Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

The A-bomb had contributed to this soft reign of terror. It had also fired a period of excitement and fertility in the neglected field of science fiction. Before WWII, sci-fi in film was widespread, with examples such as Lang's hallmark Metropolis, Things To Come, the silent 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Lost World, and serials populated by Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The war had shifted the focus, to combat and military films, propaganda, home-front boosterism, and escapism. The war also brought awareness of the application of science to conflict. Atomic power had brought an entirely new set of horrific sci-fi characters --- as embodied by Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau in the film Ed Wood: “Today it's all giant bugs. Giant spiders, giant grasshoppers...” Increasingly, sci-fi enemies came from the outside, from other worlds loosening tremendous power upon the Earth, or beings from our world mutated and terribly changed by atomic power. Or sometimes, both. Aliens of all types were lurking every week at the Bijou in the 1950s. The Day The Earth Stood Still. The Thing From Another World, The War Of The Worlds. Some of these films were silly, and as characterized by Lugosi/Landau --- giant bugs. Some became classics, despite their pedigree, as in the film Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The 1956 offering had an unlikely path to greatness, but it's stood the test of time because of the themes that run through its bones.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Last month, we waltzed through mid – 19th Century Italy. Today, we jump forward a half – century --- royalty continues its decline, the middle – class and powerful industrial leaders are ascendant in Europe. It's a new century and the dawn of a new, perhaps golden era. But is it? Where still a force, European royalty is having its last hurrah in controlling lands far beyond their borders through vicious policies of imperialism. A minor Prince in Germany (who calls himself the German language derivation of Caesar) is going to overstep his bounds and plunge Europe and some of the rest of the world into a butcher's shop of a conflict, known airily as WWI. As a result, the world further shunts royalty into the wastebin of history. But the desire for power, for rule over lands beyond your own borders? That remains. The eyes that lust after it, the hands that seek to grasp it, change from supposedly holy royal hands to an unholy alliance between politicians and industrial and financial might. And the world again sends its military off to slaughter one another. We saw the seeds of the downfall of royalty during the unification of Italy in Luchino Visconti's film, The Leopard. This month, we follow two men from very different backgrounds who emerge from a unified Italy. They face the fallout of WWI and the rise of cooperation between autocracy and industrial might that forms fascism. Another decorated Italian director, Bernardo Bertolucci, mounted an ambitious film to follow their path and that of Italy as a five – hour epic, 1900. The film, which debuted in 1976, not only portrayed another turning point for Italy and the world but was a significant change for Bertolucci as he moved away from a scandalous and dark part of his career. But this is just a light story travelling over decades --- nothing to teach the US and the world in 2025…Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Visconti has been seen in this season as the director of the searing, accusatory film of the interdependence of the industrial class with the Nazis in Germany, The Damned. But where did this European industrial class arise, when Europe was still saddled with an immense set of royalty that began with kings and queens and spread its fingers into every aspect of the lives in their respective nations or nation-states until almost 1920? How was the transfer of power and wealth from the royals to a burgeoning middle- and then upper-class of technocrats, industrialists and traders brought about? How did this unweighting of the royals and shift in power to common but now wealthy families buckle civil society under the strain? In the 1963 film, The Leopard, Visconti examines the shift in the sand in the quiet, almost dispassionate gaze of a Sicilian nobleman, who sees his royal station being slowly eroded by the forces of politics, but also by the forces of economics, as wealth passes from hands supposedly blessed by a lineage from God into the more clever, adept hands of a new line. Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

As with Django, Corbucci wrote the film with his brother Bruno, as well as Vittoriano Petrilli and Mario Amendola. He'd been deeply influenced by the recent assassinations of Che Guevara, Cuban revolutionary who had tried to spark a Communist overthrow of Bolivia, and the US' Malcolm X, a one-time Nation of Islam leader converted to the Muslim faith and killed at a speaking engagement. As the end of the 60s approached, Corbucci felt that the era of progressive political action was dwindling, to be overtaken by fierce reactionary elements. The earlier activism seemed to him to be hurled backward in progress and time. As Alex Cox noted about Corbucci's thoughts, “You could only take on the powerful and the wicked for a short while, it seemed, before they crushed you.” Corbucci set the film's action in 1899 Utah just prior to the Great Blizzard, the winter scenes reflecting his feelings of pessimism, depression, and disgust. Another influence --- famed Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni had secretly wished to play a role in a Spaghetti but felt his poor English would interfere --- he suggested to Corbucci to pen a film of a mute protagonist. Corbucci adapted the idea into the film sans Marcello --- it would become the second Mud and Blood work, 1968's The Great Silence, a word play on the bleakness of the winter setting and the mute anti-hero. Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

