The Letterboxd Show 3.24: Jordan Raup
[clip from Blow Out plays]
What are you doing here, you listening to some music?
Nope. This is my, uh, job. I do sound effects for movies.
Oh movies, huh?
As a matter of fact, last night I was out recording some sounds.
What do you mean, sound effects?
Well, you know, when you see a movie and you hear a door slam or a bird chirp or wind or whatever, you know, I record those actual sounds and then I put them in a movie. And then you see the movie. Last night—
Big movies?
No, just bad ones, unfortunately.
Oh… I really love movies, you know.
GEMMA Hello, you are listening to The Letterboxd Show, our podcast about the movies people love watching from Letterboxd: the social network of people who love watching movies. I’m Gemma, they’re Mitchell, and like many film lovers, we are giddy with excitement for the 60th edition of the New York Film Festival. It’s a big old fancy run of screenings in the storied Film at Lincoln Center precinct with world premieres, recent releases and restored classics. So it seems like the right episode to celebrate the fest, so we’ve brought in a very good friend of Letterboxd who is intimately associated with it...
MITCHELL Our guest today is Film at Lincoln Center, and therefore also the New York Film Festival. In addition, he is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Film Stage, a website dedicated to film news, reviews, interviews, original features and extensive film festival coverage with a global filmmaking perspective that may or may not feature plenty of pieces written by yours truly... Jordan is also a Letterboxd member, and I like to believe a pretty good friend. We’ll have plenty of festival talk on NYFF throughout the episode, but Jordan’s main job here is to take us through his four Letterboxd faves which are: Canyon age, The Tree of Life, The Heartbreak Kid—the good one—and Blow Out. Jordan, thank you so much for ing us.
JORDAN Thank you guys. I’m so honored to be here. Yes, all that is true—NYFF is starting very soon and it’s a busy time, so I’m glad I could fit this in.
GEMMA Yeah, I wanted to ask what is the vibe around the office in the week before New York Film Festival? Nerves, excitement? Like, screaming, crying, throwing up... What’s going on? [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN Yeah,so we start planning the festival, if you can believe it, like in December of last year, and so we thankfully have a lot of our ducks in a row ready to go for next week. But yeah, I would say for the most part, you know, right now it’s an exciting time because a lot of the films that are coming to the festival, we’re seeing some pre-screenings of things. So half the day is spent watching movies, other half is kind of preparing for things. But, yeah no, it’s excitement that people—I was, you know, last year we were a little unsure if people would come back and they did, but it was a much younger crowd. This year it seems like a great mix of kind of the Lincoln Center, you know, die-hard patrons and then also a new crowd as well. So yeah, ticket sales are going strong and excited to have full theaters for almost every screening.
GEMMA What is your festival survival plan? Because, like, Film at Lincoln Center, I don’t know. I’ve been to Alice Tully Hall to see movies a bunch of times at your festival and it’s not the popcorn and nachos vibe, and nobody wants to be that dick dropping Cheetos on the floor of Alice Tully, so...
JORDAN No...
GEMMA How do you sustain yourself during festival season?
JORDAN That is a good—I am lucky that our employer does provide us free food throughout, which is good for staff. So there we actually are—
GEMMA Where’s the office, exactly? [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
JORDAN Yeah, it’s in the same building as Juilliard, so we hang out in the Juilliard cafeteria and eat—
GEMMA What floor? [Mitchell & Jordan laugh]
JORDAN Well, it’s right near Walter Reed. But yeah, so that is my one plan is to eat as much as I can there. But yeah, it is a lot of jumping around. I mean, the nice thing compared to our festival versus some other festivals is everything’s located, you know, on one block. So, you know, we are going to be in other partner venues throughout the city and for the first time actually in all five boroughs, which is exciting. So you can head out all the way to Alamo Drafthouse Staten Island, which just opened, and see Bones and All or Master Gardener if you’d like.
GEMMA Amazing.
JORDAN So yeah, so this year—but yeah, mostly if you want to hang out at Film at Lincoln Center, you can do so and just kind of hop around the block all day and see movies and not really need to travel too far, so that is good as well.
MITCHELL You mentioned, you know, you’ve been starting to see, I noticed on your Letterboxd, some reviews coming, some ratings coming in for some of the NYFF films. I saw Tár, you got a nice four-star rating on there. So you’ve been seeing some of this stuff. I’m curious, what are, from what you haven’t seen so far that’s coming to NYFF, what are you especially excited to get to check out?
JORDAN Sure, yeah, well so at The Film Stage, we had three writers at Cannes and their kind of unanimous pick for favorite film was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction.
GEMMA Ooooh... it’s on my list.
JORDAN Yes. I’m very, very excited about that—a three hour odyssey that I really have tried not to learn much about, what it is, just to kind of be completely surprised. So that is high up there. I mean, there’s a lot of films, we have a great Current section, which is kind of like our main slate sidebar in a way which is kind of like the more kind of adventurous, bolder filmmaking. So Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, which still has not been picked up for a US distributor, which I don’t know, if you’re listening, come on, let’s get with the program. [Gemma & Mitchell laugh] It was at Berlinale earlier this year and now we’re gonna have the North American premiere, so I’m very excited for that. That’s a big one. We’re doing like, there’s some cool events, one’s completely sold out, so you can’t get tickets, unfortunately. But we’re doing the 50th-anniversary screening of Solaris.
MITCHELL Oh wow.
JORDAN With a world premiere of the live score, played live, so it’ll be great.
GEMMA But you have to stop talking about that because it’s sold out, so... you know... [Mitchell laughs]
JORAN I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
GEMMA Hold your marketing guns on that. I tell you what I’m excited about. I’m excited for other people to see the first of your four favorites, because the greedy, greedy gutsers that go to New York Film Festival are gonna get to see the shiny, new 4K restoration of Canyon age, a 1946 Western that is very little known, despite the fact that it was an absolute box-office smash in Portland the year it came out. And I’m just jealous of anyone who’s going to get to see this on a huge screen. So let’s dive into your first four fave. This is 1946, directed by Jacques Tourneur, from the novel by Ernest Haycox, script by Ernest Pascal, has just seventeen fans on Letterboxd, you are one of them, Jordan. [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN Wow. Wow.
GEMMA So you and sixteen other people—
JORDAN I feel special.
GEMMA Yeah! You can have like a special little dinner party with the sixteen other Letterboxders who also have this in their four faves. It’s got a really decent 3.8 average, and let’s have a go at this synopsis that I rewrote...
MITCHELL Yeah, a very Gemma, a Gemma synopsis here. [Gemma laughs] Not happy with the very brief one-sentence synopsis that was on Letterboxd.
GEMMA Yeah, very brief one-sentence synopsis that was about like some guy juggles two women in the Wild West. I was like... [Gemma laughs]
MITCHELL It’s a classic love-triangle movie, as anybody who’s seen Canyon age knows, this is all about, you know, a little love triangle, that’s it.
GEMMA Well... I don’t know, I feel like Logan definitely had something for George, because that friendship was... [Mitchell laughs] Anyway. ‘Polyamory, yellow gravel and land rights in the Wild Wild West. It is 1850s Oregon and businessman Logan Stewart is a man who can’t sit still. He’s got trading posts up and down the Pacific Northwest and into California, and sweet, young Caroline who wants to marry and settle him down. Meanwhile, his best friend George who holds the town’s gold supply can’t stop his compulsive gambling. And also, George is engaged to the extremely hot Lucy, played by Susan Hayward. And meanwhile, the Indigenous locals have a few opinions about all these interlopers on their land. And then things happen...’ There’s my synopsis. What do you think Jordan? Am I hired?
