Episode 806: The Postman (1997)

Hey, this is Emily sowderback of Scarecrow Videos Viva Physical Media. All right, this is Matt Lynch, co host of Viva the Projection Booth. Podcast is sponsored by Scarecrow. Try out Scarecrow Videos rant by mail service. Choose from over one hundred and fifty five thousand films and get Blu rays, four k's and DVDs all delivered directly to your door.

Visit Scarecrow video dot Org today. Oh ge is bot it? Show Die? People pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater.

They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booths. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. In the future, after the Great War, our civilization lies and ruin. Government does not exist, Technology has been erased, and everything man remembers is gone. Out of the chaos, a lawless army will arise to prey on the few survivors.

But two a people who have lost their hope. You are a dangerous man. I can see it in your eyes. He will give them courage. I have a feeling about you.

He will restore their memories of the past. It's the individual that counts These people don't need dreams, they need help. Are you gonna bring them that good? I want him? Bout I want him, don't Well, he will unite them.

You have a gift Postman with a. Message of freedom, my challenge for leadership of the clans. You know what I'm get you. What? Kevin Costner, Academy Award winning director of Dancers with Wolves, brings you an epic new vision of our future.

There coulda be new on this coulda be pain. Welcome to the Projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again as Ms Emily and Travia Hey. Hey.

Also back in the booth is Ms Carol Bordon. Hey, how you doing. It's the epic adaptation of David Brynn's novel The Postman. Directed by and starring Kevin Costner. The nineteen ninety seven film runs almost three hours.

It's a tale of a lone traveler who masquerades as a postman to bring hope and order to the tribes of post apocalyptic survivors. Unfortunately, he's opposed by the corporate reader General Bethlehem played by Will Patton, can American values topple the extremist movement or will the cinders of America be run by armed, racist survivalist assholes. Honey, I want to know the answer to that question right now. We will be spoiling this three hour extravaganza as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast and come back after you've made it through the wilderness. You have been warned.

So Carol, when was the first time you saw The Postman and what did you think? Strangely enough, last week was the first time I saw The Postman on paper? It is such a me film. I enjoy westerns, I enjoy a slow burn. I like a post apocalyptic movie with a drifter guy, and I love usps like I am all about postal service.

And I did not enjoy this movie at all. And Emily, how about yourself. I'd say, similar to Carol on or, I should have loved this movie and seen it when it came out. Not so much because I love a slow burn or western, but because I love a post apocalyptic story and I I guess it's a guilty pleasure, but I'm not embarrassed by anything I love. Kevin Costner stars in two of my favorite movies of all Time Field of Dreams and Robinhood Prince of Thieves, which I know is the mess of a movie.

And I know Kevin Costner is not always a great artist or in any way a great actor, but I am charmed by him on screen generally, so there was no reason for me not to see him in a three hour post apocalyptic ethic. But when it came out, like I would have been fifteen, and it's not an age that I could have gotten any friends to go see this movie with me. So for years I would catch bits of it, because oddly enough, it used to air a lot. I lived in Korea for a year in two thousand and five six, and it was always on Korean TV. I don't know why they loved The Postman.

So I would catch a lot of chunks of it, and I still couldn't piece the whole thing together. And I knew enough of common consensus that it was known to be dull, and I could not commit to giving myself three hours of dullness, even with all the other things that we're going to add up. So for me, the first time I sat down and watched it, granted in three sittings, was this weekend. I am also new to The Postman. This was a first time watch for me, watching it for the show, because I think by nineteen ninety seven I was kind of why.

I don't want to say I was done with Kevin Costner, because I really liked a lot of his films when I was coming up in the world. I think I'm probably older than both of y'all, but really enjoyed things like you know, bul Durham, The Untouchables. Silver Auto, He's greated. Oh he's amazing, young, sexy, athletic. Kevin Costner was a really fun thing that was hard to resist, I think for us of a certain generation.

And then you get into the nineties, where like I liked Dances with Wolves when I saw it, I don't think it deserved to win over Goodfellows for all the awards that year at the Oscars, but the Oscars a our whole other thing. Really enjoyed Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. I liked JFK quite a bit. I mean it played into his soul as like boy scout persona, this Jim Garrison role he was playing. Never saw the Bodyguard, but I did see a perfect world, and I hated a perfect world and then I didn't see whyde Er, but I did see water World, and I actually really liked water World.

I mean, I love all this apocalyptic stuff. And so I don't know why I never saw The Postman other than possibly tin Cup, which I hated worse than Poison. I don't know if you all remember the end of tin Cup where he just refuses to do something. He just is like the most pig headed person in the entire world, and I'm just like, fuck you, Like his character was one of the most annoying characters I've ever seen in my life. And yeah, I just hated that movie.

So I think I kind of based on that. And then also, you know, I mentioned the three hour running time multiple times in the intro, which, you know, hey, three hour movie I have no problems with. You know, I talked about. Good three hours. That's fine, Yes, I'll watch that week seven Samurai.

Yet there are so many good long movies, but The Postman. I felt every fricking minute of The Postman. It really is a slog. Part of it was. I will say this is a movie that benefits from breaking it up.

I think sitting down for three hours and watching this would have been hard whereas watching it one hour and the next one hour and the next one hour helped a lot. And for me this this could have been a slog, but I think approaching it in this regard where reading a lot about the making of it, going into it knowing we were going to really be dissecting it allow me to watch it on one hand from a kind of Okay, I am taking notes, I am noticing little things, but also it somehow made it that much we're fascinating a watch with how much it fails. I guess because it tries. You cannot accuse this movie of phoning it. In this movie dries.

Now everybody is not trying the same direction, and even Kevin Costner is not at time, like you wonder his efforts are going in one place. It feels like he has kind of, at this point in his career decided, I know I'm I don't need to worry about my performance. I know I'm good enough. I'm just gonna work on everything else. And so it's like Kevin Costner doing the same Kevin Costner things he's done in all of these movies that we're mentioning, and it doesn't work because this world is so weirdly ill defined for it being a post apocalypse.

Also, like I hadn't thought about this before because I similarly watched it in three segments and I became interested in why it was not clicking with me and what they were trying to do. When you talk about Kevin Costner doing his Kevin Costner things, like, you, guys, I have Kevin Costner movies I really like. I have ones I don't like as much. I think once he got more control, like because he had become a big star, he miscast himself sometimes and this feels miscast to me. But also like, do you guys remember clip shows where like at the end of a season of television they'd be like, we're going to show you all the best bits from this season of the Office or whatever.

When you were talking, I'm like, oh my god, it's like he's doing an actor's version of a clip show. Sometimes he's like, here's the part where I'm sexy and I'm smising into her eyes. And here's the part where I'm making like an off the cuff joke about how ridiculous. Yeah, here's where I'm doing a dad joke. Here's where I'm turning my hat backwards, but he doesn't have the cast on the same page as him.

Like, he's trying a lot of things and he's not choosing, and he's the director, so he really has to be making those choices, and and he's making choices for the other actors because he's the director, and they all come off. Will Patton, who plays the fascist, white supremacist militia general General Bethlehem, because they called him Nathan, and I'm like, is he supposed to be like Nathan Bedford Forrest? And then I'm like, why don't they make that more clear? Because he kind of is. When the movie wants him to be more villainous, they make him more racist.

It's almost that thing that I feel like a lot of shows have done the last couple of years, where when you've created anti heroes they've gone too far you have to bring in like white supremacists to make them look better, Like Breaking Bad does this some the matter? He did this, And it feels like a little bit with this where like Bethlehem seems that I mean, because I think he's a fascinating character. I mean, there's a very strong, flingering thing that I think we have to discuss about him, but the idea of him being racist feels really convenient to making him more villainous. Not to say this is a dumb thing to say, but like, oh, he feels too educated to be racist. You're a survivalist.

How would really white supremacy help you in this scenario? It it doesn't feel like thought out with ultimately what we get on screen. I have a weird little background where I went to get my masters in anthropology, and what I was interested when I started my masters was not what I ended up writing about, but it was these kinds of groups, dominionism, white supremacist. David Brynn is on point with their white supremact general and you can see it now, like they all show up online with their Western traditional classical Greek sculptures things. They're all mad about the Odyssey.

Now you know, they have to be good at everything and smart about everything, and it's almost always uh. He turns out they sell copiers. I think he was a copier salesman or something. He's a copy or salesman. The worst type of my father is a copy or technician.

And growing up I have you know the things you know in life. One of them is my father has always said this, The worst person in the world is a copy your salesman. Oh my goodness. So it's very very smart idea to make your villain a former copy yourself. It's funny how often they talk about Rome too.

There was an article about how often people talk about the Roman or think about the Roman Empire. These are the guys either, these are the guys that skew that number where it's like, well, I think about it all the time. Meanwhile, a normal human being what once a year maybe. And then he compares himself to Hannibal. He's like, I'm Hannibal at the Gates.

Hannibals, you are know that because you're a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. The two things about the Bethlehem character are one. I think it is fascinating that it feels like Kevin Costner specifically made sure that this character was not more interesting or powerful or charismatic than he was, because I feel like the Dennis Hopper and water World who steals the movie from him that deliberately he goes for somebody that is not as physically imposing, But also like, do we think he's gay because he is so into Kevin Costner. When Kevin Costner first shows up, which and it feels very much of oh my god, finally there's somebody here with the brain, right.

This guy knows Shakespeare. This is somebody I can talk to. This guy I haven't got to talk to anybody forever. And throughout the film it's constantly like, man, I really hope he doesn't comes back, and not in a way of like I hope he comes back so we can do it. There is clearly this sort of like crazy admiration.