There's a small set of seasons that lurk after the best of winter, but before spring is in the air. You're emerging from the wonders of a White Christmas (TM) --- those beautiful, light, star-filled dustings of a snowfall, so picturesque. Then slogging into the wet, deep, and ongoing snowfalls that you shovel every day. And then --- worse! --- the melting of that semi-season into the wet, drippy, soggy next phase --- the season of mud. Both the slogging snow and mud seasons are drags on the spirit for those who live through them --- they possess an endless feel of oppression. Contrast this with the blazing sun and hot desert environments of, well, Westerns. Even in the most desperate of Western films, the atmosphere is usually sunny, with vistas of mesas and rock formations as far as the eye can see. Think John Ford Westerns as a prime example. It's as if the West is centered in Monument Valley, Arizona --- everything farther west is California, and everything eastward is St. Louis. And 98% of American Westerns follow suit…Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Last season we walked through an admittedly unscientific list of the greatest character actors in recent memory --- all men and mostly known for roles as so-called bad men. But we made the promise to rebalance the favor in this season --- so here it is --- an honor roll that by definition only women fill; the femmes fatale. The direct translation is the fatal women, but above all, a female character played in predominately film noir. Part of the atmosphere, darkness, nihilism, and hopelessness of that genre is amplified by the woman who lead the protagonist (you really can't call them heroes, the scenario being so nihilistic) by the nose, often unwittingly, into the situations that lead to their downfall. Using their beauty, their cunning, their duplicity to maneuver the gee we're following into doing their bidding --- knocking off a bank to live large for a time, knocking off a husband who's grown tiresome. And leaving the protagonist to face the music or holding the bag as she slips away. Thus, the understood translation of the femme fatale as a deadly or lethal woman. She crops up in most noirs, not with a voiceover as the protagonist is sometimes granted, but a part of all those noir flashbacks in which the gee traces what went wrong, and just as likely to be seen in a dark room with the shades casting shadows like prison bars across her lovely face --- portents of the future. She has a magnetic presence and deadly agency --- she walks out of the sunlight into a dark bar, or appears at a party on someone else's arm, or walks down the stairs flashing a honey of an anklet. She hooks the gee with a glance, a look, or by sidling up to him to entice him to buy her a drink. It starts innocently, but then it goes wrong, so very wrong. Inevitably, her feelings for the guy are false, or dropped like a handkerchief, to allow her to drift again, with the money, with her freedom, off to entice and hypnotize another protagonist. As we had seven character actors last season, we have a Magnificent Seven of femmes fatale from the classic era of noir to savor, compare, and contrast. And we'll delve into some of the sweep of their cinematic craft outside of the noir genre --- no one trick pony these ladies…Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Well, Noirvember may be over, but our journey into my made-up sub-genre, atomic noir, is not. It's a cheery continuation for the holiday season. At least the next film has some humor in it, as opposed to the sadism in November's Kiss Me Deadly… Thanks for those memories Mickey Spillane! This month: released in 1984 by Universal, it's Repo Man, directed by Alex Cox on a shoestring budget of $1.5M, resulting in lasting indy fame and approbation. If you look it up on Wikipedia, they label it as science fiction black comedy. Oh, but it's so much more! So, I'm slapping on my own label of atomic/punk/noir. But, yeah, there is a science fiction twist, and it does have some stealthy humor.  Why continue in this vein? Well, last month, we looked at the horror of mid-50s America, with its hide-under-the-bed fear of commies and pinkos, plus it's palpable fear of the A-bomb. That whole scene blew open with the rise of white guy rock n' roll, Kennedy kicking Nixon's ass (well, by a slim margin), the rise of the counterculture, and the narrow atomic war escape of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the clock ticking toward Armageddon nearly struck midnight. Whew! People woke up, man! But then, that was blown away by Johnson's failure in Vietnam, the US actually losing a war, resulting in Nixon slithering into the White House for two terms (but now, the guy looks like an amateur), ending with the national nightmare of Watergate. Backlash to the Democrats and Jimmy Carter. But public trust had evaporated. Justice and higher ideals went out the window. People were tired --- they didn't believe in much at the dawn of the 80s. Except maybe in going to B-school, working on Wall Street, and having a home in the Hamptons, with a pool and jet ski. Who rode in on a white horse to burnish this turn towards Mammon? Why, Ronald Reagan. Or, as Doc Brown memorably put it in Back To The Future --- “The actor?” Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

It would still prove to be the American Century, but now it was overshadowed by the threat of the atom's power. Air raid shelters were built in public buildings. Families dug and poured concrete in their backyards to construct personal bomb shelters. Food was stocked, with water, batteries, Bibles, bunk beds and lawn chairs. The US government produced films on how to survive an atomic war, and what our duties as citizens were in that event. Don't believe me? Find the documentary The Atomic Café and decide what the government and military were trying to sell us. I was one of the millions of kids who learned to survive (perhaps?) an atomic blast by ducking and covering under my desk at school. At least survive the initial blast. The radiation was a different story. It was all responsible for an underlying uneasiness at all times, a subtle terror. This coupled perfectly with the feelings of unseen threat and malaise that film noir captured. The style or genre was at the end of its first and classic cycle in the US by the mid 50s and the height of anti-Communist and atomic fear. But it had a final entry that pulled it all together with a director and cast that was little equaled, then or now --- Robert Aldrich's 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, a classic film noir and fundamental influence on the French New Wave and auteurs such as Godard and Truffaut, as well as extending into the modern era, as we shall see next month. Distributed by United Artists, it had a winding path to excellence, but it's now widely acknowledged as a mainstay of noir, stuffed with talent.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Send us a textNosferatu 1922's reputation grew down the years, especially among film lovers. One of these was German master director Werner Herzog. As the 70s ended, Herzog determined that he wanted to remake the film --- an homage to what he felt was the greatest film ever to come from Germany. In Season 1 of the pod, we've looked at the scope of Herzog's work, and up close at one of his most moving films, Fitzcarraldo. Herzog is well-known for his capture of humans surviving under trying conditions, accomplishing tasks that are seemingly impossible, or unlikely. Further, he himself filmed in locations that would challenge even the best-equipped film companies --- in mountains, volcanoes, deserts, along the Amazon, amid the Siberian taiga, across the frozen Midwest. His work on Fitzcarraldo had led his backers to dub him “The Conquistador of the Useless,” as he struggled for years to film a steamship pulled by humans over a mountain. But he's characterized himself as someone who captures the dreams of others, even dreams that turn out to be impossible to realize.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Send us a textFor Scary Season 2024, we're harkening back to a founding film in the genre of horror. In this era of the 21st Century, fans of horror are rich in the types of film they view to give themselves the creeps --- body horror, slasher films, psychological fear, the supernatural. But a film had to be the forerunner for Hollywood and the rest of the world to understand that the public wanted to be scared for their 25 cents (in 1931, probably now more like $25 --- Junior Mints included). Horror would put people in the seats and pay off. There'd been a few forerunners in the silent era --- German Expressionist films such as The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu (more on that to come). But the genre took off when Universal brought out the first in their classic series of monster films, with Dracula in 1931. In this lies a tale of, not just horror, but real-world crosscurrents in legend, in literature, symbolism, star power, typecasting, and longevity. And Universal taking horror to the bank until 1948.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Send us a textDoesn't seem like much of a bargain. An uber-being shows and coincidentally knows what you want --- merely sign away your post-existence --- usually in blood, that might be a clue! But repeatedly, people actually sign away their souls --- in the form of their pride, their morality, their sense of worth, friendships, family. Come on --- it's an allegory! But what a tale! Why does it occur in the stories and representations of numerous cultures, religions, and nations? Perhaps because it explains away the failings of humans who make that irrational choice --- that opt to choose the power, the riches, the adoration and give away what really matters in return. That is --- a deal with the devil, whether you believe in the devil or not. Humans make that fatal choice, even if not confronted with a signpost such as a devilish Lucifer with a dripping bloody pen to incite you to sign. How does this fit with the German industrialists of The Damned from last month and their deals with the fascistic Nazis of the 1930s? As we saw, the trail of murder, betrayal, madness, and a lack of morality was well-rewarded, in the end, for the industrial family based on the Krupps of Germany. Machine guns for untold riches and power beyond reason? Why not? But to continue to use the fascism of Nazi Germany in the 30s as our background --- why did less powerful people sign on? Why did those in line to make a lesser fortune, or attain modest power, or simply to be left alone, go down the road hand-in-hand with the Nazis? Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Send us a Text Message.The middle and lower classes, so-called, ultimately flocked to the message of fascism, not just in Germany but even earlier, in Italy in the ‘20s under Mussolini. For a class of people who had little or less than in the past, who felt powerless, the allure of fascism was intense and compelling. But what of the intellectual class, of the already powerful capitalist members of society, what of the artists for whom fascism might lead to straited circumstances and censorship? How did they respond to a government that conceivably promised less control for them, in legislation, in industry, in the arts? Why not lead the call to remain a republic, to turn away from fascism, to educate the country on the dangers that might lie ahead? The takeover of Germany by the Nazis was relatively bloodless, mostly accomplished through the manipulation of democratic norms. Why was a beaten nation post-WWI in 1918 lulled into a world-wide conflagration a mere twenty years later? How had the leaders of Germany, in industry, in government, in the arts, failed so badly to rally the people to remain rational and democratic, leading to another decimation of Germany as a people and a nation?Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

