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010 - The Hearts of Age (1934) w/ Samuel Dumas
50 Plays7 months ago
“It was a send-up, Peter – a charade. Sunday-afternoon fun out on the lawn.”
Get ready, class, because we’ve brought in our first guest lecturer - amateur filmmaker and technical director for The Department of Menial Humor, Samuel Dumas - to discuss Welles’s first foray into filmmaking with the 1934 short film The Hearts of Age. We discuss this film’s surrealist influences, the parallels with Welles’s later work (especially his final film The Other Side of the Wind), and finally get into the details of Stephen’s fabled Wellesian bachelor party!
Homework for next week - ‘Voodoo’ MacBeth - https://youtu.be/9wmWBki06yc
Find our guest lecturer, Samuel Dumas, and his work in the following places:
- @iamyourpallbearer on Instagram
- Follow The Department of Menial Humor on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
- Watch Sam’s short films Epochs of Love and Eyes on You
Follow us on our (admittedly limited) socials to keep up with assignments and other exciting Welles-related news:
- @wellesupod on Bluesky and YouTube
- Email us at wellesupod@gmail.com to let us know how we’re doing!
- Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
- Read Hope’s blog at highimhope.com
- Listen to Hope’s other podcasts - High on Cartoons Presents DuckTakes!, The Matrix Reclamations, and The Lanes Between
- Follow Stephen at @chewywalrus on Bluesky and Letterboxd
- Listen to Stephen’s other podcasts - Disenfranchised Podcast and The Pod and the Pendulum
- Check out Stephen’s novel - Check In, Check Out - on Amazon, now available in paperback or ebook: https://amzn.to/44idk8y
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Mercury Theater and Orson Welles
00:00:01
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction... I don't think any words can explain a man's life. The broadcasting system and its affiliated station presents... Columbia Network takes pride in presenting... Rogue Spud.
00:00:12
Speaker
We take you now to Grover Mills, New Jersey. Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts... There's a voice. Just a voice. I never really saw him.
00:00:26
Speaker
He was only the hero, horse and well a great lover, horses well and a dirty dog. Good morning, this is Orson Welles speaking. How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? This is Orson Welles. This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen. This is Orson Welles speaking.
00:00:42
Speaker
Well, here it is. If anybody wants to see it. All right. That was the bell. Everybody come on in. Take your seats. Class is in session. Welcome back to Wells University. am one of your TAs, Stephen
Podcast Setup and Introductions
00:00:55
Speaker
Foxworthy. My pronouns, he, him.
00:00:57
Speaker
I am another one of your TAs, Hope Stow, she, her. And this is the but class slash podcast all about the life and work of Orson Welles. And we are now into, for the third straight week, into capital T, the capital W, work. And to join us for this auspicious third week of the work, ah we have our first guest lecturer, ah one of the masterminds behind the Department of Menial Humor.
00:01:26
Speaker
ah It is my good friend, Mr. Samuel Dumas. Samuel, welcome. Hello! How's everyone doing? Doing very well. Welcome to welcome to the class. i we We are very excited to have you. I invited you on for this episode for one very specific reason, and I told you at the time exactly what it was.
00:01:46
Speaker
um the The first time that I saw this movie was the first time that Sam saw this movie. We saw it together. Aww. And it was... It was at the an event that I that I've only mentioned before, but we will talk about much more in depth later on ah my bachelor party, my Wells themed bachelor party.
Personal Connections to Orson Welles
00:02:08
Speaker
So oh yeah ah Sam and I experienced that together on a giant screen at the Indian Apple, Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Yep.
00:02:21
Speaker
And I was introduced to what was going to become my favorite movie of all time. i was I was going to say, this is an eight-minute movie. is This is going to be a short episode. And then I'm realizing, oh, no, I want to hear all about that. How late can I stay up tonight? I was going to say, that's the question you read. Because we're about... can stop my wall off for an energy drink tomorrow morning. That's fine. There you go. That's fine. That's spirit.
00:02:42
Speaker
Just like a real college student.
00:02:46
Speaker
Reliving those glory days. Love that for you. And we are here, of course, today to discuss what Orson Welles' first film, a film short about eight minutes long called The Hearts of Age, which was filmed in 1964.
Accuracy in Discussing Welles' Work
00:03:01
Speaker
Not really seen by the public until 1960. Okay.
00:03:07
Speaker
um yeah kate Real quick point of order. You said that it was filmed in 1964 and then released in 19... I'm sorry. 34. You're going to get tweets. No. Yeah. No, you're right. And you're, you, you, you are right to say it.
00:03:20
Speaker
You said it and you're right to do so. um I'm bad and I should feel bad. And I do. um Okay. Well, let's extrapolate a little
Research and Resources on Orson Welles
00:03:29
Speaker
from that. Tell me if you want to tell me about your childhood.
00:03:31
Speaker
It all started when I was born. Yeah.
00:03:36
Speaker
um So before we jump into the work proper, I do want to ah ah reveal our resources for the episode. ah This episode, I'm using a lot from Frank Brady's Citizen Wells, probably the primary ah source for this episode, ah but also pulling from Simon Callow's Orson Welles Volume 1, The Road to Xanadu, and Patrick McGilligan's Young Orson, as well as quotes pulled as needed from the Peter Bogdanovich Orson Welles interview book, This is Orson Welles.
00:04:07
Speaker
along with Wikipedia and the Wells net archives. covered my bases. And the reason I had to do that this week is because as we were talking about just before recording, prompting hope to say, Hey, we should be recording this.
00:04:19
Speaker
yeah um There's like nothing about this, this film. anyway like The most, any of the biographies has to say about it is McGilligan, who is again, notoriously long winded two pages.
00:04:31
Speaker
kids Kids, just like Stephen was like bragging, not bragging, like worrying almost about ah how much extra homework he did for this episode.
00:04:42
Speaker
And i but I'm opening the notes in trepidation, being like, oh my God, it's eight minutes. It's going to be bad if he's doing this much extra homework. It's three pages. It's three pages.
00:04:54
Speaker
we We've done 10-page episode notes before. So, like yeah. Yeah. like
00:05:01
Speaker
This episode is called The Hearts of Age. It's going to be partially about that. Yeah. I watched the eight-minute short film. I watched the... And I watched three of the films that inspired it.
00:05:12
Speaker
um Unchi and Andalou by Louis Bunuel. um The Blood of a Poet by Jean Cocteau. And The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Vina. And the three of those...
Influences on Orson Welles
00:05:25
Speaker
the four of those films probably took me...
00:05:28
Speaker
i Someone could have watched one of the Lord of the Rings extended editions. They could have started it before I started watching those films and ended it after. i could have fit my entire viewing experience into one of those films.
00:05:40
Speaker
um it Not a lot. ah Blood of a Poet is 50 minutes. Hearts of Age is 8. Unshin Andaloo 16. And then um Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is probably the longest at like... 75? 75.
00:05:55
Speaker
seventy five and want be five Yeah. so i mean 74! I was close. ha ha ah So close. ah But yeah, it was this was um I did a lot of extra work, but it it didn't really feel like work.
00:06:09
Speaker
so a Well, when you love what you do. I feel unprepared. I literally rewatched the short film at work like six hours ago. i was like, oh yeah, podcast. What's this movie about again?
00:06:21
Speaker
Oh yeah. I'm a fucking part of this podcast and I did this and Doctor to dr of Caligari. Cabinet of... Motherfucker. I did the Caligari one last night.
00:06:34
Speaker
um So, yeah. like i um You must become Caligari. i so I must become Caligari. Yeah. Okay, so one, before we really get into the meat of this episode, I have terrible news that means more work for me.
00:06:51
Speaker
And yeah, and side note, Stephen, I'm just realizing this now. Did you take what I did with the Dune episode of Disenfranchised years ago and decide to apply that to just everything we do for this show?
00:07:07
Speaker
No, that's a happy accident. Four or five things of Dune and read several books for one episode. Yeah. Okay. All right. Happy accident. So as listeners will already have known by this point, if you're if you're just tuning in to this episode, why?
00:07:25
Speaker
um I guess for for Sam. For Sam. There you go. Hi. sam And it's because it's the first movie. Like we've got, you know, double duty here. No, you're right. You're right. That's very fair. That's very fair.
00:07:36
Speaker
um Eight minute short film involving blackface wouldn't be my jumping on point. You know what I mean? Nor mine, but yeah you do but some different people have different metrics by which they measure the significance of different works.
00:07:49
Speaker
But as you may or may not know by this point, I am a huge fan of the War of the Worlds. And that's kind of why I got into Orson Welles to begin with. And just this past week, a new adaptation of the War of the Worlds dropped.
00:08:05
Speaker
You didn't. No, of course I didn't watch it. If I can give myself an out to watch of watching it, I'm going to get out of it. But what I'm saying is I feel like for completionist's sake now, because I do go to fucking Grover's Mill every October.
00:08:21
Speaker
i yeah i feel like I feel like I need to watch that because we're going to be coming up on our War of the Worlds episode within the next 18 months. It's very topical right now.
00:08:34
Speaker
it's very topable right now There's a lot that can be said about society. if you've seen Do you know how the movie ends? ah Which movie? The Ice-T movie? is The Ice Cube movie? The one that came out? No, i I know as little about that. i do The thing I know about that, Sam, is that it's bad.
00:08:52
Speaker
I cannot. and you You need to incorporate it into your age your War of the Worlds H.E. Wells podcast. im i'm I'm going to have to. You're going to have to. It's so much worse than you actually could imagine. It is actually worse than anything you can imagine. It's evil.
00:09:07
Speaker
That's how much worse it is. Oh, no. No, I definitely don't want to watch it Yeah, it's to make you depressed about it. Yeah. Yeah, fine. Well, I have a terrific workaround.
00:09:21
Speaker
War of the Worlds. Yo-ho, yo-ho. for me She's doing it live on the podcast. that there' That's how flagrantly... That's the flagrant disregard Hope has for the rules. It's streaming on Amazon. I was purely checking to see if I was still logged into Bex's account.
00:09:43
Speaker
And I certainly wasn't going to any alternative... ah Do I have to add a 2025? Is that the secret? Yeah, probably. So while Hope does that... 720p, fuck off! Alright, sorry.
00:09:59
Speaker
so
00:10:02
Speaker
That's not going to look good on the wall. i am such a goddamn... You know what? Bex... This is probably TMI, but Bex calls me a size queen in this one specific respect.
00:10:13
Speaker
I need to have... Big screen! 4K! Bigger! Just, yeah. Yeah, make an audio clip of that, kids. That's somebody something. ah Tucker, isolate that audio so we can all have it available as like a ah downloadable ringtone.
00:10:30
Speaker
I'm so glad that I'm never running for public office. Jesus Christ. You and me both. oh Not unless everybody gets real cool with a lot of shit real fast.
00:10:42
Speaker
that There it is. Christ alive. All right. So Sam, you and I have known each other for quite some time, for several years now. We mesh pretty much immediately due to our love of film and love of movies. In fact, we hosted...
00:10:57
Speaker
Once upon a long time ago, in the deep, dark corners of the internet that we all would prefer to forget existed, ah once hosted a podcast together ah in which we discussed movies.
00:11:08
Speaker
In fact, we covered the cabinet of Dr. Caligari on one of the episodes of that podcast. um I would have listened to that had I known, son of bitch. I can forward you a link. I don't do late now.
00:11:20
Speaker
I don't remember that. <unk> it was It was a different time for all of us. we were very different people. Were we doing were we doing a thing where we were drinking like Southern Comfort and Code Red Mountain Dew mixed like by the gallon?
00:11:35
Speaker
You did that frequently, yes. yeah okay I didn't do that because I had self-respect. ah But you did that a lot. um But ah Sam, what is your kind of experience with Orson Welles, with his work? Since this is an Orson Welles podcast, ah introduce yourself to the class a little bit. Kind of what is your history with this with this figure?
00:11:55
Speaker
What is your current relationship with him, cetera, et cetera? Well, my first Orson Welles movie was Heart of the Age. That's not true. Yes, it is. Wait, was it really? It was. For real?
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah. This was your on-board point? Yeah. This? Yeah. Yeah. I guess I guess that if if you hadn't watched any Orson Welles until The Bachelor Party, then yeah, I guess it would have to be true.
00:12:18
Speaker
It's true. Yep. ah My I like Orson Welles a lot, actually. He's made two of my favorite movies of all time. Touch of Evil and The Other Side of the Wind. The Other Side of the Wind being my favorite movie of all time.
00:12:29
Speaker
i Really like the ah Chimes at Midnight. I love that movie. Chimes at Midnight rules. Yeah. does Magnificent Ambersons, right? Ambersons. Yep. Love that movie to death. I'm not gonna lie. I could take or leave ah the one Citizen Kane.
00:12:44
Speaker
yeah I know. I get it. it's Always gotta be a contrarian. Look, it's fine. Other Side of the Wind does what it did and much better. And to higher, a more interesting extent to me.
00:12:56
Speaker
like i like Like, Other Side of the Wind is the same movie as Citizen Kane. And it's like execution. see what you're saying. The subject matter is more interesting to me than that of Citizen Kane. A lot of Citizen Kane's subject matter is kind of irrelevant nowadays. It's just more interesting if you're in that part of history, I feel like.
