Pod Insights The Big Picture The King of Physical Media. Plus: The 10 Best Blu-rays of 2024. About this episode Sean is joined by longtime playwright, actor, screenwriter, and physical media collector Tracy Letts to discuss his career and how he became such a fervent collector of physical media. They discuss what got them into the lifestyle, the state of their collections, what it has taught them about being a cinephile, the best physical releases of 2024, and much more.
Host: Sean Fennessey
Guest: Tracy Letts
Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner
Video Producer: Jack Sanders
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Transcript 20,239 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:12 Sean Fennessey? That's LinkedIn.com/thepickpicture. Terms and conditions apply. 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 and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about physical media.
1:52 Sean Fennessey? I am joined today by a legend in the game, the acclaimed playwright, actor, screenwriter, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Tony Award winner, my friend, and perhaps more than anything, the king of all physical media, Tracy Les. Hello, Tracy.
2:07 Speaker 02 Hi, how are you? It's such a goddamn pleasure to be on The Big Picture. Such a pleasure.
2:12 Sean Fennessey? It's such a pleasure to have you. I've asked you here because we were connected by our mutual friend and absent brother in physical media, Tim Simons. Timothy, not able to be with us today.
2:23 Speaker 02 You know why.
2:24 Sean Fennessey? Why is that?
2:25 Speaker 02 He's too big.
2:26 Sean Fennessey? He is getting a little big for his britches.
2:28 Speaker 02 He's too big.
2:28 Sean Fennessey? He's on this Netflix show and it's a sensation and he's blown us off. How do you feel?
2:34 Speaker 02 I feel like, do you know that now they, they no longer call him Tim Simons in the casting offices? And in the, at the studios.
2:43 Sean Fennessey? What do they call him?
2:44 Speaker 02 Hitmaker.
2:46 Sean Fennessey? Truly.
2:46 Speaker 02 Not the Hitmaker, just Hitmaker.
2:48 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
2:49 Speaker 02 We have the show, Nobody Wants This, in fact, we're gonna call it Nobody Wants This. Get me Hitmaker.
2:56 Sean Fennessey? He has really, he's elevated every property he's been a part of, but it's amazing what he's doing now. For a streamer too, you know, not, not for a company that produces physical media. He's, he's doing it for, I'm not gonna say the enemy, because you're, you're a working actor as well, but.
3:11 Speaker 02 Oh, no, no, there, there are no enemies.
3:13 Sean Fennessey? There are no enemies. But he, you know, will there be a 4K edition of Nobody Wants This, season one, made available? In Walmart around the country? No, they don't really do that. I have, I do, I do wanna talk to you about that, because I do have one addition that I enjoyed that came from a streamer. But anyway, you're here because honestly, when, when Tim and I started doing these episodes a couple of years ago. Hitmaker, excuse me, when Hitmaker and I started doing these episodes a couple of years ago.
3:38 Speaker 02 They used to call him Secret Sauce, but it turns out that referred to something else.
3:42 Sean Fennessey? He was Jonah from Veep to most people for many, many years. And now he is certified Hitmaker. And Tim knew I had a passion for this and he knew you had a passion for this. I don't know, I don't think I know the story of how you guys came to know each other. I don't think that was ever shared with me. Is that something you can share publicly?
3:57 Speaker 02 He and I became friends on the movie Christine, Antonio Campos movie. He and I are both in that film and we became friends, because nobody else would talk to us. But, so we got along.
4:09 Sean Fennessey? I know, that's not true.
4:10 Speaker 02 The nerds who got along with each other. And then at some point, he knew about my collection and some point a few years later, he just kinda popped up and said, "I'm thinking about getting into this. Do you have any words of wisdom?" So I, you know, shared what I knew about it. And the next thing I knew, he was on your goddamn podcast. Talking about physical media. And I wrote to him and said, how is this possible? You just now started doing this. And you asked me, and then I said, you didn't even mention my name. And he said, well, I thought you'd be offended. I was like, no, of course not. So that's how the introduction got.
4:48 Sean Fennessey? I mean, I honestly had a somewhat similar mentality where I was like, can I exploit this relationship with Tracy? Can he come on the show to talk about this? Cause in, in the Halloed Circles, you are considered someone who has a like a really a profound collection. You have a real passion for collecting movies. And when we first met, I was curious about your cinephilia. You know, your interest in movies. Obviously you've been a playwright and a screenwriter, but like, when does the relationship with movies start? Five years old as a kid?
5:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, it starts really young. My folks were both English teachers and the house was filled with books and records. They put a real emphasis on culture and the arts and creativity in our house. Christmases were all books and records, Christmases, right? And yeah, we saw a lot of movies. The folks took us to the movie theater a lot. And they were not, they, they, they weren't modern parents in that they didn't necessarily take us to see just kids fair. I, I remember vividly them taking me to see Serpico when I was six.
6:02 Speaker 02 My boy is six right now. I have a six year old and a three year old, and I can't imagine taking him to see Serpico. I think as, as memory serves, they actually took me to see Dirty Harry. But Dirty Harry was canceled that night and they were previewing Serpico at the theater.
6:19 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
6:20 Speaker 02 The folks were like, wow, look at this Serpico. And I sat in the front row. Of the movie theater and watch Serpico. So the there and we, you know, I grew up in a time when drive-in movie culture was a real thing. And the the town where we lived, a small town in southeastern Oklahoma, had one movie theater downtown and two drive-in movie theaters. The ship, which had a great old neon schooner out front and the Skyview, which was a pornographic drive-in.
6:55 Speaker 02 We called it the Skinview locally because you could see it as you're driving down the highway into the city. Obviously, the drive, the drive-ins eventually went away. But I, I, we were regulars at those theaters and in those drive-ins. The only movie I ever remember my folks taking me out of was Taxi Driver at the drive-in when I was 10.
7:17 Sean Fennessey? Do you remember how far into the movie?
7:19 Speaker 02 I remember exactly. It's when Iris took Travis back to her fuck pad and my mom turned to my dad and said, I'm uncomfortable. We rented a car.
7:30 Sean Fennessey? Was it, was it that they wanted to expose you to more mature themes? Anybody who has seen one of your plays staged perhaps knows that you're, you're unafraid of the transgressive. Did they want you to see those kinds of things? Or was it just that at that time it was more common for kids to be exposed to the cinema of Sidney Lumet?
7:52 Speaker 02 I think they wanted to go to the movies. And I don't think they wanted, I think they loved their kids and also didn't necessarily want to pay for a sitter. So they just took us to a lot of shit.
8:03 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
8:03 Speaker 02 And there was not a lot of, it wasn't like now in terms of kids fair. We got the occasional bed knobs and broomsticks, but that, you know, Disney was at a real lull in its history when I was a kid. And of course, I'm from the last generation where we went to see. Uh, the new John Wayne movie. When John Wayne movie came out, we went to the movie theater to see it. When the James Bond movie came out, we went to the movie theater to see it. You know, so I grew up on that kind of stuff too. But they were also cultured and I, I saw the go-between at a drive-in movie theater.
8:38 Sean Fennessey? Oh, wow. That was back in the news last year when they used the score to that film, right, in the Todd Haynes movie.
8:44 Speaker 02 And I knew it immediately when the Todd Haynes movie started. I was like, that's from the go-between.
8:48 Sean Fennessey? That's so funny. So, did that make you, you think, a sophisticated movie consumer? Or was that, was there ever like a dip where sort of after your adolescence, you didn't care about movies? Or were you addicted from the very beginning because of those experiences?
9:01 Speaker 02 I was always addicted. My older brothers, I have two older brothers, they were more into music than movies. They liked movies, but they were not the freak that I was. My grandfather took me to the drive-in when I was six again to see Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and Dracula Has Risen From The Grave.
9:21 Sean Fennessey? These are Hammer movies.
9:22 Speaker 02 Yes, a double feature of full-sentence Hammer titles.
9:27 Sean Fennessey? Right, right.
9:27 Speaker 02 And we used to do those kinds of things. And, oh my God, what, what an impact that had on my life. So I was always way, way into the movies. My dad, also being an English teacher at this small college in Durant, Oklahoma, he taught the only film class. So I would go to his, he would let me go as a little kid to his film class to see Battleship Potemkin or Nanook of the North, or sort of the staples of film classes.
9:57 Sean Fennessey? And how old were you watching those things?
9:58 Speaker 02 I was a kid.
9:59 Sean Fennessey? Like 11?
10:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:00 Sean Fennessey? Okay, alright.
10:01 Speaker 02 I was a kid.
10:01 Sean Fennessey? That's interesting, because that, I mean, you know, for me personally, my exposure to all of those things was, film class was 19, 20 years old. Having Battleship Potemkin imprinted on you at a very young age, I assume, like informs, breeds, like an intense appreciation for things. Is that fair?
10:18 Speaker 02 I think so. I also remember a time when my dad did a, he did a summer seminar at University of Texas. And so he was going down to UT campus for about six weeks and he took me with him. I was about 13, so this was early 80s. And the UT campus at the time had so many screens on campus and also commercial screens just off campus. But every day I was seeing three movies on big screens. I saw Gone with the Wind in a packed movie theater, North by Northwest, packed movie theater, to see how those things worked in a full theater. Right? Because they were designed to work in a full theater.
11:01 Speaker 02 The timing of some, uh, Duck Soup, Night at the Opera, I saw in a packed theater. Uh, that, that time is really vividly imprinted. And City of Women, the Fellini movie was just out. And that was, uh, for me, that was a real mind blower. That was a, like a, oh, I didn't, it was that moment where you go, oh, I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could break the rules like that. I mean, it's not Fellini's best, God knows, but for a kid who had never seen a Fellini movie, it was mind blowing.
11:31 Sean Fennessey? So does, does that mean you knew you wanted to get into the world of filmmaking because of your love for these movies at these ages?
11:38 Speaker 02 I wanted to be a wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings.
11:43 Speaker 02 But it turns out I didn't have, uh, any athletic prowess or size at that time.
11:49 Sean Fennessey? But at least you have Justin Jefferson now.
11:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's true.
11:52 Sean Fennessey? You can at least appreciate what a true wide receiver looks like.
11:55 Speaker 02 By the way, we, we, how is it possible that we've gone this far in this conversation? And I haven't given you an opportunity to talk about Soto?
12:02 Sean Fennessey? Uh, I recorded an episode just this morning and I, I shouted him out already today. And I'm happy to do it again. Juan Soto is a New York Met. This is one of the best things that has ever happened to me in my entire life. A player that I have always loved. Now, the last time this happened, it was Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback, not a, maybe not a man, but a quarterback who I really loved watching play. I'm sure he ruined many a Sunday for you as a lifelong Vikings fan.
12:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, I hate Aaron Rodgers.
12:28 Sean Fennessey? But he was, he was a magnificent quarterback. And when he came to the Jets, I was quite happy because it's been a hard time. And I probably over, oversold, um, my excitement there. And, uh, it's coming back to bite me. I pray to God the same does not happen with Juan Soto. I'm, I'm elated, honestly, Tracy. It's great news. It's great to, it's great to be with the right billionaire sometimes, you know? And I feel like in this case, we are with the right billionaire.
12:50 Speaker 02 Uh, what about the rotation?
12:53 Sean Fennessey? They'll figure it out. They, they got, they, they still have a lot of money to spend. They've got a very savvy, uh, president of baseball operations. I'm really not worried, honestly.
13:01 Speaker 02 Lindor bats. Here's the thing. I'm a Cubs fan.
13:05 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
13:05 Speaker 02 Uh, can we, can we, can we go down this road for a second?
13:08 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, we're potting.
13:09 Speaker 02 I'm a Cubs fan and so I hate the Mets. And I not only hate them, but I, I consider, I consider Mets fandom a kind of moral failure.
13:19 Sean Fennessey? Okay, that's deeply unnecessary on my show.
13:24 Speaker 02 I mean, when I think of, when I think of the New York Yankees, I think of Mickey Mantle. And when I think of the Los Angeles Dodgers, I think of Kofax. Uh, and when I think of the New York Mets, I think of Lenny fucking Dykstra.
13:38 Sean Fennessey? What about Tom Seaver, Tracy?
13:39 Speaker 02 It's not the first person who occurs to me.
13:41 Sean Fennessey? All right. Well, we have icons too.
13:44 Speaker 02 But I have to tell you that I've moved to New York a couple of years ago. And my feelings toward the Mets have softened. Now, I'm still a hardcore Cubs fan and I still root against the Mets. But my passionate hatred for the Yankees has never been stronger. And because of that, I have to delight in the Mets sticking it to the Yankees by getting Soto.
14:08 Sean Fennessey? So is it because you've been exposed up close to the Yankee fandom? That you flipped so hard on the Yankees or was this just a lifelong distaste that the Mets seem nicer by design?
14:18 Speaker 02 I've hated the Yankees my whole life. I just hate them more now that I live in New York.
14:24 Sean Fennessey? That's great.
14:25 Speaker 02 And also you've become a friend and I, I don't like long droughts. I, I don't think it's good for anybody. I don't think it's good for the soul. And how long has it been since you won a World Series?
14:37 Sean Fennessey? It's been 38 years now and it'll be 39 at the beginning of next season.
14:43 Speaker 02 Do you remember the last one?
14:44 Sean Fennessey? I was four years old, so I remember the energy is what I recall. My dad was very, very happy at that.
14:50 Speaker 02 So that gets into father, son shit. So how am I going to root against that?
14:54 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
14:54 Speaker 02 Also, I'm a big Lindor fan. I think he's, I think he's a fan. How can you be a baseball fan and not be a fan of that?
15:01 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, no, he's, he's, he's wonderful and I'm so happy he has a running mate. And I have nothing bad to say about the Cubs. I, I rooted for you guys to win the World Series, to break that curse, and I have nothing bad to say.
15:10 Speaker 02 I'm a lifelong Cubs fan and Vikings fan, so fuck everybody.
15:17 Sean Fennessey? Shall I toggle back or do more sports? We can do as much sports as you like. I'm honestly game. I'm a sportscaster that never was in many ways. You know, obviously, you've become this huge cinephile and you set out to have a career in the arts. And how did that go? Was that hard? Was that easy?
15:38 Speaker 02 Having a career in the arts? It's incredibly hard.
