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Episode 012 - Hope Signals
8 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we discuss recent movie news and recent viewings as well as continue our conversation around Native American film and representation in media including Terrence Malick's The New World and Season 2 of Reservation Dogs
Sifting through decades’ worth of mass media consumption, my friend and fellow cinemaphile Scrumpy joins me in discussions on film from the low to high brow
CREDITS:
Intro clip from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi's "Reservation Dogs" Season 1 (2022) from FXP, Piki Films, Film Rites and distributed by Disney Platform Distribution and Disney-ABC Domestic Television
Opening music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-116199/
Closing music: https://pixabay.com/music/id-11176/
Two Oceans is a creation of Siouxfire & Scrumpy in association with SiouxWIRE
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Transcript
Introduction of William Knifeman
00:00:05
Speaker
Two oceans. Two oceans will begin. Ho ho! Young warrior. Looks as though you've tasted the white man's lead. It's only paintballs. I have had many brothers and sisters meet the same fate in my time.
00:00:29
Speaker
Are you crazy horse or sitting? No, no, no. I'm not one of those awesome guys. No, I'm more of your, uh, I'm more of your unknown warrior. Yeah. You know, my name, William Knifeman. I was at the Battle of Little Bighorn. That's right.
00:00:48
Speaker
I didn't kill anybody. But I fought bravely. Well, I didn't actually fight. I actually didn't even get into the fight itself. But I came over that hill real rugged like, ah, ah, I saw a custer like that. That yellow hair, he was sitting there. Son of the morning star, that guy right there. Fuck, I really hated him. So I went after him. But then the damn horse hit a gopher hole. Fucking rolled over and squashed me. I died there. This horse actually, little shit.
00:01:14
Speaker
And now I'm meant to travel the spirit world, find lost souls like you. The spirit world, it's cold. My nipples are always hard.
Two Oceans Podcast Introduction
00:01:26
Speaker
Welcome to the Two Oceans podcast where myself, Sue Fire, along with my friend and noteworthy colleague, Scrumby discuss film and other media through a decades long lens of mass media consumption. Tonight we'll be going through selected movie news and recent viewing as well as continuing our conversation around Native American film and representation in media. This
00:01:47
Speaker
is The Two Oceans podcast. So splash some red paint on Mount Rushmore and get on your horse as we begin episode 12. Episode 12. Maybe we should have done a gileum episode around 12 monkeys. Five o'clock high.
Film Critiques and Humorous Asides
00:02:09
Speaker
Ocean's 12. High noon. High noon. 12 angry men. Outland. Cause if you do high noon, then you can do outland.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, 12 years a slave. Oh, wow. Oh, do you remember, uh, three o'clock high, uh, speaking of the clock? I, that was a great, I remember it being great. Anyhow. Um, the Western eyes. It holds up two minutes to midnight. Uh, too many watchmen. If you do think about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:02:42
Speaker
Well, I won't encourage anyone to watch that movie instead. Watch the Watch the Excellent HBO series. Oh, that is excellent. That is excellent. And I will take back for the I like the actors that are all in the Watchmen movie, but it's a Zack Snyder, so I can never recommend it. Oh, well, you know, I mean, I remember seeing the trailer. I mean, it looks it looks great, but
00:03:08
Speaker
You know, you, it was just mimicking. It was, it was, it was, it was, uh, just making what was in the comic. Yeah, exactly. Except for, I think they got around the unfillableness of it with their, their version of the ending. They actually kind of, I won't say fixed it, but made it appropriate. So it seemed like, it's like, okay, this makes more sense than rather than huge space vagina crashes in New York. You know, uh, maybe I'm weird, but.
00:03:36
Speaker
I could have lived with that. Yeah, but the HBO series far improved all of it. Anyway, midnight, midnight hour.
High Budgets and Skepticism in Film
00:03:49
Speaker
Good night. So movie news this week, there's not much to get too excited about.
00:03:57
Speaker
Indiana Jones five. There's some more information about that one. I mean, it is James mangled. So I'm hoping he has said that they're leaning into the practical effects and that it's not season 1969, which I'm not quite sure what I how I feel about that. Yeah, it's yeah. Yeah.
00:04:23
Speaker
And speaking of movies that it's hard to get excited about, Avatar has got its budget out. Apparently it's 400 million, which means it's probably actually 600 million. Yeah. Wow. And the trailers just, it doesn't look like it's improved at all. To my eyes. You know? You mean the re-release of the original, they're doing ahead of the
00:04:46
Speaker
New one or the new one? The shape of water or whatever. The shape of water. It doesn't look any, you know, yeah. Maybe if I compared them side by side, but I shouldn't have to do that. No, don't do that, Mike. Don't do that to yourself. Yeah, I'm not really planning on it. I'm not holding my breath for this movie. Ah, I see what you did there. Because it's water. Yeah, see?
00:05:12
Speaker
Gotcha.
Upcoming Movies and Spin-off Ideas
00:05:14
Speaker
The next three bits I've got are actually kind of interesting. Nicholas Cage is in a new movie coming up called Renfeld, where it's described as him being a shitty boss who's a vampire. It's going to be using at least at least right. Yeah. They're working on a Bambi horror movie because all these movies are coming out of copy all these
00:05:42
Speaker
These characters can be a copyright. Copyright, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And the last one I have on my list is Gary Whitta, who's one of the co-writers for Rogue One. Straight after they'd finished that movie, they had an idea for a Rogue One spin-off that wasn't Andor. And it actually sounds pretty interesting. It was meant to be set after Return of the Jedi.
00:06:10
Speaker
And it's about a crew who are hunting down imperial war criminals. Nice. Yeah. I'm hoping that makes it to screen at some point if Andrew does does well, which I finished. Did you finish it? I did. What do you think? Oh, man, that's just I mean, you know, there's a lot of superlatives from a lot of critics are finally like, OK, we've had to sit through
00:06:40
Speaker
all this other, you know, they feel like it's like, you know, Hasbro fanboy service or Kenner fanboy.