JORDAN Oh, that’s great. I mean, yeah, that’s better than the official one, so, I love it. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh] Yeah, I saw this, so we actually had a Jacques Tourneur retrospective, it was, I think, four years ago now at Film at Lincoln Center. And I was one of the, you know, one of the biggest attendees there, I think 25 of his films, which, before that, I think I’d only seen like, Out of the Past and a few others. And he just has an amazing career, you know, he really can jump around genres and kind of does everything and doesn’t really get the credit for it. And this was one of the, along with [Stars in My Crown], this was one of the big, eye-opening, you know, all-time fave, instant-watch. That was on 35mm, and it was great. And yeah, so I’m very excited to have the new restoration here. But I just, you know, this is a movie—you guys talked about, I think on your last show with Kam, about just like vibes and kind of the feeling that a movie gives you and I feel like this is why I watch this movie, because the plot gets a little silly and ridiculous. But I would say like the production design is just idyllic. There’s a really, you get a really strong sense of this kind of living, breathing community. You know, I feel like with a Western, a lot are, you know, synonymous with kind of these harsher, more spare landscapes and I feel like this is something, you know, as soon as the movie starts, you’re kind of just living in this community and I love the way with the score and just how kind of warm and humid the whole movie is. And that’s something that Jacques Tourneur, in all of his films, that’s definitely a feature that carries through, but this one, I think, hits the high marks here, so...
GEMMA Yeah, there’s no world building, right? The world is just there and we ride into it. You know, we come in from out-of-frame and I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess I was expecting painted backdrops and one or two horses on a soundstage. I was certainly not expecting, as Ziglet writes on Letterboxd: “A flaunting of the stunning Oregon vistas and foliage in Technicolor. The depth provided by the real setting is in this case a great argument against studio-era artifice.”
JORDAN Yes. Yeah. And I love the way he kind of luls you in with all those things. And then like, I sitting in a theater watching the cut when they’re having this kind of like, I think it’s the barn-raising ceremony and they’re kind of having fun and then like hard-cut and you just see the Native Americans kind of come in at their doorstep and like and I just being like, ‘that is like such a brilliant way to kind of tear apart this community that and just show like what the reality of the situation is.’ And so there’s just touches throughout that are kind of brilliant, I think, throughout. And, you know, I love Dana Andrews in this as well.
MITCHELL Dana Andrews, an underrated actor. I think he’s not one of the people that people talk about a lot from this era, but I was just watching Ball of Fire recently, the Howard Hawks movie with Barbara Stanwyck and him the other day, and he plays like the heavy in it, and he’s so good in it. So nasty but like also super charming. And he just, he has this way of drawing you in and just making you lean in and want to pay attention to him. And then watching—so I watched that like a week or so after I watched Canyon age and I was like, ‘What did I just see this guy in? I want to see everything that he’s been in!’ So then I’m just going through his filmography and finding like, adding to my watchlist all these other movies that he’s been in, that I’m like, I just need to check out everything that Dana Andrews has been in now.
JORDAN Yeah, he’s in Night of the Demon, another Tourneur film, which is very fun. It’s kind of like a horror film, British horror film, so…
MITCHELL Adding it to the watchlist...
GEMMA There’s a list on Letterboxd Alyssa Heflin has called Gorgeous Technicolor Masterworks That Prominently Feature a Redhead.
MITCHELL Shoutout.
GEMMA Yes, shoutout.
MITCHELL Shoutout redheads. [Gemma laughs] We’re here, we’re in Technicolor, we’re looking great. [Jordan laughs]
GEMMA So one of the things I was really struck by in the opening scenes of Canyon age were how, I really love a script that gets economical, and really smart about all the information that we need to have without sort of, when you can’t show it, like you can’t have this sweeping introduction into the society that we’re in. But instead, the camera kind of sweeps through the bar and you overhear snippets of conversations that lay out how the politics and the trade gossip, you know, are sitting at the moment. So you hear someone saying, “Lumber’s sitting sky high in San Francisco,” and you hear someone else talking about how a train with 50 wagons and not one of them left. So immediately, we’ve got a sense that this is a dangerous, crazy pioneering time, and whatever you have, you could lose in a minute, which is... yeah, this could go anywhere. And I also absolutely love that the women—A, there are women, more than one. [Mitchell laughs] And that they know themselves, they understand that they’re surrounded by wheeler-dealers, and that this could all be gone soon enough. And, you know, that they’re ready to get on their horses and move from town to town. And there’s a really interesting moment, we just don’t get this kind of thing in movies anymore, where Logan and his best friend George are basically debating what a good kiss is, and they both have a go with Lucy... [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN Yeah, yeah, it is funny how he’s kind of like injecting some more playful elements that can also be, you know, it’s things that you wouldn’t necessarily, I feel like, see in a Western and that’s what I like about it. It’s not this kind of like archetypal, very black-and-white, like good-versus-evil. There’s a lot of layers of moral complexity, and even the love triangles, they’re a little bit, you know, they’re front-and-center in some ways, but like I said, it’s more about the kind of the mood that he’s kind of carrying across. But yeah, that scene is funny.
GEMMA Funny? I’m sorry, funny? Hot. That scene’s hot. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
JORDAN Hot. Yes, yes.
MITCHELL Jordan misspoke. We all know. But yeah, I mean, we brought up earlier the treatment of, the depiction of the Indigenous community in this film, and I was really shocked within, like, fifteen minutes seeing the white characters speaking very frankly about the fact that like, yes, this Native community, they’re mad, and they have every right to be, because we’re the ones on their land. And yeah, especially for this era, you know, speaking of the depiction of women, but then also the depiction of the Indigenous people in the film, it’s really practical and it’s really opening up that multi-dimensionality of the reality of what this world is. It’s not lionizing the white-American cowboys coming in and and like doing their thing, and just, you know, wielding guns and taking action. It’s really taking this panoramic view of every element of what’s going on in this community, and by extension in that country, in this country, at the time.
GEMMA And it’s extraordinary how it does fold in the Indigenous voice at a time when not many scriptwriters were doing that, whether the actual depiction of the local Yakama tribe is good or not. I did look at who had played the main role of the chief, and it is, it is Chief Yowlachie of the Yakama tribe who was in many Westerns, and who was also an opera singer with an incredibly beautiful voice. So, that’s just an interesting factoid that I loved knowing. There’s so many more things we could say about Canyon age, but maybe people should go get their tickets to this, if you’re in the New York area, to this restoration at the New York Film Festival, or if it comes near you or try and find, there was a Blu-ray I think that—
JORDAN Yeah, Kino Lorber released on Blu-ray a few years ago, you know, this was restored with Scorsese and Spielberg’s consultation through the Film Foundation, so I imagine we’ll see it pop up pretty soon, hopefully on disc.
GEMMA If you were one character in this crazy village, who would you be? Because I am 100% Hoagy Carmichael and an ass with a mandolin. [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN Yeah, I was gonna say, he is—who is the actor who’s kind of the doofus that’s like carrying around, drinking the wine—I forget... [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA You’re him?
JORDAN He seems like he’s having fun and kind of just having a blast.
MITCHELL You’re just here for a good time. I think, I mean, I of course as, you know, that gorgeous Technicolor masterworks that prominently feature a redhead. I think it’s very clear who I would have to be in this role... And I get to kiss all the boys! [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA Well, that’s just perfect. Speaking of redheads get to kiss all the boys...
MITCHELL Perfect. Beautiful, beautiful transition.
GEMMA Thank you so much. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
MITCHELL Our second film of Jordan’s faves The Tree of Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick, 2011, Palme d’Or winner at Cannes that year, no big deal. 3.8 average, 5.2 thousand people on Letterboxd have this in their four faves—a little bit of an uptick from Canyon age, seventeen. [The] Tree of Life, the synopsis: ‘The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.’ Kind of an interesting synopsis, I feel like a little bit more focused on elder-Jack than the movie is. But Jordan, so I know—you and I have been friends for a little while now, but even before I knew you personally, I’ve known that you’re a very big Malick-head, that’s when I think of you, I think of Terrence Malick.
JORDAN That’s an honor. Thank you. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
MITCHELL And I’ll say that to him too, Terrence, when I think of you, I think of Jordan Raup. [Gemma & Jordan laugh] And he’ll—the same honor.
GEMMA Just as long as he doesn’t think of me, Terrence Malick do not—[Mitchell laughs]
MITCHELL ‘You’re from Letterboxd? We’re not speaking. The restraining order is up.’ But Jordan, when you, in 2011, I assume you saw [The] Tree of Life for the first time when it came out, when you went into it, what was that experience like for you? Like what was your anticipation for it knowing that it was such a personal experience, such a personal film for him?
