Episode 787: Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds (1989)

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I'm your host. Mike White join we once again as mister Colin Gallagher Hardy also joining us as mister Rob Spencer. He needs legs. We continue our month looking at Australian films with Alex Proyce's feature debut, Spirits of the Air Gremlins of the Clouds. It's set where the Western desert lives and breathe in forty five degrees.

It's a sun baked outback science fiction, religious western starring Norman Boyd the Norm as Smith, a man who comes out of the desert and meets the Crabtree siblings Felix and Betty on the fringe of sanity. We will be spoiling the plot as it is as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruined, turn off the podcast and watch the movie. There's a really nice restoration out on Umbrella. I think you can get it through vinegar syndrome and come back after you've seen the movie. We will still be here.

So, Colin, when was the first time you saw Spirits of the Air Gremlins of the Clouds and what did you think? I am relatively new. I saw this in April of twenty twenty four when it played at the Spectacle Theater here in Brooklyn, New York. And I'm not paid say, but Spectacle, in my opinion, has the best programming staff in the city, and I trust when they play something. And I had never heard of this.

I didn't know it was Alex Perius's first film, and I absolutely loved it. I felt like something I'd been missing, Like I felt like, why didn't they know about this movie? So much of it perfectly aligns with my own interests in chamber dramas, in sort of weird frontier stories, and this to me felt like, I don't know if it's sort of Beckett's Waiting for Goodot or Pinter's The Homecoming, but in the same universe as a Mad Max movie, but far away from Mad Max's, like miles miles miles away. This is totally, you know, in a different zone, and it has that chamber drama feel. It's a little sad, it's a little funny, it's tense.

It really had a whole lot going on despite it only being three. People and rap hop about yourself. I saw it for the first time only about I think any about a year ago. I don't know when it was that Umbrella released their Blu ray, but as soon as I saw it advertised on the Vincent site and saw it was an Alex Proyers film I'd never heard of. I picked it up gone quite a big Alex proyis fan, some would say, to a fault, I defend some of his more indefensible films.

So yeah, I was fascinated by it, and I knew it was going to be something a bit different to his usual fare, because I thought if he'd made some other type of action film before The Crow, that would be a bigger cult hit at this point, given how well he did later on. And yeah, it was pretty much about as different from The Crow and I Robot as it's possible to be. Apart from having those beautiful visuals, it's just a gorgeous looking film. It's a film that I liked when I first saw it, and it has I think grown in my estimation over the last week or so. I've watched it two or three times with the various commentaries and so on, and it just looks better and better.

And once you understand the shape of it, I understand people get really impatient with this film because it's I agree with you, Cullen, there is a lot going on, but it doesn't proceed in a pace that traditional Hollywood storytelling will proceed it. And so I've heard the complaint that nothing happens. I think a lot happens. But once you understand the shape of how it happens and the nature of this three handed drama, you can just really bask in the vibe of the thing. So I think it's a grateful I remember hearing about this one a long time ago.

This was one that I got through tape trading circles. It might have even been and relievold from trash Video and Queensland who sent me a copy of this had to have been transferred from PAL. I think they used down there to NTSC and VHS did not do justice to this movie. I remember that it was very striking, but you really couldn't see through just the haze of VHS. So now with this restored version, as you guys both said, this looks amazing.

And to find out that this was shot on sixteen that they were trying their best to do wonderful, wonderful soundtrack. I think they were was it trying to do it in? Was it Doobe or it wasn't five point ones around that. I don't think that even existed, but they were like mastering on this Digibta format and stuff, and trying their best to push the limits of what they could do with the technology. And now they've remastered it, they've remixed the soundtrack.

They had a really wonderful preservation of it. It looks and sounds fantastic. This is a movie that I can't imagine colling you watching this in a movie, because I can't picture what these visuals on a huge screen must look like. It must take your breath away. It was overwhelming.

Yeah, just to be completely immersed, you know, pretty close to the screen so you could barely see the rest of the theater. It really felt like you were just you know, lost. And this incredible desert scape that it has the weirdest colors because it's not just blue sky. It has this weird green tinge to it that gets darker and darker as it goes up. It's almost like a reversal of like the ocean, like it has a real aquatic quality to it.

Yeah, it gets almost like a teal color towards the top. And I know that they use some filters when it came to some of the outside shots, but I'm just also very amazed by how well they blend the outside with these Monday Monday planes that they have, and then the inside, which is on a sound stage, and just you can't tell. It looks so seamless. And again, this is not made with a lot of money. This is his first feature film.

It sounds like it was shot on a shoestring. I mean, there's one story that they tell the main actor, Michael Lake tells on one of the extras where it's like Proy's coming up to him after a long take, going, oh, good thing, you got that in one because we ran out of film. And to find out that too, like so much of this was done a year later, with the special effects shots and how well they match. There's a whole plot to this around flight. And those miniatures of the flying machines don't look like miniatures to me.

I mean they, yes, I can see some strings sometimes, but oh my god, do they look great. And I don't know what's going on. But I was talking to Colin a little bit earlier in the week. We just covered. Last month a film called Aras a Dream and Arizona Dream starts in New York City, moves to Arizona, very arid part of Arizona, and at one point Johnny Depth, the main character wakes up and he's going past all of these cars that are on these poles that are out in the desert.

Meanwhile, in this you start with all these cars that are nose down in the sand, and there's this whole plot in Arizona dream about Fade Dunaway creating an airplane and trying to fly. And I'm just like, what the hell? How did I come to these two movies within like four weeks of each other. This is wild. The continuity is amazing, well they achieved.

He had like one camera out there in Broken Hill when he filmed it, and all the interior shots are filmed in the studio in Sydney, so a lot of distance in terms of time and space between those and it's just it's so seamless. But I also like it's a really interesting film. I think it's a very ambitious film artistically for a debut features. It seems quite miraculous that he was in and able to do it, and it's probably a testament, I guess, to his planning. But it sounds like they ran pretty close to the while on a few things, and probably they would have found a way around it.

But maybe nearly didn't happen, but I think the way he balanced it, like the way he gets into this film visual aspects like that, the contrast between it's all about contrast. All those desert scenes. You've got that blue of the sky, that weird blue of the sky and the red of the earth, and the figures kind of trapped between them. I know that's something Proyer said, he wanted them sort of trapped between these two extremes. But I think it's also mirrored in the difference between the exterior shots and the interior shots.

Where the interior of this house is. It's like a dark gothic space, even though it's all contained inside this little corrigated iron bush shack. It's very very dark in there, and it just gives it just such a strange vibe. The theatrical acting that is happening here. And it's interesting too that it's what I know that the norm Norman Boyd, he's Irish and a musician.

I don't think he'd acted in anything before Michael Lake British and coming over and being, you know, my main character here. And then I know Melissa Davis as Betty. I know she said she was born in France, but she definitely has a very Australian accent when they interviewed her in her role could be the most thankless role in the film, where she's just kind of over doing a lot of it. She's very, very loud, she's kind of off the chart when it comes to some of the performance, but when it comes to the makeup and everything, it kind of clues you in. This is very much a whatever happened to Baby Jane Betty Davis type performance And I'm wondering if Betty Crabtree is named after Betty Davis.

Here just like that over doing it of everything and Kabooki style makeup that she wears quite a bit. And it's so fascinating to see where some of these visuals come from. And I'm really glad Colin was tuning me into some of Prous's music videos and to see some of those images from earlier in his career, Like what was it the he did a video for Drop Bears called in Your Eyes and there's a person playing this violin or viola type instrument. And then like in Excess Kiss the Dirt, you have that wonderful blue sky with that wild orange reddish ground and everything. I mean, it's great to see how he was able to take that music video profession that he had and was able to use those same kind of clues and visuals, those themes that he wanted to work out inside of Spirits of the Air, and that he was using all of these people.