It's the end of season one, or cycle one, or Earth one, whatever you want to call it, for the pod… We wanted to end the season on something special and this film is just so --- a veritable treasure chest of recognizable and quotable lines for film fans. Tight as a drum, unfolding an incredibly well-written story in less than two hours, with a cast of three memorable headliners and fantastic support. It's definitely noir, though some reviewers characterize it as black comedy as well, but justifiably one of the career pinnacles for writer and director Billy Wilder --- 1950's Sunset Boulevard, from Paramount Pictures. Not just another noir pretty face, but widely acclaimed as one of the greatest films of all time. For all you wonderful people out there in the dark…Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

You may have seen Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and if so, you know the moment in the film when Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton sees himself in a role on TV and points at the screen excitedly --- it's a meme now. I do it all the time watching film, at least in my mind. I mentally point at the screen, and shout to myself --- “Yeah, there's that guy! He's great!” But who is that guy? Sometimes, I've seen the actor so many times I have his name committed to memory, but I'll often have to ashamedly drag myself off to Wikipedia and look him up. They too serve who no one knows. So, this is my pod salute to those actors who are repeatedly great in their roles, never the headliner, never the second lead, but always driving the story forward and so enjoyable to watch. BTW, these are all men, but I have plans in season two of the pod to do a salute to women actors in similar circumstances --- probably femmes fatale. Because all of these male actors have primarily made their reputations as bad guys.  Who are they? They're memorable actors, good actors, who made their mark in several roles and, for some, hundreds of roles over a long career. As what might be termed character actors, they have idiosyncrasies or tics that plant them in your mind and have producers phoning them up repeatedly, regardless of the genre of film being cast. The kind of actor you point at. Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

My top noirs are Double Indemnity and Out Of The Past, in that order, but Falcon is special. Right out of the hard-boiled school of writing, the character of the unstoppable but human private detective as a noir mainstay, one of the more fatale of the femmes in the genre, the moody lighting and framing, the inevitability of the conclusion of a twisted scheme. Hey, all it lacks is a voice-over and flashbacks! Oh well. Falcon launched from one-time Pinkerton agent Dash Hammett's typewriter in 1930. Run as a serial in the classic Black Mask pulp magazine, it was later published as a detective novel by Knopf. Hammett was often a denizen of San Francisco, setting the novel there and taking his given first name, Sam, for the name of his protagonist, Sam Spade. Hammett is often contrasted with a hard-boiled, slightly later contemporary, Raymond Chandler, whose own detective Phillip Marlowe was set irrevocably in LA. Chandler was more of a florid descriptor of the LA scene, while Hammett's prose was exceedingly spare, with little of the setting of San Fran or deep details of the background of the story revealed. However, this made Hammett's work perfect for a screenplay. Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

We've gone through quite a few pods on film, especially film noir and police procedurals, but this might be the first that has a female protagonist as the main character! More's the pity! But what a protagonist! Perhaps to make up for the previous imbalance, we're going to encounter one of the fiercest, most insightful, and action-oriented characters yet, regardless of gender. She has high EQ, high IQ, empathy, but she's also tough as nails, and wise. Nicely enough, she was the character that introduced me deeply, as she did for so many people, to the wonder of the Coen Brothers and their cinematic universe. Now, this is one cinematic universe I can get into…Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