JORDAN We started The Film Stage in 2008, so we had missed—this was the first Malick in, you know, in The Film Stage cycle of covering things. So I had obviously seen his past films and loved them and then this one, you know, there was so much hype for it. I don’t know if you guys , but the trailer, I watched that probably 300 times before it came out. It’s just like a perfect, perfect piece of marketing material and just gets the essence of the movie down so well. And so yeah, there was so much hype for it. I mean, the poster with all the s that came out, and then there was like early reactions and everything. And yeah, I actually saw it, I was very thankful because it premiered at Cannes obviously where it won the Palme d’Or. And then that day or the next morning, they showed it for New York City press. I going to the first screening, and it was still like, I think a few weeks before it actually came out. And yeah, just blown away. I think it was one of those things where I immediately, you know, as soon as it came out in theaters again, I saw it one more time. And yeah, I mean, it was sold before that it was his magnum opus and I think it certainly is, we can talk a bit more, but I think is his most recent run of films is more interesting and just the sense of like, how bold they in certain stylistic choices and editing choices, but I think this is like, if you want wanna watch, ‘What is Terrence Malick as a filmmaker?’ like this is the film to watch and it just has everything in one. So yeah, I can definitely dive more in. I’ve seen the film now, I’ve seen the extended edition twice, I’ve seen it in theaters with a live orchestra. [Mitchell laughs] Yeah, I’ve seen it every which way you can. So, yeah.
GEMMA Okay, so let’s—yeah, I feel like I need to do a little bit of a thought experiment at the moment. I pulled a couple of reviews from Letterboxd to specifically talk about ‘MAS’, a condition I’ve invented which is Malick Allergy Syndrome... [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN I was going to say, I am not familiar with this. Okay. Alright.
GEMMA And so, there’s a couple here, Daniel writes, in a five-star review of The Tree of Life, by the way, and these are both five-star reviews: “I’m convinced there’s a Malick gene. Some have it and some don’t. Some watch one of his films and are so moved they can barely speak and others watch the same film and can’t believe they wasted all that time.” I will not reveal which gene I have... [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN Sure.
GEMMA But...
MITCHELL You’ve maybe hinted a little bit. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh] And then PlaidFlannel’s review, very similar, five stars: “Preface: It is with regret that I have in the past subconsciously categorized people’s personalities as ‘Likes Tree of Life’ and ‘Doesn’t Like Tree of Life’, and I now realize this is unfair. Especially since most people who watch a movie want to be... entertained! Crazy concept, right?
Anyway, blah, blah, blah blah. “I understand some people just don’t enjoy this film and I accept that.” But this is a review for folks who might want to revisit it. And I’m gonna make a confession, because The Letterboxd Show is a safe space... I did not revisit The Tree of Life in advance of this episode, and I’m really sorry, Jordan, because I know it’s really special to you. [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN Aw, that’s okay.
GEMMA But... I did see it when it first came out and much like Jack’s Facts’s father, who... [Gemma laughs] “Fell asleep during the space scene and snored so loudly in the cinema that it was an A+ experience.” I had, yeah, I was... I was lost and confused. And so my offer, my thought exercise, is: bring me back over to the Malick-personality side. Help me recover from MAS.
MITCHELL No pressure after somebody just spoke so much about how they can’t stand Malick, how they hate this movie, and now it’s all to you, Jordan. [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN So for you, just to confirm, it’s every single Malick film, or especially this one, or?
GEMMA It’s especially this one. It’s not every single. Song to Song I can do, Thin Red Line, I’m, you know...
JORDAN Oh, you’re fine. You’re halfway there. [Mitchell laughs] Yeah, well, it’s funny because I think I feel with Malick, he gets pegged with being like, kind of a slow director. But if you actually look at like cut-by-cut basis, he’s actually like, one of the fastest kind of like, he’s throwing so much information at you at once. And obviously, Song to Song, another film like that, really speed that up. But even with The Tree of Life, it’s just like, you know, some of the editing montages are some of the most well put together and interesting kind of ways you could convey certain ideas or themes or anything like that. But I mean, I certainly don’t begrudge anyone from—you know, I when the great [The] Tree of Life wars of 2011. That was like, when it when it came out, it was, you know, people came out saying they fell asleep or—
GEMMA The trauma is still real. [Gemma laughs]
JORDAN Yeah, exactly. I mean, on a base level, if a director is showing me something brand new that I’ve never seen before in cinema, that’s just gonna get A+ points no matter what. And because I love Malick’s style, and how he was able to convey this—because you see a lot, I mean, there’s movies like Gravity, I feel like Interstellar where like, the pre-release hype is like, “This is the next [2001: A Space Odyssey], it’s going to be this like, epic spiritual experience.” And then you go see the movies, and they’re like, yes, they’re entertaining, you know, but you don’t get that level. And this is one where saw it, I was like, ‘Wow, he actually delivered, as the credits roll, this is 50 years from now, this would be considered a classic.’ And you don’t come across those kind of movies very often. I know, you know, [2001: A Space Odyssey], there are also people who didn’t like it, not saying that they were wrong. I’m just saying like, it’s definitely, if he had made a more palatable movie, I feel like it wouldn’t have necessarily crossed over in some sections, as it deserves to, I think.
GEMMA But is it still, you know, with you as the doctor and me as the patient with MAS, is it about ‘the vibes, man’ or are there—can you pinpoint specific moments that were in the film that lift you that are singular and extraordinary, and kind of put your heart and your brain over the top together?
JORDAN I mean, I will say, outside of like, the creation stuff and everything like that, on a human level, I think the montage where you’re seeing kind of Hunter McCracken, and the other boys kind of grow up, and it’s like, it lasts about six, seven minutes, but it’s like, literally brings me to tears every time I watch it. It is just so beautiful and encapsulates—and obviously as a white male growing up, he’s not capturing everyone’s experience, but like, it’s not even an experience exactly I have had, it is that idyllic 1950s kind of like, you know, that kind of running free in the wild and just have fun kind of vibe. And I feel like, you know, just the way—he could have chosen a million ways to show that, and the way every single shot kind of connects with each other and the music, and it’s just so joyous, so fun, just beautiful. I think he captures heartbreak really well. I think, you know, Jessica Chastain in post-[The] Tree of Life roles, I’ve had a Jessica Chastain allergy, not because of her, but just because of projects she picks, I think. I just think they’re a little less compelling in a narrative way. So I think like, this captures her essence so well. And she’s such a larger-than-life figure. She’s meant to, you know, like they say in the movie, she’s kind of grace and the way of grace and the kind of way of nature. And I feel like she actually embodies that so well throughout the movie. And yes, a lot of things that she does are something a mother would never do, but there’s so many scenes where it’s just a beautiful kind of encapsulation of like, the extremes of how well motherhood could be, and if you had a perfect mother. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there’s definitely—I’ve actually not seen it theatrically in a while, because in 2018, I watched the Extended Edition, I just watched Extended Edition again, which adds about 40 minutes. And so I’d be curious to actually revisit the theatrical, just kind of get that experience again. But I think the Extended Edition, you know, has some interesting segues. It’s not totally different film, it just kind of adds certain touches throughout. But yeah, I think, you know, the Sean Penn stuff people have issues with, totally understand that. That’s a little more like, you know, he’s in his own head, and just kind of contemplating, and is not as interesting as the stuff with Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. But yeah, I just think it’s a just completely beautiful movie, not just cinematography wise, but just everything it’s saying. You know, I grew up in like more of a Christian-conservative household, and I don’t go to church anymore, but like, when I watch Malick films, I feel like I’m at church and I’m experiencing something I could never get from what a pastor says or anything, like there’s just such beautiful themes.
GEMMA Mitchell, is The Tree of Life in your top five religious cinematic experiences? And what else is on that list?