And what else do we learn in this movie is that he kidnaps Kevin Cost's love interest. Obviously she's the hot thing in the in the town. He's rating and what can he not do? He cannot sexually perform again. Homo Eraticism is such a part of this, and I think that it was being brought to Bethlohem's character.

But the reason I hadn't thought about it is because Kevin Costner is not reflecting it back to him. And not that I need to have him have desire, but he's it's almost like he's deliberately, like you say, not recognizing him not. It's like the Ben Her story of how William Wiler and I forget the actor's name. They knew. They're like, this is yeah, this guy's in love with Ben her like this is a romance.

But they knew. We cannot tell Charlton Heston right, we're going to play it this way. But do not let anybody suggested Chorlton Heston that this is what we're doing. He won't know, he won't figure it out. And he feels like Will Patton might have been, like, I have an idea for this.

I know what I'm doing. I just cannot tell the straightest of all straight Ben Kevin Gosner about it. And it's ten kids who are in the movie. Well, even when you see Bethlehem, when he's hanging out, he's like painting pictures of himself. It's very you know, it's a very feminine thing to do, be interested in the arts and shakespeare battle, Like, I guess the nearest Shakespea your battle I had seen was maybe what Star Trek's six, The Undiscovered Country, you know, where they're going back and forth and even throwing out some of the same lines and everything.

So I can totally see that, especially all of them dressed in their leather outfits and everything. I didn't realize that they were wearing the number eight. I kept thinking they were wearing a bee for Bethlehem, and then finally I was like, oh, that's an eight. I thought they were wearing eight ball jackets. In after that is the eight.

I didn't I didn't get catch of that either, is eight laws. The eight laws? Oh right, right, yeah, which comes up twice? Right, They tell the laws and then later on they invoke the laws. Yeah, like two hours and thirty minutes later.

And then they have a we're going to roll around on the ground fight, which is like one of the weirdest end battles I've ever seen, where they just roll over top of each other. So yeah, I think I'm right there with it, Carroll. As far as these characters. Being gay, the other thing I wanted to bring up real quick about the fight, if it's not dereeling more about the home eratus. I watched the fight, and I had a similar reaction to you, because it reminded me of like a bad TV fight, And on one hand, it was not a good fight, and on the other hand, it was not a pointedly bad fight.

That was a criticism of using violence between leaders to decide who runs things. As the basis for America's future. Instead, it's just like two guys kind of rolling around on the ground. The other thing that really, I think frustrated me and also made me my theory on why Kevin Costner also deliberately made this character not know an alpha male is nowhere in the movie. Are we led to believe Kevin Costner is a warrior?

Right? We understand he sees a survivor in the book. We know, you know, there's a different story to him in the book, but he's never seen as like a physical fighter, right. He survives by scavenger and doing Shakespeare and in this movie, like he seems to be good on a horse. Okay, that's you know, he learned that and figured that out.

That's fine, and he's clever in you know, the steps he takes to survive. But there is nothing that makes sense. Where Where did he learn to punch? Where did he learn to train? Where did he learn to shoot?

So the idea that he has all the confidence of the world to just physically take on this guy who has run an army now for many years and who we know has physically been challenged and overcome it, I don't know. I like to think that in a big surge of adrenaline, if somebody was trying to like hurt my niece or my cat, I would physically if all I had, and maybe gouge an eyeball out. But I have no reason to think that I could like take on Ronda Rousey in a fight and win. And it just doesn't make sense for the film to end on this note. Like I get that you need, oh, it's action, so we do need it to end in action, but it makes no sense for the even attitude.

There's a certain class of movies that one of my friends used to call Holideck Adventures, and it feels like a little bit like that, Like I having watched a fan edit where they re edited it. They don't show him in being kidnapped and stuff until the end when he reveals the eight on his arm and challenges General Beth of the Heem. Then there's a flashback back to his training, so you can say, okay, he and you could do that with the regular edit that he learned how to fight then, but it doesn't feel like that it because it feels like Kevin Costner should be in charge and everyone should be listening to him and he's good at everything because he's the protagonist. I don't know if you noticed this as much as I did, but like around that time, that's also when he starts grabbing, Like he grabs that Scout and tells her she's not allowed to Scout, pulls her off the horse and shoves her away, and he's like really physical with the woman that he's in love with.

And I don't know how your emotional arc of my leadership is. I'm a man and I'm standing up, and I'm using physical violence too, because it's the only thing that will stop another angry white man who uses physical violence. So this army I gathered doesn't get to do anything. It's so having it both ways because then he he doesn't kill Bethlehem, he doesn't let ordlg and Mercury do it. But yet, oh no, no, where it's okay because Breathlon's gonna try to shoot this other guy shoots him, We're fine.

The guy who shoots him Joe Santos, the getty character who has been astrated by Bethlehem and had his tongue caught out right, And yeah, that's that whole thing. Like this is such a problem of these movies in the nineties, and I think still a problem today. The whole the good guy cannot kill the bad guy. The bad guy has to fall from a light and impale himself on a conveniently placed spiked fence, or somebody else has to kill the bad guy for him. I mean, even if.

It's it's very Easecode esque in it. Yeah, even if it's Al Powell killing you know, the blonde guy and Diehard, you know. But yeah, like Geddy has to get that redemption because now he has to get his manhood back. He has to get his gun off somehow. It's such attention for me that it has to be about manhood when the problem is manhood in particularly white masculinity.

Especially if we talk about the book, I mean Britain's book. I won't say it's the best thing I ever read in my entire life. He definitely feels very beholden. I mean, he makes a theater sturgeon reference at one point, like calls some you know, like a haul or something, names it after a sturgeon. It feels very pulpy.

It feels like good pulp science fiction. And he does what a good pulp science fiction guy does. He explores a lot of interesting ideas and sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but it is a science fiction book and so I like that. Towards the end, we find out that the Bethlehem character who's not named Bethlehem in the book, that he is an augmented human being. So him and his two generals or two captains.

Or whatever siers super soldiers. Yeah, they're all augments. And then the guy George Powatan, he's also augmented, but he's like the next generation, which is kind of funny because they actually have a universal soldier playing in this movie that's as close to it as. We get, you know, like, and they hate it that the people they're like the his army and slaves and stuff who they're showing the movie for. Bethlin's people hate it and they love the sound of music.

They just want the Julie Anders, which is so funny because we just covered Welcome to Whoop Woop earlier this year, which is a whole city in the outback where all they do is watch Rogerson's and Emmerstein musicals and there's a whole thing about the sound of music in there, which was hilarious to see this and have them play like, you know, shitty projected version of sound of music, and here we are, I think the same year they were doing this here for me, there are like three main things that are going on inside of Brin's book, and he even basically says it right towards the end of the book, as the Postman is thinking about things, He's like, all right, so, yeah, my whole thing about being this Postman has helped bring back society, you know, whether I liked it or not.

He basically knows that his legend has been co opted and has become something that is becoming a fabric of this new world. But then there's two other things that are happening at the same time. One is there's a fake supercomputer called Cyclops, and Cyclops is basically it's like the Wizard of Oz was a guy, yes, behind the scenes who's giving answer. Very directly, because I think he said as man behind the curtain like five times in that chapter. I thought at first, when we got to cyclop said it was going to turn into Colossus, the Feben product.

Yeah, and it would be like, oh, well shit, this guy, like this computer actually wants to take over everything, And I thought it would be a real like oh my god, how do I get out of here? Kind of thing? But no, it's funny. I thought. I was like, oh, it's more con people a con.

It is another con. Yeah. And then the third part, which is actually very genuine, Like you know, I think at the beginning of the book he mentions less strata, and then that comes through the entire book, especially when it comes to this character of Dana. I think it is who I don't think she really has a character like that in this movie. No, no, yeah, there's no no here.

They did standard sort of screenplaying where they're like, we need to have like efficiency of character. One woman, yes, yeah, we have one young woman love interest. And she will be beautiful obviously, and she will be strong in the sense of, you know, she can shoot well, and she's able to defend herself and able to be pregnant and doing a whole lot of physical things that probably a woman that pregnant in you know, an apocalypse wouldn't be able to do. And she'll be able to, like, you know, say things when they need to be said for Kevin Costner to hear. But the book and I don't think it's done overly well but I like I like the effort of it.

What's interesting is whenever David brand all the entries I read with him about this movie, he has a lot to say about a lot of things, and he actually has the best attitude of a writer to an adaptation, which is like, look, the movie something different. I really like that. I think they captured the spirit and what I was. You know, this the the theme I was trying to tell. Do I think they did it?

Well, No, but I appreciate it and it's fine. But he'll complain about certain aspects of the movie and choices that were made. But I didn't seem to ever really mention the Dina storyline because in the book it is it's basically these women saying this one woman who has been born in the apocalypse essentially like grew up without knowing experiencing much of the real world, but had books and had access to people who could tell her things and kind of comes to the conclusion that well, women never did enough. Women let this happen in a way because they didn't fight it. They always relied on the men to do it.

So, you know what, we are going to do something different, and we are going to go fight, and she does and she and it works and doesn't work. It feels like the novel's kind of saying like it was nice of that idea, but it didn't really do much. But it also did because it gets like she sends letters saying what they're doing, which get intercepted but also get read by women who are kept at slaves who then also rise up. So there was kind of this like minor attempt at sort of feminism in the book we do not get in them. I'm actually glad we didn't get it in the movie.

I watched one of the special features you sent us that was David Brinn talking about the movie, and he sort of indirectly talks about there were a lot of ideas in the book that didn't get to the movie, and I'm like, sir, you're so lucky. We're all so lucky that Dana and her like women should the guilt she feels on behalf of women, and the idea that women are all like there's three kinds of men. There's like good men, bad men, and then like middle men who are useless. And I'm like, honestly, I appreciate that he's trying, but it still sounds like a man talking about men. For the most part, like.

