The Anderson Tapes (1971) — "What's advertising but a legalized con game?"

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There's a fag decorator upstairs and a doctor downstairs, all though they say he's an abortionist. They're all loaded for. You know what I'm gonna do. I let the back up a moving environment. Then I still look at sort of the whole place.

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So what do you think? I think? That states? What are we screwing around with stuff like this? Even if he scores, it's less than one week's taking our worst horse room.

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I'll give you the money, but the finance we want sixty four. Everyone knows it's an improbable crime. Yet Duke Anderson may pull off the impossible. Yes, what the hell is. The best seller?

That bug? The world of crime unreels its power on the screen. Well, every one, and welcome to the culture Cast. I am your host, Christashio, and I am joined by my two good friends, all the way from well, all the way from the Big Apple. He is the menace from the Bronx, your friend of mine, Colin Gallagher, not the Bronx.

But I live in Brooklyn. Nothing nothing, nothing against the Bronx. I would I would love to live in the Bronx or you know, most most most Burrows. But no, no, no Bronx. I'm Brooklyn.

Colin does not rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan unfortunately. Uh. And all the way, Mike, and all the way from the projection booth. If you're here for Mike White, may this is the reason you're here, Your friend of mine, Mike. White, America.

Man, you know, it's so beautiful. I want to eat it, Chris. On this episode of the show, we are continuing Mike White May with another Sean Connery film. This is another Sidney Lumet film. They're sitting Mike at the back of the room watching us pronounce it every time, now, every fucking time.

Now, I'm like afraid that someone's just gonna come in from camera right and take me away if I say it wrong. We are talking. About yet another Sean Connery and Sidney Lumett film with the Anderson tapes. So the film is directed by Sidney Lumett. It was released in nineteen seventy one, based on a screenplay by Frank Pearson based on the book of the same name by Lawrence Sanders.

It stars Sean Connery as the titular John and Duke Anderson, a safecracker who well, you know, he just wants to do one more job. Just one more job, guys, but maybe not just one more job, but another job. Because you can't keep a good safe cracker down. He moves in with his girlfriend Squeeze. According to Ralph Separetto and the Sopranos, Oh possibly, and he decides, Hey, it's time to burgle the building she lives in because it's full of rich people, and things go awry from essentially moment one, and there's a lot of surveillance as well, with the title the Anderson Tapes factoring into a lot of the framing devices and just a lot of the themes of the film.

So, Mike, since you did program the month, I am going to kick it to you first. Why the Anderson Tapes and what did you think? Well, I don't hear a lot of discourse about the Anderson Tapes. And I saw this one when I was younger, and I just remember it being really solid, and this I don't remember the very first time that I saw it might have been one of the first film that I really kind of keyed into the whole idea of a nonlinear narrative. I really like the way that the story is told, and I also really like the soundtrack.

Can we call it a soundtrack because it's kind of soundtrack, but it's also a lot of electronic noise. It's Quincy Jones is what it is. Maybe, Yeah, And I just kind of dig it. I just kind of dig these noises that they're using and especially when they kind of use them for cutting and everything. And yeah, I really just dig this film a lot and was super excited just to talk about it with y'all.

What about you, Colin. I saw this maybe ten or twelve years ago. I was on a Diane Cannon kick, and I know the version I saw was the Martini Movies DVD release, which makes her look like a swing in sixties movie. And yet I. Knew it was like two years I knew it.

I knew Citny Limette's movies like Cirproco and Dog Day Afternoon, and I was like. What am I going to be getting? Am I going to be getting a Thomas Crown Affair movie, which is sort of what they're advertising, or am I going to get this sort of dark revisionist crime flick that I know Lumet for. And it really is closer to the sort of revisionist stuff that he's known for later, and I quite like it. It's fits more in with like Hicky and Bogs and Long Goodbye, and especially like Robert Aldrich's Hustle, sort of a darker take on you know, a genre you think you know, and this is a movie that does not give you what do you expect.

Mike, you mentioned that there's not a lot of discourse around this film, and I would go as far as to say, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong, gentlemen, we all three are pretty dialed into the film world in Hollywood or however you want to describe it. There's not a lot of discourse around Sean Connery as an actor outside of Bond. I mean, this is not something that like and Mike, you know, we talked about it on in the last episode with the Hill. Some of the films like Outland in the seventies and eighties, and obviously Sean Connery has passed is long long passed away at this point. I mean, what we're looking at like six going on six years now.

He passed away right at the beginning of the pandemic, and he was he had stepped out of film. God, what a decade at least before that. I know, his technical last film was League of Extraordinary Gentleman. And and you know there was that film he did in twenty twelve where he's a skateboarding veterinarian. It's an animated film.

It sounds insane. I just haven't heard a lot of discourse around the things that Sean Connery has done outside of Bond, and having watched The Hill on the last episode and watching the Anderson tapes on this one, I feel like that's such a missed opportunity because Sean Connery is such a good actor. I mean, we we just we essentially just wrapped up ranking on Bond, which was before this, the last thing I watched Sean Connery in because again, like I just don't go to the movies he was in outside of the Bond Ones, not for any reason other than just that's just the way it is. And frankly, the only Connery film I can think of that I watch with any sort of regularity or frequency is the Third Bond. A Third Bond, the third Indiana Jones film Steven Spielberg presents James Bond, and for me, like, Connery's great in that movie, but that's like Connery of very old.

I mean again not really that old, but in terms of like where we are here or even with something like James Bond. So I think it's interesting that the discourse around Sean Connery as an actor isn't more and I wonder why that is. I mean, I have my ideas and suspicions why. But with something like this, I mean again, it's just another entry in my mind into what I consider to be a burgeoning for me, like Snowball down a Hill of Sean Connery is a really really, really really good actor, even though he's not classically trained, which is the crazy part because if you do the research about him, he's not Adulton, who is a shakespeare An actor. I mean, Dalton carries himself like an actor with a capital A.

Nothing wrong with that obviously, but Connery is more of a all of well, Oliver Reed type. But he's like a working man's type, and for me, I love the appeal of that. And that's like a that's such like a rare thing that just doesn't happen anymore. And it's not because it can't happen, it's just the channels are different and it looks different. But I just really love Sean Connery as an act and I outside of Bond.

And again, he's great in Bond, don't get me wrong, but they hired him to be Bond because he was a great actor, and getting to see it now, like he's just he's fantastic in this movie in a movie that is otherwise just it's not a bad movie per se, but it doesn't really in a lot of ways like move the needle in the ways that it should, because it feels it feels like they just don't want to go all the way like a Parallax view does or a Blowout, which are similar in themes of like suspicion around being surveilled or surveillance. It's like those movies have more to say than this one, which is why it's probably kind of been lost in the mix. But the Sean Connery of it all makes it interesting. It makes it more novel, I guess, and hey, like Mike quoted at the beginning of the episode, though he didn't do the accent, it's got Christopher Walkin and he's not doing the Walkin thing obviously, because this is the first ever feature film debut of Walkin, but it's nice to see him and it is ironic where Walkin will end up in terms of the James Bond franchise that him and Connery share a film together, and it's Walkin's first film.

So because I want to say, for me, that may have been the first thing I ever saw Christopher walking in was a view to a kill. So you know, it's just it's a lot of interesting connections. But I enjoyed the film immensely and I'm excited to talk about it with y'all. But it is definitely, like you said, Mike, one that had not heard anybody talking about, which is a shame because it's really it's a fun movie. Well, Chris, you were comparing it to Parallax View.

And what I think is so interesting about this movie coming out in seventy one is that it's, you know, right on the cusp of you know, the whole wave of sort of cynical seventies movies. This is still pre Watergate, and yet there's still these you know, I can understand, you know, from a producer's perspective trying to sell this to a studio. It's, you know, the sixties just ended. There's just enough elements that make it seem like it could be this sort of you know, the last you know, gleam of like classic Hollywood where it's not quite into the seventies yet, and this movie seems right on the cusp. There's elements that you can see it coming out a few years before, and it's really hinting at what's going to be coming in the next few years.

I mean this was released one year to the day before the our Date breakout, but it really just presageous so much about the surveillance state, and I'm just so curious, like where did Sanders get this idea? And you know what, what was the state of the world at that time. I was doing a little uh digging into like just surveillance in film, and of course, like you know, I actually did what I love to do. I created a little chart and I was looking at it and just like, okay, uh, before nineteen seventy, there really wasn't a whole lot of surveillance in film. Then after Watergate you start to see a lot of you know rising, and then after you know something like you know, the Internet, then it starts to go up.

And then nine to eleven happens, It really goes up, and then the Patriarch happened, Patriot Act happens, It really goes up, and then it started to come down over the years, but it is definitely at a plateau that is way higher than we were way back in the seventies with this stuff. And it worked. No. No, I was just going to say it's it's so fascinating too. And I don't think because when we hear the or I listened to the book, but when we read the book or listen to the book, I don't think they go into all of the stuff that is happening.

