Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: This is the podcast about art, decorative arts and antiques, the stories behind them and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
Speaker: It's good to be back these last few months.
Speaker: They've been pretty slow for Curious Objects, and I'm sorry that we haven't been delivering as many episodes as usual.
Speaker: I mentioned this before, but I've been struggling with a vocal issue, which has made it tough for me to record new episodes.
Speaker: But the good news is I've found a treatment that seems to be working really well.
Speaker: It will be a process of trial and error, but I'm on the right track.
Speaker: And long story short, I can talk again, which means I'm very excited to get the ball rolling on some new interviews for you.
Speaker: starting today.
Speaker: And th is is one that I've been really looking forward to for a long time, ever since I heard about a new film called Lost and Found in Cleveland.
Speaker: And at heart, this is an antiques roadshow tribute.
Speaker: It follows a variety of sort of charming everyday American characters who bring their prized treasures to be appraised by eccentric experts on public TV.
Speaker: And
Speaker: It's described as best in show meets The Wizard of Oz.
Speaker: The cast is delightful, including Martin Sheen and Real Life Antiques Roadshow host Mark Wahlberg, among many others.
Speaker: And Lost and Founded in Cleveland was created as a labor of love by Marissa Gutterman and Keith Gerchak.
Speaker: And it debuted last September at the Newport Beach Film Festival and is looking forward to a theatrical release this coming fall.
Speaker: So I'm absolutely thrilled to have the chance to talk with Marissa and Keith about this movie.
Speaker: Welcome to Curious Objects.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Ben.
Speaker: It's over.
Speaker: Sorry, what's that?
Speaker: We're saying the same thing.
Speaker: We're going to keep doing it.
Speaker: We're one person.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Sort of like finishing each other's sentences.
Speaker: All the time.
Speaker: Okay, so let's start with some rapid fire questions.
Speaker: Oh, dear.
Speaker: What, and I'll let you answer these together or separately, and whoever has the best answer will keep in and edit out the other one.
Speaker: Seems like we want to do them together.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: At the same time.
Speaker: Actually, if you could answer them simultaneously, that would be perfect.
Speaker: So what is the oldest object that you personally own?
Speaker: Actually, this one is a contest between the two of you.
Speaker: I have a coin that is from when King George, Mad King George, was returned to sanity.
Speaker: So 17, I can't speak to which year that was off the top of my head, 1784, maybe, something in that respect.
Speaker: I had it appraised for, I think it was $10, but it was my grandmother's and that's why I kept it.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: That's so... Well, Keith wins this round.
Speaker: I don't even know.
Speaker: I have so many different objects.
Speaker: I'm thinking about this, Ben.
Speaker: It's a silver tea set that my great-grandfather brought from Poland when he was escaping.
Speaker: But he came prior to...
Speaker: the 30s.
Speaker: That was, I think the tea set is from the late 1800s.
Speaker: So sentimental and silver, which is appropriate for today.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, you're just pandering now, but I'll take it.
Speaker: Well, that always works.
Speaker: Flattery will get you everywhere.
Speaker: There's an asteroid headed for Earth.
Speaker: You two are lucky enough to be on the escape pod.
Speaker: What one object or artwork are you bringing with you?
Speaker: Well, this is really easy because I just went through this with the fire evacuation in Los Angeles.
Speaker: So this is very real.
Speaker: And what I grabbed was my grandmother's wedding picture from 1939 in its original Art Nouveau frame.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's so nice.
Speaker: I know it's like it feels very apropos that you should ask about an asteroid hitting the Earth when everything is going on right now.
Speaker: And objects seem so important because they really are kind of just these tethers for us.
Speaker: God, what a great question.
Speaker: I'm a bit of a clothes horse myself.
Speaker: I don't know if that's formally considered an antique, but in my family, we love clothing.
Speaker: And my great grandmother kind of was a big champion in the early 50s.
Speaker: She was a big buyer at one of the first stores in Rodeo of this designer named Galanos.
Speaker: And so there are these fabulous Galanos coats.
Speaker: Nancy Reagan used to wear them.
Speaker: And I think I definitely preserve one of those.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: So what's the, what's the most valuable object or, or just the most exciting object or artwork that you've ever physically touched?
Speaker: Touched.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I mean, I think that touch is such a great question because often art feels kind of like, uh,
Speaker: you have to stand behind the rope.
Speaker: And that's what's so fun about antiques is it's this middle ground of accessibility in a way that is tangible.
Speaker: But I'm gonna make a silly, it's not an antique, it's something valuable.