MITCHELL It’s interesting, because even though I’m not somebody who ever was or is religious, I still really connect with films that tackle religion in really interesting ways. Whether that’s, like Bergman’s probably my favorite director, who is constantly tackling his relationship with God and like, I still connect with that, but then also somebody like Apichatpong Weerasethaku, who’s doing Uncle Boonmee [Who Can Recall His Past Lives], which is a very Buddhist film, and I’m very like—that film is 100% a super spiritual experience for me. And Jordan talking about films that you can just kind of put on in the background and just feel like coursing through you even if you’re not directly paying attention to it, but especially when you are directly paying attention to it. It just seeps into you in like a very beautiful way. So that, I mean, Uncle Boonmee [Who Can Recall His Past Lives] probably is the most spiritual experience for me with the film. But The Tree of Life, I do—I’m more in Jordan’s camp than I am Gemma’s on the debate about it. [Gemma laughs] It’s not my favorite Malick. Badlands for me is like an absolute masterpiece. I know it’s kind of like a boring choice because it’s maybe his most simplistic, straightforward film. But it’s one of my twenty favorite films of all-time. But The Tree of Life, I love the bookends with the very ‘cosmos’ kind of elements of it, the birth and death of it all. But it is the stuff throughout the middle, the stuff with the family, that really hits home for me in a really interesting way. And I wasn’t expecting to when I saw the film initially because I was expecting it to be this like larger-than-life kind of thing. But I think the beauty of it is how it laces in such a simple family story throughout the cosmos of it all. And like the scenes where—there’s a whole section of the movie where Brad Pitt playing the father goes away for a while and you see this light that comes out of these kids from their kind of abusive, toxic father being gone and the freedom that they feel running around and being able to enjoy just having that time with their mother and having her with them and just being able to see the light in her kind of coming out a little bit more because she’s not feeling that oppressive weight of the father around. And I mean, it really took me back to places in my childhood too, in really personal ways, and then the feeling of the father coming home and how the energy in the entire family and in the room shifts so dramatically just from hearing him coming home. That’s what always pulls me out of Tree of—or what I always pull out of [The] Tree of Life the most, is the family stuff that comes out. And Jordan, this was the first time that I watched the extended cut of it. I had seen the theatrical a couple of times when it came out. And yeah, the extended cut, the stuff that’s added into it, there’s some added stuff with the Sean Penn element, which yeah I agree, is not the high point of the movie. But lot of it is the—Jessica Chastain’s character gets a lot more attention in extended cut. And so I really appreciate it. I definitely prefer the extended cut over the theatrical, but I liked the theatrical a lot as well.
GEMMA Speaking of Jessica Chastain, there is a list on Letterboxd called movies where jessica chastain gets fed up with the useless men around her so she decides to save the world herself. And I’m like, how many movies can—
MITCHELL How many could there possibly be?
GEMMA There are eight! There are eight of these films! Oh my god, eight of these films. I guess the last thing I would say on [The] Tree of Life is to just repeat Muriel’s Letterboxd review which is: “I respect it, but it ain’t me.”
JORDAN That’s fair, that’s fair.
GEMMA Like no shade, and also to acknowledge that the world changed when Emmanuel Lubezki came along. Every every film school grad from Jack Fact’s on down has used comps from Lubezki’s work. [Gemma laughs]
JORDAN Yeah. And even though I put into this as my favorite Malick for this podcast, like I literally cannot rank his films if you pay me to. I would not write a feature on it because like any day I would watch any of them and have fondness for all of them, even Voyage of Time, he’s just one of those filmmakers that I love what he does.
GEMMA Badlands number one.
JORDAN In chronological order, yes, number one. [Gemma laughs]
MITCHELL I’ll take it. I’ll take it.
GEMMA So now, we should move on, there are two more films to talk about. And actually from the Badlands, you know, time of filmmaking, in fact, only a year earlier than Badlands, Elaine May directed The Heartbreak Kid. This is not the one, the recent one—is that Ben Stiller?
MITCHELL Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Åkerman. We all , we all were there.
JORDAN I still have not seen. I’m scared to watch.
GEMMA Oh my god. I’m so scared to watch. Okay, we are not talking about that [The] Heartbreak Kid. If that’s the one you’ve got lined up on your watchlists right now, get it off.
MITCHELL I apparently watched the wrong one, I guess... [Gemma & Jordan laugh] I don’t know what this Elaine May thing is you guys are talking about but...
GEMMA So this is written by Bruce Jay Friedman and Neil Simon, playwrights both, which definitely, definitely, I think is a big part of what makes it a winner. I have rewritten the synopsis for The Heartbreak Kid. Here we go—it’s got 3.9 average by the way. It is nice and high. 160 fans—that is a decent-sized wedding party. ‘Lenny marries Lila, a fun-loving girl who just likes to eat Milky Way bars after sex and also likes to chat during sex and make sure everyone’s getting what they want during sex and just having a really fun time during sex.’
MITCHELL Sounds great.
GEMMA She sounds really cool and I would marry her.
MITCHELL Sounds delightful.
GEMMA ‘Days into their Miami honeymoon, Lenny meets tall, blonde Kelly down on the beach, confirming in his opinion that he’s made a serious mistake marrying Lila—who is played by the dreamy Jeannie Berlin, by the way—and he decides he wants Kelly now played by the gorgeous Cybill Shepherd.’ If this whole synopsis is turning you off, you need to know that Lenny is played by Charles Grodin, and this is the reason to watch The Heartbreak Kid. Elusive, notoriously unavailable film. Hopefully there’s a restoration coming. But it is Elaine May’s third most popular and highest rated film of her four as a director. Where does it rate for you in your heart, Jordan?
JORDAN Ooh, out of the four? I mean it is tops, I think., it has to be just from pure enjoyment. I do love all of her films though. Even have, you know, I know Kam talked about last week, his Ishtar unsureness.
MITCHELL Ishtar baby!
JORDAN But yeah, love that as well. So yeah, she has done no wrong for me.
GEMMA But like, Lenny is a dick! Let’s get into it!
JORDAN Oh, I know. And Charles Grodin delivers one of the greatest comedic performances ever, at being a dick. Cringe awkward comedy is what makes me laugh more than almost anything, and so this movie, I’ll put it on—I was watching, my wife had not seen it before, so I was watching it with her. And she was like, just so disgusted. She was like, “You have to turn this off. I can’t even watch it.” [Mitchell laughs] I’m sitting there like crying laughing. [Gemma & Jordan laugh] Yeah, it’s brilliant. Yeah, that’s the thing. I mean, he is huge asshole and I find it absolutely captivating to watch every single scene and just watch—and I love, you know, this movie, there are like some punch lines and little gags here and there, but Elaine May lets you sit with the awkwardness and cringeness and you feel every sweaty moment of it.
MITCHELL There’s the whole sequence where Charles Grodin is telling Cybill Shepherd’s father about his love for Cybill Shepherd and then it goes on for like several minutes and then he drops the hammer of, “Oh by the way, I’m here on my honeymoon. I got married three days ago.” Like that’s exactly, just letting you sit with it. Because you know that’s coming and it’s a five-, ten-minute-long scene of you just sweating and feeling—
GEMMA Oh my god.
JORDAN And Cybill Shepherd is kind of cracking up in the background.
GEMMA Yeah, she’s cracking up but the mom is just sitting there with her mouth wide open. And there’s this moment when he says to the dad, “I’m gonna lay claim to your lovely daughter here.” And Cybill, just kind of squint her eyes. She’s just like—that felt like the end of the film right there and there was still like another hour to go. Oh my god.
JORDAN I know. I love how throughout their whole, you know, if you want to call it a courtship, but she never ever once is on his side. [Mitchell laughs] She never says, “Yeah, I love you. Let’s go do this.” He just thinks she’s gonna be for it and it’s just so brilliant. It’s amazing.
GEMMA Man. Yeah, but you’re right. There’s all these funny, funny quick moments like when the dad pulls the boat away from the jetty real fast, so Charles can’t get on but he’s like leaping on. When he goes to find her at university and she’s like, “I’ve got English Lit.” And he’s like—
MITCHELL All these men swarming all over and her and here comes Charles Grodin, like frumpy, middle-aged Charles Grodin, like, “Hey, I’m just here for by my college bride.” [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA But then, yes, she writes and films, two people or four people at a dinner table like absolutely nobody else. Like there’s more tension than 007 hanging out of a helicopter being fired at from all directions, in the scene where he’s dropping the bomb on his newlywed bride, that it’s over. She’s like, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
MITCHELL Oh god.