It seems like it's more related to the mob and just keeping tabs on the mob. But then when you're watching the movie, one of the most major things is that they're watching this Black Panthers headquarters, So it goes into that whole government thing that was going on where they're keeping tabs on all the quote unquote radicals, and it's like, yeah, just because the guy lives above a Black Panther headquarters, that's how they get kind of on the radar. And just like all of these different ways that people are being recorded or having their picture taken, Like I love when he's trying to get that ID and the woman just pulls up the camera shoots them right in the face and you see the frightened expression on his face or the startled expression, and it's just like there's no like say geez, she's just like boo, I'm taking a picture of you now.

And it is all without permission. Like he's lived. Probably jail was as panopticon as it is outside of that, and just every single move that he makes being recorded in some way. So do you You asked her earlier about Laurence Sanders. Yes, he worked for let me.

Get the name of the magazine, right, Mechanics Illustrated and Science and Mechanics, So he was familiar with this technology from that, and this was his debut novel. He had already been I think he was fifty when it came out. He already had a long career as a magazine writer and editor. But yeah, Mike, you're you're right. I think what's fascinating in the book is that each chapter is organized by a surveillance and it all begins with why these locations are under surveillance, and it's all because of crimes that have almost nothing to do with Duke Anderson.

All of these taps are already in place, and you know, to me, that's what's really fascinating from like a postmodern perspective, is that none of these taps were actually trying to capture this story. They were trying to do something else, right, It's only after Duke, you know, tried to do this heist that they actually put together the uh you know, they connected the dots and a big difference. This is jumping ahead too much, but the book ends with somebody saying that if only these you know, institutions, you know, we're talking to each other, because it was all different you know, different police organizations or the government doing these surveillance. But somebody says, if only we had been talking to each other, then we could really we could have prevented the crime.

And that is not how the movie ends. And I don't want to jump too far ahead, but I think the movie gives a much bleaker and cynical, you know, perspective on technology. Yeah, it's wondering about that. Throughout the book. I was just like, are these Is this a collection of transcripts and files and letters and just all of these pieces of evidence?

Is this is just a random not random, but a collection that happened after the fact. Well, a pistolary novel, yeah, I mean. Right right, Well, there's a there's a fake introduction where the author claims that he's on leave from a New Jersey newspaper that doesn't exist. And this is like a follow up from looking at book reviews at the time, nobody was fullL linked. No, no, but.

Say to your point, though, Mike, today we look at this and it's so much about the surveillance, And to Chris's point, the surveillance is far more interesting than the plot is. The plot is basically like a. Lionel White type of height scenario, like clean break or you know, a Burnett would have done an asphalt jungle. But it is the surveillance that is so far ahead of its time. But reviewers at the time actually thought it.

Was a bit of a gimmick. They didn't seem perturbed by the fact that there are all these institutions recording us and the implications of that. Right. Well, you no, it's really funny for me, sorry, just real quick, is you know, talking about like the Patriot Act and things like that. It's like the whole thing about nine to eleven is, yeah, we knew this little part of it, and this agency knew this little part of it, and this agency knew this, and nobody fucking worked together.

And so to me, and I don't think people talk about this nearly as much, but to me, it was like one of the greatest fuck ups of all fuck ups when it comes to or to put in Saddam Hussein terms, it was the mother of all fuck ups when it comes to just the lack of communication between all these different agencies. And here we have the exact same thing happening in nineteen sixty eight when the book comes out. It was pretty pretty close to when the movie happened, I want to say. And I got it right in front of me. Nineteen seventy the book with the rights to the book were sold before it ever came out.

That's pretty amazing. And this is, like you said, this is what the first novel that Sanders writes, and this is before the First Deadly Sin, which I remember even you know, as I was born a year before the First the Sin came out. But it was such a big book that I still knew about that that book when I was growing up. Yeah, he did very well from this. I think the paperback rights sold for six figures, so that doesn't include the hardcover or the movie rights.

Wow, so you've tuck the words right out of my mouth. Mike. With the nine to eleven and Colin, you had said, like the ending of the movie is bleaker than the book. I don't. I kind of disagree.

Because I feel like the ending of the book being if only we could all communicate, then we'd figure it out, is so bleak because it's still happening now, like it's it's it's just like the logical conclusion of the really fucked up dystopia we live in, Like the most boring dystopia possible is the three Agent the three Letter agencies. If they worked together, they could actually get something done, but because they can't, because they're human, they don't. It's like that's really awful, like cause again they could have, but they just don't, you know. I think I think I enjoyed the book more than the movie interesting. But I also think that's it's because the book.

I think just the presentation of the book is just I jive with that a lot more, where it's like we're trying to do something real and there's these notes between people like it. I think it's just I don't know, the movie just kind of over explains like everything because it has to, you know what I mean, Like it's just I don't know. The movie just I feel like, for as much as I enjoyed the movie, I think the book is a more interesting thing because of what it's trying to do in seventy one that's not really like a thing as much as it is now where we're trying to like, let's lean into this being a real thing. And I found these tapes and it's like that to me is more interesting than the movie just being like a narrative.

Though I will say the parts of the movie that are interesting are when it breaks it up by doing interesting things in relation to the surveillance, which the entire book, the whole point of the book setup is to lean into the surveillance of it all. I'm much more interested in the surveillance of it all than anything else with the movie. But that's maybe a benefit to the movie that it has both things in it. It's not just a crime movie. It's a crime movie with this kind of weird framing of a Again, like there, it doesn't do it enough in the movie, the surveillance stuff in terms of like really addressing it head on.

It does it kind of more at the end of the movie more than anywhere else. I don't know, it feels like there's a lot. To me anyway, my impression was that there's a lot of the surveillance, you know, him noticing all the cameras and things, and we're only like fifteen minutes into the movie when we meet the Alan King character. Kind of interesting. I didn't know what a regular Alan King was.

When it comes to Sydney Lamett that he was in at least four of the Met films, and then Connery was in what at least four as well, But like, of all people, Alan King just keeps showing up in these movies. But like that's the first time that the movie kind of stops and we go to the people that are actually listening to the tape, so again kind of playing with time, which I like as far as like, well, obviously this has them listening to it has to be happening in the future. But now we're you know, we're moving from our present the future or is that the present? And I just kind of like the way that they play with that. And again it's like, Okay, who is this Duke Anderson that is showing up?

We're gonna pay attention to him. No, it seems like a small fry kind of thing, and it's just like, all right, you know, eventually this is gonna become much bigger, and it really it's like until that kid gets on the radio. Nobody's taking any of this stuff seriously. What's interesting Also in the opening scene, he's watching footage of himself exactly with that old tube camera. I love it, And that's not in the book, right, And I think Connery's character Duke Anderson, that's changed.

They don't seem the same to me from the book to the screen. I feel like Frank Pearson, you know, when I realized, like, oh, this is the guy who wrote cool Hand, Luke. That makes so much more sense in that. I feel like the movie is trying to present Duke Anderson as somebody who's sort of against a system, and you know, the surveillance is just one of many things that's against. But yeah, when he's watching that footage of himself, that's like the first, you know, notion of surveillance in this whole movie.

And he's almost just like shaking his head. Like I was trying, kept trying to like figure out is he ashamed of what he said? Is he embarrassed? Is he tired of it? Was?

Because what you see on that footage, I mean is disgusting what he's saying, and he's hockey and that's not really the duke that we see for the rest of the movie. No, And also that whole thing was just like you can't do fuck all to me, like, yeah, I'm not up for parole, I'm out of here. And he just tells that doctor what he thinks of him, and it's just like, go fuck yourself. Yeah. I mean that really feels like it's more of a like countercultural sort of icon.

Whereas, how would y'all describe the Duke Anderson in the book, because he in the book he gets out and gets a job in a printing press and has that job for several months before he even starts to think about this heist. Yeah, why would describe that Duke Anderson as being a sexual pervert? For sure? From a fellow pervert, I should say so, not casting judgment on him, but it's interesting how we really go a lot more into him and his upbringing, find out a lot more about him. I mean, obviously they call him a Limi and this one he's a genteel Southern guy who raised himself up from white trash.

But at the same time, it feels like he doesn't know anything other than robbing. You know that thing that he says, and I think it comes to his secondhand from the character. I guess that would be the Martin Balsam character, but I think he's much younger in the book where he's just like, you know, what is it? Something like crime is just war when it's that wartime or something. It's basically like this is an attack type of thing.