It was like a collective of people that were making these music videos with him, and it was like really the only viable thing for him to be doing at the time. It's like music videos and commercials were like the only outlet that he had for a long time before he was able to really break into motion pictures, and unfortunately, Spirits of the Air kind of came out and left very quickly. Other than being, as Tom Waits would say, big in Japan, what really did make a splash. Mike, Because you're talking about his background as a music video director and Rob you were talking about, you know, the pre production, just at the planning that he's so evident in all of the shots and compositions. I was really surprised to learn that Pray has got his start working in animation, which I haven't been able to find too much out about, but in some ways it does make a lot of sense, this real understanding of the edges of the frame and the relation, the spatial relationships of the objects.

I don't know if either of you were able to see. It's one of his earliest short films called Groping. I found it on YouTube. It's very disturbing. It's sort of his version of the Kitty Genovizi murder.

That's the legacy of Kitty Geneviez, who was murdered in Queens, New York in nineteen sixty four. Her story is taught in psychology classes, and her name is synonymous with people who look the other way when trouble happens. But the way he films it is all stop motion, but with real actors, and so they're moving incredibly slow, but it's framed by frame, so everything around them is moving fast. And he uses that same technique. And there is another video, a fad gadget.

It's Ricky's hand but it is I don't know. I just started thinking about the colors in Spirits of the Air. You know, some of the performances like it's not they're not totally grounded in reality. There is something almost little animated about it, even though the elements within the frame just completely, you know, they were really there in these environments, the props, everything. So I really like that sort of contrast between this exaggerated style in this you know, almost like pseudo documentary, you know, guerrilla style of filmmaking.

Yeah, it reminded me a lot of Terry gilliam stuff as well, and it's interesting that. Yeah, I don't think they're very naturalistic characters. They're obviously meant to be archetypes, I think. And you've got Smith the Boyd Norman character, where it's all everything is completely underplayed, where he barely speaks and it's all about his kind of laconic, almost non movement. But then you've got Michael Lake as Felix, and he's almost kind of Monty python esque too in the way that he acts in some of his mania, that he gets into what he's creating.

And I think it's I think it's really though, Betty Who. I think some people have a problem with that performance because it seems tonally weird because it's a reasonably serious film, But then she will just be having certain scenes where she seems in a completely different film. I think she's amazing, Like, I love the performance. I think it's really hilarious at moments, but it is unexpected a lot of what she does, let alone what she's wearing and the amount of makeup that she's got and all these costume changes she's got all the way through the film. I'm with you.

I love her performance, and as I've rewatched it time and again, her character, I actually come to like more and more. I sympathize more with her. There's a lot of depths that you can start to, you know, sort of peel apart when you start comparing the different characters to each other. Yeah, and I do think it is the most surprising and like perhaps shocking performance in the movie. You would not expect that.

But I absolutely adore her and it might be a little bit difficult to be her friend, but I would love it. Life would never be boring with Betty around. She's adorable, but she's always playing a role in every single scene. It seems like you don't know how genuine any of it is that she's saying. She's hard to get a bean on what's driving her?

You know? Is she just insane? What is she worried about? And then there's one scene towards the end where she goes and sits at the father's grave, and you know, that's her, That's just her. And I noticed that Alex Proyer said in the audio commentary he wished he hadn't layered the makeup on her again for that scene that should have been makeup free.

I think it works fine just as it is, but you can tell just from the performance, Okay, this is the real Betty we're seeing at this point. For some reason, she makes up all these fictious roles that she plays for an audience of one. I guess most of the time. The first time I saw it, I kept going back forth between being, well, Betty and Felix, who do we actually trust? Smith doesn't know either of them, you know.

Felix, you know, seems to have his own designs. He needs someone to help him realize this project. And Betty, you know, is sort of alternately treating him like he's you know, this harbringeror doom and destruction that's gonna ruin everything. And at other points she's trying to convince Smith that her brother's actually a serial killer and is going to be killing him. And at least the first time I was watching it, you know, it's like is there something to what she's saying, because we really have we don't.

There's no outside information to tell us which of the siblings is more grounded. If either of them is grounded. Her story is entirely plausible. When she pulls Smith aside and says, look, can't you see he is obsessed with trying to fly. You're not the first to come through here.

He's crippled himself doing it. He's now, at best you'll be crippled, but you may well be killed if he gets you out there. This is what he does. I mean, she might even that might even be somewhat true. We don't know if any other people have come through and embarked on this sort of exercise with Felix in the past.

Yeah. I really feel like Smith is the role that he is, which is a Western anti hero. He feels very and I know that Proyus was talking a lot about Leone. He feels very. Harmonica feels very.

The Man with No Name I would say probably more Harmonica than The Man with No Name when it comes to this particular film, because he actually plays Harmonica, but also he talks less. I think that Charles Bronson actually says fewer words. Than Clint Eastwood does in the Dollars trilogy. And yeah, he's got that trench code, he's got all the knives in there. Yes, he barely says a word through so much of this, And yeah, it is very le only in that the you know, it's like when there.

It was a time when I know everybody, that was a long time ago, when all this was prairie. But in these days, everybody's in a hurry. That's right. But you're damn good for nothing, drains, You're damn trains too. There are like characters in the Good, the bad, and ugly, like the guy with no legs, you know, Stumpy.

I think that he calls him and half soldier. I think at one point too, Felix feels a little bit like that. And yeah, Felix, that menia that he has is wonderful, and this whole idea of him needing to have another person to fulfill his dreams. And then meanwhile, you know, he's got his dreams, and meanwhile Betty's got her fervor, her religious mania and all of these crosses that are everywhere in here. And you just wonder what their relationship was with their father and how much he drove into them of their manias.

You know, both of these people are being persecuted by their dreams. It feels like one of the few insights we get to their perception of their father from Felix is he just says something like he just wanted to help people their dad. But there are all these signs around that he was some sort of not. There are crosses everywhere, like a long way. We know it goes a long way out because when the pursuers are coming for Smith, they walk past the crosses.

I think that's the first, isn't it the first of those miniature scenes, which is what days or weeks before the days I guess before the end. Of the film. I've made a note, who has created all this stuff out there? What is the purpose of these? I mean, I love that it's not explained, but you know that the car sculptures, that huge scaffolding out there, the flags.

I'm sure that you might ask Porious and he might say, oh, it's just there to look cool. But I love the depth and texture it gives to the films. It does have a sense of a world outside this place, which is really interesting, and also the mystery of what's on the other side of these cliffs. What's there? Is it like normal life or is it just nothing?

I mean, where is he headed in this flying contraption? At the end, it's the green place. It's full of obnoxious Australian kids. I think that's what's the Oh you're. Going to tell the tale now, I was talking about from Furia.

But oh, I'm so glad. I add that they don't over explain these things, because I think if they ever tried to, they just make things too literal. Like it is walking this fine line between being a sort of a post apocalyptic movie, but it's kind of a parable. It's sort of in a world that's recognizable. But at the same time, you know Felix's leather bound Book of Flight, you know that that's the equivalent to Betty's Book of the Psalms.

You start to wonder how long, or like what has passed, because clearly Smith has never seen an airplane or you know, that's complete fantasy to him, and it almost sounds like to Felix that in his lifetime airplanes might not have been real. You know, what's happened in this world? You don't know at all. I wondered that everyone acts like planes on a real thing. They all talk about them as if they're a mythical based It's.