00:06:45
Speaker
Service up to this point and and now it's something can really sink their teeth, you know sink their teeth into properly you know, it's like yeah, this is the best thing Star Wars ever gave us I'm like, well, no, you can't say that because You realize your modifier, right? You have something original there that is anyway So driving me a little crazy on the superlatives, but I mean they're not you know, there's the most of it that's not wrong It's getting more attention which it deserves
Praise for 'Andor' in Star Wars
00:07:10
Speaker
Um, uh, yeah, I thought it was fantastic just cause I had no idea what to expect from it for one, but I was like, you know, but it's a great character. So let's see what they do. And he had no idea that they were just going to go with the, the whole, what it takes to start what it really takes. And then, but then also just to lean in to it so hard, like you get somebody of Gilroy's level of quality, um, in terms of.
00:07:41
Speaker
The political and spycraft and those sorts of things. You have to think, don't you? Because in a lot of movies that try to do the same thing, it's pretty much obvious what choice you are unless you're a completely evil person. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, this is what you would do. In this, you're not quite as sure. Right. And you've got all these characters, none of them in makeup.
00:08:07
Speaker
that you, you know, you have to get grounded and get all the feeling from. And, you know, it's all it's all people. There's no I mean, there's aliens around. Sure. But nobody's, you know, all your mains are all people, you know, all human forms. Except the droid is surprisingly great. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's a very human role. It's a very like childlike. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:33
Speaker
And yeah, you keep that in there, obviously. But everything else is like, no, it's people. There's no aliens. There's very few robots. There's no Jedi. There's none of the Skywalker bullshit. All that other stuff. We know what's happening. It's all over there.
00:08:50
Speaker
But this is like, it's like, OK, you got all that. This is where it's really happening. This is where you know. And so. But even when they start hinting at some of that legend type stuff like even the mention of the Emperor is 100 times scarier in this series, you can you can see the fear on both sides of mention of his name, you know. Right. And we never see him, but he's never been scarier, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have to. That's the thing. You don't have to. We got that. We're going to.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah so it's a world building cuz the world's already built but it is you know cuz it's like this whole other dimension that hasn't existed really in any kind of it not certainly in this depth I mean to an extent you got some of it in
00:09:39
Speaker
in things like Rebels or such, where you got to see a little more of the on the ground sort of thing, but that even that was still. I think this just adds more layers. Yeah, exactly. More human layers to it. And the thing about it being the best Star Wars and all this is Star Wars has got so big now, you have to qualify it, you got to be like,
00:10:01
Speaker
Okay. It's the best wartime espionage Star Wars. Sure. Yeah. Like, like the Mandalorian is the best Western Star Wars. Yeah. Exactly. So, so, so, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's got a lot bigger than, than, you know, it was the best Star Wars I've seen. Cause it's, it's, it's like trying to compare apples to oranges, even though they're the same universe, you know? Um, but yeah, terrific. We're going to have to do a Star Wars episode at some point next year. Um,
00:10:30
Speaker
That's that's probably going to be a big one. But yeah, so we're doing the part two of our look at Native Americans again.
Native American Representation in Films
00:10:42
Speaker
I have seen a lot this week and I've been thinking about it and I ordered some books on the subject. We might have to do a part three. Oh, nice.
00:10:54
Speaker
But the movie of the week for me that I've seen this week, and it's one that I wasn't looking forward to seeing. And, you know, I was pretty nervous about it, which is Terrence Malick's The New World. And I really liked it. I thought it was terrific.
00:11:24
Speaker
I mean, you haven't seen it either, have you? No. To my shame, I saw 1492 instead. A Ridley Scott one, which was awful. Yeah, to be fair, I saw that one too, before seeing the New World.
00:11:44
Speaker
I think they did Native Americans really well in this. At the very opening, you have this kind of montage, you know, very Malek-esque, you know, into the way he does, sky.
00:11:59
Speaker
grass and then and you have these underwater shots of all the the natives kind of like three friends swimming just naked um in in the water and you just had this feeling of like paradise right you know oh they're completely blissful
00:12:18
Speaker
And then they come back on shore and then someone shouts out and you can see these three galleons coming up the Potomac or whatever river that is. And and it I mean, it had a texture like kind of like Fitzcorraldo or you know, it had that sort of grit to it. They refer to the natives as naturals when they arrive.
00:12:45
Speaker
The natives don't have any word for greed. There's no malice, there's no attachment to things, you know, they got a functioning society going there and you see that. And then you kind of cut to the camp. And you can see that, you know, the colony, they're starving, right?
00:13:05
Speaker
And they're trying to get people to dig a well, but they would rather be digging for gold. They're starving, but they're so greedy that they're trying to dig for gold, which is not going to serve them in the coming winter.
00:13:23
Speaker
And you have these nicer cutbacks back and forth. You have this real sort of like anti-capitalist undertone as well that wasn't really obvious. And I hadn't seen very many reviewers pick that out. But it's there. Oh, is it there? As soon as you notice it, you know, oh, you just keep picking up on bits.
00:13:43
Speaker
And the native characters are fleshed out. They never mentioned Pocahontas' name, so you never hear that Pocahontas mentioned in the movie. And you have this weird, it's split. So the first two thirds, the New World is the US, right, in North America.