When film fans speak about directors, they often go on about idiosyncratic styles or bellwether looks and techniques. You can rapidly identify a Hitchcock film. Same for something from Orson Welles. Scorsese has tendrils that can be traced through most of his films. But few directors inject themselves into the films they create to the extent that the trials and agonies of the production become legendary. Or become immortalized in a documentary. These are directors who encourage their crew to partake of the rough and tumble as well. Does this result in a film that transcends the ordinary --- or just war stories about how bad the conditions were? Of the major world directors, one stands out as someone who will go to extraordinary lengths to accomplish their quest. And will successfully talk their backers and crew into following their lead, though it may take years to bring about the final film. And they may have to, purportedly, threaten an actor with a pistol to do so. Werner Herzog is able to capture his visions of protagonists that seek after the impossible, who are strangers in a strange land. As is he. Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Film is such a wonderful art form --- in some instances, almost the entirety of the world may be encompassed. Or the artist makes the attempt to capture the world. And thereby capture timeless subjects that are repeated down the years. Imagine developing a film that looks at the humanity of man. Classism. Racism. Antisemitism. War. The rise of fascism. Nationalism. Accomplished nearly one hundred years ago now --- and the ugly elements portrayed in the film are still around to plague us. Still relevant today.The masterstroke was to expose all of this in a story elegantly simple and straightforward. It was done in 1937 by Jean Renoir --- the film, Grand Illusion. Here --- I'll give you the plot. Two French pilots are captured during WWI. They're sent to a prison camp and try to escape. They almost make it out, but at the last moment, they're sent to a different camp, supposedly inescapable. The German commandant of the POW camp admires them. They hatch another plan to escape, involving a third prisoner. Two of the prisoners escape, due to the sacrifice of the third, shot by the German commandant. There. That's it. You can stop the pod now if you like.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Many of us strive to accomplish great things in our lives. A smaller group reach the heights in terms of those dream accomplishments. Then what do you do? How do you follow that when you've climbed a steep hill and, perhaps exhausted, look back? Where do you go now? Some, accomplished though they are, will turn away and pursue other, but less vaunted goals. Others will try to replicate the initial success, riffing on it until it's a pale imitation of what was once beautiful. And the smallest, most exclusive group of all will try to go beyond the initial accomplishment, to top themselves. The air is rarified up there. In business, in sports, in the arts, how many have the vision, determination, and unflagging energy to go above? Few. Few. In film, the list of those who have brought art to the screen, then added to or topped themselves is small. And even bringing art to the screen is hard, seemingly impossible at times --- because making movies is a business. In the days before the confusion of streaming vs. release to theaters and that brouhaha, it used to be a very profitable business. The safest and easiest way to keep it profitable, or what passes for profit in 2023, is to riff on successful or even somewhat successful films. To iterate. To take a film that had a bit of magic and copy and paste it until the magic's gone and only a shell remains. Or until the movies don't make money anymore. In other words, sequels. If you've listened to the pod, you know I dislike sequels. But they don't have to be pale imitations. They can be more. It's just incredibly hard to pull off. Enter one of America's greatest directors --- Francis Ford Coppola.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

But there was the antithesis of noir as well. A small movement to capture some feelings of life, of positivity. People went to the movies weekly, and often they simply wanted one thing --- hope. That things would be better, that life would go back to normal, whatever that was. That things would work out, for society and individuals. There was a small ripple of films, also of the 40s and 50s, that took this viewpoint. And while noir went straight at the ugliness of the world, the small area of fantasy film set out to negate the ugliness. Fantasy film was a genre that embraced an adult sensibility --- not children's fairy tales brought to the screen in animation by Disney, nor the horror films that Universal had developed in the 30s. Neither were they the escapist films of the Depression 30s, with Fred and Ginger dancing up glittering staircases in fabulous dresses and white tie and tails. These were films for adults, with a message of hope, portrayed in a realistic manner, but wrapped up in the fantastic, with aspects of other-worldliness. They were a small set of beacons for hope in a seemingly hopeless world.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

I can see him coming out of a run-down building, into a rain-swept, darkened street. He's wearing a fedora pulled down over his forehead, with a large, rumpled trench coat to match. He moves wearily, a big man, not plodding, but not stepping lively either. If he speaks, it's laconic, with a somewhat slow pace to the words, seldom rising above a conversational tone. Not much bothers him. Oh, the occasional clue that's out of place, the occasional femme who means to do him wrong. Sometimes, he has to dodge bullets or fists. Once in a great while, he takes a crack on the head. But he keeps going. He smokes incessantly --- striking the match and the flame illuminating his face, with its hang dog look and sad eyes. It lights him up --- it's Robert Mitchum. He's the King Cat of film noir. The star of innumerable war films, some highlighting heroic officers, some as just a simple grunt who wants to go home. He's a Western hero or antihero. He's a malevolent villain who has LOVE and HATE tattooed on his knuckles. He threatens a family in which he thinks the lawyer father has done him wrong. He walks with hoods in Boston, the Yakuza in Japan. And he does all of this, not with the Method, not with histrionics, not with knock-your-eyes-out good looks --- he does it with stillness. With acting by not appearing to act. By being Robert Mitchum. He broke all the rules. He didn't give a damn. An unlikelier Hollywood star there never was.Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Sales is often spoken of as the tip of the spear for any enterprise. That's not true --- marketing is the tip of the spear. But we'll leave that alone. Sales is often the first time a customer or buyer experiences a company --- the ethic, the product, the approach. Sales as a career attracts a certain type of person --- driven, very focused, sometimes with big but usually at least a healthy ego. Many focused on the needs of their customers. Many focused on the bucks. Some even focused on both. Like any position, you get people who are out on the fringes of the bell-shaped curve (to be fair --- marketing included). In sales, on one end, those who are so focused on the dollars, they'll do anything to keep them rolling in. On the other end, those who whine that it's all stacked against them --- they have no help, no prospects, no luck, no life. I was struck like a lightning bolt by an examination, a wild and exaggerated examination, but one that was close to the truth, of both extremes in sales by the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross. Marketing will make you an observer --- of trends, of behavior, of people. When I saw Glengarry, a chill ran down my spine and I thought, my god! I've been in cars for hours with these guys! What I'd observed out in the wild was up on the screen. But distilled down to its essence. You rooted for these guys, or you hated their guts. What a film…Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

History repeats first as tragedy --- radio evangelism and the good, hard business sense of Christianity in the 1920s, but next the farce --- the co-opting of religion for political and financial purposes in the 21st Century. And, in both cases, railing at, to quote a fictional preacher, “Harvardism, Yaleism, and Princetonism.” The shadowy and evil elites, of course. Woops, throw in one more “ism,” Darwinism. It's on repeat play now. And it was all seen clearly in 1926 by a guy named Sinclair Lewis. Who penned a novel that inspired a fantastic and illustrative film, 1960's Elmer Gantry, from United Artists. The novel Gantry was so scandalous that it was, as the phrase goes, “banned in Boston.” It was incredibly popular nonetheless, but almost too hot to handle until the thawing of the Production Code for film in the 50s. At long last came Renaissance man Richard Brooks, to move Gantry forward as a project and into American theaters. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