15:41 Sean Fennessey? So tell me about why it was so... Because I feel like it intersects a little bit with how you become... start to become a collector, right?
15:46 Speaker 02 So when I was 15, I did my first play, a community theater play. And I was bitten by the bug early. And so I did a lot of community theater. I didn't have much of a high school theater, but what there was, I did. I did one sort of drug-addled semester at college and I did theater there. But I became... I just got very deeply involved in the theater and in storytelling for the theater. I had written a couple of screenplays. They weren't any good. Tried to get them made. Moved to Dallas when I was... After my semester of college, I moved to Dallas for a couple of years and worked in the theater in Dallas.
16:31 Speaker 02 But it's not a great theater town. There is theater there. It's not a great theater town.
16:35 Sean Fennessey? Were you working as an actor at that time? Were you trying to get plays staged? What were you doing?
16:39 Speaker 02 I was working as an actor. I had not written any plays at that point. I was trying to... You know, they were making a lot of movies in Texas at that time. They were touting it as the third coast and they'd built these sound stages out at Los Colinas and they made a hell of a lot of TV in Dallas and in the surrounding areas. That's the time of Tender Mercies and Places in the Heart and all these kinds of movies that were made in Texas at the time. La Bamba. And so I was trying to work in film and TV and it was failing. But I had a girlfriend who was going up to Chicago because Steppenwolf Theater Company had become...
17:18 Speaker 02 Nationally and internationally known because of some productions they had taken to New York. The True West they made for PBS with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. I mean, it became a real destination point for a lot of actors. Who, for whatever reason, didn't want to go to New York and Los Angeles, who maybe wanted to just do some good theater. And so I was part of that immigration to Chicago in the mid eighties. So I was fully invested in the theater. Now, I, again, forays into film and TV, but Chicago's just not a place where they've ever made a lot of film and TV. A lot of people have come from there and maybe have gone back there.
18:00 Speaker 02 And some have even made lives there, but still, when they, when they shoot the bear in Chicago, they're, they're casting from New York and Los Angeles. They're not casting much out of Chicago. So if you're in Chicago, Denny used to say, if you're in Chicago, you're here to do the work. You're not going to make any money. You're just here for the work, which is, because Brian Denny constantly went back to Chicago to work on stage. So it's a great theater town, but not a film and TV town. But I remained a fan and I continued to write bad screenplays and try to get things done.
18:37 Sean Fennessey? How many would you say you've written?
18:39 Speaker 02 How many bad screenplays? A half a dozen.
18:41 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
18:42 Speaker 02 Not, not like 50, half a dozen bad screenplays.
18:45 Sean Fennessey? Was there ever a point where you thought, this isn't going to happen and I should stay in Chicago? Or I should continue on this track and this will be where I make my life forever?
18:54 Speaker 02 Well, so after about 11 years in Chicago, I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 1997. And I was 32 years old and I thought as an actor, I thought I was, well, I was a character actor slash leading man. I played those parts in the theater. I got to Los Angeles and found that wasn't the case. And I couldn't get arrested. I mean, I came here and I did some things. I did a. I did a Seinfeld episode. I did a
19:26 Sean Fennessey? Very good episode.
19:27 Speaker 02 I did a Drew Carey show. I did a, you know, these weird fucking guest stars on Profiler or Pretender. I can't even remember these.
19:38 Sean Fennessey? Sure.
19:39 Speaker 02 Didn't really know what I was doing.
19:40 Sean Fennessey? Network TV is, you were being cast in.
19:42 Speaker 02 I was being cast, character roles and network, guest starring parts, network TV. I wasn't even getting auditions for series, regular kinds of things.
19:50 Sean Fennessey? Still writing at this time?
19:52 Speaker 02 Still writing. Now, I had had a couple of plays in Chicago that had been successful. Killer Joe and Bug. They had been very successful for the American theater, but still a kind of cult success. They never played theaters larger than a hundred seats.
20:07 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
20:08 Speaker 02 They never made me any real money, more money than I was used to making, but never any real money.
20:13 Sean Fennessey? Was there any thought to catapulting from the notoriety of those shows to screenwriting work, you know, that kind of like for hire style work?
20:23 Speaker 02 Well, and when I came to LA, I took a lot of those meetings, but I to this day, I don't know what I was thinking or they were thinking. I don't know what I was doing in those meetings. I remember going to Disney and I think it was Disney where I had a meeting, they were making a baseball comedy called Mr. 3000. I think they eventually made the movie.
20:45 Sean Fennessey? I believe Bernie Mac is the star of that movie, right?
20:47 Speaker 02 Years after, I took a meeting on it, by the way. So this had been floating around Disney for a long time. So they had me in to talk about rewriting this. And I was like, have you read Killer Joe?
20:58 Speaker 02 Have you, have you read Bug? And the guy I was meeting with actually came around the desk and he sat by me in the chair and he showed me a sheet of paper and he had written on the sheet of paper, it was a series of names. And he said, see, these are all the people that I've told I have to meet. And after I meet them, I put a check mark by their name and, and then I've met them and I'm done. And I was like, oh, okay. So I, in other words, my being here is to just put a check mark by the name on your list. And he said, yeah.
21:25 Sean Fennessey? What a brutal industry. But, okay, so demythologize that just for a second. Is that because you have an agent who has a relationship with that studio and they're like, I've got just the guy for you. And then you step in like John Turturro and Barton Fink and it's all confusing? Like, why does it happen?
21:40 Speaker 02 I don't know.
21:43 Sean Fennessey? If you don't know what hope is there for any of us trying to understand how this works.
21:47 Speaker 02 I don't know. I met with somebody who wanted to remake Willy Wonka. Again, years before they did remake Willy Wonka. And I was so naive. I said, you know, there is already a movie of Willy Wonka. It's, it's in color. It's in color. It's pretty good.
22:03 Sean Fennessey? Pretty good, yeah. That's very funny. So you're in Los Angeles. You're getting the network TV work. This is around when you started getting into this, right?
22:12 Speaker 02 It is. So I moved here in 97 with a girlfriend. She died four months after we got here. Her name was Holly Wantuck. There's no way in a podcast I can do credit to her, her life, the impact that had on my life. Continues to have on my life. Within a year, I was in another relationship with Sarah Paulson. There's public record, so I don't mind saying it. And she's a, she's a dear friend of mine now. But I should not have been in a relationship a year after this death. I was grieving. I was desperately sad. My career wasn't going anywhere. Uh, I had left a, a artistically satisfying place in Chicago where I wasn't making any money.
22:57 Speaker 02 And I had come to Los Angeles to find that I, I, I, I had no currency as a writer. I had no currency as an actor. I remember vividly sitting in a movie theater, watching the talented Mr. Ripley. And seeing Jude Law and Matt Damon and the talented Mr. Ripley and going, oh, that's, that's not going to happen for me, right? I, I think most artists have that moment, a moment of where you go, oh, the thing I dreamed about that I thought about. It's like, I have to adapt. I can't, you, you adapt or you just, maybe adaptation means getting out of it completely. For me, it meant focusing on other things. So I was not in a good way when I was in Los Angeles. Even though when I eventually went back to Chicago, they said,
23:41 Speaker 02 well, why'd you come back? Seemed like you were doing all right. And we saw you on Seinfeld, you know, it's like, yeah, it's not enough to feed the soul. So it was in that state of mind that I started to see a shrink in West Los Angeles. Is this too?
23:54 Sean Fennessey? I'm loving it.
23:55 Speaker 02 All right.
23:55 Sean Fennessey? So this is the movie discussed, yeah.
23:56 Speaker 02 So I'm seeing the shrink in West Los Angeles and I don't know how the talking cure works for you, if you've ever taken it, but for me, it always changes the world, right? If I go in feeling bad, I leave feeling, maybe not better, but altered. If I go in feeling good, I leave feeling bad, pretty invariably. So I would always get out of my shrink session and just feel very off kilter. And my shrink was right by Cinephile Video, which I believe is
24:27 Sean Fennessey? Still extant.
24:28 Speaker 02 Still there, still by the New Art Theater, yeah?
24:31 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
24:31 Speaker 02 And they had eclectic sections, movie sections, not the straight sort of drama and comedy of blockbuster, but nasty nuns or, you know, trouble on the highway or whatever the fuck.
24:45 Sean Fennessey? Great curation.
24:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:47 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
24:47 Speaker 02 And they had a Jallo section. I had seen a couple of Jallo's. I had seen a couple of Argento movies, but I didn't realize they were part of this subgenre of movie. So I got interested in these Jallo's and these Jallo's became a kind of post-therapy cooling out. It was so nice to go see my shrink, go to Cinephile, rent a Jallo, go back to my place, watch the, Paulson, I have to say, had no fucking idea. It was like, what the fuck are you looking at? What is this like Italian garbage you're watching?
25:24 Sean Fennessey? You're putting a blade in the dark in front of her. Yeah, that's confusing.
25:28 Speaker 02 I watched everything on the shelf. I got a book called Blood and Black Lace, which is also the title of a seminal Mario Bava.
25:36 Sean Fennessey? Make a lot later in our conversation.
25:38 Speaker 02 Mate, and the book is a Jallo film guide.
25:44 Speaker 02 We should probably say what a giallo is.
25:46 Sean Fennessey? It's I've discussed it on the show before. It's a an Italian style of thriller horror film that features several significant tropes. Probably the most memorable is the black gloved killer wielding a blade of some kind, often murdering women. But there's this sort of whodunit mystery aspect to these films. There is a kind of opportunity for extraordinary color, often the color red, hence the title of the kind of film. And they're sort of like heavily influenced by American and British films. And then those films have now heavily influenced a lot of American and British horror movies in the last 30 years or so.
26:18 Speaker 02 Right. Huge influence on De Palma.
26:20 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
26:21 Speaker 02 Giallo is the Italian word for yellow. A lot of the mysteries that came out in paper back in Italy had yellow covers on them, which is why it wound up with that title. Anyway, so I get this book, Blood and Black Lace, which is a giallo film guide, 200, 250 movies that might be classified as giallos. And I just made it a goal to see all these movies. Well, it's the nascent days of internet shopping. And so trying to track down these films, I got some weird DVD Rs and crappy videotapes from London.
27:00 Speaker 02 Now, I was still broke ass for the most part, and so I didn't even have a credit card at that time. I had to get a friend to use his credit card to buy these movies online. And and he's buying titles like in the folds of the flesh. And he's like, am I buying like porn for you?
27:19 Sean Fennessey? Skin view, yeah.
27:21 Speaker 02 And so, you know, I would write him a check so he would. So that's really the beginning of the collection. I started to fill a shelf with some of this giallo stuff. Moved back to Chicago. My relationship with Sarah ended and I moved back to Chicago in 2001. I took a literal vow of poverty. I mean, down on one knee, I am going to go to the city that I love to make the art that I love, where I felt most fulfilled. I know I will never get paid for doing that.
27:54 Sean Fennessey? It's profound.
27:54 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I moved back to Chicago. The first thing I did when I got back was a production of Glengarry Glen Ross at Steppenwolf Theater, directed by Amy Morton, with great late Mike Nussbaum, playing Shelley, and a wonderful actor named David Pasquazzi, a dear friend of mine, who was playing Roma. And it was the time of my life.
28:13 Sean Fennessey? What part did you play?
28:14 Speaker 02 I played Williamson, the office manager. I've never seen the film. Is it spacey in the film?
28:19 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
28:20 Speaker 02 It's a great part. It's an undervalued part in the thing. And I just had the greatest time doing that. And it totally justified my decision, I felt, to go back to Chicago. At the time, I was living at 40 East Oak, which is a nice address. It was a partially furnished studio apartment. I'd put all my shit in a storage cube. So all I had was suitcase with clothes, three cats, and a fork. It was all I owned. I remember combing my hair with that fork before rehearsals for Glengarry.
28:54 Sean Fennessey? Wow. This is a truly monastic era of your life.
28:58 Speaker 02 It was. And during this time, I mean, because it was partially furnished, it had a little TV and it had a disc player. And I was in a Tower Records in Chicago, and Contempt, the Godard film, was on the shelf. And I remember doing the calculation. It's like, is it worth it to not cheat?
29:20 Sean Fennessey? How much was it at that time? Do you remember? $29.99? Something like that?
29:24 Speaker 02 I think you're right on the money. And
29:27 Sean Fennessey? Was this the Criterion edition of that movie?
29:29 Speaker 02 It was, just out, as I recall. And I bought it. And that was really it. It really began there. Now, the collection, over time, there have been lulls. There have been, you know, long periods of time where I haven't contributed at all to it. Augustos H. County sort of blew up my vow of poverty. And suddenly, I had a lot more resources with which to... So I would say the collection probably doubled at that point. And then probably doubled or trebled after the pandemic. Really kind of exploded with the pandemic.
30:06 Sean Fennessey? Interesting. So just for some context.
30:10 Sean Fennessey? You mentioned that when Tim did the first episode where we talked about this, he was at the beginning stages of his collection.
30:16 Speaker 02 Hitmaker.
30:17 Sean Fennessey? Hitmaker, excuse me, Hitmaker.
30:20 Sean Fennessey? When Hitmaker and I spoke, and then the second time he came back, he had really gotten the bug. Now, I have been a collector my entire life. I know you have as well. I would say I was kind of shadow collecting for many years, but not with a heavy focus, sort of like acquiring DVDs as recent, as early as 1997, 98, but not thinking of myself as someone building a library, per se, just getting stuff I wanted. And then something clicked, 17, 18, 19, probably correlating to when I started doing this more for work. And, correct me if I'm wrong, because you've been in the game longer than I have,
31:01 Sean Fennessey? but it does feel like roughly in that time, something also clicked in the space where the amount of things that were available, the way that they were being crafted and marketed changed, and it became closer to a proper collector's hobby instead of, I gotta get this disc, I gotta get that disc at Target, at Walmart, at Best Buy, at what have you. And now I feel like we're in this bizarre glory period, if you like to do this. And so I assume that when it doubled and tripled during the pandemic, part of that was because you were being super-served with something that was maybe not as available previously.
31:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think there are, I think there are a lot of reasons for it. Certainly, you know, the ability to buy, to purchase on the internet, right? It's like you can do all of that shopping on the internet, right?