00:14:01
Speaker
And then the last third or quarter of the movie is her going to England. And by the way, this is entirely her story. The other characters are secondary, for sure. Even though we don't really see her until 10 or 15 minutes in,
00:14:27
Speaker
it is completely Pocahontas' story. And yeah, it's really good. I mean, it's not for everyone because it's got that malic pacing again. But I think it works here because it's historical. There's something about spending a little time looking at the filthy kind of cabins that they built and how they're building the beams and stuff like this. It's actually kind of interesting. But yeah, that was my surprise of the week because I went in
00:14:57
Speaker
not expecting very much, but turned out to be really good. Nice. Yeah, it's a nice surprise. But again, it's malic pacing for sure. I'm not sure if the last bit in England works quite as well as the beginning, but yeah, what have you watched this week?
00:15:22
Speaker
This week was a couple things, more of a, it could be a whole, you know, recurrent motif here in the forest. It's like watching movies that I should have seen before, long before now.
00:15:39
Speaker
Right. I'm doing that
Impact of Classic Films
00:15:41
Speaker
too. I think it's probably our age, Nolan. Yeah, exactly. I think it's only that point. Like, you know. So I finally watched Paris, Texas, which I had never seen before. Oh, oh, Harry Dean and Santa. We were just talking about him last week. Yeah, exactly. And maybe a part of it, I don't know, but everybody in that movie, right?
00:16:07
Speaker
See, that's another one. It's got that pacing that doesn't work for everyone. But if you go with it and start just soaking it in, it hooks you pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. And it hooks hard and it's meant to leave you. So you sympathize with his character. Why would he just leave that and like, oh, this is why. It seems much more of a natural response than
00:16:34
Speaker
and his version of fixing it by the end and such is not fixed. I mean, it is fixing it, but it's not, you know, it's not what you think it's going to be. You know, anyway, yeah, it was.
00:16:47
Speaker
Obviously, I was looking forward to it. I was anticipating it and then it was even better than I thought it would be. Oh, I'm glad you've seen it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is the funny thing is when I went through that list of like top 100 movies and I forced myself because some of them I just thought I have no interest in this.
00:17:08
Speaker
But I ended up finding movies that I really, really, really enjoyed. But the marketing, the description of it, nothing hooked me. Nothing. Nothing. The actors, I don't know who they are. But yeah, it's really nice when you actually sit down and aren't disappointed. And speaking of disappointment, I'll give you a disappointment I had this week.
00:17:36
Speaker
Gosh. You can do it. Bled Quantum. I watched Bled Quantum this week. I'm sorry. First 20 minutes? Great. Yeah. Well, this is what I mean. Nothing upsets me more than a movie that has potential or that squanders it, right? Oh, and not just squanders. It seems just like this crap all over it.
00:18:02
Speaker
It sort of feels like into week three of filming, someone went, ah, you've used up all the budget. And it's just terrible. The dialogue is I almost couldn't watch it. I mean, I was having a really, really hard time. You know how I watched it after it got to the point?
00:18:22
Speaker
and mainly for me it was the point not just of that but the the character's motivation all of a sudden changes the one character just all of a sudden snap you know turns on a dime is all of a sudden evil and that's the rest of the movie.
00:18:34
Speaker
And I was like, wait, what, where did that, what? And so I just watched the rest of the movie using the, what is it, the 10 or 20 second fast forward control. I just did that kind of pop through and like, okay, this is who they got this. Okay, and done. I'm like, okay, I watched the movie.
00:18:52
Speaker
Because I was so angry. I was so betrayed. I felt betrayed. I was furious. And I felt like, oh, Gary Farmer's in this. He doesn't deserve this. And well, I took out a pack of cards and started playing a solitaire card game while watching it because it was killing me. And I don't do that.
00:19:20
Speaker
Not often. But like you said, the first 20 minutes, the first minute when he's gutting the fish was a great way of introducing it. And it looked like it was going to be great because it didn't do the Snyder thing of like zombies arrive like within the first five minutes. It builds up nicely. You start getting introduced to the characters. They're interesting characters. And then
00:19:49
Speaker
It just throws it all away. The second it's got the momentum up, it just pulls the carpet out from under to you and it says six months later. It's like, oh, for fuck's sake. I mean, come on. Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. And Michael Greer is again, great waste of it.
00:20:06
Speaker
Good. Yeah. Very good actor. You know, it's just. Oh, no. And he's terrific. He, I mean, he's really good. I mean, he, he, he knew instantly he, yeah. Hook, hook with him when he, when he. Yeah, exactly. And then they just throw it all away. Then they throw it all away. Yeah. It's just, it's just like, Oh, what a great premise. And you just showed that, you know, yes. Okay. And digits because it's the Tyler Perry thing, right? You know, people of color and digits, people can make shit movies too. Great. That needed proving.
00:20:36
Speaker
Well, the thing is, this week I watched quite a few Indigenous movies and series.
Indigenous Storytelling in Media
00:20:47
Speaker
I watched Power Highway, which I hadn't seen in a really long time.
00:20:54
Speaker
really enjoyed that, you know. Saw and one I hadn't seen before called Skins, which is about a Native American policeman or sheriff and he becomes a vigilante
00:21:14
Speaker
You know, but it's good. You know, it's not sort of a Charles Bronson thing and it turns into something else. But I enjoyed that. And I watched Winter in the Blood. And it's actually the lead in that. I'm going to need to look up the name here.
00:21:34
Speaker
So, Winter in the Blood, it's based on a book, and it's got Chaski Spencer, who was lead in the English. Yeah. And it's 2013, this film. And yeah, it's quite an interesting one. It sort of feels like a, almost like a Charles Bukowski story.
00:21:53
Speaker
But yeah, it's good. It's good. Solid. Solid. It's all a little movie. And the other thing I noticed about these movies is they don't go on for very long. They tend to average around 70, 80 minutes. They're pretty thrifty. And then I finished Anooka the North and finished Reservation Dogs season two, which I thought was even better than the first season, which I loved.