And I feel like he really probably was in the army and really got into it and kind of his doesn't know what the hell to do now that he's not in there. Yeah. Think someone talks about seeing in the book that someone is referencing Korea and seeing somebody from Kentucky that you know, is a mountain man that you know, when he saw the enemy coming at him with a bayonet, like he went at him, you know. Just they said it was almost like watching a you know, they could have photographed it and put it in a military book like this is how you do combat. And that's not the Connery in the movie at all.

No. No, it's interesting too that it's him getting out of prison, and it's him getting out of prison with two other guys, you know, him getting out of prison with the Christopher Walken character, and I don't remember the name of the gentleman right off the bat when it comes to the older guy. But it's like that whole relationship is so interesting to see that. And oh it's Stan Gottlieb, thank you, the guy who was in Putney Swoop. I mostly know him from see the guy that asks about you know, he keeps repeating Mario.

Anyway. I love that whole thing and just having this like three generations of criminals and it's like he's he's trying to take care of the kid and he's trying to take care of Pop. It's almost like he's got this like nuclear family that he's coming out of prison with and he's like, Okay, yeah, I'm going to get the kid. I'm going to get him a job. You know, he's kind of just like wasting his life here.

I'm going to get him into the criminal enterprise and then I'm going to go to Pop. And Pop just seems so completely confused all the time. And I love when they arrest him at the end and he's just is so relieved. He so reminds me of what is the character's name from the Shawshank Redemption that hangs himself. It just so reminds me of that like, I've been in jail for so long, I have no idea how to live on the outside world.

And it is basically I think his other option is either suicide or I'm going to get caught for doing a crime. And it's such a relief because I don't know anything else. Like the way that he even refers to years. He's like, well, I think that was nineteen thirty and six or something, and I'm. Like, nineteen and thirty one, thank you, and yeah.

So like out of it, Like when he sees the girls and the miniskirts, he's just like, what the hell's going on? I also love on rewatching, when they're getting off the bus, he tries to get back on. Yes, it's the very beginning, and Connory has to get Christopher Walkin's help to be like, okay, we're taking him out, boy. And when they're in the bus station and they're trying to help him out and the cop comes over because they've seen it on TV. It looks like they're mugging this old man.

And when the cop comes over, they all three of them stand up immediately and like put their hands behind their back because they've been so institutionalized. He's my favorite character in the whole movie, and he's the one I feel for the most. He and especially when he caught. Later on the movie. He calls, you know, Connory up and he's in Connory's in bed with Diyan Cannon and Pop's is like, can I come live with you?

Yes? Oh it breaks your heart right, he's so lonely. Yeah, I like him quite a bit. He's not. There is somebody I think with a similar name in the book, but he's it's a different character, like he's invented for the movie.

Oh yeah, so much stuff is meanted for the movie. But I think they do a good job when it comes to that. Like I love the Ingrid character in the book. I think she's fascinating and I like that the book ends with her, But I don't know how much she would have added to the movie. I think having I mean, it feels like they're already struggling just having Diane Cannon because she doesn't have a whole lot to do.

Unfortunately, Diane Cannon is after I would say the first half an hour, is not given much to do, which is such a shame because she's she's really good opposite Connery. She really is and the fact that she just kind of disappears. I mean, it makes sense in the third act of the movie, but doesn't mean I'm not disappointed that she's just kind of gone. Mm hmm. I really like her final scene where she's sort of caught between you know, her boyfriend who's basically blackmailing her.

I think, not her boyfriend, her you know, her client. You know, they keep referring to things as a contract. Oh, I'm not fighting with you, I'm negotiating, you know, she says to him on the phone. And then that's her husband in the movie, right or in the book her husband, right, well. Yeah, yeah, in the book her the you know, the the Dyan Cannon characters two different people, is Ingurded, who is sort of sort of the dom to the Duke character, who's you know, very much in control of him, and it's a there's a lot more sexual.

Dynamics in the novel than in the movie. And then there's the woman who lives in the house. She's ah in the apartment building. She's a housewife who after she and her husband split up, she goes into the street and picks up Duke and brings brings them home. And then you find out that the husband is recording her to use, you know, for divorce evidence.

But yeah, when she asked to the set, when she sort of caught between these two guys, is just heartbreaking to me, Like, and I think she brings a lot to that scene where she doesn't have a lot of dialogue. She seems really trapped, and then you know, Connery is you know, kind of says, you know, like, oh, I guess He's like, well, I guess I could not do this. Heist, right I don't. I mean, that's an interesting moment because you don't. Like that's to me is the scene where I think back to that first opening when he's watching himself on the camera and it's just like, that's the old Duke Anderson, this you know, professional, disturbing, disturbed, you know, criminal.

And then in that apartment you see him with his partner and it's like, well, who is he going to be? Is he going to be the criminal or is he going to be you know, the Hollywood romantic lover who gives everything up? And so he does make that offer, I could give up the heist, and it's sort of up to her whether she believes him or not. And you know, I guess we say spoiler alert at this point if somebody's listening and uh, well now long enough. Yeah, okay, and you've also been listening to us blob on and on about this movie.

She goes with the guy that paid for the apartment. I think maybe she rightly doesn't believe that Connery would give this up. Yeah, And it's interesting that they have a relationship because in the book the Duke has a former relationship and there's a little bit of distrust I think, and like I think Ingrid. Yeah, like you said, she's basically a professional dominatrix. Sounds like she had a hard time getting out of Europe.

I wouldn't be surprised if she was, you know, tortured. They talked about the scars on her body and all this stuff. Like they have a relationship. Yeah, but the relationship Evelyn, who's the woman in the book, does not Yeah, like you said, she just picks him up and so it's a lot easier for him just fuck her over. And basically in that relationship, he and they're very vague when it comes to their sexual relationship, but it sounds like he's more of a top to her.

It's like Ingrid is the top to him, and then he's the top to Evelyn. And then the way that they combined the characters so now it's Ingrid like Evelyn's last name. So just taking those two characters and just smashing them together. Don't they use the phrase I'm gonna get you out. I think that's what Ingrid says to Duke in the novel, and then that's what Duke says to the housewife.

You're like, I'm going to get you off. It's like I'm gonna get you out, which almost has this other connotation of I'm gonna draw something, you know, a part of you that's like repressed that you don't know. I'm going to bring this out. Yeah, And the way that she like it sounds like he smacked her around or spanked her or did something to her, and she's just like, well, how did you know? And he's like, oh, I could tell, like right away that you're into this shit, you know.

It's like, oh, okay, yeah, game meets game. I suppose one thing I have to say that I really like is Dick Anthony Williams not rhyming every time that he talks. That was really annoying in the book for me that character, and then I was super happy to see Paul Benjamin show up in this. That's kind of a different configuration of these characters. But I just watched Across one hundred and tenth Street for the first time like two weeks ago, so seeing him pop up again in this, I was like, yes, yes, give me more of this guy.

He's great. He's always good. Oh yes, he's always fantastic. His role in I think I best know him from Escape from Alcatraz and he's so good in that. What do we think of Christopher Walkin because he's in it some a'be it first first feature film, But I mean we've talked a little bit about his character because he's the one that comes out of jail with Connory at the beginning of the movie.

He's the drug dealer. Yeah, yeah, what we think of him? He well, Christopher Walkin is just absolutely magnetic. He is, i mean so striking with his looks. Oh yeah, it's.

Can't take your eyes off. I mean he just looks so young too. I'm like, in a way to. Pretty yeah pretty man. Yeah, and he does to the way he talks, the way he moves, it's like there's a star in the you know the phrase of star is born.

Like he just moves with like like nobody else in that movie. He just he's really his own you know, his own figure. It's it's it's extraordinary. He also doesn't have a ton to work with him. You know, I love all his interactions with Connery because he's really holding his own you know, at first, when he's in the hardware store where you know that's his you know, his nine to five.

Now that he's out of prison, you know, at first, he he's you know, he doesn't really feel okay, you know, robbing people because he thinks it's immoral, and hearing him sort of negotiate, I'm okay selling drugs to people, but you know, robbery seems bad, right, And then you know, later on, like the deeper he gets, the more Connery has to sort of keep, you know, letting him know like it's okay, this is the right thing to do, like, and you see him, you know, you know, get you know, so you see him really change and become a little bit darker, until at the very end when again spoiler the lawyer the heightst goes bad and Duke gets shot and Walken is just like, forget him. He's gone. It's just like that is not the character you see in that first scene at all.

And yet there's so little screen time that he gets. But somehow Christopher Walken manages to convey this huge transformation like that's uh, he did a great job. I think I totally agree. Yeah, yeah, I wish there was more of him. But like you said, every time he's there on screen, it's like, Wow, this guy has presence and you are I mean, my eyes are always just drawn to him.

What is he going to be doing? Yeah, he's one of those actors where it's just like he's going to do something interesting here. I'm just not sure exactly what it is. Chris, what do you think about him? I say, he's not really doing any of the trademark stuff from later in his career either.