31:50 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
31:51 Speaker 02 I got a credit card, right?
31:54 Sean Fennessey? During the pandemic was your first credit card?
31:58 Speaker 02 I got my first credit card at 43 years old.
32:01 Sean Fennessey? That's crazy.
32:02 Speaker 02 So, I think, I think all of that is true. I think that's right. I recall the early days of collecting, I was collecting movies I wanted.
32:13 Sean Fennessey? That's sort of what I'm saying. This was stuff I wanted as opposed to what I felt I should have.
32:16 Speaker 02 Right. But another thing that happened is just the explosion of quality.
32:21 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
32:21 Speaker 02 It's one thing to look at these Jallohs when they're shitty DVD R's that have been shipped to you from London, and it's another thing to see them in, on Blu-ray or in 4K. And you look at them and you realize... Well, people worked really hard on this.
32:38 Sean Fennessey? Mm hmm.
32:38 Speaker 02 This isn't just like Italian shit show, just like, let's show up and, you know, uh, kill naked ladies cinema.
32:47 Sean Fennessey? It's a real work of art, yeah.
32:48 Speaker 02 People worked really hard on these things and the screenplays are sometimes really thoughtful, really convoluted. I mean bizarre and ridiculous, but also, uh, sort of operate in this weird moral gray area and can be quite transgressive. The, and the, yeah, the art direction, cinematography is some, sometimes it's try checking out that 4K of Blood and Black Lace, man, that is a fucking work of art.
33:14 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
33:15 Speaker 02 It's really something. So I think that's another, another reason for the proliferation. You sit there and you look at these and you go, oh, some of these movies that were sort of crappy guilty pleasures for me are actually really good.
33:28 Sean Fennessey? Mm hmm. Okay. So then let's talk about the, the like amassing of the collection and how you go from making decisions versus feeling a sense of obligation because now your collection is very large.
33:42 Speaker 02 About 10,300.
33:45 Sean Fennessey? And you track everything that you've acquired?
33:47 Speaker 02 I do.
33:48 Sean Fennessey? And is that in the spreadsheet?
33:51 Speaker 02 It's on an app.
33:52 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
33:52 Speaker 02 It's, uh, uh, collectors with a Z, C L Z. So they're getting a, an acknowledgement here from me, uh, where you actually scan the, the barcode of the movie and it enters all of the information into a, a spreadsheet.
34:08 Sean Fennessey? So when you say you've got 10,300, first of all, obviously staggering number, incredible.
34:12 Speaker 02 A stupid number. I mean, it's a stupid number.
34:16 Sean Fennessey? It's aspirational.
34:17 Speaker 02 If you can do the math, I, I could conceivably watch five movies a day and get through them all before I die, but I'm not going to do that.
34:25 Sean Fennessey? I was going to ask you that. I mean, you know, you and your wife are, are known for watching a great number of movies, tracking them over time, sharing them on social media, saying, here's what we watched. Um, of those 10,300, are they, they're not all individual films? Are there duplicates of a number of films in different formats?
34:43 Speaker 02 Uh, most of the duplicates have been weeded out. Sometimes I keep them because there'll be some special features on one that are not on another.
34:50 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
34:51 Speaker 02 A, a few for sentimental value, but not many.
34:54 Sean Fennessey? How do you store these guys?
34:57 Sean Fennessey? What do you do? Are they, is there a room with an extraordinary series of shelves?
35:02 Speaker 02 I have a lot of shelves.
35:03 Sean Fennessey? Everything?
35:03 Speaker 02 I have a lot of shelves.
35:04 Sean Fennessey? Is most stuff present in your home?
35:07 Speaker 02 It's all in my home.
35:08 Sean Fennessey? All available to you at any given time?
35:09 Speaker 02 It's all on a shelf in my home.
35:12 Sean Fennessey? Is the room climate controlled?
35:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, sure.
35:15 Sean Fennessey? Is there natural light in the room?
35:18 Speaker 02 Natural light?
35:19 Sean Fennessey? Yes, sunlight able to make its way into the space.
35:21 Speaker 02 No.
35:22 Sean Fennessey? Is there a screen in the room where you can watch things?
35:25 Speaker 02 All of the movies are in two rooms. One of the rooms is the theater where the screen is.
35:32 Sean Fennessey? Okay. At this stage, we have this, you know, there's this evolution. There's VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, UHD, Blu-ray.
35:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:46 Sean Fennessey? For some people listening, they're like, I just want the movie. I want to spend $9.99 and get the movie on DVD or Blu-ray. I don't care. In the last, you know, 10 years, but really more five years or so, 4K has taken a huge step forward. A lot of titles are now being made available in that format.
36:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:02 Sean Fennessey? Some of these movies look so much better, to your point about Blood and Black Lace.
36:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:06 Sean Fennessey? Being elevated to this format. Are you only buying 4K now? Are you, how do you make decisions with?
36:12 Speaker 02 I buy 4K and Blu-ray. Occasionally, I'll buy a DVD if that's the only way I can get the film that I want to see.
36:21 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
36:21 Speaker 02 But that's very occasional.
36:23 Sean Fennessey? Do you have a list of wants? Are there things that you're like, I, I, I'm waiting to get this or I'm waiting for this to be made available to me or?
36:31 Speaker 02 Well, I have a list of things I wish they would bring out. I mean, why do we not have a Paul Mazurski 70s box?
36:39 Sean Fennessey? It's insane.
36:40 Speaker 02 Why not? I don't, I don't get it.
36:41 Sean Fennessey? I know. Last Stop Grinch Village, what are we doing? Why do we not have a?
36:45 Speaker 02 What are we doing?
36:45 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I agree.
36:46 Speaker 02 Harry and Tonto.
36:47 Sean Fennessey? I, I agree.
36:48 Speaker 02 Everybody bitches about Art Carney winning the Academy Award over Al Pacino. It's like, maybe if we watched Harry and Tonto, you'd realize why he won that goddamn award.
36:56 Sean Fennessey? It's on DVD, I think.
36:57 Speaker 02 It is, and I own it on DVD, but it, I would like, how about Paul Mazurski's Tempest? A greatly underrated movie.
37:04 Sean Fennessey? I just saw it a couple of years ago on the Criterion Channel.
37:06 Speaker 02 It's fantastic, that movie. Why is that? Come on, come on, somebody.
37:11 Sean Fennessey? That, well, that's an interesting thing because obviously as your collection grows, I assume you have. Increasingly obscure titles, but the Paul Mazurski movies made for the studios in the 70s and 80s are not obscure titles.
37:24 Speaker 02 I don't get it.
37:25 Sean Fennessey? And so it's very confusing when there are huge swathes of movie history. Like The Heartbreak Kid is a very famous example because it's currently owned by like a medical supplies company. So there's no way to kind of disentangle the ownership of the Elaine May movie from that somehow they found their way to becoming the licensors of that movie.
37:40 Speaker 02 Right. I have that on DVD too.
37:42 Sean Fennessey? I do as well. But when it comes to stuff like that, that you're talking about, you know, these movies are made for like MGM and Columbia.
37:51 Speaker 02 Isn't a lot of it music rights?
37:53 Sean Fennessey? Some of it for sure. So when you're making your list, is it because you know that these are movies you've seen and love? Or is it because you have a vast knowledge of like the movie libraries in cinema history and you're trying to fill out those libraries?
38:06 Speaker 02 Nah, I'm not trying to fill anything out.
38:08 Sean Fennessey? Okay. So what like what drives it at this point then?
38:11 Speaker 02 The labels, the individual labels and the work that they're creating. I mean, I'm talking about the Blu-ray labels and the work that they're creating. That drives a lot of it. I mean, there's a real focus on genre work from some of the labels and they can do a great job of sort of upselling you on a bad movie in a nice package. But the truth is that some of the work that some of these companies putting out, not only great movies that we're seeing, I mean, you're seeing so clearly for the first time. I mean, for the first, try watching McCabe and Mrs.
38:50 Speaker 02 Miller on a 24-inch TV broadcast.
38:57 Sean Fennessey? I watched it on VHS.
38:58 Speaker 02 1970. I mean, and then try watching the 4K McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It's a different experience. For that matter, try watching Underground Railroad. Watch the first five minutes of Underground Railroad.
39:13 Speaker 02 On Blu-ray.
39:14 Sean Fennessey? Something I brought in just special today.
39:15 Speaker 02 And then watch the first five minutes of it on Amazon. You watch this and you're gonna say, oh my god. That's a work of art. And you watch it on Amazon and you go, oh, that's a TV show.
39:26 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, so do you try to watch as much as possible then in these formats? Like, will you still stream TV?
39:32 Speaker 02 We do stream TV.
39:34 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
39:34 Speaker 02 I mean, we work in TV. I hope to work for Amazon. I just trashed. But we, we do work in TV. We, we like working in TV.
39:46 Speaker 02 Plays are better than movies and movies are better than television. It's just the truth.
39:52 Sean Fennessey? I knew you would get there at some point in this conversation. Um, so you store everything in your home? You.
39:59 Speaker 02 Now, you play golf, right?
40:00 Sean Fennessey? I do.
40:01 Speaker 02 You're pretty good.
40:02 Sean Fennessey? I'm okay.
40:03 Speaker 02 You and Hitmaker, he's pretty good too.
40:05 Sean Fennessey? Now, he's good. He's playing in pro-am's.
40:07 Speaker 02 He's better than you?
40:08 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah, he's much better than me.
40:09 Speaker 02 So, and you're also, what are you, forty-three?
40:12 Sean Fennessey? Forty-two, yeah.
40:12 Speaker 02 Forty-two years old? And Hitmaker's around the same age. So, uh, you guys have enough self-awareness to know that nobody gives a shit about your golf game. Nobody cares.
40:25 Sean Fennessey? I've tried to avoid discussing it on this podcast.
40:26 Speaker 02 Nobody cares about your golf game. Maybe the guy you play with cares only because he wants you to care about his. But no, you know not to bring it up, even in polite conversation, because nobody cares about your golf game. That's how I feel about the display of Blu-rays. Nobody gives a shit. Why do they look? Nobody needs to see your.
40:47 Sean Fennessey? I have to correct you. I hate to correct you. You're like a wise, gifted and thoughtful person who's been very kind to me, but you're wrong. Because here's how I know. When I curate a screening at a rep theater here in Los Angeles and do a meet and greet afterwards, there are some very lovely women, but there, it's a lot of men. And those men, they wanna chat, they say, wanna say, hey, thanks for doing this, I appreciate it. They wanna shake my hand and they wanna show me a photograph on their phone of their Blu-ray display.
41:16 Speaker 02 And how much do you care? How much do you care?
41:17 Sean Fennessey? Well, as a, as an ambassador to this hobby.
41:21 Speaker 02 You feel like you have to care.
41:22 Sean Fennessey? But I, what I want to do is have empathy for the experience that they're having that I also enjoy and that I'm frankly fascinated in with you as well. Like, I'm asking in part because it's a, it's a sick thing. You pointed this out too. This is a, this is a sick thing. And you very generously sharing your personal experiences and how they led to this.
41:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:42 Sean Fennessey? I think is an identification of a very safe and gentle sick.
41:48 Speaker 02 Do you wanna talk about the sickness now? Shall we talk?
41:50 Sean Fennessey? Is it? Do you see it that way? Do you see it as a sick thing?
41:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, I do. I, I, sick is a strong word. Uh, you're trying to fill an unfillable hole with, uh, physical media and, uh, you're just not gonna fill it that way.
42:07 Sean Fennessey? No.
42:08 Speaker 02 Some people fill it with booze and hookers. Some people fill it with golf. Some, you know, people fill it in different ways, the unfillable hole.
42:16 Sean Fennessey? Trying to fill from a lot of different angles.
42:17 Speaker 02 So, uh, to fill the unfillable hole with physical media, there's lots worse ways you could go about it, right? There's, it's a pretty benign illness. I mean, it can cost you and the, and.
42:31 Sean Fennessey? This is a key thing.
42:31 Speaker 02 The shelves, they, the reason nobody cares is because they look like shit. The, the, the books on bookshelves.
42:38 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
42:39 Speaker 02 Fantastic. They, they look fantastic and there's not a better home, uh, interior decoration than, than, uh, books on bookshelves.
42:48 Sean Fennessey? I believe this is changing. There is something that is happening that is correlated to the, the, the, the financial aspect of this too, which is that, you know, a great many people can't afford to collect, certainly not at the level that you're collecting, not at the level that I'm collecting.
43:01 Speaker 02 Oh, and ours are tax deductible too. Let's, let's be fully honest about that.
43:04 Sean Fennessey? That is a very good point, um, which is a, a great benefit to me as the movie podcaster and you as the creator of art. Um, I, for example, one of my new favorite labels is.
43:15 Sean Fennessey? Cinematograph, which is an offshoot of Vinegar Syndrome. And they are doing actually the thing that you're describing, which is they're like a series of films from the seventies, eighties and nineties that are studio pictures, often paramount, that have been undistributed on these formats. And they're not only licensing them, they're licensing like Little Darlings, or Paul Schrader's Touch, or a lot of different kinds of movies. But they're packaging them really beautifully in these hard boxes with slipcases and booklets and extras and often 4K UHD. And if you put Little Darlings on your shelf, two things will happen. One, if you have a three-year-old like we do, they'll pull them off because they're like, what is that pink thing? I'm really interested in that.
43:55 Speaker 02 Sure.
43:55 Sean Fennessey? And two, they look good in your house. Do they not? Do they not look like those, those, those books on the shelf?
44:01 Speaker 02 You don't, if they all looked like that, maybe, but they don't. Most of it looks like plastic shit and it looks like you live in a fucking GameStop.
44:12 Speaker 02 They just don't look good on a shelf.
44:14 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's, it's not untrue, but I'm, what I'm, I'm working toward a, a greater beauty in the world of home video purchasing.
44:23 Speaker 02 Well, to that end.
44:24 Sean Fennessey? But that's expensive is my point. These additions are very expensive. They're not like, they're not.
44:29 Speaker 02 They're very expensive. That's another change that's happened, right? I mean, the DVD market has shrunk down to literally something like 1% of what it was.