00:22:22
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I don't know how they did it, but yeah. Uh, yeah, I thought it was really interesting how, how every episode pretty much zoomed in on one or two characters. And, uh, we really got to know them and it made sense in the context and man. Yeah. Bring on season three. Well, and, and it also leaned into, you know, has there trying to find their way of maturing and, you know, the thing has been about.
00:22:49
Speaker
grieving and processing and dealing, right? Because it's not just of their friend, but of the metaphor of then of the Native American people as well and their history and heritage. But leaning into what is their heritage, both good and bad, both catfish and crappy snacks and high cholesterol diets. And the thing with the Willie Jack episode where she visits her sister in prison,
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, what she leads a dude like, no, you're a medicine, you're a medicine woman versus what it means. And it's like, and it's so, well, it's not, I mean, you're, you're learning, you seem to be learning alongside them because you've got these, and you've got these young actors that are just.
00:23:36
Speaker
All of them are exceptional. Every single one of the kids that are your main actors are amazing, right? Yeah. And despite one being in blood quantum. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I forgot I could knock that out.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, Grey Eyes is in it and I still love him. So yeah, yeah. No, they're there. Yeah. And the stories weren't predictable either. You know, every episode you could go into and have no idea what's going to happen in the next episode.
00:24:09
Speaker
You know, and it, it got a little bit crazier as it went as well. And, and laugh out loud funny too, you know, despite being really emotional throughout there were. Yes. The emotional content was ratcheted up in the second season over the first.
00:24:29
Speaker
I like that it still references events from the first episode of the first series as well. And I think that was left hanging and always felt a little bit weird. And it was quite good to see them
00:24:45
Speaker
tie back to that in this episode. Which in particular we can support. Well, I think when Bear is eating his catfish in the cafe, and he's like, I'm going to leave. And they're basically like, well, no, you kind of owe us. And they reveal that they know that he stole the truck. They'd seen him. They covered for him all of this.
00:25:14
Speaker
And and I think that was a big moment for Bear right there to to kind of realize that and kind of understand it. And he did feel bad about it at the time, but it was just part of growing up in terms of like owning up to to your mistakes. Right. Right. And in the in the safety of a community that you get, it's like, oh, all the action. I'm like, yeah, who's who are we doing this against? Who are we? What are we fighting against and what are we fighting for? And that's a big word right there.
00:25:44
Speaker
And I would say that if I were to sum up the second series, it was a word you just used, which was community. And you really got that with the sort of pre-death gathering where everyone came together and were eating and just being there for someone.
00:26:07
Speaker
and that I mean community through the whole series including some things that were kind of ridiculous community like that sort of the indigenous sort of group that they got together with the two people who'd never lived on a reservation in their life you know
00:26:23
Speaker
giving them advice in terms of what they want to do. But they're constantly talking about, well, I want to make a documentary about this. But yeah, community is just so important. And the connections between the people. So you had your policeman bonding with the drug addict to stop catfish cultists.
00:26:47
Speaker
you know, which I thought was really nice. I thought that was a really nice moment there where they took two characters that you would never think would connect and they connected, you know? It's almost like if those two can connect, then, you know, why can't anyone else, you know? And then the juxtaposition was as people who are best friends with each other,
00:27:13
Speaker
are not talking to each other at the same time. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. Reservation dogs. Really, really good. Really, really good. Yeah. And oh, OK. And then and so in in the the the reading I've done and I watched a documentary called The Real Engine from a Cree filmmaker called Neil Diamond, of all names.
00:27:42
Speaker
And it was actually funded by PBS. And he kind of goes, he think he's based in Canada. And he goes south to the Midwest, where Hollywood Native American Indians
00:28:04
Speaker
always were, and he kind of goes through the history, and he mentioned a whole bunch of films I'd never heard of. But what surprised me was before 1930, Native Americans were the heroes in the movies. They were super popular. You had Charlie Chaplin, you had Native Americans there.
00:28:29
Speaker
The very first film, so Thomas Edison, when he created his kinetoscope, set up this box in Times Square, which is basically had just all these bits of paper that sort of flip around and make an animated image when you look in the box. And it was these Pueblo Indians doing these dances. And that
00:28:52
Speaker
became like really, really popular. And then within the newspapers, after the genocide at Wounded Knee, they started comparing Native Americans to the Greek tragedies.
00:29:11
Speaker
like they were going to go extinct. And so there was a real kind of positivity at this point, like very early on. So one of the things that always made me kind of wonder around my heritage is like, oh my gosh, would it be acceptable for an Irishman to marry a Native American woman? That doesn't seem realistic to me.
00:29:35
Speaker
But that's looking at it through the lens of where when we grew up, you just sort of assume things were always worse going back. But it but before 1930, it seems like everything was everything was better that they're there. They played popular characters.
00:29:52
Speaker
actually played by Native Americans. There were directors who were Native American as well. So you had this like 1920s were like really fertile and there was also no censorship at that time as well. And that probably has something to do with it as well.
00:30:09
Speaker
And there was one movie called The Silent Enemy in 1930, which was talking about, which is meant to be one of the best representations ever of Native Americans. I've not seen it yet, aside from the clips I saw in the documentary. But The Silent Enemy refers to starvation caused by the white people.
00:30:31
Speaker
taking everything away from the Native Americans. And the lead actor in it became a Rudolph Valentino type character, super popular after this movie. People loved it. And he was called Chief Buffalo Longlands.
00:30:53
Speaker
But he would turn up to these high society functions in a tuxedo and they couldn't figure out where the Native American guy was because he had his hair slicked back. They were expecting him to turn up in deer skin or something. So he became really, really popular and people were inviting him to parties and he's being put into other movies.
00:31:16
Speaker
But then some journalists did some digging and found out that he's actually tri-racial. So he was half Native American, but he was also part white and part black.
