99: Martin Scorsese

Three hours of Marty. All the movies, all the collaborators, all the stories. Stray topics include 4K set-ups, praise for "New York, New York," a shared obsession with “Casino,” Joe Pesci, Thelma Schoonmaker, Alex's favorite movie opening, and so much more.
In the middle of the episode, Alex and Nick argue about the biggest movie disagreement they’ve ever had.
Follow @WAYW_Podcast on Twitter and Instagram and Letterboxd.
Watch Alex's films at http://alexwithrow.com/
Watch Nick's films at https://www.nicholasdostal.com/
Send us mailbag questions at whatareyouwatchingpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

0:09

Hey, everyone. Welcome to. What are you watching? I'm Alex Witherow, and I take Quaaludes 10 to 15 times a day for my back Pain. Adderall to stay focused. Xanax to take the edge off pot to mellow me out. Cocaine to wake me back up and morphine. Well, because it's awesome. And I'm joined by my best man, Nick Dostal. How are you doing there, Trooper? Pumpkin carnage. Never not enjoying getting fucked up. I love it. Yes. You just got to drink a lot of like a lot of them. There's no they're not alcoholic doesn't this is a big one is the big one. Today. Marty Scorsese, we teased it on our last episode, our favorite directors of all time, Martin Scorsese. I mean, God, this is one. It's like, what do we say? I don't even we have 25, 25 feature films to get to here. We're going to touch on all of them, probably talk more in-depth about some not going to do giant deep dives in all of them because there are so many. I love so many of these movies. So do you. So does pretty much every fan of cinema. We have talked about them a lot on the podcast, so far. Martin Scorsese, he heard of him. Oh, I mean, you know, he brings a bell. He's one of those guys that I feel like, you know, he's we already kind of ruined what would normally be our intro because in our last part we said, like, this was one, if not the first director you and I both independently latched on to and went, Whoa, That person has kind of the art form, like I need to investigate so much deeper. And he's always been that way for me since the first movie I saw from him when I was, oh, a young lad, probably way too young to be watching his movies, but I turned out all right. I don't think that there's anyone that would, if they'd never seen a Scorsese movie. You you get punched in the face immediately with the art form of film. Oh, yeah. He jumps right in and. And it doesn't, you know, I think it's easy to kind of like equate that with violence because, you know, some of his more, more well-known movies like Goodfellas opened with such a disruptive scene of violence. Yeah, well, it's not just it's not just these types of scenes. It's just the way he launches in and the way he cuts in, the way that he moves the story along. It's it's fast, it's edgy, it's daring, it's very bold, and it does not let up. And it's brilliant. Like he he is someone that has really taken the the way that he grew up, the influence of the history of film and has found a way to tell stories his way. And he's undeniable. He is. Martin Scorsese. The Martin Scorsese. He's one of the best to ever do it. He's a go. Yeah. I mean, it's like dude's 80 years old, too. He's going to turn 81 this year. It's remarkable. Still making killer films, still making Bill Long movies. Make them as long as you want. Marty. I'm there for all of it. I don't give a shit. Make them long. Long. Was it Brian De Palma that said that? That he believes that directors make their best movies in their forties and fifties. I don't know. I can understand that, that logic. But even understanding it, Marty defies it. Yeah. I mean, Marty certainly defies the Tarantino notion of Tarantino wants that perfect filmography of ten films. Yeah, with no duds. And we're going to talk about every Marty movie today. I don't I'm not head over heels in love with all of them. We know you certainly aren't. So that's okay. It doesn't. It doesn't. It's not the end of the world. It's fine. But the pedigree in which he makes his films and he's still going, going and we always have like a martin Scorsese movie in the pipeline. And I love it. I some of his most recent films are some of my favorite he has ever made, and that is with respect to all of them. But yeah, I mean, the man's born in 1942. Again, he's 80 right now. He's born and raised on the mean streets of Queens in Little Italy and Manhattan. Obviously, a lot of his experience growing up has informed his work. He a fun bit of trivia is that he had terrible asthma as a child and couldn't really play outside as much as the older kids. That led to a lot of movie and TV watching. That also led him to initially want to become a priest and instead takes a few turns, latches on to a few films, particularly those made by John Ford, Elia Kazan, and one made by John Cassavetes. And he grows to become one, if not the most celebrated living filmmaker. It's Martin Scorsese. We could have a preamble that's 2 hours long about cultural influence, about the impact he's had on the art form. Just with his film preservation exercises alone, he is responsible for getting so many lost movies back in the world Oscar winners like I never would have seen. And now they're back there because he fought and dug them out. These are tangents I could go down, but instead we're here to talk about the work. But right up top, I guess I kind of have this answer now because of our last episode. I wanted to ask, where does it rank for you as an all time director? We know, sadly, I'm not going to lie. I wrote that prompt, assuming he was going to be in your top ten, but he's not you monster. But I think it's safe to say that you do rank him very highly. Oh, no, he he's like I said, in the end of that episode, it was a three way split between three iconic directors that I just I just picked one and but he's the asterisk and it's yeah, I don't feel good that he's not in my top ten. I really do believe that he is. I would consider him one of the greatest of all time. Yeah. Like if I, if you're, if you're just talking about, you know, so much of that episode was, you know, who we personally like and everything like that. But when I look at the form of film and its history, its legacy, he's at the top of the list for people that have done it and have done it better than anyone and the longevity that he's had. It's crazy that we're talking about so many movies. Yes, so many movements over so many decades. And he started, in my opinion, making great work right away. And he's still making great work. We're talking 50 years have gone by 56 years, and he's still making making pictures, great pictures. And yeah, when you watch a martin Scorsese movie, you're not just watching something. He's making you're getting history of film because there's so much that he puts into his work that is influenced by other movies. I talked about this a lot on our Goodfellas podcast. How much Jules and Jim, the Francois Truffaut movie informed Goodfellas, and thematically, they have nothing in common. But I promise if you go watch the first 5 minutes of Jules and Jim, you're going to be like, Why is it so familiar? Oh, fuck. This is like the cutting pattern of the entirety of Goodfellas. This is weird. This is cool. It's so Killers of the Flower Moon. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and it's going to be coming out wide in October. I'm very excited for it. A lot of people are kind of losing it over the length that it's 3 hours and 26 minutes, which is 3 minutes shorter than the Irishman's 3 hours, and 29 minutes. I'm here for all of you. Bring it on. Bring it on. But I think we should just kind of jump in and, you know, you'll have more thoughts on some of the movies. I'll have more thoughts, but I think it's just good just to, like, get into it. Yeah, because we have a lot to say. Who actually. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, my God. Yeah. Who's that knocking at my door? Oh, that was so cute. 1967 again, Marty had interests as a child going to becoming a priest, but it was movies, and he doesn't really see a way into the business. He doesn't know how. He's just obsessed them. He doesn't have any insight, like, at all. Then he sees the movie Shadows by John Cassavetes, and he goes, Okay, there. There's something here. Like, There's a template. This guy just made it on his own, took him a few years to do it, did it with friends. So that's what I'm going to do. And that's basically how we get who's that knocking at my door. I love that. The first thing we see in a martin Scorsese feature is his mother, Catherine, cooking for a bunch of kids. And, you know, she became a staple of some of his films and she always had wonderful cameos. You never forget Carson Scorsese. Who's that knocking at my door? This is a very raw, very indie movie about a young man, J.R., played by Harvey Keitel, who falls in love with a girl, but he cannot handle something from her past. Like right away, when you watch this movie, you see early Scorsese. You see things that we're going to see throughout his work. Like there's a great Harvey Keitel goes on a really very early on there. Meet cute Keitel. Then the girl is about the movie The Searchers. And it's so funny to hear hear Harvey Keitel talk about the character Scar, because the character Scar from the Searchers was the basis for sport and taxi driver, who Harvey Keitel will eventually play Meet cute in movies that are about movies. Priceless. Priceless. The two have great chemistry, but the thing is just so well shot and edited. It's like a lot of the movie plays, like a big active memory piece, not like things that are happening in real time. Like half the movie feels like a big memory. It's really cool. More over than anything. The main thing I got to touch on for who's that knocking at my door is that you can feel the great Thelma Schoonmaker work all over this. She did edit this movie and you can tell and because of bullshit union and guild regulations, she was not able to edit another feature film until Raging Bull. That was her second movie that she ever edited. And she won her first of three Oscars for it. I love Thelma. She's honestly rewatching it. Yeah, right. I've only seen this once and rewatching it. I save this for I tried to save it for the end. I snuck a few others in there last minute, but I watched this yesterday. I'm like, Wow, this is it holds up so much better. Great double feature with Shadows. It's like Scorsese's version of Shadows. There is a fantastic scene where Keitel and his girlfriend go see Rio Bravo in the theater, but Scorsese, he can't afford to show clips of Rio Bravo, not on like Mean Streets when they go to the movie theater and showing clips. So to express that they were just in the movie, he basically spends like 25 seconds showing different stills from Rio Bravo, like punching and zooming in and then the next stills of the poster than the next still. And these are these are going by in like half a second. And then over all these shots of stills from Rio Bravo, black and white shots from Rio Bravo, you're hearing gunshots from the movie. So it's this crazy sequence where it's like all these gunshots and we're just supposed to understand that these two went and watched a movie in the theater because the next scene is them walking out like, wow, I really love that. It's really inventive, trippy shit like that. It's just awesome. They had no money. You know? They always say filmmaking is basically like problem solving. Yeah, it's like, what do we do if we have no money? But we want to show an inventive way that these two went to the movies. And yes, she doesn't. It's. It comes out of nowhere. He doesn't give you enough time to be like, What the fuck is going on? You just go, Oh, I think I get this. And it goes by so quick. It's just it's an outstanding little sequence. It's so cool. It's so cool. I know I'm skipping ahead, but it's just speaking of something Jonah Hill was saying in an interview, you know, there's someone asked him who the his favorite director that he's worked with is, and he responded with Marty. He said the reason is, is because you're watching a master problem solver. He is a guy that it looks at every single situation that's happening on set, sees what the problem is and figures it out so fast and collaboratively. But it he's like he's like, oh my God, I'm just watching like the best chess player. Yeah. Play everything. And they know exactly what moves going to make and then how it's going to turn and how this is going to go from that. And it's usually better than what was originally there. And, you know, like more of the back story behind Jonah Hill in that movie, Right? Well, the this the one scene that he. No, no, no, no. This this goes straight to your point of why he took the movie. He heard it Scorsese. He would like see him on tape for it. So he went yes. And then he demanded to his representatives, to his agent, to his managers. He goes, You put my tape in for this, and you make it very clear to all those involved that I will accept the least amount of money possible to be in this movie. So he made union Guild regulations, which was $60,000. That's how much Jonah Hill made to be in Wolf of Wall Street. That's nothing. And by Hollywood standards, he got nominated for an Oscar for it. He was already an Oscar nominee for Moneyball. He got paid nothing for it just so he could watch a master problem solver. Yeah, I will always respect and love Jonah Hill for that. Always literally six grand, you know, from acting like how much it gets chopped off, where it's going, that's going to the agent, that's going to the manager that's going here, that's going here. He would have retained nothing of $60,000 over that long of a shoot, whereas DiCaprio is getting paid millions to be in it. But Jonah Hill doesn't care. He doesn't care. He's like, I'm going to be there watching the masterwork. And he got nominated for an Oscar for it. So what's up? Yeah, well done. Jonah Hill. Here's how I need to set up Scorsese, His second film, Boxcar Bertha, in 1972. I got to explain what a Roger Corman movie was because Boxcar Bertha was a Roger Corman vehicle starring David Carradine and Barbara Hershey. And here's how Corman worked as a producer. He found young, eager filmmakers and actors would give them just a few thousand dollars, some film equipment, a few filmmaking guidelines, and they would be sent off to go make a picture. These were strictly genre A, B, C, D, level movies. Corman knew that, but he was right. He figured if the movies even already aren't even that good, if I make them for X amount of dollars, but then they make Y amount of dollars, which is more than x, then I can still make a living doing this. And he did a lot of his movies. A lot of the Roger Corman movies are not good. Some are fantastic. Like Peter Bogdanovich's Targets. The movie's incredible. That's where Boxcar Bertha came from. This isn't a good movie, it The end is actually really violent. Kind of actually shocking. But again, not all Corman movies were knockouts, so it's not really, like, necessary to hone in on, like, the troubles of Boxcar Bertha. It's just like a bad exploitation movie, a subpar one, at least. I don't know. I don't think I'm talking out of turn by saying that. But I think it's more important to talk about Roger Corman. And in addition to Scorsese and Bogdanovich, other attendees of the Roger Corman Film School. Here we go, James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, Jonathan de me. Roger Corman made cameos in a lot of DeMille's films Bruce Dern, Todd Field, Peter Fonda. Curtis Hanson. Dennis Hopper. James Horner, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, John Sayles. Those are just a few. They all got Marty Hellman all got started on Roger Corman movies. James Horner started as a composer for Roger Corman movies. Amen. Corman He started the Horner Korner. Horner Korner. They started the Horner Korner. Corman started the Horner Korner. Your God damn, He plays the If you want an easy reference to he is he plays the director of the FBI in Silence of the Lambs. He just shows up at the end. Oh, yeah. WHITEHEAD Yeah, Yeah. He plays a total fucking asshole in Philadelphia. He does. He's on the stand in there. My favorite story about Boxcar Bertha, I believe I told it on the John Cassavetes podcast, but Scorsese screened a print of Boxcar Bertha for his mentor, John Cassavetes. After watching it, Cassavetes turned to Scorsese and said, in effect, Congratulations, Marty. You just spent two years of your life making shit. Go make something personal. Amen. Cassavetes And from there, the next year we get mean streets one, if not the most personal movies Scorsese has made. It's a very heavily autobiographical film. You ripped this one really hard. I've been talking a lot so far. Tell me about Mean Streets. I watched this for the very first time back when we were recording our favorite movies of 1973. What did you what did you miss? You got Mean Streets and what did you miss for that recording? What you miss. But I miss anything. Let them watch. I didn't miss anything that was that was. I don't even remember, honestly. You know. Shit, you don't. The weird, weird ear is you go listen to that episode. You want to hear about what Alex made? Yeah. Wise ass shot. Hey, what episode number is that? You were. You were on point with the last one. Let's see what it was, remember? Right. Okay, This one. I didn't study the last ones I go by, Phil, I always go, Oh, I knew that. I knew it. Episode 34 You didn't give me a chance to guess. You never would have. I was thinking it was in the thirties. I honestly, I thought I was 37. Okay, well, thank you for that. Well, hey, 36 was The Exorcist, which is one we've talked about going back and redoing because we just talked about it for a half hour. It's like our shortest episode. Then before it is to The Exorcist again, we should just do it anyway. I'm so glad. And you watched. I'm so glad you watch Mean Streets for Episode 34 Top ten Films 1973 Continue. What's funny about this, though, is that back in our home in Buffalo when I was growing up, you know, I'm racking up my DVD collection and I was such a Scorsese fan that I bought the double disc of Mean Streets and never watched it. I don't know what had there was a double I didn't even know my DVD is single disc. I didn't know there's a double of this. I think there was a it was a special edition for sure. Maybe it wasn't a double disc, but show me the show me the cover. I'll tell you if it's the same one I had. I wonder if I put it away because I. I just fucking watch it. Harold. Anyways, I'll keep talking while you do this. All right. Well, Jesus Christ, it's a special edition, right? Okay. Yeah, that's. That's what I had. That's the thing. Yeah. This doesn't matter at all. I'm sorry. No, this is. This is important stuff. This is important stuff. So, anyway, I never watch this thing. And I think it became almost like. Have you ever had a situation where maybe this is just me, but you put a level of importance on something, and then because you've put that level of importance on it, you just never do it. You're talking like life or movies. I think it's both. I know. I heard that. Yes, I still have some movies that I can't believe I haven't seen. None of them are like the all timer classics or anything. They're more like kind of somewhat modern ones that like every want to see. I'll throw one out there right now. Galaxy Quest Never seen it heard. It's hilarious. It's like it's great. There's little things like that and I'm saving that one. I am. I don't know why, but I'm going to save it. Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect way. I kept saving mean streets I kept saving right. 