44:39 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
44:39 Speaker 02 15 years ago. And, uh, but these companies have produced these beautiful specialized things for collectors. And now that, I mean, how much do you pay for? I'm, I'm so grateful to you for finding the right to syllabic emphasis on a cinematograph. I've not known how to say it.
45:00 Sean Fennessey? It's not, it might not be correct. I may be getting it wrong, but I don't think.
45:03 Speaker 02 Cinematograph.
45:04 Sean Fennessey? Um, I think, so I try to wait for sales, candidly. I don't want to spend top market dollar. In fact, when Tim and I did the first episode.
45:14 Speaker 02 Hitmaker.
45:15 Sean Fennessey? Hitmakers, god damn. It's gonna take a while to stick there despite his stature. Um, I.
45:23 Sean Fennessey? I think I made a rule of I try to not go above thirty five dollars. If I can. Now.
45:30 Speaker 02 It's a good rule.
45:31 Sean Fennessey? I've broken the rule. I've broken the rule many times this year, many times.
45:34 Speaker 02 So it's not really a rule anymore.
45:35 Sean Fennessey? It's not a rule anymore. And I've broken it. And I was, I was mostly keeping to it when I said this two years ago, and I'm not keeping to it now. Because there are more specialty labels than ever. There are higher quality additions than there ever have been. They are more super serving the collector than they are serving the common casual target shopper who's grabbing stuff and dropping it into their cart. And so I get drawn in. Now, there are exceptions, obviously, like, for example, there's a, there's one on your list. I think The Conversation is one of the, one of your picks this year that had kind of like a very expanded edition. I think it was like seventy nine ninety nine or something like that, like a very expensive edition. That's a lot of money to spend on a piece of physical media, especially for a movie that you probably already owned in at least one format.
46:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, that comes with a cassette tape of the score. It's like, what the hell am I gonna play this song?
46:21 Sean Fennessey? You don't have any tape tacks left in your house? It's funny, like, I've been doing these semi-serious, semi-joking videos about unboxing. Are you familiar with the unboxing phenomenon?
46:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:32 Sean Fennessey? And there is, I found my LaserDisc copy of Seven Samurai. And I broke it out because Seven Samurai was just reissued on 4K UHD by both Criterion and BFI.
46:45 Speaker 02 Yep.
46:46 Sean Fennessey? And the first Criterion I ever owned was Seven Samurai DVD. And I also had it on VHS when I was a kid. So I have all four editions in front of me.
46:54 Speaker 02 Is that your most purchased movie?
46:57 Sean Fennessey? Well, that was where I was leading with sort of like, at what point are we done adding on top of the pile? Because there's gonna be a new format. It's gonna happen.
47:06 Speaker 02 You know it's gonna happen, and you know you're gonna buy it. So you're not done.
47:09 Sean Fennessey? But so are you, are you resigned to just being screwed with this, where when they introduce 8K? That you'll just be like, I'll start replacing?
47:15 Speaker 02 I am now.
47:18 Sean Fennessey? What is your, okay, what, what does your, your wife think about that? You've got young children to think about.
47:24 Speaker 02 I have a six-year-old and a three-year-old. And a wife who's so lovely and patient.
47:32 Speaker 02 Again, this conversation about nobody gives a shit. So I told you, we've got two rooms. There's the theater proper, which has a lot of shelves in it where the movies are. And then there's a little room outside the room, also in the basement. When we moved into this house, the basement, it was finished, but it just looked like a Marriott ballroom. So we went down and we put a couple of walls in there to, to seal off a little enclosed theater. Uh, and there are shelves inside there. And then right outside there, there are other shelves. Uh, that we had put in. And so those are more, uh, public, right? You go downstairs and you see those shelves. So I thought for my wife, wouldn't it be nice if I made them look like something, right? That they didn't look like you lived in a GameStop. So I tried to make them, uh,
48:15 Speaker 02 I tried to arrange them by label and by color. Now, this is so against every organizing principle I have.
48:24 Sean Fennessey? Honestly, I'm having a panic attack hearing you say that. That's awful.
48:28 Speaker 02 But she doesn't know where to find anything anyway. So if I am looking for Invasion of the Body Snatchers on 4K, I know, oh, it's in the arrows. Oh, and I know the box is white. I can find it pretty quickly.
48:38 Sean Fennessey? So you're organizing by label first, then color through label?
48:41 Speaker 02 In that outside section. Now, inside I have, inside the theater, I have box sets. I have, I've sort of A to Z by title. I hate it. But so the directors have been pulled out so much for the labels that I don't feel I can organize by director. So that's just like an A to Z by title. And then I have a couple of sections of TV documentary.
49:10 Sean Fennessey? For shame, TV.
49:11 Speaker 02 Uh, there's some, there's some TV in there.
49:14 Sean Fennessey? For the longest time, the only way you could watch homicide was on DVD.
49:17 Speaker 02 That's right. Yeah. Uh, my, uh, my Barney Miller set is treasured to me. It's the greatest television show that's ever on, on TV.
49:26 Sean Fennessey? Has that been issued in 4K?
49:28 Speaker 02 Uh, Barney Miller is not. It's just on DVD. My, uh, The Prisoner on Blu-ray is a certain, a must own for me. It's a great pandemic watch for me and my wife to go through the prisoners. So, uh, some, so you and Hitmaker asked me about my organi- and I, I didn't want to even talk to you about it. I was so, I find-
49:51 Sean Fennessey? You're embarrassed.
49:52 Speaker 02 I'm embarrassed by it. It's horrible.
49:54 Sean Fennessey? But it's a lovely thing you did for- did, did, did your wife, was she like, "Thank you for doing this, sir?"
49:58 Speaker 02 This is what, this is what I was trying to explain. She's so lovely and patient. I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to engage her in this discussion and break her down and say, "Now, look, I'm thinking about doing this," and, and her response is always, "You should do what you want to do. It's your collection. You should make it the way you want it."
50:17 Sean Fennessey? That's very nice. That is very sweet.
50:19 Speaker 02 Then, when I'm out of town, I get some angry calls, like, "I can't find Sinbad." I was like, "Well, if you had engaged in the discussion, you could have found Sinbad very easily on the shelf."
50:31 Sean Fennessey? It's nice that she's even just looking for anything while you're gone.
50:34 Speaker 02 Well, the kids, you know, my boy wants to watch-
50:37 Sean Fennessey? Naturally.
50:37 Speaker 02 The Sinbad movies.
50:38 Sean Fennessey? Well, do, do your kids, have they been exposed to the collection? Are they aware of this as like a way to watch things?
50:44 Speaker 02 My six-year-old boy is very aware of it, and now he has his own shelf.
50:50 Sean Fennessey? Really?
50:50 Speaker 02 Yeah. He has his own shelf of stuff that he can go and look and say, "Pull something out and say, 'I want to watch this.'"
50:57 Sean Fennessey? That's, would you mind sharing, was there one thing that he's really feels passionate about?
51:02 Speaker 02 Well, he's a, he's a Godzilla freak. Again, the pleasures of physical media, before he had ever seen anything, I had the Criterion Godzilla-
51:14 Sean Fennessey? The big-
51:14 Speaker 02 -box, which is a big book with big comic book-style illustrations, and he was obsessed with that as a two-year-old or three-year-old. He wanted me to teach him the titles of the movies. He, you know, could, he learned all the titles to films.
51:28 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
51:28 Speaker 02 So, obviously-
51:29 Sean Fennessey? He'll be fluent in Japanese.
51:31 Speaker 02 -when he was of an age, I put a Godzilla movie on for him, and that was it, man. He is-
51:38 Speaker 02 He is hooked on Kaiju.
51:40 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
51:40 Speaker 02 My kid is hooked on Kaiju.
51:42 Sean Fennessey? That is fascinating. I wonder if that holds the same way that your predilection for the transgressive held through of your adult life, you know?
51:51 Speaker 02 Perhaps. He has seen, uh, he's seen all of the Godzillas multiple times. He has seen all the Gamera, the Arrow has a couple of great Gamera boxes. He's seen all, he could, he can identify the different eras of the Gamera movies. He has a lot of collectibles.
52:08 Sean Fennessey? Oh my god.
52:09 Speaker 02 Tracking down some of that shit. Tracking down the Frankenstein monster from the movie Frankenstein versus Baragon.
52:16 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
52:16 Speaker 02 A particular Japanese Frankenstein from the late 60s. And there was an action figure. And we found it and we bought it and it is a treasured toy of that kid.
52:27 Sean Fennessey? That is fantastic.
52:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:29 Sean Fennessey? Your wife is okay with him becoming addicted to this now?
52:32 Speaker 02 Oh yeah. He, he, he watches maybe a movie a day, maybe not.
52:38 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
52:38 Speaker 02 No more than a movie a day. He prefers movies to, he has some TV shows he watches, but mostly he's a movie kid. He's been through all of the Universal horror.
52:49 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
52:49 Speaker 02 He loves. One of my proudest moment was when I put on Creature from the Black Lagoon and as soon as it started, he said, "Yay, it's in black and white." I'm like, "Oh, okay, alright."
53:02 Sean Fennessey? You have trained him well. Do you, there will be a rejection at a certain point, right? I imagine at some point he was gonna be like, "Dad, get the fuck out of here with this."
53:09 Speaker 02 He was like, "Dad, you're a total dork and I never want to see you again."
53:13 Sean Fennessey? That is genuinely heartwarming and I have to seriously consider it. Do your, do, because you obviously watch a lot of contemporary films as well. You're an Academy voter, for example. You keep up with a lot of stuff. Obviously you're working in the business too. Do your kids care about contemporary stuff because of, despite having this access to all of movie history essentially?
53:32 Speaker 02 I don't know, I don't know what they care, I don't know why they care about what they care about. He loves The Dark Crystal. That's one of his favorite movies. We showed him Dark Crystal. There's a great 4K of Dark Crystal. And, uh, he loves it. He's seen that movie many, many times.
53:47 Sean Fennessey? He's really after my own heart with the creatures and the horror.
53:51 Speaker 02 Well, we tried, without trying to steer him into any one thing, we did try to present him with a lot of handmade stuff early as opposed to.
54:03 Sean Fennessey? CGI.
54:04 Speaker 02 Uh, CGI or, or that, that sheen, I mean, Carrie said Toy Story early to me. Now, I've, I've never actually seen Toy Story myself.
54:16 Sean Fennessey? It's a wonderful film.
54:17 Speaker 02 She, she wanted him to see Toy Story. She had shown it to her baby brothers when she, she's older than her baby brothers. And she had remembered showing it to them. I didn't fight her on Toy Story. I did say, I'm afraid once we introduce that computer sheen animation to him, it, it's going to be hard to go. I'm afraid he's not going to want to watch universal horror movies after seeing that. Wasn't the case. She showed him Toy Story. He thoroughly enjoyed Toy Story. He had a great time. He never asked to see it again.
54:45 Sean Fennessey? Interesting. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's just a kind of, certain kind of storytelling that he likes too, that can't be accomplished in that form.
54:51 Speaker 02 Lion King, he loved. He's watched Lion King a bunch.
54:54 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
54:54 Speaker 02 He's, he's watched it a bunch.
54:55 Sean Fennessey? Interesting. I, my, my concern, yeah, was computer animation versus hand drawn, but my daughter, to this day, this Sleeping Beauty is probably her favorite film. That's like one of the most beautifully animated movies ever made.
55:04 Speaker 02 We do try to, he's seen all the Disney stuff. We don't lean into the Disney stuff, right? Cause he likes creature features. Once, I mean, of all that universal horror, Creature from the Black Lagoon was his favorite. And he's, well, he's pretty, pretty much into Frankenstein too. He went as Frankenstein or Halloween. Yeah, he likes all that stuff.
55:26 Sean Fennessey? I really, I don't know if I'm jealous, but I'm fascinated by his ability to get that far into that stuff at that age. It does remind me of, yeah, I would sit in the library for hours and just look at books about monsters and try to understand the creation of monsters and mythologies. And so.
55:41 Speaker 02 That's his first question about any movie. Are there creatures in it? So he loves the Harryhausen movies. He loves the Sinbad movies. He loves that stuff.
55:49 Sean Fennessey? Okay. Well, talk to me about labels, cause then we can use that to talk about what, what's been good this year.
55:56 Sean Fennessey? Are there any labels that you think I must own everything that they do?
55:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. Radiance Films.
56:01 Sean Fennessey? This is the big winner of 2024.
56:02 Speaker 02 You have to own everything on Radiance Films.
56:05 Sean Fennessey? Can you explain what, who they are?
56:08 Speaker 02 It's a UK company and they are.
56:13 Speaker 02 Purveyors of, they seem to specialize in a kind of, well, some forgotten titles.
56:21 Sean Fennessey? A slightly overlooked world cinema, right?
56:25 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
56:26 Sean Fennessey? But not, that's not, it's not highfalutin'. These are not arthouse movies for the most part.
56:31 Speaker 02 No, it's, first of all, they do have a couple of American titles like The Hot Spot, Dennis Hopper movie, or Miami Blues, a great transfer of the great Miami Blues.
56:42 Sean Fennessey? They had another one, they had The Landlord recently as well.
56:45 Speaker 02 Landlord, early Ashby, right? Panic in Year Zero, I don't know if you've ever seen that?
56:50 Sean Fennessey? Haven't.
56:50 Speaker 02 Ray Maland, well, you should see it, it's bonkers. He directed the movie, Ray Maland. And it's post-apocalypse, and now everybody needs to get a gun to survive. It's really kind of scary.
57:04 Sean Fennessey? Sounds relevant.
57:06 Speaker 02 Scarily relevant. Messiah of Evil also was a big release of theirs.
57:11 Sean Fennessey? That was my favorite release of last year.
57:13 Speaker 02 Right. But Italian gangster movies like Tony Arzenta with Alain Delon, which is great. I'm a Hitman Getting Out of the Business, come on.
57:24 Sean Fennessey? We've seen it before, we'll see it again.
57:28 Speaker 02 The 1960s Yakuza movies, some of these titles I did know, like Sympathy for the Underdog and Yakuza Graveyard, these are Fukusaku movies, they are great. Big Time Gambling Boss, Yamashita movie that I had never heard of.
