American Cinema Foundation, Podcast #1

 

Hello, Ricochet! Here’s the first of my projects through the American Cinema Foundation. I’m planning a weekly podcast talking about movies new and old, as they come into the news. What I want out this series of half-hour discussions is to give people a sense of the depth of thought involved in movies, even in popular movies that do not pretend to be sophisticated. It’s probably going to take me a while to figure out a format that works for an American audience, but I can guarantee that you’ll hear things that make sense as soon as you hear them, but which you haven’t heard before, as well as things that make no sense or seem very obscure.

I’m all about showing what’s serious about the movies I talk about, and so are my friends and guests. I’m hoping to make a bit of a splash, not least so that I find it easier to invite directors and writers on the podcast to talk about what’s worthwhile in American cinema. So please share this wherever you can! I’m grateful for whatever suggestions you can make, if you think they might help me improve the podcast and spread the word about my work here. Ultimately, I want to help people think about movies. Our leisure to a large extent is about movies and series. I’m all about giving people ways to get as much as possible out of the movies they love or even are merely curious about.

Beyond what’s basically conversation, the podcast will help me chronicle American history through the eyes of various writers and directors. I’m trying to make movie-makers not respectable, but interesting–able to say interesting things, to articulate the important things for human beings, and even to teach whatever part of the audience wants to be taught how to ask what makes us human!

By the way, if you want to get yet another sample of the dangerous thinking I’m famous for, here’s my new essay over at the Federalist, on Alien: Covenant.

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  1. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Gumby Mark (View Comment):
    Barb and I listened to the podcast today as we drove through Oklahoma. I’m a fan of Scott’s first film, The Duellists, despite its bizarre casting (though the Harvey Keitel character seems a precursor of the creature in Alien in his mindless, relentless pursuit of a human).

    Or as Keitel calls it, it was just the Seventies, man!

    I usually react viscerally to movies so I appreciated the insightful commentary. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Alien. Need to do so again.

    Most of it was shot hand-held, & the shoulder underneath the camera’s was Ridley Scott’s. You see a man at his craft throughout, after having storyboarded it scene by scene while waiting for the studio to approve the project. Then he was in the editing room with his editor. This was just his second feature, but he was in his early Forties, no mere pup…

    • #31
  2. Quinn the Eskimo Member
    Quinn the Eskimo
    @

    I hope you will do older films also.  You run into fewer spoiler issues after a few years.  I love movie analysis, whether or not I’ve seen a movie, but I shy away from current movies that I think I might see, but haven’t yet because of my schedule.

    • #32
  3. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    So I have a provisional solution to one problem, playback. Here’s the SoundCloud link for the first episode before I put the second one on.

    Whoever wants to download it to play it offline now can!

    • #33
  4. MisterSirius Member
    MisterSirius
    @MisterSirius

    Alien (1979) was effective, yet it seems to me a clear remake of It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1959) with all sorts of Cultural Marxism (or is that just “Marxism”?) from Jodorowsky’s epic failure of a “Dune” project. Blade Runner (1982) was another odd offspring of Jodorowsky’s “Dune,” and shares the same political quirks but lacks a solid movie to remake. Weird, almost like found art or something, that two highly influential movies by the same director were both made from salvaged scraps. (I mean “more than usual” amount of salvage, not getting into the weeds about how props and whatnot, even Robbie the Robot, get recycled by other people into later films: those are cases of borrowing from successful projects, not filching from radioactive craters.)

    • #34
  5. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Well, here’s your chance to listen to our podcasts & maybe you can begin to look at the movie with new eyes!

    • #35
  6. MisterSirius Member
    MisterSirius
    @MisterSirius

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Well, here’s your chance to listen to our podcasts & maybe you can begin to look at the movie with new eyes!

    Ah, oops! I should have mentioned that I already listened to the podcast number one. The closest it got to the Marxism I mentioned is the interesting talk of anti-capitalist elements. And maybe the paranoia, which seems a rather smoking gun type of pointer toward everyday life in the Soviet Union.

    • #36
  7. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Well, perhaps I was not persuasive. To me, it seems obvious, as I’ve argued briefly in my review of Alien: Covenant, horror has a logic of its own that is not hard to follow in these Ridley Scott pictures if you know what to look for. They make sense on their own without having to think of them as derivative of Jodorowsky’s Marxism, cultural or otherwise. As for being derivative of It–the meaning of this movie & this alien is self-contained. There is far more to learn, it seems to me, by thinking about why the writer & director liked Giger for the art than by looking back to It.

    On the other hand, maybe you want to write a post about this &, of course, link here! Ricochet can always use more thoughtful movie talk!