It feels like a man writing a sci fi novel, which is what they almost always end up. Ya, especially in nineteen eighty two, where you have to have, like I have to share my very strange theories about society from my very rational science fiction perspective. Those are the big three pillars that the book is built around. And then they just cut out everything other than the Postman himself. And that's because we've got Costner here.

Yeah, but yet we don't cut out of what four minute love scene. Reading the earlier drafts of the screenplay because like, so, thank you so much for Carol for letting me know the original screenplay, or at least what the fifth draft I think of. Roth's screenplay is out on archive dot org, and I was expecting something completely different when I started reading it because of all of the bad things that Brynn had to say about Roth's screenplay. Brynn calls the Roth drafts the demonically horrific script of Eric Roth, a truly evil mishmash that reversed every moral message from the book. After that alone, I was positively disposed towards Kevin Costner and Brian Helgeland, and he bashes it quite a few times.

There was like a ninth nineteen ninety eight essay that he wrote, and. What are some of the differences in that version? Frankly, I don't see a lot of differences. Like the differences for me were a lot of structural stuff like we don't have we don't meet Bethlehem until thirty minutes into the movie, so precisely right around the time that the first act should be over and the second act should be starting. Though it also runs one hundred and thirty seven pages, so it's also over long.

Would have been very just the hell. Glenn draft as well. I think it's almost the exact same page count. But remember you have to add another thirty minutes because half of those scenes are in slowly. That's true.

That's true. Or they do that strange cross fade effect a ton in this movie, and I'm like, what are oh? I love it itific seen nineties epicness of between the score, the SlowMo and some of those filming decisions. I will say this is one of those movies why I'm glad I watched it now and not ten years ago, twenty years ago, because I think there is something like we're we're in that perfect era where there is something incredibly charming about the mid nineties because it's long enough ago and we remember, like, oh I was a completely different age than so to experience it now it feels so charming and nostalgic and some of those things in terms of the filming style, they didn't get me in that, like the slow motion was not like, you know, welling tears in my eyes, but it was like I could I couldn't help but smile at how earnest.

Some of those filming choices were just in being a mid nineties movie. It did not work for me, and I think they should have made some different choices. I appreciate that it is like we are in a formula rut now, like screenplays have never been I think, more formulaic than they are now. That is an effectual thing, I realized, but it it feels very much that way, and so I give it credit for that, and it's I appreciate watching it. Then, I just wish I had managed to find more personal charm in it, rather than thinking, imagine what Albert Pion could have done with this material.

And this budget Carl, he's a postman. I was talking a little bit to Mike about how punishing I found the score. And it's not even like by itself, because I think by itself it's a fairly standard sort of neo Western sweeping this to score, but it's relentless, and it's like, we know that you might think it's funny and campy that he's a postman and we're showing slow motion romantic shops of post offices and mail delivering, but we want you to feel this the right way. It can only be so angry at a movie that is so earnest. There's a quote I'll I'll read it from one of the art I think it might have been David Brand's own, like either his essay about this movie or a quote he had to say about it, which was Watching Kevin Costner's three hour Epic is a bit like having a great, big golden retriever jump on your lap and lick your face while waving a flag tied to its tail.

It's big, floppy, uncoordinated, over eager, sometimes gorgeous, occasionally a bit goofy, and so big hearted that something inside of you has to give. That is, if you like that sort of thing that's the novelists talking about this movie. And I mean, I think he's right. Like my dad a few years ago has always been somebody that had an American flag up, like my dad's a Vietnam vet, and he realized a couple of years ago how he got so nervous that him having a flag up would mean people think that he supports Trump, and so he made his own like he actually like drew a little like Biden sign underneath it at the time. But it is that idea of like, oh, when you like loving America and this is such an Americana movie right that it's soured just so unfortunate that you watch it today and like you want to just love the goofiness of it, But there is this other element watching it where you're like, oh, it's so like corny and it loves the USA and this and that, and then you sit back you're like, what kind of movie would this be if you made it today?

Like we're like, who is this made for now? And the weird politics of its parts I don't know, like where they map to today is just this strange thing that it's easier not to think about because then you can still appreciate this as just a really goofy art effect if it's done. I feel like if it were made today, it would have like one of two endings. One would be the Tarantino they shoot Bathlon and the head and make sassy cool reference remark. The other one is what I wish they had done, since they weren't going to give us a good fight or an epic battle with the army that he apparently raised somewhere somehow, was a trial, like they have three hours, cut out a little bit of that slow motion time and give us frontier justice trial where Bethlehem is sentenced and then executed for what he's done.

That's how I think slow motion jury selection for it. Yeah, the jury's slowly coming into the box. Gavele Gavel that. Was well he just did JFK. So yeah, he would have been right there in Jim Garrison mode.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when they talk about after they've routed the three Augments, that they go around and hang every wholeness that they find, and I'm just like, wow, that seems like a really good way to get rid of these confederates. That just seems like a really smart thing. Well in the book has a lot more about kind of the politics of war, right about the propaganda that both sides start doing because the side, or you know, the protagonist's side, one of the things they started doing is desecrating female bodies to make it seem as though they're actually assaulted because they know that we'll rile their people up to fight, whereas if it's just specifically yeah, and again, really Glad Costner didn't go that route because I don't know that this movie was never gonna be quip for that.

But at the same time, basically the bad guys who go around taking things because it's also the post amocalypse, that's kind of what you gotta do. And then you have like the good guys who are just blind dancing, and it's kind of very simple in that way. So I guess there's a part of me watching this movie thinking like, well, how are any of these people going to expect to like ever survive a winter when this was just going to keep happening, Like they had no defenses, they had no seem to have no plans. It seemed like the whole lists were very specific about who they took, which was only young men. Presumably they had women somewhere for other purposes.

But watching it like you kind of understood why anybody would join them, because other wise you're just line dancing until you get raided and killed. Very much the grasshoppers versus the ants. It feels like the Wholeness actually have a plan, whereas the good guys quote unquote are just like happy little people. I mean, there is a moment where the Wholeness people come into town and I'm like, you know, you mentioned seven Samurai. I'm like, oh, this is just like the seven Samurai.

They're coming in here, but they never raised the army, you know, they. Just have Yeah, well it's one guy. They just have one guy. Yeah, it's basically you know, if you had just to Shiro Maffune or you know, like the goofy version of Tashiro Maffoune that's in Seven Samurai. And he makes the same mistake early on, like when they capture Ford Lincoln, Mercury, Ford Mercury Lincoln.

I don't remember which order. No, you're right, the first way, Okay. When they capture him, he is the first postal inspector who's played who's called something different. I mean He's called the same thing initially in the movie, and then and then he takes on the Ford Lincoln. Mercury, Dame Johnny Stevens's got to be Johnny, just like Johnny good Boy from Battlefield Earth, which was another movie I kept thinking of.

But when the Wholeness kidnap him and decide to hold him because of the psychological value he has because there's only one guy resisting him, and we never see him, he doesn't do any of the organizing. Ford Lincoln Mercury does all the organizing. But the Postman decides to disband his postal service, and the militia that they have also become like that's a solution, Like if he's just like, well, stop fighting you and then you'll stop. And you were talking about watching these things in these times, I feel like I've seen so many people with power, who I guess have never been subject to bullying or abuse or whatever making that same dumb fucking decision. It isn't an incentive to them to come in and attack them more.

Well, I think it could have been, because you have I mean, Kevin Coster essentially realizes what have I done? I just wanted a hot meal and so I acted like a postman, and when I did that, suddenly I have changed all I have suddenly put all these people in danger because now everybody thinks there's a cause to fight for, and so they're fighting for it. We see it's mostly young people. It's you know, it's a lot of kids, a lot of teenagers, a lot of before they're famous people, Like he realizes, Oh, I shouldn't have I'm not responsible for this. But the problem is, because of the movie is three hours, there's not like it would have been really easy to tell that story tightly for him to have realized, oh, I went too far.

I'm not equiped for this, we shouldn't be doing it. But so much has happened between when he started that and when he makes that decision that when he makes that decision, it feels like it comes out of nowhere, because nine things have happened over the course of forty five minutes in different subplots that you don't even know why he's doing this. Oh, I understood why he was doing it. I guess what I'm saying, though, is that the movie is in a trap that the Book of Boyds, because the book he has that same thing but he also eventually realizes that other people have agency and the Postman in this his solution to it is, I am always responsible. And it's like they took that question.

They keep showing in the book, like who's responsible, Who's going to be responsible for them? Like they're also responsible from themselves as adults, Like they're making these terrible choices. But Kevin Costner has to be in charge in this movie. I understand why he would have wanted to make this movie. I understand why you would have wanted to star in this movie.

The best thing he could have done was direct someone else, aside from the ego aspect of it, where obviously he could not see himself objectively while making this movie. He's clearly so determined to make the Postman this savior character who is torn and who doesn't want to do the wrong thing, and so he makes it. If he had been played by somebody that was for like, you could buy as fucking up so much more. If he was not a leading man type, it would have been so much like put Giovanni Ribisi in that role instead, and it would have been a more interesting vie. But Tom Petty and Tom Petty as the Postman.

I'm there as an actor. Tom Petty's a really good musician. We're looking at the movie. We're looking at are you kind of love what they did there? Rile Like he's putting himself right, that's.