So I liked him a lot in the movie. I thought he was great. I mean I think, you know, again, like Mike just said, I think I would like more of him in the movie. But this is. Clearly Sean Connery's film.

I mean, front and center on the poster film is essentially named after his character. Like he's he takes up most of the air in the room. And I mean understandably. So it's Connery, you know, seventy one Connery, So you know, he's still kind of swinging with a rather big bat. I feel like probably won't be the case in like five to six years after this, but we're at the point now where he's still, like I would say, at the height of what he's doing.

So I think walking is good opposite Connery. It's just when you're in a movie with Connery, he just takes up a lot of the room, understandably. So I think the only person that's really giving him a run for the money is Martin Balsom, just because he is just playing it so big. And I have no problem with that whatsoever. And I just love, you know, again to talk about Lumett.

I mean, Balsam is such a different character in Twelve Angry Men and here just being so out and just so wild. And it's funny because I'll, you know, we've talked about crime films in the seventies. I mean, for me, it's just you know, taking Pellam one, two, three, But he is so different in this movie as well, and I imagine that his character could be very offensive. These days or all the things that people talk about his character, but I still just love him and I just think that he's great, and especially the way that they use him for, like, hey, you have an eye for artistic stuff. You can be the one that goes around to all these apartments and tell us what to take because we are not educated in that way at all.

And it's like that is something that Duke is really good when it comes to. And they even talk about this, like his problem solving skills and just how much he wants to solve problems. It's like if he wasn't a criminal, he could be this like master strategist and the way that he puts this whole heist together and everything, and if anything, it's you know, the mob who's backing him are the ones that really fuck him over by making him work with this Socks character. And Chris, how great was it to see val avery sons mustache in. This Oh my god, no kidding.

Valevery without a mustache is a weird looking guy. Yeah, oh yeah. He also has a massive nose when he doesn't have a mustache. I know he has a massive nose all the time, but something about him without a mustache just makes it that much more pronounced times. Has he been on Colombo four at least?

Yeah? I mean that for me, it's all about that apartment that Colombo rented that's supposed to be his apartment, right. In another timeline, I would have loved a prequel for his character. Why do they hate him so much? And what has he been up to?

Because they they detest him and they want him gone to the point where they're like, you know what, we'll give you the money as long as you kill this fucking guy before the end of the eyes. Just pin it on him. It'll be his problem, or just kill him, you know, or just you know, put it on him and then kill him. I feel, I mean we sort of touched on this earlier, but you know, part of the postmodern aspect of this movie is, you know, all of these in the novel, you know, all the microphones are picking up what is supposed to be a different story, right, And in that same way, all these characters are actually leading. They're all leading other lives and it's just because of Duke that they all come together for this.

And you know, he's a you know a great example of somebody that you can see suggestions of a really compelling, fascinating story. But that's that's not what we have here. Is that I don't know. It is a shame, but I do think that the movie is a good opportunity to see Sean Connery just kind of interestingly playing it a lot more restrained than I was expecting as well, because he's I wouldn't say like he's you know, he obviously takes up a lot of air on screen, but he's not playing it really big. He's really rained in and I like the kind of I don't know, the restraint that he plays Duke Anderson with because it could have been a really I mean and again in the book it is a really different character.

But I like where Connery is coming at it from with the screen version of it, because I think for what the film is, it works perfectly. I think you needed to have kind of a bigger presence on screen, even if you're not letting him kind of chew the scenery as he normally does. I think it was still the right idea to have somebody of Connery's caliber as the lead for the film. Well, I think you're totally right, And something I kept asking myself as I was watching this is who is the real Duke Anderson? Is it, you know, the person on the video monitor in the opening scene.

Is it, you know, the guy who's you know, sitting in the chair just you know, raging against the system that's been oppressing him. Is it the person that's like trying to help this old man, this like younger you know, ex Cohn. Is it the you know, sort of sensitive lover to Diane Cannon. Is it the sort of cocky criminal that's you know, going to the mob and saying, no, no, no, I reject your offer. We're getting fifty fifty, uh, you know, not sixty forty.

Is it? You know, when he gets asked to do the you know, to bump off, you know, the mob guy, he seems a little you know, unsure if he can do this, you know. And then but when he's dealing with the mob guy with the vale Avery, he's, oh my god, he's even cockier than he is with the you know, the capos. He's just like this like agroheman. And so throughout the movie he's really changing who he is.

And I think, I mean that's what makes it interesting. When you get to the heist, it's like, well, how is he gonna play this out? Which which of these is the actual Duke Anderson? And uh, I mean dot dot dot, I mean it's spoiler alert again, it's I mean, what what do. You all think?

Because we see different sides of Duke during that heist, Like as things continue to get worse and worse, he keeps, you know, trying to you know, responding in different ways. But I guess that's to me what makes it a suspenseful heist sequences we don't know how he's actually going to respond. What's interesting too that we have this almost fragmented portrayal or portrait of Duke, and we are getting told this story from all of this these different points of view. I mean, there are times they to Chris's earlier point, like there are times where they really stick to this whole idea of all of this is being recorded. But then there are times where you're watching it and you're like, oh, this is a movie as opposed to this is footage from someplace else, because that is so much the conceit of the book.

As we've already said, like everything that we are reading is a transcript or a letter or whatever it is. With this whole epistolatory nature of it, so we don't know anything more than that can be captured by a device. And like even to the point of there's a scene pretty early on in the book where the recording is on the fritz and words are missing, you know, all the things are missing from there. It's like, you know, Mike Myers when he's doing is, yeah, we're ordering from a drive through. Uh you know, drive in you drive through restaurant, you know where he omits things.

You're getting that. So like we and it works to me a little bit better as a book because of the whole thing of well, where's the microphone, where's the camera? You know, like we see like when when Alan King's talking to the character that they call Papa, like the old mob boss kind of thing, and it's like we get this whole scene. And then at the very end we see the nurse has a pen in her lapel and that's a microphone. Then you see a guy out on a boat and he's got a film camera and he's he's recording everything, and I'm like, I kind of wish that that it all been from their point of view rather than like this beautiful setup that the met is showing us and just like, you know, how wonderful everything looks, how beautiful it is, and all this this wonderful scene out by the water and all that.

It's like I kind of wish that they had lean more into this conceit of you only see what the recording is allowing us to see. Yeah, that's I mean, that's I mean, that's what I I mean, you're you hit it again, Like I just I have such a love for these kinds of things when they're done well. And I think, you know, Mike, I think you'd probably agree with this sentiment, like commit to the bit, commit to the fucking bit, Like, if you're gonna do this, the book commits to the bit. The book commits to the bit one hundred percent. I enjoy that the movie commits to like the bit maybe sixty percent of the way, but that last forty percent.

I think part of it is the Sidney Lumette of it all. Like I don't think Sidney Lumett is interested in making that kind of movie, uh clearly, And I think that that kind of movie hampers certain kinds of things that Sidney Lumett probably wanted to do and did do, because like you said, Mike, it's a very well put together film. It's a very nice looking movie. That kind of movie may not have looked that way just based on what it's having to do. It may have been a lot harder even and oh no, you you know, go ahead.

Co De mean to cut you off. I'll go for it now. I agree. I don't think that he could have made the book as the book is written in Hollywood at that time, And that's why I was sort of saying that, like I felt like, is this going to be a Thomas Crown affair or is this going to be something else? Because it does have it still feels like they're trying to sell a sort of more traditional Hollywood heist movie that's fun, but at the same time, there is more of these darker undercurrents that you will see later.

I think if he had made the movie, maybe ten years later, maybe he could have done more of this sort of, you know, actual surveillancey type of movie. But I think in seventy one that would have been too experimental for a you know, for a major motion picture. I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right. I think somebody could do a new version of this today, and I think it would be totally relevant.

I mean now that we have internet and phones and stuff, and I think they could really do what y'all are talking about, like just getting into these different forms you know, of a mixed media, and I think it would be not only accepted, I think people would love it. What you need to get ice Cube sitting in front of a computer talking about how the aliens are invading and then we'll just do but we'll just do that, but with this movie. If you do that movie, can you please invite me? Because no movie last year made me. I didn't think about any movie more than I did that movie.

I don't know whether it's terrible or great. Is haunted by the War of the World's movie with ice Cube in it. It's to me, it's the again, I can't figure that movie out, like. It's a sub genre now like this whole we're just shooting this from a point of view. There was that movie was a John Chow.

Unfriended, and then yeah, yeah, Unfriended was the one that started it. And then there were those yeah the Stalked or whatever that when missing or something that John Show went is like a girl gets kidnapped, but there's no supernatural element. It's just on the computer. Though, right right, yeah, yeah, but. Like the whole like that movie.