Speaker: It's a valuable object for us, which would be the DCP, the digital camera package of our film.
Speaker: That to me is our most valuable object.
Speaker: Fabulous.
Speaker: What is that like physically?
Speaker: What does it actually look like or feel like?
Speaker: Well, I'll give two answers to this.
Speaker: This will go back to the fire as well.
Speaker: So the DCP is actually what is put in the server for the projection when you have it in a movie theater.
Speaker: And so it is basically a large hard drive.
Speaker: that, I don't know, it's six to eight inches long and you just put it in there.
Speaker: But it is in a hard case, kind of like almost this football, you know, like with the nuclear code.
Speaker: That's kind of what it looks like in the boxes, maybe 10 inches long by four inches deep and six inches high.
Speaker: And it's all wrapped in foam and you drop it off.
Speaker: But the other thing outside of the clothes on my back and the go bag and the fires, the other thing that I grabbed in the evacuation was the hard drive of the film, which is like almost the size of a CPU that has all of the raw footage that we shot.
Speaker: So and unfortunately, I have both both of the hard drives of the film.
Speaker: And so I grabbed one because we have it on the cloud.
Speaker: But the last physical drive that we have of everything we ever filmed and all the behind the scenes and footage is on that.
Speaker: So that and my grandmother's wedding picture were the two things that I said, OK, I'm.
Speaker: If the asteroid's hitting, to go back to that question, these are the two things that we need.
Speaker: And there was something, but if there is something very tangible, even though it's electronic, of recognizing that that represents 12 years of work and everything behind it and the execution and the delivery of all of that dream, that vision can all be summarized in this electronic piece that goes into a server.
Speaker: If the DCP is putting the mausoleum with you, how long do you think that's going to last?
Speaker: Longer than our bodies.
Speaker: Dark.
Speaker: archaeologists will be decoding the hard drive and rediscovering lost and found in Cleveland.
Speaker: It is like a little time capsule.
Speaker: I think that's what's so fun is it's this kind of intermediate between something tangible and something digital.
Speaker: And so the physical aspect of it is really...
Speaker: There's something grounding about it.
Speaker: The other fun thing I would say is in terms of touching these objects, one of the things that over the years for the holidays, I buy a prop.
Speaker: for the film that we had written as a gift for Marissa, which I have to get all of these to you, Marissa, and I didn't bring them the last time I was in Cleveland.
Speaker: But it'll be, it's like, you know, we have a reference to William McKinley, our martyred president, in the book by Murat Halstead.
Speaker: written in 1901.
Speaker: Like, yeah, we have the first edition of that, that when to get that from Etsy and to have that arrive and go, Oh my God, like this thing that we wrote about is real.
Speaker: The base at the end of the film that Martin Sheen appraises is a real early modernism from Vienna that I found on Etsy that we got like the day before we started shooting.
Speaker: And when these things start to arrive and you realize, Oh wow,
Speaker: Wow, everything that we did this deep dive research into for this film, but also other films like we have the original edition of the Kavode investigation into James Buchanan when he was being investigated by Congress.
Speaker: And it's like an 800 page document.
Speaker: You know, and when that arrives, that is truly like touching a piece of history and realizing, oh, this is the bound edition of what everybody had on their desks in Congress.
Speaker: It's kind of a fascinating, you know, history and research coming to life when those objects arrive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're becoming less...
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Less rapid fire.
Speaker: But I think to just tag on to that, you know, what's amazing in making a film about antiques roadshow and objects is then we've created all of these objects and we've created this road, our own fictionalized roadshow.
Speaker: So it comes with its own banners and set pieces and
Speaker: And so then Keith and I kind of inherited all of these objects because we're incredibly sentimental towards them and they are really outside of the DCP.
Speaker: They they're the film.
Speaker: I mean, in a film about objects, we then we kept all of the objects because they all they all had me next.
Speaker: And it was really interesting to go back to the story.
Speaker: Apologies for the long fire.
Speaker: But we went back to the storage unit over the holidays and the storage unit adjacent to ours had a fire.
Speaker: So like fire is also a running theme in this.
Speaker: But to open up that garage door where everything from the film is stored and to kind of step back.
Speaker: Talk about a time capsule.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was stepping back and thinking about, oh, my gosh, I remember the day we brought that to set or the moment we were filming that particular scene or when we first procured that particular object.
Speaker: And to take that walk through and to see it all in this unit is really kind of mothballed and fascinating.
Speaker: OK, so aside from Lost and Found, what movie would you say has the most interesting depiction of antiques?
Speaker: Or just of decorative arts, material culture, that sort of thing?