Here, we're just thing because there's well, first off, he died in twenty seventeen. But the other thing is that he would have been like seventy according to the timeline of this, So maybe maybe Tom Petty's a vampire. Yeah, that was such a weird cameo to have, and just that whole like double i've heard of you and then oh, I've heard of you kind of thing. Yeah, I've heard about you. I've heard of you, and even that that having Concer basically makes it so Tom Petty says, you're more famous than I am.

Postman, like how much bigger ego? And Tom Petty actually in that scene comes off is less awkward to me, Like he actually seems more like the kind of guy that Kevin Costner's theoretically trying to play, but he's not because he's trying to play a good super hero. He's not playing like a con guy who feels a bit in over his head, but is like, well, I'm responsible for people now, which is exactly what Tom Petty is. He's like, I was a musician in a weirdo and now I run a town on the Hoover Dam, like where our little. Boy doesn't know what a postman is.

Oh that moment, what's a postman? And everybody stops and turns. It turns and turns to look at a little boy. So they have to tell this little boy what a postman is. Just the pacing evidence stuff is so strange.

It's like he he comes to the first town and is like, oh, hey, I just found this uniform. I'm going to pretend to be this postman. And it's interesting that this whole thing is just built on a lie. Like the first time I ever heard what the plot was, I was like, really, that's what this movie's about. But he comes to the city, finds the one person who actually does have a letter, and that's kind of his saving grace.

The mayor of the town is still just like or sheriff is like I don't fucking believe you, you know, like no way, And I love that Grey. I love that character actor. And then he goes to the next town and and it feels like time is strange in this four three hour movie. This passage of time makes note. I wrote it because I was taking you know, so I was watching it and then I was like putting my nose together, and so I was like cutting and pasting and movies around, and I realized I had passage of time question mark three different ways in my notes because I didn't understand it.

Because the opening of the movie, right you said, oh, you know he finds the bost outfit. No, that's like thirty five minutes in, because first he's kidnapped by Bethlehem's people, And how long ago was that? How long was he there for? Was that when he was trained to become a killer, Like he's there for what seems like a few days at most. You start building up relationships there where there's like intriguing characters that you're thinking, like, I forget the actor's name, but the guy who's in the wire and for some reason doesn't have an IMDb picture.

You're like, oh, like this guy's like, oh great, he's in this movie. I can't wait. And then he dies very quickly, and I was sad, but that's thirty minutes. And then it's Postman and then postman to another town, post me to another town, and it's is it years or is it weeks? And you're thinking, oh, well, we'll be able to tell by a pregnant woman, thank you, But they just randomly tell us when she's pregnant enough you.

For yeah, because you have a literal ticking clock in this movie with this woman's pregnancy. I didn't remember him stopping at two towns before the last one, Like I just thought he stopped at two towns, the one with the mayor sheriff that doesn't like him, and then the other one where it's like hey, yeah, welcome on in and we're reading mail and hope the enemies at the gate, and then we have this huge blow up and then like he sees Olivia Williams again, the abby character who he had slept with at the first town, and I'm like, okay, how like you said, how much time has passed because it's like she's all beaten to shit and she's like, oh, he came at me every night but he was never able to get me blah blah blah blah blah.

And I'm like, well, how much time has passed? Like and again like is that you know? He even asked, is it my kid or is it Bethlehem's kid? You know, Oh well he could never get it up. Oh okay, so you know, questions his manhood and stuff.

But I'm just like, how much time passed? And then they fuck off to that cabin for a long time, which is definitely not in the book, Like that's much more of like, Okay, now I'm gonna go find cyclops and do all this kind of stuff, and you know, the world turns as things are happening, Like Abby is left in the dust when it comes to the book, like she they have the same relationship, you know, but Michael doesn't die, her husband doesn't die. He's absolutely fine. He doesn't have to burn a flag, which you know is just like, oh my god. I had to look up, like when was the flag burning controversy in the US, because growing up in the nineties, that was a huge thing.

It really came to a head in nineteen eighty five. They still talk about it today. They go off to this cabin and they're just hanging out there for the longest time. But again, I'm like, how much time is passed? Even when it comes to the snow falling on his face and then like dissolve and all of a sudden we are in snow.

Just the continuity of this movie is so strange, even when it comes to like, you know, I mentioned the weird dissolves and stuff, there's that whole thing where he you know you mentioned this before, as far as him having to turn his hat around, like, oh, yeah, we used to do this when we were kids, turns his hat around, he rides off, and then smack dab before he goes to I guess it's Tom petty'stown, the one that he names Elvis, where it's on top of the big building and stuff. Suddenly his hats turned back around and he has that huge, maudlin fucking scene with that little kid who's holding up the letter do not you. Dare insult the best scene of this movie. It's me so great that they had to be showing you twice and immortalize it in Bronz's Emily as a person who has watched a shit ton of Hallmark movies, how hallmarky does some of this feel to you?

Like, because I notice you're a little more impervious. To this than Mike and I. Oh, especially, I think the sort of like country wife aspect of it, where this sort of like simple way of living. Right, all the women in this movie look great considering it's an apocalypse, right, they all still have like there you have Peggy lived in there, who's always just perfect looking, and they all have like they figured out how to make it work, factionalize, and you get, you know, the kids who are all so earnest. So when you get a scene like that of that little boy, because it's not just oh there's a little no, no, no, no.

First this little boy, here's the pitter pattern of the postman. And he grabs his letter and he runs outside. He stands there and he holds it up as his mother and again his mother was like this perfect blonde far woman. All their their hair like they have bangs, like it's like they've all taken care of themselves. And you know, he just holds it up and Kevic Concer just runs right by him.

And a little boy is just so devastated standing there holding that letter and he his arm sliwly goes down as he turns to his mother and says, I was too late. But then somehow, somehow, which I don't know how, Keema Concert didn't see him when he was writing, because there's it's like the thing on the walking down had always drove me crazy. How there's no sounds, right, there's no traffic, there's no fire alarms, and yet a character can just be like sitting on a lake and all of a sudden, yeah, like his zombie comes u behind them and eats them. Why did they not hear the like shuffle them? And it feels like that, right, How did like kenn Costter's just like writing, how did he not see a kid standing in the middle of and I was looking for people with the letters exactly like the kid short, but he's he's got his letter up in the air and Schemagostter turns back and he just does a gallop and gallop and gallop and could have killed that child so easily and just grew himself.

And he's galloping away from the kid. But then when they cut to him, like kind of realizing or whatever, he's not that far away at all. He's like just at the end of like the the fence post. How far are you going? Hey?

Look, how far are you going to the end of this? Fans? Okay, I'm Naved Johnson. What's your name? There, who we are, okay, thanks for the company.

And then when he charged, like he turns to get the letter and keeps going full speed the other way, and you're like, is he just you know, he's got to turn around, Like did he forget which way he was going? No. It is so corny and cheesy, and I loved it, and the fact that it comes up and it is the final shot of the movie, that we get a coda, and that we get that moment literally in a bronze statue and a little boy now grown up and which and also again passage of time, right, because I think we're led to believe that that should have been like how many years later, like thirty plus years. This guy somehow looks younger than Mary Stuart Masterson, who's playing Kevin Costner's daughter at that point.

Just confusing, but that he says twenty forty eight and twenty thirteen, yeah, or maybe twenty forty three like the book I think was twenty forty eight, So that guy was in his early forties. Right, He looked great for an apocalypse. You look pretty good. They're now in Saint Rose, which I didn't even realize how many times he mentioned Saint Rose in the final film, because going back to that Roth script, Saint Rose is a big thing, and that's like his like I've heard about this town, and we're gonna find Saint Rose and it's gonna be fantastic. And then he actually finds the town towards the end of of the screenplay and then like that is the paradise that he was imagining, and that's where the final confrontation all takes place is in this Saint Rose.

They do have electricity. They end up like cutting power lines and electric cuting these holensts. Clearly there's they still have like cotton production because they all are end up in these lovely pastel outfits that you can get it like coals or something, because you know, for a good like the twenty years of the First Apocalypse, everybody's wearing rags and they're all brown. But then when we get that code to everybody is in like an easter pastel and they look lovely. I think it might have been a fashion choice because like, clearly they didn't have sewing machines, but they had gromet presses because everything was grammited in lace together.

But at the end, like Marysuerpastrin has like these perfect like silver earrings and a silver necklace over her like little cant suit like Pastel looks skirt thing. And it just again felt very like like we we turn things around pretty quickly after The Postman Saved the World. I would be very curious to watch this in terms of his facial hair as well, just because I feel like there is a yeah, he's got a lot of facial hair. He starts with the goatee, he comes to pine View with a full beard. I can't remember when he is suddenly he's clean shaven.

I assume it's when he's after Abby, when he's sort of well, he's like trying to impress her a bit, all right, Yeah exactly, Yeah, yes, sir. And then when he's in the cabin he starts to grow it out again. Yeah. It's just like it changes all the time. It's kind of like the hat going backwards and forwards, you know, like it just the I mean, for a three hour movie, you would think you would have continuity, you know, pretty well licked.

Or you'd have the complete lack of continuity, right because and I feel like that's true of like I think one of my first cases of being a kid, and like understanding that movies make mistakes was in Robin to Prince of Thieves, because there's a lot of moments like that. There's a lot of moments where like Kevin Costner sticks his right arm up and Morgan Freeman grabs his left arm. Like there's like a lot of little things like that, a cup being filled and the cup being empty, going back and forth. And I feel like, in some ways, the bigger your movie is sometimes the messier that gets, just because you end up shuffling so much around. I wonder, and I didn't get to read either of the screenplays, but was this always the order?

Or were some things moved in different places? Because it doesn't make sense how the time flows. I wouldn't be unreasonable for scene seventy two to have been seen fourteen. Why I don't think the stuff of the statue is in either draft. Kevin Gosstner just needed that statue.