00:13:16
Speaker
And it's critiques and commentaries on this stuff going there. it's I mean, wonderfully shot. It's a good movie. I enjoy it. But that's where I'm at with Orson Welles. Those are, I think, are the only ones I've seen. Oh, I did see Lady of Shanghai. was going to say another one we covered for the Old Rule 3rd podcast. remember that. I like that. I like that one lot. I crammed in as much Welles as I could onto that podcast. Oh, you know what? This isn't my first. ah Transformers, the animated movie, was actually my first introduction to Orson Welles.
00:13:42
Speaker
One of Hope's touchstones. Here's the deal. Here's the deal. Oh, no. Oh, no. I didn't see it until I was like 24. That movie is insane. Yeah. no Imagine being a kid and watching you it because like that movie is actually insane and it has permanently changed me in ways that I'm still figuring out.
00:14:00
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Yeah. That movie is a lot weirder than it is. Okay. Yeah. Nothing weird. Nothing than weird. like I'm just saying. It's just the the narration. Orson Welles did amazing job as Unicron. I mean, it was scary. It was awesome. Absolutely. One of the coolest villains of all time.
00:14:16
Speaker
We have a Unicron clip in our our opening theme music. I was going to say, like, I am so stupidly proud of how I managed to figure out how to stitch together. I am Unicron.
00:14:26
Speaker
Oh, oh, oh, I gave myself a present there. Ah.
00:14:34
Speaker
Sometimes so you just happy little accidents. You know, it's, yeah. it yeah that Yeah. It's always nice when it happens good. That opening theme started off as like a minute and 26 seconds long.
00:14:47
Speaker
And then over the next two weeks, I just sliced it shorter and shorter and shorter. All of the content is in, but I just sliced more and more pieces out of it. Just shaved.
00:14:57
Speaker
It's now like 46 seconds long. Yeah. I'm very proud of that. You should be very proud of it. It's wonderful. Yeah, there's like 30 or 40 tracks in there. Jesus Christ. This is a good time to shout out our our producer and the composer of our end theme, Tucker, um who was in here earlier checking our mic levels. Thanks, Tucker, and is editing this episode before you get to listen to it. So thank you Tucker, for all you do.
00:15:20
Speaker
All right, Tucker, I'm going to put a note down for you to stitch in 1427. Fanfare for the common... twenty seven fanfare for the common Man. There go. So you can, so that's for you, man. Thank you. you you make this make sense. The common man and we fanfare you. Wait, what?
00:15:44
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, that's not going to happen. item i Let's just go back to battle him, man. yeah that was we We did that four weeks ago, Hope. Or as of as of the day we're recording this episode, today is when that episode is coming out. And then, of course, we recorded it we recorded it like several several weeks ago Time means nothing to me any Time is irrelevant, yeah. um So let's let's talk a little ah Hearts of Age. So last last week we did, we kind of
00:16:16
Speaker
worked around ah um this project because Everybody's Shakespeare starts in late 1933. It ends in December of 1934.
00:16:27
Speaker
um Everything having to do with this film takes place in the summer of 1934. Hope, did we do our What Happened in History in 1934? last step we Last class? and we yeah I was leafing through it before we started recording, and I remember those historical events happening because they're also kind of happening today. I'm like, oh, this is easy to remember.
00:16:50
Speaker
um One of my favorite posts on Blue Sky this week was, whoever would have thought that our Reichstag fire would be the big balls beat down? ah um We live in hell.
00:17:01
Speaker
um First as a tragedy, then as a farce. It just... Correct. I mean, it's a tragic farce, like when a clown dies. Yeah.
00:17:17
Speaker
Got her. Got her with that one. Oh, I am not emotionally well. Thank you. Thank you. none of us. Who among us, Hope, who literally who among us right now is emotionally stable or well?
00:17:30
Speaker
I'm hurting 30 in a few months and I just got my belly button pierced. So let's check out who is going through midlife crises. Oh, yeah I love that for you. I'm finally the teenage girl I always wanted to be. so Good for you. that that is Honestly, that is very exciting. I am very excited for you. That's awesome. very i also You can't really see it, but I dyed my hair blue because you got to have blue hair.
00:17:50
Speaker
ah So, yeah. oh that was a joke for like four people. I think Steve and The casual Homestar Runner references are always going to get me. You got to have blue hair.
00:18:01
Speaker
got to have blue hair.
00:18:04
Speaker
um mouth tiny when closed enormously huge when it's open um we will just spin this into a strong bad podcast yeah ah yeah yeah we we were debating covering another filmmaker when we finished with Orson Welles no we'll just do all the home stars
00:18:24
Speaker
first off I'm pretty sure that's already being done i don't care we'll do it again yeah okay we'll do it again and a lot worse There you go. There you go. As is our want.
00:18:35
Speaker
We can do this, but dumber. um We won't talk to any of the original creatives. So Hearts of Age, I did not know what to expect when I hit play on this thing earlier. Right.
00:18:47
Speaker
right Yeah, because you were the only one that hadn't seen it before this. As I've said several times on this podcast before, and will continue to do so, a good chunk of the reason why I wanted to do this podcast was so I had an excuse to watch all of the Orson Welles and listen to all of the Orson Welles that I haven't done so before because I hate watching things by myself.
00:19:10
Speaker
it Movies are a communal experience for me and i discovered a compulsion in making podcasts about movies. um I just took another job on my other other podcast as hosting another sub podcast. So I think I'm up to seven or eight by this point.
00:19:29
Speaker
I was going to say, as the chief flies, yes. It is a problem. ah So, but yeah. at least you At least hope you are self-aware enough to recognize you have a problem. Whether or not you do anything about it is the next step.
00:19:44
Speaker
Well, that's this podcast. This is a 10-year program. At least. And I'm going to be, within 10 years, I am going to be completely clean of Orson Welles. made i will I will never be clean of Orson Welles.
00:19:58
Speaker
I'm wearing my Orson Welles t-shirt right now. i have seen you in that shirt more than I've seen you, I think, in any other shirt. Anytime you wear that shirt, you send me a selfie, which I appreciate. Yeah.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um So it is the summer of 1934. Orson decides at 19 years old with some financial assistance from his mentor, Roger Skipper Hill, and some artistic assistance from his visiting Irish friends, ah Michael McLiamore and Hilton Edwards, ah decides to stage a summer stock theater program in Woodstock, Illinois, featuring three plays. ah Hamlet.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yes, that Hamlet. Czar Paul. i don't I've ever heard of it. Uh, Zar Paul, which is 1906 tragedy by a Russian novelist, Dmitry Marachovsky about Paul the first of Russia and most relevant to our discussion today, Trilby, which is an 1895 play based on a George Dumourier novel, about an artist's model who falls victim to Svengali. Yes, that Svengali, uh, who hypnotizes her to leave her fiance and become a singer.
00:21:09
Speaker
yeah, Did I research all of those plays on Wikipedia? I did, yes. That is a thing that I did because, remarkably, the books have very little information on Zar Paul and Trilby, and you might be surprised to know this.
00:21:23
Speaker
Those aren't plays that are routinely performed anymore. So...
00:21:29
Speaker
im yeah i'm sure I'm really particularly shocked at that. yeah However, i mean, Trilby, Trilby's only, I feel like, lasting impact is introducing us to the word Svengali as kind of this hypnotic cultish figure.
00:21:45
Speaker
um And of course, ah you know, Orson plays the role in the play um and of course plays him probably as most actors at the time had as very stereotypically Jewish.
00:21:57
Speaker
ah We talked a lot about stereotypical Jewish roles last week we talked about short Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. And Orson, of course, is just doubling down, as Orson Welles is wont to do.
00:22:09
Speaker
um He casts McClemore as Little Billy, the fiancé of Trilby, and Edwards as Taffy, Trilby's pat ah patron, and an actress named Louise Prussing as the titular Trilby.
00:22:21
Speaker
Um... William Vance, who is a handsome young actor from Freeport, Illinois, is given principal roles in all three of the Summerstock productions. ah But I don't know what roles he played because I could not find that information anymore. But Vance will become a central figure in this tale as well. Tell us your secrets.
00:22:40
Speaker
Tell us your secrets. As well as will our next figure of fascination, a young actress in the role of Angèle, a grissette or a worker woman, 17-year-old Virginia Nicholson, daughter of a prominent family from Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
00:23:00
Speaker
um And as any 19-year-old would when he casts 17-year-old in a role... oh ah Wells would become enamored of Nicholson, making her assistant stage manager and showing her extra attention, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.
00:23:18
Speaker
Stephen, like, I... I think we lost power or something like that while we were recording our um marching song episode. But do you remember that YouTube clip I ah sent you of Orson Welles talking about the Battle Hymn of the Republic?
00:23:32
Speaker
I put it in the show notes. Yes. yeah Okay, good, good. and Well, I don't know if you watched it, but like... um Good. matt night I knew you would, but like at the same time, just, just to remind the listeners, ah the students, sorry.
00:23:45
Speaker
um Where am I? ah But there's a moment where ah Orson like gets a little too horny for a woman that has been dead for probably 50 60 years by that point. When did Julia Ward, how kick it?
00:24:06
Speaker
But like, um Oh, he's he he he's turning up the heat for sure. He like boy gets horny on Maine.
00:24:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's was kind of his thing. It's boy, Orson. i We will talk about it later. But in in his in his later years, he and in fact, the other side of the wind isn't is an excuse for him to basically parade around his hot girlfriend and go, look how hot my girlfriend is.
00:24:33
Speaker
I mean, that's also most of f for fake, but yeah, yeah. Correct. Yeah. I'm agreeing with you, but like, come on, Orson. Like the woman has been dead for a while. ah But here's the thing. Orson didn't get horny in his movies until Oya Kodar.
00:24:49
Speaker
Oh, that's fair. Okay. I think, I think she, I think she kind of opened him up a little bit. Like he was always kind of horny off main, but then like later in life, he, and I think then that is from later in his life, probably when he and Oya were dating, he does get significantly hornier on main for sure.
00:25:07
Speaker
Great. I'm so excited for that. So we have that to look forward to. Sam, your thoughts on Oya Kodar's ah deployment in Other Side of the Wind? It perfectly executed.
00:25:18
Speaker
I do feel bad watching it because she was very much against the movie releasing. So I kind of feel bad. it's like Oh, really? Yeah, she was. She fought really hard to make sure it never got released.
00:25:29
Speaker
Oh, I guess I didn't know that. That's very interesting. We'll talk more about that in 20 years when we have you on for the other side of the window. Yeah. That one, love that we're having... Oh, look. I...
00:25:42
Speaker
oh i look i look i I wanted to have you on sooner than later. And I knew the other side of the wind was, I didn't want to wait to have to the other side of the wind to have you on the podcast.
00:25:53
Speaker
So I figure hearts of age, we saw that together and then watching hearts of age and reading about hearts of age and meditating on hearts of age. I'm like, there, there's a lot in common between the other side of the wind and hearts of age. So I want to get to the, I'm kind of trying to blaze through the background so we can start talking about the work proper. So we can start talking about among other things, those similarities, but yeah, um yeah Because i I know you'll have a lot more to say on that regard. So yeah i'm I'm trying to trying to get through this as quickly as possible so we can get to that.
00:26:20
Speaker
um July 12th, 1934, Trilby opens to delighted audiences and critics, ah many of whom were quite laudatory regarding Wells' no doubt stereotypical performance of the Jewish Svengali.
00:26:33
Speaker
McCleomore, however, would say of his protege's performance, his Svengali lacked grace and humor. He was a lowly barbarian. ah which, I mean, go off, Michael, I guess.
00:26:50
Speaker
And of course, much to the chagrin of her parents, Nicholson ah began to... um uh, began a show romance with Wells, uh, during the production, uh, even went so far as to cancel her own debutante ball in favor of rehearsing Trilby with Orson and the rest of the cast.
00:27:07
Speaker
Um, like her parents had a big, like coming out affair as was the style at the time. um And she's like, no, thanks. I'm in a play. And ah basically said, sorry, I have rehearsal, ah which is the thing that every person involved in the theater. Hi, hello, it's me.
00:27:22
Speaker
Has had say at one point in their life when friends are making plans. No, sorry, can't. I have rehearsal. Yeah. And um at at the time, Nicholson was one of the charges, one of about a dozen girls placed in the charge of Hortense Hill, Horty, the wife of Roger Hill, the headmaster of Todd's school.
00:27:43
Speaker
And so in order to avoid a scandal, um and to protect the uh what what she ah presumed was still the innocence of young virginia um hill did her best to kind of chaperone them and keep them from as she would put it getting that way which i think is the best way to say that uh that i've heard in a very long time christ that's incredible right getting that way and getting that way yeah if you know what i mean and i think you do I think got our kick-ass title for a hot new romantic comedy that we have to pitch here.
00:28:18
Speaker
We can set it in 1930s Illinois. I love this. It's the movie Cockblockers, but it's in the 1930s. We have our pitch. i this is I love everything we're doing right now. This is great. 10 out of 10, no notes.
00:28:35
Speaker
Oh, Christ. Getting saying that way. Getting that way. Summer 2026. um When Wells and William Vance decided they were going to make a silent film with Vance's 16 millimeter film camera.
00:28:52
Speaker
there is. He was in it for the camera. All right. Come on, Wells. She got the hardware. ah That's the worst possible way I could have said that. Jesus God. Yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
um and that That's the sequel to Getting That Way. She got the hardware. There it is. okay Getting That Way 2, colon, she got the hardware. Horty eagerly agreed to the use of the Hill home as a filming location as a means of acting as a chaperone to the young lovers.