Speaker: God, it's a brilliant question.
Speaker: And I felt like something like this was going to come up.
Speaker: And I was like, you got to have an answer for Ben.
Speaker: I'm going to noodle on this.
Speaker: Keith, do you have something?
Speaker: What was the film that Ellen Burstyn and Jon Hamm did that?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Was it Nostalgia?
Speaker: Nostalgia.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I am ashamed to say I didn't see.
Speaker: But the clips that I had seen, there was something very poignant, you know, touched on similar themes of loss and the meaning of these objects and how they're they're tying us to loved ones that have passed or the change of our own lives.
Speaker: um you know which are really the the themes that we explore in this film uh and so that that i think was just an interesting uh approach and very human you know i've been asking this question to a number of guests over the uh over the years and i'm sorry to say that nobody has yet gotten the correct answer oh good good luck which is obviously lord of the rings
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: Hilarious.
Speaker: Right in front of us.
Speaker: We were staring at the answer, Keith.
Speaker: Just missed it by a little.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: Anyway, I guess I have to retire that question now.
Speaker: What's your favorite museum to visit?
Speaker: I mean, I think that we can say from a sentimental point of view that the Cleveland Museum of Art is absolutely an astounding collection and the breadth of the collection and the fact that it's a free museum.
Speaker: I think it's
Speaker: It's such a wonderful resource for people who live in the city.
Speaker: They have a tremendous impressionist gallery.
Speaker: It's the Egyptian collection.
Speaker: It's really astounding.
Speaker: And I think the building itself speaks to the history of the city and the wealth of the city at the turn of the last century.
Speaker: For a city of the population that it has currently to have this level of a museum is incredible.
Speaker: It really speaks to the history and the legacy of the city.
Speaker: So as a Clevelander now, I would say it's a phenomenal museum.
Speaker: And anyone that has the opportunity to come to town should absolutely check it out.
Speaker: A great vestige of the period of public philanthropy.
Speaker: Yes, Rockefeller, all of that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is a period of design that you would happily live without?
Speaker: You always are throwing the 80s under the bus.
Speaker: Well, he asked it.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: My answer.
Speaker: Well, I'm an architect who started his career in the 90s.
Speaker: And Marissa also, rightly so, throws the 90s design period under the bus, too.
Speaker: Early 90s.
Speaker: Yeah, right when I started, I go back and visit some of the things I did.
Speaker: And it's like, oof.
Speaker: Dear.
Speaker: Well, that was just a hangover from the 80s.
Speaker: So it really was.
Speaker: You know, it's interesting.
Speaker: When I was in architecture school, I was not the biggest fan of brutalism because it felt very.
Speaker: You know, I mean, everything was raised on a plinth.
Speaker: It was the austerity.
Speaker: It was the minimalization of the fenestration.
Speaker: It was the kind of rough texture of the materiality.
Speaker: Now I'm sounding really like an architect.
Speaker: I haven't said these words in years.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Those buildings right now are seeing a resurgence and a kind of reinvention that is bringing humanity to them, which I think was their failure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I appreciate, I think now with a little distance, I appreciate what it was a design approach of its time.
Speaker: And that the reinvention and the humanization of those buildings, I think there's been a kind of beautiful melding of what they were trying to accomplish and what we're currently doing with that particular design period.
Speaker: What's one object that you regret not buying when you had the chance?
Speaker: The one that got away?
Speaker: We dealers have, you know, our memories are just overflowing with examples.
Speaker: I'm sure.
Speaker: But for somebody not in the trade, I'm interested if there's something that sticks out in your mind, you know, something you saw somewhere and that you still dream about from time to time.
Speaker: There was a piece of jewelry when I was 19 and studied abroad in Rome.
Speaker: I went to this school.
Speaker: broquette in Venice and it was incredible and this one piece of jewelry it was costume jewelry but I absolutely loved it and I didn't get it but I did get these like vintage Gucci glasses that I loved and then left in Rome when the semester ended but that's my answer
Speaker: Anything to add, Keith, or no?
Speaker: No, it's interesting.
Speaker: Outside of, you know, there was a... Fires!
Speaker: Not that there wasn't... I always was like, oh, gosh, why didn't I buy a house in Los Angeles when I first got here and it was affordable?
Speaker: And now I kind of go, you know, glad I didn't buy.
Speaker: I didn't know that real estate could be one of the objects.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll let... Sorry, whoops.
Speaker: Let me throw that in there.
Speaker: wish I had bought a brownstone in Park Slope in 1988.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But otherwise, I can't say that I have too many regrets.
