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Audiovisual Cultures episode 106 – Cinemallennials with Dave Lewis automated transcript


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hello and welcome to another episode of audio visual cultures the podcast that hooks and pokes in the different areas of audio visual media and the creative industries I'm Paula Blair and I'm really excited to introduce you to my cast D. Esalen yes makes a similar deals podcast which you should absolutely check right Dibbs website where you can find his home movies and podcasts Angie cheap thanks as in the show notes where ever you're accessing this episode please do you go and check that all right Steve is seeing really great work to promote cine and media literacy so please go and give him all the support you can Steve has also been kind enough to help me cast on cinema landing Elsa please see subscribe wherever you access your podcast C. don't miss what for me was a richly enjoyable conversation bites it happened one night said Frank Capra film from nineteen thirty four a massive Sanchi S. while T. our patrons over at Petri on dot com forward slash AV cultures and all our wonderful listeners for keeping us going there will be more information on ways to support artificial cultures at the end finally settling in for this really joyous maybe conversation with their David S. host of Senna millennials podcast you're very welcome to the official cultures thank you for having me I really appreciate you having me on yeah I've been really looking forward to this I really enjoyed staying on your podcast representing the older millennial content and we'll explain your podcast and the minute I think just generally it's alright if I ask you hi E. J. N. and whereabouts are we talking to you from and that sort of stuff yeah I'm doing well I'm from New Jersey in Union County New Jersey closer to New York %HESITATION around a forty minute train ride away from the Big Apple crafts city if he a lot of film reviews and you have what comes across to me as a particular and trashed and classical era holy way it's it's not fair to say I was wondering if you'd be happy C. chest and judges yourself and tell us about your interests and why you're so drawn to the types of films a year Jontay and that sort of stuff yeah my name is Dave Lewis signed host %HESITATION and %HESITATION producer creator extraordinary whatever you wanna call it it's such a weird thing to like have a title for %HESITATION when you do everything now but yes so I am the creator of Semenya's podcast where myself and another millennial watch a classic found so that ranges from eighteen ninety to nineteen sixty nine because that is you know with the academic quote on quote quote out or you're out of the classic era for filmmaking I've always just been fascinated with history basically what we do is we go into we watch the movies the very first time and then we see how it relates to our society today are millennial experiences whether be culturally popular culturally socially politically economically what have you we really want to try to understand the people of the past within the lines of our present and future and I think it's really important that we look at that stuff because all of the different things that we are going through right now whether it be racial issues other P. economic issues classicist issues there are a lot of things that we can learn from the past in order to create a better future and I've just always been fascinated with history ever since I was a little kid %HESITATION my mom got me a Fisher price castle where you can have a cannon ball shoot out in a trebuchet catapult and have the little clicking kind of as a drawbridge in the nights and everything and that really really made me fascinated with history and I think film really came into a creation point like %HESITATION kind of a amalgamation of those two and which is why I was inspired to cream similar deals we learned a lot from our history and learn a lot of things through film about history yes there's a lot of inaccuracies within historical filmmaking but what we really try to do is to look at the humanity of that really focus on the way of the future and someone else is a perfect fit for that really I think it's a rainy Accern idea for a podcast because it's both a combination of the period that you're looking at switch it anyway it's quite a big area of cinema but in another sense in terms of sort of leisure our history it's so tiny and it's still in a state of becoming it settles so that's really interesting but then also the generation that you focus on because you know you're not liking it tends ads are jammed seeds you know at the same time it's specifically millennials sons that ranges from the older ones like me from the at the stadium %HESITATION people up to the late nineteen nineties and stuff so that combination I'm thinking these older films that as if some educator having taught a lot of you know younger people coming even after me and the sense is that %HESITATION those of some suggest boring and they're nonsense you know so I'm I'm just seven said it just a probe a little bit more what kind of things are you learning from not from this combination of those two things together yeah it's it's fastening like the other idea that that I had with some money has just that I was noticing like watching Marvel movies or whatever is big right now Star Wars and then especially right now June there is a massive massive influence of older sounds coming to the sounds that are coming out today and there are a lot of people that there's this culture this some called you're on YouTube of covering found and breaking down are saying we do explain the ending explained of things and I find this really fascinating because people want to know everything they have this deep deep hunger to know everything because partly people want to you know feel better are more superior than other people and in that way I wanted to get that group but at the same time I wanted to get the group that we will find it boring they find it exhausting all its black and white so that's not gonna be interesting but there's a lot of things that you can play with within black and white within shadows I think the shadow plays like the thing that's the most important thing about that is you're able to unlock something with a a restriction of not having color with the restriction of having to write around saying this in order to make it more relevant to that person or read more relevant to that culture and that time without specifically and explicitly saying those things like we talk about the podcast but he's code I think it's so fascinating to see where people come from where myself and other money has come from what they're like saying I've never watched a classroom before but I understood that because of the different references behind it and I understood the simplicity of it because it wasn't so specific but at the same time like we talked about in our I'm sorry that it happened one night there are references where I myself am not gonna understand at all that other people might reference might understand like the older generations and I think with the millennial generation's wanting to know more that's where I was like okay maybe more and more and now there's a big film culture on Twitter and YouTube people want to know more and more and they want to see more educated within sound and I thought it was a way for not only myself to learn more about classical filmmaking or phone majors the masters of the past if you well I thought it was a really cool idea to talk to people about it to see and almost on the same line because that sounds a little pretentious but bring people decide Hey this stuff is amazing because of how revolutionary it was and how still relevant it is tags and I think it's really it's a great opportunity to bust some misconceptions I think as well because the more you take memory Rafael and I think we've both top seed mutual friend of ours ours Henriques fights now the cabinet of Dr Caligari and what strikes me about that sound is just a reminder is that those are the silent films they're not necessarily black and white because they use a lot of color filters here there's lots of police and park pinks and greens that are used in the US and so they're expressionist in more ways than one it's not just long shadows and things are actually quite vibrant and hi there expressing the internals evenings of characters and so on it's a really lovely opportunity for you to get someone by your side and for each of you to learn not to gather it's quite a joyous thing to lessen safe for me I'm so glad to get that fact and it's funny you say that it's joyous because the majority of the people that I've talked to so far within twenty something episodes everyone's love their movie everyone's love the vibrancy of everyone's loved the different acting techniques that they had back then would there be a silent or a talkie it's something that's like so fasting to see like once they understand like oh wow this is art this is a true form of art and expression and it's been something that's around for a hundred years not just the last twenty or thirty years or forty years now that's more things are coming up within forty years now you know especially the things that we grew up with four years plus almost fifty years so now it's definitely something that has brought me a lot of joy into having a lot of people really dig deep into things that they were never seen before and I enjoy listening to yes I think because I think a lot of the films that he caught fire our fans that I may be watched as a younger person because I was just curious about cinema and then I ended up studying it formally so I watched a lot of the times as well in my film studies courses %HESITATION hands my own research and teaching it remains to somebody like me to watch his sons for the joy of them as well as for what you can learn from them so I enjoy it on those two novels that's exactly what I was gone for so thank you so much and words I was wondering how do you choose your person that you did way because I know that you have some people come back and do them repeatedly I suppose with all of us to start with an indie pop past you start to you know restart with your friends and that kind of stuff and people you bump and say on the internet like maybe but and here are you looking for he shared ideal cast do you think my ideal gas would be someone I don't know I think it's I I like talking with family and friends because I think it's so interesting to see where their %HESITATION perspective start from it and with I don't know would be interesting to see if I can get somebody whether it be like academics like yourself or maybe somebody that's been involved with filmmaking or like an actor or an actress of the really cool to have if they're like doing a period piece and they want to go back or maybe something like along the lines of I think it would have been great to have somebody that was a part of manc talk about change I think that would have been awesome to say because I feel like especially with Citizen Kane Citizen Kane is something that everyone knows about rose bud whether people know it or not and especially with names and how it was it was about the creation of the story there so many like different versions of the creation of the story with their long tails asset which now has been proved false which is the whole movie that's that's the whole movie