But the way Hollywood of the classic era liked it best was for the actor to be “discovered.” That's right. You're sitting at Schwab's Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard in 1937 and the next thing you know, you're Lana Turner and making $1000 a week. By the way, it wasn't Schwab's, it was the Top Hat Malt Shop. Hollywood even has a genre for this, the films of “You're going to be a star, kid.” As an example, all twenty versions of A Star Is Born, under various titles. Singin' In The Rain. Day Of The Locust. Hearts Of The West. The Aviator. The Artist. Busby Berkley musicals. It's the old story. A kid with talent and heart moves to Hollywood from Nebraska or Kansas and waits tables, or parks cars, sells newspapers, or is a hat-check girl, until their big break. Someone hears them sing or sees them smile. Or sometimes they end up like the Black Dahlia --- that's a different kind of movie. But generally, it's the old hokum… It really happened. It happened to a 6' 5” blonde-haired guy who was built like a tank, with a voice like a foghorn, who really was a skilled sailor. Who, by the way, became one of the great actors of film noir, of Westerns, war films, even delving, almost unintentionally, into black comedy and films that are now acknowledged classics, no matter the genre. It happened to Sterling Hayden. And he ducked and bobbed and weaved away from his fate as an actor, as do so many film noir protagonists. But he was caught up in Hollywood's web, for better or worse. From his life storm emerged one of film's most interesting and talented actors. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Take that impossible set of circumstances to make a film described at the top. Now, place over those hurdles the desire to change up a recognized genre. To take a fixed idea and make it new, fresh, and vibrant. Not so easy, is it? Try to make something old work in a new and exciting way in any part of life, let alone something as evanescent as film. It doesn't happen often. When it does, it hits like an explosion. By the end of the 60s, the Western had exploded, again. It was once more in full bloom, taking up a large part of world studio output, which continues, almost uninterrupted, to the present day. Why the renaissance? It was due to an unlikely source and director --- the Italian, Sergio Leone. It was a craze and wave that became known as the Spaghetti Western.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Scary Season Part Two! The guest hosts and I spent some time last week on a true classic of the horror genre, House Of Wax… now let's be frightened out of our wits by… well, it's actually a Scary Season “so bad, it's good” classic from the master of inexpensive horror, the Orson Welles of the Bs, the ne plus ultra employer of marketing gimmicks --- it's a William Castle film! And it's one of his greats --- The Tingler! Even the title is great! Released in 1959 and distributed by Columbia, it's a tight 80 minutes of terror and fun. Starring that wonderful purveyor of thrills and chills, during his rise as the King of the Terror Bs, Vincent Price.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

It's Scary Season here on the pod and we have a double feature to frighten you this year, two classics of the screen that star the inimitable Vincent Price. The first is a true classic, that helped to launch a trend in film in the 50s and Price's career as the King of the Horror Bs. The second is so bad it's good --- a thriller that was even more impactful in its marketing than in its making, but still a lot of fun to watch. Plus, we have guest hosts to help dissect, laugh, and scream at this year's selections. We're starting with the 1953 classic House Of Wax, released by Warner Brothers and helmed by director Andre DeToth. Not only is it headlined by Price, in one of his best performances in horror, it's stuffed with a veritable museum of great B picture actors, and a few who went on to better than B work. The backstory and reason for the artistic and commercial success of House Of Wax is fun and interesting in itself. It begins, as do many good scary movies, in the mists of the 1930s.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Picture Show is absolutely authentic, due to two behind-the-scenes craftspeople and two actors who transform the film. The story of Picture Show began with the novella of the talented, but at the time, little-known author, Texan Larry McMurtry. McMurtry worked on the screenplay with the director, who had only released one pretty good previous film, after moving on from researching and writing about film --- Peter Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich was brilliant in utilizing the talents of two disparate actors to underline the film --- an old cowboy who'd been in the John Ford film company and never stretched as an actor, Ben Johnson, and an actor who had worked primarily in TV and a few minor film roles such as in the noir Kiss Me Deadly, who would go on to a long career in film and TV, Cloris Leachman. And they were in the supporting cast!email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

The person of Orson Welles is a loaded one for an observer of film --- he was so many things in his lifetime, he wore so many hats. Welles had incredible triumphs and unbelievable lows in his chosen work. He was such a consummate actor that it was hard to tell when he was serious and when he was still acting, when seen outside a theater, radio studio or soundstage. If you ask him to be recalled by people in the 21st Century, many will be able to cite two aspects, at polar opposites of his life and story. Orson Welles wrote, directed, produced, and starred in what many regard as the greatest film ever made --- Citizen Kane. He was also, near the end of his life and in search of funds, a spokesperson for the lower- and medium-priced wines of Paul Masson, with the catchphrase, “We will sell no wine before its time.” In other words, these aren't grapes we just pressed, bottled and shipped. It's not garbage. That's what Masson was paying him for. He intoned this, the words emanating from his obese body but still in his beautiful, modulated baritone. He became a punch line. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

It's a small, grimy, smoky, desperate film, just like the arena in which much of the action takes place. It's either a prime example of film noir, or some form of noir with boxing and drama  thrown in. It has the heroic performances of two noir stalwarts who were more often cast as the miscreants in their films. It has a director who was successful in almost every genre and honored by his peers, but near the start of his directing career. Plus, a wonderful cast of supporting characters, the kind that the meme of Rick Dalton, pointing at the TV screen in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, would have been created for. What's not to admire? It's the boxing/drama/crime/noir The Set-Up. Is it a film noir or not? We'll get there. Whichever, I admire its grimy look at tank town life, its unsympathetic view of the sweet science of boxing, the stories you'll tell yourself as an aging athlete, and the entanglements that humans are wont to get into when there's the sound of even a single buck dropping. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