57:44 Sean Fennessey? This was one of their first releases and a good indicator of what they're doing, which is they're really mining for kind of micro classics, for lack of a better phrase, like films that in their home countries or to cinephiles in those countries are meaningful movies or meaningful contributions, but that were not picked by Criterion or Kino Lorber or any of the other kind of classics titles, and giving them a huge spotlight and amazing transfers.
58:10 Speaker 02 So I feel as a collector, a responsibility to buy everything that they put out. Not only because I want it, but because...
58:20 Speaker 02 I want to support that company and what they're doing and because I'm in a position to be able to do that. So if I already have a perfectly fine transfer of Bridewear Black and they come out with their edition Bridewear Black, I'm still buying the Radiance.
58:36 Sean Fennessey? I bought that one as well. One of my picks for this year is Dai Gothic, which is three ghost stories from the Japanese studio that produced Rashomon, some of the Kurosawa classics, one of the most important Japanese, sort of government-funded Japanese movie studios of the 50s and 60s that, in the great tradition of Japanese ghost stories, created some movies. I'd never heard of any of these three films. They're all fantastic. They have incredible features like Kiyoshi Kurosawa talking about why these movies are impactful and how they informed his movies. Radiance is a great company.
59:07 Speaker 02 A great company. Thumbs up Radiance. More?
59:11 Sean Fennessey? Give me a couple more, yeah.
59:13 Speaker 02 Canadian International Pictures.
59:16 Sean Fennessey? I'm at a loss. Break it down. This is why you're here.
59:20 Speaker 02 It's a Canadian company and they focus on forgotten Canadian cinema.
59:25 Sean Fennessey? Love it.
59:27 Speaker 02 They are platformed on Vinegar Syndrome. Vinegar Syndrome is their own label, but they also platform a lot of smaller labels and one of them is Canadian International Pictures. Denis Arcon, who the French Canadian filmmaker who made Barbarian Invasions and Jesus Montreal, got his start in the early 70s with an informal trilogy of crime films, Dirty Money, Rajan, Padavani and Gina. All really good, low-budget crime films, sort of, it's like, what if Ken Loach made a crime film? There's some social consciousness to them too, but really good, interesting stuff.
1:00:12 Speaker 02 And I...
1:00:15 Speaker 02 You realize watching that stuff is like, oh, every country has its own cinema and its own heritage and some of it we just don't have never had access to.
1:00:26 Sean Fennessey? Incredible. Have you spoken to Hitmaker about this label? I feel like he is, as he digs deeper in, he's like starting to get a little bit intrigued by the smaller outfits.
1:00:34 Speaker 02 He's too big. He's too big. I can't get through to him anymore.
1:00:37 Sean Fennessey? He's just buying Warner Brothers discs at this point.
1:00:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's just, you know, he's on the lot. He's on the lot.
1:00:43 Sean Fennessey? All of the lots. Um, okay, one more. What's one more? I see, I see you giving love to, to smaller and powerful new labels, which I appreciate.
1:00:51 Speaker 02 Flickr Alley.
1:00:53 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:00:53 Speaker 02 Which is a, uh, they, they, they focus primarily on silent cinema. But they've also, uh, they teamed with a, an organization called the Film Noir Foundation to put out some obscure noirs, including a couple of Argentinian noirs. The Bitter Stems from 1956, which Carrie and I watched last year, which is fantastic.
1:01:18 Sean Fennessey? You are digging in the crates, Tracy. You have brought your A-game to this.
1:01:21 Speaker 02 And El Vampiro.
1:01:21 Sean Fennessey? The Bitter Stems.
1:01:22 Speaker 02 The Bitter Stems.
1:01:23 Sean Fennessey? I'm gonna add it to the watch list right now. I'm not familiar with that title.
1:01:27 Speaker 02 And El Vampiro Negro, which is an Argentinian remake of M from 1953.
1:01:32 Sean Fennessey? Intriguing. Okay.
1:01:36 Speaker 02 I got two more I have to, I have to mention. Fun City Editions.
1:01:40 Sean Fennessey? Huge fan. I've got a couple ready.
1:01:41 Speaker 02 And I buy, again, I buy every release. This is a New York company. I wish they were a little more prolific. They really only come out with about one title a year. This movie, Deep in the Heart, was, was a revelation to me. I did not know that movie at all.
1:01:55 Sean Fennessey? I purchased this because of your recommendation.
1:01:57 Speaker 02 Oh, my God, it's so good.
1:01:58 Sean Fennessey? Fantastic. Also bizarrely relevant film right now.
1:02:02 Speaker 02 Bizarrely relevant.
1:02:03 Sean Fennessey? Was it 1983 or something? A lot many ones. And a, and a Texas production, to your point about moving to Dallas, right?
1:02:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:09 Sean Fennessey? And this is their edition of Bad Company, the 70's film.
1:02:11 Speaker 02 Company which we needed on Blu-ray for a long, long time.
1:02:14 Sean Fennessey? Very long time.
1:02:15 Speaker 02 Uh, they also put out a great edition of Rancho Deluxe, uh, the Frank Perry movie. Smile, Michael Ritchie's satire of, uh, uh, beauty pageants. Cutter's Way, which is always on the list of movies you haven't seen that you need to see. And certainly one of my favorite movies.
1:02:32 Sean Fennessey? All world John Heard performance in that movie.
1:02:35 Speaker 02 And another one that's not on those lists called Heartbreakers, a Bobby Roth movie from 1984. Do you know this film?
1:02:42 Sean Fennessey? I do. I've watched it this year.
1:02:43 Speaker 02 Nick Manquoso and Peter Coyote, back when Peter Coyote meant something in a movie?
1:02:49 Sean Fennessey? True leading man performance.
1:02:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:51 Sean Fennessey? Very curious film.
1:02:52 Speaker 02 Curious film, yeah, but a very specific, personal point of view in that movie. So I really admire that movie. They also did a couple of box sets of TV movies from the 1980s. They called them Primetime Panic. We saw, Carrie and I watched a movie called Freedom from 1981. You know this movie?
1:03:12 Sean Fennessey? No.
1:03:14 Speaker 02 Directed by Joseph Sargent, written by Barbara Turner, who's Jennifer Jason Lee's mother. And she would later write a movie called Georgia, directed by Ulu Grossbard with Mayor Whittingham and Jennifer Jason Lee. Mayor is the star of this movie Freedom, and it's about a mother and a daughter who cannot get along. The mother's played by Jennifer Warren, who you would know best from Night Moves, the Arthur Penn movie.
1:03:39 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:03:41 Speaker 02 The mother-daughter scenes, they're not getting along in the movies about the daughter who is, they're gonna legally emancipate the 15-year-old daughter from this family. The scenes between the mother and daughter in that movie are better than mother-daughter scenes. I mean, it's just like, wow, this is so good. This is so well-written. They're so beautifully performed.
1:04:05 Sean Fennessey? This has also been added to the watch list. That's in the Primetime Panic box.
1:04:10 Speaker 02 Yes, Primetime Panic box. Very good. And, you know, TV movies used to be, well, I guess they still, they still make them.
1:04:16 Sean Fennessey? I've talked to Quentin Tarantino about this many times because he has this incredible knowledge of television movies, which was just a huge thing, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s even. They're, Joseph Sargent, you know, directed Taking a Pile in 123. I mean, this is, in theory, a major filmmaker who's just making movies for ABC at a certain point, four or five years after the release of a major studio movie with a big star like Matthau. So, yeah, some of that stuff has lost its time. There's, that actually could be the next wave. To pilfer from collectors over time is the rediscovery of a lot of titles like this because there's still so many that are untapped.
1:04:55 Speaker 02 So Hitmaker was in a mini-series about the housewife in Texas who murdered her neighbor with an axe. I'm not going to come up with any titles here.
1:05:12 Speaker 02 They may, Jennifer Beal, Jessica Beal, Jennifer Beals and Jessica Beal, Jessica Beal was in this with Hitmaker.
1:05:23 Sean Fennessey? Is this The Sinner?
1:05:24 Speaker 02 No, that's a TV show I was on.
1:05:31 Sean Fennessey? We're talking about Candy is the series that Hitmaker was on.
1:05:35 Speaker 02 And Candy came out the same time, Candy came out the same time as another story with Lizzie Olsen playing, right?
1:05:46 Sean Fennessey? That was the Mac series, yeah.
1:05:47 Speaker 02 Well, what nobody remembers is that this story was filmed in the 1980s, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, with Barbara Hershey playing the mother in a performance that will knock your socks off.
1:06:02 Sean Fennessey? Wow.
1:06:03 Speaker 02 She's fantastic. Is it called Murder in a Small Town or Killing in a Small Town? One of the actors, the reason I know that movie is because one of the actors in that film was Dennis Letts. My dad plays the sheriff.
1:06:16 Sean Fennessey? You didn't share this.
1:06:17 Speaker 02 The role that Justin Timberlake plays in Candy, my dad played.
1:06:23 Sean Fennessey? Somehow, so it's Killing in a Small Town, 1990 film with Barbara Hershey, Brian Dennehy, John Terry is your father, Dennis Letts is listed here on Letterboxd.
1:06:31 Speaker 02 There you go.
1:06:32 Sean Fennessey? This was already on my watch list.
1:06:33 Speaker 02 Wow.
1:06:34 Sean Fennessey? Now, why is that?
1:06:35 Speaker 02 I don't know.
1:06:36 Sean Fennessey? How did I know about this film and why did I edit?
1:06:38 Speaker 02 I don't know. Maybe Hitmaker, well, he didn't know about it. After he'd shot Candy, I said, you know, they've already made, he was like, what?
1:06:45 Sean Fennessey? Hal Holbrook is the sixth lead of this film. This is a murderer's row.
1:06:49 Speaker 02 It's really good. It's, I mean, she will chill your blood. It is a great performance. She's a great underrated actress.
1:06:57 Sean Fennessey? You didn't, you didn't tell tale of your father, who after years as an English teacher, did become a performer.
1:07:03 Speaker 02 Both of my parents had amazing second careers, which is not supposed to happen really ever for anybody and certainly not supposed to happen when you live in a town of 12,000 people in southeastern Oklahoma. But my father, who was seeing me go down to Texas and audition for films and stuff, decided he'd start doing that too. And he made about 40 films and television shows.
1:07:28 Sean Fennessey? Looking at his Letterboxd page here, it's populated with tons of Hollywood productions.
1:07:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, he worked with Robert Zemeckis, he worked with Glenn Eastwood, he worked with Francis Ford Coppola, I believe he was cut out of The Rainmaker, so I don't think you'll see that credit here. But he worked with some big names and it had a... We were all worried when he retired from school teaching early, it was like, "You're not gonna like the..." and he never looked back.
1:07:50 Sean Fennessey? It's amazing.
1:07:51 Speaker 02 He had a great time doing that. And then my mom wrote a book. Her first novel was picked up by Oprah Winfrey and for her book club. It was called Where the Heart Is, which was eventually turned into a film as well with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd. So yeah, they both had remarkable careers.
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1:09:26 Sean Fennessey? When you were a kid, did you know your parents were very creative?
1:09:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, my dad did a lot of community theater, college theater. I think the first play I ever saw was To Kill a Mockingbird with my dad playing Atticus at the college. So he did a lot of theater and mom was always writing. How my mother raised a family in a pretty traditional, a family of all boys in a pretty traditional household where she did everything and worked full-time job and wrote books. I don't know how the fuck she did it.
1:10:01 Sean Fennessey? I'm struggling just to gammer twice a week about movies on this show. It's honestly insane the way that people are able to do that. And do your kids know that you guys are creative, you and your wife?
1:10:12 Speaker 02 Eh.
1:10:13 Sean Fennessey? Not yet.
1:10:14 Speaker 02 Maybe, who knows? Because now it it kind of gets it's just in the drapes. Like they have a couple of they have Carrie's action figure from Ghostbusters. And they're just like, oh mommy, you know, they've got you know? There was even a little like stuffed sheriff figure from Fargo, from her season on Fargo. So they have two mommy dolls.
1:10:39 Sean Fennessey? That is fascinating. Do you want to shout out any individual picks this year? You've made a list. I know you've made a list. I brought some of what I have from your collection, though of course you have more than I do.
1:10:50 Speaker 02 Well, I guess I was going to talk about just some of the 4K releases from, I mean, because in terms of those smaller labels, the things they're finding, the things they're unearthing are the story. In terms of some of the bigger labels, it's not so much what they're unearthing. It's the it's the 4K restoration of these things.
1:11:13 Sean Fennessey? Presentation.
1:11:15 Speaker 02 And it's extraordinary.
1:11:16 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:11:16 Speaker 02 We just watched Happiness the other night. It's the first time I'd seen it since I saw it at the Angelica when it was first released. And of course, I've worked with Todd since then. I made the movie Wiener Dog with Todd. That's an amazing movie.
1:11:33 Sean Fennessey? Incredible.
1:11:34 Speaker 02 That's an incredible piece of work.
1:11:36 Sean Fennessey? It's a, it's one of those titles that you're talking about that people
1:11:42 Sean Fennessey? We're begging for, basically, because it's such a signature 1990s film and such a signature independent film. And yeah, hopefully Todd makes his next movie soon.
1:11:54 Speaker 02 I think he lost.
1:11:54 Sean Fennessey? I know.
1:11:56 Speaker 02 He lost financing at the same time that Todd Haynes was losing his movie. It was really depressing.
1:12:00 Sean Fennessey? Very sad. But this is an incredible addition and a deeply uncomfortable in a good way film.
1:12:05 Speaker 02 I told Carrie, Carrie had never seen it, but it was a rewatch for me. And I told her, I said, you know, when you, when you read the comments and there's horrible, like troll-like, you know, like the Nazis who were on, you know, I said, always in my head, what I picture is Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in Happiness. That's the person I see writing. And that's one of the ways I keep it in, I keep that stuff in perspective.
1:12:32 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, yeah. I think that's healthy. Okay. What else is on your list?
1:12:36 Speaker 02 Pat Garen and Billy the Kid in 4K. Oh, my God.
1:12:41 Sean Fennessey? Another movie that we yearned for in this, in this format for a long time. And, and RIP Chris Christopherson, obviously.
1:12:47 Speaker 02 It's the last great Peck and Paw movie, right? He would not make another great movie after.
1:12:53 Sean Fennessey? I am pro Cross of Iron. I am pro Part of Convoy. Hmm, I'm, what else? What am I forgetting?