is based off but now it's interesting to see like how people really interactive film and how they go from saying %HESITATION yeah it's just a movie too wow it's saying a lot about society and especially how it so real relevant to our world today but yeah I think somebody will that would be a part of something whether it be like movies like bank or %HESITATION the other side of the window I don't know why I am referencing or someone else here twice %HESITATION he's been on my brain a lot %HESITATION for some reason but %HESITATION no I think somebody like that would be really really cool to have well never say never hopefully %HESITATION yeah that would be really great to say that I'm thinking it's all about you saying references this is something I used to tell my students as somebody who is say teaching usually first year from Saudi students a lot I noticed that you know every year maybe just get a bit more reticent to just be there at university %HESITATION and there's a lot of factors involved in that and in the U. K. I don't rating I can't speak for the aspect you know there's reasons behind that I need at the moment %HESITATION arrange the structures and that sort of stuff and %HESITATION I used to tell my students you know it's not even just staying well academically you actually start to understand references and shows like family guy a lot more pay attention to what I'm telling you and you'll enjoy it more because you'll get it you go oh that's from that made me understand this million attack from rival and that was something that came up in our episodes that's coming up as well is is and chances as you say of some sort %HESITATION coming out each day you will understand them more because those directors there from disco love going to the cemetery R. cinephiles I know what you're doing and they love what they're doing so you'll understand some more if you just watch widely right I feel like that's where a lot of especially the big directors today now like some my favorite directors are you need on news and %HESITATION Christopher Nolan and basically they often I say this a lot of a Christopher Nolan he basically takes a lot from Hitchcock yeah with the attention that he builds within the film whether P. Dunkirk where you have the constant ticking of the mechanical movement of a watch no I love that effect because I'm in the big lots guys well %HESITATION ology guys well but it really builds that tension and then with you need to live he uses a lot of the stuff from science fiction of the past but is able to fully realize the world I've been obsessed with dune for the last couple years building up because I've read the first two Bucks to run really really struggling to get there but I think what he was able to do was he was able to build a world of all %HESITATION you know George Lucas and Mike he's able to build the world even though George Lucas is you know it people don't differ on if that's a classic or not because that's the whole like kind of ideas people say oh a classic is just the thing that like you know everybody revers rather than the academic sense which is the layman you know I go by but on the way that he's able to build and build and build this kind of tension and he kind of reminds me of older film directors not even but before long you can also say his cock as well because of his stuff from that the signer a lot of people don't know that you talked it silences swelling even today %HESITATION he did an adaptation of plough and the stars which is really ran into me as someone that worked in higher studies and I was really interested in %HESITATION saying that but anyway I think basically what we see a lot with those two directors and other direct like when Tarantino is probably a great example even though I'm not a fan is %HESITATION that they're using the techniques and they're using the ideas of the past and are influenced by the past and they want to elevate their stuff by using the old masters and by using the old masters they elevate their own projects as well in definitely it's quite great sales to show people that are at least introduce it to them and for them to to get up and run was set by themselves you know that's a great thing to pass on to people would you like to receive updates thanks and special offers straight to your inbox then visit audio visual cultures dot wordpress dot com to sign up to your mailing list yeah I wanted to ask you how you teach to use the phones you've mentioned a few limitations already you've got last time period so we're looking at quite as she mentions classicism in the sense of periodization select right at the time he gets up and you're looking for the moment as far as I know %HESITATION specifically Hollywood scare which is a bit gray in the very early years but a lot of the films that we go right back to the eighteen nineties are probably going to be really difficult to access any rise I mean you need that limitation I think you need a limitation but I just wondered about your experience working with and not and it just got me thinking Kian uprights there is a distinction I think an important distinction between Hollywood and yes our American sentiment they're very different things actually and I was wondering what your thoughts were on that and what impact that has maybe on shaping your podcasts or is it something you might address at some point you know just what do you think about that yeah I am I thought about it to certain degree because I know you know in the early eighteen nineties obviously it was dominated by Edison which is my area of where I live and it is dominated by %HESITATION Addison and a couple other early ones until Addison actually forced people out to go to Hollywood by literal gun point actually I'm not himself of course why would he do that he has a bunch of cronies that day I was in was not a great person and everybody thinks he is generally there is an absolute distinction between American Hollywood sounds and it is very difficult because what is said ninety percent or up to ninety percent above of silent films are completely lost so often it is very hard so when I take the phones originally I just picked I think was a hundred or something films of what are deemed to be the best of the best classics are the most well known classics as well as some things that I knew personally from things that I wanted to find out from whether it be European filmmaking whether B. E. S. judgment yeah E. or a and a half a dozen half again I can remember my gosh the Italian director Fellini at every company name yes only thank you %HESITATION Fellini and then some of the French directors this file that I really really interesting never really got into %HESITATION because I understood that some of their stuff is kind of a little difficult to get into if you don't understand the whole culture and you know being American I don't think I'm a regular if you're an American and a lot of ways but some ways I am I think that what I was trying to do is let's look at like all the things that are deemed to be as the classics where I looked at the AFI lists the BFI lists not wanting to have a good diversification as well as introduce other not so long well known classics like on the list I have %HESITATION I have the response by Oscar Michaud who is a African American director who is one of the first African American directors I can't remember the title the sound I think it's the unconquerable or something like that %HESITATION where she responds to D. W. Griffith's birth nation where a lot of people think that this is like you know D. W. Griffith stays the great you know introduction of epic cinema when in actuality there are people in Italy in France doing a lot more than he was way before December Griffiths even came to the stage and that we're doing way less problematic stuff and I wanted to introduce Oscar me shall I wanted to introduce other people that might not be able to be on the pedestal of what Hollywood and other people think as like the great filmmakers and I want people to look into European filmmaking because there's a lot of great stuff as well as I'm trying to now look at other phones outside of Europe outside of Hollywood outside America in order to have a big diversification when I do have people that are from other places that want to talk about their personal and cultural experiences going to the cinema so mainly we have phones that are known as the benchmark for a lot of stuff so what every citizen came in with like we talked about for me you know Frank Capra's kind of lexicon of the are %HESITATION filmography of americana or like we talked about Capricorn with it's a wonderful life which is one of my favorite films of all time and then you had the great British directors like this guy behind me David lean %HESITATION Lawrence of Arabia which is another great favorite some of mine it's all across the board I wanted to understand what is the best things are what a lot of people like scholars like yourself for you know academic saying this is the best as well as the same thing as what a lot of people say is the best like people that are outside of the cell making world news I wanted to understand and I wanted to like educate myself as well as help other people educate themselves through listening to and participating and going back to the idea of American town versus Hollywood there's a lot of you know D. I. Y. and corn corn punk type of influences are there's a lot of DIY and punk type of directors that are doing stuff that not many people know about some trying to delve deeper into those in order to see like if I can add anything on and then I have course you added it happened one night so I'm always open to suggestions whether it be you know anything in the world it doesn't matter weather be like you know a small thing or something that's obviously why didn't I think of that what am I doing why didn't I just think of that movie so it's a whole thing across the board it gets me thinking a lot of by curating your own films being in a way that's been on my mind about it anyway because again our our mutual friends larceny son and Garen and I over at mysterium picks for him you know where they've they find a desk you know they find a hard drive for C. three hundred pounds on them and so that's what their podcast is about it is it's curated for them as their family hearing and what you've done and the limitations that you've sacked and that's something that for me and they show it I know that my show is it doesn't have that many she know I'm quite broad and sprawling because those are my research in Trastevere where where's that where things stepping over each other I just feel like there's really good crimes here for a really fascinating research projects where it's right I want to make a podcast debate the staying and so in Q. reading a script the film so I'm gonna watch to talk them three you know I I just %HESITATION something ready fascinating about that that's just bring a light yeah macos participating in that and other people's head that way as well which is quite nice yeah it's I mean it's funny you say it's like kind of like a research project which I mean that I think that's a perfect example of what it is because %HESITATION I went to school for history I'm trained ademas historian because you know that's not my field and I want to sound too pretentious in there I'm not gonna call myself %HESITATION missile historian but %HESITATION you know I did study anyway anyway you are to no sales the story no one but no I