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Ira Nayman on Satire and Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man
59 Plays2 years ago
Hosts Mark and Joe talk to author and former Amazing Stories editor Ira Nayman about satire; in particular they discuss Lindsay Anderson's 1973 comedy drama fantasy film O Lucky Man.
For more information about this episode, including film trailers, please visit: https://re-creative.ca/o-lucky-man/
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Mark A. Rayner
Contact us at: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
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Transcript
Mark's Move and New Beginnings
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Mark. Hey, Joe, how's it going?
00:00:11
Speaker
Very well, very well. I am now podcasting from a completely different province. I think I may have warned you in a previous podcast that I was going to move a couple of provinces over and I've now done that.
Meet Ira Naaman
00:00:22
Speaker
And how was the jet lag? Well, the move lag has been horrible, but actually the move went just about as smoothly as I think it's possible for a move to go despite a flat tire almost as soon as I arrived in New Brunswick on the day that we were supposed to move into the new house.
00:00:39
Speaker
But even that was fairly straightforward. So we got the house mostly set up and office set up, and I am now prepared to start podcasting again. Yay! And there was great rejoicing. Yes, that's right. And to celebrate the return, because it's been two months since we actually recorded one of these, we have a very special guest today.
Ira's Career and Works
00:01:01
Speaker
Do you go by doctor?
00:01:02
Speaker
Because I know you have a PhD. Yeah, no, not usually. I'm not really into honorifics. Okay, so we have with us Lord Ira Naaman. Ira Naaman, who I've been acquainted with for some time, and I understand, Mark, that you have not met, and I felt it was high time that you guys
00:01:21
Speaker
Met because you have a lot in common, which I think will come out during the course of this podcast. Now, our previous guess, Mark thinks this is a sign of laziness, but he only thinks that because it is actually. And cruelty. Don't forget the cruelty part. And cruelty.
00:01:38
Speaker
That's right. What we do, well, what I do, what I've done is instead of introducing the guests, you know, going on about how great they are and all their wonderful accomplishments and everything, I make the guests do that. I hope you're okay with that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, certainly. Well, I mean, I will actually start with the big ticket item, which is that, uh, at the beginning of the month, my website, Les Pages aux Folles, had its 20th anniversary. That's 20 years of.
00:02:04
Speaker
political and social satire updated weekly. It's a project that I now think has yielded about two and a half million words over the 20 year span of its lifetime. It includes 35 books, collections of weekly articles, and 12 of which are in the series, the alternate reality news service, which I have also published, self published in print, because it can be hard for a lot of people to read a lot of text online.
Multiverse Narratives
00:02:32
Speaker
Now, just so you know, I will edit that down to about six words. Okay. Now, I'm just going to say... Le Paj Offal. Good. That's all you really need to know. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. That is quite the marathon. You know what? It's easily digestible chunks, right, on a weekly basis. So it isn't until 20 years later when you realize, holy crap, I wrote a lot. Sure.
00:02:55
Speaker
In addition to that, I have now had my eighth novel published by Elswen Press. It's the final novel in the Multiverse Refugees trilogy. It is called Bad Actors, and I'm very proud of that whole series, all of those novels. And just although I don't do it anymore, for three years I was the editor of Amazing Stories magazine.
00:03:17
Speaker
which is also among your other great accomplishments. Very cool. Thank you. Terrific magazine. And the version that you guys put out was so good looking and so well put together with a great stories. Yeah. Well, I'm very proud of everything I've done. But yeah, that that in particular was a real treat for me.
00:03:33
Speaker
But now what you guys have in common is, is you both write humor and you've also dallyed in the multiverse.
Time Travel and Paradoxes
00:03:39
Speaker
I've dallyed. I haven't written eight novels about the multiverse, so I've just written one. Yeah, but what a one. Okay. Yeah. It was my multiverse novel. I think it was, that was it. Yes. Yes. And I'm thinking I know I have to write a multiverse novel. Didn't you? Isn't theoretically a time and a place of multiverse novel as well as a time travel novel?
00:03:56
Speaker
No, no, I don't think so. No, I may have to go back and reread it. Okay. It's been a while since I've read A Time and a Place. I'm trying to remember, but it occurs to me that there are creatures from another dimension that would make it qualify as a multiverse novel as soon as there's a second universe that creatures are coming from.