1:13:04 Speaker 02 Keep digging.
1:13:05 Sean Fennessey? Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia is before this? Okay.
1:13:08 Speaker 02 Ah!
1:13:09 Sean Fennessey? They're right, very similar timeframe.
1:13:12 Speaker 02 Oh, it's after this.
1:13:13 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:13:13 Speaker 02 It's right after. All right.
1:13:14 Sean Fennessey? So that's, Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia. That's.
1:13:16 Speaker 02 All right.
1:13:16 Sean Fennessey? All right. But, but maybe The Last Masterpiece? How about that?
1:13:20 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:13:20 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:13:23 Sean Fennessey? I've actually, I'm about to rewatch this because I'm doing an episode on A Complete Unknown, and I'm looking at Bob Dylan at the movies. And this is, of course, a Bob Dylan performance and soundtrack score.
1:13:35 Speaker 02 And he's also an expert with knives. And if you remember The End of Dune, Timothy Chalamet is an expert with knives. Have I told you my Dune 2 quandary?
1:13:48 Sean Fennessey? No.
1:13:49 Speaker 02 Well, we haven't seen it, and I don't know how to watch it because I'm quite sure my wife doesn't remember any single thing that happened in the first Dune movie.
1:13:58 Sean Fennessey? Same issue that I'm having. My wife, obviously, she also watches along with many of the Oscar films with me at this time of year. We usually do it on a screener's circumstance and she can't remember what happened in Dune. And she's like, I don't have five hours and 45 minutes to watch Dune part one again and Dune part two.
1:14:17 Speaker 02 That's exactly the situation we're in. Not only can she not tell you what happened, she can't tell you who was in it. She can't, she knows that there's sand and she remembers at the end, me turning to her and saying, I'm pretty sure you could take Timothy Chalamet in a knife fight.
1:14:34 Sean Fennessey? You've met the man, is that true?
1:14:36 Speaker 02 And she could take Bob Dylan in a knife fight.
1:14:38 Sean Fennessey? He's not very gifted ultimately. Great movie though. Um, okay, what else?
1:14:43 Speaker 02 Peeping Tom in 4K. Wow. Look at you.
1:14:46 Sean Fennessey? As much as I could. Um, I'm, I'm pretty up to date on my criterions these days.
1:14:50 Speaker 02 An important release, right? The movie that for all intents and purposes, ended Michael Powell's career. It was very unpopular at the time, but very influential and great horror movie.
1:15:02 Sean Fennessey? And nice, um, round shape to your Jallo introduction because this is obviously a hugely influential movie on those Italian filmmakers.
1:15:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:10 Sean Fennessey? Okay. What else? Let me see what else I have.
1:15:12 Speaker 02 McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
1:15:13 Sean Fennessey? I don't have the 4K unfortunately. I only have the Blu-ray, so I didn't.
1:15:15 Speaker 02 Well, again, I, I go back to the earlier point. Try watching it on a 24 inch screen in 1978 and then try watching it, uh, in 4K now. It's, it's revelatory. They, they really are revelations. You go, oh my God, there will be, they will actually change the meanings of some films for you. When you go, I never realized that's what that person.
1:15:40 Sean Fennessey? Well, in the painted scan, when those movies are on TV, you can't see.
1:15:43 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:15:44 Sean Fennessey? 40% of the film, the edges of the frames are just gone. So yeah, now with the way the televisions are and the way that these restorations are working, a movie like that is fascinating because also Altman as a director, obviously the way that the camera moves is unlike most filmmakers. And what's happening over here matters.
1:15:59 Speaker 02 Right.
1:15:59 Sean Fennessey? So to lose it, you're right. You're, you're learning something new.
1:16:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:16:02 Sean Fennessey? Great recommendation.
1:16:03 Speaker 02 New information.
1:16:04 Sean Fennessey? Altman would have turned 100 next year, so I'm doing a big episode about him and about his films. And hopefully his lost films, you know, the eighties stuff.
1:16:11 Speaker 02 I auditioned for him once.
1:16:12 Sean Fennessey? What was the film?
1:16:14 Speaker 02 The Company.
1:16:15 Sean Fennessey? Oh yeah. The ballet film.
1:16:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. Which he shot in Chicago. I didn't get it.
1:16:18 Sean Fennessey? Was he?
1:16:19 Speaker 02 He was running so late in the auditions that he stopped taking people individually and he started taking us in groups.
1:16:26 Sean Fennessey? That's not common.
1:16:28 Speaker 02 It wasn't great.
1:16:31 Sean Fennessey? Great director. What else?
1:16:33 Speaker 02 Blood and Black Lysin' 4K from Arrow.
1:16:36 Sean Fennessey? Here's that.
1:16:37 Speaker 02 Oh, man. It's fantastic.
1:16:39 Sean Fennessey? This is a beautiful movie.
1:16:40 Speaker 02 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978, Phil Kaufman. I watched that this year. It's just...
1:16:46 Sean Fennessey? In the Hitmaker text chain that we share, you were touting this quite loudly a few months ago.
1:16:51 Speaker 02 Oh, my god.
1:16:53 Sean Fennessey? There have been a couple of editions of this movie now. This movie has really been rediscovered and reappraised. Actually, Adam Namon often regularly, I guess, on the show. This is one of his favorite films of all time. He's written about it multiple times, I think, for The Ringer. But absolutely amazing movie. Also, Lost Donald Sutherland this year as well.
1:17:08 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:17:08 Sean Fennessey? One of his great performances.
1:17:09 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:17:10 Sean Fennessey? What else do I have? Can I keep matching?
1:17:12 Speaker 02 Wages of Fear?
1:17:13 Sean Fennessey? I have that.
1:17:13 Speaker 02 Wow, I'm doing good.
1:17:16 Sean Fennessey? This is Wages of Fear. This is not the Criterion Edition of this film.
1:17:20 Speaker 02 Right.
1:17:20 Sean Fennessey? This is the BFI version.
1:17:22 Speaker 02 In 4K.
1:17:23 Sean Fennessey? 4K restoration, which is obviously the film that Sorcerer, Friedkin's your collaborator and friend, sort of adapted for Sorcerer.
1:17:33 Speaker 02 He would always say, "It's not based on Wages of Fear." I'm like, "Eh, but..." He's like, "Well, it wouldn't exist without the Wages of Fear." I was like, "Yeah, that's true, too."
1:17:42 Sean Fennessey? I've been joking that there's a certain kind of man in Los Angeles recently whose whole personality is, "I love Sorcerer." I don't know if you're aware of this, that like guys who just go to rep theaters, Hitmaker might be one of these guys, actually. He also loves Sorcerer. But if you really are a Sorcerer boy, this is a film you should watch.
1:17:58 Speaker 02 We have a nanny/friend. She's a dear friend of ours. When we get really busy, we have to double nanny. And so she lives in Los Angeles. She's gonna come up and introduce herself to you at a movie theater at some point. She says she sees you there all the time.
1:18:14 Sean Fennessey? Fabulous.
1:18:14 Speaker 02 So she was with us for a few months while Carrie was in Thailand making White Lotus. And so I showed her some movies. She'd never heard of Sorcerer, had never heard of it. And I showed it to her and it's like, she's like, "This is now my favorite movie." She's the one who made us watch all those goddamn Mission Impossible movies.
1:18:32 Sean Fennessey? What do you mean, "all those goddamn"? You mean, "all of those wonderful features"?
1:18:36 Speaker 02 All those superb Mission Impossible movies. It's just not our genre. And Carrie and I watch it and we go, "Okay, we don't see a lot of this stuff." And we're happy to know that that's one of the best examples of that kind of stuff.
1:18:49 Sean Fennessey? Can you give me just like a couple of minutes on Friedkin and your experiences with him and getting to know him?
1:18:55 Speaker 02 I adored him. He was such a lovely, generous man. He was so good to me and my family. I just adored him. And, you know, I miss the days of Hurricane Billy and all the kind of wild behavior and stuff. But he was very open in talking to me about those days. And he was the kind of guy you could say, hey, tell me about making The Exorcist. And he'd just sit down and talk to you for a couple of hours about making The Exorcist. He loved to tell the old stories. Uh, he was such a, such a great guy. Bug was happening in New York. Michael Shannon and Shannon Cochran in the New York production of Bug. And he saw it and he called me out of the blue while I was, was actually acting in a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? At the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, not the one we eventually took to, uh, New York.
1:19:40 Speaker 02 But I thought it was a joke. I thought somebody was playing a joke on me. Hello, this is William Friedkin. When he eventually convinced me he was actually who he said he was, he just said he'd saw the play and that he thought it was great and he loved it. And that was it. He called again 24 hours later and said, I want to make a movie of this. I can't get it out of my head. And I said, great. He said, I'll fly you out to Los Angeles tomorrow. I'm like, I'm doing a run of a play. I can't go. So I finished the play, flew to LA, I met with Billy. And he was one of the few people I ever dealt with in the movie business who did everything he said he was going to do. I mean, he was just a straight shooter and such respect for the writer. Uh, just, just a great guy.
1:20:24 Speaker 02 I was not on set for the production of Bug or Killer Joe because I was doing plays during both of those, uh, when, when they shot those movies. But, uh, was always deeply in conversation with Bill while he was making those movies. And he continued to be a part of our lives and the lives of our kids and stuff. And he's just, uh, I, I miss him terribly. He's a great, great fellow.
1:20:45 Sean Fennessey? Those are such great films and that actually, I think there is a Bug 4K restoration.
1:20:49 Speaker 02 Just came out on Kino Labor.
1:20:51 Sean Fennessey? And what, do you have a special place in your home for the, for your work? Do you, do you, do you own those things?
1:20:56 Speaker 02 It's in the A to Z, baby.
1:21:00 Speaker 02 No.
1:21:00 Sean Fennessey? True Democrat.
1:21:01 Speaker 02 I do not put it on a separate shelf.
1:21:03 Sean Fennessey? You want to keep rolling through titles?
1:21:05 Speaker 02 Paths of Glory.
1:21:06 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I think I have. Uh, I think I forgot to bring it. Yeah.
1:21:10 Speaker 02 It's both on Eureka and Kino Lorber on 4K. I think maybe the Eureka is.
1:21:16 Sean Fennessey? I believe it's just Blu-ray, the Eureka. I think the Kino Lorber is 4K. The other way around?
1:21:21 Speaker 02 Eureka, I think they're both 4K.
1:21:23 Sean Fennessey? Oh, I only have one. I don't remember which one. I think I have.
1:21:25 Speaker 02 And I think the Eureka is.
1:21:28 Sean Fennessey? What does that mean when you say a touch better? Because people, they'll go shopping, right? They'll look and they'll, for example, um, Inglourious Basterds is available on 4K. It is now available in an Arrow 4K. The Arrow 4K maybe has one more special feature and nicer packaging, original artwork, but it's the same transfer. It's basically the same movie.
1:21:49 Speaker 02 Then I would say it's not worth the double dip unless it is to you, unless you say, I want that Arrow packaging on my shelf. Or I want that special feature, or you're just the completist in you is just like, I need everything associated with this movie. I need the poster. I need the cassette tape, all the bells and whistles. Who knows?
1:22:07 Sean Fennessey? I fall somewhere in the middle. I like a nice hard case for the presentation. I do not need any of the toys.
1:22:13 Speaker 02 I don't need the toys either. Have you seen The Third Man?
1:22:16 Sean Fennessey? I have. I mean, it's my favorite film of all time. I did not buy that edition because I don't want that toy in my house. I don't need it. I don't need a Ferris wheel.
1:22:24 Speaker 02 You open the box. Not only is there a pop-up Ferris wheel, but the score plays when you open the box.
1:22:33 Sean Fennessey? I do love a zither.
1:22:36 Speaker 02 So.
1:22:36 Sean Fennessey? Wow, maybe you've compelled me to. I think that might be sold out, actually. It may not be available.
1:22:40 Speaker 02 I want you to know that that transfer is a legit, I, in anticipation of this podcast, I looked at it again, compared to the other, I mean, Third Man's one of the most purchased movies in my house. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's worth it.
1:22:55 Sean Fennessey? I am waiting for them to issue just the regular edition of that, and I will get that.
1:22:59 Speaker 02 Right. Kino Lorber this year. Oh, you talked about the conversation.
1:23:04 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:23:05 Speaker 02 That transfer as well, whether you want the big packaging and cassette tape or not, that transfer is really impactful. You know, when the movie first starts, it has that kind of a waxy seventies film look and where the credits look a little blurry. And you're like, oh shit, is that, it looks like an episode of MASH, right? It's just like, not quite. And then the, the movie proper starts and you've never seen it with such clarity.
1:23:29 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:23:30 Speaker 02 It's really superb.
1:23:33 Speaker 02 Kino Lorber, High Noon, North Dallas 40, prime cut, Last Year at Marion Bad.
1:23:38 Sean Fennessey? Two of those. I don't, I have prime cut on Blu-ray, so I didn't bring that in, but I have High Noon.
1:23:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:43 Sean Fennessey? Here on 4K, one of the most significant American films ever made, and Last Year at Marion Bad.
1:23:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, Bill Simmons' favorite movie, I would guess.
1:23:50 Sean Fennessey? I don't believe he's seen that film, but like, we can call him if he'd like to speak to him and ask him. The, the, uh, Alain Rene durational mindfuck that is Last Year at Marion Bad.
1:24:02 Speaker 02 It's not for everyone.
1:24:03 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:24:03 Speaker 02 I'll just say that, but for those of us it is for, that transfer is superb.
1:24:09 Sean Fennessey? This is a general question, since you're such a cinephile. Better to see a movie like Last Year at Marion Bad, which is narratively challenging.
1:24:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:24:16 Sean Fennessey? When you're 19 or when you're 45.
1:24:19 Speaker 02 They're different movies at 19 and 45.
1:24:22 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:24:23 Speaker 02 For the longest time, I was, I, I would have ranked several Fellini movies above, uh, La Dolce Vita. And now that I'm an old man, La Dolce Vita is the shit.
1:24:38 Speaker 02 La Dolce Vita is.
1:24:39 Sean Fennessey? Maybe I should revisit it as I get on in the years.
1:24:41 Speaker 02 It is, it's, it's tops on the list. It's an amazing movie.