Speaker: Fair enough.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Well, we will be right back with Marissa Guterman and Keith Gercheck in just a second.
Speaker: First, I always like to take a minute to say thanks for listening.
Speaker: And that feels especially meaningful now coming back from my absence.
Speaker: It's really good to be back with you again.
Speaker: I have a lot of pent-up energy, and we have some great interviews coming up, starting, of course, with this one.
Speaker: I'm always interested to hear your thoughts, topics you'd like to hear about on Curious Objects, guests you think would be a good fit, something you'd like to tell me about an episode you listened to.
Speaker: You can reach me on Instagram at Objective Interest or on email, curiousobjectspodcast.gmail.com.
Speaker: And of course, I can't not remind you that if you'd like to support the work we're doing, which we bring to you
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Speaker: Peter at Hughes Auction recently left a review saying that even when it doesn't sound like a topic that he'd be interested in, the perspective, context, and knowledge of the guests invariably makes it a compelling episode.
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Speaker: Unless you're driving, in which case, please keep your eyes on the road.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: With all that said, I think it's time to talk about Lost and Found in Cleveland.
Speaker: So Keith and Marissa, first off, is it safe to say that you're both Antiques Roadshow fans?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Super fans.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Super fans.
Speaker: Now, the film, it explicitly draws parallels to The Wizard of Oz, where characters, they're seeking external validation on the path towards discovering their inner strength.
Speaker: how did you approach selecting or designing the antiques that represent each character's journey?
Speaker: And are these based on real objects or are these sort of entirely fictional constructs?
Speaker: It's a great question.
Speaker: I think, you know, this goes back to the origin of our approach to the film itself.
Speaker: As you had stated, like, there's a lot of best in show in this film.
Speaker: But once you get to know Cleveland itself, there's this earnestness that kind of is just very much woven into the people who live in that city and their dreams and ambitions and, you know,
Speaker: I mean, even in the architecture.
Speaker: And so with the approach, we didn't want to mock the people that live there.
Speaker: We wanted to celebrate the people that live there.
Speaker: And this really is a film where Cleveland is ultimately the protagonist.
Speaker: And so these objects, Cleveland is...
Speaker: for me, my touchstone is always Los Angeles because I'm from there.
Speaker: It's a collection of different neighborhoods and each neighborhood has a real personality.
Speaker: And so then each neighborhood kind of, we selected an object that would embody the attributes of a neighborhood and the people who live there and
Speaker: For one example, we picked these Greco-Roman plates that were antiquities and it belonged to, Stacy Keech plays the character, but he is a Korean war vet and he lives in Slavic village.
Speaker: is actually fairly well known because it is ground zero for the housing crisis in 2008.
Speaker: But it also was this vibrant community where people would work in steel mills and thriving Main Street.
Speaker: And a lot of the Slavic immigrants came to
Speaker: uh this neighborhood and built you know the american dream but the the neighborhood doesn't look like that anymore it's a shifting demographic and these plates um that were given to this character from a lost army buddy then take on potentially a new meaning and i think uh each each uh neighborhood we really tried to approach the object with um
Speaker: these questions that come up with the tension of in that neighborhood, whether it be society, status, classism, racism, all of that, all of these questions that we're dealing with as a society are reflected in the objects and the neighborhoods that we picked.
Speaker: Keith, do you want to talk about The Wizard of Oz, maybe?
Speaker: Yeah, Wizard of Oz and I think the Dennis' character, too.
Speaker: So the part of the genesis of the film, Marissa used to watch Antiques Roadshow growing up with her dad and had originally approached me to write the film and didn't want to set it in Los Angeles because that's so familiar.
Speaker: There's so many films set here in L.A.
Speaker: And I said, I'm from Cleveland.
Speaker: And, you know, that sounded funny because, you know,
Speaker: In the zeitgeist, you know, Cleveland's always been the butt of jokes and it's the mistake on the lake and the burning river and the mayor's hair catching on fire and its own default in the 1970s when I was a little kid under Kucinich.
Speaker: And so there.
Speaker: Yeah, I.
Speaker: Marissa always says I'm like the unofficial mayor of Cleveland.
Speaker: I've been this ambassador no matter where I've lived around the country.
Speaker: And I said, hey, don't knock Cleveland until you try it.
Speaker: And so we had decided on these neighborhoods and I was describing what they were like and these objects and went back to Cleveland and took my mom to the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum, which isn't even in Cleveland.
Speaker: It's like 45 minutes south in Canton.
Speaker: Next to the football hall.
Speaker: It's featured prominently in the film.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's real.