00:31:28
Speaker
Um, as soon as they found out about the black bit, um, they stopped inviting him to the parties. They didn't publicly announce it, but then a producer or something invited him round and it, it was threatened that they would release this news and he immediately committed suicide. Um, so yeah.
00:31:54
Speaker
And that kind of told the bell for for going into, you know, the Great Depression and then the Cowboys being the big deal, you know, which actually kind of makes me wonder about, you know, because if you have the depression, whenever you have something bad happen economically, like now, there's always got to be a scapegoat for a certain part of the population. And I think I
00:32:22
Speaker
wonder if that sort of fed into it as well, uh, around minorities. I don't know. I'll do some digging, see what I can find, right? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Making connections here. Making connections. Wheels within wheels, man. Yeah. So, so yeah, that's
Censorship's Impact on Native Representation
00:32:40
Speaker
surprising. So it used to be better. I mean, in everything in movies was quite open. Like nudity was not a big deal.
00:32:47
Speaker
right pre pre 1930 you know all that code yeah yeah exactly bingo um and then as soon as you know always uh you know presented as being something around modesty or something like that because a lot of things were but it was like no it was around like basically everything that wasn't uh you know
00:33:08
Speaker
waspy, sort of ideal. Yeah, we don't like that idea. So we're gonna censor it. Yeah. Yeah. And then it just got pushed further and further until people actually started pushing back in the 1970s, really, you know, there's, you watch the, that
00:33:28
Speaker
that queer fear or whatever the shutter there. You'll see that it was the horror genre. That was the biggest subversive voice for pushing back on there. James Whale alone.
00:33:45
Speaker
Uh, you know, just doing it very, very quietly. That whole thing of like, Hey, if you, you know, if you were gay, you would instantly see this. And if you weren't, you would never see this, uh, the subtext, you know.
00:33:58
Speaker
A lot of those people on that sort of right wing flank, or I don't even know if you want to call it right wing, but they're kind of controlling flank. They sort of miss subtlety. So they don't see those things.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, that's going to come to another. So in the 1930s, you have this sort of crackdown, I suspect, of minorities, which then turned into the sort of red panic in the 40s. And there's a director that I'll get to.
00:34:40
Speaker
you know, later in the conversation who ended up getting blacklisted, but then created. And again, another movie I'd never heard of. Actually, I may as well just jump to that one now. It sort of makes sense. Let's see. It was called. I got too many notes here, Nolan.
00:35:10
Speaker
Tell Them Willie Boy is here, 1969. And that was from a director that got blacklisted in the 40s. So he wasn't able to work until the late 60s. And he made this movie based on a book, based on a true story.
00:35:36
Speaker
about this Native American kid, really, who gets mixed up with the law and not his fault and sort of meets a tragic end. Again, so the Greek tragedy thing happening again. Robert Redford is the law that's trying to get him. And it's Robert, what's his name? Robert.
00:36:06
Speaker
Forster. No, no, that'd have been good, though. Robert Blake, Robert. Oh, oh, right. Yeah, yeah. It's probably played the the Native American kid, the kid in this. But, yeah, that one sounds like an interesting one. I think I might track that one down. I mean, just because of Robert Redford as well, I'm kind of kind of curious if
00:36:31
Speaker
I imagine that Robert Redford's politics probably gelled with the director. The director is, his name is amazing, by the way. Abraham Lincoln Polonsky is his name. But yeah, he got blacklisted in the whole sort of panic.
00:36:49
Speaker
But yeah, yeah, that that that looks like an interesting one. But yeah, so after in the 30s, the movie that became the template ongoing just because it was the big movie of the time was Stagecoach.
00:37:05
Speaker
And yeah, they stopped doing any sort of nuance between any different tribes. Nope, they're all plains Indians now. They all have feathers. They're all in the desert, right? And I remember growing up thinking that too, you know, because my dad would take me to the Nisqually reservation and
00:37:27
Speaker
I couldn't get my head around the fact that it wasn't at all like, you know, movies said, you know.
00:37:36
Speaker
Yeah, and it's weird. It's also hearing all these like Native American actors and directors sort of saying that they were rooting for the cowboys in the movies because the movies were all geared that way. Despite the fact that they're Native, it just pushes you that way. And then when they were kids and they're playing with each other, cowboys and Indians, you'd always want to be the cowboys because you knew the Indians were going to lose.
00:38:01
Speaker
And that was just like the default expectation. But yeah, grim, grim, grim and really sad. And too many notes here.
00:38:19
Speaker
Yeah, to the point of, what was it, the second Adams family movie with Wednesdays, having the retribution of the Native Americans. No, go kill. We're stronger than them. The slaughter of the pilgrims instead of the, yeah. Where did that come from? It was this great bit. Now it's held up, the imagery of that is great.
00:38:46
Speaker
So Thanksgiving without it. And then, yeah, so he talks about the Cowboys come in and basically in stagecoach.
00:39:04
Speaker
Now, this is the way I remember the movie is to me watching Stagecoach. And I only saw it in the last few years as one of those movies that I never, never really had an interest in watching. But I have watched in the past few years. And really, the Native Americans in that are essentially like aliens.
00:39:24
Speaker
in the movie Aliens and everyone in the stagecoach is a colonial marine. And that's it. I mean, the Native Americans are not human. They are. They are. They are something outside that is besieging them. But they are just menace. They are right. They are part of like part of nature, almost. You know, something else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:39:49
Speaker
So it's like you don't need to give them details. Just that's all the detail you need because that's all they represent in the story, right? Yeah, because the other thing with stagecoaches, you know the throat the real threat, you know, it's a threat there, but then there's the threat for You know John Wayne's character of the
00:40:06
Speaker
the guys that are coming to get him, the bad guys, the white guys, the bad white guys. The bad white guys. Yeah. Yeah. Because the white guys have nuance, you know, they have different.