00:04:15
Speaker
Like I said, I'll have to go back and and reread it myself. But no, I actually don't think so. They're just from another world halfway across the galaxy. Yeah. So I don't really I don't get the multiverse credentials. You see, I would argue that any time travel by necessity requires travel to another universe, that there is no time travel in a continuous universe. You are actually what you're actually doing is moving to another universe that just looks remarkably like the one you come from.
00:04:43
Speaker
Well, it depends on what theory of time travel you're using. There is time travel in a couple of my novels and some of my short stories, and it is set within the conception of the multiverse so that when anybody travels back in time, they actually just split that universe off into a new universe of its own. One of the great things about that approach to time travel is that there are no paradoxes.
00:05:09
Speaker
Right. Yeah, exactly. So you you were still even if you go back in time and kill your grandparents or whatever, you still existed in the timeline that you came from. You just don't exist in this new timeline that you've created with your grandparents no longer existing. Exactly. Yeah. See, I deliberately took a different approach where going back in time, they couldn't actually change anything as much as the characters tried.
00:05:34
Speaker
So, again, I can't say that it's a different universe because it isn't an alternate timeline. It's the same timeline. Well, and one other theory of time travel is, of course, that whatever you change in the past becomes part of your history. So in that sort of framework, it's still only a single universe. It's still not, you know, multiple universes. Yes. So there is room for both in the time travel trope.
Multiverse Concepts in Ira's Novels
00:06:02
Speaker
Yes.
00:06:04
Speaker
It's not my book we want to talk about today. It's not my lame fiction. It's your stuff, Ira. As you know, we ask every guest who comes to this podcast to bring a piece of art that they're passionate about to introduce to the rest of this universe. And anybody in any other universe who might be listening, you never know.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, we don't know what the technology is for other universes, so they might be listening. In my novels, there are two different technologies. There's one technology which is very much controlled by government agencies, which allows people to travel between universes. But then there's a second technology, which I think is called the home universe generator, which allows people to see into other universes, but not go there or interact with them in any way.
00:06:47
Speaker
It's kind of a multiverse form of television, but a lot of people get hooked on seeing like what their lives would have been like if they had made different decisions, right? Interesting. So this is why I can, you know, mine it for eight novels and a whole bunch of short stories, because there's a lot of different sort of approaches to stories you can tell in the multiverse. Anyway, sorry to interrupt, Joe, you were about to ask me a key question.
00:07:10
Speaker
I'm sorry, I have to jump in here. You realized, of course, that most people using that technology are using it for porn purposes. Kat and I, when I used to teach new media, one of the things that I tried to point out to my students was that every new communications technology is driven by porn, starting frankly with the printing
'Oh Lucky Man' Film Analysis
00:07:33
Speaker
press. It's worrying, isn't it?
00:07:34
Speaker
Porn and religion, right? So with the printing press, you get the Bible, obviously, but you also, within seven years of the creation of the printing press, the Vatican releases its first encyclical about banned books.
00:07:48
Speaker
So clearly, there was a lot of porn circulating. And the reason why the church put out that encyclical was, of course, that a lot of it was porn that dealt with religious figures. Oh, my goodness. Not something that would endear you to the church, obviously. No. So, yeah. So, Ara, the big question is, what piece of art are you passionate about that you're bringing to the table today?
00:08:11
Speaker
Okay, it's a British film. I believe it's from 1973. It's called Oh Lucky Man. The 60s and 70s were actually a really amazing time for satire. You have everything from network and mash in the United States to the ruling class and Dr. Strangelove in England.
00:08:31
Speaker
And Oh, Lucky Man fits in kind of in that vein. It's actually the middle film of a trilogy by a director named Lindsay Anderson. It's known as the McTravis trilogy after the main character who's played brilliantly by Malcolm McDowell.
00:08:46
Speaker
It starts with if in I think 1968, which is an exploration of student unrest. McTravis at that point is a student at a British boarding school, which deals, the film deals so much with class and just British social pretensions. In the second film, oddly enough, he starts off as a coffee salesman.
00:09:08
Speaker
And I will get to a bit of the plot and why the film is just so amazing. The third film in, I believe, 1980 was Britannia Hospital, which again is kind of a parody of British society, with the hospital being kind of a microcosm of all the different schisms in British society. Oh, lucky man.
00:09:30
Speaker
O Lucky Man is a kind of cinematic version of Candide. Mick Travis, the main character, as I say, he starts off as a coffee salesman, which gives him the opportunity to travel around England, and the film skewers
00:09:46
Speaker
just about every social structure within the country, right? There are satirical barbs against economics. There are satirical barbs against the military, against colonialism.