00:29:24
Speaker
That's my narrator voice, kids. Good luck with that. This is amazing. Good cry. will say the the the shit or the the candelabra that Wells is holding later in the film with the ah crystals dangling off, it was actually a family heirloom of Hortense's that she very, very reluctantly let Orson borrow for the for the filming of the movie. Oh, Orson. Those are the links to which she wanted to go to keep the two of them from getting that way.
00:29:52
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That. Okay. Well, get it. Hey, guess what? Now we just, this is the movie. We just shoot this. These kids trying to make a movie in 1934.
00:30:06
Speaker
There it is. <unk> Based on true events. Yeah. We won't say which ones, though. Nope. I do want to try to get to Woodstock and see if I can find some of the filming locations for this movie, though. yeah Oh, God, that'd be fantastic.
00:30:22
Speaker
That would be really fun. um The short film, which was called, of course, Hearts of Age, was shot over the course of a Sunday afternoon ah without a script or really even a plan. um There was a spirit of improvisation and spontaneity to the shoot with Wells and Vance basically... say Throwing out various ideas and suggestions for new shots on the fly, like, hey, what if we took this angle? Or, hey, what if we try this?
00:30:46
Speaker
um Per per brady Frank Brady, author of Citizen Wells, Wells and Vance might have had some idea of a plot, but it is difficult looking at the film now to see how one scene or piece of action connects with another, let alone to understand the film's nuances or substance.
00:31:03
Speaker
ah which i would say might be the point, but we'll get to that when we talk about the work. um Wells is, I hope i'm going to let you read this Wells quote.
00:31:15
Speaker
um Okay. Sorry, I'm skipping Wikipedia. ah Wells is on later thoughts on the film in conversation with Peter Bogdanovich. Hang on. I got a wet the whistle.
00:31:27
Speaker
I was a sender, Peter. A charade. a Sunday afternoon fun out on the lawn. I don't care for much for surrealism on the screen. Never did. I've always been pretty much anti-surrealist, but it was a put-on.
00:31:38
Speaker
Roger Hill had a movie camera. Simple as that. um So there's Orson did this. Yeah. yeah I mean, yes. Cause, cause he wanted to get that way. um Absolute fuck boy energy.
00:31:54
Speaker
My God. I cannot wait for our Orson Welles fuck boy episode. I don't know when we're going to do that, but we have an episode planned called Orson Welles fuck boy. um God, I love you. That's amazing.
00:32:07
Speaker
ah inspired hope inspired you heard it here first folks it's that what you can't it's it is not inspired it's the dumbest possible way to do that and that's why it's inspired hope that's why i really hate that i seem to have unlocked my true potential by thinking creatively like how can i make this dumber ah interesting okay I hate that that seems to have brought out the best in me. that's's That's what makes this podcast great is like Orson would often do. It's highbrow and lowbrow together as one.
00:32:41
Speaker
And that's that's what makes us great is because we have an appreciation for both.
00:32:49
Speaker
Okay. Well, now I kind of want to do a Bill and Ted episode, but um just highbrow and lowbrow at the same time. What's the dumbest way to tell a time travel story? Yep.
00:33:01
Speaker
Tell it with stoners who never smoke weed. um Are they gay? No.
00:33:08
Speaker
Bye. i this is This is a polycule at the very least, right? yeah where oh yeah You got Bill, Ted, and the and the two hot princesses? Yeah, that's a polycule.
00:33:20
Speaker
You know those two have never lived apart from one another. and then And then death is there. yes Yes. There. Death.
00:33:30
Speaker
played by William Sadler in a hilarious parody of Ingmar Bergman. um God bless that fucking weird movie. um
00:33:41
Speaker
Contrary to Wells' account, and Brady asserts that it was Vance, not Hill, who provided the film camera for the filming of the Hearts of Age. This is Orson Welles.
00:33:52
Speaker
ah Thank you. Tiao, this is Orson Welles' editor, Jonathan Rosenbaum, asserts, i I abbreviate the titles of the books in the notes. And so this is Orson Welles is T-I-O-W or T-I-O.
00:34:07
Speaker
Caught me off guard when I was cold. I had a feeling it might. Last piece of – not last note here – is um Basically, the film was thought to be lost media for decades until a film scholar, later Professor Russell Merritt, would find a copy among some of Vance's effects that had been donated to the public library in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1960.
00:34:31
Speaker
And that's why we have it today. um Were it not for ah just dumb luck? I mean, it's the same reason why we were able to find all the missing footage from ah Metropolis. It, like so many other German films at the time, was discovered somewhere in South America. Hmm, that's odd. um ah
00:34:51
Speaker
And they were they were able to do a complete recreation.
00:34:57
Speaker
I wonder where our war criminals will go when this whole thing finally finally blows over. can i Can I share a real quick side story that's vaguely related to that?
00:35:08
Speaker
we're we're we're getting We're getting ready to get into the work. So yes, before we get into the work, you can share a tangent. Okay. This is a, you know, speaking of um German things being in South America, uh,
00:35:24
Speaker
So I work in ah sheet metal manufacturing and we use nitrogen to control the burn on laser welding. And a lot of these big compressed air canisters have been around for decades because you tend to keep relatively good care of them so long as they're not like punctured or overly dented.
00:35:46
Speaker
You can just keep them in circulation for decades. And a lot of them will have a little star engraved on it. And that usually denotes... and that it was manufactured in the United States of America.
00:36:00
Speaker
And my supervisor told me the one time, Hey, if you ever see one that has a square with a plus through it, come and get me because that was a swastika.
00:36:12
Speaker
And that means that that compressed air canister was manufactured in Germany 1932, four till 1945. And, two four till nineteen forty five and Y'all, a few weeks ago, I didn't find a square with a plus sign in it.
00:36:30
Speaker
I found a swastika that had a square offset punched around it. And I'm like, oh, shit. I actually found one in the wild. Oh, fuck. Did you take a picture?
00:36:41
Speaker
Of course I took a picture. I'm trying to find it in my fucking scroll wheel. I was going to say, when you do find it, you don't need to look for now, but when you do find it, I need you to text that to Because I will fucking put that on the social media.
00:36:53
Speaker
Something slightly related to that happened to at a job about 10 years ago. let's hear it. At the time, I was working in cell phone repairs. And manufacturers, like people who like put the stamps on there sometimes put messages and things inside of the...
00:37:07
Speaker
like on the boards, like you've seen like memes about it. Like they'll put messages on the like circuit boards. And I got a phone screen, iPhone screen and that straight up had a German swastika on it. I took a picture of it, but i lost the picture a long time ago, but yeah, they were, they stamped it. they And it was like the but inverted and everything the way like his was, this wasn't, oh my this wasn't like so happening. Like, Oh, it came from China. You know, maybe there's some connection. No, it was straight up a German swastika stand on the inside of that phone.
00:37:34
Speaker
some of my Some of my friends in college went through the archives of the yearbook archives of of my school. Holy shit, there it is. I'm to need you to text that to me right now so I can include that in the socials for this episode. Doing that now. Doing that right now.
00:37:53
Speaker
um But ah there was apparently a campus group called the Schwastikans. And weirdly, they just kind of like stopped. um they They just kind of like disbanded sometime in the early 30s for some reason. I can't figure out why. Look, why happened look i realize and fascism and hate off Hitler was all the rage here in America until the war happened.
00:38:16
Speaker
Right. Right. Well, it in, in, yeah, right no, you're, you're, you're not wrong. And honestly, some would argue it might still be all the rage in this country. anyway, let's,
00:38:30
Speaker
Let's talk about the work. Hope is giving me a look that says, Steven, move on to the work. So here we are talking about the work. um It's time to talk about our first encounters with this film. Hope, you said you had yours leading into this episode.
00:38:44
Speaker
What were your initial thoughts on Hearts of Age? Because Sam and i are going to go for a while. I'll give you a real detailed account as to how I came across this movie. um Steven texted me last week while I was on vacation. Hey, this is what we're doing.
00:39:01
Speaker
It's on YouTube. Great. And about ah two to three hours ago now, I threw it up on the wall and it was this. It was one of the stranger eight minutes of my life. I'll say that much.
00:39:15
Speaker
um And ah then I ate dinner and now I'm here. yeah. yeah and there was blood everywhere.
00:39:27
Speaker
um Everywhere. and There I was. There I was. Barbecue sauce on my titties. Anyway, please keep going. no no, no, no. You were saying about the titties?
00:39:41
Speaker
I can just vote vines for the next half hour. Let's fucking go. So ah Sam and i Sam, we saw this movie together in May of 2015. still have ticket. I hang the wall. You still have your tickets.
00:39:57
Speaker
Oh my God, dude. That's amazing. All of a back there, all that's mementos and stuff. Oh, that's it.
00:40:15
Speaker
And we're back. I'm sorry, Sam, you were you were saying you you still have your ticket from the Wells Symposium, which was Chex Watch 10 years ago? Yes. ah at The exact date was May 2nd, 2015. And this ticket was purchased at 3 p.m., which I think was when the event started, actually.
00:40:34
Speaker
Correct. Yes, that was the beginning of the event. This was way back in the old days when you pay $3 for like a ticket to some event art event cinematic art event that no one else went to god it was it was basically us and wells scholars like it was like students of the film school yeah and like biographers and critics and like serious film people and us this is the funniest mix of people i've ever heard how how did it feel being in a marx brothers movie um i felt great about it honestly
00:41:09
Speaker
Honestly, one of my favorite experiences. Yeah, let me rephrase the question. How did it feel being the Marx Brothers in a Marx Brothers movie? Even better. but I was okay with it. We got a lot of strange looks.
00:41:21
Speaker
um well I was a big fan going into the event of Wells Scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum, who was at the event. And Sam, you probably remember this. Like I went to, he was like talking to some people after the first night and I went to like, cause I wanted to meet him. I'm like, there's Jonathan Rosenbaum. I'm going to kill my, kick myself, not kill myself, kick kick myself.
00:41:41
Speaker
If I don't introduce myself to the man and just tell him I'm a fan of his work. So I kind of gently tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around like he was terrified of me, which I've heard from, I've heard from other people who have met him is just kind of the thing he does.
00:41:55
Speaker
um But he turned around like he was absolutely terrified. And just said, oh, i'm I'm so sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to let you know. um ah My name is Steven. I'm a huge fan of your work. i I really enjoyed the conversation tonight. He's like, oh, i um thank you.
00:42:08
Speaker
Like just very kind of like, I don't know what to do with this information. and then I was like, I'm sorry. i'll I'll leave you to your conversation. And then he turned around and kept talking. But I was like, okay, I met Jonathan Rosenbaum. It's important to note that Steven was a lot more, was a little more fanboy about it.
00:42:25
Speaker
It was in the earliest trauma. Hey, I'm Steven. Nice to meet you. was like, oh, hey, hey, hey. Like, he's very giddy. He's a very giddy boy. I'm also, I'm also, I've been told by by both friends and exes that I am, quote, a lot.
00:42:39
Speaker
um ah Right. yeah Yeah. Steven. Cheers, man. That's... I've got that exact one.
00:42:50
Speaker
i can't imagine. ah that This is one of many things you and I have in common, my dear. um Yes. But, I mean, it was... So, I... Let's take it back. The...
00:43:02
Speaker
no let's take it back um the So I put my friend Matt in charge of – who will probably be on this podcast at some point – in charge of my bachelor party.
00:43:12
Speaker
And he decided – give him a huge list of people to invite, three quarters of which did not come. um In fact, Sam was the only person there for the whole damn thing. Hey.
00:43:23
Speaker
I thought Matt was Dave. Dave was the other guy, right? No, Matt and Dave left like early Saturday morning before the 3 p.m. symposium. ah they They did not stay for the Hearts of Age and the other howards Wells ephemera.
00:43:35
Speaker
Okay. And then they they stayed for new comic book day and then they left right after that. And then we went with Mark to go get ah like tobacco and smoke pipes. yeah Right. And then there's Ben. Batman was there and Batman was there Friday night. Andrew Lawrence was there Friday night.
00:43:52
Speaker
So those two came up at the same time. The names. Yeah, it was funny. They So it's two. At the time, I taught at a christian at at a Christian school, and I had previously taught at another Christian school. So it's the Friday night.
00:44:03
Speaker
It was four Christian school teachers, me, who is also currently a Christian school teacher. So five Christian school teachers and Sam. Who, by the way, went to that Christian school that Stephen taught at that Andrew and Ben Batman came from.
00:44:15
Speaker
That's where graduated from. that's That's the school Sam graduated from like a year or two before I started teaching there is the difference in age between Sam and I. Six. Six years. Yeah. I graduated in 09.
00:44:29
Speaker
Okay. So it was a few years. was a few years, yeah. Not that many though. Yeah. And so that night, the first night, and I got this information from the Wellsnet archives. Thank you ah to Ray over at Wellsnet, who is not in any way affiliated with this podcast. And I do not know personally, but he's the guy that keeps it up and he keeps really great records. So it's a great place to just find any Any and all Wells news, you can find it on WellsNet. It's an incredible resource.
00:44:55
Speaker
um But he had the schedule pretty much listed there of of what was happening each night because I couldn't find it on the IU website at all. I went digging for this info. um But the first night was a panel discussion at the at the time unreleased The Other Side of the Wind. They were still trying to find a distributor at the time.