Did they pitch that as like it's the most pro Amazon Prime delivery movie of all time? And I'm like, do the people making this actually believe this? Or is this just like somebody pitched this during a board meeting and it was so over the top with its pro Amazon is that nobody could say no or risk getting fired. Like is there something weirdly subversive about you can't say you can't save the world unless you click buy on Amazon dot com? Like it's so absurd, like it's put groutschow Marx with but like if you put Groucho Marx and his mustache in there, like this would be like duck soup level absurdity.

Oh yeah, no, it is a totally absurd concept and execution. Yeah. I need to see it again. So if you do the podcast about that movie, I would love to come on. I can't tell you what I will think about that movie, but I also just like a movie that makes me think, and I to me that movie was far were fascinating than stuff like Running Man or Eddington, and whether intentional or not, I thought it was far more dystopic than both of those films You.

Sound like me and Megalopolis, where I just can't stop thinking about that stupid movie. I really want to see that. I'm so bummed that I missed it. And every time it comes back to play the Roxy here in New York, it's always a night that I have something else going on. So copele, if you're listening, bring it back to New York one more time, but just check with me and my schedule first.

I want to say your prayers are answered. I just recently saw on Instagram, let's see May fourth Roxy Theater, So I don't know if that's going to be too late for you. And actually that was too late because I was just the other day. So they just played in New. This is what I mean.

So but yeah, no, they a new cut that's going to happen with the what's he calling it, Megalopolis unchained or something like that or unbound. So yeah, we're we're in for more Megalopolis. And I think his whole New Year's screaming thing is going to become a tradition. Cool, whether we like it or not. Cool, he likes it.

That's already mattered. Yeah, you know, I can't stop thinking about it. I love a good vanity project. I mean, I know the War of the World is not a vanity project by any stretch of the imagination. Well, it might be Jeff Bezos's vanity project.

Isn't that everything now technically that. He does as opposed to Milania, which is Milania Trump's vanity project. Hey, everybody, my name is Milania Trump. Come see my movie, fam It's the whole fucking movie. Colin, But no, he listened to that episode because he wanted to share in the pain with the rest of us.

I only made it, and I need to finish the episode. I am. I did have to take a break. I mean it was a great film, a great episode, not as good as this movie. I do think.

We know we talked about the surveillance state of it all, and Colin, you said, like they could remake this. I think they could make something of this or something in this. Vein, like when it comes to what is effectively a found footage or found footage style film or mockumentary or whatever the framing device you would use, like surveillance. Know, this is cobbled together surveillance footage or whatever they there is shockingly little in terms of non horror movie thing, So to have something like that or this in that capacity would be really fun actually, because again it's just not done. It's not done as frequently.

It's just it's just more of a horror movie pastiche to do found footage than it is like a crime film or a heist film even. But like you said, Mike, in the day and age of iPhones and everything else, like, I feel like you could make something really interesting. This movie kind of leans into it a little bit with the ham Radio of it all. I mean that's the you know, it reminded me a little bit Mike of Colombo. You know, technology is crazy.

We all as wild stuff in the seventies, Like this movie has a little bit of that. So I feel like if you did something a modern day re kind of retelling or update or even inspiration even because I mean, you don't have to remake this movie. There's this Let's just be honest here. If James Bond doesn't have any cachet anymore, do we think the Anderson Tapes does. I don't think so.

But you could make a movie inspired by this movie, and I think it would be pretty interesting, and like you said, Colin, in this day and age, where you can do something interesting even with the most basic of technological ideas, like having a guy sitting in front of a computer, imagine what someone who actually had something interesting. To say could do with an idea like this. Because this movie touches on it, I just don't think it ever goes all the way there. I think it just, you know, it's still maybe is a little hamstrung by being just outside of the sixties barely, because if this were maybe a year or two later, I think that would have really been punched up by whoever did it. They probably would have leaned into it even more, especially post Watergate, my lord.

And I still like the ending is I mean, that's something I liked about. I like the ending of the movie better than the ending of the book personally, because it does have all those characters that are the you know, that are working for the government and the police say oh shit, what we're doing is illegal. If we get found out, we're screwed, deleteed, hide everything. Like to me, that's where you start to see this sort of revisionist aspect, like we just watched this whole scene where you know the police are doing this kind of insane stunt. You know, Ralph Meeker also love Ralph Meeker as the chief of police.

He's he's incredible ordering this guy to go climb this building. Garrett Morris of. Oh god, that shot when the guy walks down and is it Garrett Morris who walks down the street and then he turns the corner and then you see all of the cops just hanging out there. I'm just like, holy shit. That's a chilling moment, especially seeing that part of Manhattan where they've blocked off the streets and it's quiet and empty.

I work on the Upper east Side and it ain't ever quiet. It's that's near uh. I mean, there's just ambulances and sirens and it's just people and it's maybe it was quieter back then, but still seeing Manhattan quiet and still, there's something very unnerving about that. I love seeing the Mayflower moving truck because for years I didn't even know that Mayflower is a real moving company because they've been talking about that and the Jerky boys. Yeah, I worked from Mayflower.

I work from Moist, you know. And then when I saw my first Mayflower truck I was just like, oh, it's a real thing. Okay, all right, that's cool, and I. Moved and made my family from Georgia. The main I love nineties.

I love that they do the whole mini van in the back of the moving truck so die hard, and even the die hardness of the kid calling on the radio and like nobody believes them except for these ham operators over in like you know, Arizona and Hawaiian stuff, and they're the ones that relay the message. And I mean that's such a major flaw that they trust the handicap kid. It's just like, hey, what thread am I to you? And they're like, yeah, no, I guess you're right. And then he just turns right around and gets on the radio and I'm like, okay, I mean.

I don't have good I don't think these are actually good criminals. No. And that's what I think is, that's what I think is really fascinating is like the movie be You know, if we look at the heist genre, if we're talking about again like Thomas Crown or like Ocean's eleven, especially at this time, it's built around smart criminals. You know, it's going back to raffles the gentleman thief. It's this idea that you can be artful and sort of like, you know, what you're doing is so genius that it doesn't matter that what you're doing is you know, a crime and that you're stealing and hurting other people.

And then you see this movie and you see the planning, and you think that they're going to be smart, but it's not that well planned a heist. And even the mob you know, knows that this is gonna go bad, and they okay it because they still want it to be on the front page because they'd rather have it go bad. And then people are gonna like be you know, realize that, you know, look at all the chaos the mob caused. It gets yeah, Like I mean, that's the revisionist aspect of the movie that really interests me in terms of genre. Yeah, the whole thing where they're like, we're not even doing this stuff anymore.

We're we're doing all these other things and we make more from numbers, we make more from this like this. There's no upside to this other than for them, well cool, we get to get rid of this valevery character. We've been looking for an excuse to get rid of socks, and this is our excuse. Whether they get caught and we don't get anything, or whether they don't get caught and we get a cup of the cut of this, we make out. Either way, it really is all right.

And going back to the hot heist genre, like, I think the masks are genius. I think there's their references to what Kansas City Confidential kind of minded me. And I'm trying to remember which film it was and what kills me is. I can remember that Morricone did the score, but I don't remember who the actors or the director was. But like I remember in a compilation, actually it was in John Zorn doing all those Morricone songs.

There's like an image from a robbery film and I'm just like, these are really cool masks. And like in the book, they're not the's right, it's just like, well you got a paint me on your head. They're just wearing pantyhose, right, And yeah, but I love these masks and I just love I think they're so cool looking, and you know, they are very functional for a movie because they make the characters look a little otherworldly, but you know exactly who every single character is. It's not like a full face mask, like a like a joker or something. I give a shout out to another heist movie from the same year, The Day of the Wolves.

Ah nice, which is great. And I still don't think I don't even know if that ever got a DVD release like it is online. I've seen it at Spectacle a couple of times. But if anybody who does Blu rays is listening in, yeah, it looks like it did get a few. It was on some like these multi pack DVDs.

But if somebody listening wants to do a nice Blu ray, Day of the Wolves is a treat. Anyway, I haven't seen it, but if you're recommending it, I'll check it out. I remember liking it, Oh real quick. What do you guys think about this whole idea of the Ham Radio being the trip up, because it's like, it's kind of a throwback for me that Ham Radio is the thing that it's them. We're in this world of modern, modern technology, but it's the kid on the Ham Radio which is the one that eventually foils the entire thing.

I think it's a clever bit of irony. Yeah, I think it's really smart because it allows the movie to really be I would say, hands off with how they get caught, because you can have everybody in the building all rounded up, you can have everything cordoned off, and yeah, you have just the one least obvious thing possible. Is the reason this happens, Like the reason the entire plan is foiled is because of a child. Of course, it's because of a child, Like you know. I don't know.