Speaker: I called Marissa from the parking lot and I said, OK, we've got the tone of the film.
Speaker: William McKinley didn't write anything.
Speaker: Presidential libraries empty, just empty shelves.
Speaker: Planetarium, a dinosaur exhibit with wires coming out of it.
Speaker: The two animatrons of McKinley and his wife dressed to go to the Pan-American Exposition where he's assassinated.
Speaker: But they had this exhibit about the Wizard of Oz there.
Speaker: And as it turned out, at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland as well.
Speaker: And this exhibit said that it was a Cleveland story, which really had blown our minds.
Speaker: And that McKinley, well, Dorothy was the common man.
Speaker: The scarecrow were the farmers and Tin Man, the factory workers.
Speaker: And the yellow brick road was the gold standard.
Speaker: Oz stood for Ounce.
Speaker: And McKinley was the wizard.
Speaker: And the guy behind the curtain, Professor Marvel, was Marcus Hanna, who was this Cleveland politician, his campaign manager, McKinley's.
Speaker: Uh, and he was, you know, there were talks of he's the puppet president and it's Marcus Hanna who's behind there in Cleveland pulling the strings.
Speaker: Uh, and we said, what if we did a wizard of Oz?
Speaker: And, you know, so that got into what you were speaking to earlier, Ben, of this, uh, the parallels of, uh, you know, that the answer to self-worth lies within, you know, instead of a scarecrow or 10 man, it's this mail carrier and the little boy and the retired steel plant worker.
Speaker: And instead of a harder brain, it's these objects, uh,
Speaker: And the wizards would say it's the meaning that we attach to them that's really important in our own self-identity, not the monetary value.
Speaker: So that was the genesis, actually, of the letter the little boy has that is purported to be handed down by his father from William McKinley.
Speaker: And that if it has been passed down through generations, does it mean that he therefore is part of, you know, American royalty?
Speaker: Does he have a lineage?
Speaker: If his father is deceased, he's just trying to find his identity and his place in the world.
Speaker: And there is this little house that overlooks downtown Cleveland.
Speaker: That's the opening shot of the film with a drone shot that he lives with his widowed mother.
Speaker: And it's this land of opportunity that's spread out in front of him like Oz.
Speaker: And he's Dorothy in the poppy field scanning the side yard with a metal detector looking for any loose change to help his mom make ends meet.
Speaker: But that land of opportunity and the promise of the American dream is just without reach across the bluff and this chasm of the Cuyahoga River, which, again, historically caught on fire.
Speaker: And so that there was a poignancy to the location of that house and the specificity of the museum and the idea that the letter could be this connection and this talisman that's left from his father that could tie to his identity.
Speaker: the mail carrier character played by Dennis Haysbert, that was originated with the idea of a mail carrier that we don't necessarily know our mail carriers.
Speaker: This is a profession that knows our details intimately.
Speaker: They know our names, our addresses, everybody that lives in the house, whether we've gone on a Viking river cruise, and we don't know their names.
Speaker: We don't know their faces necessarily.
Speaker: And so this invisibility of the person that shows up on your doorstep every day was something that we really wanted to explore.
Speaker: And there's a whole inner life going on.
Speaker: There's a whole history.
Speaker: There are the dreams of this intimate stranger.
Speaker: that we thought would be very poignant in something that had the transparency.
Speaker: And there's also, there was an honesty and a purity and innocence, something that hadn't been jaded by the hardships of life and the hardships of his own personal history that we wanted to explore through the fragility and strength of something that was glass.
Speaker: That is truly the things that that appraisal by Martin Sheen explores towards the end of the film.
Speaker: I think listeners are going to be fully on board with the idea that antiques often carry deep personal meaning for their owners.
Speaker: Each of your main characters is struggling with loss.
Speaker: There's someone deceased or absent, and each of their objects somehow connects with the person that they're missing.
Speaker: And I'm curious whether you see a fundamental connection between antiques and laws.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we do.
Speaker: I think that is absolutely, that is one of the theses of this film is that the people who have left us
Speaker: their memories are entangled in these objects.
Speaker: And we decided to set the film.
Speaker: It's not a holiday film, but it's a holiday film.
Speaker: And, um, there's something really bittersweet about the holidays that most films often don't explore.
Speaker: Um, it's the, it's, it's the ornament left behind.
Speaker: Um, it, it is these physical, uh,
Speaker: Remnants and also rituals that we have that are really woven into that this particular time of year and.
Speaker: And I think for us.
Speaker: Exploring loss is really.
Speaker: it's really powerful through the lens of these objects and that that is something that we really truly wanted to explore.