00:40:21
Speaker
And, uh, Oh, the list of actors. This is one of the, so I took note of this. Some of them actually surprised a lot. They kind of surprised me, but then kind of didn't cause you expect about anything. Um, so the list that I got together from the books and the documentary, Anthony Quinn, Johnny Depp, Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson.
00:40:46
Speaker
Audrey Hepburn, Charles Bronson, James Cagney, Elvis Presley, Chuck Connors, Boris Karloff, Burt Reynolds, Sal Mineo, Robert Blake, Ricardo Montablaun.
00:40:59
Speaker
all played native parts. And they got sprayed with paint, basically, pre-fake tan. And an iron eyes Cody, who you'll remember when we were kids, was the crying Indian in the environmental ad. The Italian fella.
00:41:24
Speaker
He was your mama Mia. Yeah. And he wasn't over like, but what the weird thing was is, is that, that, yeah, he was in over like a hundred Westerns playing native parts. Um, his real name is Oscar. And his parents are from Sicily. Um, but when they arrived in the States, the
00:41:48
Speaker
Irish were where they were living in Louisiana were lynching Italians and he felt quite embarrassed about being Italian and he just took on this new identity. I mean to be fair the guy did live it. His wife was was was Native American and yeah he leaned into it from like
00:42:11
Speaker
teen hood. And it might have been like a mechanism to deal with, with the survival. So, so yeah, he's not one of those ones where I feel too much hostility for it's like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he did represent Native Americans quite well, too, I suppose. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. What else do I have here? There's
00:42:41
Speaker
I don't know. Did you watch? I'm just gonna throw in the mix there while you're going through the stuff Documentary a couple years back on rumble the Indians that rock the world It's rock bands, right? Yeah, the different bands and I I didn't see it. No, okay It's it's very much worthwhile. But there's one of the things and they point out and you've kind of brought it up already. I
00:43:03
Speaker
is that, you know, they talked about it was, it was easier, you know, Indian, Indians were the most excluded, like specifically excluded group, even more so they're like, because they talk a lot about the like in Louisiana, where you have the Creole or black and native crossover.
00:43:24
Speaker
And so they would all claim black because they could still at least get work or get recording stuff or things like that. But if they went the Native American angle, they could not like that was instant. Like it was worse to be, you know, they bring it up and a couple of them pointed out, you know, it was worse to be Native American than in this country than it was to be black. Which I'm like, wow, that's I didn't think you could sing. Wow. OK, in terms of on the racist poll, I thought,
00:43:53
Speaker
Wow yeah it's and they they point out they use some examples and subject I mean they kind of back it up a bit too it's like obviously you know that they've got a you know that's kind of the edge of the movie anyway right but but it's like no no we're not just buttering this up this is the strange reality of the nuances of American racism.
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's weird because- Strong, strong permutations. Going back to like the 1920s, like I said, it was different because the racism toward black people at that point was severe, right? So severe that, you know, they were willing to sort of accept this Native American guy as an actor. Well, they thought he was.
00:44:42
Speaker
thought he was pure Native American in that way. And then they let go of him as soon as they thought he had anything, that he's partially black. And it must be during that time in the 30s and 40s where things started to change that way. Because even if you go far back, yeah, if you went to 1900,
00:45:10
Speaker
the Irish and Italians would not be treated as white people, as Caucasians. Yeah, they were on the outside. But then as you need more workers, you start to be a little bit more open about who you will accept. And so they got sort of pulled into the fold over the next few decades.
00:45:32
Speaker
And then, you know, it's sort of like that joke on Family Guy with the card that you hold up to people's faces because that's the order that you go in in terms of. But yeah, that's quite interesting about the Native American thing. It's like, okay, well, you got your reservation, so you're fine. Just stay there, you know? Or the fact that we...
00:45:56
Speaker
It's like, you know, you think you're more special. You think you're more American or something, you know, it's like a, it's like a special grudge or something like, no, we, we, you know, like, you know, it's the, the robo cop, what killed you? You're already dead. Kind of feel to it, you know?
00:46:13
Speaker
Well, this is the other thing that I think we do to minorities again. We're talking about how they're all Plains Indians, right? And there aren't any other tribes. We do the same thing with people who are Black as well.
00:46:33
Speaker
We refer to them as being from Africa. Africa's fucking huge. There's so many different parts. It's so different. It's so diverse. And we talk about it like
00:46:48
Speaker
It's, it's this one small place and it's, it's, it's not. Well, again, just whatever is easiest, like, Oh, okay. We're closer. We're getting there. Right. We're trying. I'm trying to meet you halfway here, people. You know, that's the, you know, it's like, uh, like here, like, you know, we've like, we've moved into, you know, the best we can do now, uh, for, uh,
00:47:09
Speaker
Central and South American is Latinx or Hispanic, but even that is still troublesome because we're not from Spain. The difference between Ecuador, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, it's all the same, right? No.
00:47:29
Speaker
No, no, they're all very different. Especially not Puerto Rico. Exactly. But it's all it's just like, oh, oh, oh, OK. So so what do we refer to you as? You know, it's like, well, you could ask me my name or, you know, make Puerto Rico a state.
00:47:45
Speaker
I mean, yeah, those poor people. I mean, what it was a few years back, wasn't it, when Trump was president and they got hit by a hurricane and, you know, our president didn't quite understand that they're American citizens. Yeah. Why do you keep bringing up things that are just awful, man? In the rearview mirror now. Oh, tossing the paper towels out like a basketball.
00:48:14
Speaker
Oh, yeah. In the old films, when they had Native Americans, once they got to that at okay, they're all a bunch of evil people, there's a couple of funny stories is in some of those old movies, they just had the Native Americans speaking English because they spoke English.
00:48:33
Speaker
And they would play it backwards. So there were actually movies out there. They kept playing clips from them. They're hilarious. And it sounds like the man from another place in Twin Peaks. It doesn't sound like another language. It sounds like someone playing a voice backwards.