I thought it was smart. I love I love when Hamm radios are in anything. As a ham radio operator myself, I find it very funny that Ham radio operators are a downfall of Sean Connery, who I guess dies at the end. Yeah, when he so when he comes out from the chimney, just kind of drops down like a wounded Santa Claus. I thought for sure that since he had been seen in this apartment so many times with Diane Cannon, that maybe he was going to go in the bedroom, put on a suit and just pretend that he was there the entire time or something, because there's all that chaos that happens afterwards.

Of like when we cut to like Martin Balsom talking about the robbery, you know from again from the Future it's like a flash forward of him talking about things while the robbery is happening, and so you're kind of like already like, oh, well, this isn't going to work out. But yeah, I just kept. Thinking, Oh, he's going to use this, like this is a really good alibi for him to like have been there so many times. I actually wonder if there's more footage, because you're right that that seems like something that just isn't a different rest, Like. There definitely was a different ending at one point.

Yeah, they talked, I mean I in the research they talk about it. They talk about that the Columbia was not a fan of the ending of the film. There's other parts of the movie though, that make me think that there's more, Like when Diane Cannon is in bed with Sean Connery and she's referencing, you know, this sexual encounter with another woman, and Sean Connery's so. That was with another woman, Okay. I was wondering what that was.

I thought it was like like her first time was somebody. I wasn't sure what was going on with that, Thank you. I rewounded a couple times and put the subtitles on because it comes out of nowhere and there's no context to what's being to what's being said, And at first I thought I missed something, but it makes me think that there was more footage to that scene and something got cut. And so with the ending where it doesn't tell you whether or not Seohn Connery lives or dies, you know, as you were, you know, suggesting, you know, he'd been seen in the building. You know, he went back to an apartment and hid like it seemed that they were building towards something else, like they were going to try and tie us all together, and then it just doesn't happen.

So maybe there was more, maybe there was a bigger finish, something clever, and instead they went with a different ending. And I do like I like ending on the deleting all the footage, erasing it. Yes, I'm a big fan of that. That great cold end with the just that close up of the the recorder is such a great way to pull out of this. Chris, what do you think about the ending of the movie versus the ending of the book?

I mean, I think they're both. I mean again like cynical or kind of again, however you want to perceive what the tone of the both the pieces are but I do. I personally, I can understand liking the book more. I just think I like the movie. I don't know.

I'm kind of split because I do like the book, but I do like the movie's ending. I like the idea of the inability of the organizations to work together being kind of really hammered home in the book, but in the movie, like you said, Colin, and clearly again just in the research, like they left something out of the ending, because the ending feels really disjointed, and honestly, where they leave Sean Connery's character just kind of strain, like he's just sitting on that gurney and then that's it. And it's like, Okay, like the book works better because the book seems better thought out. The movie could have been better thought out, and maybe at one point it was. But I just feel like they made some choices in the movie that just don't serve the narrative as well as the ones that are in the book.

I something I'm you know, we don't have the angered character from the book in the movie, and we. Don't like It's not like that. I don't think we in the book. We don't like Duke Jordan the same way that we like him as portrayed by Sean Connery, but the way that he goes back to his lover and kind of screws her over in the book just made that that was a real bummer for me. I don't think her character deserved that at all.

And I mean there's another element that in the book, the reason he went to jail was because she wasn't at the meeting spot and a she was at her stockbrokers and you know, so a cop saw him and he looked out of place, and well he had the loot on him. And it's it's never revealed whether she left him waiting on purpose or whether it was an accident, because it sort of fits into the sort of dom aspect that she might have left him there to make him a little nervous. And throughout the book she's you know, you know, saying like, oh, I'm sorry I did this to you, and he's like, no, forget about it, you. Know, oh I'm sorry, shot sie. I Yeah, it's the ending, you know, when he goes back to die at her apartment.

You know, she of course calls the police, but like, you know, she's gonna get deported. She's royally screwed, even though she had nothing to. Do with this. So that's that's our last impression of him in the book. It's just, you know, he's slimy.

He's not the likable character that Connery plays, even though I'm not sure what the point of playing him as a likable character is other than because we have to spend the entire run of the film with him. It it's better to make him likable than unlikable. But I don't think he's fully likable or dislikable. And that's more likable than the character in the book. Is, oh, one hundred percent.

But I think that's in a Connery being a great actor. I think, you know, Duke Anderson is a complex character. To me, that's what I made it a compelling movie to watch. It's not that I'm just watching the ingenious thiefs. I'm watching somebody who's evolving throughout the whole movie, and who you know, when you get to the end, you don't know how they're gonna act or how they're going to react more you know which is more appropriate.

Like driving a car a blue van away really fast and dying and getting flipped over and just being dead by Christopher Walkin in this my Lord and Nobody, Nobody the only people that survive. And you guys mentioned this like the bad You know, these guys aren't necessarily the best at what they do. Martin Balls and just going all right, I just fucking arrest me, like I have Martin Balls, like, yeah, you're not even a thief, Like you're not even a thief. You're like an antiques dealer. And by the way, the amount of times they say fag in this.

Movie, hoo bully, I mean, it doesn't offend me. I could care least, but boy boy, they really got Martin Balsam's character pegged huh. Well, something they don't go into and the move they suggest in the movie that he and Duke have a relationship, but in the book it's very clear. Yeah, which I mean. You know again, you know, you know, Duke's relationship with all the different people is really fascinating, the way he sort of pulls them into this, right because you know, I don't I don't know if the Martin Balsam character would have gone for this if there wasn't you know, if he didn't have a deeper you know, affection isn't the right word, but it's clear that he really, you know, has this connection.

You know, I think he's really attracted to Duke, and you know, you know, at the end, he can't go through with it, Like he can't even run away. He's just like, I have to give up now because this is not who I am. I liked that moment. I thought that was one of the most interesting moments for his character and for Duke to you know, basically tell him just take off your master and be fine. Like the now we're back to the comforting Duke, Like, you know, for for once, he's actually saying something nice to this guy.

He's not trying to screw him over. He could have recommended that he I'll take care of you. We'll get out of this alive. That was like an honest, kind thing to say. But he's not honest for a lot of the movie.

It's a weird way. I take that back, like is he honest? He's kind of honest to Diane Cannon that he's going to rob this place, and like. The first seed that they share together, he's like, I'm just going to rob this place, like has some for play Bro cuts right to the chase. I think you're right that it is for play though.

That's thing is Yeah, but that's what's so interesting about his characters. You know, he's sort of being the sort of macho like smart thief. That's just oh, yeah, I'm going to rob this place. I'm gonna take all your neighbors. You know, I don't care that it might screw you over and have you implicate it.

I'm going to do it. You almost wonder if he decided to do this heist just to impress her. Yeah. Yeah, it is a weird relationship that they have, and I it's it's very interesting. Like I said that they had this previous relationship, so when he shows up, it's just I mean, Panti's off within what two minutes maybe not even and nineteen seventy Sean Connery.

You don't can blame a girl. Yeah, yeah, blame but yeah. I was just like, okay, well this is interesting. They know each other, like what does she think about him being in prison and just that whole like I haven't had section ten years or whatever. It's like, okay, yeah, she's ready for it.

I honestly love that. That's the that's the intensity he shows up with. I haven't had sexy. Ten years, eight months, three days, and four hours. It's likely shuts of blue bottles on me, like I bet we bet Connory.

Oh yeah, yeah, he's yeah. This sexy man. Like I get it. I get it, Like I am not complaining about seeing Sean Connery on screen, and it is believable that he just walks into a room and it's like if he has your attention and you have his attention, I get it. I get it.

Oh yeah, but I love that he's going on natural with the hair too, and it looks good. He's aging gracefully. What was the Is it seven years between this and The Hill? I think you're well, it was it sixty five. I can't remember.

Where Will was. You can find this out, Yeah it is sixty five, so six years. Okay. Yeah. I watched that the other night since you all had covered it last weekend.

I'd been meaning to see that for ages and god, damn, that movie's great, right good? I was. I think I told Chris I was during that the final scene, I was like holding back tears. That's a heartbreaking, just devastating ending. Yes, I mean, if you all want to do like a second podcast about the Hill, like I'm ready right now.

Should we invite you back for the offense? I haven't seen the I I've been meaning to for Ages. And another that's the other other Lamette. Uh yeah, I think also What Family Business, which I think I saw when it was at the theater, But man, oh man, it was not a movie for me at that time. What is it with Connory and Lumette?

They just worked so well together? Huh? They fans of one another. It feels like Lumett had certain actress that he'd liked working with, and Connory was definitely one of them. Well, it's you know, I mean again, he seems to get a pretty great performance out of Connery in the last two films.

I mean he's. Batting too for two with What Again. My perception of Connery as an actor is definitely starting to kind of as we watch these movies, definitely start to move in a direction of like all right, Like It's not that I didn't get it before, but now I'm seeing and I'm like, man, he's just so charismatic, has such a presence you can't take your eye off of him. And yet even when his hair is like clearly starting to like recede and like again, there's a there's a there's some feeling of that in Hollywood that that's like, you know, you're less masculine. It's like, nah, he still fucking pulls it off, man Like, still pulls it off.