am I studied history went to school for history because as I said before was a lifelong passion and I really do think that film is a good way of introducing not exactly educating because obviously you know there's too much Hollywood stuff like the last tool which is in the army %HESITATION but now which is actually funny like to go on a little little tangent armor medieval representations of armor are better in the first half of the cinema rather than what is going on today unfortunately but I think it's a great way to really see what people are into and see what they're not into and then see how they can relate it back to our world tangy and how to understand what we're doing wrong or what we did do wrong in the past whether it be through art or social movements and how we can fix that today and I think through filmmaking that introduces a lot of topics that are can be often difficult and can really make people not make people but can really make them feel comfortable enough to talk about those issues I think I'm not I was wondering if you have some examples of factors jokes that come picky to mines create from Sentinel any elsewhere that sort of thing has really happens and Ian your cast a pretty dull guy something even arsed something like that is really shiny oh gosh that's so relatable to see the recession we've just seen one ten years ago or something like that like do you have some examples that you kids aren't semesters to words yeah the main one the main examples that I thought of was all about eat and how when it's apparently clear coat it there's a lot of references to queer coding within that I myself did not know any of that from that world I heard a little here and there but my cousin Kelly who inside you know she's very interested in that kind of period and then %HESITATION but not that kind within that there's issues and within those issues but in the period and how %HESITATION there's a lot of different references to clear %HESITATION ideas and representation within that film and I had no idea about that because I I you know I always heard about all about eve being this like on Twitter there's a big old Hollywood community and with it being so kind of like I'm looking to DVD box right now with how impactful it is within that community and I was like okay well all I can see it this way and somebody sees it as another way really fascinates me because you know I myself I'm straight says hat person you know I don't understand everything that's going on within that community I try to educate myself more more which is why one of the reasons why I picked all of that is because I wanted to know about that and why Kelly picked all about eve %HESITATION because of its representation in a time where that representation could not make sense in a lot of places and now when you can look back even further not to a film that we've covered %HESITATION on similar deals but there's films from the twenties and thirties and even our earlier that you have representations of queer people I know G. T. Q. plus people that are coded in a way as to run around the Hays code and other restrictions set up time so that's another one on another one and talk with that is %HESITATION some like it hot is another great one that we really talked about gender politics and the representation of gender on the screen and you know you can trans gender issues as well so that was really fascinating there's a couple films that we really talk about I mean we talk about happened one night with %HESITATION classicism and economic strife between the classes and how we really see what America was at post depression or during that depression up post freshen during the depression and how people were trying to travel across country for work they were having this depressed but jolly positivity at the same time when the scene that they're on the bus and then you also have gender politics and that within our %HESITATION Peter tries to hail a cab and you have very sexist but what some people could say as empowering to the female characters in the story is the whole almond hedge my dress up just to reveal man I get the car right away he's my sexuality as a power kind of grab %HESITATION in a way so yeah those are a couple examples that I could really think of right now especially how can I forget this one citizen Kane as well I know I keep talking about it but you know the ideas of especially right now billionaire's having all this power people like Charles foster Kane having all this power and how you can clearly relate to a lot of major political and economic figures today how do you treat the world around them when in actuality a lot of it was down to childhood trauma and issues that they weren't you know loved enough or they weren't you know that kind of thing where we really have to look at everybody from a human perspective whereas you know a lot of people can deny this as well but we need to look at like what happened and why they are the way that they are today maybe we can empathize maybe we shouldn't empathize at all so there's a lot of different issues there that we can really delve into yeah tellingly the medium %HESITATION kill a silent just based at one time I think no no definitely not we need a lot we need we need to there's a lot of issues going around with that media moguls and how they control the media or who who controls the media really and how different points of view and perspectives are pushed out rather than held against an iron door so they don't get pushed out we'd love for you to be part of the conversation with AP cultures called on Instagram Facebook and Twitter and we also have discord I mean you say you go back in history and you talk quite a bit about that and then %HESITATION and I think it you've already answered this question gives you you've said to your your interest and some quite dove tails without minutes remaining so I mean what was that attracted G. T. ng film reviews and writing some reviews as well as costing from northeast not sort of work it was just something that I was I've just been always passionate about %HESITATION writing really kind of came as an accident when I was working at %HESITATION actually I went to an event at the American Irish Historical Society in New York I'm very involved with %HESITATION the actual unity in New York especially the new York Catholic association and %HESITATION I actually pointed out it was twenty sixteen so is the year of %HESITATION you know the hundredth anniversary of the nineteen sixteen star rising in Dublin and %HESITATION I was just there you know as a friend to support my friend who is %HESITATION that kind of she ran the offense at the American Irish Historical Society I was just pointing out to somebody a couple that didn't really know about Irish history because I study that a lot my grandfather really got me into it when I was a young kid %HESITATION talking about the different you know people of the past with the B. Patrick Pierce or Tomasz McDonough or you know the signatories are even people little later Tomasz mix we need people like those %HESITATION figures of the past during the Irish revolutionary period and then I just point out this is a copy of the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising proclamation like a legit copy of it and then somebody noticed that Hey this kid knows what he's talking about so I started working for a mini truck McConnell she %HESITATION is from Donegal which is where my family's from in Ireland and %HESITATION which is not too far from where you're from I just found it interesting and I found the history so like I was so passionate about it and I started working within that field and she had connections with an Irish America magazine so I started working there %HESITATION as an editor and writer assistant editor writer covering all across the board of history the Gaelic athletic association's events that covered events meet a podcast for them %HESITATION where I wanted to make this deep dive into history and how it is still relevant within the Irish American kind of culture today %HESITATION which unfortunately is a lot of older people %HESITATION rather than younger people being passionate about it there's a lot of younger people only to see Patrick Stanley it's you get drunk your crazy for a guy and that's about it not really knowing where their families from or the history of it you know people inappropriately saying things about the irate and things like that which yeah it's too much of an issue %HESITATION ignorance lies on those kind of histories and I think it's something that I just kind of fell into because it was a passion for me there was a film critic there called ka hor of Dougherty who really really pushed me into going into film reviewing %HESITATION she actually had a lot of connections within New York kind of film screening circles so he actually got me a %HESITATION an invitation to %HESITATION the Stan and Ollie and all the screening and ever since I was a kid I watched on March the when soldiers are based in Thailand and that that has such a head likes to massive impact on my life %HESITATION every single year I get a nutcracker because of that movie my parents gave me a cracker because I thought the soldiers in the movie were real the whole story is that for those that don't now stand Ali laurel hardy %HESITATION play %HESITATION toy makers and sans workshop they were asked to create six hundred soldiers and a foot high instead they made a hundred soldiers at six foot high they defend the land of toy land from %HESITATION the boogeyman and %HESITATION I thought they were real such a call can you please can you please give me M. long story short my parents you know Santa Claus got me a nutcracker that's probably about this tall I'm about three or four feet and ever since then you know I've been obsessed and watch it every year so there you go early Hollywood's influence a young young age yeah so from there I started doing my own things on YouTube they are not very good there's one that is okay decently I would probably need to re edit it it's about how Lawrence of Arabia really sets up people's intrigue with showing his death at the beginning of the movie and then later on you're gonna see the whole arc of his life within the military and his experiences in the desert and you see all the different perspectives of all the people that worked with him throughout the film and that really builds intrigue to start later twenty forty nine and you know things from there and it's just been growing I'd like three hundred seventeen subscribers as of right now and never did I think that I was gonna get that far yeah it's I mean I just I've always enjoyed I think the first film that probably son Peters was Toy Story and that from there was probably after that the first live action film last Sunday there's a Star Wars and %HESITATION I got so excited that apparently I was screaming crying and going nuts in a theater singing with me was the coolest thing in the world that I almost got my and and like four five nine because it's my brother kicked out of the theater so it's always been there and it's just like with this kind of steady build into something that I've always been passionate about history as I sat I always wanted to know what the why and how about a lot of people in who they were and and that and you know I just going to deep dives on wikipedia is and then go into the kind of academic resources and things like that so it's something that just has been a slow build over my whole