1:24:45 Sean Fennessey? Eight and a half was always my favorite. Um, okay. Is that it? I have a few.
1:24:50 Speaker 02 Uh, opera on 4K from Severin.
1:24:53 Sean Fennessey? I couldn't get my hands on this. I believe it's gone.
1:24:56 Speaker 02 Really?
1:24:56 Sean Fennessey? I believe it's sold out. This is a, a late Argento or a mid Argento, I guess, late eighties.
1:25:02 Speaker 02 Maybe the last great Argento.
1:25:04 Sean Fennessey? I wonder. I, I was introduced, I've told this story before, I think I might've just told it, that I was introduced by Argento when a friend sat me down to watch Deep Red.
1:25:11 Speaker 02 Ah.
1:25:12 Sean Fennessey? And I very quickly went down the hill and watched all the Jell-Os and, um, got very into them. And around that time, the Stendhal Syndrome was coming out. And I went to the art house and it was the first time I saw an Argento movie in movie theaters. And I told people the Stendhal Syndrome was good and it is not very, it's not my favorite of his. It's not actually very good. But I believe trauma comes after.
1:25:33 Sean Fennessey? Opera and trauma, I think, is pretty good.
1:25:36 Speaker 02 There are good.
1:25:37 Sean Fennessey? Good parts.
1:25:38 Speaker 02 There are good parts of trauma and and I love the American actors like Frederick Forrest and Piper Laurie, who are just like having the time of their lives. Like, what is this crazy, like, head lopping shit I'm in?
1:25:52 Sean Fennessey? I mean, it's no different than David Hemmings cropping up and you're like, what is David Hemmings doing in this Italian movie?
1:25:56 Speaker 02 That's right. It's a trip to Italy for some of them, right?
1:25:59 Sean Fennessey? That's right. That's right. Um, okay. Have you got through your list?
1:26:02 Speaker 02 I think I have.
1:26:03 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:26:03 Speaker 02 I think I have, yeah.
1:26:04 Sean Fennessey? I have a couple more I want to add to the stack.
1:26:06 Speaker 02 Please.
1:26:09 Sean Fennessey? So I mentioned Cinematograph. I've got two of their titles from this year. I've got Red Rock West, the John Dahl neo neo neo noir. Uh, I've got Going South, which is one of the very few films directed by Jack Nicholson.
1:26:26 Speaker 02 What do you think of that movie?
1:26:27 Sean Fennessey? Um, I really like Mary Steenburgen in it.
1:26:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, he discovered her, right? That was her first movie.
1:26:32 Sean Fennessey? She's very, very good. I think it is a bit, um, over over cranked, but, uh, I love Nicholson. I've always loved Nicholson is a real portal into movie history for me. So I I had to own it. Um, two more criterions, very simple, more movies that I've wanted to own for a long time, which are Greg Araki's movies, which were very, uh, I would say creatively instructional for me as a young movie watcher. More movies that I didn't know you could make movies like this.
1:26:57 Speaker 02 Oh, right.
1:26:57 Sean Fennessey? Um, particularly Nowhere, which is his sort of like omnibus tale of, uh, you know, slightly disassociated existentialist teens.
1:27:08 Speaker 02 His his shortcuts.
1:27:09 Sean Fennessey? His shortcuts. Well put. Um, and then Trainspotting, which I wanted to bring with me for a couple of reasons. One, I love Trainspotting, of course. This is a 4K edition. I just hate what they've done with the packaging of this film.
1:27:20 Speaker 02 It's a real fuck you to people with shelves.
1:27:22 Sean Fennessey? It is longer than all the other titles here. You can see, if I can just show you, that these don't match. Why the fuck did you do that, Criterion? Don't do that anymore. That's not cool. Um, and then the last one I wanted to point out, I had, uh, a director named Arkasha Stevenson on the podcast. She directed The First Omen, which is the prequel to the Omen movie, which I liked quite a bit. I think she's a real talent. And at the end of every episode, I ask filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? I'm gonna ask you that question momentarily. But I asked her and she said Hollywood 90028. Are you familiar with this?
1:27:56 Speaker 02 Oh, and to see, I don't know this at all.
1:27:58 Sean Fennessey? So this comes to us from Grindhouse Releasing and it is a. Seventies independent film that is, gosh, what is the, what is the American Jacques Demi film that takes place in Los Angeles? Oh, my goodness.
1:28:12 Speaker 02 Uh, uh, uh, starts with an M.
1:28:15 Sean Fennessey? Oh, my goodness. You know, you know what I'm referring to.
1:28:17 Speaker 02 Yes, with Gary Lockwood from, from 2001.
1:28:20 Sean Fennessey? Yes. Uh. I'm gonna look it up right now and we're gonna.
1:28:22 Speaker 02 See, I haven't had any protein. I knew this was gonna happen.
1:28:25 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:28:25 Speaker 02 Starts with an M. Sure of it.
1:28:28 Sean Fennessey? Hmm. Model Shop. You were right. Jacques Demi's Model Shop, which is like one part art house movie and one part weird genre guy picks up girls and has sex with them movie. This is kind of a version of that. It is one part art house existentialist drama, one part horror slasher movie. Arkasha is actually quoted on the back of it, as is Ty West, as is Sean Baker. This is one of like the major genre discoveries of the year. Grindhouse Releasing doesn't put out very many films. I also have their copy of Death Game, another movie I love.
1:29:01 Speaker 02 I don't know this at all. So this is a.
1:29:03 Sean Fennessey? I put you onto something.
1:29:04 Speaker 02 You have put me on something. I don't know at all. You watched it.
1:29:06 Sean Fennessey? I watched it.
1:29:07 Speaker 02 Thumbs up.
1:29:07 Sean Fennessey? Thumbs up, yes.
1:29:08 Speaker 02 Cool.
1:29:08 Sean Fennessey? It is not exactly what you're expecting based on the packaging here, but, um, actually the pink will probably likely draw in my daughter as well in the future.
1:29:16 Speaker 02 Got it.
1:29:16 Sean Fennessey? Though I don't think she's ready to watch that one just yet. It's been a great year for this sort of thing.
1:29:21 Speaker 02 What sort of thing?
1:29:23 Sean Fennessey? Fifty-nine dollar.
1:29:25 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
1:29:25 Sean Fennessey? 4K UHD editions.
1:29:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:29:28 Sean Fennessey? Can we, can, you know, that conversation box is pretty pricey, the, uh, the third man is pretty pricey.
1:29:34 Speaker 02 That's what we were saying. This is where it is now, though. I mean, there are just fewer and fewer people who buy these things, but the people who buy them are so passionate about owning them. The collectors are passionate.
1:29:44 Sean Fennessey? You're gonna stick with this like till the end? This is, this is your lifelong hobby now?
1:29:47 Speaker 02 There's no other way. There's no other way to live. Again, you know, I'm, I'm a sober person. I've been sober for a long time. I, I, I don't have any hobbies to speak of. I've been collecting these things for 25 years. Uh, I, I gamble on sports, but very, uh, I'm very conservative about it. I, you know, I have a business manager who's also got a lot of years of sobriety, so he's watching, so I can't go crazy with that.
1:30:15 Sean Fennessey? You putting money on Sam Darnold?
1:30:17 Speaker 02 I have been winning with Sam Darnold this year, I'll have you know.
1:30:21 Sean Fennessey? Congratulations. I hope that continues.
1:30:24 Speaker 02 So I, I, I don't think there's, I don't think there's any other way for me.
1:30:29 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:30:30 Speaker 02 And the truth is, my wife, she does love it. She, she, she's patronizing about the collection, but the truth is she loves it. I will tell you about our movie nights.
1:30:39 Sean Fennessey? Please.
1:30:41 Speaker 02 Uh, so during the pand- I had amassed this collection, but we never watched it because we were always doing theater.
1:30:46 Sean Fennessey? Mm hmm.
1:30:47 Speaker 02 So we never had a chance to watch movies. And then the pandemic happened and quarantine and we all found good qualities to the quarantine. And one of them was that we would put our son down, uh, at the time. Uh, we, we didn't have a daughter yet. We would put our son down and we would clean up the kitchen and then we would go down and watch a movie. We watched a movie a night. And it was a time when everybody was sharing the way they were getting through a difficult time. And we weren't baking bread and we weren't, we weren't watching, uh, the Michael Jordan documentary, though we eventually got there and watched that. But for Carrie, I think it was, she just started tweeting the title of the movie, hashtag movie night or hashtag quarantine life or whatever.
1:31:32 Speaker 02 She would do this every night and people enjoyed it. No review, no thumbs up, no thumbs down, just here's what we're doing. And instead of watching Friends or Tiger King,
1:31:44 Sean Fennessey? Mm hmm.
1:31:45 Speaker 02 You could also watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller. You could also spend your time doing something like that.
1:31:50 Sean Fennessey? The Devils was one of those where when she tweeted, she, did you guys watch The Devils together?
1:31:53 Speaker 02 We did. There is a very good BFI, uh, DVD of The Devils. It's never come out on Blu, but it's actually quite good DVD. And she had never seen it and I had not seen the new, again, I had watched it on fuzzy old television back in the day. But, uh, it's one of my favorite movies of all time. I mean, it is a great, great movie. And, uh, so she thoroughly enjoyed movie night and she continued it even beyond the pandemic as we would watch movies and she would enjoy movies from the collection. It's gotten a little challenging now because Twitter's, you know, there's all of the Nazis. There's Nazis all over.
1:32:34 Sean Fennessey? It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.
1:32:35 Speaker 02 So she's trying to get off of Twitter.
1:32:37 Sean Fennessey? What about Blue Sky?
1:32:38 Speaker 02 She's gone to Blue Sky.
1:32:39 Sean Fennessey? I didn't even know that.
1:32:40 Speaker 02 And she's started sending out the movie night on Blue Sky.
1:32:43 Sean Fennessey? Oh, I didn't know.
1:32:44 Speaker 02 And we have just joined the Letterboxd community.
1:32:48 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, let's speak about that. I'm so glad you brought it up.
1:32:50 Speaker 02 Well, it's as, it's because of Nazis on Twitter. That's why we're on Letterboxd.
1:32:54 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. There was, I, you know, did an episode with Chris last week and we talked about, is there any concern about the kind of gamification that comes with Letterboxd? Of course, my first instinct when you were telling me titles I'd never heard of was to go to Letterboxd and add it to my watch list and make it a part of my, the spreadsheet of my life. But I find that it's just an amazing, for the most part, a very nice community of people who actually care about movies. And if you go to the right corners and recommend the right things, they will pay it forward, which is a really nice thing.
1:33:23 Speaker 02 Right. So we've done that. She's continued to.
1:33:28 Speaker 02 Here's another unique thing about my movie night with Carrie. I choose 100% of the time. I make the choice of what we're gonna watch. Now, before you decide that I'm, you know, some caveman.
1:33:41 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:33:43 Speaker 02 The truth is, it's her choice that it's my choice. She's like, I'm overwhelmed. Your collection is, I, I'm overwhelmed by it. I make choices all day long. I don't wanna choose. I don't wanna be part of this. She's overwhelmed by streaming, all the tiles on streaming, all the different streaming services. She's just like, it's too, you put something on and I'll watch it. That's been our arrangement for many years now. Of course, she has veto power. She's never exercised it.
1:34:12 Sean Fennessey? There's not a single kind of movie that she won't want to watch or? God bless you both.
1:34:18 Speaker 02 And it makes the curation, I mean, I, I feel a certain responsibility about the way I curate it, right? I'm not gonna follow the Clint Eastwood movie with The Dirty Dozen with, uh, uh, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, right?
1:34:33 Speaker 02 I don't think I would do that anyway, just for my, my own tastes are more, I hope, a bit more diverse than that. But I'm conscious of the fact that I have an audience that I'm programming for. And so, and I've even said to her, hey, do you want to try and do like a deep dive on Boonwell? Like, shall we spend a couple of weeks? And she said, I'm not in film school. I don't, this is not what this is for me. I like the variety. I like mixing it up. I like going from movie to TV, from comedy to drama, from old to new. Just mix it up for me. So it's a great arrangement.
1:35:10 Sean Fennessey? That's wonderful. If this wasn't my job, I think I would probably try to do it a little bit like that. And maybe one day I will be able to. My wife is very similar. She is very much, I'm in your hands and this is something you care about. And there will be times occasionally where she'll say, I want this, but for the most part, she lets me roll with it. It's a nice way to be. It makes, it justifies this sad amount of time I've invested, both financially, emotionally and personally.
1:35:32 Speaker 02 How does she, what, what's her, what, what about when she doesn't like something? Does she tell you to take something off?
1:35:38 Sean Fennessey? Not usually, but I can't show her the devils. That won't, that wouldn't be in conversation. She wouldn't watch that. She wouldn't, she wouldn't care for it. She wouldn't care for the substance. She wouldn't, I know what kind of things she's going to like, but she's very open minded. There is just a limit, extremity, I think is just not going to, to work. Everything else, she'll roll with.
1:35:56 Speaker 02 I think there's some extremity I haven't shown, like Martyrs, which is like, I'm not going to put Martyrs on for Carrie. I don't think that's her.
1:36:03 Sean Fennessey? One of the most extreme films ever made.
1:36:05 Speaker 02 Yeah. I can show her upsetting things. She'll watch an upsetting thing. And I'm, a lot of the times, obviously, we're watching movies I haven't seen either, right? So I was like, I, I have no, I bear no responsibility for this.
1:36:20 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. I mean, I tend to have an overwhelming amount of information about movies before I even sit down to watch them, unfortunately. So I tend to know what we're getting ourselves into.
1:36:27 Speaker 02 I also, I laugh, I cry, I'm very emotionally involved. My wife is just, she doesn't.
1:36:34 Sean Fennessey? Dead inside.
1:36:34 Speaker 02 Nothing. She's just dead inside. She's a.
1:36:36 Sean Fennessey? That's after my own heart as well. Yeah. It takes a lot to move me.
1:36:40 Speaker 02 There's no fucking response. And I was like, really? I, I had to stop showing her W C Fields because I'm just over there just chortling and crying. It's just nothing. It's just like, oh, wow. You, you, you don't even respond to this humor at all. It's like, I'm going to stop putting myself in this position. I feel.