00:45:14
Speaker
ah It was moderated by iu faculty member, film professor, and Wells scholar James Naramore. And the panel included um Jonathan Rosenbaum, the aforementioned Jonathan Rosenbaum, ah Joseph McBride, one of the stars of The Other Side of the Wind, um Josh Karp, who is a ah Wells author who I believe wrote the book ah Orson's Last Movie, ah one of the producers of The Other Side of the Wind, ah Philip Jan Reich,
00:45:41
Speaker
rimsha I think R Y M is S Z A. Sorry, Philip, my apologies. um And it was basically at the time, it was pretty much more information than anyone had ever gotten in one sitting about the damn movie because it hasn't, hadn't been released. And at the time, it was just kind of one of those things that everyone sort of whispered about, like no one really knew what all it was. And they had like never before seen clips of the film featuring like,
00:46:09
Speaker
Stuff from Peter Bogdanovich and like some of the Rich Little stuff that Rich Little filmed before he had to exit the project. Like it was incredibly – honestly, it was really amazing. And David, Sam, Matt and I were the but were like really locked in and Andrew and Ben could not have cared less. They were bored. Yeah. out of their damn minds i'm sure like andrew i'm pretty sure got up at one point and just left so he could go to the bathroom and then just hang out in the lobby because i really think he was that disinterested that's incredible that's to to be completely fair the other side of the wind is one of those movie titles that you can really really whisper about in secret have you seen the other side of the wind it doesn't work with like
00:46:55
Speaker
Have you seen Shrek forever after? it just doesn't work. You know, i was wondering what you were going to pull and that was such a good Yeah. Yeah. i Another one that, that, you know, people will whisper about and they will probably whisper about it for, for ages. The day the clown cried. I knew you were going to say that.
00:47:13
Speaker
The lost Jerry Lewis film. Yeah. That's another one that you can, that's another title you can whisper about. No, they found that, but they're not going to release it. Like the person has it. That's right. They did. They do.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah. They said it's so bad. We can't release it. like it's what is the It's worse than you could possibly imagine. From what I understand. They did find it like recently. I thought like they have someone has the movie. No, it was it was in it was in Lewis's effects. But like his one of his dying wishes was that it never be screened anywhere.
00:47:45
Speaker
Right. But I think someone has a copy of it, but they won't let it go either. Probably because of Jerry Lewis's final wish. Well, they said that it's really bad. The person who has it, they watch he said it's actually like terrible.
00:47:59
Speaker
i I feel like we already saw what all like the best version of that in Life is Beautiful, the Roberto Benigni film. Yeah. like I feel like that's kind of what he was going for there.
00:48:11
Speaker
Yeah. Hopefully. Buongiorno, Principesa, etc., etc. Yeah, I did it. i did it and I don't know what you're going to do about it. Yeah. And so that was the Friday night. And then afterwards, we we went out to a bar and got wrecked.
00:48:28
Speaker
um And then the next morning, we woke up. We went to New Comic Book Day because it was New Comic Book Day was May 2nd. So we went to newcom we went to a comic book store there and there was a place called the Briar and the Burley.
00:48:41
Speaker
They're in downtown ah Bloomington. And we bought, after David and Matt left, Sam and I went in and bought some pipe tobacco and then a couple other people, my buddy Mark and someone else. And I don't remember who else was there, but there were four of us.
00:48:55
Speaker
Uh, who came out and we were, ah was my buddy, Sean, as my buddy, Sean came down and we were sitting in just kind of sitting in the, uh, like there was a smoking room in the Briar the Burley. Sam and I brought our pipes. We loaded our pipes and we were just sitting there smoking our pipes with the new pipe tobacco we'd bought.
00:49:12
Speaker
ah Mark and Sean were not smoking. um But, you know, we're just sitting there chatting. And then the three o'clock, we went to a local bar for lunch, like kind of a college dive bar kind of spot.
00:49:23
Speaker
And then we went to the three o'clock symposium, which is where we first watched the other side or not the other side of the wind. obviously we didn't see it then where we first watched, um, the hearts of age along with a lot of, yes, the hearts of it. ah And they had a lot of other like clips from other Wells projects that had never been seen before. Like they had clips from his, um,
00:49:44
Speaker
His movie, The Deep, um which was an ocean boat movie. um They had clips from his version of Don Quixote but he had filmed like only snippets of. um And like they had like a couple scenes that were like shown without sound. was really quite fascinating.
00:50:01
Speaker
um And then some clips that we hadn't seen the previous night from the other side of the wind and some clips, of course, that we had. I forget who was moderating that. I think it might have been Joseph McBride.
00:50:12
Speaker
um I was trying to remember if it was McBride or Rosenbaum who was moderating that. I'm pretty sure it was McBride. Is it on your ticket at all? It's not, but I think you're I don't think Rosenbaum was there.
00:50:22
Speaker
I don't think so either. i couldn't remember when I was writing the notes, but now that I'm thinking about it, like in the cold light of Dan, pretty sure it was McBride. yeah who was kind of curating this conversation. um but it was there that we, and the the only full film that we watched, we also, I think, saw the clips that we'll talk about um probably early next year when we talk about the the hilariously named Too Much Johnson. Yeah.
00:50:47
Speaker
Got a smile out of hope on that one, um ah which which is a play that Wells did with the Mercury Theater and that included some film segments with the Keystone Cops or a Keystone Cops-esque group of police officers.
00:51:02
Speaker
ah But that film is the one of the first cinematic roles of ah one Joseph Cotton. the great Joseph cotton, who we'll talk about a few times on this podcast. I have no recollection of watching any of this. The only thing I remember watching was the clips from the other side of the wind and this short film.
00:51:19
Speaker
I remember nothing else. i remember I remember more than I feel like I ought. um But again, i was just like, I was such a Wells fanboy even then that I was just like soaking it all in as much as I could. It was kind of like, i these are memories that I need to make last as long as possible.
00:51:36
Speaker
yeah um And then after that, we... we of there was a They were showing, I think, that night, Touch of Evil and The Trial, but we weren't able to stick around for those um because I had to get back for something or other, probably church the next morning or something. Church. I was probably still was probably still churching at that point.
00:51:55
Speaker
After a bachelor party? How can even walk out I know. All our debauchers so well. I had to beg forgiveness for all the debauchery I'd gotten myself into. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been 20 minutes since my last symposium. What was my last time?
00:52:19
Speaker
the you You got me. You got me there, Hope. Love that. um I have a precious little tape put into this cut part of the conversation, so i'm just I'm just trying to do what I can here.
00:52:30
Speaker
But no, I mean, that was that was essentially the the bachelor party. Like we – I mean, it was basically us engaging with you know as much of the Wells ephemera as we were able in that timeframe. And honestly, it was it was really incredible. It was um maybe the second best thing that happened to me that year. Although in retrospect, maybe the best thing that happened to me that year. Yeah.
00:52:52
Speaker
Well, did forget one thing, though, about the Patch Party. we I think all collectively had the worst – a bunch of guys – again, this is a bunch of guys who drink beer. All collectively had the worst beer of our lives. There was a – that chai tea imperial stout that no one could drink, and we all passed around. I don't even remember that. Yeah, was so bad.
00:53:11
Speaker
I remember there being something we all passed around, but I don't – We were trying it. We were seeing who could actually drink it. It was awful. Yeah. It was bad. I mean, these are guys who'll drink anything. And they couldn't no one could drink. It was bad.
00:53:25
Speaker
Yeah. Everything but like Miller High Life, pretty much. Right. yeah
00:53:31
Speaker
Because, you know, everyone's got standards. And and Sam holds up his Miller High Life.
00:53:39
Speaker
Champagne and beers.
00:53:43
Speaker
Oh, I picked. i Okay. So I should have probably said something like Bud Light, but knowing that Sam would have probably pulled out of Bud Light. but yeah, I don't, I don't drink Pabst. Okay.
00:53:55
Speaker
i i will I will drink PBR in a pinch. I would rather have a PBR than a Bud Light. PBR was the cheapest beer at all of the improv shows I went to, so that was just kind of the default.
00:54:05
Speaker
There you go. Yeah. um so So then now that we've discussed our various histories with this film and our first times seeing it, what um where do we want to start? Do we want to start with the content, the influences? Do we want to start with... um With the content, obviously.
00:54:24
Speaker
Content. Okay. Well, then what what what do we see? What what is what do we think of the content of the film? what is it what what What elements of this do we see that would go on to kind of give us glimpses at the filmmaker that Wells would eventually become?
00:54:39
Speaker
Let me answer this first. Sam, I'll let you take point on this. Only because I'll probably actually have little less to say than you think. I have no opinions on the content, and I don't think this is very good or even worth remembering.
00:54:49
Speaker
And I'm a little sad that I remembered it. That's one of the only things I wouldn't agree with you. Goddamn! Let's just body slam Orson Welles straight out of the gate. I will, because we talked about it earlier in the podcast.
00:55:01
Speaker
This was a Sunday delight just hangout sesh. This was not Art. This was not him trying to do something. And it's very obvious. Virginia Nicholson. Yeah, right.
00:55:13
Speaker
So, like, there's not really anything there. Get Get laid. Get laid. Yeah. and so i like I'm already casting it in my head. I'm picturing Chalamet.
00:55:25
Speaker
We can beef him up. Chalamet has strong fuckboy energy, so that's a good call. We can pad out those cheekbones just a little bit. Actors go apeshit for light prosthetics.
00:55:39
Speaker
CGI does everything. at Star Wars, you know? We could deepfake him, yeah, absolutely. right but But go back to the movie, the short film, I should say. Yes.
00:55:50
Speaker
Okay. Yes. Go ahead. understand I don't have any opinion on it but on the, the merit of it. Cause I have strong opinions about surrealism and I don't think it's even good at surrealism. It's just, it's just, I think you're right and um we're definitely going to get into that. Cause I do want to, cause again, well says he's anti surrealist. And I think that makes this a bad parody. It's supposed to be a parody of surrealism and it's a bad parody because parody generally needs to be born out of a place of love.
00:56:18
Speaker
yeah And Wells hates surrealism. So it's, it's, it's punching down. The whole thing is punching down, which, yeah, I'm not a fan of. So I, yeah. So maybe we'll talk about the influences to make, shed more light there. But for me, someone who has opinions about surrealist filmmaking ah and opinions about Orson Welles, typically are separate sides, but like sometimes they cross over.
00:56:40
Speaker
Yeah. I didn't have much to think about this film because it's, yeah, like it's not good surrealism. It's as we learned through the history, they did on a Sunday, they were making up as they were going, he was there for a girl. There wasn't anything going into it. It was just a hangout sesh for some friends.
00:56:53
Speaker
Sure. And I mean, I'm sure you've made your share of like just kind of spontaneous little, Hey, let's, let's make a movie kind of filming shit. Like you're a, you're yourself are a amateur filmmaker.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I wish I just wish I had friends to do that with, but we all live in Chicago. Literally all of them live in Chicago. right You Jim Banta, my only friends. So, You've got DeZuba. You made a movie with DeZuba.
00:57:18
Speaker
Yeah, I guess our show is going there. We've made several things together, I guess. I guess I got Zach. You're right. yeah you're right. I guess we're constantly working every single month making something new. and i'm sure yeah And I'm sure your brother could prop would probably, you know, pop in and and film something with you. Yeah, he only works by himself.
00:57:36
Speaker
I mean, no, he'd be an actor for you. i'm not saying he'd, like, let you film something for him. Like, no, you would he would probably act for you is what I'm saying.
00:57:47
Speaker
And yeah I think your brother would do. He's he's done some silly, stupid things for for us and for the disenfranchised podcast. So I'm sure would. on your podcast is not a silly, stupid thing. Don't but put yourself down. It's an honor to be on your podcast.
00:58:00
Speaker
No, I mean, he he recorded some audio for one of our April Fool's episodes one year um as as the Circle City collector. um Like we we we put him up to it and he was like, yeah, OK.
00:58:12
Speaker
So. Love it. Yeah. um But yeah. um So i for me, though, i and I agree, this is this is fluff. Like, there's not much to this thing.
00:58:25
Speaker
it is It's lull-so-random kind of take on surrealism. um But the...
00:58:36
Speaker
the things that I see that kind of stand out for me, the things that i will go on to see in stuff like citizen Kane are like the dynamic camera angles. Like he's shooting like up, um, uh, fire exits, a fire escapes yeah and like using constantly canted angles. Like everything's kind of shifted to the side one way or the other.
00:58:56
Speaker
um like he's using dynamic camera work in a way that, um, that we would see from him later on the stuff that he would kind of help influence Talon to do. in Citizen Kane.
00:59:08
Speaker
i could see that. I would say that with lighting too because the lighting in this one is really bad. But no, I mean, it's just because of the circumstances. But lighting is one of those things on a film, especially when you have to pay to have film Lighting is one those things where you do it wrong once, you're not going to do wrong again, which Orson Welles isn't kidding. Technically he was doing it in quotation marks wrong, but he knew what he was doing. We'll get to that. Yeah. We'll get to that like a year.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um But yeah, like, and, and that's, I, in this, the, the lighting in this, you're right, is very bad, but it's also very, and I think intentionally reminiscent of like the stark, uh,
00:59:45
Speaker
German expressionist lighting of the cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which Wells would say would probably be the biggest. and And I think all the scholars that talk about this briefly. And I see what he was trying to do. The issue is a lot of the lighting. It's just ah equipment.
00:59:58
Speaker
They didn't have enough lighting. They didn't have the light enough. But yeah. Yeah. It's it's ah it's a 16 millimeter camera filmed by amateurs. Like it's. Yeah. It is what it is. And I mean, as ah as a student film, as like a calling card film, it's – and again, for the time period, it's probably something very dynamic.