Like we're being cast back into Icarus and Datalus territory. When it comes to this, it's like how many generations are they removed from flight? Had their dad seen an airplane or was he just holding onto this book or books? You know, it's almost a little book of Eli where it's like, okay, here's the sacred text kind of thing, but and nobody right now can read it. You know, it's been that long that we don't know what this even means.

And it's kind of the same thing, you know, Felix looking at these pictures, it just feels like he grew up like kind of like I was saying, like he grew up probably reading that book, and Betty grew up reading her Bible or reading her book of Psalms, and it's just like, okay, now, it's like, I don't want to say poison both of their minds, but it basically it becomes their obsessions as like the only thing that they can latch onto. And he's just hoping so hard. He's like, oh, well, this has to be real. Look at this book, and I'm amazed that he can actually even read. Yeah, they've each chosen their own belief systems with science and ones with religion.

And am I right in thinking that his book of Flight. I don't think there's any like clippings from magazines of photos of seven four sevens or anything like that. It's not necessarily this is not necessarily set in our literal future. It's a kind of a mythical boast apocalyptic world where I think it's all drawing, it's all conceptual stuff. So when Smith reacts to him with incredulity about his dream of flight, it's not he's not sort of saying, oh no, you're not going to be able to fly with just the resources that you've got at your disposal.

He's saying, fly is impossible. You can't fly. People don't fly. And that's where suddenly goes from science to magic because it feels like, you know, what's that old quote about what you don't understand is magic kind of thing. It feels like this is almost a book of spells for him when it comes to oh, yeah, well you just have to get this.

And then I love like his his orgiastic wind machine that he has with the little airplane that flies, and I mean he's basically having an orgasm. He's doing this with the plane flying and everything. And to hear again praise on that audio commentary talking about how the actor had like different levels of laughter and he could hit those every single time because they you know, they only had the one camera, so it's multiple takes putting this all together, and that he would nail that performance every single time. I still am sort of fascinated by the title, which the movie doesn't really fully address, the spirits and the gremlins, because gremlins, to my knowledge, comes from that's sort of talking about It's like early twentieth century sort of military talk.

These were the things that could get in to the engines and you know, cause problems. And what do you all make of those that juxtaposition of you know, spirits versus gremlins. It's a good point. I think it does mirror that science versus religion thing or spirituality at least spirits versus gremlins, which are yes, you say, I think they were a twentieth century weren't we grimlins? I can't remember.

I've read up about it once. The history of where this idea came from. It's not something that came out of medieval folklore or something like that. It's something much more modern and its inextricably associated with technology. So yeah, I don't know.

There's also the whole thing about clouds. I mean, I do find the imagery of clouds in this film quite incredible, just because, I mean, the skies that they got out there a broken hill when they were filming just feels like serendipity that they got this amazing. Maybe it's always like that out there. What were the skies like when you were young? They weren't on forever that when we lived in Arizona, and the sky's eyes had little fluffy clouds in them, and they were long and clear, and there are lots of stars at night.

But maybe they could rely on getting those sorts of skies. But the clouds just seem perfect. They seemed painted on at times, And I noticed Priya said in the audio commentary, this shot looks fake. It's not fake, And I really thought it was a couple of times. I thought it was some sort of real rejection or something like that.

When we finally see Felix's room and it's that beautiful art design in his room of all these clouds painted over the over the walls and the ceiling, And even now after watching this film about three or four times, it still feels like there's light emanating out of those things. They don't look like paintings. It's so well painted and the color is so perfect. I thought it was some sort of light projection up on his walls. We only see his room once toward the end right, which I thought was really interesting.

Because we see Betty's room several times. I would have to look at the chronology, and one of her rooms sort of looked like one of the rooms from the Crowded House video for Don't Dream It's Over. I think they call it the mission room because there's a lot of religious achiconography and candles. But he had seeing his room with the clouds didn't seem like that room actually belonged in that house. Even as you were talking, I sort of feel like delighting.

It looks like it's somehow differently and it does feel like a like a child's room, you know, somebody, you know, a kid that just dreams of being a pilot, And I don't know, it felt like we got to see a little bit of a softer, you know, more juvenile, idealistic side of Felix, because when he's you know, working with Smith, you know, he's using profanity, he's swearing, he's sort of like under his breath and be like hell and then be like, oh, hell, we almost got it. Like there seems to be this battle between the part of him that thinks he's going to fail, and then well, I have to pretend to be optimistic to keep my you know, my companion going. And then you see that room with the clouds everywhere, and he is just a child dreaming.

I like Boyd Norman's reactions to it all the way through those two because he can tell he doesn't ever I don't think Smith ever fully believes it's going to work. But I just think it's one of those situations where he literally has no choice. He doesn't believe in get up the cliff for whatever reason. Let's not explain to us. He has to get north.

That's the only option, so he may as well give it a try. So there's a sort of fatalism from his point of view. I think I think you're. Right, and even at the ends, not to skip around too much, but up until the climactic flight. He is sort of saying to Felix, like, you sure, I'm not going to crash and die in this thing.

This whole thing of him being pursued by these three unknown gunmen again very you know, they've got the trinity of the three gunmen, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly or you know, father son, Holy ghost kind of thing, or just those three gunmen at the beginning of Once upon a Time in the West, you know, and then you've got the three the trio, the trinity that we have with Felix and Betty and Smith. And I like that we have those contrasts between them, and I really do like what you're saying as far as like, oh, like how far out are the gunmen the pursuers when they come across those I mean, it's such a filmmaking one o one kind of thing where you set up like, okay, you pass by the church and then the school and then the firehouse, and then an hour and a half later, do you see these other guys pass by the church, the school and the firehouse, just to establish like what their path is going.

It's that classic chase type thing that you do, but to spread that out for so long and the use of those damn miniatures. They look amazing. I never would have thought that those were forced prospective shots. Looks so good. The first time I saw this film, I was like, I wonder where that those cars are.

I'd love to go out and see that. Exactly, because I mean I've been to Carhnge out in what was it, North Dakota or no, Nebraska, and it stopped by there and saw a car Henge. So when I sell these cars here, I was like, Okay, modernist sculpture kind of thing or folk art. I mean so much folk art seems to go through here, especially with like the mills and those like kind of nailed to the posts and everything. I mean, so much of these crosses feel like they were kind of what they actually were, which is, you know, a bunch of these guys on the on the crew out there with like gluing things onto these little crosses.

But they're little crosses. They're not these huge things that look like they just dot the landscape. Even the use of the telephone poles looks like it's a whole bunch of crosses. I was reminded a little bit of the way that Randall flag would crucify people on the telephone poles and the stand. Yeah, I was reminded of the cover of Bob Dylan's what's the album he did when he went Christian?

It Rember the one, but it's got telegraph calls that look like that. New Day Rising. Yeah, there's all these Christian imagery, but there's some hints of Buddhist imagery in there too. I mean the light it reminded me of t a Bet I. Not that I've been to Tibet, but to Bet I've seen on film had that similar sort of rurified atmosphere to it.

And there's there is a moment where you've got prayer flags on the side of the house and the crosses with this of double cross piece too. I'm sure that's something I've seen in Eastern Eastern iconography somewhere as well. It's a real mythical land of the mind, this and not to be taken literally in any way. And I think that's one of the keys to enjoy it and get on its wavelength is to think, Okay, we're just we're talking about broad sweep of ideas here, you know, stuff like what I was saying the light in the Dark, but also just this is a film about creativity and ingenuity, about creating stuff, and I wonder how much of it's meant to actually mirror the filmmaking process itself. The whole thing on the weather and the obsession with the weather and the wind is in particular something that seems that like a filmmaker understands.

And apparently they were very very lucky. I mean, I don't think it rains much in breaken Hill anyway, but when they went back, I think a year later to do all these miniature shots, it rained quite a bit. They had some real stresses getting that done. But if that dada happened on their principal shoot, I don't see how this film could have happened. So I did check.