Satire in Film and Writing
00:09:59
Speaker
The film is just so rich in just weird stuff and funny stuff and really pointed smart stuff. Because back in the day when I actually started writing, I write primarily comedy and
00:10:14
Speaker
Largely satire and when i started i wanted to be somebody that most people have never heard of art bookwald who was a Master satirist in the 50s and 60s so i'm drawn to Smart funny movies and and this one is just so rich so much going on have you seen it mark i have i saw it i Think i think it was 1993 hmm and i watched it in prog i
00:10:42
Speaker
So in Prague, at that time they had one station that played, I think like two hours of English language programming. And then they had a movie that played like midnight or whatever. And it was one of the movies they showed. So they showed it in English and I actually happened to be home from the Pivnica that night, early enough to catch the start of it. And it's very Python-esque in some ways.
00:11:10
Speaker
So elevated, like if you imagine like an elevated Python kind of comedy, it's like that, but it's just as absurd. And it's filled with bits that you go, what just happened there? What was that? Now, admittedly, I was a little drunk when I watched it. I imagine that being a little high would also be a good way to watch it. Because you didn't mention, Ira, that it's three hours long.
00:11:36
Speaker
Okay, yeah. Well, there are actually two versions I was going to ask you. So you've seen the full version because the TV version has, was cut back to about two hours and 20 minutes. I think I probably saw the original version with, but there was still some advertising breaks in it. Cause I think it was about four 30 in the morning when I finally got to bed, but I did stay up for the whole thing. And there's points where I was just like, wow, this is the most brilliant thing I've ever seen in my life. Cause there's also musical bits.
00:12:05
Speaker
that are amazing, like some of the songs are incredible. Yeah. The soundtrack is by Alan Price, who was originally from the Animals. Alan Price is very fine. And the film is interspersed with performances of Alan Price actually performing the songs. All of the songs are the complete songs, not snippets. And all of the songs are integrated into the storyline. So they're actually comments on what's happening in the film itself. Yeah, like a great chorus or something.
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's, you know, just part of the fabric of how amazing the film is, because it's actually a really good score. The Song Changes became a big hit for Alan Price, actually. Is it your favorite film? It is my second favorite film. Oh, so we have to invite you back then, I guess, to talk about your other, your most favorite. But you got to spill it now, man. You got to tell us what your favorite film is.
00:13:00
Speaker
I, yeah, no, I have no problem with that. My favorite film is Citizen Kane because it's a film I've seen like a dozen times and I always, always find something new in it. It's just an extraordinary film. Which is almost as funny. I think I did a top 10 film list one time and like eight of the 10 films were comedies. Interesting. But not all of them are comedies because I think you need to experience art widely. So for instance, for the past
00:13:28
Speaker
Oh, decade. Well, until COVID hit. Anyway, I used to go with friends every month or so to watch opera from the Met. Not a lot of humor in those things, especially the Ring Cycle, which I experienced.
00:13:43
Speaker
don't really need to say more than that. But again, I actually, I have a saying, which is a takeoff and a much more famous saying, of course, which I often tell to people who are aspiring science fiction writers, the phrase is, who knows science fiction, who only science fiction know?
00:14:01
Speaker
And part of the sort of philosophy behind that is just that as an artist, you want to take your influences from wherever you can get them and not to limit yourself to one specific genre or one specific set of genres. Because in my writing, I was actually thinking about this earlier today.
00:14:21
Speaker
In my writing, of course, you're going to come upon a lot of references to other science fiction stories, because I do a lot of intertextuality, but you'll also find references to other genres. It enriches the mix quite a bit. I agree with that completely. I wholeheartedly subscribe to the same notion that you should read as widely as possible.
00:14:43
Speaker
I say something somewhat similar to my students and I say be intellectually curious like be curious about everything and look into everything if you got any kind of interest in something dive into it and figure out what you think what you like about it now that said i'm a dilettante.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I think a dilettante in the best possible way, which is like, I love learning, I love do things, I love art, but I'm not a traditional academic in the sense that I don't know one topic very deeply. I like lots of topics. And for me, breadth is what makes this stuff really interesting. So you haven't said anything about the actors in it, because for me, that's part of the amazing thing about that movie.
00:15:26
Speaker
It's got an extraordinary cast, as well as Malcolm McDowell, Ralph Richardson plays several parts, like a who's who of British acting at that point in film history. Big shout out to go to Helen Mirren, a young Helen Mirren, who is delightful.