01:00:17
Speaker
um It's incredibly silly and very goofy. yeah But like – and like ah the use of makeup, again, we'd see Wells – Wells had a kind of a fascination with makeup. He hated his nose.
01:00:29
Speaker
And so he was always using nose putty to try to give himself like a different nose shape or style. i think the only film in which he has his actual nose that he appears in is the Third Man.
01:00:44
Speaker
that's because Carol Reed wouldn't let him use nose putty. um But like, so I mean, even even when you like the pictures of him that you see and you're like, oh, that's that's that's awesome. out Like a lot unless it's just like a candid photo or like him like appearing on something as himself.
01:01:01
Speaker
He's pretty much always got nose putty on. ah There's a story that um McGilligan tells of Wells leaving his nose putty too close to a lamp backstage and it melts.
01:01:12
Speaker
And he like is flying around furious at everybody screaming about, you know, who, who moved my nose putty, who. And so we had to go on with kind of a different kind of a prosthetic nose to play Svengali in one show ah much to his dismay and chagrin.
01:01:27
Speaker
um But yeah, i mean, who moved my nose putty coming this fall to the CW getting that way. Three who moved my nose putty. Yeah.
01:01:41
Speaker
ah Yes. And ah there's none of the actors from the original movie except for the guy who played the dad in the first movie. Right. He's still there for some reason, but now it's at summer camp. So, okay.
01:01:54
Speaker
This one time at summer camp. um No, not summer camp, summer stock. This one time at summer stock. ah There it is. There it is. Oh God. Oh God. um So let's, let's get into the influences, I think a little more. Cause again, the concept, the content of the film, as, as Brady pointed out, there's not really much of a plot.
01:02:16
Speaker
It's just kind of a bunch of scenes and images strung together. Although the central conceit seems to be about death. Wells's character seems to be kind of a ah specter, a grinning specter of death kind of character.
01:02:30
Speaker
Virginia Nicholson is playing an old woman who for some reason is, let me check my notes here, riding a bell. Um... just like rocking back and forth on a bell for most of it. It's not a great look because it's a slow reveal of the bell. So you just see this old woman kind of gyrating aimlessly for about a minute or two before you actually see the goddamn bell.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, you can do that intentionally. um Really? What? ah Let me check my notes here. Oh my God. Orson. Orson.
01:03:09
Speaker
Orson. I'm glad that I can say Chex Notes as a joke and it's actually real. Right. one Yeah. Christ why? So there are three major influences that Wells himself c cites.
01:03:24
Speaker
um We're going to start with probably the most obvious and the the biggest ah influence. ah Robert Vina's... The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, probably the best known of the three.
01:03:37
Speaker
um and honestly, just one of the great, all-time great silent films. i love The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Fucking incredible goddamn movie.
01:03:47
Speaker
um I saw this, I dabbled briefly ah decades ago in ah the idea of being a film major. So I took a film history class and this was one of the first movies we saw.
01:04:01
Speaker
And it's my takeaway 18 years ago, whatever, was almost the exact same takeaway that I had watching it just the other night, which was this is the only movie Tim Burton has ever seen.
01:04:13
Speaker
Yes. It's the only This movie, this is Tim Burton saw this movie and literally, literally made it his entire personality.
01:04:25
Speaker
Pretty much. Pretty much. ah Sorry, I'm just plugging the budget for Cabin of Dr. Caligari into an inflation calculator because I'm curious.
01:04:37
Speaker
Oh, love that for you. Thanks. um Okay. 1930, sorry, $294,204 today. still in under the budget 1978's John Carpenter's Halloween.
01:04:48
Speaker
which was the equivalent of two hundred and ninety four thousand two hundred and four dollars today so okay still coming in under the budget and of nineteen seventy eight s john carpenter's halloween So way to go, Orson. You're keeping it.
01:05:03
Speaker
You're keeping it. it was Not Orson. What am I saying? Orson's not after that one. Vina. Vina. I jumped the director there for a second. ah But way to go on on keeping it under budget like that. Good job.
01:05:16
Speaker
So hope you and I rewatched Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I know, for this episode. Sam, when's the last time you watched Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? I have no recollection of ever watching that movie, but apparently there's evidence that I have.
01:05:28
Speaker
so I mean, I know we covered it. There was an episode of Rule of Thirds called, in Germany, it's just called Expressionism, um where we watched this, Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, and Fritz Lang's Destiny.
01:05:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So three three German Expressionist films. I wanted to watch Metropolis, and you're like, no, no, no, no no Destiny. And i was like, all right, fine. And Destiny is, I'll concede, a much shorter film.
01:05:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:59
Speaker
that's the point um yeah i get it i look i look everyone's seen metropolis a thousand times it's a fucking masterpiece hope have you ever seen metropolis honestly i have not uh it's just another one of those things where it's uh uh uh i don't like watching new media by myself i want to have somebody to talk about it well good news it's not do metropolis with you it's old it's an old movie yeah really yeah
01:06:29
Speaker
Is it, let's see, that was 1927? Yeah? ah Nine, I think. Okay, I'm pretty sure that's in the public domain, Mattropoulos.
01:06:43
Speaker
This is the restored version that I own on ah the Kino Lorber DVD. ah The original 1927 score ah is on this disc as well, along with the restored footage. This is where we and we went over this on the podcast, Rule of Thirds, from like 10 years ago. There is no original 1927. Oh, remember it now?
01:07:03
Speaker
No, I remember this because this is an interesting fact. There is no original 1927 score. There is no action. That's lie. There is no original music. They do not have music. like of My Kino Lorber DVD begs to differ.
01:07:16
Speaker
Kino Lorber can go and say, do some nasty things to themselves. Let me tell you, you can pass on this podcast. It's fine. I can't cuss on this podcast.
01:07:29
Speaker
Anyways. Okay, that's fine. ah um I mean, you can, but if you if you decide not to, that is your choice. Can I not cuss? No, you can. Yes, Hope, you can. Fuck.
01:07:40
Speaker
Okay.
01:07:45
Speaker
um But I mean, I think the the most we've already talked about kind of the lighting, the stark use of light and shadow in this film um is is very evident, a very, ah very clear ah draft from the cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
01:07:59
Speaker
I feel like Wells's portrayal of death, and I think Wells himself agrees. He basically admits it is just kind of wholesale lifted from Werner Krause's portrayal of Dr. Caligari. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
01:08:11
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Like, I don't think he's wearing the Mickey Mouse gloves that Caligari is wearing. but No, I love that, too. That's such great deal. Yeah, I only cottoned onto that last night while I was watching the movie. but it and For some reason, I forget it between viewings and I'll rewatch it again. I'm like, oh, right. got the Mickey Mouse glove. That's great.
01:08:30
Speaker
just like I was trying to like give like sound to their voices in my head while watching it. And when once I cottoned on to the Mickey Mouse gloves, I'm like, suddenly Dr. Caligari sounds a lot like Mickey Mouse.
01:08:42
Speaker
what I have a synambulist. um It's just this. You must be become Caligari.
01:08:52
Speaker
Oh, fuck. Couldn't really take this film seriously after that, but... you know But no, Wells is wells is kind of a wholesale just doing Werner Krauss. Even the makeup, and and again, heavy use of makeup in German expressionist cinema, ah particularly on Werner Krauss and on... um ah ah Conrad Veidt, who's playing Chisere.
01:09:17
Speaker
ah But then you also like Wells and Nicholson and then the dude with the weird hat, like this dude with kind of the bell hat who kind of lifts it at the old lady and goes down the street. think that may have been played by Vance, ah but like heavy use of makeup on all of those characters.
01:09:31
Speaker
uh in this film and of that feels like also kind of very heavily lifted from cabinet of dr caligari as well um my partner while watching um cabinet of dr caligari with me who she had never seen it before so i was able to introduce that to her um about halfway through the movie she looks at me and she goes what do you think the hat budget was on this movie i wonder just like
01:09:56
Speaker
You know what? Valid question, dear. Valid question. Because um everybody wearing hats in this thing. The hat budget. ah Oh, fabulous.
01:10:08
Speaker
And they're they're weird looking hats. Like by today's standards, just weird looking hats too. Like it's wild. um So that that I would say is the first and probably the major influence. The other major influence I would say is ah the Luis Bunuel, who Luis Bunuel, by the way, looks like if you see a picture of him, like a young picture if you see his Wikipedia photo, it looks like Marlon Brando with Peter Lorre's eyes.
01:10:35
Speaker
Like just this kind of like attractive, svelte kind of looking dude, like this macho looking dude. And then these giant wild eyes. It's insane. Like I was looking at it, I was doing my research and looking up, uh, Luis Bunuel. Cause I think this is the first Luis Bunuel film I've ever
Exploring Surrealism in Film
01:10:51
Speaker
seen.
01:10:51
Speaker
Um, the, but you know, dude is, is a weird looking dude. Um, but yeah, Marlon Brando with, um, I'm to see if I can find that picture now.
01:11:03
Speaker
Because ah you've you've got to you've got to see this. I'm looking at it now. tucker Tucker, edit some of this. Yep, yep. Writing it down now. Yeah, you're like dead right.
01:11:15
Speaker
He looks like...
01:11:19
Speaker
I'm putting the the notes here. Yeah. There you go. That's like Marlon Brando with Peter Lorre's eyes. Yeah. It just, it's fucking weird. Weird as hell. Um, he's a, uh, a Spanish Mexican filmmaker, right?
01:11:32
Speaker
like oh and am I wrong? oh I was not prepared for that. Oh, Marlon Brando with Peter Lorre's eyes, right?
01:11:45
Speaker
Like, I think they're like, he's attractive in a you're fucking crazy kind of way. yeah It's like, I'll go on this Tinder date. ah But I'm gonna let a friend know where I'm going.
01:11:57
Speaker
Exactly. Like, there's a chance. There's a chance you're gonna have fun tonight. But there's also a chance you're gonna choked out. Yeah. Hey, Jen, you're trying. That's what you're into. Right. and
01:12:08
Speaker
But hey maybe that's what you're into. I don't know. His eyes are his eyes are cocked at the opposite of Peter Lorre's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's fucking weird. Fucking wild is what it is. um And then, so it's, it's a film directed by Luis Bunuel, but it's written by Bunuel and Salvador Dali, ah the great surrealist artist.
01:12:30
Speaker
um And so now may be a good time to get into kind of our feelings on surrealism because Un Chien Andalou is an incredibly surrealistic film. I would move my computer to show you that I have a painting a Salvador Dali painting.
01:12:42
Speaker
Don't move your computer. I'm not going to move my computer. Move your computer. We know what happened last time. had the temptation of St. Anthony hanging above my desk. Okay. That's a good, that's a, that's I saw a Dali painting at the, ah the, ah one of the New York art museums when I, when I went to visit New York and it's the, it's the one of the, um the crucifixion of Christ.
01:13:05
Speaker
And he's like, perfect. Like the body has no scars on it whatsoever. It's a fucking wild painting. It's so incredibly weird. And yeah, Dali is a, is a, is an artist I really respected and admire, but an artist that I will freely admit I do not get.
01:13:22
Speaker
I think I love – well, I love Salvador Dali. I don't know everything about him. But I do know like like the St. Anthony, the temptation of that. Like there's more to it, especially if you under if you know – like if you have a theological history knowledge, there's a lot to look into his paintings.
01:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, he was very into theology and he paints it deeply in all of his paintings. So like – And I mean both – There's like, yeah, whole there's tons of different images and meanings. Like almost all of this stuff has typical theological historical like significance in these kind of paintings.
01:13:53
Speaker
So it's not all just like both silly random stuff. Both Dali and Bunuel were lapsed Catholics. ah So Catholicism was a huge influence for both of them.
01:14:06
Speaker
yeah Like they were both incredibly influenced by Catholicism in their own Catholic faith. Because I mean, again, they're from these cultures that are culturally Catholic. um Like I think Dali is – I think both of them are from Spain actually.
01:14:20
Speaker
um So they are – again, culturally – yes, both of them are from Spain. So both of them kind of culturally grew up Catholic and both of them in later age rebelled against their Catholic belief. Although it's a clear influence for both of them throughout their work is that kind of – wrestling with and rejection of those Catholic ideas, which, i again, for someone who himself has kind of made up ah made his religious trauma, his entire personality, more or less, is I find incredibly fascinating and incredibly like I would love to knowing this about Bunuel, I would actually love to dig into his films more.
01:15:02
Speaker
um And kind of like do a like a Bunuel marathon. i I feel like I would get a lot out of
Orson Welles and Surrealism
01:15:08
Speaker
that. I feel like my partner might hate me by the end of it. um But I would have a lot of fun like this, the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.
01:15:16
Speaker
There's also the Milky Way, which is like his his movie in which Jesus actually appears. um Like there's there's a lot of – Wells on Bunuel. I want to actually read Wells' thoughts on Bunuel because I feel like they're – the only one of the artists that we're discussing today that Wells actually talks about in This Is Orson Welles.
01:15:35
Speaker
um ah Peter Bogdanovich brings up ah people who comment on the use of hands. in ah the movie The Trial. And so Wells says, those kind of people are happiest when writing about Bunuel, whom I hasten to say I like.
01:15:49
Speaker
He's a rich feeding ground of that kind of critic because it's true about him. You can take off and say he likes feet and all that. Jesus, it's all true. He's that kind of intellectual and that kind of Catholic.
01:16:00
Speaker
He's a deeply Christian man who hates God as only a Christian can. i fucking love Well, now tempted watch some more his movies.