It's Slow Train Coming, Selewly Tron Coming, that's it. New Day Rising is the Husker Do album. So I am ashamed that I should have gotten both of those were it? So I'm sorry, apologies to Husker Do and Bob Dylan. And you're right, I was just looking up Gremlins as far as when those came into the lexicon based on the German word germane, I believe, and then Yeah, they were very much a twentieth century invention for when people started flying.

The first gremlin I ever remember seeing was from the old Falling Hair cartoon with Bugs Bunny, where it's him versus the gremlin. Yeah, I thought you were going to say that's Twilight's episode. I think I saw the bugs body one first. Oh murder, what a yale. Man, little man.

He's say from crashing right because he runs out of fuel. You mentioning it is the first that's literally crossed my mind in god knows how long that I can see it in my mind, so I can see those images and yeah. Kind of getting back to the title, I mean, yeah, he mentions, or I should say, Felix mentions the whole idea of you know, when I was younger, I thought that when people died, they became clouds. So it's interesting that it's the gremlins of the clouds versus the spirits of the year, because, like you're saying, like the air is so important to them and to even look behind them at times, and after hearing the who is it the composer and editor? But god, everybody did every job on this.

It sounds like, but their commentary where they're like, oh, yeah, the windmill was tied down here to kind of show that there was no air, and just how important the wind is to this film is wild, and I mean that becomes literally the answer to their prayers at one point. There's still something weird about the wind. It took me a while to put my finger on what seemed weird about it. When he's got that little wind machine to understand when it's going, which is a great little a little thing that got kitted out with the motor. I think the weird thing about it is you will have in the background of those shots, you'll have Smith up on a scaffolding holding a big contraption that's gonna fly, and there's no evidence of any wind hitting him at all, So that the whole thing is given this weird, otherworldly thing.

We're you thinking, is there any wind? What difference is this wind going to make? I guess it's probably not necessarily something that happened by design. I think it's just it would have been very difficult for them to simulate wind in that way. But it sort of works again for the vibe of the film and the uncertainty as to is any of this real, because this seems like such a pipe dream that this is ever gonna work.

It's funny to say, because I never questioned the lack of wind whatsoever. I feel like it's the confidence of the storytelling. I'm going to tell you there's wind. I'm going to show you somebody. So I believed I had to tat me too.

But it took me like four watches before I thought what feels weird about this? And I never really thought about it. I was like, okay, because there is no evidence of the wind apart from that little thing. Yeah, you're right, it works. Totally works for the story.

Well, the whole thing of the guys who are in rental cars driving doing donuts out in the desert to get the dust to come in. That's such an assy way to make dust. All I have to do donuts without cars. And I love that They kept saying rental cars. I was like, this isn't our car that we're doing this too.

It's a rental car. Would you like insurance? Yeah, you better give me the insurance because I am going to beat the hell out of this. Everyone knows what you do rental cars. You cane the shit out of them.

They kept talking about the smoke machines that they had going, and that does add such an atmosphere to this when Felix and Betty are in her bedroom and she's all kitted up in the like Marie Antoinette type garb, and you can see the light coming through those painted windows, like her makeshift stained glass that she's got, and you can see the thickness of the light coming through those from that smoke that's hanging in the air. It looks gorgeous. And that's such an eighties music video thing too, which I you know, like Tony Scott did that, you know he was. He's famous for always putting that in his films and he came from it. Did he come from advertising or music videos?

I can't remember. I think advertising. I think him and his brother were into advertising. Yeah, you had mentioned the music videos before. There is a real especially this era in Australian music.

I mean Smith Boyd Norman. He really reminds me of Michael Hutchins from Early in Excess. I'm sure he had that hair. Even some of the aesthetic of the film reminds me of I don't think this movement ever had a name, but there was a general aesthetic around that sort of wasn't that alternative. It was quite mainstream in Australia, but bands like in Excess and Mental as Anything and Midnight Oil.

I was thinking of mid not Oil, some of the photography that they used the shit. That's why I dropped in a little Midnight Oil in my intro there. Oh nice, Yeah, because I knew it wasn't. The Western desert, but it's still probably at least forty five degrees, which I always that sounded incredibly cool. That's all right, that doesn't translate properly into American.

It also reminded me a bit of there was a There was a clothing label that was, I remember, really popular in Australia for a while called one hundred percent Mambo. Did you guys get this over there? Does this mean anything to you? Doesn't sound familiar to me. It was kind of like surf where it was.

They used to sell it in surf shops, which is where all the kids would go for the trendious clothes back in the sort of eighties and nineties when surfing was all the rage, pure adrenaline. They had artists. One of the artists was Martin Plaza from the band mental as anything, and they just had this weird, other worldly vibe to these pictures that this film reminds me of so much. So this very much, I'm I'm not at all surprised that Proy has came from music videos and that world, because this film is really steeped in that. I really liked that story that Michael Lake talks about in the interview with him on the desk where he was recognized so many years later and or he was recognized someplace that was in Australia or England and this woman comes up, she's like, oh, I know you, you're an actor and he's like, oh wow, I'm really getting out there.

And it's because he was in the in Your Eye short that Proy is directed for MTV that they used as basically a bumper. And I've talked about bumpers on the show before, like when I talked with Robert Longo for john Mymonik and just how amazing his bumper was that was on there with Steve Bushemi in it, or like even like Henry Selick when they would do Slow Bob and the Lower Dimension, like little clips of that as a bumper. And yeah, as soon as I saw the in your Eye bumper again. I was like, oh wow, yeah, this brings back memories of just seeing this, and I like how he was talking about how they were playing that next to Sean Andelou and I was like, oh yeah, I can really see that, especially well obviously the eyeball, but there's no I really I trauma in that one.

But I mean, eyeballs are everywhere in Proyus's music videos. Eyeballs and hands seem to be the big things for him. I need to actually go back and see which ones he did on in the couple that you mentioned, because I've never looked into that. Yeah, I wish that they had more of his shorts on this disc. That's one of the small complaints about this Umbrella disk, because otherwise it looks fantastic.

I also kind of wish that Prous hadn't been reading his commentary. I could tell that he had it all written out, but it's like, you can shoot from the hip a little bit more, but you know, it's still very interesting. I mean almost he writes very well. He doesn't honestly put but you can till it's written down. You're right, you fel he's reading it up and at least.

He had all the time incorrect as far as Glenn it was going to be on and what he was talking about. So he definitely put a lot of preparation in there. And I can't say, you know, I'm not guilty of reading commentaries, but you know, usually I try to make him sound like I'm not reading them. That's the trick. And then yeah, to have them poser as part of the other commentary at the music in this and just how inspired by the wind again it is, and that just layers on the atmosphere.

This score is fantastic. I wish it wasn't out of print. Someone really should bring this back, as you know, Mando or one of these companies that do those really nice like double gatefold LPs, you know, nice splatter like this could be a really beautiful edition. Yeah, and they recorded a like a single which you used the music is backing? Did you say that on the disc?

There's a whole music video that they did that was great. It looked like it was kind of behind the scenes, but I know it wasn't. But using the actors and using cliffs, Yeah, it was really well put together. Yeah, but apparently Peter Miller was saying in his commentary, because there's this disc has two commentaries, it's really really great release, and he's the composer. He was saying that the only mention of the school, and I think two reviews won by David Strutton and one in Variety was that the score isn't entirely underwhelming, which is so unfair.

It is completely unfair because this score adds so much to it and just I'd love to going back to Leoni. You know, like when they shot Once upon a Time in the West, they would play the music during the scenes, and I know that they had played the music for the actors before they would shoot stuff. So do you hear Felix whistling this? Later on you hear Smith kind of humming the song. So it's like so integrated into the movie that the characters themselves are aware of the score.