GEMMA And he’s like, “You can’t do that here. Everybody’s eating. Everybody’s looking at us. You have to still have, you know, manners and politeness and pecan pie.” And she’s like, “I’m gonna vomit.” [Mitchell & Gemma laugh] Oh my god, she’s just a genius, Elaine May, an absolute genius.
JORDAN And yeah, it’s just a shame with this movie. The background, you know, it’s caught up in the rights with this pharmaceutical company who has no interest in releasing it. They probably don’t even know they have it, the people who own it.
GEMMA Wait, what? Can you just explain that a little bit more?
JORDAN Yeah, so it came out, obviously. And then there’s been one-off, kind of lower-quality DVDs here and there. I mean, a VHS first obviously then DVD. I mean, all before that, Betamax. But in the last, you know, there hasn’t been anything as of late. And it’s a pharmaceutical company who bought, who has the rights to this film for whatever reason. And yeah, it’s just been sitting there. And so they actually—there was some controversy—but there was a guy who recently did, Gus Lanzetta did an AI upscale, which obviously is not a restoration by any means. But it’s still better quality than what we’re used to. And he released it for free on the Internet Archive. So anyone could go and just stream it now. And he’s just like, “Hey, if it gets taken down, it gets taken down, but maybe it’ll give these people at the pharmaceutical company to notice and get mad and then maybe they’ll want to do something when they see the interest of it.”
MITCHELL That was how I watched it this time. And yeah, I mean, he did a really great job. It definitely, obviously isn’t a restoration, but compared to the kind of, I watched it earlier this year, just on the YouTube, like it’s up on YouTube. And that’s how I watched it earlier this year. And I mean, so this was my second time watching it, but that first time I watched it with my partner Samm, who also works with us at Letterboxd and the big takeaway for both me and Samm, I think in both of our initial Letterboxd reviews is just Jeannie Berlin in this movie is a star, like an absolute—and a dream woman, like that’s a perfect woman for me, as far as I’m concerned. And like it makes it so perfect that he’s just trying to run away from her the entire time. And I found in doing kind of research about the movie, I found it interesting that Charles Grodin wrote an autobiography in the ’80s called It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here and he talked in it about how—[Gemma laughs]
GEMMA What a title. [Mitchell laughs]
MITCHELL He apparently talked about how Neil Simon repeatedly wanted Jeannie Berlin to be replaced in the movie, saying that she wasn’t pretty enough to be in the movie. Apparently Neil Simon really wanted Diane Keaton, not realizing the entire time that Jeannie Berlin is Elaine May’s daughter. [Gemma & Jordan laugh] And I just like... one, gross. But two, how do you not have Jeannie Berlin in this movie? She is magnificent. That’s peak performance right there as far as I’m concerned.
JORDAN And I love the dynamic, because if she was actually truly off-putting in any way, you would maybe be more on his side, but because you’re like, ‘What are you doing Charles Grodin?’ [Mitchell laughs]
MITCHELL She’s perfect! She’s delightful! She’s trying to feed you Milky Ways after sex, who would not want that?
GEMMA Oh man, I just, I have to read some of the Letterboxd takes, because they’re just brilliant. If anyone’s still not convinced to watch this, you know, two hour movie about an absolute dick. [Mitchell laughs] Ella Kemp who writes for us: “Lmao he SUCKS I love this.” Which basically, yeah, my entire review was, “He’s a dick!” Brianna writes: “This is a movie about insane people.” And Sydney writes: “Men should watch this so they understand why women think they’re dumb.” Which I’m so there for that. And of course it sits in the great Letterboxd list Help! I Got Too Horny and Now Everything’s Bad by Tommy. I love that list. Love that review.
MITCHELL That list is highlighted, top of that list, my favorite movie of all-time: After Hours. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh] A list after my heart.
GEMMA That is the ultimate ‘too horny’. Good question from Melissa, the great Melissa Tamminga by the way, “Why is the final shot of this film not as celebrated as the final shot of The Graduate?”
JORDAN Yeah, I mean, A, because this movie is hardly available. I think that’s one thing. But yeah, it is so great. And it’s one of those movies where like, you’re like, ‘Oh, he’s not actually gonna like go to Minnesota. Oh, he’s not actually gonna get married to her.’ And then it’s like, he gets there. It just keeps like upping the ante and then it’s the final combination of those dreams and he’s just sitting there. Not even hanging out with her and talking, listening to two old people. [Mitchell aughs]
GEMMA Just sitting on a couch going, ‘This is my life.’ The Heartbreak Kid, Elaine May, you genius. Hey Jordan, what was the first film festival that you going to? Or the first film you saw at a festival and what were the vibes and how did it make you feel?
JORDAN Yeah, so that was, Dan Mecca and I—co-host of The B-Side and co-founder of The Film Stage, we grew up or we went to school in Buffalo, New York, University of Buffalo. So TIFF was so close to us and like none of our classmates were going. We’re like, ‘Why aren’t you gonna go experience like the best movies of the year?’ And so the first year we went and the next year we decided to start The Film Stage after that and so that was the first—so it was the year of like Into the Wild and—
MITCHELL The first film, if I’m correct—speaking of best movies of the year—the first film you saw I believe was Rendition... [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN It was, yes. We were arriving to TIFF, we drove to TIFF, arrived there. It was at I think Roy Thompson Hall or whatever, like the big gala spot. Everyone’s dressed to their nines. We arrived with our college-grungy clothes and like, go up. [Jordan & Mitchell laugh] And then we sit through, we just arrived, right as the movie is starting, watch it. And then at the end, just everyone starts to stand, massive standing ovation. [Mitchell laughs] And we’re just looking at each other, and we’re like, ‘I guess this is like, a film festival, for this movie that had no impact on us whatsoever.”
GEMMA Wait, are you talking about Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon...
MITCHELL Jake Gyllenhaal.
JORDAN Yes.
MITCHELL Gavin Hood directed it, I believe.
JORDAN Yeah, Gavin Hood.
MITCHELL “Just tell me he’s okay,” famously, Reese Witherspoon in the trailer. “Just tell me he’s okay!!!”
GEMMA Amazing.
MITCHELL Weirdly, Rendition also—so, 2007, the year that I was seventeen, I got my driver’s license, I was finally able to drive by myself. So Rendition also the first film I ever saw in a theater by myself. I was so excited to drive myself to the movie theater at like, 9pm on a Saturday night. And I was honestly so stoked for Rendition. I thought the trailer—
JORDAN How was the crowd there? Did you get a standing ovation too?
MITCHELL There was about three people there. It was me giving a standing ovation, of course, big fan. And everybody else was just asleep about halfway through.
GEMMA So wait, your first film festival experience was at the Toronto International Film Festival? I mean, that’s massive!
JORDAN I want to say, probably, yeah. I grew up in Rochester, New York, so there’s like the George Eastman House, so they have some one-off smaller things. But yeah, that’s like the first super memorable one. Yeah, I would say so.
GEMMA So for someone listening who’s thinking, ‘Ah, this job being a... I don’t know, a human-rights lawyer sucks! I want to get into film-festival work.’ Or I don’t know... What would your advice be for how to get started? Like do you start as an usher? Or do you start as a red-carpet publicist volunteer? Or what do you do? Start just emptying ashtrays?
JORDAN Yeah, a lot of the people—you know, I work for Film at Lincoln Center, which we have stuff year-round, obviously, and obviously NYFF is a huge part of our time, but we have programming 365 days a year. So it’s very much like day-to-day. And I think a lot of people I work with did start in working as theater staff and then kind of, you know, leveling up to our side of doing marketing and other things. And I think the big thing is like, just follow your ions, and I know that sounds lame. But in high school, I was like, ‘I love movies, this is what I want to do.’ I went to school for it. And then, you know, The Film Stage was a huge part of it. I worked for kind of a digital-marketing agency for five or six years. And then when this job opened up, I was like, everything they’re programming here, I just would love to see it at all times, so this is definitely a no-brainer. And yeah, it’s just honestly, you’re putting on a film festival every month pretty much, because outside of NYFF, we have like, fifteen, twenty flagship film festivals and then another series and retrospectives. So it’s just, you know, constant stuff. And it’s great to be in New York City and have an audience but it’s also great to just have like a worldwide, you know, we shoot a lot of our Q&As and post them, do podcasts, we have a lot of big digital push on everything on our end. And so it’s great to get kind of like a global audience as well for those kind of things.