Speaker: And loss doesn't have to be present loss.
Speaker: The Stacey Keech character is dealing with something that he's been going through
Speaker: through for the last 60 years and it's still so visceral for him.
Speaker: And these plates just serve as this reminder, this daily reminder for him.
Speaker: And so, you know, one,
Speaker: one storyline that we really reconcile with is loss and inheritance of a really uncomfortable collection.
Speaker: And the idea that even though this person, you know, held on to this, what would be,
Speaker: perceived as a very racist and complicated collection that, you know, just because they're gone doesn't mean we, we, the collection is gone too.
Speaker: We have to reconcile with the, with the,
Speaker: with the physical reality of them.
Speaker: And so these boxes just piling up in this one character's living room and then also in his psyche as well, the loss is kind of a state of mind and yeah, it's completely pervasive and it is critical to each storyline really.
Speaker: I was just going to share the personal story about Bubby's coin collection as a kind of like...
Speaker: antidote that when my grandmother in the 50s and 60s was working in a candy store, and so she would collect all the interesting coins that would come through, and she would switch them out for a contemporary quarter nickel, and she would put them in a cigar box.
Speaker: And that was meant to pay for her grandchildren's college education.
Speaker: And I ended up being the only grandchild.
Speaker: And I didn't need the collection for that.
Speaker: I got a free ride to college, which was great.
Speaker: But when she passed away, I held on to the coin collection.
Speaker: And when I got to be in my 30s, I said, oh, you know, I'm supposed to leave Cleveland.
Speaker: I need to move to New York.
Speaker: I'm supposed to be in the entertainment industry.
Speaker: But in order to afford that, I had to sell the coin collection.
Speaker: And the appraiser came to the house and it was very comical, actually, because he had broken his foot.
Speaker: Not that that's comical, but it kind of was because he had to, like, take the crutches and climb upstairs.
Speaker: His mother dropped him off at the house and he's sitting with his leg up and he's going through all of Bubby's coins in these cigar boxes strewn across the living room.
Speaker: And I'm like, I'm sorry.
Speaker: Selling off all of this.
Speaker: And I'm crying up on the balcony and my mom finds me and she says, what's wrong?
Speaker: And I said, that's my last connection to Bubby.
Speaker: It's outside of this wedding picture of hers that I took with me in the fire.
Speaker: That was the last physical connection I had to her.
Speaker: And my mom said, you would be honoring her dream.
Speaker: Her American dream was for her grandchildren to realize their own.
Speaker: And that is what the coin collection was for.
Speaker: It didn't have to be for your college education.
Speaker: If it meant you being able to move and start a new career, that's honoring her American dream is to pursue your own.
Speaker: And that ultimately is what led me personally to California, to meeting Marissa, to us working on this film, and to the physical realization of it at this point.
Speaker: And so for me personally, the film is my American dream and an honor to my grandmother and her own collecting that she did throughout my childhood and beforehand.
Speaker: Yeah, so you've been working on this film for quite a long time, as I said.
Speaker: I could say that.
Speaker: A lady never tells.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: But it is a labor of love for both of you, I think.
Speaker: And I'm curious to hear a little about the research process.
Speaker: You've mentioned some of these objects, the Greco-Roman plates, this problematic Aunt Jemima figurine collection, the glass vase that Martin Sheehan's character ends up appraising.
Speaker: And these are fairly sophisticated objects with fairly complex backstory.
Speaker: I mean, this vase is in the film, you connect it to the Vienna Secession, and Martin Sheen gives this sort of mini art history lecture about it, which I love, and which I think it's trusting your listeners maybe to give a shit, to have a bit of curiosity about
Speaker: actual art history.
Speaker: But I'd love to hear from your perspective what that process was like of sort of investigating and settling on these particular pieces.
Speaker: I mean, not to be one of those like, I took a lot of art history in college, but I really did.
Speaker: Oh, but your thesis, I am always obsessed with what Marissa's thesis was in college.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: I only get to bring this up at cocktail parties and when I slip teeth at five so that I can't hear it.
Speaker: But my thesis was around art and social change.
Speaker: And so the thesis that I ultimately did was about God, this is so boring.
Speaker: Italian, futurist art, and fascism.
Speaker: So that was really...
Speaker: I loved the connection between that.
Speaker: And I think that regardless of that specific case study, this is truly this is a case study in kind of the American condition and what we're dealing with as a society.
Speaker: And so to tag on to the other question about why did the objects come first or the characters, it's kind of, well, they
Speaker: they kind of informed each other.