Certain sound effects in the movie that almost function like a score, Like when Betty is cutting the potato, just the sound of that knife hitting the board, and then it will cut to Smith and Felix having a conversation with just in the background you hear that unnerving irythmic chop, and then another scenes the sense it's like, is this actually the wind? Is this you know, trying to emulate the wind? Is this something else? There's always some sort of unsettling noise just beneath the surface. I think one of those is the squeaking wheels on Felix's wheelchair, which we're all added in post.

What a tedious job sounds like it was, Yeah, very tedious. It sounds like he really cut those squeaks go over and over and over again. It was like it was a roll of magnetic tape however long, and then I just had to keep, you know, repeating it. It's like, yep, yeah, that sounds about right, and it matches up well with the him actually moving in that chair. And frankly, I think that Michael Lake does a wonderful job manipulating his own chair.

It looks like he's been in that for half of his life. Are these incredible physical performance It looks really difficult. Just even the scene you were mentioning before with the wind tunnel where he's like shrieking and going crazy, that looks exhausting to me. I accept I'm not in the best physical so that someone sitting down and you know, pulling a flywheel. It looks really exhausting to me, but it is.

It's an amazing physical performance that he puts in. And I think, and what you were saying about the music, and my favorite moment in the film actually is in the climactic moment when Smith finally flies. Even though we've seen Michael Lake going manick all the way through the film, he raises it to another level when it actually works and he's there screaming and waving his arms around, almost completely incerrent at that point. But the reason that works so well, I finally realized after a couple of rewatches, is the music at that point is really beautiful. It really lifts a notch and it really adds some emotion to that to that moment.

So I think, I think the score is just fantastic for this film. It is so integral to everything that goes on, and just it could be it could be cloying, it could be annoying, it could be not that impressive, as the reviewers would say, but it just weaves its way in and out of everything so well that sometimes I'm like, oh, the music is playing now. I didn't even realize because it just it's ever well. I can't say it's ever present because it will dip out here and there. But here and there, but no, not literally going.

Yeah, well, I think so interesting about the sound design for the movie. As you all point out, it's always going, and yet it doesn't feel repetitive. There are themes that get interwoven, but it's not the same synth cues over and over, and there's different elements of sound within the frame. That's diegetic, that's you know, sometimes a little bit louder, sometimes a little bit quieter. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Betty's like I think you said, it's like her Marie Antoinette outfit.

She and her brother are having, you know, a bit of a fight, and in the background, you just hear this toy bird that's just incessantly making this noise and it's as loud as the dialogue, and it just doesn't stop. And then eventually, you know, Betty's sort of blows of hues and she starts literally deflating and she collapses to the floor and she's making the sound as if a balloon is dying. It's played pretty seriously, but then afterwards she's like, Okay, I feel better now, and Felix's reaction is so unsurprised. It's like, how many times has she done this exact performance before? Oh, this is her balloon deflating moment.

Oh, and I love his little knife twist and there is makes her come to kind of thing and she's like okay, yeah, I'll do anything or whatever. And he's like, good, it's your time to cook. And I'm like nice, he's got that little crooked grin on his face. I never would have thought that he wasn't Australian. He for me as an American, he nails that accent.

I've got a bit as an Australian. When I listened to the audio commentary from Alex Pros and he mentioned how he had to coach Boyd Norman and Michael Lake in sounding a bit more Australian than they already did because they lived there for quite a while, but they still had their Irish and British accents. I hadn't noticed. When he mentioned it. I was like, actually, I can hear the English accent in Michael Lake, but it's not Yeah, I didn't even notice.

Sorry, I wouldn't feel bad. Yeah, Norman Lake, this performance that he gives is just so killer, and it makes me want to track down more of his stuff. And I was glad too that he was in that in your eye short and just doing all that physical stuff, you know, because we don't get to see him stand up or walk around at all, and to see those that physicality that he's bringing to that performance where the eyeball is moving up his pant leg and I had forgotten that he's like kicking up his legs so high and doing the splits and everything. And I don't know if that was his body, because it's as I learned through this Proeus is great at doing body doubles. I didn't realize that it wasn't Betty who's playing her instrument at one point, you know, I almost wanted to say the viola, but it's not.

It's this weird bastardization of a stringed instrument. And I love that that's all not real either, all cueued in afterwards, like all of the screeching of that thing, which sometimes can sound beautiful, sometimes like at the very beginning she is really playing along with the soundtractor in those opening credits, and then other points that can sound just so discordant, but it really feels like it's all of her mental state. As far as visual elements in this film goes, there's a lot of great ones, but Betty herself is the thing that keeps wowing me. Just every now and again, she'll make it'll cut to her walking out with her weird loot violin thing, and she's got some new outfit on that we haven't seen before, and it'll be lit in a certain way.

They got a bunch of magic hourl shots which look really great in the film too, And it's just like, wow, this looks amazing. And there's part of me that thought, you know, without getting too literal about it, thinking, would you really if you live down in a place like this you sit around putting makeup on? And then I thought, well, what else is she going to do? She was, well, make herself up and change clothes. Probably watching YouTube tutorials and how do I make my hair look like Byork today?

If you can't guess what I am, you know inspired by is Bjork. I have loved Grajora for a very long time, and I think she's so talented and unique in the way she does her art work, which is her music, and I love the hairstyle. I used to rock this, believe it or not, back in the nineties when. I was a baby well, and some of their hairdos sort of look like sort of like Elsa Ancester and The Bride of Frankenstein. There's prois refers to as the mini skeet up where it's sort of this like almost like t bone like you know, forked bun Evan.

There's one toward the Inn where she's trying to do this, you know, sort of black lipstick, but the lips are off center, and there's just something wonderfully almost like adolescent about it, like she's she's seen maybe some stills of old movie stars, but hasn't actually ever had anyone to help her learn how to put on makeup, so she's still just trying to do it herself. That one really reminded me of. We just recently did Lady in the Lake on our podcast, The Raymond Chandler Story, and there's a bit in that where he upsets the fem fatale and she gives him a sort of sneering look and he says, to a eolistic song crooked. The first thing that I thought, what I thought. About, Yeah, her eye makeup reminded me a little bit of like a Nina Hagen.

And there's something about her body movement in general that I kept thinking of German expressionism, of from Metropolis or even you know, Conrad Vight in a Caligari. Sometimes her movement is very for products, not the ray word, but it's almost like she's a puppet. I think she had a background in performance art, didn't she She was with some French surreal performance art troop or something before, because she has not done a lot of film work, which is such a shame because I think she's absolutely incredible. Rhys Davis she had done. She had a role in Brian Tranchard Smith's dead End Drive, in which I love, which I also kept thinking of in this movie, because that's another movie about people trapped and all they want to do is get over a wall, and they don't know what's going to be on the other side of that wall.

I wondered if there was a specific reference to it, because there's the bit at dinner She's trying all these strategies to get rid of Smith, and at one point at dinner she just goes full on the offensive and says, what gives you the right to come here. We were fine before you arrived here. It reminded me so much of the the sort of the critique of you know, the anti immigration argument that you get in Dead in Driving, really really similar, and then I saw that she was actually in that. Yeah, I saw some comparisons with other post apocalyptic films, which there are plenty when it comes to this, and when you're talking about the German expressionism, I'm just like, Okay, later on this year we're going to be doing Dark City, which I think is majorly steeped in German expressionism.