This is such an un James Bond role for him. Right well, And that's that was the other thing I was gonna say. This comes out literally the last time he plays James Bond in an Eon production. This comes out the same year that he steps down as James Bond. I mean, he comes back and never say never again, which feels like beetlejuice every time we have to mention.

It is that, right. I thought that he made making the offense part of his deal to come back for Diamonds Are Forever. Came out the same year as this film. Okay, well I wonder that maybe, yeah, because there's something to do I want to and I don't think it was this film. I think it is the offense that that was part of his deal.

I'll come back and do Bond, but you give me money for this for the offense. And then he was also supposed to do a version of was it McBeth something? And they talk about it and nobody does it better? Yeah, and the the Polanski one didn't do that well at the box office, so they're like, no, no Macbeth. And it was like, guys, you can do Macbeth any day of the week, Like, give this man.

Can you imagine like if he's Sean Connery, if he was playing McBeth Jesus Christ. I guess Macbeth just didn't have a have a good track record. Though, I guess not. So we got to punch it up. Can we add like a sexy lady and you know, like I don't know, like a gunfight or something in there.

Would that be good? We can have like boz Lhrman direct it, it'd be pretty cool. All right, you're really you really you peaked. My interest now yeah? Yeah, god, so we've got two movies to produce.

Now. We're gonna do an Anderson Tapes remake and uh, we're gonna do a boz Lerman Macbeth. Yeah, with a production designed by Guy Madden. Oh okay, sure, exactly like what I mean, yeah, I would. Yeah, I'm not going to turn that down right.

I would also just watch a Guy Madden Macbeth like. Oh fuck, yeah, well his track that was amazing. I haven't seen that yet. Now it's like based on a ballet, if memory serves. I feel like the biggest missed opportunity this month is that, Mike, you didn't pick Zardas.

I feel like that's just because everybody's covered it to death, including you. You. So it's like I don't get to see Sean Connery's sexy nakedness in full effect. I just have to imagine what it would be if I did get to see it. To be fair, I've also covered zar Dos like a million years ago, So so.

What comes after the offense? After the offense, I think we're doing wrong as right is wrong, and then we'll be doing in the name of the Rose. And that's it right where we're talking about I think we were talking about doing because who wanted to do something and I'm trying to remember what it was you wanted to do. Of extraordinary gentlemen. Yes, Oh, I thought there was something that I actually wanted to see.

I don't know what was there. Something we had talked about was probably in the last episode. I think we're like, oh, yeah, we should do this because this sounds good. Was it, Dragon Hart? No, No, it definitely wasn't Dragon, Like I said, it's something I want to see.

So, sir Billy, is it the Is it the movie where he's the skateboarding? Oh? That must be. Oh no, I know what it was? The Adventures the Avengers.

Yes, we want to do the Avengers. That's what it is. We want to have You ever seen that, Cullen. Yeah, I mean back when it came out, back when. You were like in your teens like I would have been.

He came out of nineteen ninety eight. I would have been a teenager at that point. Yes, yeah, y'all, y'all aren't going to do Okay Connery with Shawn's brother. No, I wanted to do that for ranking on Bond, but nobody bought into. Richard said no, Richard.

What if can someone ask Richard why you said no? We suld you could also ask Richard why he said no to the Elvis movie podcast as well. Yeah, I love Elvis's like you. I mean they were going through all of Elvis's meeting you. I love love.

That was the idea him get in his ear about it. He shot it down straight up. I rewatched clam Bake the other day, which. Is just it's so good clam bake? Are you gonna have a clam bake?

Y? I absolutely adore that movie. Richard had him just said no, he said, and they. Nay, that's such a ship. Yeah, I'm we love I heard Cheerson Ford podcast will yield all sorts of unexpected fun.

And we'll get to cover a Sean Connery movie at some point, you know, we'll get to cover Indiana Jones in the Last. Crusade, which is a Sean Connery film. It's no clambake, No. No, it's not no. Uh, it's no Stay Away Joe either.

Which is the one that Elvis has to get a job. So he applies to two different places and he gets them both and they're in the same building but on different floors with different uniforms, just running back and forth between the two. Trouble. Yeah, I don't remember, Oh god, I would see. And that's the thing is, I have big gaps in my Elvis movie knowledge.

I was hoping to close those up. Finally I went through. I watched all of them, and I bought them all on DVD, and when I moved, I stupidly purged and sold them all And so I've now started to rebuy them all because I for myself, like I can't have just one Elvis movie. I need all of them because if I'm gonna watch one Elvis movie, I just have to start doing them all again. I don't even have I think I have more Elvis movies than I do Elvis records.

And if you can tell. I get excited about Elvis as a movie star. Yeah, yeah, I love Elvis's movie. I haven't seen The Carpenter Elvis, and I'm bummed I missed that. Wasn't there just a boz Lerman thing where they found a concert?

Was amazing? Oh? Absolutely amazing. I think that's where the idea for me. The wasn't that what like spurned on your idea of doing that Elvis podcast?

Was you going to see that or it coming out those a couple months ago? Like two months ago? Now, I've always yeah, but I've always been an Elvis fan, so I mean, well, not always, but I went through a real heavy period when I was about went Tea, when I was doing a documentary about Sherman Arnold, the Elvis tribute artist, and I was just really into Elvis stuff. And I remember going to Graceland and then finding out after I went to Graceland that there's a hotel right next door to Graceland where they just run Elvis movies twenty four to seven under their cable and I'm like, yes, that sounds amazing. Please if I go back to Graceland, MI, I'll try to figure out a way for you to go at the same time, because I went by myself and oh I had food poisoning and I was like on my way to the airport just trying to hold it together.

And Graceland is amazing, But the Graceland experience for me was so underwhelming because the tour guide was just an iPad that was narrated I think by John Stamos. And most of them had a real tour guide. The other people on the tour were just families where the kids weren't even looking at the iPad. They were just on their phones. And I'm like, I want to I want to be around some crazy Elvis fans.

And then I remember the shop and there was nothing I wanted, like Elvis Camo T shirts or something weird, and everything was so normal. There was a we had a real tour guide, and there was somebody on our tour who asked her how much Elvis weighed when he passed away, and and the tour guide had a straight face and she said, oh, he was two hundred and twenty pounds. Said yep, sure, I. Would believe it even if it wasn't true. But I'm not going to go and research that to find out the answer.

Yeah. But yeah, we got to see that living room where the teacher were, Yes, the jungle room where they recorded that album and everything. Oh yeah, it was It was wonderful. I even went on to Lisa Marie and saw how he pimped out that plane. Yeah, it's amazing.

At the car museum where you get to see the purple Cadillac and all that. Oh yeah, we'll go back, Okay, record on location. Do you know what My favorite part of Graceland was calling and maybe as a nerd you can you can sympathize with me. I was going through like they had a display and it was like some of Elvis's personal stuff and he had like a three quarter inch humatic video player and he had on a three quarter inch tape he had Monty Python and the Holy Grail and it was like handwritten on there like somehow he got a three quarter inch copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Amazing, And I'm just picturing Elvis laughing his tits off at Monty Python.

Hey man, that's funny. Man. I won't tell you. I'm just now I will tell you. I'm now just picturing MST three K style with Elvis in silhouette.

But watching that movie, I was like. A giangonia popatur Oh god man that Oh and he's dead too, which means uh well, which means you can just take it and run with it. I guess I would love to see Elvis crow and Tom. Yeah, Elvis man, what yeah? He just he must have had a hell of a time with Monty Python.

Oh boy, from fucking. The PODU enjoying himself fucking laughing it up. Lord. It feels like almost if Culin ever had the time, that would be a podcast for the three of. Us to do.

Clearly, I agree. Clearly, Culin, we have to drag Colin out of retirement because Richard had him, just wouldn't wouldn't grace us with his Elvis present said quote, this podcast ain't big enough for the two of us. It is a very tempting offer, but I need to I would have to look at scheduling because I I don't understand how y'all do as many podcasts as you do. It's I feel like the few I come on is like exhausted, and I don't know how you all have the stamina to just between the watching, the rewatching the research. I ate a lot of white rhinoceros horn.

I don't understand, Mike. It's a lot of deer horn velvet too. Yeah, it's all about this. It's the potency. It's always they always do that arm gesture when they talk about male stamina and vitality.

I eat deer penis because it's good for the stamina. She talks about this, dear Japanese businessman, your salarymen. Basically, Yeah, we're just making jokes about Western medicine here, Cohen. Yeah, okay, like Asian medicine where they you know, they all these things for the vitality. You know, you asked how we had the stamina, so that's how.