GEMMA New York Film Festival is so outrageous. Every single time I’ve ever gone to one of your events, whether it’s at the festival or just Film at Lincoln Center, I feel like—honestly I feel like Cher in Moonstruck when she goes to the opera. Because it’s like, for anyone who hasn’t been, it’s there, you know, it’s exactly there. It’s where the concert hall is. It’s where the, you know, the dance theater is, it’s the Alice Tully Hall, you know, that famous Lincoln Center fountain. And there’s just something so ridiculously magical about walking out into a New York night right there. And it’s like, where is Nic Cage with his wooden hand right now? [Mitchell & Jordan laugh] And why is my hair not as good as Cher’s and it doesn’t actually matter because I just, I feel infused by the beauty of this insane city just for this moment.
JORDAN Yeah and I love, we do have one of the longer festivals at seventeen days, but really it is—we do it because it gives opportunity for each film to kind of be in the spotlight and, you know, obviously weekends are a little busier but on weekdays, there might be only two films usually in Alice Tully Hall. So there’s no awards or anything, it’s like kind of—a lot of filmmakers have told me like, “If I get selected for NYFF, I know I made a good movie.” That’s kind of what they’re feeling and and if they don’t that year, they know like, better luck next time. [Gemma & Mitchell laugh] You know, especially for some of the returning filmmakers—or not if they didn’t return. But yeah, I think having—it’s a celebration of cinema, truly. Like I said, there’s no awards or anything. And it’s a great way to catch up if you’ve been to other festivals and kind of need to see—we do have some world premieres here, but a lot of it is, you know, the gala slots are really exciting because it’s films, you know, one’s a documentary, Laura Poitras, and then one is literally a first-time narrative filmmaker, Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection. And so, you know, I love like, I read every single prediction that comes out of like, ‘What are the galas gonna be this year? What’s gonna be selected?’ And literally not a single one predicted any of these correctly, so... maybe White Noise, but not the other ones. [Mitchell laughs] And those, you know, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed sold out during our pre-sales, you know, there’s huge demand for documentary films, and especially of this caliber. And so it’s exciting just to see the response and that, you know, people want to see films in theaters and it’s exciting. And I know it’s rarefied because we’re a festival and we’re doing a lot of premieres. But I think, you know, when you see things that are kind of more under-the-radar still sell out, it’s great. Like an Edward Yang restoration, both screenings have already sold out. It’s just, it’s nice. It’s nice to see.
MITCHELL Very excited for that.
GEMMA Well, I mean, speaking of rarefied and excellence and the very best of filmmaking, we come to our last of your four favorites. And the filmmaker, I think, who possibly—we haven’t quite run the numbers, Jack’s Facts might be able to help us. But I think, you know, you’d think it would be Spielberg, you think it would be Scorsese, but actually, this is the filmmaker who I think has made the most appearances on the four favorites. And that is... the great Brian De Palma, who wrote and directed Blow Out, 1981, with a four out of five average on Letterboxd. Mitchell, would you like to tell us what it’s about?
MITCHELL Yeah, I believe this is also a Gemma-patented update on the synopsis...
GEMMA It’s a little mix... [Gemma & Mitchell laugh]
MITCHELL ‘In Blow Out, John Travolta plays Jack Terry, a master sound recordist who works on grade-B horror movies but can’t seem to find the perfect scream for a particular shower-slasher scene… so off he goes for some relaxing nature-foley recording—owls, frogs, the wind in the trees, you know what you do—when he hears something unexpected through his sound equipment and records it. A car crashes into the river below him, he rescues Nancy Allen from the car, but when spooks, cops and fixers descend on the hospital, Jack realises his sound recording might be the key to a nefarious conspiracy.’ I’m gonna open this up. I mean, this is, Blow Out, one of my top ten films of all-time, very excited that Jordan selected it.
JORDAN Oh, that’s great.
MITCHELL Just got a 4K release, Blu-ray release from the Criterion Collection. I have watched that twice already this month. But Jordan, I know you’re a big De Palma head. You know, you mentioned the other day on Twitter, The Film Stage did a Summer of De Palma in 2016, where you commissioned essays on every single De Palma film, and you yourself wrote the one for Blow Out. So what is it about Blow Out especially—
GEMMA Do you want to just read that? Read that aloud to us now...
MITCHELL I read it—honestly, I read it, like, three hours ago again and it’s... I mean, if people haven’t read that essay, it’s Jordan... Fantastic.
JORDAN Aw, thank you.
MITCHELL It’s one of the best things that I’ve read in awhile, like it’s a phenomenal essay.
JORDAN Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, Blow Out is actually the first De Palma film I probably—I mean, I might have seen seen like Scarface on VHS or something. But like, Blow Out was I —I think because it came out of Criterion, but way before the Blu-ray—I mean, before the 4K release. And so I think that was one where I just saw the cover, I was like, ‘Hmm, what is this movie?’ back in college. So yeah, it is, I mean, this movie just absolutely rips from like frame one. [Mitchell laughs] It is a movie where he, I mean, a lot of De Palma movies he’s showing off how great he is as a stylist, but I feel like this one is the best synthesis of doing that, you know, that kind of formalistic touches and just pushing the style to extreme but also like having a clear, clear handle on the story and the emotion and the suspense. And, you know, he obviously gets knocked sometimes for being like a Hitchcock pastiche in a lot of his films, but I feel like this, it takes all the great things you love from Hitchcock, infuses it in new ways, takes the conversation blow up, stuff like that, and like makes this this whole new, singular original product that is just beautiful.
GEMMA I love how like Body Double, it’s got a film-within-the-film, like he’s such a fan of films-within-films and it opens with a film-within-a-film and it’s just, ah... It’s like flexing all over the place in of these different films styles.
MITCHELL You mentioned in that essay that the opening kind of slasher film that they’re working on is like B-grade schlock, but it does feel like it could have been something De Palma directed in his earlier days, like a Sisters or something, and I mean that’s a great movie too. But it almost points out Blow Out being like an evolution and a maturation of him as a filmmaker. Is that—especially seeing Blow Out as maybe your first De Palma and then seeing so many of his other films and going back to Blow Out, is that something that really stands out for you in the evolution of his career?
JORDAN Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, he does get knocked a bit for not being so much of a personal filmmaker, but I think you can see his touches throughout. So in this film, I think, you know, he’s wrestling with the fact of getting, like John Travolta’s character working in kind of this schlocky atmosphere and then trying to search for something real and human and true, and that’s why the ending is like so incredibly bleak, because the one moment of personal truth that he finds is in like the most horrific thing ever. [Jordan & Mitchell laugh] And yeah, but it’s also like, the way films—I mean obviously that iconic shot with like her and the flag and all of that, it’s just like incredible.
GEMMA Oh my god. There’s just so many Letterboxd reviews that are basically all about that one moment and, you know, being Reagan’s America—
JORDAN Best Fourth of July movie.
GEMMA Yeah, “best Fourth of July movie”, “Welcome to Reagan’s America”, you know, “Neo-noir conspiracy shrouded in the blind patriotism of red, white and blue” Although just on the opening film-within-a-film, Comrade_yui writes: “Love how De Palma has the entire opening scene of this devoted just to making fun of John Carpenter for no reason other than spite.” [Gemma laughs] Oh my god. But no, it’s the juxtaposition of this kind of fake-schlocky film at the start with this incredible production design of this final, you know, the scene at the top of the steps—which no spoilers—but, holy...
JORDAN And it’s even De Palma being like, you know, at the end he’s still stuck in a studio kind of in this purgatorial state, John Travolta. It’s almost De Palma being like, ‘Yeah, I’m still gonna make movies like this and I’m not trying to reach for some higher echelon,’ and what he does through with his form. And yeah, it’s just, it’s fantastic. John Lithgow great as well—perfectly creepy.