life I mean I remember watching you know the Oscars when the lord of the rings trilogy %HESITATION came out that was something that really really changed my whole world about filmmaking and thinking about film and watching behind behind the scenes of those movies it was something that just you know developed a long lifelong passion for film and wanted to know why the why the how and who behind the scenes I really can appreciate that curiosity I have a very similar curiosity as well let's just say end up starting from quite formally those are all things that I've really always encouraged some students said today as well %HESITATION so it is ready cartons me that someone right there does that because it can be quite difficult to capture the students of the subjects should be that carried us and check to make those things up I've always said that even just credit sequences are gold mines of information my gosh yeah like a it notes interviews like I look at those a line like we eat that person did this one of my favorite like phone taxes that some of the greatest films of all time written by like the scene two or three people he had like I think it's Robert bolted Lawrence of Arabia he was a part of it's a wonderful life he was a part of the on so many other great films that he did I know I only need to but when you look up Robert ball and see what the credits you Dan it's amazing but no one knows his name because of you know the house un American activities kind of idea %HESITATION event that happened and how a lot of communists and leftists were completely shunned from Hollywood including him I mean you had another great example is Dalton Trumbo and how he did Spartacus and all these other great sounds but you have to find the little details within those stories and that's how you find it through the credits through wouldn't eat different Matt paintings in the background of Star Wars or the special effects artist with more the rings any circus you know how these things all connect one of the great examples of old Hollywood is Conrad vite people don't talk about him and now he's one of the greatest actors film actors of all time look at his demography the cabinet of Dr Caligari the man who laughs still me his face is still making an influence on our popular culture today nearly almost I think he's almost you know it would have been close to his hundredth birthday or something like that by now he also did a casa Blanka she is so super influential within our society in popular culture today in what is known as the you know upper echelon of filmmaking and storytelling I think that's really fascinating how there's still so many names that have not been talked about enough within some meeting in you know in a way I I hope to bring those people little bit more to light even though we are talking about those bigger kind of people for the majority of the time it's great I think anything that can redress the %HESITATION reassures that have happened because there were a lot more women involved in filmmaking and people realize similarity years most film editors are women a lot of screen writers for women but there their names were changed her masculine I used a word they just aren't included in the crowd at seems to always look at what's missing as well as with fire I thank ray and you talk about women I mean some of the earliest like we wouldn't have the %HESITATION the color version of %HESITATION the way I still do not add a trip to the moon we wouldn't have that because it was all women hand cleaning every single frame that film that's why it still colorized today and then you also have you know a form more updated reference you know talk about Lawrence Arabia Andy Coates who worked until what was a couple years ago before she unfortunately passed she was working on so much influential sounds I mean she is the one that basically created the famous cut most famous cut one of most famous transitions of all time with Lawrence of Arabia where he has the match he blows it out and you just see the beautiful sunrise across this vast desert wasteland there were so many especially I mean when you look at even earlier in the nineteen tens nineteen twenties nineteen thirties a lot of famous directors especially comedy directors were female and it's really really fascinating to see how people want to have that focus today there's another %HESITATION northern Irish %HESITATION my god I can't member's name film kind of historian director that did a whole series about women and stuff and I think it's on criterion %HESITATION mark cousins yeah markup that's done talking about yeah that's on talking on mark cousins great great series on that I started watching that %HESITATION a couple months ago and I was like oh my god they're just so much good history here and there's so much good kind of representation here more people should know about it Kitty here do I feel like we should we should chat again because I thought I'd love to hear more about your experience as an Irish American personally this is something that's come up in the podcast a few times you know where I've found and I've had a cast on and it turns out they have a wealth of Irish history Souchez Donovan but also carry roots he is a film historian and he's %HESITATION from the asset and that he's he left and Belfast for a long time and he taught me a film studies actually here's one of my lectures at queen's high school and he's just written masses and masses and masses backseat just he spent for my tastes and the machine he's written loads by RD horror and RT at American horror he said he's a huge fan of Bela Lugosi and he's right back has traces of the state but he's also written quite a lot of fights Irish American cinema show he might be somebody in assets and and the king and say he's one of those people he's a he's a take make sure you know I think he's got Cherokee and them but he's also got Irish in him and you know he's already been there and one person so Gary's pretty fascinating yeah I'd love to it really keep in touch and they can stop it mark have covers you the diaspora is is so interesting I mean I'm technically yes I asked for it in a way nice while living in England %HESITATION and it's also really kills me to hear that you're from all star specifically yeah my family's from down low and so one of the %HESITATION way way you know isolated places and it's actually great grandparents that come from Ireland and %HESITATION my grandfather was just always super passionate about and telling me about it and then you know I started I went to study gone twenty thirteen and %HESITATION %HESITATION yeah twenty thirteen I absolutely you know love the place want to learn Irish %HESITATION I know a little bit of Irish myself just always this fascinating history and you know to see the sports and how intertwined it was within the culture and you know being someone that's been you know part of the G. A. community for the last almost nine ten years which is insane to think about it's a really interesting to see especially within you know the context of America and to see how there's almost this kind of like secret world within America within Ireland and people that have absolutely no connection to Ireland or any Celtic or %HESITATION Gaelic type of representation really fascinates me and how they just cling on to win we had %HESITATION I live in a pretty urban area and we had a lot of you know African Americans we had Hispanic Americans we had a lot of kids because I I started a %HESITATION hurling club at my university and we had a lot of like we'd probably the most diverse team and it was so fascinating to see like how these people just so attracted diverse cultures without even you know noting that they're all part of the whole lineage of you know what is it four thousand years history within politics societal issues and things like that that are baked in within that culture that are peaking within their sports as well so it's really really fascinating Z. the Irish American experience over here and how to see it and within the lines of the GAA but also within the minds of as a growing up I like really was interested in my history kind of prescribed and on my or Scottish miles so you know I was very interested in those people's on in the relation to British history medieval history as well so it was something that just like was something that's you know I'd be so passionate about and I just want to delve deeper I've I I talked at the Irish consulate things like that so like I did that kind of stuff and I wanted to do like branch out to more things I can sound because it was again it was something that I was always super passionate about and some that I just loved and wanted to like learn more about and educate myself and you know I was already doing the reviews so I was %HESITATION doing stuff all all along and I just wanted to know more and help other people no more because you know as a kid you're you're somebody that and I'm sure you do the same thing you watch older son how many times did you get made fun of for watching older phone L. and like it I mean we you talk about the next generation have you talk about that and like I I know I think I saw somewhere on your one of your social media to get far skate around and things so you know how it felt when people lie like put you down on stuff and you know whether it be for me it was like a lot of my our stuff as well as because you know I live in a town that was mostly Italian Americans or convert to keep their kids and things like that and they were very fiercely in right very rightly proud of their heritage well you know that could be also a whole conversation about %HESITATION about different ideas about nationalism and things like that our cultural nationalism or whatever but growing up liking twenty years ago lord of the rings and fast way to eighteen you know fifteen to eighteen years later everyone's obsessed the game of thrones it's like come on guys you gotta you gotta catch up on the cool stuff here but %HESITATION you know it it's something that I wanted to help other people to realize this is something that has clearly you know made it Denton impact within our current generation of filmmakers and actors why was that a thing why are these references coming up now and how are these were and where did these references come from so I want to educate people I want to have people know more about film and I want to have conversations with people that would have never looked at this thing before and really say to them like this is something good you're missing out on it let's get into it and see how it relates to us so we can be more relevant to you and so it's just a friendly and so that I don't forget to say C. H. and if you ever get to go back to Ireland and do you ever get to see travel more around all star and she check out the %HESITATION Sir American folk park yep you will laugh at I've heard of life heard a lot about it working with the Irish America I think they actually have like a kind of a deal with them I have never been said Northern Ireland never been there I'm sorry I'm saying the north because all my friends and I'm like I gotta stop doing that I got I got I have to get out of the the whole kind and because a lot of them are obviously you know directly tied to a lot of different movements yeah I definitely need to go live hi friends and Jerry as well so I definitely need to like take a trip out there anyway I mean I'm going right through there anyway from Dublin to go to Donegal so I definitely