Speaker: And so I think you're right.
Speaker: There is an erudite quality to some of the appraisals, but we trust our audience that we've earned this point in the film to kind of give the objects the weight that they deserve and the history that they deserve.
Speaker: And the problematic Aunt Jemima collection, for example, is,
Speaker: You know, this is something even I did a ton of research on spoke to a lot of experts in the field, and it was it was dangerous for us to even think that we could tackle the subject.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: We had to kind of roll up our sleeves and make sure that we were communicating kind of just the most honest representation of what these collections are, even though they're painful for some people, they're some people's childhood memories.
Speaker: pancake memories that, you know, as the audience, we have to trust them that, you know, I think that people kind of, it's a misnomer to think that art history is like, sophisticated and not for everybody.
Speaker: It is the story really of these objects.
Speaker: That's,
Speaker: that's the crux of art history.
Speaker: And so we like to give our audience a little bit of credit here that they, they have the ability to go there with us and that they want that.
Speaker: And that is really, you know, that's what's so fascinating about antiques roadshow is the demographics that it hits.
Speaker: It's, I was at a bridal shower of 30 year olds and everybody was talking about an episode of antiques roadshow.
Speaker: You know, it's not just,
Speaker: It is amazing.
Speaker: It hits.
Speaker: And that's why we really wanted to reflect that in the characters that we have.
Speaker: We have a nine year old boy and we have a 90 year old couple.
Speaker: And there's something about Antiques Roadshow that just appeals in this broad swath.
Speaker: But, you know, just to speak to the origin of the project and the research there, Keith and I interviewed
Speaker: several of the appraisers before we even attempted to write the script, because we really wanted to understand the world of the road show that, you know,
Speaker: the world of the Roadshow is separate from the world of Cleveland and these characters.
Speaker: And we wanted to understand the pacing and that there is this competition between appraisers, which is so funny and subtle.
Speaker: And you wouldn't know that necessarily from watching the show that they're vying for spots.
Speaker: But we really, you know, the mobile reference library that we have
Speaker: got to learn a lot about.
Speaker: I don't know if it's maybe modernized itself since we originally wrote the script, but it was really a library of books.
Speaker: And that is fascinating.
Speaker: And that's why people, I think, are going to be really excited to see the film is because we did such an accurate depiction of what the actual roadshow was like.
Speaker: So it is a peeling back of the curtain for super fans.
Speaker: And there's something Marissa and I often say, the biggest goal, and you kind of said this, Ben, in watching the film, is we are hoping that audiences will laugh and cry at the same time.
Speaker: That's been our experience in the screenings.
Speaker: And that would be the greatest testament and the highest compliment as an audience reaction to the film, because that is the most human thing possible.
Speaker: Experiencing it just in the last week, Marissa and I, that in the darkest moments of the lives that Marissa and I have shared, there is always that one moment where we start laughing, because it is so intense that it is almost like the release valve.
Speaker: And there was something in the appraisals themselves, even the seriousness of
Speaker: The themes of the Greco-Roman plates and this kind of the will character of Stacey Keech being, you know, an antiquity within his own neighborhood as the world changes around him and nothing is quite what it seems for somebody who's, you know, on onset dementia.
Speaker: But, you know, exploring what the themes and subject matters were for Greco-Roman plates.
Speaker: Like, this is very human.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: the kinds of depictions on there that the letter of William McKinley, he didn't write much, but he did have this family in Cleveland and he was a commissary sergeant.
Speaker: He wasn't out there in the battlefields like as a general, you know, leading the charge.
Speaker: He was out there serving coffee like it.
Speaker: There is this kind of added layer of ridiculousness and absurdity that's all based in truth that I think is just a kind of fascinating mix that brings a relatability and an accessibility that at one level is erudite and then at the other level is about as human as one can get.
Speaker: I would love to hear a little about the props that you used for these pieces.
Speaker: Well, let's start with the easy ones.
Speaker: So the hero vase that's appraised by Martin Sheen is actually an early modernism.
Speaker: I can't say that it's specifically from the Wiener Secession, but it is of that time period.
Speaker: And it was from Vienna and arrived right before the filming.
Speaker: The giant statue of Juno and actually the giant cookie jar were made by our amazing props in our department.
Speaker: So they are physically- As were the plates.
Speaker: As were the plates, yeah.
Speaker: As was the letter, frankly.
Speaker: So a lot of them were actually created by the props department.
Speaker: You should have seen the earlier version of the plates.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Actually, after we filmed, we were like, this isn't quite graphic enough.
Speaker: And then the giant collection is, you know, those were real as well.