00:15:41
Speaker
Yes. Because when did this movie come out? I believe around 73. I may be off by a year or two, but early 70s. So it would have been before Helen Marin's appearance in Excalibur? Yes. It would have been before Malcolm McDowell's appearance in A Clockwork Orange? Might be contemporaneous, very close. Those two were probably very close in time, yeah. But that's also a similar kind of skewering of culture at the time, right, in the English system.
00:16:10
Speaker
Well, I've always maintained, and this is perhaps a discussion for another time, but I've always maintained that Stanley Kubrick at heart was always a satirist. Like there's satire in just about every film he made, even when the genre seemed to be something completely different. But I think the satire in Clockwork Orange is very clear.
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. But an amazing actor, Malcolm McDowell. Yeah. And Helen Mirren in that is just so, she's great in that. I actually, I think I'd obviously seen her in Excalibur. That's probably the first thing that I saw her in. A life-changing event, if ever there was one. But yeah, I think that she's quite good in it. And Ralph Richardson is fabulous in that movie. He's such a bastard. Well, so here's the thing. A lot of actors play multiple characters.
00:16:58
Speaker
for whatever reason. Yeah, I'm thinking of the industrialist character, like Helen Mirren's father. That's the character I thought you were talking about. He also has one of my favorite lines. He's actually in a boarding house that Mick is in early in the film. He's the one who gives Mick the silver suit or the gold suit. Right. Yeah. And he just sort of offhandedly, as Mick is about to go on his way, says, and he delivers the line so brilliantly, try not to die like a dog.
The Audience for Satire
00:17:28
Speaker
There's that and the other thing, and I've actually quoted this many times because I just love this. Mick tries to be a good capitalist and lives the good capitalist life.
00:17:45
Speaker
And he ends up in jail because of it. And he comes out of jail, a new man, he wants to help the common man, and the common man basically says, screw you, I don't want or need your help. Right?
00:17:59
Speaker
There's a scene where in the background, you only see it fully in one shot and I think you see it partially in a couple of shots. There's a bit of graffiti scrawled on a wall that says revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.
00:18:18
Speaker
That's fabulous. I did not notice that, but it was probably four in the morning. Well, there you go. And we're a little drunk or high or whatever, so. Yeah, I was sobering up by then. But it goes very quickly. It's easy to miss, right? So who would like this movie and who would not like this movie? Here's the thing about satire.
00:18:36
Speaker
There's a large audience for comedy generally because most people enjoy laughing at silly things. Satire is intellectual comedy. It's intelligent comedy. It's comedy with a sharp point to it, a purpose to it. And that is a much smaller audience, unfortunately.
00:18:56
Speaker
probably young people, probably educated people, I would think. And the nod audience for it is just about, sadly, everybody else. Again, the amazing thing, and you find this with Britannia Hospital as well, one of the amazing things about it is that the film isn't actually about what it appears to be, and you don't find out what the film is actually about until the very last scene.
00:19:19
Speaker
in which the film goes like crazy meta. We've had the scenes of Alan Price performing throughout the film, and there's this character who is kind of in the background of those scenes. The character is Lindsay Anderson, the director or producer of the film. And in the final scenes,
00:19:41
Speaker
After all of his travails, all of his experiences, Mick Travis, the main character, is just wandering around London and he sees somebody with sandwich boards saying that there are auditions for a film.
00:19:57
Speaker
and he figures what the hell I might as well go and try out. He goes to the auditions and oddly enough, all of the actors that he's met along the way in Oh Lucky Man are there, apparently auditioning for a film called Oh Lucky Man. And Lindsay Anderson is then formally introduced into the narrative. We finally find out it's his film. He's the guy who's been behind it all. Now the thing about that final scene is that
00:20:24
Speaker
Mick Travis often gets in trouble in the film because he unquestioningly obeys something somebody tells him to do. The most obvious example is when Ralph Richardson's rich character gets him to sign for a shipment of weapons that eventually gets discovered as being illegal. Somebody has to be arrested, but it's certainly not the rich guy, right? It's Mick Travis's. No, yeah.
00:20:54
Speaker
signature. That's how McTravis ends up in jail. That's how he ends up in jail. So throughout the film, he's constantly just doing what people tell him.
Humor vs. Satire in Writing
00:21:02
Speaker
At the audition, Lindsay Anderson actually, he tells him to hold a gun, he tells him to take poses, all of these things. And then he tells him that he needs to smile. He just wants to see what his smile is like. And he asks why. And Lindsay Anderson won't get of him a reason. He just wants to see him smile, right?