Where do we think the statue is? Now? If it were a Hallmark movie, you'd know that it would be like in Jasper or like just out side Victoria, British Columbia or something, and they'd be like, oh, we found the perfect statue to. Make a movie around it in three days. The Roth script has well, it's kind of got the postman doing a little bit of narration, but it's him talking to his mules.

There's he's got multiple mules. Ah Bill Bill gets butchered and fed to Kevin Cosler, just like the water buffalo gets fed to h Tank Girl in Tink Girls coming out the year prior. I think it was he's got the multiple mules in the Wroth draft, and then there is one point where a narrator just comes in and I don't think you ever find out who that narrator is. But then in the you know, the Helgelin version, and in the final film, which is pretty close, I would say to the Helgeland version, you've got Hope the daughter. Of course her name is Hope.

It's got to be got to be Hope. You've got her narrating at the beginning, and then we come back at the end and she's talking about how brave he was, and she's there at the statue unveiling, but there is no statue, I don't think in the Helgelend version, and there's no kid saying it's me. As much as I had not seen most of this movie. I also just kind of assumed certain things about it, Like I assumed he died at the end once I read the book, and I assumed he was not going to be father to the child because he wasn't supposed to be. And so realizing watching the movie of like way he lives is the kid with that way it just ends in this traditional way.

It was so disappointing, is it? Oh? Yeah, yeah? It made your family in a post nuclear apocalypse. It's an interesting thing of the novel that the idea of like a lot of men are sterile and probably women too because they're not getting vaccinated and it's the apocalypse and things are happening.

So the idea that it would be like almost commonplace to have a body father, that's something, right, that's a concept, and this movie like gives that to you. And the scene like Olivia Williams first scene where she's like flirting with him, where he thinks she's flirting but really she's just trying to figure out if he's syphilist. Like, that's a funny scene. It's kind of cute, like and if the movie like stayed in that style and had fun with it, it could have also been something instead, it just ultimately, you know, twenty minutes labor later, Olivia Williams just has to be like the suffering woman. And it's a disappointment the problems that led to the wholeness and the apocalypse and everything can be solved by normative heterosexual white masculinity.

Like they just weren't doing it right, like and now he's come around, right because. He because Bethelhem couldn't Bethelhem could not actually, you know, reproduce because you couldn't get it up with a woman. So there you go. The men just weren't many. They weren't no and if they hadn't men to I mean, Michael had to burn that flag because he was not a man.

And we knew he wasn't a man because he had the mom syn couldn't produce semen. And that's interesting watching from now too, because like early I think the Turner Diaries were written in the seventies, but like clearly by nineteen eighty two, David Brynn had some familiarity with like militia groups and how particularly American white supremacist groups operated. By nineteen ninety seven, a lot of people did after like Waco. In the Oklahomama city. Yeah.

Yeah, and so but they're just like no, no, what we need is more traditional values because that is the solution. This must just be a white supremacist dream here with all these tradwives running around. I mean when they come into the Wholeness camp, they're all just doing laundry and stuff. It's like, Okay, I was thinking about like how General Bethlehem only wanted boys between fifteen or like men between fifteen and fifty for his army, and I'm like, oh, it's the new US Army. Yeah.

Yeah, they're basically ice rothscript gives name to what happened for the eclypse. It was the hole in the ozone layer which burned a bunch of stuff. And then the Wholenists. Nathan Holme, this survivalist guy who was very charismatic, wrote a bunch of books. Very not a Bill O'Reilly, not really a Tucker Carlson, but it's just like kind of along those lines.

Basically, they have a second Civil War and it's almost like an insurrection, you know, it's almost there's even a storming of the capitol and everything. But yeah, like the postman actually gets like brought into their army and he's like, oh, yeah, I was captured in Saint Louis and I was there when Washington fell and that's great, Yeah, okay, cool. But the movie itself refuses to give name to anything, Like they talk about radiation, and they talk about the bad mumps, and they talk about these things, but they don't really ever say how the world collapsed. And I know that, you know, and they definitely talk about at quite a bit. They don't give us flashbacks.

I don't think in the book they will talk about how he had I think just joined the army or something when the shit went down when he was seventeen, but he mostly talked about. Isn't he isn't in the novel is he a college students because he's like an actor, right, he's he's going to theater school. Yeah, And then he joins the militia and Saint Paul because it seems like there is basically like you have to do something stop these people. And in the novel too, I think, right, it's mentioned that like his commander was a woman, right, and that she was incredibly brave and that like she you know, did everything she had to keep them alive and her. Name implied she was Southeast Asian as well, which.

Pointed it and feels like it was a deliberate choice. And I can't remember exactly in the novel what they what the cause of it is. It's sort of a combination, right of environmental and bio and then it just gets worse because of what people do. Yeah, like everything that could go wrong does go wrong. So it's it's like environmental stuff and it's war and then the wholeness break apart the lines between cities because they're insurrecting everywhere, and so then the illness starts to spread and people can't get vaccines.

That's right. They block vaccines and block medical deliveries and things like that. So, yeah, it's not the Bethlehem character who's racist. It's like some of the guys that are on his army. Because the person that helps out the postman, one of the two people that helps out the postman the most, is a African American guy who like he's the one that mutilates the woman's body and is just like, you know, hey, you need to leave.

I need to do this. We need to basically like send a message and make all of these guys super angry because these are just fucking plain folk who are not angry enough to actually go to war with these guys. And he comes back towards again and does a lot of damage to the Bethlehem character and his guys, and one of his guys is like, oh yeah, this black guy and blah blah blah blah blah. I don't even know if he uses the N word, but it's just like, I know, Bethlehem's character is like, hey, you know, that's small minded, like what are you doing kind of thing, Whereas it here, it's just like, oh yeah, like you said, like you thought he was bad, well, we're going to really make you feel, gonna make him racist and you know, talk about like mongoloid's and the N word and all this kind of stuff.

I mean, James Russo always good for that. But it's so funny that, like I thought, just from the cast list, I was like, oh, James Russo's in this, Oh, Geo Bonni Rapisi's in this. Oh wow, this is this is great dead within thirty minutes. Which might not have been a bad thing in Giovanni Rubeci's case, Oh. My god, Rabisi, he was like totally the other sistering in this movie.

He was going for it like he was he was trying. You want to be on set that day to just see like did he come with that or was Costner Like I need to push it harder just because I have a hard time watching Kevin Costner in this movie, who is such a like again, who can be a really charming screen presence. I don't know that he's ever really a great actor. I think he's one of those actors, like a better version of Mark Wahlberg in this where he is entirely dependent on what director is getting from him. But can he get things out of actors like you have?

Again, it feels like will Patten came on here knowing what he was gonna do. Olivia Williams is a Shakespearean theater trained Brigdish actress who came in and said, well, okay, I'm just gonna take it seriously and hopefully it works. And so it's hard to imagine him giving directions to Giovanni Ribisi in that pull back or go harder. I feel like it's the kind of movie that usually you want to be bigger in, both as a Western and as opposed to apocalyptic movie and as a parable of America. And I'm not sure how he was directing them, but I feel like all the other actors did a good job understanding well they understood the movie in that kind of way we need to be a little bigger, except for Kevin Costner, and I feel like he has a level that he's comfortable at and it's almost I'm the normal guy reacting to things, and then sometimes I become the normal guy who's pushed too far and he has to become a hero, and he maybe he did that.

I would be curious for a reading like I think you could do this again. I think you could do it as a mini series. I think you could do it as a film. And I think the movie made a lot of the right decisions in what they cut from the novel. I don't think the computer stuff would have worked.

I think I don't think the super soldier stuff would have worked. To me. When I was reading, that was when I felt like, oh, right, this is why I don't really like reading a lot of sci fi novels that they end up just feeling so technically devoted to something, usually focusing on this specific story we want to tell at the cost of like good writing and characters and the supercilous stuff. I thought for a minute, I'm like, did I like skip a chapter because it felt so much like a different book by that point. So I think the movie made a lot of the right choices in the story was telling.

It just ticklls it so poorly that you could do it again in another twenty years. Let's have a post woman. Yeah. I don't even mind the decision about we're going to conserve I mean, in general, I don't like the idea of like conservation of actresses, Like maybe they could just have more actresses doing things that aren't specifically woman things to do. But I don't mind that there was one love interest for him.

I do think, like you say, it could have been handled better. And there's a lot in this I Mike shared that fan edit with us, and they cut out a lot of things, and they sort of make it much more what you would expect, where they introduce Bethlehem and his army and his predations very much like say a cattle baron in a Western or a warlord in a Mad Max movie. And then they introduce Kevin Costner's character as like a drifter, so you see him sliding in the mud and finding the postman out that they actually tighten up Abby's story together so you can see her arc and with him, and they show that works a lot better. And then at the end he reveals, like I said, that, ooh, all along, I had been in the army.

And it works better as a coherent movie. But it's not the same movie, you know, And I don't think David Brinn would be happy with it because they made it more like. Other post amocalyptic violence. Yes, and I probably would have enjoyed it more. I wouldn't have found it so far frustrating or spent so much time trying to figure out what was going on with it and then what was going on with my response to it.

But the definitive thing about this movie is that it is optimistic about America. And I think if you take that away, you did, it is I don't know what movie it would be. The optimism about America. We mentioned the burning and the flag. There's that little girl who just starts singing America the beautiful out of nowhere at one point.

Thank you so much for bringing that up, because I almost forgot. And it's such a moment. Also, how did yeah, how does she even know that song? She went alive when we were singing that. Well, there's the thing where it's like the band in Pineview that is singing.