The films I talk about on the pod are usually ones that I saw when I was younger and then returned to over and over because they struck an emotional chord with me. A very few are films that I've heard about due to their impact and finally got around to watching when I was middle-aged (or older!). Today, allow me to wander around a film that, while we may in 2023 need to interpret the effectiveness of the silent film actors, plus a certain admitted goofiness of the story, will allow us to recognize elements and genre of film that have been exploited to this day. It's the almost one hundred-year-old 1927 film, Metropolis. I'd heard about Metropolis for years and finally began viewing it repeatedly in middle age. I love its boldness and vision and am delighted to trace the roots of many films back to this monumental, far-seeing work. The director, Fritz Lang, is among the most honored in his field, and was a master of many genres, helping to found some of those still resonant today.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

I've made fun of film sequels, universes, and series on the pod, accusing Hollywood of taking anything that's successful and knocking it off repeatedly, for the dollars. As well as the yuan; many of the cinematic universes are action/hero/comic book films, which are short on plot and long on thrills and special effects, thus not needing extended passages of subtitled exposition. Which is not to excuse Hollywood, don't get me wrong! It's a lousy use of film, talent, and time, but I suppose an adequate way to make money. But allow me --- I'd like today to look at the end of an arc, a sort of sequel, if I may, on this pod. It's 1952's Umberto D, from the last of the era of Italian Neorealism. It's the antithesis of an action universe film, as very little occurs during the story. But it does sum one director's study of the ages of man --- Vittorio De Sica. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

When I saw Yojimbo, at last, from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, I thought, this is the greatest samurai film ever. But, I thought, he stole it all from Sergio Leone and A Fistful Of Dollars. Boy, was I naïve. That was backwards, of course, if I'd cared to check the dates of release. But the story was even more layered than that. Kurosawa, Leone, Sergio Corbucci, they were all swimming in a beautiful blue sea, not only of water, but of time and history. They conjured up one of the greatest stories that ever hit the screen of the fight for and triumph of right, the lure of money and what it may devolve to, and the beauty of the loner hero. It was a story that had been told many times before. And many after. For the ages. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

In the glorious days of the 70s and early 80s in the US, there was a birth of auteurs and a move towards independent films and away from huge legacy studio systems. Just a few of the names associated with this movement, captured controversially by author Peter Biskind in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, were Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. All have made film that is memorialized as some of the finest or most ground-breaking in history. All have had, not only success, but their share of misses, as one must when aiming high. But joining them and others in their auteur cohort is a producer and especially a director who, I believe, has changed American and world cinema. A writer, director, producer, actor, conservator of film, a film historian. A man whose background and family bent him, luckily for us, in the direction of the dreams of cinema. And a director who has had to pull himself up repeatedly to make important films, who has gone from critical and monetary successes to works that were underappreciated in their time or missed their audience completely. Martin Scorsese. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

I've seen The Music Man at least once a year, since age ten, usually around the 4th of July, which is when the story takes place and is the holiday it embodies so well --- the All-American, fireworking, head-back-looking-up-at-the-sky, patriotic singing holiday of holidays. And all due to the enthusiasm, good-old American stick-to-it-iveness and talent of Meredith Wilson. The entertainment industry doesn't produce people like Wilson anymore. Born at the turn of the century in Mason City, Ioway (the real River City), he was a musician, composer, playwright, radio star, bandleader, and author. He grew up in Iowa, a son of the Midwest, and became an accomplished flutist and piccolo player, so much so that he attended the Julliard School. He later played in John Phillip Sousa's band (talk about “76 Trombones!”) and for the New York Philharmonic under the master Toscanini. In 1950, Wilson met playwright and screenwriter Franklin Lacey, and they began an eight-year journey to capture Wilson's memories of his boyhood in Mason City. Thirty revisions and forty songs later, they produced the Broadway show, The Music Man, premiering in 1957. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

The Asphalt Jungle came out of MGM (yeah, MGM. Not exactly a wonderful musical as we shall see) in 1950, the classic era of film noir in the US. But Jungle might also be pegged with a label that someone walking down the street would now recognize: it's a heist film. The story comes from the wonderful author of crime, W. R. Burnett, and his 1949 novel. Burnett came up the hard way, working as a night clerk in a hotel while learning writing, exposing him to all sorts of characters and situations, seedy or not. His first novel, Little Caesar, established the gangster story in America, followed quickly by the film adaptation, starring Edward G. Robinson. Burnett made a habit of writing about a novel per year and rapidly turning around and selling the rights to Hollywood, sometimes writing the screenplay himself. He came up with the novels or screenplays that formed the basis for such classics as Scarface, with Paul Muni, memorably remade with Pacino, High Sierra, with Bogart and Ida Lupino, King Of The Underworld, The Dark Command, This Gun For Hire, which made diminutive Alan Ladd a star, The Great Escape, and Ice Station Zebra. Burnett's novels were unusual, not for the protagonists' helpless fall into crime in the big dirty city, but a contrast with their desire for a simpler, rural, straight life, one which they seldom achieve. As we shall see in Jungle. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

I can count on one hand the number of films whose introductions startled or entranced me. Citizen Kane, yes, 2001, sure. But one that fascinated me was at a free showing (thanks student ID) during grad school. The film was Aguirre, The Wrath Of God. Besides an interesting title, the opening sequence showed a trail of people traversing a huge, verdant mountain, surrounded in deep, then evaporating fog; conquistadors in heavy breastplates and helmets, indigenous natives impressed into service carrying immense loads, priests, elegant women, horses, donkeys. On the soundtrack, incredible music was describing this journey, as the camera hove into the sight of a blonde helmeted warrior, who seemed to be both frenzied and completely calm. The music was from the West German group Popol Vuh. The half-mad conquistador I recognized slightly from his small roles in many spaghetti Westerns, especially For A Few Dollars More. It was Klaus Kinski. Later, I looked up the director who visualized this and other dream-like scenes in the film --- the German, Werner Herzog.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