01:16:10
Speaker
he's very spanish i see him as an almost as the almost supremely religious director in the history of movies a superb kind of person he must be everybody loves now i'm kind of tempted to watch some more of his movies Yeah. Right. Yeah. When you hear him, when you hear him talk about that way, you're kind of like, well, fuck, I, I gotta get into this guy.
01:16:33
Speaker
cause my only experience was the one he did Salvador Dali and it's not a great experience. So, I mean, when she done to Lou and again, that's the movie that well says kind of influenced this, that movie came out in 1930 or 1929 rather.
01:16:45
Speaker
thirty or nineteen twenty nine rather Um, and so it would have been probably something that would have been seen that Wells might've seen in one of the art house theaters in Chicago, or maybe he saw it when he was in New York trying to sell marching song.
01:16:59
Speaker
Um, but he has this experience with the film. It's a 16 minute short film. The first image is uh, woman getting her eyes sliced open by a razor blade. You have like a man with like ants crawling out of his hand, yeah dragging pianos with dead donkeys with like oozing eyes, like across the floor.
01:17:18
Speaker
You get that Dolly death head moth that he was so obsessed with in several images. um a man like, just like, assaulting a a woman and like her clothes just magically vanishing and re reappearing at various points.
01:17:33
Speaker
um It's a weird, but again, it feels like it feels very random, but the randomness feels intentional in a way that hearts of age doesn't.
01:17:46
Speaker
And that I think is the big takeaway that, that kind of cut from random image to random image, random thing to random thing. No. and And again, Brady, Brady, mentions this as a, a, as a symptom rather than the, the cure a, as a bug, not the, the point, a feature um is the fact that there, there doesn't seem to be any connection between the shots, but if you're parodying Unshin Andalou and not understanding Unshin Andalou, that's what you're going to get out of Unshin Andalou is that this is all just random hodgepodge of shit.
01:18:24
Speaker
Right.
01:18:31
Speaker
Cool. Glad you guys are coming with me on that.
Personal Preferences for Surrealism
01:18:33
Speaker
Yeah. Sorry. I'm like... felt like you had more to say. ah no. no that was That was the point. okay yeah no I really don't watch much in the way of like surreal movies. like I really still haven't seen much of anything in the way of David Lynch.
01:18:48
Speaker
And I consider that a personal failing as a human being. um um um Again, please see my above statements about new media and not having people to talk about it with. Girl, I will talk about David Lynch with you all fucking day long. I know. And then it becomes a time thing because I'm like, well, I got to watch this movie when Bex isn't around.
01:19:10
Speaker
So, yeah. that's that's ah that's in that That becomes my thing as well is that my my partner hates David Lynch. So I have to find a time when she's not around to watch David Lynch. My partner is the opposite. I have to find a time when we can both sit down to watch a David Lynch movie. She's obsessed with Bex.
01:19:28
Speaker
I was going to say, the the the one and only convention I ever went to, that time we all went to Gen Con, you guys cosplayed as Dale Cooper and um Audrey. audrey So, yeah. We love that show. Nice.
01:19:39
Speaker
Big David Lynch fan. Oh, yeah. We love David Lynch. But, like, my reaction to this, this ah to to Hearts of Age, was just like, oh, this is... every surrealist movie parody I've ever seen in like a Saturday morning cartoon show.
01:19:56
Speaker
Yes. Except I would argue that those disembodied hands coming in from off screen. There's a gravestone. There's a weird looking dude there.
01:20:08
Speaker
pet Is it a photo negative? I'm not sure. Oh no. It's blackface. um Yeah. It's a lot of that. Every surrealist film ever made. it it does it it is It does need to be pointed out that an actor named Edgerton Paul ah plays a character in blackface, but the only part of him that is painted black is his face because every other part of him is is is as as white as his ah as his regular skin tone. Like his hands, nothing's done with his hands.
01:20:36
Speaker
Like it's just, it's very distracting. So it's not even... I'm not going to say that sentence. That's a bad sentence, Steven. No, it's not even effective blackface by, by standards of the time. It's, like it's fucking lazy is what it is.
01:20:53
Speaker
Yeah. He just, he put makeup on everyone for it. So just, yeah. Yeah. Cringe. Uh, but I have something to say. Crap. Oh, going back to the ah ah the Louis Benal film that is in French that I can't say because I don't say French. Unchinandalu?
01:21:12
Speaker
Unchinandalu. Which means the Andalusian dog. Yeah, I also feel the same way about that movie that I feel about this movie Hearts of Age, that it is just random images that don't have meaning. See, okay, I have a strong opinion about surrealism, especially surrealism in film.
01:21:25
Speaker
It's one of my favorite art like movements, but in film, I don't like it much. much It has to have some sort of structure for it to truly work well. um I don't actually consider David Lynch to be all that surrealist. I consider to be more hyper-realist because he taps into some certain realities that are not...
01:21:43
Speaker
He's more realistic. Yeah. He's more realistic than people give him credit for. But when I talk about serious filmmakers who I like who people is Alejandro Dodorowsky. So who did Holy Mountain. Hope.
01:21:55
Speaker
Hope knows all about Dodorowsky. Yeah, but Holy Mountain is also a garbage movie, but the movies where really good at. I know all about a very specific time of his life. Yes.
01:22:08
Speaker
yeah Hope is obsessed with the movie. Very specific time of his life. I'm sorry. The the the the the media franchise Dune. Let me say it that way. Well, the thing is, is like his other movies outside of Holy Mountain are good because they tend to be in sort of structure. Like Santa Sangre is more or less just a slasher film.
01:22:26
Speaker
And Topo is a Western. But he elevates those with hyper-surrealism. Like there no way are they following any kind of genre conventions. They are very surrealist films. But they operate within a genre of structure.
01:22:38
Speaker
So you kind of understand like sentence and gray, you really realize you're basically we'll get into the mind of the serial killer. And it makes a lot of the images actually make a lot more sense and connect better. So i for me, and that's why David Lynch works so well is because again, he's not really surrealist, but he uses a lot of surrealist conventions within structured movies. He's mix very much old timey Hollywood films.
01:23:00
Speaker
Very much like his, his favorite movie of all time is sunset Boulevard. Like that tells you everything you need to know about the man right there. Right, and every movie makes... Like, Mulholland Drive is his is is his pastiche of... is his neo-noir pastiche of Sunset Boulevard, basically. Yeah, and he and he uses surrealism as a tool to amplify the ideas versus just use being a surrealist filmmaker.
01:23:20
Speaker
and It's like like Kenneth Anger. I don't like Kenneth Anger. I don't blame you. oh yeah and he's and the Andy Warhol, probably the same kind of kind kind thing. I got different opinions about Andy Warhol. Not for this podcast, though.
01:23:33
Speaker
yeah i were haled i mean, as a as a human being is a piece of shit. Let's let's clarify that right now. Yeah, well, it's I think his actual art is sos sucks. like you know The things he does, like the physical art he makes sucks because I don't think that's what his art was. I think his art was a big middle finger to capitalism because his whole thing was like, yeah, he made shit and you bought it.
01:23:54
Speaker
i mean, maybe not you, Stephen, but we we bought his shit. Yeah. We're kind of still in a lot of ways buying his shit, whether whether literally or not. but yeah He was a great producer. He's a great capitalist. He's a great businessman.
01:24:08
Speaker
And that's where his arm was. That's what I do like about him, but his, that is pop art. I mean, that was the whole point behind pop art. Yeah. yeah but And I mean, Dali is Dali is the great surrealist artist of, of the time.
01:24:23
Speaker
And so like, and I mean, Dadaism has its kind of roots in surrealism, but that's more like a political surrealism, yeah like a political absurdism, actually probably more than surrealism.
Orson Welles' Legacy and Surrealism
01:24:34
Speaker
Yeah. um Yeah.
01:24:36
Speaker
But the, um but I mean, you, you see the, ah the, the, the surrealist elements in Unshinandalu. And it has structure as much as something like that can have structure. Right.
01:24:50
Speaker
Like, yeah like the, There is a progression to it. There is, much like this film, they're both kind of meditations, surrealistic meditations on death. I feel like Unshinan DeLue is far more ah effective in that message than Hearts of Ages, because again, Hearts of Ages is attempting to parody that.
01:25:09
Speaker
ah Blood of the Poet also has death as a primary subject matter. We'll get into that here in a second. I feel like I'm the only one that's seen that one. So... example I'll have to be the authority on that, which I don't like.
01:25:22
Speaker
um But like, yeah like from the, from the image of the, the woman in the street with the severed hand getting, you know, run over by the car to ah the end where it's the man and the woman with their heads buried in, like buried up to their head, their necks in the sand.
01:25:38
Speaker
Like death is kind of this, and you know, getting her eyes sliced open, the dead donkeys on the pianos. Like it's all this kind of, death imagery, um the ant crawling out of an open wound on ah on a human hand, like all this stuff is just kind of feeding into this kind of... The structure is death, but it feels like a very loose structure. There's a structure there, but I don't think it's a very tightly bound one, you know? Right, and that's... whereas think Right.
01:26:07
Speaker
right And I would say that, ah yeah, that Morrison Wells movie is significantly inferior. ah and It's bad. It's bad parody. But and that's the problem I have with lost realist stuff ah is that kind of inflates the artist's ego. If it's not constrained, it's just pure ah egoism.
01:26:27
Speaker
ah But like movies. so Yeah. We're like art or like surrealist, like paintings or books and stuff like that. Or even music. If you, you can, look at it as a piece of art and just ignore it if you don't like it.
01:26:38
Speaker
With movies, you kind of got to watch the whole thing to figure it out. So you're watching it first, story you're trying to watch the whole thing, you're like forced to sit through the 16 minutes of bullshit imagery.
01:26:50
Speaker
To even get the scope of the art, and you will watch it, I got why i just wasted 16 minutes of my life when I could have just looked at the painting for 30 seconds and walked away. it's Remember when Sam wasn't going to swear on this podcast, Hope? It's a bad time investment.
01:27:05
Speaker
I can't lie. You guys are talking like so far above my pay grade here. I'm like, oh, goop okay. That's cool. We really are I didn't have to do much for this episode. Now, Hope, can you imagine what this episode would have been if it was just me talking all of this at you?
01:27:23
Speaker
Aren't you glad I have someone here to bounce some of this shit off of? You know, I don't cry on podcasts often, but... Oh no, Hope, we love you.
01:27:36
Speaker
It's okay. I got jump scared by my cat halfway through that. that. I saw that. I was trying to figure out what was going on over there. It woke me up. It woke me I was a little terrorist.
01:27:47
Speaker
At least it wasn't as bad as like what was our first or second. And Tucker cut it out of the record. It didn't end up on the episode. It's proper. But like when one of my cats was sitting on the back of my chair and did – it literally jumped at my laptop and the camera and Hope about shit herself live on the podcast. It was kind of incredible.
01:28:11
Speaker
was incredible. podcast was suddenly in 3D and it caught me off guard and I did not care for it. No. Suddenly the webcam had depth of field and it and I lost my mind for a moment. What's a good podcast than a jump scare, you know?
01:28:29
Speaker
absolutely right yeah uh and again you will never hear it because it was cut out of the episode yeah um even it's in air raid sirens but quietly in the background so as to instill a low level of dread all right good as podcast should be consumed with fear Right. Yes. It's at all. Yes. Every time I listen to Wells University, I feel an overwhelming sense of of of of ah ominous dread creeping through my system.
01:29:01
Speaker
General unease, starting with my toes, oddly enough. The opposite of white noise? Interesting. Okay. um Which brings us to the third influence, Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet.
01:29:16
Speaker
Did I start a trial subscription to the Criterion channel just to watch this movie? I don't know. Maybe. and by maybe, I mean yes, and I have absolutely been watching it.
01:29:28
Speaker
Did you remember to cancel your trial subscription before? and i It's not up till Saturday, and I've got two more Tom Ripley movies to watch between then and now.
01:29:41
Speaker
Have I already watched um have i already watched was ah Purple Noon and what's the other one? The American Friend? Yes. Do I still need to watch um ah the Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley's Game?
01:29:56
Speaker
Yes, I do. We have another special guest on the podcast right now. No, you're fine. We just did I'll pause the recording here. Hang on. All the story about how I turned my sister vegetarian by accident sometime. But Tucker can cut that out.
01:30:14
Speaker
um So there again, this this is the longest of the um or I guess the second longest after cabinet of Dr. Caligari of the of the influences on this film.
01:30:27
Speaker
And again, there is a lot of surrealism in it. There's a ah man who's an artist and he's got like one of those kind of old timey 1700s like powdered wigs on.
01:30:38
Speaker
And he's drawing a picture of a person and he notices the mouth starts moving on the painting. So he like rubs it off with his hand and then the mouth is on his hand, which he realizes when he starts to wash the charcoal off his hands and like there's bubbles coming up from the water.
01:30:54
Speaker
And then he smashes his hand against ah a statue, like a Venus de Milo armless kind of statue. And then the statue like starts to have a human face and talk to him. And he jumps through a mirror, Lewis Carroll style, and goes on this bizarre surrealist adventure because the mirror turns into a swimming pool and he jumps into it like there's.
01:31:15
Speaker
like different kind of perspective things going on here. So in some ways, like I think the perspective use is, is something that Wells is using, although to a significantly lesser degree, because I don't think he's that kind of filmmaker. Uh, but then the film negative, um,
01:31:32
Speaker
Imagery, like where you'll suddenly like the film will suddenly switch to the negative. And so it'll be kind of a reverse colorized version that comes directly from this film from Blood of a Poet.