    • #37
  8. MisterSirius Member
    MisterSirius
    @MisterSirius

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    There is far more to learn, it seems to me, by thinking about why the writer & director liked Giger for the art than by looking back to It.

    Ah, yes, Giger! That answers my first observation: I was looking through the wrong end of the telescope! Because Giger was also a big part of Jodorowsky’s “Dune,” as was O’Bannon (writer for Alien), and others. (The Giger illustration of what I take to be a mobile Spice Harvester has always seemed to me to be a design leading toward the dead pilot humanoid of Alien.) So they were “survivors” of the doomed project, all together in the lifeboat/shuttle craft, rescued by the next project. My error was limiting the influence to merely the (Jodorowsky) Marxism! In addition, O’Bannon had already riffed on It in a comedy vein with Dark Star (1974); and “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” TV series (1964-68) must have had at least a couple episodes with monsters on board the submarine/heroes crawling through the airducts, so truly, reduced to (or elevated to) trope.

    • #38
  9. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Also, Ridley Scott tried, in 1979, for about a year to make Dune for Dino de Laurentiis after Jodorowski’s funding dired up. That was right after Alien–he dropped it to make Blade Runner.

    • #39
  10. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Also, Ridley Scott tried, in 1979, for about a year to make Dune for Dino de Laurentiis after Jodorowski’s funding dired up. That was right after Alien–he dropped it to make Blade Runner.

    Probably all for the best. I enjoyed Dune the book, it’s hard to translate to the screen. Not that it can’t be done, but the two versions that have been produced, while covering all (most?) of the bases in the story come across as being six degrees from a parody of the story.

    • #40
  11. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Yeah, it takes an unusual talent to deal with all the religious fanaticism, political intrigue, & military aristocracy. It’s not really part of our world; such things tend to come across as somewhat parodic; or too sentimental…

    • #41
  12. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    It’s also just hard to portray somebody who might be an emperor, for example. What kind of man is an emperor? Who’d take that seriously?

    • #42
  13. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Yeah, it takes an unusual talent to deal with all the religious fanaticism, political intrigue, & military aristocracy. It’s not really part of our world; such things tend to come across as somewhat parodic; or too sentimental…

    It wasn’t that so much as that most of the book is describing the thoughts of the characters. That is not easy to film successfully without becoming pretty boring.

    • #43
  14. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Percival (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Yeah, it takes an unusual talent to deal with all the religious fanaticism, political intrigue, & military aristocracy. It’s not really part of our world; such things tend to come across as somewhat parodic; or too sentimental…

    It wasn’t that so much as that most of the book is describing the thoughts of the characters. That is not easy to film successfully without becoming pretty boring.

    Well, more action, less interior monologue is a pretty good idea for movie-making. I don’t see why lots of the book couldn’t have been cut to improve the story, at least interior monologues.

    • #44
  15. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Percival (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Yeah, it takes an unusual talent to deal with all the religious fanaticism, political intrigue, & military aristocracy. It’s not really part of our world; such things tend to come across as somewhat parodic; or too sentimental…

    It wasn’t that so much as that most of the book is describing the thoughts of the characters. That is not easy to film successfully without becoming pretty boring.

    Well, more action, less interior monologue is a pretty good idea for movie-making. I don’t see why lots of the book couldn’t have been cut to improve the story, at least interior monologues.

    Yeah, but you are dealing with a very popular book. You can’t cut willy-nilly, or if you do, you will suffer abuse for it. See Jackson, Peter and Tom Bombadil.

    • #45
  16. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Well, it didn’t hurt him, did it? Sure, there’ll be complaints–but all I can say is, he was a fool not to make an entire Tom Bombadil movie… You know, for the kids-

    • #46
  17. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Titus Techera (View Comment):
    Well, it didn’t hurt him, did it? Sure, there’ll be complaints–but all I can say is, he was a fool not to make an entire Tom Bombadil movie… You know, for the kids-

    The thing is, without Bombadil, there’s no rescue from the barrow wights. Without the barrow, there’s no provenance on the dagger that Merry uses to stab the Lord of the Nazgul. Instead, it’s just a weapon that Aragorn just tosses to him on Weathertop.

    And it’s fine if you leave out the Scouring of the Shire, but if the reason you did that is to provide for more time for that sappy “end of the adventure” drivel at the end of The Return of the King, you’re a goof.

    • #47
  18. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    I think he left out the shire because he’s a coward. As for the other, it’s a very minor plot point. It’s worth thinking about, at least for people who like it, but it’s not a big plot point-

    • #48
  19. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    The Shire should have been more important–Tolkien & people like him took their England fairly seriously & saw certain virtues in democratic men. Sure, they lack the splendor of the aristocratic age; they’re not much on glory; & they fail to inspire. But there’s more humanity & more justice among them, much less cruelty…

    • #49
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