In the film Ed Wood, Wood is speaking in a hospital waiting room to the woman he'd marry, Cathy. She asks him what he does for a living, and he says he's in movies --- as a writer, producer, director and actor. Awww, no one does all that, she replies. Yes, two people do, says Wood, he and Orson Welles. But there was an individual who did all that and went some better, helping to compose the music for his films and the editing. And from the 19-teens to the 1950s. It was Charles Chaplin, Knight of the British Empire, better known as Charlie Chaplin, perhaps best known as his film persona, the Little Tramp. Out of a childhood of want and strife, he became the world's greatest comic character, an innovator and magnate in the film industry, a multimillionaire. He was also despised by many in Hollywood, decried as a Communist and degenerate and expelled from the US. Most important, he taught me (along with the Marx Brothers), through the films of his classic age, that it was not only fine to make fun of the wealthy and powerful, it‘s crucial to do so. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

But with, first, film noir in the 40s and 50s, then the end of the American century beginning with the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the scandal of Watergate, plus the rise of the counter-culture, heroes became more and more difficult to identify, or identify with. The 60s and 70s gave rise to the idea of the anti-hero, still the protagonist of the film, but someone who had a more ambivalent moral or legal code --- Dirty Harry, Jack Nicholson as Bobby Dupea in Five Easy Pieces, Nicholson again with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider. You weren't rooting for them perhaps, but the fascination with their character, flaws and all, as well as the ambiguities of the storyline, focused your attention. But what if you determined to make a film about someone who was almost completely unlikable, who inspired fear rather than fascination, someone who seemed almost irredeemable? How do you situate such an individual in a story that doesn't cause the audience to turn away or walk out? Moreover, why even make such a film? What would drive a filmmaker to these lengths?email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Before we get to the meeting of the minds, what about the Brothers, or as they were later known, Minnie's boys, in honor of their mother. Minnie came from a performing family, was the sister of vaudevillian Al Shean, and guided their early career. Minnie's emigree family moved to NYC and she met and married Sam Marx, so the Brothers were Jewish lads with a mixed French and German background. Minnie and Sam had several male children: in order, Leonard “Chico” Marx, Adolph “Harpo” Marx, Julius “Groucho” Marx, Milton “Gummo” Marx, and Manfred “Zeppo” Marx. Minnie managed Al Shean and the boys were also guided into vaudeville, first as a singing group. Chico was self-taught on the piano, Groucho played the guitar, and Harpo was self-taught on several instruments, including, of course, the harp. Gummo never spent much time in the act and became the head of a talent agency which later repped the Brothers. The singing act travelled the circuit, then one night in either Nacadoches TX, Ada, OK, or Marshall TX, depending on who you believe, the crowd had rushed out to view a disturbance in the street during their act. This infuriated Harpo, who steadily insulted the audience when they returned. The audience loved it. Voila! The comedy troupe of the Marx Brothers was born. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

As you age, you may have these half-wispy thoughts enter your consciousness --- have I done anything worthwhile? Why, if at all, will I be remembered? It may not be a subject that's brought up in polite company, but it was the arena for one of the most moving films of a director who made many --- Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa was famous for his samurai films, for his remarkable achievement in portraying how a single event may be seen in different ways in Rashomon, in his repositioning of Shakespeare's work or works of a Shakespearean nature seen through a Japanese lens. But one of his quietest but most moving films deals with how we spend our days --- Ikiru, or roughly translated, to live. It's a film that causes, in its first half, jolts of recognition for family members, for what were termed salarymen or plain old bureaucrats, with victims of disease, with the old, with the young. But in the second half of the film, Kurosawa unveils the ability of humans to change, to make a monumental turn and in their own way, to make their days count, even if those days are painfully few. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

On a Saturday it was nothing for a kid to go to the theater, get a ticket, candy, popcorn, and spend all day there. And teenagers had after-school jobs. They had real dollars! So, while not all of Hollywood's offerings focused on children, as there were plenty of adult-themed movies, which TV also couldn't provide, a good percentage of films were oriented towards the boomers, especially teen-agers flush with cash. This led to a 50s renaissance in a genre that had been going full blast in the 30s at Universal Studios and then died out before the war; horror. This presented the opportunity of a lifetime to someone who was a true Renaissance man. While teen and kid movies were mostly B product of studios, they needed an actor who would hold the attention of a bunch of popcorn-throwing, making-out-in-the-balcony teens, someone with the acting chops to put across the thrills of horror. And not horror as we know it in 2023 --- this wasn't dismemberment on the screen. There had to be a tension between the thrill and threat of horror and what could actually be shown in the 50s. Up stepped a tall, aristocratic actor with a perfectly modulated, incisive voice; dashing, but also a bit threatening, often with a moustache and sometimes a beard. Up stepped Vincent Price, to take his place among the immortals of Hollywood.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Now, as for most of the US, Weitzel Elementary wasn't on the Soviet list of primary targets for a hydrogen bomb blast. The film, made in 1951 by the Civil Defense Administration, was designed to allow civilians a chance to preserve their eyesight, avoid flying shards of glass, and minimize the radiation burns and absorption of radioactivity that would take place from a nuclear bombing some distance from their location. At Weitzel, they also talked about heading to the nearest Civil Defense shelter after the explosion, which as far as I ever found out, was in the Post Office downtown, about four miles distant. But, remember kids, we had to be ready for the bomb to go off at any time, day or night. OK, now, back to math class… Quite a world to live in. And ripe for comment by serious filmmakers to highlight the madness. And along came one of the geniuses of film, and among the most independent in thought, Stanley Kubrick. It made complete sense for Kubrick to do a film of the asylum-like world we were in due to the shadow of the atomic bomb. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