There's a floutist. There's like a full out country band with classical but. They're playing songs that are modern as of nineteen ninety seven. And at one point they start singing I think the very first time they start singing, and it sounds like they're singing the Cosmi Kids song like the not Going to Have a Good Time, And I was like, oh, okay, well they do that. In the book, there's a lot of like, oh, you know.

Singing jingles, YEAHI pop culture, Yeah, well you. Know demolition Man like what we did. We've got the radio station that is just like the Armor hot Dog kind of songs and stuff. And I'm like, oh, well, that's interesting how they worked that. No, no, they're playing like you know, I can't even remember which the band is, but I'm just like, okay, yeah, I've heard this song before, just not in this kind of folksy way that they're doing at all.

Right, But then that. Was a very hallmark moment too. They all they needed to be was in like a gazebo or something like that. Well, they had the little fire lights and everything. There's something too that I do find interesting about the apocalypse of how does culture survive?

Right? For whatever reason, I think we're kind of led to believe in this movie that even though again target clothing will survive, books don't. It seems like right because nobody is reading, nobody is like that aspect does not seem to be a thing there. And so when Kevin Costner is this his his ability, his his trade is that he can perform Shakespeare kind of kind of not very well, not very well, but he's like the last guy alive who remembers most of the words to make beeth And again it does that thing that oh god, I forget, like when you are trying to show like somebody doing Shakespeare badly and the way they always go, it's like to be or not uh line line, that's what it feels like, right, He's like life is sold by it ore on.

Yeah, that's it, like just like okay, like he could be good, like I guess, I mean, I don't know that I could buy Kevin Costner being good in Shakespeare. So maybe it's fun. The movie doesn't pretend he's actually good at what he's doing there, But there is something interesting about what would our how would how do we survive art without the things that we currently use for the medium? Right, It's like in Rain of Fire. I'm thinking of the Dragon movie, where the thing that they do right the way they entertain the children in it is they reenact Star Wars and the Empire strikes back.

Because that's the thing we'd be able to tell our kids, like you're right, you know what, I can't recite at Tel of Two Cities to you, but I can reenact the entirety of problem Child if I need to. That's something that like would have also been more charming, because it again, you feel like you're going a certain direction with this movie of here's the world we're in, here's what survived. Again, it doesn't really work, but there's something there, but then it just gets mixed up in three more hours of a lot of other states. I think it's difficult, Like, I think it's difficult for two reasons, Like one, they don't really want to go there, Like I think that's like a whole class of stuff that in the book and to a lesser extent, but more by absence is like feminized, Like there's the work the women do in the books, and there's the work women we see them doing a little bit in the film.

But it's also sixteen years out. I'm sure there are still librarians in their libraries organizing community. Like it's it's too soon for people to have completely forgotten Shakespeare or even like Danielle Steele, you know. The lady playing the piano seems to know all the lines. Yeah, she's cueing him and he keeps fucking up the keys.

IINU it's very realistic of any society that you would have like the slightly older woman who totally could run everything and remembers everything and knows it all, but everybody like falls over for the attractive young white man. And that's also a character that's missing from the movie, is that I believe it's a woman. That Thompson the first woman who understands you're not a postman. I like, she calls him out on it immediately, But they have this kind of like these they became penpals, where he writes to her earnestly, but also it's like the one person he knows knows his secret and that she'll keep it because she realizes it's better for the world to hold onto it. Yeah, there's nobody like that here.

I thought it was gonna be that character, but we don't have room for a woman to be beat and pel shit in this movie. I haven't thought it was going to be the guy that plays the sheriff, you know. I was like, oh, well, me too. I thought, oh, they've shifted it over to this guy, which again I'm sure, okay, the man would know. Kind of comes around after a while, but not fully.

This is a case where I think it is an actor overcoming bad material because he's you know, he's there to be the guy, the one guy that really gets it. He's like, you're not a postman. I know you're not. I can tell. I'm older.

I look at you. I know that this is bullshit. But then slowly, like has the scene where he's like, I still don't believe you, but you're good for this town. But then the next scene when Keavin cost is like, by the way, I have a letter from your sister. That scene is actually a really beautifully done scene because he takes it like just in one moment, this actor's eyes go from steely to welling up with tears, who says, I thought my sister was dead and he just walks away and reads this letter and you suddenly are like, there's a movie here, Oh there's okay.

Can we just go with this guy? Can we follow him? Because it does feel like there is something genuine happening here and it's really lovely and I think it is purely a good actor being given two lines to make it work. What's funny because that guy, Daniel Van Bargain mostly plays sheriffs and chiefs of police like super Troopers, Chief Grady, oh, brother Waret, though he's Sheriff Cooley. I had just seen him on Seinfeld, so that's what was stuck in my head with him.

Yeah, Seinfeld, he is fucking fantastic. I want to say, isn't he the guy from Malcolm in the Middle as well that that tortures Francis the Older And oh oh. He's the military guyana with the yeah, the yeah. And I think he even showed up in a Universal Soldier movie, which is kind of funny. But yeah, I was really thinking, Oh, he's going to be the guy.

He's gonna, you know, see between the lines and all this. But yeah, you're right, that is a beautiful scene. There are moments in this movie where you're like, oh wow, this is actually like hitting, but those are so few and far between. And when you're a three hour movie. The Pony Express moment when when all the postal carriers are spluffed, yeah, yeah, that's a lovely and yeah.

The Ford Lincoln Mercury character, I would say, is probably one of the strongest characters around. And he's the one, like you said, he's the one that organizes all this stuff. He's the one that really gets all of these people together, like he adapts the dream, like I think I referred to him in my notes as like he's basically the Paul of Tarsus of this whole movement. He's the one who gets hit on the road to Damascus and is like, I must spread the gospel of the postman. And he's the one that starts all of these Johnny Apple seeding all these different post offices all over the place.

Yeah, we can have a better life. There's something lovely to that idea, because the you know, revolution to be in the hands of the young, right you want you don't want it to be these like old people. They're like, well, I remember how it was, now it could be again. Sure that's great, but it's much more important and powerful and sustainable if it's the young people saying I believe that the world could get better and I'm going to do something about it. And you also can't rely on I know, I feel like i'm harping on this, but you can't rely on one person.

You have to build a community, no, unless Carol, that person is Kevin Potics. Yes, you're right, I'm sorry. Kind of reminds me of that line from Mad Max Fury Road where it's like they, you know, when a Morton Joe comes in and they've written like who broke the World or whatever, and it's like, yeah, all these young women are the ones that are going to be our saviors. It's not these old men who are just beholden to the old style of running things. And that's why I thought this movie was gonna end with Kevin Cosler dying with board Lincoln Mercury like putting on the Postmaster General flag, and Kevin Costner's daughter, who you know is taking over like the next level and so on, and all of that would have made more sense, but instead it still has to be in the hands of Like, isn't it great that Kevin Costner didn't kill that guy.

During that moment? It made me briefly think of Grand Turino because I'm like, you know, I could see Clint Eastwood, who I think has different politics than Kevin Costner, pulling this movie off better. And they probably have the same politics. Yeah, I don't know. I haven't paid attention in a long time, but I was willing to give some continue to do that.

That's the best way to live. I haven't seen Kevin Costner speak to any empty chairs, but I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I haven't really kept up with him since I don't even know when the last time was. But one of the things that I appreciate about Grand Turno is that his character realizes he can't fix this and that in the end, the only thing he can do for these people is die, and that Kevin Costner character, like you said, there's an ending where the solution is he dies, his army gets pissed off seeing his dead body, and they have their victory. But no, they can't have their victory.

I guess the last thing I saw him in was when he was playing paw Kent and had the most senseless death of. Oh my god ever. Oh this this scene where he just where he just chooses to die. Don't save me, Superman. I know you can save me, but don't save me.

It's more important for you to let me die. Yes, I can't quite explain why. Because i'm your militia dad, and I have to teach you that humans are terrible and. You should never learn they're not worth saving, even though you're Superman, and that defies everything about Superman. Yes, yeah, I'm not going to go there.

I'm gonna not. No, I forgot how mad I'm maybe. I don't think I'm a Superman person. I'm married to one who I can't believe he didn't walk out of that movie. I had a friend visiting it from out of town, and we went and saw at the Ford drive in because he was like, oh, you know, I like to see something in a drive in because he's from Toronto and there they're not very local drive in.

So we went and saw that because it seemed like I was like, I don't want to see another Zack Snyder movie. But we saw it together there and we bitched so hard together in the car that we saw these people in this other card looking at us, and like that's. The perfect way to watch it, so that you could just bitch together and disturb them. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird.

There's like little echoes of things that happened in this movie. I was just looking through my notes and there's that one moment where Bethlehem is just like, you know what, what separates okay men from great men? Or something? And he starts talking about like writing things down or journaling or something, and I'm like, what about it? Like, there is the whole thing about.

The joy it makes you a good person in the book, that's a big part of it. Yeah, because the loses his journal, the postman loses his journle, and then that's what kind of outs him to the military guys to be like, hey, yeah, you're. You're a phony and a bad con man who wrote your con down. Every little girl who has a brothers learns very early you do not keep a diary. It will be used against you.

And you were talking about what a good shot Abbey is. She's a good shot for one shot, and after that she becomes the worst shot in the world. No, she's a great shot for a movie. Oh yeah, because you have to prove yourself that you know how to hold the gun, you know, and can shoot to injure. And also yeah, you have to have the whole like Stormtrooper ability to not actually hit your primary target at all after that.

So also, where are all these bullets coming from? There's a lot of bullets, and like they're they're not even like using them. Like at one point, right they when they almost let a guy get away, or Kenn concern wants to let a guy get away and the rest of the postmen do not and shoot the guy but then shoot him like fifty times each with their guns. And I'm watching it thinking like, don't you have to conserve Ammo, Like, shouldn't you be a little more thoughtful about this? I want to say.