MITCHELL So good. Yeah, I was watching Raising Cain, a few weeks back with Lithgow too, and that like Blow Out, like The Untouchables, like Scar—like so many De Palma movies just builds and builds, and he constructs all these pieces together, and then the climax is just like crescendo that is just like you are in awe of how everything comes together, both formally and narratively, to create something that is like something you’ve never seen before. It lifts you up almost. It’s so fascinating to watch his mastery unfold without you even really realizing that it’s unfolding until you get to that climax, and it just drops your jaw on the floor.
JORDAN Yeah. And I feel like, you know, a lot of that—not to say like, ‘Oh, back in the good old days,’ but I feel like nowadays, if it’s an action film, or even like a thriller, it’s like, these concentrated set pieces are very impressive, and that’s what the movie is called for. Here, any shot, you can pick up any shot of this movie and he’s doing something interesting with the camera or like, framing in a certain interesting way or there’s some sort of audio visual, you know, stylistic touch that’s interesting, and it just feels so meticulous, but without feeling like it’s getting in the way of the story really in any way. It’s incredible.
GEMMA And the same with the characters as well, you know, I mean, maybe even John Wick aside, but no, they all seem to have some sort of moral center that puts our heroes, you know, at least puts us the audience in the cinema seats inside their brain. If we were in this position, morally, what would we do that is right? And then De Palma’s, all of his films, everybody feels complex and complicated and implicated and, you know, even John Travolta’s character turns out to have a past working with the cops. In the same way that, you know, in The Conversation, Gene Hackman is not wholly correct or morally upright himself. That’s what I love about it, is that, you know, Nancy Allen, yeah, we like her because she’s kind of the only woman in the movie but she also turns out to have been contracted by certain people to do certain things and is not squeaky clean herself.
MITCHELL An amazing Dennis Franz, so gross. I would not want to be in that apartment with him... Ugh! [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA Nancy Allen also has, you know, opinions about Barbra Streisand’s makeup so... [Mitchell aughs] There is that too. It’s just so good. When was the last time you saw this on the big screen? And when do you think we’ll be able to see it again?
JORDAN Good question. I actually don’t know if I’ve seen this on a big screen, because, yeah, I don’t think I have. So I would love to. I would love to have a first viewing someday. But yeah—
MITCHELL Film at Lincoln Center? Program something, you know you got the hookup there.
JORDAN Let’s do it! Take advantage of—I think it was Metrograph who did, when Baumbach’s and Jake Paltrow’s documentary came out, they did like a huge retrospective and I saw ten things were still there and caught up on the all the rest at home. But yeah, so I would love to see it on the big screen. It would be incredible. I feel like it comes around every so often.
GEMMA We gotta have a De Palma, we’ve just got a whole De Palma situation.
JORDAN Every five years. It’s just required just to show you what cinema can do.
GEMMA And get Paul Williams along to, you know, play songs to open each screening, just because I love him. We have come to the end of your four favorite films, but not to the end of the show, because we do like to have a bit of fun with what you’ve been using your Letterboxd for. You’ve got a great—
JORDAN Oh boy, here we go... [Mitchell laughs]
GEMMA I know, it feels like we’re about to drag you but actually...
MITCHELL This is actually going to be more complimentary than I think most of these end up being. [Mitchell laughs]
GEMMA Super annoyingly, given your position in the film industry, you do really good things with your Letterboxd that really serve the community. And Mitchell’s pulled out your Sub 2K list, which honestly is such a genius list. This is Jordan’s favorite films seen by less than 2,000 people on Letterboxd. And I... like, Mitchell, have you seen any of these?
MITCHELL No, I haven’t seen a single one of these.
GEMMA Wow!
MITCHELL So this list is designed to get people’s attention on films that need more attention.
JORDAN There we go. Let’s do it.
MITCHELL It worked very much on me.
GEMMA I’m looking, I’m looking, I’m looking... I’m like, ‘I’m at 99%... unwatched.’ [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
JORDAN What have you seen from it?
GEMMA No, no, I lied. I don’t think I’ve seen any of them... [Gemma laughs]
JORDAN Yeah, speaking of Malick, there’s Better Angels from his protege, A.J. Edwards, is on there.
MITCHELL Oh, yeah, yeah!
JORDAN I mean, there’s some—we did also a Christian Petzold retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center. So one of his films, Something to Remind Me, a young Nina Hoss is great. I’m looking now to see—I mean, there’s Her Socialist Smile, great movie from a few years ago.
GEMMA Oh yeah, we should all—
MITCHELL Days of Glory, a Jacques Tourneur in there.
JORDAN Yeah, and Circle of Danger. Yeah, there’s a lot.
GEMMA We should all have lists like these, all of us, and then just share them with each other. This is amazing. My god. And then looking at your completed collections, you have watched every single Oscar Best Picture winner since the Academy Awards began.
JORDAN Unfortunately, I did that a few years ago. Highly not recommend whatsoever. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
MITCHELL I know that Jack’s Facts, that’s one that he loves doing, like catching up, making sure that he’s seen every single one. And I—
GEMMA No, he’s two off! He’s two off.
MITCHELL Is he? Jack, come on buddy.
GEMMA Yeah, so Jordan, you are further ahead.
MITCHELL I’ve seen like, 75-ish%, but there are some that I look at, like Gigi or some of those earlier ones that I’m just like, I don’t... I don’t think that I could sit through some of these three-hour-long early ones that—
JORDAN Yeah, those are rough. Yeah, The Great Ziegfeld, I . I’m trying to think... Cavalcade... There’s some really, there’s ones that just take a lot out of you. I mean, it really goes to show that what it does for me, is shows how you should care so little about the Oscars every year. [Mitchell laughs] Because you’re looking back and you’re like, ‘This is what people put their thought and attention to?’ And Oscars do great things, they help put the spotlight on films that otherwise wouldn’t and I love that for it. But it’s like, the anticipation of, ‘What’s gonna win? What’s gonna win?’ That’s, yeah... on The Film Stage, we pride ourselves, we don’t do Oscar predictions or anything like that.
GEMMA Ahhh...
MITCHELL Good for you. Good for you.
GEMMA Good for you. Are you not an awards-season fan?
JORDAN I am in that I watch them, I enjoy the the ceremony. I enjoy when films I love kind of get the love—like the poster behind you, Mitchell, Drive My Car, that was amazing. I would have never predicted when I saw that at New York Film Festival that that would do what it did.
MITCHELL Crazy, yeah.
JORDAN Yeah, I mean, I love what it does for making people talk about interesting films for longer than the lifespan of most films these days, which seems to be like a weekend at a time. And so yeah, I love that for it. I just think that there’s so much anticipation and hype for six months and then literally the day after the Oscars end, it’s like this show never happened and no one ever talks about it again. Obviously, you know, there’s some outstanding factors sometimes like this year. But yeah, I think it’s a mixed bag, you kind of have to see it both ways, I think.
MITCHELL From the Best Picture winners, what is a film or two that you would say is maybe underrated or doesn’t have, like not a lot of people have watched it who should check it out? Because for myself, I watched Marty for the first time earlier this year, and I mean obviously won Best Picture, but it’s not one that’s on a ton of the best movies ever kind of lists and I really loved it and wish that I had seen it earlier. Do you have ones like that that are ones that you would point people towards?
JORDAN Yeah, Marty is actually up there for me. The Lost Weekend’s great.
MITCHELL That’s great.
JORDAN The Best Years of Our Lives is obviously a classic—speaking of Dana Andrews, that’s another one. I mean, you know, How Green Was My Valley gets a lot of shit because it beat Citizen Kane, but it’s a great movie. Yeah, I’m trying to think—I mean, there’s some great—I mean, obviously It Happened One Night, it’s a classic. I’m like looking through the list now. I feel like the last—
GEMMA [Green Book].
JORDAN Yeah, Green Book for sure...
GEMMA Huge. Massive, massive hit.
MITCHELL We all loved.
JORDAN We all .
GEMMA Everybody, everybody liked that...
JORDAN The Tree of Life, The Artist...