00:48:52
Speaker
And then one of the best ones was some of the Native Americans who were playing in the films were speaking in their native language, but kind of going off script. And they were saying things that
00:49:12
Speaker
Oh, I got to find the quote here. It's pretty terrific. You'll love this. It'll make up for all that darkness that we just went through. Oh, here's one. Actually, not what I was looking for, but Tushinko Witko, which is
00:49:42
Speaker
crazy horse in quotes actually doesn't mean crazy horse. It means his horses are spirited, but they called it crazy horse. The proper translation means that he was really good at taking horses, breaking them, and they'd be really, yeah, spirited. That's what it meant. But anyway, okay, we'll translate that. It's crazy. Yeah.
00:50:09
Speaker
But now, you know, since they leaned into it, yeah, crazy motherfucker, crazy horse. You're goddamn right it is. You'd be crazy too. Oh yeah, okay, here it is. So when they were speaking in the film, there's a bit where, you know, the cavalry comes up and says, okay, I'm going to go back to my camp now, but if anything happens to me,
00:50:31
Speaker
you know, oh, hell will come down on you. Do you understand? And the guy speaks in the native tongue and what he's saying is just like a snake, you'll be crawling in your own shit. And then the guy goes, you do understand, right? And then he just repeats that he'll be crawling in his own shit, which is pretty terrific. It's a movie called A Distant Trumpet.
00:50:58
Speaker
But yeah, they had their fun while filming.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that the thing with the no tribes, though, and that sort of lack of nuance, it's like, you know, the cardboard cut out. Yeah, where whereas again, 1920s, you had at Nanook of the North, you had had people and Native Americans that look different, you know, and then and like, you know, soon as censorship comes in, everything gets shot to hell. It's
00:51:32
Speaker
It wasn't good for horror either. No. Yeah, which is probably what they wanted. Oh, and then they started talking about some of the key actors that actually changed the landscape. And one of the first ones that came up was Chief Dan George in the Outlaw Josie Wales.
00:51:56
Speaker
Um, just because he had a sense of humor in it. He played a funny role. He had like a role that actually had some substance to it. Um, and then, uh, yeah, they, they all hated dances with wolves. You know, it's basically a movie about a white man, but Graham Greene fantasizing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it's a terrible remake of run of the arrow.
00:52:23
Speaker
Right, which I need to watch which I need to watch Troublesome, that's the that's the Charles Bronson as the chief. That's fine. That's fine And yeah, but they said that the Graham Greene's portrayal in that movie was very good and
00:52:46
Speaker
But but yeah, they had a lot of problems with it. Again, another white guy teaching them how to fight. And here are the guys that that, you know, beat Custer, you know, they don't need to be taught how to fight. So like in the in the run of the arrow, he becomes a scout for them rather than like the you know, the English, the Indian scouts idea. He's he's on the other side of it and can translate.
00:53:11
Speaker
Right and that's what keeps him alive, you know, that's like he's never part of it, you know, they kind of accept him enough so that he's Comfortable enough for him, but he's never you know, they're like I think in Washington long time, but I think there's one point that just like yeah No, you're not one of us
00:53:29
Speaker
He's like, but I'm not one of them either. They're like, well, tough. You're not one of us. So you find your own path. You know, it's a much more on that idea, which again, it's much more Sam Fuller, which is much better versus like, oh, no, we're all, you know, the Dances with Wolves is the visual equivalent of Rodney King's, we all just get along.
00:53:49
Speaker
Pathetically. What you just described, it sounds like Colin Farrell's performance in the New World. He goes scouting ahead and it's not easy. He's not welcomed with open arms. He's wearing full armor.
00:54:10
Speaker
for a start. All these conquistador type helmets, even the British, but they'd still have a similar helmet. He does not have an easy time of it, and he has to prove himself. They're not stupid either. They're like, well, if we let you stay here,
00:54:34
Speaker
more of you are going to come, you know, and they've got no idea how many. But yeah, I thought it was, yeah, I really enjoyed it again. And I was not expecting it to be quite grounded really for a Malick movie.
00:54:52
Speaker
Um, but yeah, yeah. So, so yeah, they mentioned in Graham green, but they, they, oh yeah. And they, they mentioned the fact that Kevin Costner finds the one white woman on all the planes and, uh, she's happened to be.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, right. She's got like the Wilma Flintstone outfit and her face is smeared with mud and they're like- So she's brownish. Right. And they're like, well, no, they wouldn't, she wouldn't look like that. I mean, if she were a prisoner, maybe, but she's grown up with them, she would be just as well kept as the rest of them, right?
00:55:30
Speaker
And, and, and when you look at these clips, they just look really silly because she's just got, you know, the mud and she does have a Wilma Flynn stone outfit on. And, uh, uh, the, there, there are bits where Kevin Costner, you know, there, there's a tribe attacking them and, and the guy's sitting there with a gun staring at it. And he's like, use the gun. It's like,
00:55:51
Speaker
Come on. Really? Really? The next one that came up, appreciate coming to the end here, Gary Farmer in Deadman.
Influential Native American Actors
00:56:02
Speaker
By the way, Gary Farmer is in everything. I mean, he's just in everything and he's always good. Yeah. And just as you saw the first episode of the second season of reservation dogs, it's him and West Studi having this whole back and forth hilarious, you know, as characters who've been around each other forever moment.
00:56:20
Speaker
to try to heal the kids, but it's also healing them, but in a way that's like, eh, uh, you know, more détente than anything else, but West Doody's another one that- Yeah, really, really good. She's a good girl. Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then in Smoke Signals, Adam Beach and Evan Adams got pointed out.