Speaker: The cooking jars.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: What some, I mean, no spoilers, but one piece turns out to be fake.
Speaker: Obviously that's disappointing for the character who owns it, but maybe it's also a humbling sort of learning experience.
Speaker: I wonder if you can relate to that experience somehow or sort of where the emotional foundation for that comes from.
Speaker: Oh, of course.
Speaker: I mean, I think that that is if you didn't have one of those moments at the end of this film, I think you'd be almost disappointed as a as a viewer, because that's why we watch the road show.
Speaker: Of course, we watch for the storytelling, but we also want to know what the value is.
Speaker: And we're kind of all clutching our pearls until we get there.
Speaker: And so it's fun to see kind of.
Speaker: one of them has to explode in your face.
Speaker: But my, my grandmother, who I adored, got married seven times and she had these Indonesian figurines from her, I want to say fourth honeymoon.
Speaker: And so we were all convinced that they were worth a ton of money.
Speaker: And then when Keith and I went to the road show ourselves, we went Palm Springs one year, we, we,
Speaker: we brought them and they, uh, they were not worth anything, but they were worth a hundred dollars.
Speaker: But, you know, at the end of the day, it's really just like an opportunity for me to tell you how much I love my grandmother and what a wild ride she was and what a fun person she was.
Speaker: And so there's no loss.
Speaker: And I think the, uh, the value of the, of the object, not being, you know, the financial, the,
Speaker: That's why we watch the feedback booth at the end of the roadshow where people are say, you know, well, I thought this was going to be worth $2,000, but it was $20.
Speaker: And I came here and, and I had a great time.
Speaker: And that's what, that's what we hope the audience will get from this film also.
Speaker: So for an audience like the Curious Objects audience, who are generally, I think, safe to say passionate about antiques, what would you hope for them to take away from this film about the objects that they treasure and the significance of those pieces in the broader cultural narrative?
Speaker: Well, the only thing that immediately comes to mind for me is this experience of the fire evacuation, which will then be history as listeners are listening in the future.
Speaker: But when I was driving away and on the phone with Marissa, I really wasn't thinking about the
Speaker: the houses much or the furniture.
Speaker: It was the pieces that were tied to my own history and identity and the things that were tied to the loved ones that were no longer with us.
Speaker: So it really was my grandfather's cufflink collection.
Speaker: It really was
Speaker: The pictures that I drew as a second grader that Mrs. Gibbons, who really was a very influential person in my life, would grade with an A plus to encourage me to keep drawing and writing, you know, and that I really give her testament to the career path that I took in the rest of my life was this one teacher on one day.
Speaker: And the prospect of, you know, you're watching the flames behind your head as you're driving away thinking you'll never be back home, that it's those things, those touchstones, those talismans that connect us that –
Speaker: potential of them evaporating and not being able to have them again.
Speaker: It was the weight of the meaning that those objects had in my own personal life that overshadowed any other material possession.
Speaker: It wasn't about their monetary value, really.
Speaker: Honestly, it really was about the emotional and spiritual value that they had.
Speaker: I would say, you know, listeners of this podcast, like this movie is for you.
Speaker: It's really a love letter to people like I want to say us.
Speaker: And it's just a lot of fun.
Speaker: I think that it's a lot of fun about a very specific world and a world that we all treasure.
Speaker: And I just hope you enjoy it.
Speaker: That would be meaningful for us.
Speaker: So for listeners who are now sold and want to see this movie, when and how can they do that?
Speaker: The movie's going to be coming out in theaters.
Speaker: We are waiting to announce the official release date, but it'll be probably sometime in November.
Speaker: So we can't wait for people to
Speaker: go to theaters and have an experience.
Speaker: I just to expand on that, I think you films are really targeted for people who care about things who have the attention span in the depth.
Speaker: I think Hollywood is really underestimated what viewers are hungry for.
Speaker: And I think if you have a passion for this subject matter, you have a passion for storytelling and there's something that, um,
Speaker: can't really be replaced by the communal experience of going to the theater and seeing something for the first time.
Speaker: So in terms of preservation, Keith and I really care about preserving the theater experience.
Speaker: So it'll first start out there and to be followed by streaming.
Speaker: Well, Keith and Marissa, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.
Speaker: It's been a lot of fun and a huge congratulations on the film, which again, I just adored.
Speaker: And I can't wait for it to come out this fall.
Speaker: It's going to be very exciting to see the kind of momentum that that builds around this little funny little world that we all care about.
Speaker: Thanks for such a joyful conversation.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with web support from Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Christine Hildebrand is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