need to check out a lot more stuff and it's something that %HESITATION you know I need to delve into more of definitely because I do love the medieval parts I love the nineteen twenties no I I have I'm hesitant to dealing with like more of the sixties through you know the ninety stuff because it is often it is very hard and very very difficult there are a couple films you know that I'm like like I put off watching hunger for a long time as like stuff I don't that's very intense especially with somebody that has that kind of connections and has close personal some people that I now within family had this personal like kind of story so it's something that's very fascinating to me as someone that is removed from that history with and because our family came over here in the nineteen twenties so yeah I just definitely want to learn more and like educate myself and again watching films like I I saw %HESITATION the navy is film already who is it yeah that means I think it was called with them I'm a guy came into the main actors name but %HESITATION I saw that premiere at the American premiere there and it was just really interesting to see how it block was run and how all that stuff was like really fascinating so and that's why I like I I found your work so fascinating because I want to see how those experiences are expressed through filmmaking because you know some I have books and nice things that are you know some of them are biased some of them are not because they are historical books and you know they try to be unbiased as much as they can you know I want to look at multiple perspectives rather than one perspective that I'm clearly being around to constantly with the GAA and other places as well so it's really fascinating to see all the perspectives and to see where people came from and why people are doing things especially now with and and this is getting a talking point within the next couple weeks or months with Kenneth Branagh as Belfast found unlike very hesitant on that film I think it's amazing that Kenneth Branagh is going back to his roots of being from Belfast in Northern Ireland I think it's really fasting because I had no idea that he was I was like why are you kidding like this guy's supposed to be like the English and the English because of his connections Shakespeare when he's really not liking I think there's a B. B. C. kind of thing that he didn't very early on I was like that then the price on yeah exactly yep yep that's lazy exactly like wow this is so strange and he's been a patron of the lyric theatre in Belfast for many many years he's never really gone away he has kept a hand on the knee does keep going back you know he's never really been behind the door I think it was when he was a teenager or something or when he went to England for university you know you get a crop K. thank you for having the socks and especially when the conflict with some so and he changed pretty quickly but that's what happens a lot back then I'd almost forgotten about that some yes some great looking for it's like minutes I know exactly what you mean because it's painful and yet it's still a mystery you know it's very ambivalent feeling I have and especially spending so many years studying what type of phone my PhD studies were you know they were the love of my life and yet they nearly killed me you know it was very strange and your apps that they have it's really refreshing to hear you talking about this multi stage because it's very much a quite literal history see no they're going very very slippery but you know what if you if you ever wanna watch any of those kinds of films and you want it to something else like this were re recorded chat about the need be so welcome not that lovely wonderful I'd love to see that you have for chassis very welcome back so before I forget this is well hello dear listeners where they can find more about you where the contestants and the millennials plug all your stuff yeah my %HESITATION my website is D. Liu movie review dot com I know it's a lot D. A. L. E. W. movie review dot com you can find all the podcasts I've done whether the Irish America similar deals my you tube channel please subscribe to my YouTube channel I would be more than glad if anyone subscribe even if it's just one person I'm just trying to get my voice out there trying to get you know the ideas that I think are very important to the world and more people should listen to put across in those %HESITATION videos and I think it's just something that I want to have a bigger community of people that I can really delve into about filmmaking about films relationship with history and history strong relationship found and you can find similar deals on pretty much every podcast provider every podcast kind of platform adobe Spotify Google apple podcasts you can find it on anchor you can find it pretty much anywhere I would be so glad to see people in a really talking about more more classic films and I really appreciate you having me on thank you so much I love this conversation now I'm so glad you asked I really enjoyed chatting to you always enjoyed chatting to dance and I hope that this is the second of many many many times I hope they enjoy your company okay too thank you so much it's so nice to say that
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Audiovisual Cultures episode 108 – 2021 End of Year Guest Showcase automated transcript


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hello and welcome to see this twenty eight twenty one and if you're gassed showcase we made it very another year we had some really fantastic guests here on audio visual cultures through quite the past year whether you've recently joined us or you're just here for the good parts this recap of highlights is free a I'm Paula Blair and in making audio visual cultures I investigate a wide range of areas and audio visual media and the creative industries these include cinema television streaming live performance music audio production and the visual arts and much more anything you can think of that might be considered audio and or visual culture that's what we're in today so the issue has been going since March twenty eighteen and we've covered a lot of topics since then in the past year I've re branded the podcast opened its own dedicated YouTube channel and have been learning more and more ways of making improvements and sign quality editing my performances and interfere and communicator on how to get the show right there and better ways are incredible patrons at Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures have been instrumental and supporting all that work and I can keep going but cite them and there are loads of exclusive extras and early releases on pitching on so please stay find a satire and consider giving regular support to sustain and improve this show fires are our hosts a cast have also been tremendous and offering training and tools to facilitate marketing in rage so banks thanks to them as well if you follow AV cultures part on the socials you may have seen this year Spotify rocked three which we learned we've been dying noted in twenty two two countries in the past year which I'm really bowled over by I am I'm just so grateful anyone's listening a toll but the idea that strangers and countries I've never been to your last thing not so exciting and I'm really grateful massive thanks to everyone where ever and higher for your last name we've got more great things coming your way and twenty twenty two so I really hope you stick with us for the rest of this episode we're going to go through some highlights of twenty twenty one we hit the ground running and January with two fascinating discussions with filmmaker Justin McAleese and urban planner missed office Shareef was both in different ways talking about storytelling hopefully when you get on sat a lot of your decisions are already made because you've made them with the producer the director or the writer whoever happens to be in your you know what you're trying to accomplish and I mean really that's what it comes down to it's not like oh what do I want to do in this situation that's like very forced tear sort of concept you want to be like what serves the story what will help the director accomplished the most amount of information in the least amount of time it really that's what you're trying to do David Fincher American director has a quote you know like basically my job as directors deciding what information to give out when and that's really what directing is about and and by proxy that's what cinematography is about is putting people with a sense of what the context is what the vital information about a frame is in where to leave their eyes and how to feel about it so consciously without even attempting to tell them why do you feel about a certain way with the actors of the dialogue or the action or any of that stuff just like you know one second and you're like oh I get what this is when when I was young and now may bind to hold but anyway so I I'm listening to Ted talk on YouTube I was very inspired by that and it what makes it Ted talks special is the way they tell the story it's not like a lecturing university or a TV program that's why it's so special and I was like okay but how about mixing this kind of story is and then the plot casting and urban planning and also L. like after work are you doing I am part of statics Stockholm team and what we do is like I do content researching medical select co coaching people how they talk and giving feedback about their speech I was trying to combine that not makes a boring lecture and not to like sort of stand up comedy or something you know I want something like as a how white would love to listen to we all know that's it why we like TV shows and seriousness as a storytelling like it's art and culture is about storytelling so I wanted to do with the podcast says something like this like this format is not going to be like a feeling that you're in the police station like a question and answer you know like okay what's your name what do you do what's your project because there are many puts us like this and when you hear when you listen to them you you feel sometimes bad for the kids to be back home but give him some time to briefing notes express himself or something like this so I decided and I tried my best to that leave the platform open to the guest because it's not like Mustafa sherry fair podcast it's urbanistic out and ideal for many suggest that people are the storytellers because I'm listening to them and learning I can start my own show and talk but today most urbanised case listening and learning because this is the goal every guest is the storyteller I just leave them to talk just like how you doing now like you just you know leave the flow and that's always a good flow when you give people the the freedom to express themselves and always I don like control so much for the questions just like a main questions and then see what happened because in the end what comes from heart ghost others people's hearts so it says that there is like it and aim why I say the guess is a storyteller because the format of the ports gas is a kind of story to inspire us because the aim in the end it's about us getting inspired by people and hopefully we transform this inspiration to actual action in our offices when we really work with the projects in February I had the great pleasure of connecting with artists and performers Shay Donovan hello we got into some tough topics there was a lot of joy and