20 years I've been saving it. That's probably how long I've had this DVD I bet. Honestly, this. I know I'm serious. Like, about it. It was like I at least got it in, like, 2001, 2002. We I watched it for our 1973 episode, and I absolutely loved it. I did that. I did it ranked high. Yeah, it was number two. It was just something where, you know, I was I was thinking about the context of movies from 1973. I was thinking about where Scorsese was. And I mean, this was his first big movie, and I'm watching the stuff that he's doing and I'm just was blown away at a filmmaker just taking these chances. I remember the sound of that movie. I love it. It's so wrong. The the way that Harvey Keitel in the beginning walks into the bar and it's all red and he's going through, you know, this cast of characters talking about who they are. And you realize what you're almost kind of doing. And this is what I love about directors in and that scene was executed perfectly. Like, that was a beauty. It wasn't my favorite scenes of the whole movie, but you're almost kind of wondering, is this Goodfellas in training? There you go. You just said it. I yeah, I was literally just biting my tongue. I'm like, Don't interrupt him because you want to know exactly what I was going to say. Yes, yes, yes. And you see in this movie all of the things that Scorsese would put into his upcoming movies in his filmography, but it's not like they failed here. Like these were No, very well done. But I this like every filmmaker kind of has got some things that they just like to do. Yeah. They and they and you'll go back to it because you're like, No, I like to see things this way. And you know, the content of, of this movie is yet very personal. But you are talking about the Italian upbringing, talking about the religious upbringing. These are all themes and cultures that reflect Martin Scorsese's life. And it's just all starting here. And then you've got DeNiro and with, you know, that first collaboration and Harvey Keitel. I remember I just was like blown away by his performance in this movie. I was like, This guy is I love Harvey Keitel and this movie. He is killing it. I love it. I absolutely love it. I think it's one of his best. And it is a very, very clear indication that Martin Scorsese, he knocked down the door and was like, All right, I'm here. Let's go. Yeah, you don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. I love that. Scorsese He is the narrator as opposed to Keitel, but he does use Keitel's voice a few times it breaking the rules like that. Exactly. Exactly. It's breaking the rules. And why do that? I don't know. But believe me, believe me, one of the biggest demerits I'll say that people give this movie, even I've read reviews not even that long ago where they say the songs in this movie. I liked the movie, I liked the soundtrack, but all those songs are overused. And I'm like, Yeah, since 1973. But he was in there first. So be my baby. Of course, you've heard that other places. I don't recall hearing it in the movie before 1973, this grim subject material. But he's playing the music that he and his friends listen to this pop music that is like by the time I saw Mean Streets, I had already seen Tarantino do that. So it's not like I have the same vibrancy, the same like shock is if we're sitting there in a theater in 1973, but because we appreciate movies enough and we're able to like put them into context, once you do, that mean streets, it's it's so important. I mean, also, you said it's like his first big movie, but Marty made this with his friends for like half a million dollars. It ended up getting picked up by Warner Brothers, but it was not like it was an indie movie to the bone. Like they were just running Gunning. I mean, they filmed most of it in Los Angeles on sets and that which is crazy that they only had a few days to shoot in New York. They shot all the hallway arguments in New York because the titles are so specific in the walls. But yeah, the majority of it was shot in L.A., which is like, Oh my God. But yeah, the cutting patterns, the choice of pop music, the slow motion, the title cards. Yeah, it's all instances of Scorsese, his early talent and yeah, there's absolutely a come to that club bathed in neon red in Mean Streets is the same color in Goodfellas and the same kind of going around meeting everyone. Keitel is great here as the lead Charlie and it seems like there does. There's a big conflict within him, like, like the streets versus the church. Oh, like, do I want to be this gangster or do I just like, want to run my uncle's restaurant? I think I'd rather do this. There's a huge conflict in his romantic interest. A lot of conflict in him. Oh, I love that. And I love Keitel. I love Keitel, but, I mean, come on. This movie belongs to Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy and one of the literally most explosive and unpredictable force performances he ever did. It's just this is a movie movie buffs will appreciate because, you know, I love that Charlie does. Fred's go to the movies like they rip. You know, a few kids off for like $20. And he goes, $20. Let's go to movies like, Oh, I love that. See it? And I mean, when I watch Mean Streets, now there's there's literally equal influence of Cassavetes is shadows, Howard Hawks is Scarface and and Abbott and Costello bits because that's what they were watching and that's what they were studying for these nonstop scenes of Keitel and De Niro going back and forth like, you know, I had this work Tuesday. Yeah, it's the one after the other one. And just going back and forth like that, this pitter patter. So you have this real indie thing with fight scenes, with gunshots, with action, with, you know, street level action. But then it's also funny as shit. That's why I love this. It's so funny. It's so fucking funny. And what's a mook? What's. Oh, my God, that whole inside research, that word tirelessly I in hopes that it's not a slur. We've talked about this like I've researched it, hoping that it's not like a slur against anyone. It doesn't seem to be. Just seems to me like stupid person. I swear to God, if movie ends up becoming a slur, I'm going to be fucked. We're going to. We're going to find out, said Mark so many times. No, I've done extensive Googling because that's what Dan and you and I always call each other. Okay, one final thing. Are you done with Mean Streets? Yeah, I've been duck. Yeah, You've just been talking forever. Oh, have I? Oh, have I? You want me to start talking about my back again? How? It's killing me? Nah. Carrying the weight of everything. A little bit of trivia for mean streets. Michael, I've always wondered, who is Michael? Why do I recognize Michael? I'm like, I know. I know this guy. His real name is Richard Romanus. I finally know why I know that goddamn face. He played Lorraine Bronco's husband in The Sopranos. I knew. I knew how I knew it and I knew I recognized him. So a little bit of trivia there. I'm going to do a quick, very quick interlude. We're not going to do this for all of them. And I promise this is very quick. Italian-American. This is a little documentary interlude here. I cannot believe it took me so long to see this. It is on HBO, Max. He made this in 1974 right after Mean Streets. And it's basically 49 minutes of Scorsese, his parents telling stories in their New York apartment. It's great. It's easy if you are a fan of Catherine Scorsese, he's cameos in Marty's films. I promise you will love this very quick documentary. So just wanted to give that a little shout out, that's all. But the next movie I'm kicking over to you because there are few. I can say what they are. There are at least two Marty movies that you rep really hard and I love it. So tell me why Alice Doesn't Live here anymore is one of those. Oh, God, I love this movie so much. I do. Single mom story like this single mom parenting stuff. Yeah, totally. That's any time there's a single mom story and it's done. Well, that's. That's a straight shot, right to me that I'll always love. I also like this movie a lot because this is a fairly recent discovery. I, I don't think we were doing the podcast yet, or maybe we were, but we weren't doing a Scorsese episode. No, I think this was pretty hard. Because you dislike text to me one day and you were like, Dude, it was on something. It was like on Prime or something. It was something I remember and that motivated me. I'd only seen it once in college and I literally watched it that night and I was like, Oh shit, this was better than I remembered. Yeah. And your text, I mean, it promoted me, motivated me to watch it again. Yeah. There's something. So what's funny about this is we're talking about a single mom, and my mom herself is not a fan of Martin Scorsese's movies. And in this is the and the reason why is because there's a certain level and certainly like she she doesn't mind the humor but she's like there's a certain macho elements to his movies. They're very masculine driven and typically very angry. And this is the one movie in his filmography that really focuses on a whim, a woman as the lead. And it's really done with a lot of sensitivity and care and thought and nuance that you don't really see in any of his movies. I kept having to pinch myself watching this. I'm like, in my watching a martin Scorsese movie right now. Like, this is so unlike anything that he's ever done. And this was like, you know, 1974, he is just started his career and yet he makes this. And in a time where this type of movie wasn't being made either. Well, yeah, it was like it was on the up. It was it was the time when for the first time in film history, for the first more female driven films like Jane Fonda won an Oscar for Klute in 1971, and she is. Whoa, That's a great movie. One of my favorite Jane Fonda performances. So, yeah, they're starting to they're starting to become a thing. I mean, you know, it's going to lead to like Sally Field winning an Oscar for Norma Rae, that type stuff. Yeah. And I just I really, really love this movie. And I remember even loved it from the opening where it's such a bizarre opening. Wizard of Oz, baby. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's always the two of us and the four, three aspect ratio and the false choice. Oh, it's perfect. It's like, what the fuck is going on here? Yeah, And then. Then the movie actually starts and we're given a certain cinematic view that will become like the look of the movie. But it doesn't start that way. And again, it's just like you look at someone, it's just like, You know what, I'm going to break the rules here. Yeah, this movie, I really love the relationship between the mother and son. I love the I mean, this was funny is that when she's playing piano in the bar, that was, you know, when we were making there I go, I had so many different like, you know, we ended up really kind of going with the same part of that jazz bar scene. But in a way, when I was watching Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Like that bar scene where she's playing at the piano was all kind of like emotionally tied to what I was trying to achieve. And there I go. And I was like, Man, like, it's always cool when you see something in a movie that someone else did that resonates with what you've done and you're like, Wow, man, like the same type of energy. Hence why I am obsessed with waves. This is that's exactly why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a sensitivity that's going on in this movie that he doesn't often bring to his other work, and it's totally fine. But I love that there's this. I love that he has this movie in his career and it's so well done. It's so good. There's so many great side performances. Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel. Ooh, you know, these men that this woman that this woman encounters along her way, But then also Diane Ladd, who's great, Jodie Foster, who is oh two years, both for Taxi for it's crazy like there's there's really just so much to love about this movie. And if you haven't seen it or heard of it, like really like, don't sleep on Ellis's and live here anymore. It's a it's a great, great movie. I agree. The movie was set up by Ellen Burstyn at Warner Brothers, and due to the success of The Exorcist, which was made in 1973, heard of it and not don't don't know. It was a popular one. A lot of people saw it. Was it because it was so popular? Burstyn kind of had carte blanche to pick her director for this film. Francis Ford Coppola showed her an early cut of this movie called Mean Streets. She met with Scorsese and asked, What do you know about women? To which Scorsese replied, Nothing but I can learn. And from that conversation we got, Alice doesn't live Here Anymore. And I love that. I love that. I didn't know that. One of the reasons why it's so effective to me is because it is a gentler, gentler tone for Scorsese. It is focusing on a woman, which he very rarely did, at least as a lead character. But despite all that, this is not like some schmaltzy movie of a single mom and a wise ass kid. Like they're living tough. Yeah, and the movie is not afraid to get dark and real, as expressed perfectly in the Harvey Keitel character who when you first start to see him, you're like, Well, look, half old. Harvey's playing a good old boy. So nice. And yeah. Nope. Like his turn is very believable For fans of Harvey Keitel. You go, There it is. I knew that was under there and it's like, whoa, it gets scary. And then she meets people like Diane Ladd, who have just always loved Diane Ladd. Diane Ladd. Bruce Dern. You know, they had Laura Dern. I love the live the whole family actually watch this movie with the commentary on and it realized there was a commentary in my DVD, but there is few people come into it. Diane Ladd talks a lot and it and she said that filming that scene when they're like suntan ing, when she's talking to Ellen Burstyn, she said that's a favorite her favorite scene that she ever shot in her career. Oh, yeah, isn't that great? And I was like, well, she just talks. She loved I mean, she loved working on it, loved the movie. Everyone just had a great time on this. And of course, we should say Ellen Burstyn, who should have won an Oscar in 1973 for that little film. The Exorcist did go on to win this year. And that's good. That's great. I'm glad she won. She did beat our Gena Rowlands for Woman Under the Influence. But you got to keep in mind, women under the influence never had a chance at winning Oscars. There was an independently made movie that somehow snuck in there and they gave it nominations. The nominations for that were its gift. Like they did not nominate independent movies. Not at all. But Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Is made by Warner Brothers. Yeah, Yeah. WOMAN Are the influences made by Faces Company? John Cassavetes faces production, so hell yeah. I'm so glad we got to talk about that. It's just so cool to see him deal with that subject material, but it's also kind of shot like mean streets. Like it looks like it was shot in the same like film socket. A lot of it takes place during the day. But yeah, Kris Kristofferson is another actor that I think I've not paid enough attention to, but he's actually really good, just like studying Heaven's Gate recently for the Deer Hunter part and now this. I'm like, Oh, I like him. I need to go back and rewatch his A star is born. I've only seen that one once. Oh yeah, I would like to see that, actually. Yeah. The Judy Garland one is way better, but to me, none beat old Lady Gaga. No, never. Gaga and Cooper. Hmm. Next up, here is a movie that we will not be discussing in depth today, Taxi Driver, 1976. If if I may have a drum roll to explain why we are not describing this one, because episode 100 of the What are you Watching podcast? A podcast for people who love movies is going to be on Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. We've been circling this enough. This is my favorite film of all time. I said that on our first ever podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun to dedicate a whole episode to this. You know, it's one it's kind of intimidating because I'm like, where to even begin? We're just going to have to start like talking about it because I have so much to say and I don't want to go on and on. But yeah, very, very excited. It does seem perhaps a little unfair to just skirt over it because this is the Marty podcast, so I'll get a little prompt going in. This isn't the last time Taxi Driver is going to be mentioned in this episode, but here's something fun that I'll toss out that you can consider before we record that podcast. Did Travis Bickle really go to Vietnam? Is he a veteran? Oh really? Because in his new book, Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarantino does not speculate. He outright states that there's no way Travis Bickle went to Vietnam because if he did, he would at least be more socialized with people of color. But instead it's very clear that Travis Bickle is racist and his racism. The way the movie manifested was with those long, slow motion shots of like the pimps or the guys walking by on the street and all that stuff. So and, you know, Tarantino is also quick to point out that that jacket that Bickle wears isn't like an Army regulation jacket. It's something he probably bought at like a thrift store or something. So it's kind of an interesting road to go down. It made me look at my favorite movie completely differently, like, is this just a put on that he's doing? He's actually not a veteran, I don't know. But we're going to have a lot to say about Taxi Driver. I love this movie to no end. You can really tell who runs the scheduling of this podcast to make our 100th episode his favorite movie of all time. Exactly. Exactly. We already did your favorite. I gave it to you like never gave you a late 47. 66 was Blow right after episode 65, our Goodfellas podcast, which that was done to honor the great Ray Liotta. After he passed, we did two deep dives. I picked Goodfellas. You pick Blue. Those are fun. But yes, I do make the scheduling for the fun. Yeah. So, no, it was it was kind of daunting. I'm like, what is 100 going to be? What are we going to land on? And I went, Oh, just make this easy on yourself. Just, you know, it's perfect. It's perfect. Make Mega Taxi Driver and we're doing this on purpose, like I want to do our favorite directors and they have a lead in the Scorsese and then Scorsese. He would lead in the Taxi Driver. But yeah, unfortunately we're just going to kind of slide right by it today, but I'm going to watch it as soon as we're done recording this to get ready for tomorrow, But I've already watched it twice this week and I'm like, God, Tim, I love this thing. You're Mad Men Flush it all down the fucking toilet. Any thoughts on Taxi Driver before we move on here? No, I'm going to leave everything to to that. So when we record it, I mean, okay, this is all I'll say. It's my favorite Martin Scorsese movie. Yeah, I mean, same here. I've over. It's my movie of all time. Yeah, we've given away our number one spot, so that's why we're doing top ten. Marty As opposed to top five, we usually do top fives because I like to put those limitations on the spot because our number one is spoiled, yeah, we're going to branch out the ten, which will be fun. So yeah. Spoiler They're all right now. Things get weird. Yeah, Marty has had a few put it all on the line. Passion projects in his career in which he's fought really, really hard to get movies made. This is a theme I'm going to go back to. These are things like Gangs of New York. He fought for so long to get that made. The Last Temptation of Christ he spent decades trying to get that made. Silence is another one that he wanted to make for years and years, and he finally did get to make them. Now your mileage is going to vary on all those, most notably his first real passion project, which was New York New York, released in 1977, or, as I like to call it, La la Land Meets Revolutionary Road. It's this is one if not the this is the most misunderstood Martin Scorsese movie because this thing came out and people hated it. It was just panned like universally, this happens twice very quickly in his career. We're going to talk about the other when we get to 1982. But New York, New York followed just this groundbreaking work in Taxi Driver, and I think everyone was expecting the next DeNiro or Scorsese Ecolab to match that. And instead, New York. New York is like this really sprawling, intentionally artificial ode to old Hollywood that I get a lot more appreciation for every time I watch it. I've only seen it three times, have not studied it a lot. But this latest rewatch, you know, we're talking about is Mean Streets giving way to Goodfellas. When you watch New York, New York, especially early on, there are some scenes that take place in a club and I'm like this is just a preview for The Aviator. That's what once he gets more money and The Aviator is a movie, he was really interested in Howard Hughes for a long time. I knew that, like so watching it, I'm going. That's what it feels like to me. But, you know, in short, New York New York is a movie about a very egotistical musician played by Robert De Niro, who meets a singer, Liza minnelli, and they fall in love and work together. And that's where we can begin. But the there's a lot more to say about this. But I know you're actually in the middle of this one right now. You're watching it. Yeah. Tell me your thoughts on it. I honest to God, I'm loving every second of it. I didn't think I was because I'm not the biggest musical fan saying it, but I honestly have not gotten to any real musical moments. Yeah, I see. I wouldn't even classify it as a music because every song in it, it's not one where they're going to randomly break out into song. And yeah, every song is like Singin in the Rain. Yeah, yeah. So, So this checks all my boxes for fun. I am really, really enjoying the tone of the movie. The feel. It's so light. It's so it feels like New York, to be honest. Like it really does. Yeah. Kind of moves to that speed. But one of my favorite things so far, the movie and I and I rarely ever think about this, this opening scene between Robert De Niro and Liza minnelli. Is this back and forth of him just trying to get her number and her saying no. And I think this is a perfect acting scene of someone trying to get what they want and someone, you know, getting them to try to go away like those are. There are two objectives, right? I want this want you to leave. And the dialog is very sparse for the most of it. She's just saying no, but this is the best way to is like acting because how many different ways can you say no? How many different ways can you get your point across? How many different ways can you try a different tactic to get what you want? And this scene is just cooking on all cylinders and could be played a million different ways. I thought this scene was just like, This is the best, like acting class scene I think you could ever have. All right. I think I'm about to blow your mind. And the only reason I'm going to get into this stuff, because we we do focus on the work and not the law. This isn't law. SCORSESE He has talked about this. He's written about it. And I promise it gives context for what many consider to be Scorsese his masterpiece. So New York, New York, all the dialog in this movie was improvised. Literally all of it. Get out of that is because Scorsese was doing so much cocaine he could not like focus on the script. I'm not joking. I don't want to drag other people into it. But Scorsese, who was married, he and Liza minnelli, were spending they were spending a lot of time with each other in each other's trailers. They often wouldn't be able to come out of the trailer because they would be engaged in various activities. Scorsese and De Niro argued a lot on this set, not something we hear about a lot with one of them storming off. I have to assume a drug was responsible for a lot of that. But yeah, it was just basically like chaos and production designers and costume designers. A lot of people have talked about how New York, New York was just the making of it was chaos. I don't I think if anything like this was even attempted 2023, no one would have a career like, know what Niro, Scorsese or Liza minnelli would never work again. Given some of the stories I've heard, I'm just being very, very high level. But by this point, some success is happening. Scorsese's drug use is really, really taking off. And when New York, New York is panned, I mean, really critically panned, he thinks maybe I'm just going to go off and make documentaries. Maybe this Hollywood thing is not for me and I'll go make documentaries on my own. And it's not like a big Tarantino style announcement. You know, New York. New York is my last narrative feature. I'm done. It wasn't like that. But this is what he was telling friends and this is what he's admitting now. So I'm going to do two more quick documentary side tangents for one reason, he makes The Last Waltz in 1978. The concert. Yeah, this is a concert film of. Yeah, Double three. And this is a concert. The concert itself was labeled as the band's farewell concert. One of the members of the band, lead guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson. He's gone on to work with Scorsese. He still works with him. He does. He did the score or he supervised the music for The Color of