So I can tell that he likes it, as is The Crow. I watched The Crow the other night, just thinking I had not seen that since it came out, and I thought, if I'm gonna be talking about PRIs, I really should revisit The Crow and the city and the Crow could be the same city as the one in Dark City. It's definitely got that German expressionism feel to it. It is not a real place. This is obviously something Preys loves settings for films that are not even trying to be a real place.

Oh, come on, that's totally real. That's that's Detroit. You know, there's all that sound Detrade in there and Devil's Night and all that. Yeah, it was prophetically yes, but yeah to jump on that as well. Yeah, some of those shots in The Crow.

I was talking McCullin earlier this week and I was like, yeah, I don't really need to watch that movie again because it's burned in my brain. I mean, the shot of Brendan Lee along the rooftops and you've got that nine inch nails cover of Dead Souls by Joy Division. I mean, that is one of the most striking moments in that film for me, and I will never forget that because it just was, Wow, what is happening here? This is great. Brice has such an incredible eye for the iconic visual and I mourn his wherever he is now and whatever he's doing, because he seems to have kind of dropped away.

I don't know if Gods of Egypt did his career in completely or hasn't he been saying some in advice things. I don't know. I don't give up with all that sort of stuff. There's a movie in production now. It's called ru Are and it's based on the old play by Carol Koppek or cop Check.

I can't remember. How it is. It's basically about robots, which is funny since he might be revisiting the eye robot world of it and I robot. For me. It's not a terrible film.

I've seen it several times. It could be way better, but it's not as bad as some people make out, and it could definitely be worse. Same thing with Knowing. I've watched Knowing this week, and all I remember from that movie is everybody talking about how awful the end was and there's a twist at the end, and I'm watching it, I'm just like, there's no twist. I know exactly what's happening, to the point of my wife chagrin, where it's just like, oh, well, this is going to happen, and then this will happen, and this will happen.

And I don't think i'd seen it before, and I don't think i'd read a prophecy written by a little girl in the fifties that was put into a time capsule and dug up thirty years later and translated that into the script of Knowing. That's not the case, but I can't remember if I've seen Gods of Egypt or not. I think it just got lumped in with a bunch of other kind of slop from other music video type people. I know, I love Tarsum, you know, listen to our episode down in the Fall, but I think he also did something sloppy like that too, And it's just like to the point where I was getting I was actually getting Prois Tarsum, and then oh and then David Towhey for all for whatever reason, I guess just because of Pitch Black.

I was like, oh yeah, Pitch Black and Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Crowd Clouds, Like, I can see how those two movies are related, but they're not. They're not at all. Well, that's awesome seeing carlol is really good because yeah, Gods of Egypt is Prais's immortals in a way, it's like total I quite like Gods of Egypt. I understand it's very bad in many ways. Again, it's prois design.

For the visual it has a lot of striking visuals in that film. A lot of it is bloody ridiculous. And I used to defend that by saying, oh, yeah, I don't think he had much of a budget, so he did pretty well. And then I found out later that he had a massive budget for that film, but I still think it looks kind of good. And Knowing as well is a film that I haven't watched since it came out, but at the time I was slightly surprised that everyone hated it because I thought it was quite quite good.

So I'm clearly just someone for whom Prius's films just kind of worked for me. I think whatever he's trying to do, whatever else you want to say about him, you don't mistake PRI's films really for anything else. And they are miles away from the big budget, blockbuster films we're getting these days, even Gods of Egypt. But at least I had the self respect to be its own thing. You know.

It was nothing like a Marvel film. It really wasn't, and that's why people probably didn't like it. I'm glad that you called out Immortals. I could remember the name of it though. When you said Immortals, I thought Eternals, and I was just like, oh, giving me like another type of flashback.

It also reminded me a little bit of that shit remake of Clash of the Taittans. Oh yeah, yeah, that's the stuff. That's yeah, Gods of Egypt is way better than those. All right. You may have tuked me into actually going back and rewatching it.

So I was having a real eight with myself and Colin, I know, was like, do I need to watch that? I'm like, I'm not going to talk about it. So I'm not going to sit through that at all because I just remember the trailer looking like CGI garbage. Get ready for a lot of CGI. I hope you don't curse my name when you do watch Gods of Egypt.

Has anybody here seen Garage Days? That's the one that seems like an outlier for me. Filmed in my old neighborhood where I lived, where they were filming that. I can remember seeing vans about the place and is it Pia Miranda who's in that? Cant remember the actresses name.

He was looking for a La Brandy and they filmed scenes in my local pubia. That's all filmed around Newtown and thenmore in Sydney. It's probably somewhat lost in time now. It was about a specific, very specific time period in the late nineties early thousand, so sort of a little bit grungy, in a sort of post grunge in that very inner city, very Sydney, which is my hometown. So that's kind of why I love it.

But he does get to do a bit of cool special effects stuff just because I think it's to do with them taking a lot of acid at some point, so there's some pretty cool hallucination scenes. But generally, no, it's just about a band. I think it's not a sort of the normal fantastical stuff he does. Yeah, that's why I was calling it the outlier. I was just like, this doesn't seem like it was made by the same person.

When I was reading the description of it, I was like, what is this feels like Garage Days or something or SLC punk or something. I'm like, this does not seem like And I know unfortunately, Prius had a real hard time in his life between with the Crow and all the tragedy that went on with that movie and then and we'll talk about this later on. This year, Dark City was not really embraced other than by Roger Ebert, who would not fucking shut up about that movie. And it was like, Roger, if you say Hoop Dreams or Dark City to me one more time, my god, I'm gonna have words with you. I think that's just Roger e.

But it was his version of moral licensing. It's like, see, I like one movie like that. I like one a horrid fi five thriller things, so I can shitcat every single other one that I say though. And yeah, I know I Robot really got shit on when it came out. But I mean it's it's a decent detective story.

Yeah, I saw for the first time last night, and I enjoyed it a lot. I mean, Will Smith is terrific and charming as always. He just seems like a forties detective. He has that anti authoritarian yet he's still a cop attitude. Yeah, it is kind of a noir plot, so I mean, it seemed like this fits in with the Crow in Dark City.

And then I read that the original version of that script was actually like one detective interviewing a room full of robots that had committed a murder. And it's like, okay, that sounds fascinating, and you know, it seemed a little bit closer to the spirits of the air territory of the sort of chamber drama limited cast, and I know, you know, had some studio interference, and I Roba went through umpteen writers and you know, different directors, So I know that the book. Does not resemble a sort of Hollywood action through a love while that one is in any white type or form. In fact, it's a book of short stories, isn't it, But none of the stories. To your point, Rob, earlier, you were talking about his eye for visuals.

I remember just thinking, during the you know, the big climactic battle, the camera's doing some like weird three sixty stuff, moving around the set in really unusual ways, complicated camera setups that I would think most people would avoid because it's just all this extra work. But it was really beautiful to watch and kind of gave a dynamic sense to these scenes that sort of elevated it from your typical early two thousands, you know, studio sci fi action extraganza. Yeah. Absolutely, he loves doing that. I'm in the Crows one of that as well.

Isn't it just these sort of sweeping bird's eye shots. He's always trying to do something interesting. That's what I love about Preuce. He could have just easily fallen into this James Mangold status of just safely churning out whatever his studio bosses wanted him to churn out. But there's a sense of the auteur about the guy, even though he has existed apart from this film we're talking about Tonight almost solely in that sort of big studio mass appeal to market.

I do like how in knowing he makes it as Australian as an American film can be with like rose Byrne and Mendelssohn and I get there was another Aussie in the cast. I was just like, all right, yeah, to be Frank. I did not know until I was watching that movie and looking up things that Rose Byrne is Australian. I always thought she was American. So one of these days I'll have to catch her original accent.