1:36:57 Sean Fennessey? She saves all the emotion for the work, you know? Are you enjoying your, your, your time as like a, you're a true that guy now? You know, you're an esteemed playwright and, and incredibly gifted man, but like you're now a person who's like, oh, hey, Tracy Letts, I know that person.
1:37:13 Speaker 02 Yeah. Isn't that something?
1:37:16 Sean Fennessey? Is it? I mean, it's gotta be a great way to make a living.
1:37:18 Speaker 02 Uh.
1:37:19 Sean Fennessey? No? Not a great way to make a living?
1:37:21 Speaker 02 It's a mixed bag. I mean, being an actor can be pretty degrading, really, but it's so. Well, you're, you're.
1:37:29 Sean Fennessey? Cause you're the show pony?
1:37:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:37:30 Sean Fennessey? Okay. They move you around and they say, do this, don't do this?
1:37:33 Speaker 02 Yeah. And they, and don't, oh, don't tell him that. He's an actor, you know, they're, they're, and I've been on the other side of the table as a writer is like, no, don't tell them that. They're actors. They don't, they can't, you know, it's like you can't handle the truth.
1:37:44 Sean Fennessey? Do you feel more sensitive or less sensitive than when you were, first moved to LA back in the nineties about all of those things?
1:37:50 Speaker 02 Send, define sensitive.
1:37:52 Sean Fennessey? About the way that you're treated and understood as a performer?
1:37:57 Speaker 02 I don't know. I, in some ways my skin is so thick because I'm a playwright and nobody, nobody fucking takes the beatings that playwrights take. We take a beating like, no, most people could not handle the beatings that playwrights take. So the skin is pretty thick. I'm very fortunate. Well, I'm fortunate in many, many ways. I'm very fortunate that my wife's career has continued the sort of upward trajectory, which has put me in the position of, you know, I can do something or I don't have to do, I do something I want to do.
1:38:29 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. That's kind of an odd thing to ask, but I'm going to ask it's like, she's become a big star.
1:38:33 Speaker 02 A big star, has she?
1:38:34 Sean Fennessey? A big, I've been a minimum, a big TV star. I mean, she's a part of a number of shows now that have a huge following and.
1:38:40 Speaker 02 Ever get recognized.
1:38:41 Sean Fennessey? Really?
1:38:42 Speaker 02 Anywhere, ever.
1:38:43 Sean Fennessey? Stop.
1:38:44 Speaker 02 Anywhere, ever.
1:38:45 Sean Fennessey? I find that impossible to believe just from the leftovers alone, which people have built shrines at this company, people have built shrines to, I mean, it's worshipped.
1:38:54 Speaker 02 I'm telling you, man, she doesn't get recognized.
1:38:56 Sean Fennessey? Fascinating. Well, that's nice for you guys.
1:38:58 Speaker 02 Uh, and, uh, yeah, her, it's, it's rare. She's, you know, you guys are around the same age and normally it's a time, or has been historically a time where jobs for women tend to fall off a table and hers have just continued to sort of go up. And so it has allowed me a certain freedom to say. To be choosy and say, I'll do this, I won't do that. Also, we've got two young kids at home, so the first question both of us ask is, where does it shoot? You know, the idea that we're, she went to Thailand for six fucking months for White Lotus, and it was really challenging with, you know, two little kids. I was a single dad living in Westchester for six months, it's hard.
1:39:34 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that's a one-season show, though, so, in theory.
1:39:37 Speaker 02 White Lotus? Oh, yeah.
1:39:38 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:39:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:39 Sean Fennessey? Okay, well, at least there's that.
1:39:41 Speaker 02 But it's.
1:39:42 Sean Fennessey? But fifteen million people will watch it. Is that meaningful?
1:39:45 Speaker 02 A lot of people will see it. It's, and, you know, it's obviously proven to be kind of a golden ticket for a lot of actors who do it. She loves Mike, and we both love Mike's work. In fact, after she got the gig, one of the first things we watched was Chuck and Buck. She'd never seen it. I owned it on DVD, so I showed her Chuck and Buck.
1:40:02 Sean Fennessey? Still not issued on Blu-ray, another nineties Sundance classic.
1:40:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:40:06 Sean Fennessey? That's funny. You feel good about the state of movies?
1:40:10 Speaker 02 There are many, many amazing artists doing amazing work in this country and internationally. It's always been hard to make movies. It's always been hard to make good movies. It will always be hard to make movies and make good movies. So I don't necessarily, I mean, what's going on with streaming and exhibition of movies and all those kinds? I don't, I don't pretend to know any of the answers to any of that, but.
1:40:43 Sean Fennessey? I pretend to know them all the time.
1:40:44 Speaker 02 At the end of the year, you look at the list and you say, there's a lot of good movies there, right? Invariably, whether they're movies, whether they're domestic product or international product. We've, we've been international voters in the Academy since I joined, and, and we love it. We love watching those films, and we see some pretty obscure stuff as a result, but there's always a lot of great, great work going on. So, look, man, artists are, I, I give it up for all artists everywhere. It's hard to be an artist in this country, in this culture. It is really hard, especially
1:41:25 Speaker 02 struggling artists who are struggling to get their voices heard. It's really hard, so, I.
1:41:32 Speaker 02 I'm not doom and gloom about the state of the art.
1:41:36 Sean Fennessey? Then I'll tee you up for the way we end every episode of this show, which is by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? What have you seen that you've liked? Have you prepared for this? Did you know this was coming?
1:41:46 Speaker 02 I didn't.
1:41:47 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:41:47 Speaker 02 Because I, because I'm here. You know, as soon as we started this, I could almost hear the groaning disappointment that Hitmaker was not on your physical media show.
1:41:58 Sean Fennessey? No, stop.
1:41:59 Speaker 02 Sure, groaning disappointment.
1:42:01 Sean Fennessey? No. He would have run the risk of self-parody if he had been here for a third time. So we don't, we don't want that for his ascendant star.
1:42:09 Sean Fennessey? So, that being said, you will come back with him and then we will have a bit of a sad nerd off, I think.
1:42:16 Speaker 02 And I'm not going to give anything away, but there's a chance that I'll be back on this show.
1:42:24 Speaker 02 Maybe for...
1:42:25 Sean Fennessey? We have, we have given you, I don't mind saying it right now, we have given you the run of show, the pick of show, that you'll join us for a draft and you can choose the year.
1:42:35 Speaker 02 See, because my, I've already won this draft.
1:42:38 Sean Fennessey? Okay, settle down.
1:42:39 Speaker 02 No, I've already won it.
1:42:40 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:42:40 Speaker 02 I mean, that's, that's a foregone conclusion. I'm not playing to win the draft because I've already won it.
1:42:46 Sean Fennessey? This is what they all say.
1:42:48 Speaker 02 I'm playing for third chair.
1:42:51 Sean Fennessey? You know, Chris is getting a little bit sensitive about this because he believes that it is his birthright, you know, just given how close we are, but many, many new voices have come to the show in the last few years. You now have staked your claim. And when you win, what do you mean by win? You mean voting by the people or you mean in the cosmic knowing?
1:43:10 Speaker 02 In the cosmic knowing.
1:43:11 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:43:12 Speaker 02 There will be no question.
1:43:13 Sean Fennessey? Did you choose your year yet?
1:43:14 Speaker 02 I think we have.
1:43:15 Sean Fennessey? I don't remember, you had, I think you were toggling between two.
1:43:18 Speaker 02 No, I think we chose.
1:43:20 Sean Fennessey? All right, well, don't reveal it yet. We'll reveal it later. You'll be back. Do you want Tim to be on that episode?
1:43:26 Speaker 02 Hitmaker?
1:43:26 Sean Fennessey? Do you want him to be, do...
1:43:29 Sean Fennessey? You really held the bit. I give you credit. Would you want him to be that fifth participant in that draft?
1:43:35 Speaker 02 Sure, why not?
1:43:36 Sean Fennessey? He's available, I mean, he might be in...
1:43:38 Speaker 02 I've won it.
1:43:39 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:43:39 Speaker 02 You bring whoever you want. Bring, bring your friend Quentin Tarantino. I'm winning it.
1:43:45 Sean Fennessey? One season with Sam Darnold and this is what you get.
1:43:49 Sean Fennessey? Did you see something good recently?
1:43:50 Speaker 02 Uh, can I give two?
1:43:53 Sean Fennessey? Of course.
1:43:53 Speaker 02 I'll give a modern one, just because people should see movies. Uh, The Devil's Bath.
1:43:59 Sean Fennessey? Hmm, I still haven't seen this. Horror fan that I am, it's literally in my queue at home on Apple TV.
1:44:04 Speaker 02 I think it's on Shudder.
1:44:06 Sean Fennessey? It is on Shudder.
1:44:06 Speaker 02 Is it possibly on Shudder?
1:44:08 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:44:09 Speaker 02 It's really good.
1:44:10 Sean Fennessey? This is the filmmaking duo that made Good Night Mommy, right?
1:44:13 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:44:14 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, okay.
1:44:15 Speaker 02 And The Lodge.
1:44:16 Sean Fennessey? The Lodge, right.
1:44:17 Speaker 02 Uh, it's really good. It's disturbing and it's dark, so it's not for everybody.
1:44:21 Sean Fennessey? Did Carrie sit for that one?
1:44:22 Speaker 02 She absolutely did, and she loved it.
1:44:24 Sean Fennessey? Oh, great, okay.
1:44:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, she loved it.
1:44:25 Sean Fennessey? Maybe I'll watch that tonight.
1:44:27 Speaker 02 Saint Jack.
1:44:28 Sean Fennessey? Oh, yeah, please.
1:44:29 Speaker 02 Uh, we watched it, uh, I was surprised to find that it's on Blu-ray. I didn't realize it had been out on Blu-ray for a while, and the Blu-ray, um, shit, I'm, I'm...
1:44:39 Sean Fennessey? Is it imprint? Is it overseas?
1:44:41 Speaker 02 It's not imprint.
1:44:42 Sean Fennessey? I get it.
1:44:43 Speaker 02 Imprint, a very good Australian company.
1:44:44 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I don't, I don't own it on Blu-ray, I have it on DVD.
1:44:46 Speaker 02 Shit, I left one out.
1:44:48 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:44:48 Speaker 02 Real quick.
1:44:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, shout something out.
1:44:50 Speaker 02 Second Run.
1:44:52 Sean Fennessey? I don't know Second Run.
1:44:52 Speaker 02 Second Run is a British company. They specialize in a lot of, uh, Eastern European cinema. It's a, it's a very, uh, it, it's a small label.
1:45:03 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
1:45:03 Speaker 02 But they're really good, and the guy who runs that place is really passionate about his thing, and I didn't mention them, and I want to.
1:45:09 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
1:45:09 Speaker 02 Uh, the Hungarian Masters box set is excellent. Interrogation, uh, by Rizard Bugaski, nineteen eighty-two, is a harrowing movie about living in a totalitarian state. I advise you all to familiarize yourself with...
1:45:24 Sean Fennessey? I love seeing you just transform into Gene Shalit. It's amazing.
1:45:29 Sean Fennessey? You were born to do it.
1:45:31 Speaker 02 Tomorrow I'll wake up and scold myself with tea.
1:45:35 Sean Fennessey? That's the title of a film.
1:45:36 Speaker 02 And it's a great movie.
1:45:37 Sean Fennessey? And my memoir.
1:45:38 Speaker 02 It is a, uh, Czech sci-fi comedy about neo-Nazis who get a time machine and go back in time to deliver a hydrogen bomb to Hitler. And it is hilarious.
1:45:53 Sean Fennessey? I'm making a note of this film.
1:45:54 Speaker 02 Tomorrow, I'll wake up and scald myself with tea.
1:45:58 Sean Fennessey? Yenjik Polak.
1:45:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:46:00 Sean Fennessey? Love it. Um, you mentioned Saint Jack.
1:46:03 Speaker 02 Saint Jack is a great movie, a great underrated Peter Bogdanovich movie, an underrated Ben Gazar performance, and then watched him a few days later in happiness. That guy was good and stayed good. The goodness never went away from that guy. We also watched for the first, first time we had not seen Lars von Trier's Dogville.
1:46:24 Sean Fennessey? Oh.
1:46:25 Speaker 02 And Ben Gazar is great in Dogville.
1:46:27 Sean Fennessey? Remarkable movie, yeah.
1:46:28 Speaker 02 He's just always great. But Saint Jack, that's the shit. That's really good stuff. It's a great book, too, by the way, for those who are. Uh, Paul Theroux, I believe he pronounces his name differently than his nephew, Justin Theroux. Paul Theroux is the author of Saint.
1:46:45 Sean Fennessey? Don't know how that could be possible, but nevertheless, you're just, you, you really, you, you brought it today. I really, I.
1:46:51 Speaker 02 Thanks, man.
1:46:52 Sean Fennessey? It is with great affection that I say, thank you for joining the show. Uh, you are something we are aspiring to as, uh, not as an artist, because I'm not an artist, but as a collector, certainly. I can, I can reach for your stars.
1:47:04 Speaker 02 I love this show. You guys are great.
1:47:06 Sean Fennessey? Thanks, man.
1:47:06 Speaker 02 I, I disagree with you guys so frequently.
1:47:09 Sean Fennessey? I hear it sometimes.
1:47:10 Speaker 02 And yet, I don't hate watch, hate listen to the show. I listen because I have genuine affection for you guys and the work you do on here. You're clearly, you're working hard to make something look very easy, which is, uh, is just great. So I really enjoy the show.
1:47:25 Sean Fennessey? That's very kind of you. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you so much for indulging all of this magnificent physical media here. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Bobby Wagner. What are we doing later this week? We do have a draft. We have a very strange draft, actually. It's the 2021 movie draft. 2021 was when you were starting your movie nights, or I guess in the middle of your movie nights. It was a harder time and it was a ultimately a very weird.
1:47:50 Speaker 02 Have you already done this?
1:47:51 Sean Fennessey? We have, yeah. We pre-recorded with Amanda before she left.
1:47:53 Speaker 02 Great.
1:47:54 Sean Fennessey? And, uh, well, it went off the rails. That's what.
1:47:58 Sean Fennessey? Tune in for that later this week. We'll see you then.
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