00:21:22
Speaker
And it's like the first time he's asked that kind of question too, like, why should I do that? And the whole film is revealed as his journey to questioning authority, right? It's about not taking at face value what the people in power tell you. I feel like at this point we should issue a spoilers alert.
00:21:44
Speaker
Well, the movie was made in 1973. So yes, lots of people have had an opportunity to. I don't think this is a spoiler though, because actually, well, maybe it is because you do go on a long journey to get to that moment, but we haven't actually revealed.
00:22:01
Speaker
the final part of that moment, which is actually the culminating moment of the movie. And I think maybe we shouldn't reveal that. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. So this is satire. It's not clear and maybe I'll ask you as well, you know, are there other laugh out loud moments in it? But the real question I want to ask is because I've described both of your work as as humor,
00:22:22
Speaker
Would it be more accurate to say that you guys write satire it isn't it isn't in my case My goal was always to write as many different kinds of humor as possible satire is a big vein in what I do But it's not everything that I do hmm and mark same same. Yeah
00:22:37
Speaker
Cause I mean, sometimes you just want to be silly. Sometimes you just want to, you know, tell a funny story and not have to worry about making a political point or making a point. I mean, I would say if you look at my books, my last book is not satire. It's, it's science fiction and it's humorous science fiction. There's lots of humor in it. Whereas the fatness is definitely. Yeah. So that's what I was thinking amongst your work. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I'm a bit like Ira in that sense that I have.
00:23:07
Speaker
humorous impulses and how to use them for this particular story that you want to tell is how I think of it. Yeah, and I must apologize to Ira. I own several of his books, but I haven't read them yet, and I will. Whereas I've read several of Mark's books, but I couldn't be bothered to own them. I approve a library, so I teach at a library and science program. I think it's okay.
00:23:36
Speaker
It's a challenge. At this point in my life, I have so many writer friends, and I'm always compelled to buy their books, but finding the time to read them is a challenge. That is my earnest promise to Ira to eventually read them, because I know that I will enjoy them, because I enjoy Ira.
00:23:52
Speaker
which is part of the reason why he's here. Thank you. So I am, what is it, a reformed shy person? I had a lot of trouble when I started going to conventions kind of connecting with people. And one of the things I realized was that before you can interest somebody in your books,
00:24:09
Speaker
you have to interest them in yourself. They want to know about you first before they'll do that. So, I mean, a number of things. Going to conventions was one of them. Teaching at a university was another because when you're standing in front of a room with 30 people who look to you to give them knowledge, you have to freaking give them knowledge. You can't just sort of clam up and, you know, be shy. There were a number of things that kind of brought me out of that shell.
00:24:35
Speaker
And so yeah, now hopefully I am not boring. Well, you're very approachable. No, thank you. Yeah, and so accomplished at this point. So the humor and the approachability and the accomplishments, you're irresistible, man.
00:24:50
Speaker
Well, thank you. We can't get a room. We live in different cities now. You have to go to the same college and meet there. But I want to talk more about satire because I do find it fascinating. I used to work on a show with the CBC called The Muckraker, which was pretty much satire. They were certainly aiming for the laughs, but it was satirizing popular news and current events of the time.
00:25:16
Speaker
And I found that it was a challenge because it wasn't always necessarily funny. It was, like I said, sharp pointed biting.
00:25:24
Speaker
but not necessarily laugh out loud. And the audience does seem to be smaller for that. And I'm not sure that this is necessarily leading up to a question more than it's just kind of an observation about
Perception of Satire
00:25:35
Speaker
satire. But I would imagine that you both have more thoughts about satire. How you define it is really key. A lot of people would say that Orwell's 1984 is satire, and there is not a laugh to be had in that book, at least not the version I've read.
00:25:50
Speaker
I think humor is an integral part of satire, but I also think that... So for me, if the audience isn't laughing, if the reader isn't laughing, I failed, even if my point has gotten across. But I always worry that if they're not laughing, they're also not getting the point of what I'm trying to write.
00:26:10
Speaker
But isn't there kind of a component of appreciation in satire? You're not necessarily laughing, but you're appreciating what they're saying or what they're pointing out. I'm thinking of other historical examples of satire, like Gulliver's Travels, for example.
00:26:24
Speaker
I mean, I'm a little bit leery of satire these days. I can't remember why I was listening to someone's podcast talking about, you know, is satire dead, which is a question that gets asked about every 10 years. So I don't take that question very seriously. But the problem is that satire, as Ira says, requires some.