positivity and her approach to working online during Oct nine part of my philosophy a little bit here has been to kind of resist adapting existing work to the digital space which I see a lot of people do beautifully and I think there's a need for that and that's a great way to exercise practice that that's your you know what you're feeling called to do but I think for me what I've been enjoys creating work specifically within these restrictions like being very intentional about embrace those restrictions and those obstacles and maybe mine them for a different way of making work rather than trying to adapt my normal practice within the constraints of the digital space I've been enjoying creating collaborating in new ways just in fun March was a bumper Munson database three fantastic episodes as well as celebrating the podcasts third anniversary with a special offer on P. Treon and freshening up the branding I had a great time talking with artist Clinton Kirkpatrick then producer towards MMN archer Katrina Michaels I'm production manager tab appeared safe from all duties entertainment followed by filmmakers large hand rakes and Nissan R. A. can here's Clinton toss could train at Debra Larson Nissan talking about creating characters and world building yes it's kind of like for me you know there is a lot of I realized a lot of hard storytelling and even one during the line of my research and my own destinations like all right Bach to your soul G. S. and then within the solar cheap what creation myths are I'm actually in the process of investigating various creation myths that have existed throughout human history in all different cultures what I'm doing is I'm checking pieces of the box you know whether it is modern day creation mess or Egyptian creation myths or whatever creation method is misty slow characters to come into my work I've read this creation myth recently where you these logs all from the sky and they create this ball you marshy area and then from this the first Youmans cute today I'm just like this is the right way you know it is the heart of storytelling heart arts for me that is my work is people look at my work and I'm like what is not or your moderator I listen to it all over the years really care either but it's like I listen to it all but I always think if you take the time any artist we have to see what they're doing to walk to invest it up but certainly for me when you start to investigate what might work as smaller practices there is a whole lot where you know there's a whole lot of world's arms you know hello world see arms there's a lot more still to come you know when we created this to really give it that immersive experience we asked all of our performers not only bring their characters to life but bring their characters to reality in the fact that we asked for Facebook pages to be created or Instagram accounts or linked in or you know we wanted to give them an online presence that our audience could go and find these characters in the real world each of their characters has a website that is dedicated to their characters professional backstory so for those audience members that want to really go down the rabbit hole to really explore their opportunities to find hints of these characters living in the on the internet so and I know between you've got some fun stories of guests that have reached out to you but I want you to speak if you can the creation process of trying to help build this character not just when you are on stage for that hour and a half but that lives in the real world I mean it was a fascinating experience to me because I am used to the rub us %HESITATION for instructing my character based on the clues in the tax and healing back to the technical in this case I'm creating the taxed the text is nearing it's it's very it's a flip of that kind of process but the exciting thing about being engaged in that creation is that you know the material so well my carrot so what's in the box and I can rattle off the drinks menu and like you know when in doubt to give extra Fulda to rely on and I have a lot of fun my car is a mystery themes box so I got to come up with the most terribly punny names such as the George all Mancini on the picture of Dorian gray Bruce Rankin steam %HESITATION %HESITATION %HESITATION %HESITATION bill and I have so much fun and so then I can make a game throughout the show all kind of assigning a signature cocktail to aghast and you know that he's here a lot had to go back to you it's fun and it's it is interesting having online presence with the character of I've had people reach out to me through my character my keys Instagram and I think Jim would leave like they think I am ninety there are elements of me he and Maggie had but I've not bought Tenda musician on the lot I got but it's it but it's really like someone was asking when my next gig was and I was like I mean but we've actually from my apartment that that okay it's funny how it's fabulous it's state like how much they invested in the lead in the wild and I think having those clients to you you know we have like will also %HESITATION connected on social media and things and having this carrot to how those elements as well grounds %HESITATION as a human one of the videos of my characters Instagram is me playing accordion and I haven't you know people reach out to me asking about the accordion which I will always happily talk about you know it's a great way to connect and %HESITATION I find like I did it creates another layer of emotion about it integrates in that technology even beyond the shot we had a really robust writing team when you're first coming up with this I mean we all kind of sat around a table are set into meetings just trying to like nail down the concept nail down the story you know we had thirty plot points that came and went and then the amount of research we have an entire told that talks about all of these libraries these historical libraries that are actual actual places you know they had actual significance in history and we had to pull all of that material just so that we could get back home to the performers so that when they had that fodder to keep pulling from as well but we didn't you know Todd night we we didn't just great this it was such a collaborative effort we were getting materials every day I remember you know our writing team would send us a draft of one scene it while at the same time somebody would send me a draft a character you know like Katrina would send me at the bar menu you know and then the next day somebody else send me a song I think between even wrote an entire song it had a clue it fell by the wayside as we change the gameplay my hustle but I once long and then there's another song that carries with links to another one who's a history teacher %HESITATION and I needed to see that was a pneumonic device about the toll limit and I up it's working credible it's all about last so it's gonna be talking I will I will pay you know and during the pandemic which is been such a time of you know we've all had to go inside of our bubble right a lot of us were missing that creative outlet so I think that pulling in all of these performers and what not to and allowed everybody to find a quick creative outlet in a time where were all very frustrated because we can't live our not our lives as normally as we want right so I don't even think we asked people with some of the stuff that got created you know I just said Hey could you have a little ditty because I think that Maggie you know I think a tree to your character and this other character they know each other and they went to school together or something and next day I have a page long twelve verses of the Ptolemaic empire you know so like it really gave us all a chance to be really creative you know and push the boundaries of how can we keep telling stories in a new imagine of way and just make everybody laughs because everything is so twenty twenty right then we did this D. I. Y. A. thing again with a little more budget this time via %HESITATION worked for an acting school we worked with their students on a movie together based on on their character vicious because we your last and me we are also from the acting department so we could work with that and we are making films we could work with that so the second movie with the together %HESITATION was also on many many festivals and was %HESITATION sorry how do you say and that his English is better than it was discovered it was discovered from a release Emmons and you have to write it really is %HESITATION %HESITATION yes get released in the U. S. yes it's behind bars yeah the Blu ray yes SRS and I'm also I was really proud of that and really happy about it the second movie is about seven girls in the pharmacy and then maybe %HESITATION cherished florist so it's it's kind of fantastical but very very subtle and it was the first time for us that we've worked with a non sambal and those were seven girls who were like in their twenties early twenties early twenties they were just finishing drama school not so easy but it was fun and it was also it for us we learned a lot to work with a big group I work very closely with the actors four of them M. when we were developing Leon I think and you said and I had just started hanging out again and I don't know I I was thinking about how to do a lo fi science fiction project that was still having it was still dreaming about getting into cinemas and making something that that woods translates to a wider audience so I was thinking about how how can I use John ready to do that that was on my mind and then I think we just had a really long conversation about death because that's the fun guy I am I basically just took that conversation which was really long and turned it into a script so that would be these two characters in that center which I think I because Nissan and Leon is not me but that would be a lot of the stuff in that that we had discussed that's how that sort of came about so so so I in that sense worked with Nissan to come up with it all and then %HESITATION for back it means and later permeates actually we started working with this acting school like Nissan said I was a teacher about and I get sort of bored with teaching acting and not doing anything so I started developing characters with the students I had originally planned this was Nissan's idea to to make short films with them so they could use that all the demo reels and and in case of the beckons group we quickly realized all right this is not the short film this is possibly a future and %HESITATION yeah I mean they came up with that characters had different exercises to improvise and to come up with characters intuitively plus with characters that would fit them and would be what they would need in the demo rear to %HESITATION and then what I would have them improvise with each other and come up with scenes and then slowly we would all see all right this is a possible setting like all the characters you came up with would probably do community service at some point they're all pretty antisocial and then we would support the characters and situations together and see how do these incorrect and then we would think all right you too make an interesting committed you'll so let's think about that and I think we had half a year it was really luxurious and our kids bed hobby yelp of just playing around and then I would go and they have seen all the stuff they would have come up with themselves and then I would just read the script according to that and %HESITATION mid was more compressed with the next thing we did with that school with over many ex but it's really similar to it then we may do a web series together also called the acting students we worked a lot with that school to find out projects where we would have them improvise all the dialogue on sets and I would just go okay now that thing you said was funny do that again so yeah from this very close work with the actress the characters and I look I think I mean I like that and I like the results yeah me too we got musical in April with host of the world fusion show Derek Jordan and me session down he's he talked about modeling Siri and lasts an ideal locked on circumstances we used to do live improvisations when I was working at B. C. T. V. N. properly but because the lock down it's been closed so we've done various workarounds one is that I will get my artists to record a solo video of them playing and then I will basically play along with that and try to pretend that's life sometimes well depending on how good I'm able to do that you would think it is live a lot of the times most the time see I seem to be able to pull that off but now that we're in lockdown mode I stopped doing the live or this kind of improvisation over top with her video the new format that I'm using is just taking pre recorded videos from my casts %HESITATION and that's been the last few shows just because I wanted to keep the show going I felt it was more important to keep the show going so I'm not doing a live music right now but we'll get back to it I mean things will open up again we'll be able to do that again but we have great audio engineer and we have three cameras at BCTV so its quality is very high somewhat limited now more at my soon calls but it's still fun and it's still I get to showcase these fantastic artists and I feel like the workaround is better than not doing the show it also I'm just trying to keep everything going forward what has your lock sign experience pain as a musician well in this league panic those laws my money is gone for more than a day most welcome and I'm still going to a new routine so I thought well this is a fun clothes look on as the %HESITATION I have the rest of my life %HESITATION gig of the form and %HESITATION you know we'll be doing it when I'm eighty the way in the out to the local public realm panicking so you take him two years out three years out even I've seen it all but in the grand scheme of things is not nothing too big so I thought well a mother trying you last time I have to try to be as productive as I can be and %HESITATION flex new muscles reading when you do a loss against you and you end up just being all of heart and soul of %HESITATION during the same thing all the time is is so can be very relentless off from twenty three I've done lot tunings here pretty much solid for the past ten years so that's my target I'm sorry it's good to kind of step wife not really in the cry of them wrote music and talking to people %HESITATION AA or podcasts and training people is good you can't convert them selves in in a frying pan lot harder and musician or filmmaker will put costs social media personal really bubble as things went quiet people that is very cold for what you do not tell you what you should be creative and try and log me off my music but I see a above that mediates its to me to be cry if it's an issue of free lost all lock and navigate myself that's more important to me they're not you play music as much as I love playing music well hello I lost all the Arkham controlling BB king mackerel basically nothing my strife people strive for that because it all has no point being in a high jump playing music well %HESITATION on paper they sound amazing but the end of the day you're welcome to somebody else in your control involvement %HESITATION which is always good we went stateside in may with a fabulous catch up with my old pal from queen's university Belfast Dr Gary Rhodes and my new friends fellow arts podcaster Neeson rocklands can you remind me so happily of my arrival in Ireland but also so I try to be unflappable that's impossible and one of the spookiest moments and not a horror film spooky but I guess you'd say nervous moments was when I walked in to teach that course because I felt a little out of place not only is it immigrate myself and living in another country for the first time but I felt I felt a little %HESITATION I would never want to be seen presumptuous in teaching a course on Irish cinema in Ireland I had taught Irish semi actually America previous a couple of times what I ate that was a bit nervous actually going in to teach all of you because I thought gosh I feel ill at ease real ill informed maybe you know to take all that long since as an American and in Belfast what I suppose my interest would be two fold in and one I think it started with horror and they're certainly these tremendous connections between horror and Ireland Irish literature Irish folklore from obviously the bean she threw a film I saw and I I don't think a lot of Irish film scholars I don't know that any of never really talked about it much but when I was ten twelve years old I I was in love with horror movies I was also in love with Francis Ford Coppola who directed the godfather films in Apocalypse Now and early in his career he had made a film called dementia thirteen race early nineteen sixties and it was a gothic horror story set in Ireland it was actually shot in Ireland and you know it's readily available on YouTube it's rather well known film in terms of cold blood studies because it was basically a second film but I think Irish film studies it's completely unknown connections go deeper I mean stoker was Anglo Irish they're such a great tradition of Irish gothic novels and as I grew my interest in horror I grew in my interest at heart literature as well as horror films so there's all these fantastic connections and Irish horror stories on film but the other thing to happen to me when I was a teenager was by about the age of thirteen and of course you know I grew up in the state of Oklahoma I grew up in a town that I will in American terms certainly most mmhm we probably consider small town twenty five thousand people I grew up in I guess I'm trying to think of the the best way to say it but it probably a and is a native American everything you know kind of a masculine type culture in terms or that parameters and so John Huston's films spoke to me greatly as a teenager his films like the Maltese falcon an African queen and these films with Humphrey Bogart who was one of the great cinema tough guys and you know his later films like the man who would be king with Sean Connery and Michael Caine and you know you can kind of see probably quickly understand maybe or or see that you know kind of okay a lot of his films in his life %HESITATION I became fast about Houston's life he was quite an explorer and hunter and you know very masculine and all that very much human waves kind of hit me way of twentieth century American cinema and he was deeply interested in Irish literature and by the time I was in high school he was making his film the debt based on choice and there was a credible documentary film made about it Houston and showed the behind the scenes footage showed in talking at length this is before the kind of making of featurettes we know today by by a large number some examples but they weren't it was before DVD it was before that cottage industry so to speak so I S. I became entranced by the time I was sixteen and seventeen I became entranced with James Joyce and the dead when Houston said in his mind it was probably the greatest short story ever written in the English language that spoke volumes to me the film version he made which I found to be quite faithful I'm talking at length for question and now maybe wearing what but my interest came from these different angles from horror as well as Joyce and then about that same time Beckett because I was also one of my other favorites as a teenager was a Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett had made keeping film yeah you know later in king's life of course and and a kind of although guard film and I was I was also getting in transfer you know it's easy to romanticize thing when you're a teenager and I you know the passion for it all and I was and I was getting interested in basket because of then his work with Keaton and I was particularly intrigued because Kevin brown will have made this incredible documentary about Keaton and had forty two Keaton's saying you know you didn't even understand the film he made with that you know which I think yes he's one of the yeah exactly here is what the genius filmmakers in my mind he he said he didn't quite understand it but he liked packet and everything so I was coming in Ireland for all these different directions to conclude I would say that in the night you know in the nineteen nineties America really when their kids always had this love affair with Ireland is regrettable exceptions during some immigration periods baby in the nineteenth century and so forth but there's a lot of love affairs in in the later twentieth century certainly from you know everybody you know celebrating St Patrick's day to the nineties when the commitments particularly the film version you too there was a particular love affair with I mean it happened different times before in the sixties I think with JFK for a lot of people but in the nineties it was like it was Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan's films were exploding onto the scene not my left footed one you know at the academy award and Chris I was graduating from high school and about to start university right at that moment then there's you too and I particularly fell in love like I heard it on the radio and I was driving I mean I remember the moment so clearly I was driving down I. forty in Oklahoma City are your state that runs around a lot of America and I'm burning down the highway in an old car the only one I could afford at the time I'm burning on the highway and this voice comes on the radio this ban what I didn't know the name and I had to ask a friend later that day who is singing this and it was the cranberry so you're gonna set but you know I heard including that kind of Irish weighed in at the end of the song which went from the Irish but meeting pop music even more Irish sound at the end of it just seem to speak to me in ways and again as a more romantic young person a romantic maybe more the German sense of that term my great grandfather was from Ireland scored so on Cherokee and mainly that but I'm you know I have a McCord whose family was actually from the north of Ireland even America from Cork and I had many once is a little tiny child very memories on more work well on all of that and so I had that connection to Ireland as well so forgive this long biography ladies that I fell in love with this and then I fell in love with an Irish woman who was in America and all roads lead you know what I had to leave but I had to leave and it was this tremendous love affair I cannot tell you how achingly I miss Carrickfergus one of my favorite places how much I've missed the Belfast city centre the people there there's so many Dunluce there were so many places I like to go and go repeatedly I just unending love affair there's nothing ever wrong with having back position with that stuff if you're not judging the culture around you then you're just being ignorant to whatever's going on and being ignorant not