The guy she shoots in the head is the guy who gets booed at the dance contest and American astronaut. I haven't yet confirmed that though, but I was very happy about that. But yeah, in the book, they're so he's like, I have five bullets, you know, and I do not want to fire this. He ends up making a bow and arrow and he's just like, well, yeah, I'm gonna use this bow and arrows. Yeah, because he needs to shoot once to prove that it's loaded.

But then after that he knows I'm done after these five bullets. And the final fight is hand to hand. But also like all all the troops they've learned, like the Wholeness are using knives because it's quiet and because they're reusable. Makes sense. And yes, that is Joseph McKenna, who was a Wholeness captain as well as the doorman from The American Astronaut, one of my favorite films, and I was really glad to see.

At one point Kostner gets or the Postman gets heckled by a guy in the very first time he's performing, and he's just like, you suck, you know kind of thing. That's the guy from The Untouchables who is the bookkeeper that Sean Connery shoots the dead body in the head, and he's like, i'll tell you anything, I'll tell you anything. That's that same guy. I'm like, oh, okay, this is kind of nice. It's like Costner kind of you know, like, well, I'll use this guy from The Untouchables, I'll use Will Patten from No Way Out and also ironically the character that he plays in No Way Out gay and is just so in love with the Gene Hackman character in that movie.

Probably why he cast Will Patten, because you want it's funny because every interview, the ones that were in there that I watched, Kennon Costner is trying, like whether he's trying hard or genuinely, Like when it comes to actually talking about himself, he seems very like, kind of embarrassed and kinda yeah, I mean I kind of had the star in the movie and you know, I really I know I'm not the best actor and so on, and it really like he just puts on this humble act of it just this is how we had to tell the stories, is what we had to do. And I don't really think of myself as anything great. And but yet every decision in this movie, right that casting like his love interest being younger enough than him but not so young that it's weird right that he like Will again, like I'll just keep going back to it, but like Will Patton being such a specific type of person to cast an in the part of your rival, right because he is not going to outshine you.

And again, I think there is absolutely like homosexual undertones to it. I think he. Did, though, I think Will Patton outshine him. I agree. I think most of the spell trying him because she was really not good in this.

Yeah, a lot a lot of before they're famous people too. Well. Will Penn's just a great actor. Some of the reports I read and now this is always folly when you read like, oh, well they almost cast this person because they didn't, you know, like I know there. Right, Yeah, who knows how will close any of that ever came?

Roth said himself that he was writing it with Tom Hanks in mind, and there was talk of him coming in. Other people that they talked about. I know Dreyfus, Richard Dreyfus. Richard Dreyfus apparently really wanted to do it right. He was like crying like himself spearheading it.

And I don't know if that was just for the rights, like if he would have been a producer, if he would have been the star. And then the other people I heard for starring in this. One of them I can't see, the other one I think would be perfect. The one I can't see is Robin Williams. The one I could see as Michael Keaton.

Yeah, Michael Heaton would have been great. He has the right he has the good energy, and you know, like we were talking about his Shakespearean acting and it's sort of in retrospect. I'm like, oh, you know when you watch the Westerns and there's sort of the the loosh sketchy actor who comes into town who's overly broadly Shakespearean. Oh, yeah, you're Richard Harris. Yeah he was trying to.

Yeah, he was trying to do that. And because he didn't do that, because I don't want to say he can't, I suspect it's not in his range, like that kind of like broad over the top kind of performing is a specific skill. But because he didn't do that, we're like, what does this have to do with like the time and what kind of education they have that they're relying on him? And but Michael Keaton could rip that shit up, Mike, he could be terrible Shakespearean actor who's super broad and then gets into a fight about whether or not he sucks. I mean, his character in much Ado About Nothing was fucking fantastic.

Yeah, and I'd buy him as like a con man who eventually had to realize his con was true. I mean his character from Night Shift is a total con man type character and he eventually has to come around and that, yeah, Michael Keaton has ranged. You can have an arc, whereas like when Costner is like, hey, this was a bad thing, it's just like he is just so abrupt about it, and it's like you've got three hours to build this character and you just like turn out a dime here, and just like some of the weird decisions that they made, Like there's a I think the only extra that's on either the DVD or the Blu ray is available on YouTube fully, which is a breakdown of the special effects and who did they push out right towards the end.

It wasn't the special effects person somebody else, but like the choices for the special effects were so odd because it was all stuff that seemed like it was practical. Like when Olivia Williams is in that freezing cold water, all of that snow was digital snow. I'm like what, Or like they'll do like big replacements of like mountain ranges and stuff, like when he at the very beginning he's in that dry lake bed and he's like hopping on a trampoline or something like all of the stuff behind him was replaced. And like they talk a lot in that Roth screenplay about how fucked up the sky is because of the Ozone layer, and I was like, well, that kind of would make sense if the sky was weird, but as it is, like I wouldn't mind vacationing to pine View, you know, not beholden to you know, like the post office being you know, almost torched and everything, but like these places seem very you know you're talking about the clothes and stuff and how great the clothes look.

Yeah, things don't look dirty in this Like where's the the worn outness of things? Like it's so ironic that, you know, like and I think that's one reason too why they moved away from the Roth draft was things like the postman will go around and he collects bits of things from the pre war period and he'll like impress people with like here's a le leardo to teenage mutant ninja turtle figure. Well, that is so similar to what he was doing in water World when he would dive down and take you know, like dirt from the bottom of the ocean or any of that kind of stuff. And it's just like, oh, yeah, here's this thing that I found, and that becomes oh, you have paper, Oh my god, I haven't seen paper in forever.

I mean, the one version of water World that I like even better than the theatrical version. It runs about three hours and it moves so much better than this movie does. Realizing this movie came out the same year as Contact, Starship Troopers and Titanic, and I remember at this time, like you know, most fifteen year old of the era, I was a big fan of the National Inquirer. I used to really like reading it, and every week there would be an article about Titanic, the same way three years earlier, every week there would be an article about water World, Right, water World is this disaster? I remember one short article about how talking about how much money Kevin Coster was spending.

How they filmed a scene where he was supposed to fall in like a vat of like oil, and it was jello and it was cherry flavored jello, and Kevin Coster immediately yelled cut and said no, I said strawberry, and they had to reload it with strawberry jello. And I don't remember anything about the Postman because all of that attention was on Titanic. Every week it was Titanic's budgets now one hundred million, Titanic budgets now at one hundred and twenty million. And The Postman in some ways got so lucky because it was not the disaster it was not anticipated to be the disaster it was going to be because the world was waiting with bated breath for Titanic to fail. And what do you know, Titanic the most expensive movie at that time, but yet it's huge and The Postman does not at all, but is not.

I don't know how much money had ultimately lost because it was it seems like they spent money on this movie, and apparently, if some of the articles are to be believed, like they wasted a lot of time and money on this too. Like there's article in how like Kevin Costner would like because he was in charge in so many ways that he was not looking at the weather forecasts. So they'd show up and be like it's raining today. He's like, Okay, I guess we're not shooting. I guess I'm gonna go golfing or something that it seemed like a little bit of do you understand how much your people's money you're spending by doing this movie.

But again, the movie kind of like got Away. We talk more about water World being a failure than we do about The Postman being a failure. Water World made money in the end, the Postman did not. Yeah, well was it eighty million dollar budget? They say, and I'm made back thirty.

I can't remember if it was britn because I watched all those interviews and one of the people said about Titanic. They're like, yeah, we ended up being the Titanic, And the Titanic movie was the Iceberg. The Iceberg, yep, I think that was Brendanah and. I know it was. Yeah, I saw in the theaters like for better or worse.

I'm not a big fan of Titanic, but there's a. Lot to be said negatively about Titanic, But Titanic is an experience and that was a movie that ultimately, and it's been true of every James Cameron movie kind of before and after. It is easy to mock the man. It's easy to doubt the man. I'm sure he's a miserable man to like actually be around regularly, but he fundamentally he is confident in himself, and he knows what's gonna work, and he has always been right.

Titanic was supposed to be a disaster, it was not. Terminator two was suposed to be a disaster, it was not. I remember everybody doubting Avatar, and I remember thinking, you're wrong, that's gonna be the biggest movie of all time, and it was and it you know, most people can't do that, and Kevin Costner certainly couldn't. I understand he's leaving Yellowstone to direct three more movies. I wonder, well, you know he did the one right, and he's still yeah, it was such a disaster.

And did he film the second part? Or was it that it was like all prepped and because it was supposed to be like a three part epic. Thing, he's still trying to do it. I think he. I think he's going to have a difficult time.

I thought Horizon and American Saga at Horizon and two already came out, or was it just part one? The first one came out and was like a miserable failure. I thought the second one was then supposed to go like straight to DVD or like I think whoever was backing the first one was like, oh you know what, No, we're we don't need to pick up this contract. Chapter two mom filming began. Yeah, I guess maybe it actually was filmed, but I don't think it's getting a cinematic release.

Oh No. Premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in twenty twenty five, and it's the last time anybody who's ever talked about it. It's really difficult when you really want to do something and it is not your forte. When you have enough clout and money that you can do it, you can physically do it, somebody will give you the money to do it, somebody will give you the permission to do it, and you have too much confidence not to do it. It's a shame.

I have actually not seen Dances with Wolves. It's on. It's one of those best pictures I've always meant to and just haven't yet. It's fine, it has lots of It's very beautiful in a lot of ways. It's very cool to see like West two Dy and Graham Groon and the whole old Western gang and I'll best actors in their bones.