00:26:46
Speaker
I think it requires self-awareness as well as intelligence. And if someone doesn't have self-awareness, then it's really hard to deliver satire to them. And this for me was kind of pointed out when someone was talking about the Colbert report. And that is quite obviously a satire of the extreme ultra conservative view of things.
00:27:12
Speaker
But that show was very popular amongst conservatives because they didn't see it as a satire of their view. They saw it as a satire of the guests that were on. So they saw Colbert as their mouthpiece, making fun of the position of the Richard Dawkins of the worlds, those kinds of people that were guests on the show. So for me, that was kind of like, well, that's depressing.
00:27:40
Speaker
They also did a little cognitive quirk though. They also said, well, because I've seen that study. And in fact, I was not surprised at all by that study because there was a study done in the 60s, which I'll refer to in a minute. But they did this cognitive quirk where they said, oh,
00:27:57
Speaker
He has to be funny because he's on Comedy Central or wherever his show was, so he has to appear to be making fun of conservative pundits, but really he's sympathetic to conservative pundits. Now, Colbert in interviews was very clear about his satirical intent, so that is not
00:28:18
Speaker
what I think of as the preferred reading of his show. In the 1960s, there was a study done of the TV show All in the Family. And in particular, they were looking at how people viewed the character of Archie Bunker and what the study found. And it, you know, it's mirrored in the later findings about the Colbert Report was that really,
00:28:39
Speaker
How you felt about Archie Bunker was determined by your politics going into watching the show. If you were a liberal, then you thought the character is making fun of bigoted conservative Americans. If you were a conservative, you thought that Archie Bunker was a sympathetic character who was always getting the better of all the liberal jerks around him.
00:29:01
Speaker
Does it matter what the intent was? Because it seems like you can appreciate the content even if you don't get that it's satire. Okay, I think there are two questions there. I will answer the first one. I will answer my preferred question. Good thing I didn't go into politics, right? Yeah, smart choice. It's always the best choice. Answer the question you want to answer. Exactly. PR 101.
00:29:22
Speaker
From my point of view, as somebody who writes it and has a point of view, well, yes, I think it's important that the audience actually get what I'm trying to say. But having said that, I will try to make my lecture brief. satire, as I was taught it, I actually studied satire as an undergrad at university, has three components.
00:29:45
Speaker
the ostensible object, the actual subject of attack, and the comic device. And the example I always use is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. The modest proposal is fairly well known even today. Basically, it's a 10 page short piece about how the problem of the Irish poor in England can be solved
00:30:10
Speaker
by allowing the Irish poor to sell their babies to the wealthy Brits for food. The article talks about what ages they're best suited to be cooked at and what the best things are. And it even, I believe, has a recipe in it for how to cook the children. And then at the end of the article, towards the end of the article, he does something which just, it always blows my mind to contemplate it. He says,
00:30:38
Speaker
You know, I was a member of British Parliament and when I was a member of British Parliament, I proposed all of these solutions to the issue of poverty, all of these reasonable things that we could have done, and none of them were taken up by the House. Nobody accepted them. So you know what?
00:30:54
Speaker
If we're not going to pursue reasonable solutions, then maybe an unreasonable solution is something that people will actually do. Right. And the reason why I think that's such an amazing moment both in the article and in literature, actually, is that what he was saying was, hey, look, are you outraged by what I've just written? Yeah, you know what? I'm angry, too.
00:31:21
Speaker
But you shouldn't be angry with me. You should be angry with the people who created the conditions where something like this could even be considered. Bang! He's taking the anger of the reader and directing it where he wants it to be directed. So now, that's all preface. What is the ostensible subject? Well, it's what's on the surface of a piece of writing and on the surface of that piece of writing was selling babies to people for food.
00:31:51
Speaker
The actual object of attack is what lies below the surface, what the author is actually trying to say. And in this case, the author is trying to say, hey, the rich people are complacent about poverty,
00:32:06
Speaker
they should be the people you're angry at. The comedic device, I would say, would be obscenity. Cannibalism is what the article is basically about. Is it actually funny? I think it's hilarious, actually, if you read it. Yeah, I think it is funny, the way the ideas are presented. I've certainly laughed at it in the past when I've read it, but
00:32:28
Speaker
Here, finally, I get to the point that I wanted to make, which is that satire is a form of comedy where you have to actually interpret what's on the page, right? It's not obvious. It's not like physical humor where, you know, somebody slips on a banana peel. It's there. There's no interpretation needed. You have to get it. You have to interpret it. And whatever can be interpreted can also be misinterpreted.