Yeah, silkworm tea. I mean we're not We're not going to hide it, you know, clearly. Dear penis extract applied directly to my PERENEU. I'm still hyper from having a coca Cola at lunch. How do you guys do it?

I take a moth larva and I inject them directly into my pineal gland, and I let them grow in there and they excrete a hormone that allows me to get fifteen minutes more out of every hour every. Day, Coled, amazing. M h. It's a risky procedure. I wouldn't advise you to do it.

I use a time turner that Professor Professor dumble Door Secreted. Gave you in the third act of the Moon. Yeah, that's why. That's why I can study so much. That's right, man, what a good use of time travel allows me to study more fucking British nerds.

I'm surprised we didn't talk more about the conversation. Well I did. I mentioned a couple things, but I think, yeah, we never we never got all the way to the gene hackman of it all. But I think that's actually a good thing. Like I expected this to be more like comparing the two, I think it was a more interesting conversation.

No pun in, not even a pun. I didn't mean to make that joke. I thought it was a more interesting podcast recording session to not have it focus on the most immediate comparison, right right. I think it's I think it's good enough to stand on its own, but I don't think it's I mean in terms of quality. I mean, obviously the conversation is is.

Oh well, if we're comparing, I mean, the conversation is a superior movie. But I have a hell of a lot of fun with the Anderson take. Yeah, yeah, it's it's a superior movie, but it's Yeah, this movie is still fun. The Sean Connery of it all makes it worthwhile, and the fact that it's a Lumette and Walkin's first film this and I mean, the Martin Balism of it all. I think everything works in the film's favor.

I think it's almost unfortunate that there is a book to compare it to, because we probably compared it more to the book on this podcast than we compared it to anything else. Really, Yeah, this. Isn't It's not Lunette's best movie, but I think it's terrific. I think I like the idea of the book more than I do. I'm just gonna have to rewrite this.

Yeah, I even want to say that Essex I was saying, I feel like the storiness. To me, it's just like Lionel White, but Lionel White does it better. But the conceit of how it's organized chapter by chapter, not just with one type of surveillance, but as the chapters go on there's different types of surveillance. They really get into, you know, he really gets into the different reasons for why the surveillance is happening. He gets into the technology, Mike, as you pointed out, there is the chapters where because there's either interference or bad microphones or the tape gets garbled.

He really has so much fun with the form. Like that's what's great about the book in my opinion. But yeah, I think it's a terrific movie. It's no, it's no Curproco, but it's it's no The Hill, but it's. It's better than Superco.

But I've only seen Superco once. I just remember laughing at Curproco, like when it's like they do a hard cut to al Pacino is like a hacidic jew and I'm just like, oh my god, that is so fucking funny. It sounds funny, but you're just describing it. So yeah, I maybe I knew to go back and try that one again. But I'm just like, ah, you can keep out put you you know, give me shot on Connery.

I haven't seen it, Curpico, I haven't seen Zupico in ages. But maybe I could have picked a different one. It's no the Hill, which I saw two nights ago and loved. But yeah, I quite enjoyed going back to the Anderson tapes. I'm glad I have my Martini Movies DVD and I will be watching it again.

What about you, Mike, Yeah, a lot of fun. I'm really glad that I was able to finally talk about this movie after all these years and watching that on you know, WKBD in Detroit here like on a you know, Sunday afternoon. It's a perfect dead for noon type of movie. But yeah, I'm just so glad that we were able to dig into this one a little bit more. Yeah.

No, I I enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed the film. I think, you know, in terms of Connory trying to break out of the bond mold, this is a very interesting direction to take your career, to try to go in a different direction. And yeah, you know, I I never know what to expect going into Mike White May or March, depending on the year. But you know, you're still bat in two for two.

You rarely throw in a dud other than when it's literally just bad Robin Williams movies, so you know, but the intention there was for them to not be great, so I guess they weren't bad. In twelve, Well, Patch Adams wasn't great. How does that compare to Man of the Year. Patch Adams broke? Who is that Mark Begley that was on there with us where it just like broke him completely?

I think it did. Yeah, but Man of the Year for me is still the worst film, especially in twenty twenty six, looking at that and you're just like, yep, yep. Yeah yeah. I mean the subject matter for Man of the Year was pretty bad, but I know. The execution too.

Yeah yeah, But I don't know Patch Adams. I think his worst Patch Adams is that like Maudlin Saccharin children with Cancer and Robin Williams is a clown laughing for them, like it's just I don't know. I always am more icked out by that, So. I don't want to see that movie. Yeah, well I didn't either, So Mark Begley was broken.

I think accordingly it would seem so, but no, this was this was a good movie. I'm excited to kind of see what other Connery films we have, and I am excited to move outside of the lumette of it, although we have one more lumet. So yeah, So we'll take a break and we'll play a preview for that that film. From weirding Way Media, Cambridge, and with Shawn is a podcast about two guys obsessions, passions and hobbies. Those two guys are.

Mark Bigley, host of Wake Up Heavy Recollections of Horror. And Ronald Zuriggian, host of the Skelevator YouTube channel. Each month, we talk about the toys, comics, movies, books, TV shows, and other cultural phenomena that captured our imaginations and helped shape who we are today. From Masters of the Universe to Saturday Night Live, Star Wars to Harry Houdini, the Muppets to The Elephant Man. Ronnie and Mark dive deep into the recesses of their minds to pull out treasured memories of things lost but never forgotten.

Join us on the first Tuesday of each month over at Weirdinwaymedia dot com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Join me Jamie Benning on the Filmmentaries podcast, particularly if you enjoy stories like designer Nila Rhodis Jamiro convincing George Lucas to push him around to help gain the support of his crew on the Ailing Howard the duck. Plam, the door opens, It's George. Everybody gas. George makes a b line to me, I'm literally back against the wall.

Well here puppeteer Tim Rose's emotional story behind that iconic admurl acbar shot in Return of the Jedi. I believe it or something to be proud of, but not the Cellburg. Or how Star was. Editor Paul Hirsch tackled cutting so many successful films. The thing that I learned from work with the Palm is that tension depends on a clock.

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Do you find yourself wanting to know more about the latest murder, conspiracy, cult or haunting. Than this is the podcast for you. In nineteen fifty two, there was a record high of UFOs reported fifteen hundred sightings. There has been evidence of human sacrifice, double warsh, and it is haunted by more spirits than can be counted. A family of two adults and two kids reportedly.

Saw a giant flying thing with glowing red eyes. And meanwhile, the family's nanny that helped Veronica to care for her and Lucian's children, was found bludgeoned to death in the basement of their family home. I'm Alicia and I'm Sierra and this is twisted and uncorked. See Lee, remember that you haven't that, don you know? D d.

Good, Oh my god. Constable Turns Cunning McConnell reported station office. Immediately he tet reported detective achieve Inspection Office. So detected consta belongs to them by report inspect the cameras Constables Turner, David cunconnell. So yeah, when we get back on the next episode, we'll be talking about the offense, which is another Sean Connery Sidney Lumett film.

So until then, where can people find you? And the things that you work on. Colin Gallagher, they can go to Colin Gallagher dot com and I think the most recent thing they will find and these they can go from there. They can jump to Modernsilentcinema dot com. And I have a new album coming out June first, Passages thirty three through forty eight.

If I can read my Roman numerals correctly, the lo fi recordings, instrumental stuff. It's the Passages series. Have started as solo piano and this is this one. I throw in a little bit of guitar and bass, make make it a little weird and noisy, but that'll be out June first. About you, Mike, Well, everything I do is available on the network.

You can get this show on which is weirderwamedia dot com, with the exception of the show that Chris was talking about, Raking on Bond, which wrapping up pretty soon. It's wrapping rapidly, So get on over to Chris's Patreon at patreon dot com, slash culture cast or my patreon at patreon dot com slash Projection booth and listen. If you're at the ten dollars and above level, How. About Chris, Mike, you did all the heavy lifting for me. So weird Media, yeah, thank you.

Weirdingwaymedia dot com is where you can go to kick a couple dollars. Well, no, I guess weirding Way Media. Jesus boy, I was My brain just was still on that track. I still was going to plug it anyway. Weirding Way Media is where you can go to listen to all the shows that are on the network, including this one and more importantly ADYCV Ladies, the Projection Booth, the Things that I'm Not, which are fantastic shows that are award winning in most of their cases.

So go give those a listen, and yeah, like, rate and review all of that on iTunes or Spotify, which is more than likely where you're listening to this, and if it isn't, please make one of those two where you listen you show. Colin, thank you so much for joining us. See you in a year, buddy, It'll be sooner. It'll be soon. Back to the vault with you.

No, I'm kidding. And and Mike, thank you for another great entry into Mike White May for the here so yeah, we'll catch you on the next episode.