I mean, it's crazy to realize he has directed a lot less movies than I realized he has, because I think in my head I know how involved he was during in post production on Robin Hood and Water Like he recut Water World right. Ultimately, the theatrical version I think was his. So I think of him as a more of a director than he probably is on paper. He really wants to be, like I think that's what he wants to do and what he wants to be remembered for. He wants to be an auturist.

Did you guys suffer? See Detroit Metal City? Mm mm. I always think about it in these situations because it's the first time I really consciously thought about, like what you wanted to be good at and what you were good at. And in this case, it's about a guy who wants to do Swedish what he calls Swedish pop, and he has like a little mushroom cut and he wants to sing these bright, cheerful songs.

But what he's really good at is black metal, and he ends up being in a band trying to get his Swedish pop songs produced. But everyone loves Detroit Metal City, which is the name of his band. It's from a manga and he just looks so devastated in his face paint and his kiss boots and his Lord Yama's water buffalo on stage to frighten people at the image of death and engaged in a battle of the bands with Gene Simmons singing fucking him Palace. It's the opposite to me of the movie Rudy, which I hate. I know people love Rudy.

I know people like have modeled their you know, goals and ambitions and pride on that movie. And I watch it and I'm like, but he's not good. You can't just get something because you really want it. Yes, sometimes you're not right for something, and you shouldn't be on the Notre Dame football team if you're five to three and can't actually play football, no matter how much you want it. Bat foot nothing, you weigh one hundred and nothing.

I remember that trailer from Blockbuster a lot. And you don't get You don't get something just because you want it. And I mean you're Kevin Costner, so you yet the ability to direct films, and I mean Horizon was set to be people thought it might be the best picture when it was announced because it has a great cast. It was like, oh, Kevin Costner back to directing a western. This could this could be something.

And I mean I remember it's showing up on a lot of like most anticipated lists, and then it came out and people are, oh, lead, this is the Postman, Kevin Costner. Not cancel the polls, Kevin Costner, I don't know, but give this to another director, give give this, yeah, another reboot. I'm all taken. Yeah, to your point, I think this would make a great television mini series or series. You could play around a lot with the genders.

You could flip a lot of things. You could explore the racism or or not. You could make it more about physical ability and have it be that kind of story that's about ableism or something to that effect. Like there's a lot that you know, Again, I didn't love the novel, but I think there's a lot in that novel that I understand why a lot of people were drawn to it and said, I want to make this movie. I want to be in this movie.

It's again I'm saying it's a shame. I think I probably enjoyed this a little bit more of the books of You, just from an entertainment point of view, because I can enjoy something that's trying really hard and failing, and that's what I feel like this movie does. But I still think like there's still there's there's wheels in this thing to give it another go. I'm a little confounded because I can almost always do that, and this is the first movie in a long time that I really had trouble with. I'm still thinking about, like, what is it about it?

Because I enjoy zombie like say like which has terrible pacing and but but it has charm to it that and I feel like there's the smelding of Oscar level sensibility, Like there's Oscar level music, there's Oscar level cinematography all that. The cast is fantastic, and it's been merged into what I would normally see as a very low budget straight to video kind of thing. That would have been that way for if Kevin Costner hadn't been involved in nineteen ninety seven, Like you say, now, it could be a very cool prestige mini series. It could you know, like murder Bot or the Dune stuff, And instead we're trying really hard to elevate the material. And I don't know, maybe it's as simple as that that I can't deal with the elevating of the material.

I mentioned things like the It's me line or the little girl singing America the beautiful. There are so many clunkers in this movie where you're just laughing out loud, like you give away hope, like you're giving away. Candy that one I might adopt. And that's where you're like, Olivia Williams, you pour a beautiful creature. I love the uh.

There was one of the interviews with her, because this was her first Hollywood film, right, she basically came straight over on a plane from England and was like shoved on set and the you know interviewer it's like one of those typical like very like Hollywood talking it up and everything and favorite the exact line they say to her was something like, oh, you know, like, were you really was this what you were looking for? Were you excited to do it? And she's basically said, like, you know, you're an actor, you take what comes to you. Yeah. I liked I liked the part where she was like when they kept asking her trying to get her to be excited about it, She's like, well, I'm really looking forward to the good work I can get from this now, don't make her be any more damningly polite.

I'm saying I'll never watch it again, but no, that's not true. If this is on cable one day, I will absolutely flick it on and be like, Okay, I guess I'm gonna whisk my eggs to the scene where, you know, whatever scene it is not in a way that like a Field of Dreams is on, I will stop whatever I'm doing and be like, all right, guy, start watching the rest of Field of Dreams again. With this one, I think it is watchable. I think it is I say that it's not watching able to sit down and watch it for three hours. But I think this is one that in passing.

If I walked by and this was on TV, Okay, I'm gonna leave it on for a while, laugh a little kind of again, appreciate the horse three in the movie, and move on with my life. But it's fascinating to me in how much it wanted to do and how it was just in the wrong hands to do it. I would like to want to watch it while I did laundry. I think I will find some I think I'll turn to water World while I do laundry. Yeah, I'm glad that there was a fan edit of this.

I think it's definitely stronger. I think they Carol you pointed out the a spark of hope subtitle. Yes given is really kind of overwrought, but that's very much in keeping with this movie. It's the same. Yeah, it might be appropriate.

Yeah, but yeah, I even with that, I don't think it can really save what's here. It definitely makes a move faster, which thank you for that. Appreciate that one. But yeah, no, water is where it's at for me when it comes to this stuff. And there's a lot of other Costner films where I'm like, Okay, yeah, let's check this out.

Like I would love to go back and rewatch Silverado. It's been way too long since I've seen that. That is a good time of a movie. Again, He's kind of like very minor to the cast, you know, compared to you know, like Kevin Klein or Danny Glover, these guys. It's a shame that he got so big so quick, because I think he is somebody that could have been a great supporting actor in a lot of things, or do like.

A Chris Cooper, you know, like have some small ey movies that are like Buldeom and stuff. But just as soon as he got that power and could direct and star in his own projects, you can't do that if you don't have the ability to step outside yourself and and know your strengths and weaknesses. Like right, because I don't think he is an overly classically trained actor. I don't you know. And again, he is to me the definitive person when I think of like an actor who I think is a film actor who is charismatic but is not necessarily a good actor.

And again, he's been good in film, But I don't think he is who he is because he is a trained actor with great instincts. I think he just has that thing that works really well on camera, and when it's done right and exploited right, it's really watchable and it can really make a movie better. And when it's front and center without any editing and directing around it, it is a three hour slog. He does have the honor of being in one of my least favorite movies ever, which I only made it through one time in the movie theater, which is Dragonfly from two thousand and two. I don't know if you've ever heard of this movie.

It's a Tom Shadack film, and it's about a grieving doctor who's contacted by his deceased wife through her patients near death experiences. It is what. It sounds like, some wretch. It absolutely wretched. Oh you've so made me add this to Mike Cue Linda the Haunt and Gathy Bates.

I just got I just skimmed like this synopsis. The first thing I see is when Joe arrives at his home, his parent goes into a rage. I mean you sold me on that? Do another feminine critique? Definitely, Yes, Yes, that's what we're doing.

All right, guys, we're going to take a break and play your preview for next week's show right after these brief messages. Matt from Viva again and Emily looking for something superior to streaming a place with more than ten times the selection available on literally all of the streaming services combined. Check out Scaracrow Videos rent by mail service, Select from an unparalleled collection of over one hundred and fifty five thousand films, and get blu rays, four k's and DVDs delivered directly to your door. Get in on it now at Scarecrowvideo dot org and rediscover the wonders of physical meet Yeah, no. Sh shod, oh God, A thousand miles your own alone.

You'll count back count some day, You'll count back home some day. You steal up. In costs, star shot and no Opera extracts. Come Back comes Day, You're a black Cosme. Day extras, no shust come back Concdays Consisday.

Nay, that's right. We'll be back next week, kicking off a whole month of Western Discussions where we start with Massacre time. Until then, I want to thank my co hosts Emily and Jane. Emily, what's been going on with you? Well, obviously I'm going to be watching Dragonfly on to B because that's where it's streaming.

But aside from that, you can find my writing at Deadly Dollshouse dot com and my podcast with the wonderful Christine nick These at The Feminine Critique. We just did an episode off in Christine had a great goal of watching more movies directed by women, So this somehow led us to pairing for Ephron's Julie and Julia with Julia Dick Harno's Titan. So that's our latest episode, the double pairing that was always. Meant to be and Carol, how about yourself? I will obviously be reading and listening to Emily's discussion of Dragonfly and you can find me at the Cultural Gutter.

Strangely enough, my latest piece there is a nineteen ninety seventh film, The Office Killer, which is directed by a female director and art fine art photographer Cindy Sherman. And we've recently hired a new editor on, Michelle Kisner, who fans of the Projection Booth might be familiar with from her episodes here. Thanks again, folks for being on the show, Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They are all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com.

Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get help some Projection Booth take over the world. I gave a letter to the postman, put it in his side, biting her.

The next morning he brought. My letter back. She rode about it, returned in the cylinder. Had dress sudden No such number those such song we had had a bottom a love spat. I'm sorry, put my letter keeps coming back.

So when I dropped it in the mail box, that's saying a special. Brit in her. The next morning he came right back to me. She rode upbout it returned in the cylinder. That dress sudden though those such person.

Such this time, I'm going to take ad byself and put it in her head, and. It becomes black the very next time. Then along the step at this bottom go such number such return. Want to support physical media and get great movies in the mail, head over to Scarecrow Video dot Org and try. Scarecrow Video is incredible rent by mail service, right.

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