Money, Gangs of New York, The Departed Wolf of Wall Street. But while they made the waltz, Scorsese has admitted that he and Roberts did did so much cocaine the entire summer that they don't even remember filming parts of the documentary. So the same can be true of another 1978 documentary. He made American Boy a profile of Stephen Prince. This is a 55 minute doc where Scorsese interviews Stephen Prince. That's the gun salesman from Taxi Driver. Isn't it a cute little honey here? Oh, basically, the documentary is 55 Minutes of Prince telling stories and they get crazier and crazier. It was also reported that Prince was Scorsese's cocaine connection and Scorsese is on camera a few times in American Boy. And he's talking real, real, real fast. Got a lot of energy, a lot of energy. Why am I talking about this so much? Why am I bringing all this stuff up? This is why Because I'm not making light of this. His cocaine addiction got so bad that he almost died and he had to be hospitalized for a really long period, for an extended period of time to get over this. I'm talking like he was telling stories to Lorraine Bracco on the set of Goodfellas that he used to have, like nosebleeds and try to fish Coke out of his nosebleeds. He had a bad, bad, so bad that while he's laid up in the hospital, his good friend and collaborator, Robert De Niro, comes and visits him, pulls out a book, hands it to Marty and says, We need to make this in. The book is Raging Bull by Jake LaMotta. So I mentioned all those crazy on set antics and all that offset behavior by way of saying that this is where Raging Bull was born from. This is why Raging Bull is so profane, so violent, so intense. And, you know, this is why it's one of my favorite movies ever made. But yeah, that brings us right to Raging Bull. Did you know that stuff, like all that crazy backstory? Yeah. Yeah. I knew he had a really bad addiction. I didn't realize it got to that point. I didn't realize that. I mean, essentially, death was knocking on his door. Potentially. Yeah. And to the point where he. He did announce really like on set, this is my last movie. Raging Bull is going to be the last narrative feature I make, and I'm just going to go make documentaries. And that was, you know, that help explains why it's black and white. There's a there's a lot that went into this. It's kind of white. Parts of it feel like like a farewell song, you know, it's Oh, yeah, yeah. But let's let's just get into a Raging Bull crisis movie. So this was a this is a great story that I don't even think that I've shared with you. This is one of those about face movies for me. I have a few that we're going to talk about today. Yeah? Yeah. Oh, so you were not a fan. A lot of people. Raging Bull is tough, man. It wasn't that I wasn't a fan of it at the time that I saw it. I just don't think I was ready. Sure. I don't think I had kind of, like, lived enough life in order to kind of wrap my head around what this because essentially this movie is a character study on or it's more of a portrait of just the complete animalistic nature of men. Oh, yes. Of when men go to the most extremes and it turns to violence. And whether it be jealousy or competition or wherever it is, that's where this guy lives. I yeah, when I first saw it, I was just sort of like, okay, wow, this is just a lot. And and I wasn't really understanding what this movie was trying to do. Give it a few years. And I'm like, Oh, wow, this isn't the movie that I thought it was. And then I rewatched it like last week. It I think, okay, so I'll put it this way. It's become one of my most favorite shot movies I've ever seen. Yeah, it's right up there with me with one of the best shot. And this got voted not too long ago by the Editors Guild and Association of Editors. This was the best edited film of all time. I completely understand why. Yeah, I can't say I disagree. It's so. Well assembled. I got the movie for the first time this past time. I mean, really, there is no real end or beginning to this movie in terms of narrative, hence why it starts and ends in the same place. It's you're you're really given something very specific and important. Yeah. There's just and there's nothing really to learn. And unfortunately, because it's about Jake LaMotta, like it says to me that this was something that he never learned, not in the events of the movies. I think by the time well, does everything in the movie takes place, you know, decades ago. So he was present at the Academy Awards. I would hope by 1980, 1981, when he's sitting there in the theater, that he had learned something. And it sounds like he did. When you watch the special features or the commentary, which is, well, the Jake LaMotta commentary for Raging Bull is a fucking listen and a half, I'll tell you that. It to me was just an expression of the depravity of man men. The complete toxic traits that men can have in their worst. That's what this movie to me was about, was exploring that. And again, like I said, like there isn't. Well, this is how you deal with this or this is how you get better at it. It wasn't meant to be that. It was meant to just be here. It is. And I totally got it. And I really felt like it was such an artistically well done movie in a way that I hadn't appreciated before. And yeah, so it doesn't beat made my favorite movie, as I've stated on the cinematography was, is the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. But this is now taken number two. This would be a good this would be a good spot episode as our favorite shot movies. Yeah, I did that on my blog years ago like this, been ten years ago. And I split it into color and black and white, and it was a lot of fun and it was a lot of fun. Oh, people you have commenting about you know, And that led me to watch so many good ones. And then the criteria for that is so different because it's not just literal staging compositions, it's how is the camera moving? What are you? Yep. Talking about cinematography. So to go into it, my love for this film is so grand and you know that it's hard to think of new things to say about it. I did buy The Criterion 4k and it is, Oh my God. I don't mean to sound like a broken record for this, but it's fucking astounding. I genuinely I've said this so many times in the past few months, but I've seen Raging Bull. I've seen Raging Bull on the big screen. I saw on the big screen when I lived in L.A. This, I swear to God, watching it in 4K was even better. I'm looking at this detail in the grain in this film stock, and I'm like, I want to put it on right now. And I just watch it like three days ago again. Oh, stunning. Real quick. I'm really sorry that is a 4K a player. Is it like a DVD player or is it a TV for. Well, yeah. Okay. This is a good question since I talk about it so much it because I watch for. Yeah. To watch 4K properly, unfortunately you have to change your whole setup. You have to buy a 4K TV, which is what I did. I didn't have a 4K for a while. You got to buy a 4K player. Those aren't I mean, Blu ray players are so cheap now for a good 4K player because you're like 200 bucks, which is a lot for a player. Now that fucker can play anything. Yeah, Yeah. 4K player. You can't use a shitty HDMI cord, you have to get a 4k HDMI cord. Those are the new things you need and you need the 4K disc. Now, my 4K player, of course, play DVDs and Blu rays. But yeah, the only way to properly get that 4K picture and when I tell you, you can tell you can fucking tell like it is. I showed you some, I showed you some a T to some of it was like, Dude, it's having me. It's, it's a tough beat because every 4K I've purchased, I already own the Blu ray or the DVD if like Casino was a great one, and I've already talked about this, but Casino, I did not own the Blu ray, so I'm it. This is easiest. This is an easy step. Step up from DVD to 4k. And of course all the 4K is fucking come with Blu rays. So they all come with that. Yeah. Yes. So I have I have so many DVDs to give away. Fuck, I've been wanting to mention this for forever on the podcast. I have like a plastic crate full of DVDs and Blu rays that I've wanted to give away. Sub out just to sub collector dummy. I am not joking. I am not joking. I will work with you. I just need to get rid of these because I have so many and so many of them. They all work for kids. It's so worth it. I did have to spend a little money like I already had the 4K player and the HDMI cord. I was just waiting for the TV and then I'm like, Fuck it, let me just go do this. And it was it. For a movie fan like me, it changes everything. It makes me reinvestigate them. It's so cool. I couldn't believe I've said this before, but like I, I truly believe that this is a worthwhile purchase because like the DVD to Blu ray, I was like, okay, yeah, it looks a little bit better, but when you show me this 4K stuff, I yeah, I remember that I watched that scene in Pulp Fiction and I go, Wow, okay, this. Yeah. I was like, This is like watching the movie for the very first time again and I really want to buy the Three Colors trilogy. On The Criterion for their next flash sale, But I want the 4K, right? Like, I like, like, like. So if I'm going to buy it, like. Like I could see myself. Okay, well, I really want it right now. So I'll buy the Blu ray because I've got the Blu ray. But like later on I'm going to want to buy the 4K spend, spend a little extra dough. Yes. Start like start building out your 4K now, because eventually you will get a 4K player and a 4K TV. At least it sounds like that's your ambition, but at least the 4K will still come with Blu rays, so you'll be able to watch those. Yes. And so you'll be able to watch. Yeah. When you enhance your setup at Smart, then you just I mean. Yeah, that's what, that's what I was doing. I own I have like a million little waiting for 4K cliffhanger 4K Wild Things, 4K. Whoa, whoa. Great times, Great time. What else? Okay, back to the cinematography of Raging Bull real quick. I love the use of slow motion. Martin Scorsese, these movies, he always tries to use it when you wouldn't expect it, you know, Punches art in slow motion. Raging Bull. It's the baptism by bloody sponge that's in slow motion. Those animal roars that blare on the on the soundtrack. As Jake LaMotta rages, whether he's in the ring or not. Like when he gets into the fight in that home. Whoa, You just hear it. Oh, my God. It's like, you know, Moreover, Raging Bull is a lot like taxi Driver in that it was a perfect marriage of three talents of director Martin Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader, and star Robert De Niro. And the three of them only made those two films together. They only made Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. And there is an inherent, what to call it pessimism, an inherent human sadness to Schrader's work that pairs so well with Marty and De Niro in these two instances, because Schrader has gone on to do other, you know, in this sad, pessimistic vein that, you know, when he's directed his own work, I love a lot of Paul Schrader's movies. I dislike some of them, too. Yeah, I love lot of Marty's movies. I dislike some of them, too. And obviously the same can be said for De Niro. But when these three got together, it just clicked. And kind of what you're saying of why you may not have been as drawn to it the first time and why I think a lot of people are in is that the characters these characters don't grow like Travis Bickle doesn't grow, Jacob doesn't grow. Not, not really, not in the ways we're hoping with like some sweeping orchestral score. And there these big reunions. It's, you know, in a lot of these movies, I would argue that Henry Hill in Goodfellas doesn't really grow. He seems pretty bummed out to living the rest of his life like just another schnook, you know, Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Jordan Belfort does not grow. This is why this is why these movies, when they were released, when they were released and still today still garners some controversy because it is as if some people watching these movies think this was a phrase. It was said all the time in late 2013, early 2014 in relation to the Wolf of Wall Street depiction is not endorsement. Just because Martin Scorsese is putting this stuff on screen does not mean he agrees with it. I bet Martin Scorsese, when he was making Raging Bull, agreed with very little that Jake LaMotta had done in his life, agreed with very few of the choices. But goddamn it, it makes for one hell of a compelling movie. Yeah, Thank God it won two Oscars. It didn't win them all. Didn't win Picture director, but it did win. The ones that really, really counted. It would have been it would have seriously diminished their reputation if they did not give best actor to De Niro. That just would have been like weird eyed and then edit it. Yeah, yeah. You got to give it to Thelma. You got to get to editing one cinematography over this. Let me see if I can do it before I look it up. 1980. How? Like I was Empire Strikes Back 1980 because I think that beat it for sound. No, let me look. No. Well, I mean, I suppose it could have been because it was strikes back came out in 1979. So it might have. I'm not playing that fucking game. No, no, no. Don't do that. All right, all right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want you know, I don't. I wasn't looking for an apology. It's okay. It was just. No, I think. Yeah, though. Empire Strikes Back was 80. Oh, so it won like an Oscar for Best Sound. Which Raging Bull. It's like the sound in Raging Bull. So good, you're like, how does that not win best sound? I mean, look up cinematography. Don't know. Top of my head. Oh, I didn't know that. I forgot. This was released in 80 tests. The Roman Polanski movie won cinematography. Michael Chapman, who shot Raging Bull, was nominated. Tess, just like is one of those beautiful looking movies. Really soft color like he made it for the visuals, production, design, all that stuff. So it won like costume design, art, direction, cinematography. But it should have been Raging Bull. Oh, this next one's going to be so much fun. Oh, my God, I. Oh, honestly, just want to kick it to you because I alluded to it right up top. Rupert Pupkin, one of the all time great Marty De Niro characters and the king of comedy. I mean, honestly, this is just one of the all time great underseen comedies, let alone movies made the Eighties, let alone movies made by Martin Scorsese. Yeah, some very, very similar to how New York New York was received as well. This is in Taxi Driver, the King of Comedy was received as well. This isn't Raging Bull. And Raging Bull, keep in mind was a movie that a lot of critics at first were like, No, this movie is way too intense and a lot of critics eight their words did Reappraisal is of Raging Bull, but by the time King comes out, no one gave a shit and I mean no one. And it is. This movie is fucking hilarious. This movie is great. Amazing. I love this. Tell me about it though, because you just watch it for the first time, watching for the first time King of comedy and and I think even I got because I knew the lack of caring about this movie like this, I always associated this movie as like, oh, I that's like the one Martin Scorsese movie that nobody liked, right? That's sort of the the reputation that I thought this movie had. And when we were getting ready to do this because I had never seen this, I was like, Well, I want to watch all of the ones where I want to try to get to all the ones that I've never seen before. Man, I will tell you from the second that it started to the second it ended, I had the best time. Such a good ride. I really don't know what to say other than I think this is one of his best. A lot of people think that a lot of people, both De Niro and Scorsese, maybe I should have teed this up better because whatever it is, we come into a streak post Raging Bull really like three movies in row that are just funky out there. Scorsese Movies that I know, people who love, movies, who love Scorsese. And their favorite movie by him is The King of comedy. I also know that is true for the next two movies we're going to talk about. But yeah, this is one that is ripped very, very hard. And it's you know, we have Robert De Niro's Super Pumpkin, one of the all time great character names. Yeah. He's a wannabe standup comic who's obsessed with talk show host Jerry Langford, played to complete Meat and utter Perfection by Jerry Lewis. It's just one of the best acting performances Scorsese ever got. The fact that neither of them were in contention for Oscars is it's just really, really dumb. It does not age well at all. Rupert will stop at nothing to meet Jerry and to tell him about the influence he have on his life. Oh my God. That scene at Langford's country home is is. It's one of the highlights of Scorsese's career, the awkwardness. It's all staging, dialog and performance. There's no violence. It's nothing like that. It's just so fucking real. And you really feel we don't ever talk about. De Niro is one of the great improvisers and artists, but he is. He's so good at improv it, volleying it back and forth already talked about New York, New York. But what he and Jerry Lewis are doing here, it's like and you know, Jerry Lewis was an icon of a young Scorsese, an icon to a young DeNiro. It's like when you put all that context into this, like this is a movie where I laugh out loud several times when I watch it and it's something that gets, you know, genuinely like scary a little bit toward the end. And in the way, my favorite thing about the movie, my favorite thing is the way it seamlessly infuses fantasy and reality and uses, you know, which you're watching and that holds true up until the very, very end. And the way they do that, not by like changing the film stock or putting like a filter on it of having music playing you don't know and you just have to track and pay attention. It's profound. It's so profound. They're just cuts. That's it. They just cut that set. They're just we're watching one thing and it cuts into something else. And I'll give yeah, I'll give it in an innocuous example, just so people can choose know, like I'm saying, Rupert. Yeah, innocuous. Got it. What movie? Do it. Oh, no. I was just using a big word. Oh, well, I used it for a while. I was repeating a big word. Well, that's what. Yeah, I know. I was. Perry Keating. You Tom Hanks uses that big word in Philadelphia. Denzel goes up anyway. Okay? He's obsessed with Jerry Langford. Jerry Langford wants nothing to do with Rupert, pumpkin. And we gather this very, very quickly. But then the next scene, you're just hard cut to Rupert and Jerry having lunch and as you listen to the lunch, Jerry Langford is now the has been and Rupert Pumpkin is now the huge star and Jerry is asking Rupert for favors and you're like, what the fuck is going on here? I thought I thought he didn't even know who he was. And then you have to start doing the math yourself and you're like, Oh, taxi Driver didn't really give us insight into Travis Nichols. Yeah, meandering psychosis, But this is in a really, really specific way that gets kind of scary and it's just brilliant. And people, audiences and critics were not ready for this in 82, but thankfully, this has a huge cult following now, like Rupert, Pumpkin is in the zeitgeist. Like that just means like, you mean kind of a clown and everything. The girl, the the, his his partner in crime. Sandra Bernhard. Yeah, big in the eighties. Yes. Yes. She's giving a very specific performance, too. This is one of my favorite performances by a woman in any Scorsese movie. Oh, yeah. Because it's just so fearless and bold. And I mean that scene, I don't even want to say what it is, but basically she's got Jerry Langford in a certain position and she just dominates the scene. It is a one woman show, total control and the depths and layers and range that she goes through as a legitimate, insane person, basically. Oh, they're they're funny. They're scary. And and they're like some of it's kind of sweet and then it's super disturbing. It's amazing to me when you can seamlessly go through that all within a scene. She does amazing job. I was blown away by her lesbian way by the whole movie, but I just wanted to give a shout out to her for that performance because I think that's one of what as one of it's one of my favorites. Yeah, I love her in it as well. And if anything we're talking about sounds a little familiar. If you watch Taxi Driver and then the King of Comedy after you've pretty much just watched Joker directed by Todd Phillips, now trying to take anything away. But it is like at some point they got to start giving like a credit to these movies. I mean, seriously, you got to be like with with thanks to Martin Scorsese for his work because this movie was so heavily influenced by these. I know it's been going on forever. Tarantino made a whole career off of doing. Yeah, yeah, come on, come on. But Tarantino says it exactly. He says it. It's like Todd Phillips. I mean, come on. You just you you literally mix those two together and then brought in like the Joker and sprinkled that in. Like, that's what it is. Hey, I'm excited for the sequel, though. It's next. One's tricky. This next one is tricky. I feel like I should, like, loop in against someone who can like, rip it so hard. I know people online who have seen every single Martin Scorsese movie, and their favorite one by a long shot is After Hours. I listen to a few famous movie podcasters and this their favorite Scorsese movie, and I just got to say upfront that you and I aren't the biggest fans of it. And that's, you know, well, I just I don't know how you feel for you, but I'm not. I wanted to have a much better opinion of it, rewatching it for this because I've seen it. I've seen it a few times. Okay, I'll start with the context, because this movie was the frustration in the movie, Born from the frustration Scorsese was going through after Paramount completely abandoned, making The Last Temptation of Christ in 1984 like it was a go movie. They were doing it and they got scared from the controversy, pulled the plug. So Scorsese is like, I need something lean, mean, fast, cheap and out of control. And he makes after hours, which takes place over one maniacal night in New York City. And the thing I can say about this is that I've always wanted to like it more. I mean, yeah, it has. And there's everything here that I should like it. It's directed by Scorsese, it's shot by the same guy who shot Raging Bull. It's edited by the same woman who edited Raging Bull. It's got an amazing cast. And Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Farentino, Terry