A good one to check out is Two Hands, the Heath Ledger film she's in in that that's a sort of crime film sit in Sydney. You will get the full the full Assie Rows in that. Yeah, Heath Ledger also Australian, and I always forget that because he puts on that brilliant Midwestern accent in the dark Knight, you know, and just how he affects I mean, he sounds like he's from the neighborhood with some of the nasal performance that it gives he could do an Americans. Serious, you don't be sarcastic. No, I thought that he did one of the best accents, and like when he's even doing the accent and broke back Mountain, I mean I heard no Australian in his voice whatsoever.

Actually, speaking of Heath Ledger's The Joker God that was based a lot on The Crow, Brandon Lee watching The Crow the other night, I was like, this is the exact looks exactly what the Joker, the Heath Ledger Joker amazing. Well, we were talking about phrase his vision. In interviews, he kept citing Lawrence of Arabia and two thousand and one as the two movies he saw when he was like eight years old that made him want to be a filmmaker. Any I think you can still see that in a lot of these movies. Sort of interest in technology, in science and camera movement, wide open spaces, confined spaces, sort of natural landscapes, artificial ones, intimate, and the epic.

He definitely draws on these influences because he mentions at the beginning of ad audio commentary, he mentions his influences. First one's Leoni obviously, but then he mentions old Topo absolutely woman in the Junes. Yep, even cul de Sac he mentions, and I can see that Helen the Pacific is another one he mentioned, which I've never actually seen, so I don't know either one. Well, he must be and must have been a big film fan, because tracking down I mean, okay, yeah, I know he's from Sydney, and I know Sydney is a great city. From what I understand that as great as Melbourne.

I don't know, everybody tells me that, but track down al Topo. Hopefully it was playing someplace in Sydney, because tracking it down in the eighties was so difficult. Like I remember the first time I watched al Topo, it was a It was a rented VHS tape, completely illegal. You could tell it was recorded off of a Japanese laser disc because I had Japanese subtitles in the few bits of dialogue and then all of the nudity, like the monks that are getting sodomized, like that's all blurred out. So that was my first experience watching al Topo was this Japanese laser disc transferred to VHS.

So speaking of another movie that really benefits from its visuals. Yeah, that was a shit experience, but at least I got to see it, And yeah, seeing that movie was tough. And I was so impressed that Proyus was just name checking all of these great artists and directors and films throughout that commentary, because yeah, you can tell, like he seemed like a cinematic sponge. He had mentioned that he was originally intending to have those three trackers confront you know, the main characters at some point, which I'm you know, he said in the interview, we didn't have the budget. I'm so glad he didn't have the budget because having like a traditional high noon showdown, We're going to just spoiled this.

Like I love, you know, the way it ends, where you know they're sort of approaching, but Felix just sort of like looks up in the sky and you don't find out what happens. That's when you find out that Felix is actually a serial killer. And then cut to them having beans with a little bit of meat that time. I big back on our menu more. I love that cellar full of beans that you get, and then the plates later on all stacked up with all the being remnants on there and you're just like, yeah, how many cans of beans.

Do they have? And then to find out that Heinz sent them cases of They're like, how many cases do you want? It's like, this is a movie. We want our names splashed up on. This is perfect for beans.

Yes, yes, as presented by Heines. Yes, this is a you know made me double down. I'm a Heinz buyer. Now you supported Spirits of the air, Gremlins of the clouds. I am only buying Hines ketchup from now on.

I'm just gonna make a John Carry joke there because I remember that whole ketchup. Thing I did. It's all Heins. It's all beans and potatoes. I don't where they get their potatoes from.

But yeah, I imagine kind of a Martian situation with their poop good call on high noon and the soul sense of dread and they become the ticking clock, you know that, the you've got that those edits to them of like okay, now they're passing the flags and you're like, oh, okay, we've seen those before. We know that what the next one is. And yeah, to have this sense of dread and is he going to make it over that wall, those cliff walls, and to your point, what's on the other side, we don't know, and we never get told, and I love that we don't get told. And I also love this whole idea of we don't know what happens when those three guys show up, and I like that they have the little line that Smith gives like they won't hurt you.

But then I'm like, I can't remember who on which commentary says you know, is now Felix going to be like, oh cool, three more guys that I can teach. To make planes. I'm like, that'd be a real shot in the r for Smith, right, But okay, I guess it would take a few more weeks. And then maybe one of them would want to play dress up with Betty. It was weird.

I'd heard that apparently, you know, we didn't mention the gargoyles. One of the elements of the on It's really Weird is the gargoyles around the house. And this is it's a team bush shed, not the sort of thing that you would stick a gargoyle on top of. I heard on one of the commentaries they were saying that there was four of them, and they were meant to represent the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. And then I thought, well, why is there only three guys coming?

Surely that seems a perfect opportunity to mirror there the four horsemen of the Apocalypse coming for them. But then I noticed how a rewatch you can only see three gargoyles. So I don't know if this was just a serendipity thing where maybe one of them broke apparently made out of polystyrene, and then probably thought well, now I only have to cast fine three guys to play these because I think it was the composer, the production designer, and something like someone else. Everyone did you know, double triple, quadruple duty on this film. I mean, maybe Smith broke away from them.

Maybe he was the fourth horseman and he said nope, I'm not going to do this anymore and broke away. I don't know. Because he's such a man of mystery, we never really get to know very much about him at all, which again I'm. Like, yeah, isn't it great that we can wonder about these things instead of having it been instructed to us by Christopher Nolan or whoever. All of these would leave no root for ambiguity at all.

We know exactly what was going on. Oh, and then I'd make a YouTube video all about it. It'd be great for those He didn't get it the shocking ending, explained, It's like, I think everybody knows what happened here. Thank you. Oh I'm still debating with my friends about that top.

Does that top fall? Did you hear it fall? What could that mean? We need to know? Obviously, independent film crew, very limited budget, very limited amount of time to shoot this, and they are capturing the morning and the night.

They are working through this entire thing. I don't know when they shot at how close sunrise and sunset were to each other, Like right now feels like they're four hours apart. But they were definitely working long hours and that they almost burned down the set with all those candles. Holy shit. Practicality and pragmatism was not a major overriding factor in the design of this production, I don't think, which is one of the things I love about it.

It's about the idea and what they wanted to do. Peter Miller was saying, how there's a couple of shots in there which I think looked great, where he sort of said, yeah, we didn't quite get the magic out for that. We were a bit late. Mentajna light on it kind of ruined. The shots not that good.

But there's one in particular, which is just a shot kind of out of nowhere of Betty looking in a window and know if you remember it, and it's it's sort of magic our but it's a bit late. It's got a bit dark, and you can tell the image quality isn't quite there. They may have thought that wasn't a good shot. It's one of my favorite moments in the film because it just looks incredible and it's sort of inexplicable. I mean, it's explicable from a story point of view, but it's just why is it there?

Is that when Smith is making the sandwiches and she comes in and starts trying to spin her story and he's like, you're squeezing my sandwich that line, and then she does realize and you know, moves it. Yeah. Yeah, And that's when he smacks a kiss, order, isn't it, which is just an act of aggression, I guess, yeah, just to shut her up, I guess. But I like a reaction. I was sort of I made a note that you know, I might not be the world's greatest love of it, but I know if like you said, woman and acts that way, it's not going well, it's not happy.

No, he's kind of an asshole. Well, I mean, what's he on the run from? You must have done something again, we'd have a note from the beginning. He steals, he steals the food. Yeah, and it's really only seeing Felix fall over in his wheelchair that kind of stops them from just stealing stuff and leaving.