01:31:42
Speaker
Again, like Unshin Andalou, this film has the death imagery and kind of death as a subject matter. It's about kind of. a topic that Wells will revisit a lot throughout his filmography, death and legacy, ah is, is a theme that we'll see him come back to again and again.
01:32:02
Speaker
um and again, like we'll see it in citizen Kane. We'll see it in the other side of the wind. We'll see it to a significantly lesser degree and stuff like Mr. R. Cotton and, um, the lady from Shanghai and, uh,
01:32:18
Speaker
touch of evil, like all of these films kind of deal with death and legacy in kind of their own ways. um And so this film kind of does that a lot as well. um Wells and Cocteau would actually meet each other at the premiere of our next – our homework assignment for next week, Voodoo Macbeth.
01:32:38
Speaker
ah Wells' is production of Macbeth with um ah with ah with an all-black cast for the – ah the the the post the The post-depression project. I forget the name of it. It's like a public works thing. Oh, I used to know this, son of a bitch. Yeah.
01:32:59
Speaker
Well, well it'll it'll become very relevant next week don't or next class. Don't worry. um But there is a poem that Cocteau wrote for Wells, and the two would meet several times later.
01:33:09
Speaker
um Like they were at Cannes when Wells went to Cannes with Othello. Like Cocteau was there. ah But there was a poem ah that Cocteau wrote about Wells, I'm going read it.
01:33:22
Speaker
um It was probably written in French, ah so it's not going to rhyme, but here it is. Orson Welles is a poet through his violence and through his grace. Never does he tumble from a tightrope on which he crosses cities and their dramas.
01:33:34
Speaker
He is a poet, too, in the loyal friendship he bears, our dreams and our struggles. Others will know better than I how to praise his work. I content myself with sending him my fraternal greeting. His handshake is as firm as he is, and I think of it each time my work obliges me to leap over an obstacle.
01:33:53
Speaker
Oh, that's kind of lovely. Yeah, it's it's kind of sweet. um So yeah, that's that's on the I found that on the WellesNet archives. which I like it when filmmakers like each other. It's great, right? also like it when filmmakers hate each other.
01:34:08
Speaker
No, they're pen pals. They're like obsessed with each other. They hate other. No, I'm saying i love I love when filmmakers love each other and I love when filmmakers hate each other. oh yeah like When filmmakers are kind of indifferent toward each other, I couldn't care less.
01:34:22
Speaker
But when they love each other and when they hate each other, I love it. I love that shit. um And so this is Wells' first... uh, film, uh, that was, he ever made the last film that was of his, that was ever released is the other side of the wind. And as I was, which Sam, you've mentioned previously in this episode, and this will kind of be our, this, this will be our final kind of thought for the night. And then we'll get into the Wells news of the, of the era,
01:34:49
Speaker
um but um there's a lot of similarities between this and the other side of the wind, which Sam, you said is your favorite film of all time. um And I would say predominantly of those, which we've mentioned already, kind of the meditations on death and legacy that both of these films present. I feel like this is somewhat more amateurish than what he would finally get to in the other side of the wind. But you can't argue that both films are dealing with death in in a way.
01:35:15
Speaker
No, I would argue but like thematically they're the same. and in fact, I would say, actually Orson Welles makes a better scathing commentary of surrealism and other side of the wind than this was.
01:35:25
Speaker
He does better. Surrealism charity. Another side of the wind. Then he achieved with this. I'm like a masterful level. And I was going to say, that's the other major thing that this has in common with The Other Side of the Wind is that Wells is commenting on the avant-garde cinema of the day in each film. Yeah. um this is He's commenting on all the films we just mentioned, Cocteau, Bunuel, Vina.
01:35:46
Speaker
But in um The Other Side of the Wind, it's it's very pointedly at Michelangelo Antonioni, which they I think they mentioned at the panel discussion that we were at back in 2015.
01:35:59
Speaker
ah Wells did not care for Antonioni. at all no no yeah yeah it's i love it because i also hate all those guys that he hates as well But I watched them because they are such massive... What they love The Other Side of the Wind?
01:36:14
Speaker
Yeah. because Well, they're such massive influences in cinema. Again, I keep going back to Kenneth Anger because Kenneth Anger more or less invented the music video. If there's no Kenneth Anger, there'd also be no more no Martin Scorsese. But his movies are such absolute garbage movies.
01:36:27
Speaker
But then Orswell's parody is that with the that wonderful, amazing sequence but with a song from Icebergs and Lettuce. I think that's the song or no blue cheer, iceberg lettuce, which is a stupid song in itself. But mixed together with that imagery, you're like, this is the sexiest thing I've ever seen on cinema.
01:36:45
Speaker
And like he, in his parody, he ends up making better surrealist music videos than and any of those guys invented it. And yeah, I mean, that, that I think is, is, in and again, I don't have a lot of familiarity with, with surrealism as a, as a genre, particularly a film genre.
01:37:02
Speaker
Like I've the, I've never seen an Antonioni film to this, to this point. um Although the, the house he filmed the other side of the wind in was used in Antonioni film, if I'm not mistaken.
01:37:18
Speaker
Uh, that was kind of just one of those like weird locations out in Topeka Canyon, ah where like a lot of shit got filmed. Um, I want to, I'm trying to remember, it was the name of a place and I'm trying to think of what the name of the, cause the name of the film was the name of a place and I am struggling now to remember unfamiliar with this, uh, bit of information, this little fun fact.
01:37:47
Speaker
It's one of those things like I remember getting being mentioned at the symposium and I don't remember what the name of the film was. Yeah. The problem is that I would really like to go back and relive that symposium because that symposium would have made a lot more sense.
01:38:01
Speaker
Had I seen the movie first. ahre the last No one's seen the movie. Like, yeah like other side the the other side of the wind is a very difficult movie to grasp.
01:38:12
Speaker
If I were to explain to you what it's about, it'd take me like 45 minutes to straight talking. So, trying to understand whether, like, no one had seen the movie at this point, so they're talking about scenes, they're talking about this movie that, one, we haven't seen, so we really don't know what they're talking about.
01:38:24
Speaker
And then, still, i would rather, like, hear the conversations after having seen the full picture to get more insight into what was going on. The movie is called Zabriskie Point. It was filmed on location in Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, which is, I think, where that house was.
01:38:40
Speaker
And in the book, it is listed in the book, The 50 Worst Films of All Time and How They Got That Way by Harry Medlev with Randy Dreyfuss. ah It is described as the worst film ever made by a director of Genius.
01:38:53
Speaker
Zabriskie Point is the name of the film that ah that the same house used there. So I find it very funny that Wells is using a house that Antonioni had filmed in to kind of make fun of Antonioni. Like that feels like a very intentional move on his part. And I would believe that it would be an intentional move because Orson Welles was a bitch like that.
01:39:16
Speaker
He was. Orson is, as I think we've said on this podcast before, he was that bitch. Orson was that bitch. Yeah. Okay. So you've said it before. yeah Yeah.
01:39:27
Speaker
And we'll say it again. and Look, we're not above saying it again. and Like, no. um Yeah. He was absolutely that bitch. And I mean, it's like Dennis Hopper shows up on the other side of the wind. He's another one of those kind of avant-garde filmmakers that – Like Hopper shows up in that movie because he loves Wells, but we I don't know if he, he may have been too stoned to realize that Wells is absolutely kind of poking fun at the shit he does in interviewing him that way. So like, I don't know. I find it very fascinating that he's able to get.
01:39:58
Speaker
some of the figures in the other side of the wind that he is, but we'll talk about that in 50 years when we get to the other side. i say Cause I don't think it's that output. I found out it's like said Dennis, ho like do you think Dennis Hopper took everything he did seriously.
01:40:09
Speaker
Like I know i as someone who's watched, as someone who's watched two Dennis Hopper films in the last two weeks. No, Dennis Hopper did not take, I watched land of the dead and the American friend. One of those movies he took very seriously. The other one was a paycheck movie and I'll let you figure out which one is which. I'm guessing Land of the Dead was the serious one.
01:40:29
Speaker
like Clearly, no, not at all. um but But again, i I feel like everything Hopper does, he does kind of somewhat unseriously, which is why a lot of people wouldn't work with him for years until David Lynch kind of digs him out of obscurity for Blue Velvet. So well then that kind of revived his career.
01:40:48
Speaker
yeah he's His drug abuse, the violence, the sexism. He's just been an all around awful person. I mean, it all comes into play for sure. Just being an asshole. um Friends, any final thoughts before we move on to the Wells news segment?
01:41:04
Speaker
ah Any final thoughts on ah the Hearts of Age? I like the ending where the little sign said the little gravestone said the end on it. I thought that was kind of funny. Oh, yeah, that little triptych of, um, triptych, whatever it is actually called, that little couple of shots of the the tombstones that he's shuffling through.
01:41:25
Speaker
Sleeping at rest in peace with the Lord and then finally the end. i thought that was... That's my only high fucking hysterical. That was amazing.
01:41:37
Speaker
The best joke of the movie for sure. I chuckled at that. I chuckled at that. thought, can steal that somehow for one of my movies and not be I'm sure you can, Sam. Here's the thing. I'm sure you can. And if anyone calls you on it, just say it's an homage. It's an homage. There it is.
01:41:51
Speaker
Got it. ah Say, no, no, no. i wasn't taking that seriously. That was an homage. Yeah. I actually don't like that movie. Um,
01:41:59
Speaker
Hearts of Age. Yeah, it's it's it's not his best work, but it is the first of his films. And Wells himself even would go so far as to say, I don't – and I think this is maybe a vague paraphrase, but almost a direct quote.
01:42:12
Speaker
I don't know how it entered the oeuvre. Like like he he himself is like, is it's Sunday afternoon fun in the park with friends. I have no idea why it's become kind of this work that people are discussing.
01:42:25
Speaker
um Because in Wells's mind, it's not worth discussion. And yet we've talked about it for 90 minutes. Actually, we talked very little about it. We talk more about movies around it than we have it fair.
01:42:37
Speaker
And because there's not much to it. there's not much to it and And again, I think the most interesting things about it are the backstory and the influences of it and kind of the glimpses that we start to see of the filmmaker he would become as he would get more more freedom and more more daring with his ability to to work behind the camera.
01:43:00
Speaker
um That said, we're going to go ahead and casually segue into a little segment I am now calling Wells News on the March. um ah So some news items from the last several weeks that we kind of neglected to get to within the past couple of recordings or things that have happened since our last recording.
01:43:22
Speaker
um At this point, all of these are old news. ah But on July 16th, which is just about a month ago from this recording, the infamous Rosebud sled prop, which had been previously owned by the great Joe Dante, one of my favorite filmmakers. ah Did I mention I'm a Gremlins fan?
01:43:41
Speaker
um From the movie Citizen Kane was sold at auction for $14.75 million, dollars making it the second most expensive piece of movie memorabilia ever sold after a pair of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz sold last December for $32.5 million. Man.
01:44:01
Speaker
and um So. I could use like a small fraction of that. Yeah, right? Yeah. just I would take just a couple of those million, honestly, and I'd be okay. I would take a fraction of that and be okay. yeah um Also, ah the actor Norman Ashley, who was one of the actors in Wells' The Immortal Story, a film he made in 1968, which we will talk about in 25 years, um died on August 2nd at the age of 80.
01:44:32
Speaker
Um, he, um it is said in one of the articles, one of the obituaries I read on him that Wells had wanted to adopt him when he was 23. Um, and, uh, Ashley, uh, demurred because apparently Wells always wanted a son and he wanted Ashley to be that son.
01:44:49
Speaker
Um, I, I find that weird. Um, but you know, influences and the other side of the wind. Yeah. Really? You're, you're, you're, you're, you're fine. You're picking up on that.
01:45:02
Speaker
And then finally, we'll we'll end on this. Vishal Wah of No Film School ah ranks the – oh, gosh, what did I just do? Ranks the films of Orson Welles, quote, four cinephiles. We did ah ah kind of one of these not too long ago.
01:45:19
Speaker
I don't know if we want to go – I'll just kind of run through the list. um But, yeah, No Film School does the – ah Kind of a film's site. um Bear with me.
01:45:32
Speaker
i just, I, oh, I lie it was, there we go. Here it is. Ranked for finished. Cinephiles. Starting at number 11 is The Immortal Story, the film starring Norman Ashley. In number 10, Mr. Arcadon.
01:45:45
Speaker
Number nine, Macbeth. ah Number eight, The Other Side of the Wind. Sorry, Sam. ah Number seven, The Stranger. ah Number six, Othello.
01:45:57
Speaker
Number five, The Trial. Number four, Chimes at Midnight. Number three, The Magnificent Ambersons. Number two, Touch of Evil, which brings us to number one, of course, Citizen Kane.
01:46:12
Speaker
um Again, not the ranking I would give. It is. Citizen Kane number one. What else? I mean, I would i would put Citizen Kane as number one, but I would not... ah like I don't know that I would rank the others quite the way that they do here. But um yeah let us know if you agree or disagree with those rankings. I posted something about it on social media.
01:46:34
Speaker
um If you follow us ah at... Wells U pod on blue sky, blue sky, and YouTube pretty much the only places we exist on social media these days. Cause social media is a hellscape and yeah, I'm the one who manages the social media accounts. And quite frankly, I don't want to be on most platforms and I don't want us exist, which means we're our, our, our radius for influence is probably diminished, but I'm okay with that. If it means I don't have to contend with the metaverse.