Guard, John Hurd, Catherine O'Hara. It's a home alone preview right there. Yeah. And Dick Miller's here. I should like it more. There's there's obviously a ton of American psycho influence, meaning after hours influence American Psycho. And I've heard Bret Easton Ellis talk about this. It's like that bit in the end of the book and the movie where Patrick Bateman's just kind of running around the city killing people. Like that's after hours for 90 minute sands, killing people. But they even have that really long like manic phone, like there's a lot of Oh yeah. So I see I get that a lot of people like it and I see the influence it's had and I get like the style of it. It moves fast, fast, fast. It's basically like Dante's Inferno, I think was a big kind of, you know, he's stuck in limbo, this hell limbo. So I have I have a take and I really hate it. Well, I have a final take that I don't hate, but I think it under art since Jaws sounds like it's going to be negative, let me get my not so negative one out of the way. Sorry. Real quick. Every person I know who says this is their favorite Marty movie, they're all about 5 to 10 years older than me. And I have to assume that that's playing a part that they just caught it, you know, after hours made 1985 Casino is made in 1995 and people who rep after hours that hard they're repping it as hard as I rep casino so I get it people I'm fucking nuts about casino like nuts I've seen it all year. We're slowly working our way there but I so I get it. I respect the love people have for after hours. I do too. It just doesn't click for me. I don't know. That's all I can say. I think I know what it is for me because I would even venture to say even more so for me that this is a more me movie than anything. Absolutely, I, I love the idea as like, you know, you take a certain time and place and you take our main character and you get him to meet a select group of people and they're going to take the journey is going to be however it's going to be with these people and they might come and go. But I love these ideas. I mean, Jim Jarmusch, this is a complete Jim Jarmusch formula of Sure, sure. But wrapped up in like this, this like weird maniacal maze that has no out, you know, like that's yea I completely agree. I think I know what it is about this movie that does not vibe with me. And I really hate seeing this because I'm not trying to like. I don't want to say anything too negative, but I know what it is for me. It's Griffin Dunne. Yeah, it's just it's very specific casting because Scorsese, he could have had anyone and he did this very intentionally. But yeah, it's not. I think you're either. You either love his performance in it like it's your favorite Scorsese Z performances or it just doesn't click with you. And you and I are in that camp. This is okay. It's fine. He's given nothing but praise. Yeah, it's like we're sitting here repping New York, New York. It's fine, everything's fine. And it's not like I think he does a bad job at all. It's just I think, I guess, you know, it's that part of you that when you're watching something and you like we've just said, like we wanted it to be something a little bit like, I guess I'm craving for this type of story, a different type of character for us to center on, because this movie is based off of the idea that the craziness of the world around him is funneled into this one guy. So we need to be on the journey with this guy and we need to be feeling however we want to feel through him, and I want to be feeling it through someone else. And I don't even know who that is. I don't even have like I would love. I got one guy played on, I got it. He became in 1982, my main man, Michael Keaton. He would have fucking ripped to shreds. He would have done amazing young Michael Keaton with that crazy ass energy. I love you. You are, man. You are. You're spinning some down. And I just salivated. Right? You like that is. Yeah. You like it? Yo, I love that. I like that man. Like he's losing his mind out there that I think you don't. Young Michael just put young Michael Keaton in there. And I think it's a you know. Oh, my God. I like Griffin Dunne. I've seen a lot of his work. I'm not trying to be mean at all. But yeah, Young Michael Keaton energy in there. I think that movie. I think then maybe it is one of my favorites cause he's in movies. I don't know. You know, what else does it for me? What? It's the unit, the unibrow. I don't like it. It creeps me out. I look out. I can't look at it either. It really takes me out. Yes, it is. Were they a thing? Was that a thing in 1985? I don't know, because no one even mentions it. It's in their close up. No. So much. And it's like so much is like a Frida Kahlo, like unibrow. Like, it's just it's stuck there. It's a thing like, it's undeniable and I'm wondering, it's bigger than Barbie's eyebrows. It's yeah, it's, it's huge. You could see that thing from fucking space, man. It's weird. And I don't and I see that. And I'm like, I don't know if I buy that. This guy is like, you know, like, cashing in with the ladies, with, with, with that, I don't know. All I know is some people hate on Tarantino for all of his shots of feet we're saying right now in the what are you watching podcast not a fan of you know brows can hang with them not a fan you can't hang with them It takes me So if you guys are going to be fetus and hate on Margot Robbie's dirty feet in the movie theater, then we're going to hit on Griffin Dance University Dunne's Unibrow. Great. That's about it. With After Hours. That's about it. I'm not turning my back on it. I know, I know. I'm very. There's some I watch and I'm like, Yeah. I don't know if I go back to that one ever, but, you know, after hours, I'm I own it. I do own it. And I'm just going to go back and watch it, check it out. Maybe it'll click for me one day. I don't know. I don't know. The next one clicks for both of us right away. Ooh. Craziest thing about this one is Scorsese. He takes it as a director for hire. Yeah, the Color of money. It's based on old IP. It's like, kind of a weird thing. Is it a sequel to The Hustler? Paul Newman's playing the same guy. It's not really, But The Color of Money is a great example of a master director dipping into genre. Yeah, going into a genre movie because in a lot of ways, like this is not Marty's Oscar movie, which is ironic because it was nominated for and won Oscars. But I just love seeing Marty in particular Dip, which this is essentially like a sports film, but it's one that's edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, scored by Robbie Robertson, shot by Michael Ball House, directed by Martin Scorsese and acted the hell out of by Paul Newman and Tom Mike and Mary Elizabeth Moss. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This one was on TV all the time when I was a kid. All the time. I just I watched this one. I remember I would just catch little parts of it, but have always loved it. It just moved so well. It is so much fun. Does the Vince shirt. It's just one of the one of my favorite bits. I love that bear. You love this one too. I do. I, I got to give a shout out to a listener of this pod. He's the guy I moved out to L.A. with Sean O'Connell, and Sean doesn't have many DVDs, but he loves the movies that he loves. And he watches them over and over and over because of us. He is now. Everybody Wants Them is one of his favorite movies. Just a little. Had he never seen it, he had never it. So I recommended it. I fucking love that. I go, Dude, I've got your new favorite movie. And he he watches it monthly. Oh, yeah. Cause that movie's awesome. We're about what we're going to watch. And I see the color money. I had never seen it. Yeah, I had never seen it. I've never even heard of it. So, yeah, I did not see it growing up like that. Being on TV or whatnot. So but I love Paul Newman. We're watching the opening credits, which with the crazy fonts that are hopping up and all of a sudden I see by Martin Scorsese, See, I lost my mind. I go, What? And he goes, Yeah, that's right. Like, it was so calm and like, I go, What do we? I had to pause. I go, What do you mean, Martin Scorsese? He directed this. How come I'm never like, even remotely even know about that? And he goes, Yeah. And he's like, This is one of his best. And went on like the best ride with this movie and rewatched it. There's just not a bad note. There's just like, this movie just flies, everything works. And Paul Newman it's I mean it really is like he he is he holds the weight of this movie like he holds the weight of all movies he does. He's that kind of actor where the movie needs to rest on the performance of somebody. And you want a guy who's just always going to deliver. He is your man. And this is this is no different. No different. Yeah. In terms of where he's at in his career, this is a great double feature with verdict because I mean totally different themes. But he's in the same area and you know, the Academy, they get it wrong often. More often than not, they fucked up in 1982. They should have given best actor Gandhi was the thing. So of course, Ben Kingsley won. They should have given it to Paul Newman. They didn't. They feel like bad. So in 1985 they award him with the honorary Oscar. That was hysterical. The next year he wins for the Color of Money. Finally, it's like, Yeah, the dude wasn't done in 1982 or 1985. He still had a lot more to go in. Oh, yeah. Okay. Before I get to my story. So have you ever seen The Hustler? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's cool to, like, just go back and watch it and again, you don't. You absolutely do not have to have seen that. I certainly saw color money first. I saw that when I was a kid and then didn't see the Hustler until college. So. Yeah, but it's just. It's cool. That's cool come though I was going to say I had seen The Hustler before and I did I didn't know this was a sequel, but as I was watching The Hustler, like I started catching the references, I go fast. Eddie. I know that, like, that's fast, but it's also Paul Newman. And I was like, Is this a sequel? And Shawn didn't know, like, Yeah, you're watching it. And he's like, I don't know about that. And I was like, Well, this is too much of a coincidence. And then later I found out that it was like, Oh, that's a nice nod because you don't need to have seen it. But it's a nice little continuation of that guy. It's just in there. It's yeah, it's something that, like, makes sense. It's a movie that asks nothing of us. It's it's not tough, It's not challenging. It's just fun as all hell. But there's substance, too. Like, Oh, yes, oh, yes, it goes there, but it doesn't go there in a way that puts you off or everything about the movie just works. It's almost like, yeah, it's like that dip in the genre where it's like, okay, I don't really have any attachment to this movie. I'm just going to direct it. But I'm going to direct it really? Well, yes, Yes, of course. As he as he does. Those are three kind of funky movies in a row, but they are the color of money does well It's nominated for Oscars, makes a decent chunk of change. And now he's finally able to scrounge$7 million together and make the movie he has always wanted to make over the last temptation of Christ sometimes seven recently remember a few years ago when Martin Scorsese, he was like Marvel movies aren't really cinema. And like, people lost their minds and you and I were just texting each other like lol to everyone's reaction. Yeah, that controversy is not going face someone like Martin Scorsese because this was a guy who made a movie about Jesus having sex in 1988 and apparently there were terrorist attacks, death threats, protests, bans of the movie. He's someone who's hip to controversy. And and as I mentioned, the Scorsese The Passion Project is a thing to navigate because on one hand, I have all the respect in the world for a master filmmaker, basically putting his whole career on the line just to get certain movies made, which he did have to do with this. So whether I like all those movies or not, just knowing that in some cases Scorsese fought for decades to get the movies made, it really makes me appreciate them more. And this is this is one weird ass trippy movie you have. A lot of people had issue with. Not even the content, like that's its own thing. I'm not really even one to speak on that. I just watch and go, Wow, he took that no way different vision. But like there are things about the movie that took a lot of people out. For instance, everyone in the film talks with their natural accents. Harvey Keitel sounds like Harvey Keitel. British people sound like British people. And I don't know, I think it's fine. I get what he's doing. He didn't want everyone to have to march to, like, fit the same accent. I get it. But you know, the music by Peter Gabriel, like it's it's out there. It's an out there movie and. You know there's a bit of a Damien Chazelle watched the end of this for Babylon not as overt as Babylon. There's some things in here. I'm like, you you watch Last Temptation of Christ. You did. You did, you son of a bitch. You son of a bitch. The Last Temptation. The whole movie is just a fucking flex, especially the final act, which, you know, speaking kind of generally, because I know you haven't seen it, but you should watch it. I would love to hear your thoughts. I know. I can't promise you you're going to like it, but I can promise you you'll be like, okay, I was some real quick, another quick interlude. In 1989, there was an anthology film, each with stories from Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Marty's Porsche was called Life Lessons. I just want to mention it really briefly. Marty's chapter is the best by far as well. It's about an abstract artist who has painter's block. He can't really find the inspiration to paint, even though he has a new show that's just days away. Nick Nolte plays that painter. He's really good. Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Illeana Douglas, Peter Gabriel plays himself. It's got an amazing soundtrack. It's good. It's one of the briefly, briefly slide that one in there. Well done. Thank you. Martin Scorsese. His career has been going for a number of years, and he hasn't taken he hasn't taken a writing credit since 1973. He's mean streets and that all changes when 1990s Goodfellas is released. This is one like taxi driver. Unfortunately we don't have a lot to say at this podcast we took we could talk about it forever, but we did cover it in depth in episode 65. Ah, Goodfellas, deep dive. But I mean, yeah, Goodfellas like one of the seminal most rewatchable movies since it has been made. I have seen this movie countless times as I know others have the influence from European cinema and the influence that Goodfellas has had on all subsequent cinema is vast and I love everything about this movie. It feels silly to kind of skirt over these big ones, but, you know, we've been here before, that's all. Well, yeah, exactly like we did. We did an entire for Ray in honor of Ray for Goodfellas. But the things that we talked about in that pod weren't just about him. We we broke down the movie. So. So that's, that's really the only reason why we're really not getting into some of these ones because we've already done it. Or will do. But yeah, what is there to say about Goodfellas that we haven't like what what is there say that anyone hasn't said. Yeah I don't remember if I said this on episode 65 but I will just declare it now. Goodfellas contains my favorite opening to any film ever. It is my favorite opening scene to any movie. Not because of what is depicted, because of how violent it is, not because that fucking perfect line of opening narration. As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Slams the trunk. Music starts not just that, it's because that is not in order. And if we don't have that scene there, we don't know the full brutality of what these guys are capable of. For like an hour we see spurts of violence, but we don't see murders for like an hour until it's Billy Batts. So by putting that upfront, we have this thing in the back of our head the entire time going, What the fuck did I just get myself into? Who Are these people I love it. Oh, my God. I guess. Okay, here's the only thing that I'll say about this one is before we move on, because we didn't really mention him in our talk about Raging Bull, but. Joe Pesci. Yeah, Yeah, you're right. Damn it. I love Joe Pesci in Raging Bull. I love him so, so much. Really feels like like Joe Pesci is Joe Pesci. He's lived the life, I'll put it that way. I don't yes, I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but I think I think a lot of stuff that is depicted in Martin Scorsese movies are things he has maybe witnessed firsthand, maybe heard about firsthand. I think having Joe Pesci was a kid from the streets, You know, he's responsible for like getting the Four Seasons together, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Like he started that group that does not surprise me. Yeah, exactly. He's a mover and shaker. And like, Raging Bull is his second movie. And, you know, he gets nominated for it Goodfellas, he wins his Oscar. But yeah, I mean, what explosive performance as Tommy in Goodfellas will we'll talk more about him in an upcoming movie but I think Joe Pesci is one my favorite actors to watch ever. Oh, he can't not love Joe Pesci. It's so specific. But there's nobody like him. Oh Like there's been nobody on screen that can even come close to matching what he brings in In Raging Bull, They just kind of going back to because we didn't get there and we kind of got to use this time for it. Good point. You know that he's such a tender kind of guy in that one. He's not the boss like he is in some of his other performances. He is very much the little man. Yeah. He just wants, like his brother to like, you know, play ball with the mob. He gets it. Let's do that. Yeah, let's do this thing here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he is. Definitely do what he does. Raging Bull. Yeah. He does not have any power, and he's always punching up against DeNiro in that movie. And that's a, it's a really nice blend when you look at his like because you get the towering performance that he gives in Goodfellas and again in Casino but they're very powerful performances. This is one where he's almost powerless and he's somebody that's so specific to his kind of character that it's incredible to watch him be as good as he is and these other ones as he is in Raging Bull because he gets to play it differently and and you feel for him. I just really can't say enough good things about Joe Pesci. And it's been really kind of a treat going back and and on this Marty podcast to watch his work and Goodfellas is just I mean it's kind of it's has to be the crowning achievement of his acting There's just no real I mean yeah it's tough It's I love all the work he's done for Marty, but yeah, it is tough. Including the most recent one he did for Marty. Like, I love his. Oh, yeah. It's just crazy because he's not even, like, in Goodfellas that much. Certainly not as much. No. Is. But he's really Irishman. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And you just can't. You can never take your eyes off him. He's always so fucking mad any time you're looking at him because got the scowl on his face. All right, buckle up everyone. Okay, so it's been in the running bit. We're going right in. Yesterday On Friday. I got a text message out of nowhere very early in the morning. Very early in the morning from Nicholas Stossel, my quote unquote, co-host. And he says that Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear is, quote, one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen. My literal response was whole question mark. And then he started in with these insane series of texts that didn't make any fucking sense to me. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I am convinced we watched two different movies. It didn't even seem like you knew what movie you watching. Texted me all this bullshit about it. So I don't know how far we're going to take this. Let's get into it. Talk to me about it. I fucking love this movie. I. I've loved this. I saw this movie in 19, in 1992 on TV because it was on TV a lot. I was really young. It was one of those ones where I'm like, okay, what are they cutting out? What are they cutting out? So when I got hold of that VHS, I was like, Holy shit, there's some crazy show on here. I, I, I am not even trying to say that is similar the way that I'm kind of talking about after hours. Like I'm not I'm not pooh poohing on Cape Fear as a movie. I'm certainly not one to to criticize Martin Scorsese. But this movie, I did not get it. I did not I didn't know what I was watching. I nothing worked for me except Juliette Lewis. She is the she was the the only thing that I kind of liked about this movie. I love the way it was shot. I did not get this. I did not get it. So that's where my responses were coming from. First of all, the reason why you were confusing me so much in your text messages is you kept referencing Night of the Hunter. Well I was confused Why? I said, Why are you doing that? You thought this was a remake of Night of the Hunter? Yeah, it was a brilliant reimagining of the 1962 film Cape Fear. A fear which I did like and let me. Yeah, let me back up here. Like anyone is allowed to dislike any movie, I don't give a shit. But when you call this movie one of the dumbest you've ever seen, I'm okay. Okay, listen, we. Okay, Hang on, hang on. We can't. I don't want to include that. But that's the whole basis of my argument that you called it dumb, because that's not it's not exactly like it's it that's, to me, is fucking nuts to me, because this is. This is why I got so riled up, because you called it dumb. Because the movie. All right, then keep it. No, I'll find a way to love me, too. I already introduced it. Is you saying it's the dumbest movie ever made? I know, but I was. I was caught off guard because texted you and I said throughout our thread, I don't want to call it one of the dumbest movies on the pod because that's too mean. But if we're going to go with it, I will. I will. I will tell you how you really feel about it. So I know where to get the basis, so I know where to start from. I don't want to include anything you don't want me to include. But if it's not one the dumbest movies you've ever seen than woke you, you can. You can. You can keep the way it started. I'll I'll stick by what I texted and what I said, but I'll try to find a nice way to do it. Well, we got to go back up just a little bit. That's it. We'll see how it goes. Let's see how it goes. All right. So when I say that this is one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen, I'm not calling it a bad movie. Oh, what I didn't get about this movie was, how realistic the choices and movement of the story went. I did not understand. I don't really think Nick Nolte, his character, had a very good understanding of the profession he has or the law that exists. I agree. How does Robert De Niro get out of jail and then have Mustang? What the. Oh, come on, you can't do the Shrum like. Where is he staying? He's driving around this point. You don't know. This motherfucker's just around. Why is he here? I sent him up several states away. Why is he around? Why is he stalking me? This is. This is the whole. You know, I get why he's stalking you, but does he have, like, what he has here? You talking about a car? That's all? Just a car. You don't know this in the original Cape Fear. This is what I'm saying. You can't if you yourself love or like the original Cape Fear, the answers you are, the questions you are asking now are not answered in the original. So why do you expect them to be Answer All right, all right. That's fine then. I did not understand the choice of the voice De Niro did. I mean, I honestly don't know what to say. George dropped. Oh, my God. That is like I fucking love Max Katie's voice so much. All right, this is. Yeah, this is one. This is a tough one. I texted you yesterday, and I'm saying it now. I'm absolutely dumbfounded at. I feel horrible. I feel for one in it. No, no, this is what I'm saying. Anyone is allowed to dislike any movie. I don't care. That's fine. Cape Fear. It's so funny that I'm taking this stance because I think I've even said on this pod that I love this movie until that third act, which is fucking nuts and hysterical and goes way too over the top. It does. It's overblown for me. I think that was his point, but it just it goes a little too far. So I don't even think this is a perfect movie, all told. But I absolutely think this is a grade A genre B movie made with that exact intent. As someone you told me that you love film noir as a genre, this is one of the most intense nnl uses of updated noir ever, starting with the music, he uses the exact same score. The cutting patterns are the same. The cinematography that you like, that's from the original. Like I really thought this would be a knock out of the park, just a lay up for you to love because it's so specific to film noir. It is a love letter to that genre and there is nothing about if you're going to get Nick picky with the cars and stuff like, Yeah, I'm going to I know it's not even there that no, but I'm saying just like whatever opinion you want about it. But everything in this movie is intentional. Everything. And then the biggest selling point, every fan of cinema has to appreciate that. Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam star in the 1962 Cape Fear. And Marty fucking brings them back. All of these legends. And Gregory Peck actually has like a big role, Like he's good in it. Martin Balsam is the judge, and they're all kind of playing inverses of their original characters. Oh, my God. The fucking axis cuts when they're having ice cream, and he just sees outside. Katie backs Katie having the cigar at his car, staring at the re access cut, jump forward, then access cut again. Jump forward. Nick Nolte. He doesn't seem to understand the law. That's all fucking point. He mishandled Katie's case on purpose, which is not what it was. This is everything he does. That's insane. He's a fucking You see it? He's an idiot. His wife is like, going nuts. She doesn't seem to want to leave the house much. Why? I don't know. It's like all this sexual repression going on. Clearly, Nick Nolte is had affairs in the past, and he just gaslights Jessica Lange like nothing's going on with the Illeana Douglas character. It's nothing. And it's like, Yes, it is. He's a shit heel. That's what makes it cool. Nick Nolte is not. Jessica Lange is not innocent. The only innocent one in it is Juliette Lewis, who thankfully you did like because she's brilliant and it no one's innocent. Everyone's a fucking and Max. Katie's just taking advantage of that. Joe Down, Baker. A fucking legend of 70 Cinema Walking tall. Joe Baker's in there as the heavy doing whiskey. Pepto-Bismol. Oh, my God. It's fucking. I cannot believe I. I truly liked nothing about this movie. I cannot believe it. Outside of Juliette Lewis, I really. You know, like, you don't think that a shit heel sociopathic country, redneck hick would talk like that and that that's not fitting. The cigars are so exaggerated. No, it's nothing. In the movie theater. Everything is over the top on purpose. Now, again, I'm not saying that you. I'm not saying you have to like it or love it. I'm not saying that everyone listening us like it or love it, but the fact that none of that appreciation is coming through for you. It's not that. It's not that I don't appreciate it. I just don't think it hit the mark Like that's does it for me. Like like I saw what he was doing. I don't think this was a badly made movie. I just everything that it did, it just I just didn't like it. And I had seen the original and like, I knew that one and I liked them. I think it was just all the intentional choices that were made because I'm not going to sit here and say that this movie I got, that it was intentional. I didn't like it. I just didn't like Claire. And I wanted to. And as the movie kept going, I kept wanting to be like, All right, like, let's just start like new with this scene. And then something would happen. I'd be like, Oh my God, Really? Like, this is how it's going to go. This is what's happening next. This is this is one of the definitely like top ten most quoted movies. I quote this all the time. I know every word to it. I think this movie is it is so funny how much of a creepy is I cannot believe this like and how and how is he? Like, how is he hanging from the underneath of a car and they're traveling like as the like as is like, like how is like no one can hang underneath a car for that long. See, this is like saying it doesn't feel like you were watching it, though. He was hooked in. He he was hooked in with clips, in loops and straps. It's like, this is what I texted you. Like, were you watching the movie? Whatever the because I get I know what you mean. Like, for whatever reason, these things, like, really came out at me and I was like, this is just not it just feels like like you turned on it so early because all you're doing, these are like strawman arguments. How do you hang on to the car? How do you get the car? We never nit pick movies like this because like, No, I know, but it has faults like this. Like we never do that. So I'm wondering what is there like a bigger picture here? Like, I just, I just I didn't. Okay, Here's also I didn't buy anybody. I didn't believe anybody in the movie. But this is this is what you're talking about. This is the over-the-top ness of the movie. And what it did I it that must have lost me. Like that must be something I just did not connect with because I didn't find any of these performances in there over. The top in this to be like I it it made me feel like everything was artificial. I didn't like because what I was feel like I was watching when I was watching the movie. I go, there is a real terrifying element that's happening here where this man's family is being stalked. He's being stalked. This is a very, very scary feeling. I did not feel scared. I thought it was silly. Yeah, I don't really necessarily feel scared. I feel scared in that auditorium with Juliette Lewis. I can't believe that scene. That scene. That's the only scene that. That's the only scene that really kind of. I was like, Oh, wow. Oh, wow. There's Some there's a real creep element here that's coming in, but like, the tone of everything just confused me. I like, like this scene where, like, they're in the bar and, you know, he's talking to the lawyer girl who really want to be with Nicole, and he's like, with her and lying to her and being like, No, I'll stay sober. And, oh my God, it's one of my favorites. I'm watching all of this and I'm just like, I'm like, I get that she's drunk, but I'm like, What is happening? Why? Like, why are I like, how are you even remotely even talking to this guy? Yeah, I guess the best way to describe it is that I got what the movie was doing, but in its tonal execution I just did not vibe with it. That's the only thing. So everyone that everyone was doing all the decisions that were being made I thought were dumb. That's what I mean when I say dumb. They, they. I did not believe anyone in what they were doing. I believe Max Cady. I believed I believed what he was going after. But I was like, this should be not silly. Should be. I, I, I feel like this should be really scary and really serious. And I just did it, didn't. I just didn't. I didn't. I didn't connect with what it was. Yeah. And this, this is such a weird position for me because I think it's, it probably sounds like Cape Fear is my favorite film of all time. And it's not. Yeah, I wouldn't even give this. I would. Far from giving an A-plus, I've always, always been critical of the end and the Bible quoting on this shit, all that stuff where it's very clearly a set. They're like on it in a tank. It's like you can tell all that stuff. I have always called out. It's being like, okay, now we're we've kicked it like way, way up. I don't I mean, I'm glad it doesn't last for too long, but like, okay, we're just we need to wrap it up here. Let's go. I've always said that about the movie because I don't think it's perfect, but for. Yeah, I mean, it just I Yeah, I don't know. I can't believe, like, why would you. Why would you leave this? Like, after, after everyone's died, the house just not call the cops. You keep going back to these story points that are in the original though. So. Yeah, I know, but that's what I mean. No, no, that's the thing is like that. Why did the original work for me and this, didn't I? That's a great question. No, this is a great, quite interesting conversation. Honestly, I think that's where this conversation really lies in a way, because there must be in the intentional tonal shift that Scorsese took with this movie, I bought all of this in the original. And with this one I have a huge disconnect with to the point where I had to literally throughout the movie just be like, What am I watching right now? Like, what am I like, What is what am I watching? So there must be something in there. Because I also know like a lot of like I again, like I'm not saying this is bad. I feel like I'm really trying to defend a a myself in trying to accuse of Martin Scorsese making a bad movie. But but I just I thought it was silly I thought it was very, very silly and and I did not understand that tone. There is parts where I'm like, am I supposed to be disturbed? Am I supposed to laugh? I'm not either one. And then, like, you know, like he like, bites her face and I'm like, What the hell is this? Now? He's like, Brakes are. Yeah. I'm like, What the hell? Like, we just we skipped some levels here. And he's like, No, no, he didn't. He's a fucking calculated psychopath. This is all part of the plan. I guess what I did, I like. Whoa. Okay. All right, now we're here. And now this is happened. And did you watch The Simpsons growing up? I did. Did you see this episode? The period it was Sideshow Bob playing Max. Katie Oh, yeah. It's all Rick's. Yeah. Genuinely wondering if, like, you're conflating it with something in there and you're like, That was ridiculous and silly. And then you're seeing this and you're like, I already saw this in The Simpsons. I know. I think The Simpsons I like better. The Simpsons. That episode's hilarious. He keeps stepping on the brakes, but All right. We're going to move on from Cape Fear here. We're just going to that's I'm sorry, everybody. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm sorry. Marty, Knowing that you like film noir and that you like I like the original, masterful directors dip into genre, the fact that this one's so wildly missing Mark for you. It's just. I don't know. I'll never understand it. I don't think I will either. I never like this. This is this. This is. This is another this is. I think this might be our biggest breach. Oh, easily. No, easily. I can't. I've. I still. That's why we spent so much time on it. I still can't believe it, but. Ah, yeah, we're going to move on from that bullshit because things could get out of hand next year. Something completely different from Goodfellas and Cape Fear is going to slow things down. Slow patient, thoughtful. Marty. Think like Kundun Silence, The Age of Innocence, 1993. It's a movie we actually have talked about on the pod. When we covered Daniel Day Lewis in Episode 12, still our most listened to episode. People love that one, as they should all the way back in Episode 12, Daniel Day Lewis You know, I was much more concerned with watching. There's a bunch of only scene once, and then I like Saul in college after Hours King of Comedy, New York, New York. Who's that knocking at My door? The Age of Innocence. I had seen the second time I watched those for DDL and then rewatching it for this. It's like there really is a a violence to it, but it's all emotional. There's like a savage you to it, but it's all hidden with this very bourgeoisie. You know, language and it's all everything's very polite and there's dishware and all this stuff. I mean, moreover than anything, Daniel, Daniel Day-Lewis is great in this, but this thing is, like, stunning to look at similarly to when we were talking about something like The Beguiled, when you said, you know, you love the Wrap, that movie, like The Age of Innocence, is just gorgeous to look at. And I always have an appreciation for it. But no, it's not as maybe not as Rewatchable as something like Goodfellas or Casino or, you know, it's just a slower pace. And I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah. I remember really, really enjoying this movie and being kind of taken aback by its subtlety. It reminded me a lot of. I remember when the first play I ever did was Dangerous Liaisons. Oh yeah. And I remember in that play because the movie version of it is actually quite good. Along with Michelle. Yeah. John Malkovich. Yeah. Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman. Very good. Keanu, not his best work. Well, you know, and there's a thing about movie that I think this has in common or about this play is that the majority of the action takes place offstage. So a lot of like what's similar about this movie is like, Yeah, but you mean like that emotional damage that they're doing to each other and that violence. But a lot is they're setting up for something that's going to happen off screen and then we find out that, oh wow, this is what that person did, even though we never really saw it. And now we're dealing with that upon each scene. So I appreciate that because it's sort of like, well, the most interesting thing that could happen, we actually don't see we find out about and then we deal with it. And just like, you know, how serious they take everything. Well, that's what I mean. Everything has so much importance on. It's like, who are you being invited to this thing? What family is inviting you? This person is, you know, coming from a troubled past. You have to be welcome in by the family It's all this. How did I. It's like a brutality of manners I think is how I that's described in middle part it's not my own that's someone either describing the movie or describing the original text, described it as that. But yeah, that's what it's like. And it's always interesting. Again, do we just talked about a master dipping into genre when a master just dips into something that no one I can't imagine. People are like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. I would have loved to have been around when like this was leading up, like Martin Scorsese. You who directed Raging Bull in Goodfellas is making Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. Okay, I just love that. I bet some people are questioning it and then very pleasantly surprised as I am every time I watch it. It's just a great title, too. I love that title. Yeah, it's a good title. It's a good title. The ending to this always blows me away. I know we talked about that on the detail, but I think it's a perfect ending and just perfectly realized I really, really love it. I was going to say, I don't think there's I don't think there's really like we've always kind of talked is if we've discussed this movie in depth in the previous episode, it's okay if we kind of breezed past it. This next one. Oh, here we go. Here's a martin Scorsese film I've seen the most. Here's the fastest long movie I've ever seen. And yep, despite being nearly 3 hours long, I have damn near seen Casino more than I've seen any other movie. We're talking about four ks. Oh, this is stunning. This thing only imagine turning all the colors, all the costumes, the soundtrack to. We're just focusing on visuals. The sound is also so enhanced in 4k. Oh, my God. Here's. We've talked about Casino a lot just on the podcast, and it ranked very high for both of us. Episode 58 Our favorite movies from 1995. It's very high up there. It's a great movie year. I don't even start this. Okay, So I was traveling for work recently and I had to take five agonizing days off from movies. It's a long time for me. It's no fun. Those are bad times. The first movie Back Casino in 4K, it's a movie I've seen dozens and dozens of times. I was just drawn to it immediately. Still love it. This is also a period of time that probably because of Casino and other movies like it, I've become obsessed with. I'm very, very fascinated by the mob controlling the Teamsters and therefore building Las Vegas. And obviously Scorsese made the movie in 2019. The Irishman that is all about this, and the casino and the Irishman make great double features. It would be a very, very long evening of film, but long day. They're really like hand-in-hand. There's so much to casino, so much story that I love. And also it's one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. We're talking about Joe Pesci. Oh my God, just adopting that accent like now Pink veal. You can pound that shit for two days and I'll never get tender like, screwed over, honey. Oh, my God. Everything they're doing. You know what his brother spits in the sandwich is a choke on it, motherfucker. Like I. I could. I could go through scene by scene, shot by shot. I mean that the fucking it fate. The first time Joe Pesci is meeting Sharon Stone the way it like cross fades into her closer and then it hard cuts into her even closer. It's like boom, boom, boom. Oh, that crazy fucking close up panning close of Joe Pesci as it goes by. You know it's songs play in there We thought Ted to me use it really well and blow yeah can you hear me knocking And he does He does he opens his movie like that but there's always fuckin Scorsese getting stuff in there early. I had to admit on the 1995 podcast that again, talking about subjective taste, not a not objective thought. I do. If you know, if my head's in a vice, I prefer casino to Goodfellas. Dude, I can't believe I'd say that. I loved it both, but casino is just fucking like this movie. It's sacrilegious, it feels like to say, but I think I'm in the same boat. I think It's funny though. It's kind of like I always feel whenever I'm watching The Godfather one or two, like whenever I'm watching Godfather Part one, I'm always like, It's fucking this one. This one's the best. And then I watch Godfather part two. I'm like, Fuck it, this one's the best. They're two sides of the same coin. A completely different types of movies. Even though the casting is similar. I think the thing that I was, I was having the most fun with because that's the thing. Like, there's so much to chew on with this movie. So I mean like every does look at Kevin Pollak yeah he's playing is before because like I understand, I understand It's like no you don't He's like not the chairman of the board. Philip Fucking Green Like it, so funny. Oh, my God. There's just so much going on in. And what I realized, what I had the most fun with this, this rewatch, because every watch this movie quite a bit too. And I think it is his most rewatchable I think it's it is to me it to me is it's so fun. Like even though there's some danger stuff going on like it's fun to watch those cheaters get busted up. Like, yeah, I had bad you know, you know the hammered money. Yeah. Oh, my God, is this fun? For some, he beats Ginger with the needle. Drop it. You know, it goes to freeze frame something. Scorsese He does. And then boom It just love is strange comes on the chips going in the air. You're right. It's a feast. It's a feast. There's so much for me. There's so much. I mean, you're really watching three of the most stubborn people. Oh, man. Sharon Stone. Shia. You really want to kill her? You really, really. Just one like she is just. Yeah, but she was upfront from the beginning. No, I know fucking. I know. It said the love will grow as long as it respects their. You're a moron. Yes. Inmates, right? Yes. You're so smart at handicapping Be a moron when it comes to love. You just wanted the hottest lady on the strip. Yeah. You don't even care if she loves you. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Well, how did you think she was going to respond? Of course she's going to go back to the golf course. Pimp Lester Diamond. I mean, of course it's the man. Don't be a fucking pimp. Sorry, I the the scene that got me the most this time around is so subtle, but it's when things are like. It's like she's she's leaving again and she's with Lester and things are really not going well. They're like, they've got the kid. Lester's waiting to do a thing and she's doing coke, and it's right in front of the kids. Like, don't do, don't do this, sweetie. And Lester James Woods. I fucking hate James Woods is a person now, but he's so funny. He's like, he goes, I'm going to ship this kid into a bar in a box to Bolivia. He's like, Whatever they argue, they're in the background. He'll go, She started it. Yeah, she fucking seven. Dude, you're 47. Of course she started it. And Sam, like, takes her back. Like, he goes, How much did you spend? Mm hmm. And? And she tells him the amount, and he's like, Okay, I can live with that. Like, if there's anything more. Now, let's face it, he could. That's the type of, like, you know, any amount of money. Well, yeah, he just wants his kid back, that's all. Then they go out to that dinner and he's doing that fucking thing, that needling thing that Scorsese is so good at, particularly Scorsese and DeNiro. Yeah, this kind of goes back to the Abbott and Costello thing. It's like, think of even Irishman when it's a I know who owns it. Oh, who? It's like, No, I do, I own it. You know, this like wordplay, this funny wordplay. And then the casino, I mean, he just when he's asking her like, you know, where were you? Like, where did you go? Where were you? Yes. When he is like quizzing her about not even where were you, but how did you spend$30,000 like that fucking. Yeah, like so he got to watch and he's not going it that nice to watch. So even if he did get fitted for ten suits in three days, which he can and he's not going to pay that much, you just needling me dead. Dead and it all. And that's the pattern that they had. Perfect. Yes. Yeah. I think I really spent this rewatch watching her. She's great. And she is. She's so great. But like the thing that I've realized, like, about her character is this the new discovery that I made is like she is. So that is her biggest thing, that she hates what she does not want to be questioned like that. She doesn't want it. She doesn't want a leash, which, you know, she does. Yeah, she's a wild man. She does want to be caged and she doesn't even when, you know, there are some points where when she's like, who are you with? Like, and, you know, and she does not want to give up. Lester Oh, I get that. But then there's some where it's like the girl, you know, he's not going to be mad if you just tell her how much, how much money is spent. But she refuses, she will do it. She won't do it. She will go to any links just to not tell him how much money she's spent for no reason. No reason just because she does not like it. And I just like when you when you watch her performance and you see like like it clearly. And it's one of those things where, like, the script will dictate that you don't see anything. But watching her as he, as you say, just keeps needling her. It's such a treat to watch two really good actors do that. And can we talk about the cinematography of Robert Richardson? Robert Richardson is a beast. This is the first movie they made together. They he Robert Richardson goes on to win Oscars for shooting Martin Scorsese in movies. But right away, we have that introduction. Casino takes place in Las Vegas. Yeah, Las Vegas is bright and sunny and it's just what happens here stays here. And they are using that trademark. Bob Richardson Hot, hot, hot white light. Yeah, I'm just beaming down on them. Early examples This go watcher JFK, born on the 4th of July, did a lot of Oliver Stone stuff. The Natural Born Killers crazy looking movie. Even the scene it's the needle drop and it goes God damn it doing And like the first honcho walks into frame and then. And then the second dude does father down and then Ace walks in right in the middle of them, and he's just like, standing there. It's perfect. Like composition. Or when the camera would just go around him and he like lights a cigaret or whatever. Like the cinematography in this movie is one of my fuck. I didn't even consider this. What's the what's my favorite shot? Martin Scorsese movie has to be. It's got to be. Yeah it has. Yeah, it's got to be. And then taxi drivers up there. But yeah, okay. So that's a gimme. It's got to be a raging bull. But like, yeah, I mean, I like the cinematography and casino better than Goodfellas, honestly. I mean, the great one is in Goodfellas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fuck. Just the way this looks. He has that when he's talking, trying to get convinced to, like, join the casino and you know the guy Andy Stone talking to him we start to shot from like way up on the hotel It looks like it looks like north by northwest. It's like, Oh, my God, it's so cool. It's so cool. But yeah, please talk to me about Robert Richardson. So I just went it went off because in my rewatch this year, like, there's just been so much like I've seen Richardson pop up and I didn't even realize that it was. Yeah, yeah, it's that hot white light. You can tell. Yeah. My God, do I love that? Like, I can watch anything seeing that like this guy does because I, I love that look I there, it's, it's, it's heightened, it's not even realistic, but it's certainly not something that takes you away from anything. No, it, it it makes sense every time you see it. Vegas feels like that. Vegas feels like you got the hot white light burning on you every time. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's a bad thing. But you're. You're always under the lights of Vegas. Oh, it's so good really. I mean, even with his cinematography, like, the way he stages that last supper with the bosses and like, Oh, yeah, you're always talking about the bosses. And they all look at the camera. It's like, Oh, it's great. And then the way it's going around with narration, you got Pesci coming on, you've got De Niro, you get Frank Vincent gets a sentence or two. It's like, Okay, yeah, that works it shouldn't work. All right. But really quick, as we rounded out though, like, Where does this land for you with Pesci Yeah, it's really high. Like it's, there's a thing. So the funny about casino like we got to keep in mind here like that the events in casino are not that far away from 1995 like that cornfield thing which did happen that happened in the late eighties. Like so these people may even know who Martin Scorsese is. Maybe even I guarantee most of the characters in Casino have seen Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, you know, so it's a it's actually a different performance from Tommy in Goodfellas because in Casino, like Tommy in Goodfellas, still has some people to answer to. He Nicky Santoro doesn't give a fuck about anything. The whole reason the operation crumbles is because he moves to Vegas and sees it as an open turf. Know what happens if he loses? He doesn't pay. What happens to the the cowboys in the county who run everything? He doesn't give a fuck about them. What happens if he gambles illegally and fixes stuff? He gets put in this black book. I don't give a fuck about that black book. Oh you do until you get put in there and then you can't do shit. He does it so much that the bosses get sick of him that. They take him out in the most gruesome fashion, and that's why they make such an example of him. It's so gruesome, it's so brutal. I talked about that recently when I fucking fainted and John Wick for like one of the few times I've ever gotten that feeling or nauseous for a movie was the first time I saw this. The baseball sequence. Yeah. Okay, here's how we're going to end Casino. I think it's the third time I brought this up to you. It's the 1995 Oscars. Yeah, and Elizabeth is nominated for leaving Las Vegas. Sharon Stone is nominated for Casino, and Susan Sarandon wins for Dead Man Walking. We every time we talk about this, we land on Elisabeth Shue. But I don't know. I don't know. It's tough either. It should have been her or Sharon Stone. And let's face it, Sydney, your mother was no show in stone. No, she certainly wasn't. Casino, I love you. Oh, I remember you forever. And I'll watch you again probably next week. I want to see it on 4K so bad. Oh, it's so good. It's the best. Now we move into something no one could have expected. This is. This is way out there than even age of innocence. Maybe the most horror flicks on paper. On paper that he had in his career. This is only the second time I've watched Kundun and, well, it is far from Scorsese's most entertaining or rewatchable picture. It's an extremely well-made biopic about the Dalai Lama. Two things to highlight here. Roger Deakins is cinematography. It's the only movie Deacon shot for Scorsese and Philip Glass's original score. Both of these things are stunning. You can just watch the movie and go, okay, at least I know the whole time I'm going to have amazing visuals and an score to listen to. It's a very deliberately paced movie, not unlike Age of innocence or silence, but honestly, like the way it looks and sounds. It just prevents it from getting stale. And I usually say about this one, if you're a Scorsese completist, go ahead and check it out. Parts of the cinematography really are breathtaking. So I think that's just important. Note This is also responsible for one of the best jokes in television history. When Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos sees Martin Scorsese walking into a club, it goes, Hey, Bardi kun, dude, I liked it. Yeah, Like, that's the movie you call out. Christopher Moltisanti. You're the young thug in the Mafia. That's What you call out. It's it's funny because he's calling out the movie that an Italian kid from New York, an Italian kid from Jersey, would least likely call out. He'd be like, Hey, Goodfellas. Yeah. Which coincidentally, Christopher MOLTISANTI Michael Imperioli was in Spider but got nominated for Best Score. Other movies nominated for Best Score, directed by Martin Scorsese, The Taxi Driver, The Age of Innocence, and Hugo. Not a bad list. Wow, That's it. Yeah, that's it. Taxi Driver should fucking one. Oh, so that's it for Kundun. There is. I found it. It's kind of a hard movie to find, but I found it for free on YouTube. Some rep is up there. I watched it go forth and watch that, if you will. Next one, you're leaning it up. You're taking us all the way there the whole time. Take us to it. 1999, Paul Schrader and Martin Scorsese team up again. And is this their last time that they they've last collaboration. Last collaboration. They team up for what? One of my absolute favorite Scorsese movies that's Bringing out the Dead. I thought, I like this movie when I first saw it back in, whenever I first saw, I think I was in college and I rewatched it and I loved it even more. Like I cannot. There is something about the Schrader Scorsese, what we were talking about before, and I guess, you know, with De Niro not being here, you've got Cage, right? Yeah. Nicolas Cage. Joe Cage. I think this is one of my favorite Nicolas Cage performances ever there. There's just something so goddamn upsetting about the Schrader in a good way. Like a very, very, just pessimistic view of life. That's what I mean. But this is the this is the one movie where I think and some people might call me crazy, but I think of all of the Schrader and Scorsese collaborations, this one's got most humor, I guess the best, the cynicism of everything. Like, I love the way that this movie bounces around when Nicolas Cage is basically like, I can't do this anymore. I won't do this anymore too. Let's fucking do it, and let's do it as hard as we can because I'm going to die. If we don't let you quit. I'll follow you tomorrow. I'll find you tomorrow. So it's like, Yo, you're so good. Yeah, I love weed. Like, you know, he's freaking out in these ambulances, and John Goodman's like, You know what? You just need to eat. I eat, Larry. I like and and again, like me being me, the type of storytelling where you just basically take your main character and give to three other guys. This is the movie's going to centralize around your experience with these three whack jobs and go to town in each one of them represents a different nightmare and salvation for Nicolas Cage's character. And then you've got, you know, Patricia Arquette, who's really just like the angel that he's hoping for. And that's why, I mean, with the Robert Richardson lighting, I think he's lighting every one of those like halos. And it's just, Oh, yeah, yeah I, I think this movie is hilarious, sad and just just fucking full of life. I just love seeing Tom Sizemore, John Goodman, Ving Rhames going fucking nuts. I love when Cliff Curtis shows up. Yeah, I love Martin Scorsese as a dispatcher. I love that much. Hello, Car 87 or whatever it is. You know, I have a very, very strong connection to the humor of someone who is hanging on by a thread and and is finding this cynicism in it. I think part of it is Cage because he is so good at that like adaptation and similar type of thing, different stakes and different like circumstances he's in. But there's a man who's just completely on edge and is like ready just to like if someone was to like, kill him right there, he'd be like, All right, just fucking do it. Just end it. And then you've got like these other three guys, like, I think I think this is Tom Sizemore s funniest performance I've ever seen. Oh, God is great. Ving Rhames cracks me up. Yes. So I definitely find the humor in this depravity of this movie. Another thing that's cool about Brian, I mean, what's weird about bringing out the dead? Thelma Schoonmaker It's talked about this in countless interviews that a lot of Marty's pictures will come back around. They'll find a cult following. King of Comedy is one, you know, they'll, they'll get an audience after the fact. Bringing out the dead never has. She just doesn't get it. She thinks it's great. It's a really undiscussed Martin Scorsese movie like it was made in the Great Year of movies. It has all famous people in it. Like, it's weird that it just didn't click. It's it is pretty pessimistic. Parts of it are pretty sparse. I do think parts of it are funny. But that's that's funny that this one is like this kind of feels like your Cape Fear. Oh, yeah. Another fun thing about this movie, it kind of feels like a marriage of seventies and nineties filmmaking. It's like you get like, you know, he plays T.B. Sheets by Van Morrison, like 48 fucking times. He's also got tracks from Sinatra, The Who, The Clash, Stevie Wonder, all Martin Scorsese fodder. Then he also has tracks from costar Marc Anthony, R.E.M., Jane's Addiction, 10,000 Maniacs, UB40. It's a weird, like mish mash, but it's always been very interesting to me that no one else caught on with. That's what I was going to say. It's been very it's very bizarre to me that it just didn't have a life. But your love for bringing out the dead, you've talked about this one like from since we first met. You always loved this one. And I was like, Oh, cool. I got to go back and check that out. The soundtrack is a real trip. I did not remember all those like 60, 70 songs mixed in with like current today nineties music. It's kind of funny. I really like stories about guys or people that are just like down and out and like they've like they're not happy with life in any sort of way, but they just keep doing it like the monotony of just doing this job over and over and over. Right, Right. Yeah, yeah. No, I get it, I get it. All right, let's move on to another one. Another one we've given a lot of some part time to. It's I think we're kind of like our same feelings on after hours is that I remember on our young lines remember on the Monty Cliff pod when I said there's a much better way to watch the Young Lions just skipping every Brando scene, I mean if you skip every DiCaprio scene in Gangs in New York, it's a really lean, mean movie about a psychotic butcher trying to protect his streets. That plays way better. I'm not I'm not trying to be mean, honestly, honestly, when I'm talking about gangs. New York, one that he wanted. Scorsese he wanted to make for decades literal decades. And the only way he finally got able to make it was with the help of a blowhard name, Harvey Weinstein. And it sounds like it was hell for Scorsese. Scorsese is way too much. He's too classy to take to air out dirty laundry even after Weinstein got taken down. But I don't know, man. There's some stuff in gangs in New York like Scorsese, he no stranger narration. This narration is terrible and it feels like a wine scene. Add on to me, Weinstein, who would make directors add on some voiceover to movies after they were already done. It's also reported that Gangs of New York did not have narration was 30 minutes longer. I don't know. I want to say it could have helped, but I do think there are weaknesses in the performance. Some of the performances that I do not think could be helped with longer running time. It's a movie I do want to like better, but unlike after hours, this has essential a miraculous performance in Daniel Day-Lewis. Like I put this on last night and was specifically kind of just watching his scenes and I was like, Jesus, he's on fire. And I can't, you know, it's not just on DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. I'm not just putting it on them. Cameron Diaz got a lot of shit for her performance in this movie. And DiCaprio we love him. We're no stranger to giving praise to DiCaprio for the rest of this fucking podcast. It's going to be a lot of praise for Leto. DiCaprio. Trust me, it just doesn't work here. It's Those two don't work. The assembly feels a little choppy. It just yeah, there's a lot of it that I think it just long, I don't know. But again, how much of that is Weinstein How much whatever I love DDL in it that that always be I love the supporting cast. I love all them. Brendan Gleeson's great. Oh, great. Jonsi Reilly's great. Yeah, yeah I think this is I agree with all of that. I think there's also like, there's there, like, there's things about this movie that and I'm talking like DDL always works, but they're scenes that really work like this movie. There are. There are, Yeah. Like, like that as a movie. Like I was like, you know, when this movie hits, it really hits. And when it misses, it kind of misses. And that's how I've always felt about it. I've always been sort of like, Man, there's something better here. More than likely than what's actually here. And it is. It's true. It's not my favorite. Leo It's my favorite Leo. And I love him. I love him too. But I remember when I saw this, I was like, still kind of in my period of, you know, Titanic at the time wasn't for me. We've talked about all this, and I was like, I don't know. I know this. I love Catch Me If You Can. And I loved him in it, but I went this didn't really work for me, but oh, well, we don't need to harp on it too much. We're kind of repeating the same points we did in the Daniel Day-Lewis episode, but it is worthwhile. It does have a few fantastic set pieces that fight in the beginning. Oh, it's great. Fight the end fight. The end is good. But the monologues that Daniel Day-Lewis gets, you know, I got to sleep with one eye open. I only got one eye, you know, just stuff like that like he's he's great. Was good, but really. Well, thank you. Moreover, I'm kind of rushing through gangs New York because I can't. Wow. Wow. I saw The Aviator of the Week and it came out in theaters in 2004. I own the DVD. I've watched it. It's nothing I've avoided. I've I've gone back to it for my blog, Like I'm going to write about this performer or something. I've I've gone back to it. It's been on TV, I've watched it. I've watched the DVD a few times. I've watched the commentary with Scorsese, with Scorsese, Thelma and Michael Mann, who produced the movie. Whatever the hell happened, I haven't seen it in like ten plus years. I put this son of a bitch on a few days ago and I went, Hello, I love you. I would have given you a B before. This is an A-plus masterpiece. And I know why this happened. It happened because. I, since 2004, have become obsessed with old Hollywood movies, with the law, the time period from the birth of film until right now. You know, these are things Babylon touches on a lot. But when I saw it in 2004, of course, I knew who Katharine Hepburn was. I don't know if I'd seen a Katharine Hepburn movie. I think I'd seen, like, Adam's Rib maybe. I don't know how I actually seen. Oh, yeah, Oh, yeah. And now I've seen damn near every movie that's referenced The Aviator, like in all the ones that aren't. So I get everything. I never knew why the colors were so weird in The Aviator. I wanted to figure it out. And now I'm like, Oh, yes. You go back color film at that time because The Aviator takes place like in the twenties, in the thirties, that's what it looked like. So he's trying to match like the tri color effect or the Technicolor thing. It's just I was stunned by my rewatch of this, so stunned that I watched it twice in two days and just went, Wow, I finally get it. Like, I really, really like this movie. You and I have even said that like the first mature now I'm a man performance for DiCaprio was The Departed, but I really see him here. I saw things that I hadn't seen. I thought it was kind of wimpy. And he's doing this voice and, you know, it's just like, okay, I get it. And I wow, I really, really got it. I really loved it. Total newfound appreciation for The Aviator that I just can't believe I had. I'm going to get personal on this one. Go for it. I had a very, very crazy reaction to this movie that I'm still kind of in shock by. So I remember I saw this movie in 2004 with my uncle, and we saw it in theaters. I remember liking the movie a lot, but I remember I was very, very, very upset and disturbed with all of the germophobe stuff. And what the future with future with the future. The blueprints and the blueprints. And to the point where I was even like looking away the screen because I was so bothered by it and I didn't consider a germaphobe. So I at that point I had not really kind of had to deal with that. But I remember like actively looking away from screen, like that scene where he's washing his hands and so bleed and he makes himself bleed and he can't he can't like the guy asks him for a towel. Oh yeah, sorry that's I jumped ahead. That's, that's a separate one. Yeah. There's separate but yeah. Because they're both in bathrooms and it's the same bathroom. Yeah, it's at the same club. But no, the dude is like he's all tore up. He's probably a veteran he's on crutches or something. Yeah. Yeah. And he said I can't do that. There was something that I was like in the theaters being like, very, very like, whoa, my God, oh my God, I'm really affected by this. So then all of a sudden we enter into a global pandemic in 2020 and I'm alone in my apartment that year, and I definitely got in touch with my germophobe side of things that definitely went to an extreme that I have since deal with and all of that. But what's crazy is that I rewatched The Aviator for this podcast. All of those scenes comfort the shit out of me. And because now you have a friend. Yes, I say what you do. Yeah. Like all of a sudden I'm watching this. I'm like, Oh my God, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would never do like the hands thing until I bleed. But like, the idea of not wanting to touch something just because of, like, you know, all