00:32:55
Speaker
You have to read what's between the lines and you can always misread what's between the lines.
Modern Satire's Challenges
00:33:00
Speaker
And we can argue about whether other people's interpretations are legitimate. But as I say, as a practitioner myself, my preference is that they get the point that I'm trying to make and not the opposite point. I would just add that I think he's also in that piece making the point that, look, the wealthy are already eating the poor.
00:33:25
Speaker
Why don't we just eat the poor? Yeah. Why don't we just actually eat them? Just actually eat them. Yeah. Which, that's the part that makes me laugh. It's so on the nose. But I'm actually worried that we live in an age where that kind of subtlety has just been lost. Yeah. Would it not be better to eat the rich? Like, would they not be more to them? Of course. Well, no, well, there's more to them, but there's fewer. That's the problem.
00:33:54
Speaker
If you're looking for, you know, bulk. And actually that, that may not technically be true because of course a lot of poor people have very poor diets because that's all they can afford.
Surrealism in 'Oh Lucky Man'
00:34:04
Speaker
And so you have a obesity crisis, uh, hits the poor as much as it hits the rich, but for different reasons. I love how this podcast is descended into cannibalism. It only took having six episodes. That's pretty good. I thought it would get there number two or three personally, but you know,
00:34:22
Speaker
Hmm. Yes. Where do we go from here? You needed to have me on earlier, obviously. Yeah, obviously, obviously. So I take it that, Oh, Lucky Man meets all of your criteria for satire. Oh yeah. Yeah. It just goes to weird surreal places. Yeah. I would say it's quite a surreal movie as well. I think that sometimes the surrealism takes you away from the satire of that movie. Okay. I've only seen it once, but that was my feeling is like, what's happening? Am I watching this? Is this actually happening?
00:34:50
Speaker
There's a scene, I don't know, maybe two thirds of the way through the movie that takes place in a medical facility, which is very shocking and meant to be shocking.
00:35:01
Speaker
I think. Yeah, you're nodding your head. You clearly know which scene I'm talking about. The funny thing about that is it actually pays off in Britannia Hospital, where the researcher in charge of that project reappears in the hospital. But I don't want to spoil that film. See, the way you have to consider this film, as I said, it's very much in the path of Candide, Voltaire's novel. They're both what are known as picaresques.
00:35:27
Speaker
It's about a series of scenes. It doesn't have a sort of formal narrative arc. It's just a series of events that happens, all leading up to a character revelation. And one of the ways you actually know about this is that fairly early in the film, Mick Travis is driving through the British countryside to get somewhere, and he drives through a fog. And the fog is actually a
00:35:56
Speaker
a symbol of a lot of older narratives that we have left the real world. We are now in a place where anything can happen.
00:36:07
Speaker
If you were aware of that as a convention, as a storytelling convention, then you're kind of prepared for a lot of the weirdness that happens later. Am I wrong in thinking that the movie has, it's somewhat related to the tradition of the medieval morality play, but it's obviously an inversion of that or just a perversion of that.
00:36:31
Speaker
because those morality plays kind of have the same kind of structure,
Personal Reflections on the Film
00:36:36
Speaker
right? Like stuff happens and then the character realizes the error of their ways in those plays. But in this movie, it's a different kind of realization at the end.
00:36:47
Speaker
I think it's definitely possible. One thing I can tell you is that Malcolm McDowell was actually the person who went to Lindsay Anderson and suggested the idea for Oh, Lucky Man. It wasn't generated from Lindsay Anderson himself. And I don't know what his influences were, although I suspect they were classical.
00:37:06
Speaker
Yeah, well, I could see that. I mean, it's got so much fun stuff in it. As an actor, I can imagine how much fun it was to do all those different things and to have so many different people to work with.
00:37:19
Speaker
The other part of that experience that was wild was, of course, it had Czech subtitles and I was taking Czech and I was desperately trying to learn Czech. So I was halfway between the story, what was happening, trying to figure out what the Czech words were and how they actually related to the English words that were being spoken. It was a pretty wild experience. I'm struck that you saw it a long time ago in a foreign country and yet it seems to have left quite an impression.