01:47:05
Speaker
We should go back to doing like mailers or text messages, like text message random people the link to link your podcast. and just that That's a fun idea. i mean And anyone who's willing to click on ah on a random link they receive in a text message deserves whatever they get.
01:47:20
Speaker
Which is a two-hour podcast about a short film that no one's seen. Correct. this this this This episode is longer by like a factor of 10 than the actual subject matter being covered, which I find hilarious. Yeah.
01:47:36
Speaker
That's actually a great question. ah The link to it on YouTube has 110 likes. yeah so yeah
01:47:50
Speaker
Yeah, good. We got that going for us. um Yeah, I'm not on social media, but you can go to my website. Hi, I'm hope.com H I G H I'm hope.com.
01:48:01
Speaker
ah That's where I put anything I care to put and I don't care to put much out. So really doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. But she bought the domain, so she might as well use it.
01:48:13
Speaker
I might as well. It's a place to put my my my short form writing based on D&D campaigns. So fuck it. Who cares? And that, you know, five part saga of your your wedding, which was absolutely lovely.
01:48:26
Speaker
Oh, you're still very kind. ah Still feeling pretty good about that. As well, you should. ah God in heaven.
01:48:38
Speaker
Sam, where can we find you and and your work? Tell us a little bit about ah the Department of Menial Humor. Well, you can find me on Instagram at I am your Paul Bear.
01:48:51
Speaker
said that slowly so you could catch on to that. I am your Paul Bear. Is that where you find me on Instagram? And then, the yes, the Department Menial Humor is a a comedy variety show that direct and produce here in indian Indianapolis featuring Indianapolis comedians.
01:49:06
Speaker
We try to intercut it with other art stuff like short films, skits, music videos. We actually have a live music guest every episode. We film once a month down at the wonderful bar and grill on Pendleton Pike and 38th Street. It's a safe area, trust me.
01:49:18
Speaker
um And then I edit it and I release it on YouTube. You can find the Department of Menial Humor on YouTube where you can see all of our episodes. We have a website, the DepartmentofMenialHumor.com, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. We're on all of it.
01:49:31
Speaker
Right on. And, um, are you working on any, uh, any film projects lately? Uh, way too many to talk about. Okay. and Oh, fair enough. Destroying, destroying everything around me. But, uh, uh, back in January, Stephen, Stephen Fox, where they sent me a link to the internet archive.
01:49:51
Speaker
ah apparently they, they were having a film contest. So I entered that. I didn't win, but I entered that net short film. You can see on the internet archive or on my personal YouTube channel. Uh, ah Crown Hill Productions.
01:50:04
Speaker
Named after the famed Indianapolis Cemetery, Crown Hill Cemetery. But that's just my YouTube. I set up like 20 years ago and I've never changed it. You can also find the short film. it's called Epoch of Love. I believe it is an episode eight of a show worth watching, which is with the Department of Human, our show on YouTube.
01:50:19
Speaker
So you can go to YouTube and watch one of our episodes. I can't quite remember. If you look at the credits in the comment section or in the description, you can find it. But I have a short film hiding somewhere in my TV show. Oh, dude, when you type in Epochs of Love on on Google, ah the Google AI has you as the top result.
01:50:38
Speaker
Oh, sick. It's a surrealist film set within a structure. ah Yeah, though i know
01:50:47
Speaker
I know. No, say it again, but without the hypocrisy this time. can't. I can't.
01:50:56
Speaker
I can't. Oh oh my god. I've been waiting this whole time. I'm so fucking glad we got there, Sam. You have no idea. point of this contest is to take as much public domain footage from the 1927
01:51:17
Speaker
whatever this year 1925 whatever ah public domain ah footage and create a short video production to showcase it but you didn't have any rules so I just created like this story where like this girl gets kidnapped by these satanists and then this guy has to travel across time and dimensions to savor fighting different villains in each time period and I found some royalty free music that I put it to that I really like the artist that person's really generous to put their music out for free because it's really good and So it's silly, but there's at least a story to it.
01:51:52
Speaker
If you can detect it, I think I'll watch and I'll judge. No, we'll link to that in the show notes for sure. You should watch it and do a podcast about this idiot, Sam.
01:52:03
Speaker
what What a fucking hypocrite this man is. He just shit on Surrealism. He's like, oh yeah, check out my silent black and white Surrealist film.
01:52:14
Speaker
um And didn't is the is the the short that you made with with the Zuba, is that up on YouTube as well? Yes, it is on YouTube. I should promote that more. ah Like two years ago, we did a...
01:52:25
Speaker
Very, ah you're going to watch and you're going this is bad, but it it is artsy. We did a very specific thing and we achieved the thing that we were trying to do. So we are proud of it. It's called Eyes on You. It's about a couple that a couple that's fighting and they retreat to a cabin, like a cabin retreat for the weekend to try to work on the relationship.
01:52:42
Speaker
Not aware that someone's watching them. it's It's a, it's a, you're retreated to a cabin, which is itself a cabin retreat. Yeah, sorry. I try. It's like 1030 here. i'm just I'm just messing with you, dude. I'm just goofing on you. Yeah, but yeah, a feuding couple gets gets to a cabin getaway, but there's someone watching them.
01:53:03
Speaker
So that's that's the movie. It's 20 minutes. It's very long. Okay. Oh, I just found it. There it is. 20 minutes. Yeah. not to it's It's a little over twice as long as Hearts of Age. so yeah And from what I understand, it makes a great double feature.
01:53:17
Speaker
Oh, I don't know about that. Maybe. If you want to do a double feature of movies that kind of piss you off. ah We didn't. Oh, okay. ah This movie is kind of fun because it's all drama improv. We didn't write a script for it. Mm-hmm. We really did. So in that way, very similar to Hearts of Age.
01:53:33
Speaker
ah We had a structure at least going into it that you can at least know there's a story. And both of our actors are actually very good at ah ah improv. So the drama worked really well, especially Erica. She's amazing.
01:53:45
Speaker
And I gave them backgrounds, to their characters, a little insider information about this. I wrote backup. I wrote character sheets for them, but then gave them conflicted information. So there's actual argument with that. We put kind of film because I gave them conflicted information. So they're talking about a place that they, their first date and they actually both have completely two different stories and they get into an argument about it. za And Erica picks up on it. She's really good at arguing. So Zach's like trying to keep up with her the whole time.
01:54:09
Speaker
It's pretty great. i I love that as someone who is, I've known Zach longer than I've known you. yeah So that's, that's a it that you managed to get that man flustered. Bravo. Cause that is, he is an unflappable dude dude. Yeah. It's easier than you think if you know him, if you'd like, not like put off by how freaking intimidating he can be with his personality. Yeah.
01:54:31
Speaker
yeah He's yeah. Very large. good He is a, he is a, he's a ringmaster at a circus that does not exist. or has not been built yet. Exists in his own mind. um For sure. And he is, I would say, the mastermind behind the department of menial humor. It is his brainchild, yeah.
01:54:49
Speaker
I'm the person who's doing all the technical work, so. Yeah, you're he's he's the mastermind. You're the you're the the person making it work.
01:54:59
Speaker
um There's a third friend of mine that you you met through my Facebook page, one of the weird um polls that I used to post on Facebook. And there was a picture that you you sent me at the first...
01:55:12
Speaker
ever show worth watching of the three of you. And I know you all from three very different places and three very different times in my life. So seeing a picture of the three of you standing together was speaking of surrealism, very surreal. du murder It was very weird.
01:55:29
Speaker
Murph is the best. I fucking love that. he come i don't know if he doesn't realize that that he has equity in our show. So if we ever make money, he actually gets money off because he's been out so help us so much. He also filmed. yeah yeah and We actually have a short film that we filmed. I haven't released it yet that we made up that we met some of the comedians like like we did a show and that night after the show, we were all hanging out and then Zach's like, hey, you should all should meet us in Noblesville tomorrow. Let's make a short film.
01:55:53
Speaker
So I got that very very hearts of age kind of set up too. So this one's it's fun. Yeah. So some of the comedians came out. We made it. It's not a comedy. It is a very serious movie. Also drama improv.
01:56:07
Speaker
No script written. We just dramatically improv because comedians have to know improv. yeah It helps. It's not an essential skill, but it's helpful. It is absolutely essential. I'm sorry. If you don't think improv is an essential skill, you should reevaluate your life.
01:56:24
Speaker
I mean, Hope and I are both improvers. It helps you in every single aspect of life. It kind of has. I play real good in job interviews because of it. so Yeah, it's such a useful skill to have. I wish I had it. I have a little bit of it, but not much, obviously.
01:56:39
Speaker
ah But yeah, it's a very useful skill to have. And it's been very useful for actors. If you're trying to do movies, stop trying to do movies, do theater and improv. You'll get your skill will increase by a lot. So when you do the few movies, you'll do the ah talent comes out.
01:56:54
Speaker
That's why use mostly theater actors and stuff.
01:57:01
Speaker
i'm I'm your host, Stephen Foxworthy. ah say No, seriously, Sam, thank you so much for being on the the episode. It's it's yeah been an absolute pleasure having you. Thank for having me on.
01:57:13
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Again, any time. Seriously, if there's another Wells project or piece of Wells ephemera that you want to discuss, let us know and we we'll put you on. and We'll schedule you for it for sure. Yeah, but we've got to act fast because this podcast, I don't know, it's it's got a short shelf life.
01:57:30
Speaker
We're certainly not going to be doing it for decades. The rest of our natural lives. yeah jesus Right. Well, obviously, other side of the wind, I wouldn't mind coming in for Touch of Evil if it's available. All right.
01:57:43
Speaker
yeah I've already got you on the schedule for the other side of the wind. So don't even worry about that. i i will ah The only reason is because I feel like I didn't understand it the first two times I watched it.
01:57:55
Speaker
And we did a podcast on it after I watched it. And I feel like in the podcast that we did in which I'm talking about it, I'm talking like an idiot because I obviously didn't get it. I don't think any of us got it. And I think that's kind of what makes all idiots.
01:58:09
Speaker
The other guy, your other friend that was on there who saw at a Ren Fair two weeks ago. ah He got it. Phil? Is his name... Oh, Phil. Oh, that he was on the, he was on the Phil Smith was on the lady from Shanghai episode, the film noir episode.
01:58:27
Speaker
He wasn't on the other side of the wind episode. No, the ah touch of evil. He was on two episodes, I think. And I'm pretty sure he commented on the one. Was he not on the villain episode? No, he's on the villain episode.
01:58:38
Speaker
No, the only, no, there were, there were only three of us on that episode and Caleb decided not to pick a villain. So we literally just discussed night of the hunter and touch of evil.
01:58:50
Speaker
Yeah. I've chosen the wrong villain for mine. Yeah. I want to redo that. i don't want to redo that episode. Actually. I, I have a different favorite villain, but it's fine. It's whatever um you can find. You can find me on social media at Chewy Walrus. I'm um on Blue Sky and Letterboxd. You can find my other podcast disenfranchised at disenfranch pod on Blue Sky, YouTube and Letterboxd.
01:59:13
Speaker
ah Listen to us wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah. And then we are on the pod and the pendulum. We are getting ready to record our 300th episode on the pod and the pendulum where we're going to be ranking the top 25 horror films of the century so far, of the last 25 years.
01:59:29
Speaker
ah So that is we're currently getting all the all the data in for that. So that that's going to be a fun episode. um And then, yeah, i'm ah if you're in the Chicagoland area, I'm doing one of my favorite plays, the and Inherit the Wind. I'm playing the passer. It's at the Curtain Call Theater, Curtain Call Community Theater in Mokina, Illinois.
01:59:54
Speaker
um On Front Street in Mokina, Illinois, you can get tickets at CCC Theater. That's theater with an R-E dot com. If you're in the Chicagoland area, we'll be presenting at the end of September, beginning of October.
02:00:07
Speaker
So if you're interested in theater, come and see that. It's one of my favorite plays of all time. I, again, as someone who's made religious trauma, his entire personality to get to play a villainous pastor is...
02:00:20
Speaker
Kind of fun, going to lie. That's going to be a good time, yeah. It's very cathartic in a lot of ways. i Did I miss rehearsal tonight to record this episode? I don't know, maybe.
02:00:32
Speaker
um I put it down as... Because i We had this episode scheduled so far. We had this episode scheduled before I auditioned. So I put it down as something as a, a, as a, a date I couldn't make.
02:00:45
Speaker
Oh, gosh. That's what happened. um But yeah, so that is everything that I've got going. um This has been, Wells University, your homework for next week, before I dismiss class, ah your homework for next week is going to be ah the the Voodoo Macbeth production, the first production of what would become the Mercury Theater.
02:01:07
Speaker
It's going to be a pretty big one, honestly, ah because there's a lot of shit to discuss in the lead up to that one. how the theater comes together, the John Houseman of it all, ah the works project that FDR put in place to get actors working again with federal funds.
02:01:26
Speaker
One of the last times the the the United States government funded the arts, um So, yeah, there's a lot that we're going to be getting into on that episode. But that is what we're covering next week or next class, rather. ah So you have your homework assignments.
02:01:41
Speaker
um Once again, everybody, please give it up for our guest lecturer, Mr. Samuel Dumas. Sam, again, thank you so much for being here. It is an absolute pleasure.
02:01:51
Speaker
ah We look forward to having you back on again at any opportunity. And with that, for ah my other TA, Hope Stow, for our very special guest, Mr. Samu Dumas, I am your TA, a Stephen Foxworthy.
02:02:05
Speaker
And until next time, class dismissed.