MITCHELL We all folded up that pizza... [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
JORDAN Well, that’s what I mean, you watch, you know, I would actually more so go through the nominees, pick out a movie you might not have heard of from each year, that could be more interesting project maybe.
GEMMA Okay. Okay. You are such a cinephile, and I don’t mean that pejoratively. You know your stuff. You love your movies. You could you could fix almost anyone’s Malick allergy.
MITCHELL Almost... interesting use of ‘almost’ there. [Gemma & Mitchell laugh]
GEMMA So come through, Jordan, because I always get a little bit intimidated having people such as yourself on this show. I mean, it’s a safe space. What would be your ultimate stoner-comedy classic, like absolute piece of trash that you love above all else?
JORDAN Oh, that is a good question. Stoner-comedy... I mean, when I think of stoner-comedy, I think of Inherent Vice, which I know isn’t a piece of trash... [Gemma & Mitchell & Jordan laugh] But that’s honestly the movie I’ve seen the most times.
MITCHELL Jordan gets asked your biggest piece of trash stoner-comedy and you list a two-and-a-half-hour PTA film. [Mitchell laughs]
JORDAN I know, I know...
GEMMA Honestly, I thought he was gonna say something by Godard, or I don’t know...
JORDAN Well I was going to say, movies that I would like are maybe not a stoner-comedy, but to get stoned to and laugh to, like They Came Together.
MITCHELL That’s a great movie.
GEMMA Oh yeah!
JORDAN But that, like The Heartbreak Kid, that is an underrated movie that I literally cry laughing from frame one to the end. So yeah. And my wife’s favorite movie is You’ve Got Mail, so she hates They Came Together, because it’s just kind of ripping apart You’ve Got Mail every second, so it’s understandable. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh] There’s not a lot of family watches of They Came Together. But yeah, I mean, I grew up—I mean definitely high school, like the Harold and Kumar movies.
MITCHELL Yes! Oh my god, Harold and Kumar, agh. What a masterpiece, honestly.
GEMMA Is there a White Castle around here? I gotta go. I think the biggest news this year though, just to finish off, the biggest news out of Jordan Raup’s Letterboxd, ladies and gentlemen, is that you gave Top Gun a one-star rating. But this year, in the year of 2022, a billion-dollar box office, Top Gun: Maverick lands the perfect score: a 3.5...
MITCHELL Oh yeah, right, Gemma’s perfect score.
JORDAN Yeah, okay. [Mitchell laughs]
GEMMA The Gemma line, it reached the Gemma line. And your review is: “The biggest jump in quality in a sequel... ever?”
JORDAN Yeah, I stand by that months later. Yeah, I just think, I really cannot stand the first movie whatsoever. I rewatched it, it’s just annoying—like any sort of like Top Gun, Braveheart, there’s a bunch of movies I put in a certain thing, a category, of like I know the Top Gun is more, you know, if you take the Quentin Tarantino version of it by poking fun of masculinity, but I really think it’s a very dull version of that where it’s very, you know, just trying to deconstruct something that’s not very interesting to me. And so I think—
GEMMA What is your problem with topless volleyball scenes? [Mitchell & Jordan laugh]
JORDAN But I mean, that’s the best scene in the movie. There you go. So that that’s two minutes out of a, you know, longer movie. And then Top Gun: Maverick like synthesizes so many things like it’s more of a fun blockbuster and like an adventure, whereas Top Gun is just kind of adult movie without even much action to begin with. And so yeah, I’m getting a lot of hate for this, I already feel it coming.
MITCHELL I’ll tell you, I felt when I saw your one-star rewatch a Top Gun followed by the three-and-a-half for [Top Gun: Maverick], I felt as somebody who hates Top Gun and was kind of like, with the [Top Gun: Maverick] love happening, I was trepidatious about it. I was like, ‘I’m not gonna get excited for that movie because I hate Top Gun,’ like I felt seen by your ratings were those. So I actually got excited by [Top Gun: Maverick] from seeing your response to both of them.
JORDAN And I will say, I love—shout out to Dan and Connor with The B-Side, but I love Tom Cruise so much and I think Tom Cruise Maverick—I mean, sorry, Top Gun: Maverick—
MITCHELL Tom Cruise Maverick...
GEMMA Basically. I mean that’s basically the name of the film, right?
JORDAN It’s such a great summation of his career and there’s elements of the movie that is like, you know, going a bit deeper whereas obviously Top Gun he was just kind of starting out and there wasn’t as much to say. And so I think it’s, you know, the Mission: Impossible movies, love all of them and so this era of Cruise, I’m here for. Obviously would love for him to do some more interesting dramatic material, but if this is what he wants to do, by all means, go for it.
MITCHELL We’re going to space, baby.
JORDAN And Jennifer Connelly—
GEMMA Oh my god.
JORDAN Big bonus, I think.
MITCHELL Bring her back, yeah. [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA I would like to see a Top Gun 3 and it’s just Jennifer Connelly getting her girls together.
JORDAN Yes.
MITCHELL I just wanna watch her running that bar!
GEMMA Yeah! Right?
MITCHELL Just a lovely lady, just great to see her in a movie.
GEMMA I want a beer in Jennifer Connelly’s bar right now, how about you guys?
MITCHELL Let’s go!
GEMMA Our guest today was Jordan Raup, you can follow his work at The Film Stage and all across the socials for Film at Lincoln Center and New York Film Festival which starts in a matter of days from this episode dropping, depending on when you’re listening to it. [Mitchell laughs] I will be there in New York along with Mia from Weekend Watchlist and a few other Letterboxd pals. So keep an eye out for our coverage on Journal, on socials and beyond. I am so looking forward, Mitchell, to seeing Todd Field’s Tár with Cate Blanchett as a narcissistic orchestra conductor. It just sounds incredible. What New York Film Festival film are you most looking forward to watching in their online section?
MITCHELL They don’t have a list yet of what’s going to be available online. It’s usually not the big heavy hitters. So the film that I’m most anticipating from NYFF is Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener, of course, as you know, me and Paul Schrader... but I’m sure that won’t be available online. But the section of NYFF that I am always obsessed with is their Revival section, which they do thankfully offer a decent amount of that online. So I’m hoping to see some of the ones that I’m really looking forward to there online, The Mother and the Whore especially. It’s a film that has not been available for decades, and they got a new restoration of it coming out from Janus Films.
GEMMA Oh wow.
MITCHELL That’s playing there. I’m really hoping I’ll be able to see that. Jordan also mentioned an Edward Yang movie, A Confucian Confusion, that is a restoration that’s playing there. And I’m a big Edward Yang fan, for people who know like A Brighter Summer Day and Yi Yi and Taipei Story. So I’m really excited to see that as well.
GEMMA Oh my god, that will be so exciting. I have been following Paul Schrader’s adventures in hospital across Twitter after Venice Film Festival and I feel like, I mean, you should just call Paul or Paul, call Mitchell. I feel like while you’re recuperating, you guys should just be watching New York Film Festival at home together... How bad would that be? That’d be a really nice time, I think.
MITCHELL That would be perfect, honestly, the dream. [Mitchell laughs] Do be sure to listen to Weekend Watchlist, our other weekly podcast where me, Slim and Mia explore the latest releases in cinemas and on streaming every Thursday. Thanks to our crew: Jack for the facts, Brian Formo for booking and looking after our guests, Sophie Shin for the episode transcript, Samm for the art and to Moniker for the theme music. You can always drop us a line at , and please do that.
GEMMA Ah, we’d love to hear from you. The Letterboxd Show is a Tapedeck production and I’d like to leave you with the words of Marta from Canyon age: why can’t you be a friend to yourself? We should all just be friends to ourselves.
MITCHELL We should all be...
[clip of The Heartbreak Kid plays]
You’re gonna eat the Milky Way? You’re gonna have the Milky Way now?
Yep!
Okay… You want a bite?
No thank you. No, no, no.
Come on.
No, thank you… no, honey, don’t do that. Don’t put a Milky Way in somebody’s mouth when they don’t want it.
You’ll want it later and it’ll be in my tummy.
[Tapedeck bumper plays] This is a Tapedeck podcast.