00:37:49
Speaker
It really did, yeah. I remember watching it thinking, I'm going to remember that. And I'm not quite sure what just happened to me. I really wasn't quite sure. And I actually, I'll be honest with you, I still don't quite understand
00:38:05
Speaker
the culminating moment of the movie. And you can't explain it to me right now on the air because we don't want to spoil, actually spoil the movie. But yeah, that last scene is amazing. That last scene is probably one of the coolest last scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Wow. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
00:38:22
Speaker
I don't know that I would recommend the rest of the movie that highly. There's a lot to go through. And I would say that a lot of it doesn't work comedically. Like there's lots of stuff that doesn't really work. And, you know, like I thought, whatever that was 30 years ago. So I'm not sure if there's stuff in there now that wouldn't stand up at all. Have you seen it recently, Ira? Yeah, I see it every couple of years. I've seen it a couple of dozen times, I think by now.
00:38:50
Speaker
What I would say is that, yeah, it is not consistently funny all the way through for sure. And sometimes, you know, there are certain scenes for shock value or other reasons, but I think it's all part of a, my artistic goal is to literally get a laugh with practically every word, but not every artist has to be that way. I appreciate artists who can meld the serious in the comic. And so for me, it does work. And I think a lot of it,
00:39:19
Speaker
does hold up well over time. The political stuff, the military stuff, a lot of the relationship stuff actually works, continues to work. So as long as rich countries are exploiting poor countries, yeah, it'll work quite well, I think, sadly. I'll also say just while it occurs to me that for a while, Oh, Lucky Man was my first date film.
00:39:50
Speaker
When an opportunity arose, I would always gauge a potential friend or girlfriend's role in my life by how they responded to the film. Oh, I see.
Satire's Resilience and Podcast Close
00:39:59
Speaker
Okay. So you would, you would basically inflict this film. Yes. This, this almost three hour surreal, what the hell was that kind of thing? Yeah.
00:40:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I have to admit, it steered me away from a lot of what were potentially bad relationships. So an intriguing strategy. It did seem to work. So I am going to wrap things up here in a minute or two. But one question I wanted to ask was, is this a film better? And you've kind of just answered this question, but is this a film best viewed alone or in the company of others? I would be willing to bet it's better with other people, other people that have a similar sense of humor as you. I think I think that would make it more fun.
00:40:37
Speaker
to have someone to go, did you just see that? And did you just experience that the way that I experienced that? Because I think that might help for some of the really weird parts. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that. Yeah. That's just my take, of course. I mean, I can't answer for the movie.
00:40:55
Speaker
No, I would totally agree with that. Yeah. The more, the merrier. All right. Any final thoughts on satire or Oh, Lucky Man? Well, Mark brought up a question that does come up every so often, which is, is satire dead? And it was a question that came up a lot during the Trump years, because of course the argument is that when reality becomes so extreme, then there's nowhere for satire to go.
00:41:24
Speaker
I would say a couple of things. One is I remember because I've been writing a long time, I remember writing about Richard Nixon and thinking, oh, my God, politicians, American politicians can't get any worse than this. And then in the 80s, of course, we had Reagan and I was like, oh, well, fine. OK, but it certainly can't get any worse than this. And then in the 2000s, of course, we had George W. Bush. Yeah.
00:41:53
Speaker
It seems to constantly be getting worse. Obviously, it had its apotheosis with Trump. And at each juncture, people were saying, satire is dead, satire can't handle this. And my argument goes back to what I said about the three parts of satire. And in this discussion, I would say, you need to look at the comic device. When people say the world is so extreme that satire can't handle it,
00:42:19
Speaker
What they're saying is the comic device of exaggeration can't handle this, which is a comic device that is often used in satire. That's fine. But satire uses every comic device that there is, right? You could write a parody of politics. You could use all sorts of different ironic forms of humor.
00:42:39
Speaker
Right? So satire is always alive. Sometimes when the times are really extreme, it just means you have to dig a little deeper and be a little more creative as a writer. So that's my final take on it. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Ira, for appearing on our podcast, Recreative, and for introducing myself and others to Oh Lucky Man.
00:43:03
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much for having me. And if I may, just if anybody is interested, I would suggest you see the trilogy in order. So start with If, and then Oh Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital, because they really are kind of, they're very different films, but they're also of a piece. Yeah, I've seen If as well, but I haven't seen the last one Britannia Hospital. So it's called, I will have to see that at some point. And perhaps we'll have you on another time talking about Citizen Kane.
00:43:31
Speaker
Well, I just want to say it's lovely to meet you, Ira. Oh, and you too, Mark. Yeah, thank you. That was great. And we will no doubt speak again. Okay.
00:43:56
Speaker
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00:44:12
Speaker
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00:44:36
Speaker
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