About six months ago, I did a pod on Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's 1990 magnum opus on the wise guys of New York, which to me was sweeping, magnetic and a triumph. And as I said then, it's a young man's film --- it had all the adrenaline, obstinance, the hubris, and the self-belief that young men often possess. A lot of water under that bridge since 1990, with Scorsese directing a slew of incredible films to follow: the remake of Cape Fear, a huge change of pace in The Age Of Innocence, back to wise guys with Casino, Gangs Of New York for a take on the Protestant-Catholic and Nativist battles of the 1860s, The Aviator, a terrific film on Howard Hughes that didn't get its due, then winning the Best Director Oscar in 2006 for The Departed. You've heard me rant about that late, late recognition before, so I'll let it lie. Then through the latter part of the 2010s with amazing films like Hugo, The Wolf Of Wall Street and Silence. Where am I going with this laundry list? Here, you have the protagonist, but where's the antagonist, huh? Where's the drama?  Like De Sica and his Italian Neorealism series of Shoeshine, Bicycle Thieves, and Umberto D, tracing the ages of man in post-WWII Rome, you can conveniently stick a square peg in a square hole and assert that Scorsese is following a similar arc with his gang and wise guy films. Early work with young, promising actors in Mean Streets, followed by the crazy adults of Goodfellas, middle-aged and calculating in Casino. And what's at the end of the arc? The wise guys in old age, looking back. What we find is the film, The Irishman. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

For me, there are some films that are so emotional and fraught that I have a difficult time watching them. Some examples from my life are A River Runs Through It, Kurosawa's Ikiru, which I'm going to do a pod on in the future, Scorsese's Raging Bull, and one of the greatest examples of Italian Neo-realism, Bicycle Thieves. Until reviewing Thieves for the pod, I hadn't been able to watch it for two decades. It certainly affected me as a young man, when I first saw it, but viewings after that were as a husband and father. The knowledge of and responsibilities of those roles made Thieves almost unendurable. It's that indelible.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

One of the perks, I suppose, of being a writer, is that you may get to write your own epitaph. Billy Wilder is buried at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park under a big, dark marble stone that has the inscription: Billy Wilder    I'm A Writer      But Then Nobody's Perfect…a paraphrase of the closing line delivered by Joe E. Brown to Jack Lemmon in Wilder's Some Like It Hot, when Brown discovers his intended, Geraldine, played by Lemmon, is really a man. But that's the way Wilder wanted to be remembered, not as a director of numerous classic films of the 40s, 50s and 60s, but as a writer. To him, the story you were telling was everything. He had a unique view of humankind that was cynical, insightful, often humorous, sometimes dangerous, but overall, loving and understanding. Those were the stories he wrote and loved to tell.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Dean Acheson, the Secretary of State for President Truman, penned a memoir in 1969 he entitled Present At The Creation, which always struck me as a bit of hubris, but kept reoccurring to me as I thought about this film. Not nearly as important as post – WWII American foreign strategy or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the war in Vietnam, but still a reminder of what it is to be in on something powerful that had modest or unseen, far-reaching roots. The year was again 1982 and I was going to see a film in a theater for which I had no expectations and was merely looking for some entertainment. Yet I encountered a film, a director and a cast that had substantial sway on cinema going forward, from a modest beginning. It also had echoes for me of the fun and pain of growing up, of having a deep group of friends at one point in your life and then drifting away from one another, one of the bittersweet experiences of life. It's the film Diner, the first by Barry Levinson in the director's chair, with a smashing ensemble cast, great, on-point dialogue, which I love, and the looming experience of adulthood on the horizon, all in less than two hours of run time. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

What unfolded was a nightmarish world of gas explosions and eruptions, darkness stabbed by beams of light, flying cars, omnipresent rain on the ground, cops, magnificent buildings, garbage and hovels. The quirky and great minds of Phillip K. Dick and Ridley Scott had flung me into a world far in the future (Ha! LA in 2019 to be exact) and then caused me to question society, religion, race, slavery, the forward progress of humans, advertising and marketing, human relationships, all in 117 minutes (BTW, everything I'm talking about refers to Blade Runner: The Final Cut, as this was the version that Scott ultimately approved). At the time, I thought it was an amazing sci-fi tale and was more taken by the visuals than the story and lessons therein. I had no concept of film noir at that point, but now I think of Blade Runner as future noir --- the noir sensibilities of the 40s and 50s launched into a world almost (and now, in fact) 100 years later. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Out Of The Past has the coolest, most laconic, world-weary noir character ever portrayed, the standard for the type. You can't take your eyes off him. And America never did. He's the prototype for the anti-heroes to follow, but was never equaled: Robert Mitchum. And he wraps this film up in his hand, puts it in his trench coat pocket, and makes me want to watch it over and over. It's got all the elements of a great noir, of course, but the star of stars in this is Mitchum. He makes the film. And he's got to drag the attention away from a basketful of talent to do it. email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

It's the Golden Age of Billy Wilder in this sharp, insightful, and funny comment on the wonderful, wonderful world of business (and love), The Apartment. Released in 1960 by United Artists, it's Mad Men come to life at the beginning of the 60s, if Mad Men was about all the people four levels below Don Draper and how they're victimized by those one level below Draper. It's, in my opinion, the best example of Wilder's jaundiced but realistic view of the world, and for the business world, it's dead on. I watched it every year when I was part of that hurly-burly, to wash the rancid taste out of my mouth. Now I get a charge out of revisiting it, for nostalgia, but also to think about how the hierarchal world of business has been beaten up by COVID and the collective realization: there's more to life than business and getting ahead.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Haven't you heard of the suspension of disbelief? We're in the second part of Scary Season here on the pod and we're diving into one of the wittier, more tender portraits ever created of a person who wasn't successful. And I don't mean like VanGogh, as in never sold a picture before death and then esteemed as a genius later. I'm talking about an artist who's been recognized as the director of possibly the worst film ever made. An artist who ground it out in the most basic and ignominious fashion possible during life. I'm talking about Edward D. Wood, Jr. It's the film Ed Wood, lovingly directed by Tim Burton and produced by Burton and Denise Di Novi for Disney's Touchstone Pictures in 1994. It's a semi (very semi) biography of Edward D. Wood, Jr., a Burton lesson in believing in yourself and continuing in the face of constant headwinds. And it's atmospheric and has a fun, resonant vibe for the Scary Season.email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.comWebsite and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.comIG: @thosewonderfulpeopleTwitter: @FilmsInTheDark