that, I'm like, Oh, man. Yeah Yeah. It's so it's just crazy to think that, like, when I was little, clearly there was a fear that was there that I had not dealt with. And then dealt with and I'm still dealing with. But now when I see something like that, I don't go to that. That completely disturbed point. It's now it's yeah, it's a friend. And so when I see it, I actually really championed Leo's performance even more because that uncomfortability that fear that he has about it is very like oh my God like that's like I'm feeling everything that he's feeling but, but being on the side of it as opposed to being confronted with it, I had not experienced that since. Since all that has happened, I hadn't watched a movie that had expressed that type of because there's not many movies about Germaphobe like this, you get well, some of them I have to take humor. Like as good, as good as as it gets. Where you go, it's all the identical bars of soap. That person is also, you know, it's yeah, it's done. It's like, funny, I'm not stepping on the sidewalks, but this shows when it can ruin life. It's like certain periods of time, especially or how God. That's why when you just get stuck saying the same thing, like, Oh yeah, over and it's like, Oh yeah, you really feel how tortured he is. Yeah, he plays it so well. He really does. And it really makes you feel for the real Howard Hughes because like, it's just a mental affliction that, you know, was not something that was like dealt with or diagnosed or anything. So that that poor guy's got this genius. But, you know, if he just had therapy and he had like the tools that, you know, or medication that one needs, yeah, that's what's so cool about the movie is that and I remembered this, he sets it as like an edible thing because he's getting clean by his mom in the beginning. And what's that word? What's that word we got familiar with in quarantine and COVID quarantine? They're selling it over and over. So it kind of plays like a COVID movie. Honestly, it does. It does play. So in just in his, um, he tracks his phobias. So well, because obviously they get progressively worse. But then listening to the commentary, Thelma's like, I can't tell you how brilliant this performance is because one day sometimes, one morning he'd have to be in 1945. In the afternoon it's 1925. So they did not shoot this movie in order. And Leo has to like track that. And this is where. Yeah, and it holds up the way he's like always grabbing it like it's pants when he's nervous and like, hiking them up a little bit the way they show, like the flashbulbs, how it's just disorienting. Everything Oh, yeah, so good. The scene with Alan Alda. Alan Alda was kills it. Yeah, kills it, kills it in this movie that Germany Japan could help you I'd love to it. He says it's so good at that. But, you know, he's setting him up by putting fingerprints, you know, doing things that he knows is going to upset him and watching Leo's performance in a way where he recognizes that he's like, Oh, should I have to deal with this fear? But then it's the dying. You've done this on purpose. I'm Not going to show you my fear. I'm going to like, do this, but I like to put on that that courage. I just I really, really like that scene even more. And then when he leaves, he's like, freaking out. Freaking out? Yeah. Because he was barely able to keep it together. Sure. Yeah. How do you spell llama? I love that. And then he back comes back, you know, Bru. Oh, well, you know, it was crazy because Scorsese, at this point, still hasn't won an Oscar. He's been taken out by all these actors. Robert Redford beat him for Raging Bull, Ordinary people. Kevin Costner beat him, Dances with Wolves, Goodfellas, Clint Eastwood beat him, The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby. But by 2006, everyone had had enough. People are like, this was a narrative. Like, people are like, this is ridiculous that this guy doesn't have one. It's ridiculous. And departed, which, you know, we covered extensively on episode 56. Our first commentary was on Martin Scorsese's The Departed that a ride back arrest and it's so funny over time, it's just so funny to watch his whole career and hindsight and go, this is really what they caved at. Like I knew it at the time. But everyone knows this is not his like, best work. It may be the movie you've seen from him the most because you're obsessed with it. I've seen it plenty. I think it is wildly entertaining. I think it is very flawed. I think it doesn't make long stretches of this movie. Do not make a damn lick of sense. That's okay. It just, you know, it's going by. It's not. It's entertaining. It's entertaining as hell. This is not a cruise at all by. But it's hilarious to me that this is what wins him best director and it wins best picture. But yeah, we've talked about this movie a lot. A lot that I mean, all your Cape Fear criticisms that I rejected. I've never rejected those for The Departed. I've always had those criticisms of it as well. I wonder which one and the is maybe it's the one who's acting fucking guilty every time know just. Yeah, but it is a it's a lot of fun and this is an extremely well-liked and well seen Scorsese movie. So many people have seen this and very few people I think give a shit to scrutinize it heavily as we you know and I think that's very true because what's what's Goodfellas and The Departed are the two most talked about Scorsese movies. I this this would be my experience in just talking to people about movies. Well they're both so easy to watch They just move They move move and they go and they go. And there's so many things you can quote from them, so many cool, like set pieces you can wait for. Yeah. I always hear people say, like, even if we're not, they're not movie people, but, you know, I'll be like, oh, so what movies you like? They'll list off like a few. And like, you know what I really like? I like The Departed. Yeah. Even talking with guys at work when they found out I was doing the Scorsese iPad, they're like, You're going to talk about The Departed. And I was like, you know, just to appease and oh, yeah, we're going to talk about The Departed for a little bit. But I think this this is, I think Goodfellas The Departed are his two most talked about or of this scene. Yeah we're coming up on one that is very well scene to the one that's made the most money actually in the next one. A lot of people have seen Shutter Island. Yeah. Like a shitload of people have seen this one who made $300 million. It's like so I don't really dislike any Scorsese movie. I don't know if I'll ever watch Boxcar Bertha again. I don't know if I'll have a need to. And I don't dislike Shutter Island. I actually put it on right before we started. I Just enough time. I was like, All right, you can fit one more in. And this was the only one I hadn't rewatched and I didn't rewatch it because the movie has never been fully for me. And I just want to describe everything. I definitely much like Cape Fear. He's very intentionally making a very literal B-movie here. That's he's doing that's the exercise. It's a thriller. It's a genre thriller. I saw this opening day in 2010, the second they stepped foot on the island. I knew exactly what was going on. Even when I watch it now, it is. I'm not. I always talk about this stuff you just called it. It's so like, I don't want to say it because I don't know if people haven't seen it, but it's so obvious to me. Maybe I'll bleep it out the second they step on that island and everyone's at them weird. I go and I went, that I can't really be it. Right. And we've talked to this. I talked to this when I talked about get out. Like when dial in to a movie that quickly, it can diminish a lot of it for you because all of his ranting and raving and his paranoid things, those is it. This is it. This I'm just sitting there going, it isn't this dude like this is I just I called it shot early. And when it turned out that it was that it seemed like a very, very long time for us to get there. I just saw where it was going. And now in subsequent viewings, there are parts of this that move very, very slowly. To me, those long conversation he has was with all those performers. I love Elias Gutierrez, Patricia Clarkson, love them all. Jacqueline Haley. I love those. I'm just like, You're just spinning stuff that when Ben Kingsley does his monologue at the end, it's all going to be thrown out. It doesn't leave me a lot to latch onto. Noting all that some of my favorite modern Scorsese stuff that he has done is everything that takes place in and around Dachau. In this film, the concentration camp stuff is like all really, really intense and really effective. So when I'm watching Shutter Island as a PTSD movie and a guy that just went to this war and then had a wife that lost it's then he snapped, then it's very effective to me when you put in all this like smoke and mirrors and this ruse and it's magic trick it. I don't know. It's I've always thought is it is a fun B-movie. I have always given it a letter grade B, I think that's fair. That's just where I'm coming from. I I've always thought that this was of the best looking Scorsese movies, though. C And even when I was watching it today, I'm like, parts of it have terrible CGI. Honestly, that when they're Oh yeah, the beginning, I'm like, You guys are not on a boat. That storm behind you, it's not real. They'll cut to certain buildings on the island. And I'm like, Man, those renders are they're tough for me. But, but we said this before. Maybe sometimes, maybe Mean Streets is like a lead up to Goodfellas, watching Shutter Island and like Hugo back to back, which he made closely it feels like he's using he never use this type of CG or technology and he's using it in Shutter Island. That to me feels like I'm getting ready for my 3D epic Hugo here. That's what I'm doing. Oh, no, no, totally. And he also uses it in The Aviator, too. Yeah, there. There's a lot of CGI in there, that style. It is. And it feels like that's what he made some changes to it in the six years since 2010, because it doesn't even look, I don't know. I thought it looked more noticeable in Shutter Island, honestly, than The Aviator, which was weird, but I don't know. I don't know. I just I mean, that that concentration camp stuff, like the lighting. Yeah, that stuff is just that really. Oh, my God. And and. And I like this. I guess this was that may the best looking in terms of the overall visuals, but just some of the cinematography of Shutter Island. I really enjoyed looking at he does use lighting really well. Yeah. Like everything inside when there's no CGI. I do like it. Yes. I don't want to be Yeah. And there's no I don't want to just I agree on the, on the negative Yeah. A lot of lighting, a lot of cool effects like matches and. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean again a great B is not a bad grade like IMAX, but seeing Max von Sydow on this see Leo DiCaprio and Max von Sydow going toe to toe, it's like, great for me. I love it. I love it. Just say that you hate it. Just don't hate Shutter Island. It is not it's crazy to me that it made $300 million and it's one it's like I think his second biggest film ever in terms of money. That's wild. And there's a lot of people that they're real big fans of this one. Yeah, I know it fooled a lot of people and a lot of people were stunned. I just I don't know. It just seemed very, very obvious to me. It does have one of my best weeks. We brought this up in in I think we were talking about a rival because they use the same score. Very true. They do use that Max Richter score and damn it, I always associate that with a rival, but there's always fuckin Scorsese. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's used really well. Doesn't go well yeah. Oh, it's really beautiful like that. That's actually my favorite scene of the whole entire. It's my favorite scene, too. Yeah, it's my favorite scene, too. You know, there's this is. This is Eric is in 2010 with Inception. This was when Leo was playing the type of character where you can't get over the girl. Yeah, sure. We'll move right on. Okay. Here we go. Hugo. 2011. What a weird choice for him. Not maybe if you look at like this is the same guy that made age of innocence. You know, he can go to, like, make not as violent and as profane as some of his other stuff. But there was a trend I noticed in my Scorsese rewatch and I like all of his movies about movies much more now that I have seen all the movies those films are referencing. So I just thought, you know, New York New York in The Aviator, huge to see all the movies that are referenced in those. I have more context. I had seen like some George Melies films, but not to the extent that I have now. And, you know, I don't think Hugo is perfect. It's a little too it's a little too light for me. Overall, the stunning 3D visuals that were in the theater, they're really sorely missed at home. I never seen this movie at home. I hadn't seen this movie since 2011, and I watched it last week. But everything related to Papa George, Ben Kingsley is just cinematic bliss to me. Even that the reverence that the Michael Stuhlbarg character has measles, like, you can't even, like, look at him like he's got his head down. Like, yeah, George Measles, I mean. Well, yeah, let me hear your thoughts, your Hugo thoughts. I actually enjoyed this movie for what it was. Yes. I don't let's put it this way. I don't like kids. I know you don't. All right? I don't like anything about them. I and I remember I saw I saw this with a really good friend of mine, and he's since gone on to become like. Like a young adult writer. Oh, cool. Children's writer. And so he really liked it. And I think I enjoyed being around the energy of someone who is really like, this movie was made for this this sentiment. And and I remember even when I said when the movie was out, because it was what did you think? I go, you know, if I have to watch a kids movie, I would want to watch this. I'd want to watch it by Martin Scorsese. Yeah, that's yeah, yeah. That was exactly how I felt about it. Like I was like, okay, this is a straight up. It is. It's a kids move. Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. And, and I don't particularly enjoy those. They're not for me. I'm not a kid. I don't like them. And, and this was one where I was like, I all right, I like you. I like you. You're fine. You can stick around. It is. Yeah, it's just fine. It's. It's really good. I like some of the performances. I also think it's interesting that despite being a kids movie, it is tied with The Aviator as the Martin Scorsese movie with the most Oscar nominations and wins. 11 nominations. Five wins. Wow. Pretty big. Oh, yeah, that's huge. And 2011 was a big movie year and this walked away with five Oscars. It was Hugo in the arts. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, That was what was up, huh? I guess so. And Hugo made a shitload of money, not unlike Shutter Island, so. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he has a few movies in a row that make a shitload of money, but we're. Well, we've arrived. Here we go. Maybe the Wolf of Wall Street 2013. This is tied Casino and Goodfellas as the Scorsese film I've seen the most. I've watched this at least two times a year since 2015, 2014, when I got a hold of this Blu ray. Oh, my God. I watch it all the time. Just all the time. Similar to you talking with your guys at work, You know, I'm doing Scorsese, Z Sometimes Ali and I will carve out some movie time. We typically stick to like shows or something and wait, you know, next part is on. Scorsese Yeah, I've shown her a few. She's liked them all. She loved Taxi Driver. I'm like, Do you want to pick one? And she goes, Well, I'm in the mood for comedy, You know. I was like, Who this is tough. It's a tough sell. It might be a little too you never know. Brody or something for for her might may not hit the mark. And she loved it. She was like, this movie is fucking outrageous. He is so outrageous the entire time. And he is. It's one of my favorite comedies. I think it's hysterical, but it's also not afraid to get real. That shit with Kemi? Oh no. When he lent her $25,000, that, like that always makes me cry. If not makes me cry every time. And we've talked about it before. That final argument with DiCaprio and Margot Robbie is no bullshit. And when I saw that in the theater, it stopped the audience's cold. And a few nights ago it stopped Allie cold. She was like, Whoa. It got real, real quiet. You can hear a pin drop when? Just 5 minutes ago were laughing hysterically. It's I don't know, think it's a genius film. I always have. I cannot believe he follows up his PG rated kids movie with. Yeah, probably the most outrageous movie he'll make. This thing is just full tilt outrageous from the get. There's no way there's no way a movie like this is made anymore. It's it snuck right in there and it's still got a lot of criticism it was right on the low it still did getting a lot of like content criticism in it Yeah it barely snuck in there that there's no way yeah there's no one who would greenlight this No one absolutely not And I remember it So, like, I've spoken about this movie in the pod before, I'll just repeat it really quickly. This was a huge about face movie for me. I did like it when I first saw it, and then I've seen it so many times since. And just I just had this experience where. I was back home in Buffalo, saw my mom, and she loves Leo. She's a very, very big Leo fan, but she is not a martin Scorsese fan. And so I have always told her I was like, you know, and this is like his most Martin Scorsese movie. Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah. I go, Mom, you got to see in this, though, because you're such a Leo fan and this is arguably his best work. It is his best work, in my opinion. I was saving that for the end. It's my favorite. Leonardo DiCaprio performance. We've skirted this issue. We've tried to come up with it. Rewatching it, I'm like, This is just it. Now that ten years have passed, I'm like, Yeah, this is yeah, this is it. Yeah, I had to. I'd have to think about what my favorite. It's this is up there. It's up very up there. But she, she said, why don't you just show me certain scenes that you think I like and we'll call it good. And I go, Well, this is the perfect movie to do that. Yeah, there's a yeah, right there. You got a ten minute sequence. So right there for you. Oh. Oh, She kept asking for more. Oh Of course. I started with one and she and she's cracking up and she goes, Show me. No, show me another. I like fast forward like 5 minutes to the next one. She's cracking up. Okay. Should we not? And should we not? We spend like, 40 minutes watching, like, Yeah, or maybe even more of, like, these cut up bits of this movie of just Leo being ridiculous, but also like the Kyle Chandler scene, which that scene on the boat opportunity is everything you could that that's one of those movie scenes where you don't need to show anyone anything leading up to it. If you just started that scene from beginning to end, you've got everyone hooked. They are invested, they are in their teens. Kyle Chandler does a phenomenal job well of conviction. Always does. Yeah. He's a guy. Just always fucking does it. Yeah, I love him so much. That's the power of this movie, is that it? Got my mom of all people who does not really like Martin Scorsese in movies or his and this is the most wildest to watch 45 minutes in complete hysterics about Did you show her the lemon scene? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I'm saying yeah. It's like a it's like I lost my short film right there. It's perfect. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's the gets eludes. We even watch this scene where you know, where he's where the whole entire lead up when he's on the plane and he's trying to time his drug experience and he gets tied up in the seat. And Jonah Hill is like. Jonah Hill is like, we to tie you down, you're a maniac maniac. You're going. It's like Hill. Good. He'll go over the hill, but they remember it later in the car. Yeah. Yeah, they're up my ass. Don't worry. Next one up. Not. I mean, there were a few. I didn't have any about faces. I just had newfound appreciation. Things like The Aviator, big time. Always Loved the king of comedy, love it even more now. The biggest change I had was with Silence, which I had seen once in the movie theater. Yeah, I remember had talked about this movie, and you weren't really if you didn't dislike it or anything, but you were you didn't really have much to say about it. Here's the thing, and this stance hasn't changed and I I'm just sorry to say this. I do not think Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield are well-cast in this. I don't and I never have. And even rewatching this, I went, there are better people. I'm sorry. They're just it looks like those two men put everything into this. They lost so much weight. They took like a year off to study it. I get it. I love both of them independently. Yeah, They do not work for me. They just don't. Maybe that's because my head is poisoned. Knowing that the original three actors were supposed to be Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael Bernal, which is much, much better. But it is very different. But but, but that was that's always been my main takeaway from it. And I've always kind of latched on to that a little bit miscast. I think Liam Neeson is perfectly cast. I think he's great. Yeah, he's great. I really, really do. And I think Adam Driver has scenes like his Final Scene is devastating. And I Oh, yeah, I really buy it. I think as Andrew Garfield's character gets older, I start to buy more of it more, but a lot of it doesn't. I don't know. It just didn't it didn't click for me. And I kind of had that in my head. But, you know, I want to put it on and I can tell you like just what I've watched every Marty Scorsese movie over the past three weeks. Silence is his most punishing film. It it is in terms of runtime, in terms of patience testing. It isn't. His most violent or profane. It isn't his longest, but it's just a truly punishing experience. And it's designed that way. It's designed test our patience, and it's designed to make us appalled by these brutalities in the film. Like I, I'm stunned that I didn't remember how effective and how devastating these tortures scenes are and how they're shot, like documentaries you just observe. There's no like you just use it doesn't like play. I mean, they're really, really, really tough to watch. And yeah, I've talked about the his intended cast when he first I mean this was a decades long passion project for him. Almost got it off the ground a few times and then it basically came to like, you got to make it now or it's not going to get made. That's kind of the same in gangs in New York as well. And I've always found the end, like the last 5 minutes of this movie intensely moving. It is a better film than I remembered is not very rewatchable I'm not it's not like I'll never watch it again. I will, but I'm going to take a while with it. But you can tell again, like New York, New York, like Last Temptation of Christ, which is obviously probably the best comp for silence. Marty put everything he had into this. And a lot of people said, the producer said, Marty said this was the most difficult film he ever made. Thelma said it was really difficult to edit. I just think it was tough. I remember I kind of all of the same sentiments I remember because I certainly saw it in theaters when it came out as we were feeling like I was like full okay. Like I appreciated everything the movie did. I felt the exact same way about it. A memory occurred to me recently, which I thought was just very funny because I had a girlfriend at the time who you knew her, her tastes lied in more of just like the regular type of entertainment. You know, she she kind of like comedies and, you know, you know, stuff like that. But she would always be great because we would go and see really good movies together. And she would she would be able to, like, have really good thoughts about them. And we talk she went to see this movie with her mom without me. Oh, wow. And I didn't and I didn't know. I just this memories occurred to me. And I remember like one time I was like, I was like, oh, would you guys see? And she and she couldn't talk. Like she was just sort of like we just came out of silence. I go, I'm sorry. You saw what movie? Wow. She goes, Silence. Like, Oh, I know. But like, why did you go see that with your mom? And she goes, We we just made a decision. She's like, kind of like all like in her head about it. Kind of still like feeling the effects of the movie. And she just goes, I really liked it. And I was like, This is crazy. Like, this is it says something when someone really kind of finds that movie. What I just saw was just so funny was like, This is the one movie that you chose to go and see, and then this is the one movie that you actually really like. Yeah, it's so weird. It's so weird. It's like dancing, like Place Beyond the Pines. I was like, What? You. Yeah, it was what it was. Were like, No, no disrespect for like, some people have said, like, I have talked to some people that this is their favorite Scorsese movie. Yeah. And I'm always like, wow, okay. All right. All right. We're talking we're talking we're talking movies here, kid. Talking movies, kid. This was one of those movies where I remember seeing it. I'd be like, you know what? I'm good. That's how I thought, too. But was glad I rewatched. Yeah, I was. I kind of want to rewatch it again because it's that type of I mean, it's not that I wouldn't, but it just didn't fit into really the time. I think there was once I haven't seen but I wouldn't be opposed to it. But it was always one where I remember walking at a theater maybe like, man, I really I felt all of that movie and I appreciate it. I don't know if I need to go back and ever revisit that, you know, because God's got gods, a superstition, you know? God, it's a superstition. You know movie. I go back to old time fucking Irishman in 2019. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You. You like this movie? This this. This has nothing to do with you. Go to Sierra out. This has nothing to do with you. Positive or negative, I think. I think I might have to do a solo pod commentary for the Irishman. And I'm dead serious, I think. I think I might have to do it. I'm serious, man. No. Yeah. The obsession I have for this and the amount of history. There is a lot about this movie that people just didn't give a shit enough of a shit about to explore because it's three and a half hours, or because of the de-aging stuff that took people out and they think it's just a joke. There's so much to this movie that I think is so brilliant, so tragically overlooked. I've been saying it basically since 2020 that everyone is going to like this movie more. This is terrible to say this. Sucks to say when all these guys are gone. When Marty De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, when they're gone, this thing is going to be like, You all slept on this. You all missed it. I It basically what I want to do is I used to do these blogs for I post the top 140 things I love about Taxi Driver that no one talks about. I would go the films in painstaking detail and pull out screenshots and then write a little caption for a moment that I wanted people to acknowledge or recognize. I can't do that now because the blogger format sucks. It would take me days to create a post like that. I don't know man, what this commentary would be. It would fill in for that. There's so much about this movie that people need to know and see. It needs to be shouted from the mountaintops. I fucking love the Irishman. Hey, hey, hey. Seen the movie ten times? I've logged every I've watched it. Why? I don't know. The movie's on Netflix for free. That I buy the Criterion. I did. I don't know why I fucking love the Irishman. You want the special features? Yeah, but most of those are available online, and I had already seen them all. So it was like. And guess what? The criterion for sure. It's a Blu ray. It's not 4K the Blu ray. Looks better than the Netflix render 100%. But I'm just saying this is some every time I watch it, I'm like, I need to talk about this movie on such a much bigger scale. But I don't know the format from because I know you've seen it like once or twice, but like three times. That is good. I rewatched it. I am for this deep in to like my love for this. But every time we've talked about it I haven't. You've said like, yeah, I like it. I don't know if your love for it. Like I'm like top tier fucking love the Irishman. Well you, you listen to me all. Listen, you motherfucker. You're, you are not doing a solo pod on the Irishman because I'm going to be there. We'll see. We'll see. Because I like this movie. I don't know if it's an exercise in ego that I explain it with me on their alone or if I have you. But then it's just going to sound like I'm explaining everything strictly to you. That's what you do anyways. No, we try to have conversations on commentaries. We try, we try. I don't know. I'm thinking about it. What if we did a commentary Cup? Cup? Where did it come and say, Oh, I thought you so much, you don't even to me, Jesus Christ. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Solo deep dive I would have with you. It's a commentary. This is what I'm saying. A commentary. Because that moves and it's live. I don't know how much. You just. People want me, like, talking to you at you when I can just do it and be like, Well, do what you want. You do it. Anyways, we're getting past 100 episodes here. We've done It's been you and I. I sometimes I go out and do this. Oh, my God. So this is it. This is how it happens. I'm thinking about ending it after 100. I'm thinking about ending it after a hundred. I thought about it. Thought about just pulling the plug. Not not even. Not even just doing it solo. Just. It is your favorite movie. I finished my silver favorite. I've thought about it. Your Cape Fear leads me more to it. I've thought about it. No, I think after 100 episodes, I mean, we've been doing this Jesus people. We've had this going since June 2020. It's wild where it like some commentaries that we listen to. Like for Bergman, it's not two people going back and forth. It's like a historian talking about them. I am not a film historian, but I do love films. I do love the Irishman. I don't know. I feel like it would get I feel like our commentaries are fun, for we make them like fun and they're humorous and we take the piss out of them a little bit. I wonder if people would be interested in like a more educational commentary, if you will. I didn't know you liked it, though. I had all this in my head because I didn't know you liked. It I thought you were like, Yeah, it's okay. This the like the first time you said you were like, I don't know, man. It's really long. I remember the first time yet. First time? It is fucking long. Come on. But all right, you tell me. I've talked enough. Well, I mean, I don't know. I can't fucking beat that. Who's your favorite performer in it? Because I think Joe Pesci in this movie. I don't know, man. It's Right up there could be my favorite from him the way because it's the exact opposite of everything. Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. He's so internal when hearing about the Bay of Pigs and he hears he's in the bar and he hears how many soldiers have died. He just gives this little like this little look of like, Oh, man, can't believe it went that way. And it's so believable the way he just leans in to De Niro and he's like, If they can whack president, they can whack a union boss. It is what it is. I don't know. I love it. I didn't know you liked it. Let's talk about it then. What do you like about it? Well, I will. Well, I mean, I can't. I see. I can't compete with any of this. I, I like the movie. I like. I've got, I've, I've this movie three times. Once was in theaters once was on Netflix where I watched the whole thing. This is before I had this job. And then this job, I had to break it up over the course of a week. I don't know. There so many things I know about this that aren't like who Little trivia. It's I mean, there's something that happens in the first like 3 minutes of the movie that no one ever talks about, ever. And I've never seen it mentioned in a single review. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere. And I go how is no one talked about this? When I was just traveling for work and I was gone for a week, I was traveling with a guy who loves Marty. He's a great cinematographer and we were talking about the Irishman he loves this too, and he did not believe me. So we pulled it up on Netflix at Happy Hour at the Bar, and I showed him and he was like, What the fuck? How I miss this. I went, I don't know, maybe because I'm obsessed with it. But there's so much about this movie that people thought it was. I'm not I'm I want to say that for the solo commentary, Baby Oh, so many little bits. It's just. All right, I'll say it now. I'll say it now. Just this one. The first person you see die in the Irishman is Jimmy Hoffa. Oh, wow. It is a very, very, very quick insert shot from old De Niro sitting there, and it cuts to Pacino's head getting blown off from the front. Now, three fucking hours later, when we get to that scene, we don't see him shoot Pacino. We see him hide behind the wall. That is the first kill in the Irishman. I have never seen anyone mention that. Holy shit. And you only do that if you pause and go pretty much frame by frame. But it is the house is the tan shirt that Hoffa slash Pacino is wearing. And you see the blood splatter. This is in the first fucking 3 minutes of the movie. I have dozens, not hundreds of bits of little things like this about the movie that I don't know would work with two people on a commentary. I really don't. I just. All right, now, listen. All right, All right. I feel like I've just gotten broken up with. It's fine. Not broken up with moving on to killers of the flower moon. The Irishman's commentary is we have to do in person. So we'll see. We'll see if I don't want to do it more. I've had to branch out and kick you out a few times. Mister. I don't like John Wick. I don't like John Wick movies. So I got to do the John Wick four solo part. I sound like a fucking idiot talking about me feigning for no reason had to do that. I would alone would have loved some some chatter for that. We should. I would have seen it if you wanted me to. Yeah, we got to. We're fucking run along. Okay? Yeah, I'm very glad you like the Irishman. Well, then I have to say, we need to put that at the top of our list for commentary. My whole speech was based on. I genuinely didn't think you liked it this much. I swear I didn't know. I thought you told me you had seen it twice. And what you said after your second viewing was. Yeah, I did like it better the second time. That doesn't lend to me like ecstatic fucking fandom like I'm doing. Like I'm raging out right now. Ready to talk about the Irish. Well, you got it. You're. You're. You're on a whole other level. Movie cinema, The Irish pictures. That's it. We did it all. That was fun. Yeah. I mean, there's some quick Oscar facts right here. Okay. Most nominated films and wins already said it. The Aviator and Hugo. Each 11 nominations, each five wins, biggest Oscar approaches, Gangs of New York and the Irishman. Each ten nominations, zero wins. Oof! Robert De Niro COLLABS with Killers of the Flower Moon. It'll be ten. Leonardo DiCaprio after Killers of the Flower Moon. It'll be six. We'll have to see it. Box Office Number one. The Wolf of Wall Street. 392 million. Wow. Shutter Island 295 million. Number three, The Departed 291 million. Number four, The Aviator 214. Number five. Gangs of New York 194. Some of those kind of surprised me. I'm like, yes, as far as me too. We're moving it along. Scorsese, Z, Top ten, How are we doing it? We don't to give explanations. I don't know. Do we just go back and forth? We cannot have explanations, do we do my overtime? We've always we've always done better. We start with each of our ten. We move down. Okay, who goes first? Well, I'll go first just to get it out of the fucking way. Fucking ten, The Irishman. Ten. The Irish. Done. Oh, you're done, Nick. But the Nick, the Irishman gets in there. I never would have thought that. Never got it right. Yeah, I'm thinking about taking it back. All right, Number ten from you. The. I love it. Number ten for me is a big surprise. It was circling. There were three that were circling. I can't believe I'm putting it here because I never would have. The Aviator 24. It got a huge bump for me. Huge bump. All right. Number nine from you. Number nine for me, the color of money. Oh, yeah, I did make my list, but I thought it would make yours. I really, really love it. Number nine. Love it, Love it. The king of comedy. Oh, what a picture. What a picture. All right, so number eight from you know that that works perfectly. That's the king of comedy. King Comedy for you. Okay, cool. Number eight for me, as stated several times I love when masterful directors intentionally dip into genre Cape Fear. I love you already read them. I, I, I hate it. Okay. Number seven from you. Number seven mean streets. Same same way that linked up it. I had to have it in the top ten. I had to and you know Southland. But yes, that one gets bumped up a little more every time I watch it. Oh, so number seven for me, Mean streets? Yep. Numbers six from you. I can't believe it didn't make the top five, but it did in Raging Bull one six. Oh, that. Yeah. Okay. Wow. I thought. Okay, okay. It's in the top ten. I thought would be. Oh yeah, higher. But okay, cool. My number six, the Irishman. I can't believe it had to be at six, but I my top five was not number one. Yeah, I do love it. I love it. Part of my love for it is that it never, never got the respect it deserves. Clearly. Number five from you over me. Alice doesn't live here anymore. Ooh, perfect. I fucking love it. I loved it. It snuck in the top five. My number five, the wolf of Wall Street. Oh, yeah. Believe it. Number four, bringing out the dead. Oh, also, I knew that was going to be Make your list. Yep, yep. That's that hundred percent. It's fucking hilarious Number four for me. Well, can't. Can't believe I'm putting it here. Goodfellas is my fourth favorite. Martin Scorsese picture of all time, which feels sacrilege to say I these movies since I mean, we all know how I feel about the Irishman. That's an A-plus. Plus plus. And that's number six. So it goes to show you goes to tell you how I feel of all these other movies. But yeah, Goodfellas, number four, she's that weird. Number four, Number three, three, Marty, baby. So top three. So that number three, that this is now Goodfellas. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's got so I think wow, I think I see what you're doing here. This is this is cool Number three for me All hail casino. God, I love you. I'll watch you all the time. I will watch you. There's so many more times in my life when I'm going to see this film. I got to see it on the big screen this year too. I didn't even mention that. It was amazing. It was all like, Oh, yeah, how am I? I need that in my life? I think I've seen it twice on the big screen now, like since COVID. It's any time that's planned. I will see it. Casino Love you, baby, baby, baby, baby. Number two from Casino. Yes. I wondered if you were going to do it. Yeah. I'm fucking dead fucking of it. We're out here. We're out here. So. Yeah, we both. We both edge it out, and we know what our. Oh, my. Number two Raging Bull. It's in my top 15 of all time. Got it. It's just got to be there. It's a it's a tough one, but my God, I love it. I mean, you know as someone who has thrown his weight around the ring a little bit, I love the way it's shot and captured. It's so good. It's it's amazing. Number one for both of us. Taxi driver got taxi driver. Got to be. Yeah. All right, let's do our top ten. I'm going to do him real quick. Number ten, The Aviator. Number nine, the King of Comedy. Number eight, Cape Fear. Number seven, Mean Streets. Number six, The Irishman. Big fan of it. Number five, The Wolf of Wall Street. Number four, Goodfellas, three Casino two Raging Bull one. Here is Taxi Driver. Give me your top ten real quick. Number ten, the Irishman. Number nine is the color of money. Number eight, the king of number seven, Mean streets. Number six, Raging Bull. Number five, Alice doesn't live here anymore. Number four, bringing out that dead Number three, Goodfellas, number two, Casino and number one taxi driver. We've been here for a long time, folks. We really appreciate you listening, handsome. Nice tangents, Cape Fear. Wow. Well, that was a fun one. That one's going to go down. Go down in history. The Irishman commentary. It will come. It will be happening soon. Well, you know, you know, we got to do we got to we got to make an Irishman visit. Just a solo visit to do. I'll come there just to watch the Irishman record it is It'll probably take nine. Fuck it out. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, Sly all the way over here just to record a goddamn commentary by yourself. The awesome. No. So, what are you watching? We've arrived. Give it to me nice and fast. We can keep it lean and mean. Well, it is very convenient that you mentioned, because that's. First of all, it's not. I'm not doubling down, but I am throwing out the reference to a movie that we've talked about. I am saying from my. What are you watching? The Hustler. Oh, cool. Okay, Good stuff. Yeah. Throwback an influence on clearly Scorsese, is he? Yeah. Yeah. And movie's a fucking beast, man. Like it's it's a it's not the fun color of Money movie that that No that is it is a much deeper much more deals with a little bit more when it comes to the substances and a little bit more of the of the lows of that world very very true you know Excellent. Excellent. Paul Newman. Oh God, it's so great. They I love the hustlers. Yeah. Robert Rosen That's right. You know, he tried to get Jackie Gleason back for like a cameo in The Color of Money. That would have been. Oh, great. But, yeah, I think he was just a little too. Yeah, he was close to the end. He died in 87, so I think probably had other stuff going on. Great pick. Great pick. Mine is also a pretty clear reference to Scorsese. It's funny that I'm recommending this one now, considering our next episode is going to be on Taxi Driver, but I'm going with John Ford's The Searchers, one of the biggest influences on Scorsese's career, and George Lucas and all those guys really. I mean, it's funny because we didn't talk about Taxi Driver in depth on this, but I saw The Searchers in college. I bought the DVD and I think watched it another time, like I saw it in a college course and I just hadn't seen it since then in a really long time. And I'm like, okay, I'm going to it's time. I'm going to do it. And obviously I knew that the character Scar in The Searchers was what Harvey Keitel was told to base his pimp character on in Taxi Driver. But Then also like John Wayne's costumes in a lot of ways, mirror what Travis Bickle is wearing all throughout Taxi Driver. There's a lot of similarities, like going to get the girl back, all that stuff. There's a lot of parallels in to completely different genres in movies made 20 years apart. I like it for that reason. It is. Wow, that is still a stunning movie to look at. I actually I had my DVD and I was like, Alright, it's on HBO. Let me see. It looked way better on HBO. Those colors were poppin, they were vivid and was. It was something else. It was great. But Hustler, The Searchers, Wow, this was a lot of fun. What do you think? How do you feel? Feel good. Feel all right. It contentious. You mad? I mean. I mean, my feelings aren't hurt. Not really, no. Well, should they be heard about the Irishman? You know, I mean, we can do a commentary. No, no, I'm going to give you a few fucking books to read. So listen, all know how I feel about reading. Marty, we love you. This is a lot of fun. One of our biggest episodes yet. Let us know what you think about Marty. How many Oscars should he have? Make arrest on Twitter, on Instagram, on letterbox? A lot of my letterbox friends call it what I was doing. Log in every Marty movie. Let us know at W aiw underscore podcast spot. As always, thank you for listening. Coming up on episode 100 and happy watching. Hey everyone thanks again for listening. You can watch my films and read my movie blog at Alex Withrow dot com Nicholas Dose Dotcom is where you can find all of Nick's film work. Send us mailbag questions at What Are You Watching Podcast at gmail.com or find us on Twitter at W aiw underscore podcast we started what are you watching on July 10th 2020 and our 100th core episode on Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver will be released right around July 10th, 2023. We have had so much fun doing this podcast and we are going to keep truckin whether Nik likes it or not. Stay tuned. Now listen, Julie baby in a natural fit, a crying midnight.