00:56:43
Speaker
also point out that Smoke Signals also has Elaine Miles, who played Marilyn Whirlwind in Northern Exposure as well. She's briefly in there. And she's actually from Pendleton, Oregon. Oh, nice. From, yeah, she's Nez Perce, chaos, I think. But yeah, they marked Smoke Signals as a big one just because it was good to have a film where they could laugh
00:57:11
Speaker
You know, at the situation, at themselves, at everything. It's also a very good movie. It's also a very good movie. A nice, nice aside. Yeah. It's also very good. And then Evan Adams actually has become a doctor since like he went and studied medicine. And yeah, if you're kind of wondering why you haven't seen much of him, but apparently he's been in a couple of things, you know, over the years. But yeah, yeah, it's actually nice to hear.
00:57:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was a pretty full episode that's taken us to the end of the hour. We still haven't probably going to need a part three at some point because they also brought up the other indigenous movies. Oh, they did point out that Dances with Wolves did make Native Americans bankable.
00:58:03
Speaker
which laid the groundwork for, you know, the indie movies that we actually liked. And then also, you know, movies and other parts of the world with indigenous characters like Whale Rider, Once Were Warriors, Rabbitproof Fence, which I've not seen, which is Australian one. But yeah.
Critiques of 'Dances with Wolves'
00:58:25
Speaker
I'll have to share this this list of some of these other movies because I've not heard of them. So if you come across them, you can let me know where to find them. But yeah, Windsor in the blood, man. I'm still stewing about that. I've never seen in a movie or I can't recall blood quantum, blood quantum. Yeah. Drop off a cliff quite as badly as that. Oh, yeah. Agreed. Yeah.
00:58:53
Speaker
I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was, it's like a commercial came on and I accidentally changed the channel. It just, oh my God. And not only that, right? If you're going, they, yeah, I gotta, I gotta get this off my chest.
00:59:10
Speaker
The whole idea of the movie could have been used as the backbone for so much suspense, right? And so much, oh my gosh, you know, but they just cut to six months and immediately you knew what was going on, right? Okay, they're immune to, I'm not even worried about spoiling this movie. It's very spoiled.
00:59:41
Speaker
We can spoil whatever we want out of it. But that idea that, you know, like the Native Americans are immune to the zombie bite, if that was over the course of a night, right, or a shorter period of time, and you didn't make it quite as obvious as they did, right?
01:00:04
Speaker
Like suddenly you're like, Oh, all the main characters have got bitten. Well, obviously they're immune or something. Right. Um, but, but by cutting to six months, one, they just drop us in to this weird new place. Right. With two characters.
01:00:23
Speaker
that we haven't really seen, right? And then people arriving at the camp who we don't know and don't have any, we're not invested in any of these characters and the dialogue is like,
01:00:37
Speaker
written by a teenager. It's like, we got to fucking do this or we're going to fucking die. You're fucking right. And it's just so bad. It's just so awful that there's no buildup of suspense or anything. But they started doing that. So they knew how to do it. They just gave up and like, I don't know.
01:01:01
Speaker
It's the only, you want to be awful, the director of it. Yeah. The guy that wrote and directed it and the hack responsible. Yeah. Uh, he died at 46, uh, just last month, just in October of this year. I'm not seeing why. Well, that's becoming a theme, isn't it? Me? Exactly. So good job. Uh, Mike's curse of the week.
01:01:30
Speaker
Send us your requests. We'll pick from a hat. Yeah, Jeff Barnaby died in October, middle of October of this year. I didn't, I didn't see from what. So at least there won't be a sequel.
01:01:47
Speaker
Oh, that's awful. I mean, I think something must have been going on. I think they got this. Yeah, like you said, they lost budget or a new production company took over. They got right. No, we have notes, you know, kind of thing. Because it just it feels like it just the movie gets like a, you know, a roundhouse to the head.
01:02:11
Speaker
Yeah. I was like, Oh, okay. Let's just ruin it. Well, well, it's, it may be the producers got the sort of dailies from that beginning bit and went, Oh, this is too slow. Right. You know, and you know what? Um, walking dead is really popular, you know, cause it feels like walking dead at its worst. Mm-hmm.
01:02:36
Speaker
Um, yeah, yeah, it didn't know what it wanted to be because it was quite grounded at the beginning, you know, even that opening with, with, with, you know, gutting the salmon, I thought was a great way, quite a subtle way because as, as you can have things like that, we're like, okay, they're moving, but, but why, why are they moving? You're not going to instantly think, Oh, there's zombie fish. Um, but, but then you.
01:03:01
Speaker
Then even the production design, as soon as you went after that six month period, it just all went to hell. It's like, why is he wearing a hockey mask? It's just a bit too much. And some of the dialogue, because the guy's just lost his wife, and I think she's pregnant as well, or something like this. And she's like, we've all lost someone.
01:03:31
Speaker
No go to the compound and check in and then which which was like oh that is the worst line and then he just like shrugs and walks off like yeah no no there'll be more of a conflict than that and then it cuts to a scene with the the woman doctor talking to the girl who's come into the camp.
01:03:52
Speaker
And she's asking her, have you been bitten? It's like, they ask that at the gate, don't they? Shouldn't they have, uh, yeah. Yeah. They just said, uh, we don't need consistency. Let's just, uh, what do you feel like doing this scene? Okay. Let's just go ahead. And I'm not sure who the actor was, but at
01:04:10
Speaker
I thought the grandfather, he's down at Stonehorse Lone Goman, but he looked exactly like Tamara Morrison to me. I thought that's who he was for the longest time. And someone thought it was a cool idea to give a Native American a samurai sword. Yeah.
01:04:35
Speaker
Anyhow, I think that just about rounds up this episode. So it was a Christmas next week. We're doing Christmas. And we probably should. Yeah, let's do Christmas next week.
01:05:18
Speaker
This horse actually. Little shit. Two oceans.