Well, he realizes, but again he's trapped. He is entirely motivated by self interest through the whole thing. Really, I sort of felt like I had an affection for all the characters equally throughout the film, But it's only where you look back at it and think, well, he may well have been a just a complete scumback, but the fact that they were working together and trying to create something makes you kind of root for them. His occasional moments of vulnerability, like there's a bit where he's sitting up ready to have his first attempt at flying and he's saying come on mate to Felix. He's waiting for the wind to get to the right level, and Felix says right now, and he goes, oh, well, now that's like he's suddenly scared to go.

He's not the sharpest tooling the shed. Like when he's trying to learn, you know, how to use the stick. He doesn't want to learn how to use the rudd. He's get to the stick, get to the stick, and he can't remember how to move up and down. It's really a wonder that he didn't kill himself the first time he went up.

You were talking about those magic Hour shots and maybe didn't quite work. I'm curious about the one where it's not when she's in front of her father's grave. It's earlier where she's well, she might be in front of his grave, but from a different angle, and it's a little darker for that one. But yeah, she does have a light shining on her and it captures that makeup so well. Just that light makes her look like she's almost like a wild animals when she's got that what you were saying, like the split bun in her hair, and that's just is so remarkable, that outfit, that hair, that make up that whole combination.

And that's the sandwich part as well. I think so right before the sandwich part is what I'm talking about when it comes to her with that what looks like a light on her and yeah, it almost reminds me of like driving down the road and capturing an animal in the headlights. I really do think in terms I've said it before, but in terms of art design elements in a film, I just think the work that was done on Betty's character by her in her performance and also costume and makeup. I mean, it's that's one of the things where you watch this film and think this is too good for This is not the sort of thing you normally see in a low budget, so financed debut feature. No so ambitious.

That's the thing that I really like is just the ambition. I mean that you see that come out in first time filmmakers so many times. I mean, you're Robert Rodriguez, is your Sam Raimi's just like that first feature where you are so hungry and also somebody that's coming to this from a world of short films, and like you said, all an animation and all these music videos. I mean, it's just like, Okay, now I'm finally ready for this. Now I'm going to do it.

And they just balls to the wall the whole time out. And this is such an interesting way, you know I talked about I just mentioned like the genre films that are usually those first time films, and this kind of is a genre film when I mentioned all those words like sci fi, a post apocalyptic western, you know, all this kind of stuff, but it doesn't deal with those trappings nearly as much. It kind of just uses little bits and pieces where it needs to. It doesn't really play in genre that much. Sometimes this movie reminds me a little bit of something that like an Alex Cox would do with what is a street from hal or something.

But I'm just like, this one feels so much hungrier and so much more contemplative. And it's it's got Western elements, but it definitely doesn't feel like a Western. It's got science fiction, but it doesn't feel like a science fiction film. I mean, even when they take off from the final flight, I guess what it really reminds me of as magical realism. Like when you see that plane coming down, you just expect it to go whoop right off and then crash right into the ground, But that becomes the one moment like it looks so not promising, and I love that they did that on purpose, that they made it look like it wasn't gonna take off, but then when it finally does, you're like, oh wow, okay, this really is happening.

Now you don't expect that, you do expect the crash, and you know, you're talking Colin about like what's reality, what's not. It's like if if we weren't in a dream before, it feels like we are in a dream. As soon as that plane takes off. That shot of the the you know, the final moment when they get the plane aloft and they've set up this entire contraption, this rant for it to go down. It was on.

It's on the second commentary. I think it's Peter Miller says, this is crapt. This shot doesn't work, and I can see why because as it's going down the wrap towards the last bit that goes up, it's already slowing down for it's cut to the so you can tell. But I would still argue it sort of still works. As you say.

It gives it a sense of none of that shit matters in this film. If the plane's going to take off, we know it is this is a bit of magic that's going to happen. I appreciate the effort they went to to create all that stuff. That's all part of the apparatus of the procedural of how they're getting the plane off. It's all part of the creative process.

We don't actually have to see it work exactly right. It's not that kind of film. All right, We're going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages. Looking for something superior to streaming, a place with more than five times the selection available on all of the streaming services combined, check out Scarecrow Videos rent by mail service, select from an unparalleled collection of over one hundred and fifty thousand films and get blu rays, four k's and DVDs delivered directly to your door. Get in on it now at scarecrow dot com and rediscover the wonders of physical media.

Just to cry, say two hundred too many bloody, but it's ours Astralia. Our first breaki with your new hobby. I'm my tr husband, We're not married. You what you see the photos staying up a heading A gay can't even to me except you asked. Me what I don't I'm right, she said what I say?

I love it. I want you to be happy. He teddy. That's my prayers. The seven o'clock years, guys, Whoop Whoop doesn't exist, and that's the way we like it.

Nobody leaves here without my commission. That commission is never given. This is a kidnap. That's right. We'll be back next week with a look at Welcome to Whoop Whoop as we conclude our Australian month.

Until then, I want to thank my co host Robin Cohen. So Colin, what have you been up. To, sir? Doing lots of music stuff, several new albums over at www dot Modernsilentcinema dot com. In December, I put out three.

The first was a soundtrack to Matt barryfilm called Surveillance Film. Then I put out sort of a remixed version of an older soundtrack I did for his film The Manu Stopped and Stared at the Clouds, which was sort of a slow cinema film, and it was all originally classical guitar, and I went back and chopped it up and added some other elements to flesh it out, and then The third album was called Flesh Mother, which was something I recorded back in two thousand and nine, which was more of a when I was listening to like Boris and like a lot of heavier music. And then I'm not sure what date to this episode is coming out, but in early February, I have a new project debuting called Hollywood Extras, which is a collaboration with Matt Berry, who's a filmmaker based out of Baltimore, and we are a guitar and bass or improvisational duo and we perform with remixed versions of early films, so a lot of like Segundo de Cheman, Alice Gee, Melieis And we're going to be performing at Millennium Film Workshops here in New York.

The gig is actually the Saturday, February seventh, but the album will be out by the time this episode drops. So yeah, Hollywood Extras and Rob, what's. Going on in your world, sir? The podcast I do with my with my co host Joe Caliber nine from Out of Space, where we focus on cult exploitation. We take the definition of cult very broadly, so we will usually cover a double feature we put together every week where we just about to have a guest on.

Been very privileged to have mic on a number of times, and you're on our one hundredth episode. Yeah, that was brilliant where we talked about Sisters, brother from Another Planet and Twins of Evil, the Hommo film, which was great. And I think when this episode is coming out, I think next up will be we will have just released our episode on a couple of swing sixties British swinging sixties films, Smashing Time and Haunted House of Horror with Justin Kurzwell from the Hysterio Lives podcast is our guest for that. And coming up we will be doing a double feature of Creature from the Black Lagoon and its second sequel. We skip the first one, the Creature Walks among Us, but looking forward to that one.

That's a good Yeah. Yeah, Smashing Time that's got a real different meaning these days. Yeah, it sure does. Yeah, this one does not feature the rock Oh no, sorry, that's the Smashing Machine. Yeah.

Oh that's right, that's right. I was thinking of netflicks and chill or something like that. I don't know how the kids they say smashing stuff. So, oh do they? I'm not up with the kids, so I have no idea.

Next week, the word root gets it re explained to me. You know that whole idea of and I found out about rooting in Australia from. That's gonna say, that's me, that's I know wise ready does? I only knew that because of Payback, that Mel Gibson film, because the tagline in the America was It's time to root for the bad guy. It's time to read the bad guy?

Do we really want to do that? All right? Thanks again for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to support physical media and get great movies in the mail, head on over to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by meal service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world.

You'll find films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want when you want on it without the scrolling. And yes they have Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the clouds. If you want to hear more of me shouting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I'm working on. They are all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com.

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From the city, just to times from THESS, take side, shoe silences lots nys suny bening. So I said, let's see with Richar.