understand the culture is not going to nourish you as someone that appreciates the culture and you're being a producer like you know if you're going to make content you know make sure you make it was a good purpose I mean if you think you're producing the content these extra help culture one way or another %HESITATION by the stop you I think part of us being podcast assisting our podcast is preserving the cultural little bit so the way we're sort of helping with people understanding and analyzing the culture I'm sure you have it on several occasions I've gone back to like you know seeing how movies were like the fifties and sixties and seventies stuff and seeing the mentality that the world had then and see how different it is now well the stuff that we're making right now can you imagine what people you know twenty fifty a hundred years from now if they go back and find the stumble upon this L. as wow this is what their culture was like during this kind of situation and how much you wanna bet that like at least two or three generations from now people are gonna be curious on how people were during cove it there go back these podcasts and stuff be like wow this is how they got your cove it we talked about before but like you said it yourself would like the public access TV will you ever come back and see some of those old public access TV's and see just like how they did their stuff you know how they would set up their shows I get getting that look into like their realities and such you know like if we're watching like movies in the seventies some like that how much like the Cold War may have influence on the make certain movies and such like that's something that we're never going to experience but like as an analyst we can look back and how they're making movies in the seventies such realized okay this is how they got through the potential existential dread that they could die tomorrow from nuclear warfare going back to like the thirties and such seeing all those like the classic Looney Tunes and such are like the classic cartoons where they they influence are they inspire people hate you should go to war or you should help people you know it invest in the military in such as nail if you go back like that's how they got through the potential jet that they could be aerated by Germany tomorrow you know that's something to help them yeah as an analyst you're always going to be looking back and so we're making stuff right now that other analysts chemistry look back on then it's going to benefit society at the in the day Jan was all about creativity with artistically week absent a K. eight slayer one artwork and doctor Rabaa Mikhail I researcher with University College London's community covert project definitely so I mean I can't say you know it's it's always been enjoyable and definitely being able to have people to do it because of Hobbs you know the office and the spectrum what people saw knocking down its costs awful and you know I want to start selling at comic conventions that was a really difficult time because you get like really hot streaks up point and then it's like oh you know like I'm I'm just here to sell like my outlook on the effort you know for minimalism issue some people are just unfortunate very nice I think you know especially when you are on the PP should always want to encourage people to us I've always believed in my positive reinforcement opposition positive like pushing people you know like I'm always happy to criticize someone in a positive way if someone says tell me everything that's wrong with this also well we'll bill as long as you let me tell you what's wrong with it as well but yeah it is great and also in Leeds as well one of the amazing conventions I mean it's most target now but fall festival thought was I could not festival and that was one of the first proper conventions I want Sir I used to go like religious in a best friend of must win sisterhood and offered them as well and but I'll go on just look all the emission outlook connection with plan for like Olean although she's all these amazing comic out as far as criminal we need to do this when you know any upon this of them would call themselves such an amazing time G. situation out work I actually met should should a lovely woman called Valentina and she ended up I think I'm ever at fault double on the gun shows at work was so inspiring that was another Austin's been amazing to me Schendel designing my first ever thought it was she designed it for men gosh you're so lovely she's helped with my outlook as well and she thought about what she moved back to Italy I like I miss all the time which moved up to a million and she still bought a shirt she was like and it only shows the only on the phone so so when all of a sudden jaw crusher men's and basketball advise yeah I think I think it's really important personally I try to match all the also Paul I don't and never will I mean I myself to forget about all of my friends so I do not stray if Boston Celtic forget also it works my hooks yeah I think especially if you wanted to start out just dole so critical of yourself that's probably adversity given to myself even non if all the advice because people think that have to be perfect straight away in a society where we feel we have to do everything right the first time it's not all I'm sure to give an opponent diminishes and shows a lot of people produce all the mission on this quiet Walmington on the people really thought about working for the sometimes I don't like as much like so many people out there think oh gosh you know you really really good tomorrow you know so hi Kim imposter syndrome will be all see some of the actions that we've been doing with participants have been around people's experiences of lock down their experiences of pandemic their experiences may be accessing subsidized or experiencing loneliness or isolation or the anxiety that comes with the pandemic and expressing that through all forms sorry we've run a couple of very very interesting workshops the bathroom is run by somebody called Marana he works with us he is actually PhD student he's whacking on interventions with people with dementia and say she doesn't so very interesting things such as embroidery said the mindfulness that comes with android jury analysts say the find my skills and you know everything that comes with doing this very very intricate and still full think for a long period of time hello webshop was on collage and we looked at how we might be able to express our feelings food medium of college and denied that might involve looking at lots of old magazines and you know dissipate pad over things that you might have lying around and looking at maybe what the newspapers and thinking about thinking about white why you're picking them out and say you know when you see somebody's collection piece of paper they might have used to set in color they might be used to set some pictures that might be sets and what's to bring the picture together save it might look like a complete mess of the picture it might not be completely as that sixty correct it might look wonderful that's beside the point well the points of the clutch is is to look at that and think how does this reflect my experience and in looking at reflecting my experience how do I tend to talk about my expense had I frame my experience and if I can have this old narrative around the experience then maybe I might be able to address the issues that come up during the experience for example my college in particular I happen and I thought this is very very interesting I was thinking why are you doing this myself my clutch looked at that Meghan and Harry into G. and I picked up pictures of Meghan and Harry and for some reason I also picked out what's that what to do with the interview was around understanding and telling my side of the story and your family and these kinds of things and and and I'm picking these things out and thinking why I picked these things out maybe I'm thinking about my family maybe I'm thinking about my %HESITATION laid the I. eight projects myself well the way that I am talking about how I experienced things and when you look at these and then you look at %HESITATION everybody's colleges and you ask everybody to talk about the colors you can see some very very very interesting stories you know you have about people's experiences and rather than sitting down and doing a traditional interview with somebody which we might do in reception you know it might be very very structured when you got somebody to express their opinion through the medium of all his meeting the college you might get a lot more rich states if not you might get a lot more interesting data from that goal you might get more of a glimpse of the passage rather than excessive structured ons is that they might want to tell you just to tell you save we won these elections just for that practice to understand how people have been experiencing quite a bit and that's one of the things that we've been doing is part of that committee got the project we will say it does not focus groups of people so we've spoken G. as well because they subscribe as in people that work in the community %HESITATION whacking intoxication and community people lacking in that close our teas and social activists and teachers to Austin about well what do you think of the various constipation what can we do to make these things much more accessible for people with what do you think of the other issues around what's happening you know on these patients stuff yeah and as well as that would diagnoses like traditional Quincy black which we have to take we headed back to the states in July for excellent conversations with Dr Charlie hole and palm Munter to talk about their newly published pics funny rules and feeding feed him what I would just really you know like to thank you again for giving me a chance to talk about my mom and to really promote the family rules book just so it's so important to those of us who have been care givers with people who suffered with Alzheimer's and dementia I understand that it's not easy in a row to be on we have to find ways we all have to find our own ways to get those memories back we know that our loved ones are not going to remember them no matter how much we want them to have moments when they'll remember them but they won't be the same and of those memories when they're stolen from you find a way to get them back in this was just my way of giving those memories back to my my children my grandchildren my brother and his family a way for them to kind of remember %HESITATION you know Graham on the way in which they wouldn't remember her normally yes and so now when you see and hear Fanny rules you'll know that I'm talking about my mom well when the power if you think about it I mean they're such a great strong you know conversation about that is the fact that here we have an individual with a twelfth grade U. S. education %HESITATION which means no college no formal education beyond that who is wise beyond her years I mean things that she would tell me one of those conversations that she would tell me is about being mediocre she says don't be mediocre don't be lukewarm just want to be hot you want to be called she said because mediocre is just a block and it just settles for whatever and so I took that message and I think crafted into this one and it's that mediocre settles to the bottom and complains about the view and I never wanted to be a person who complained about the view I wanted to celebrate the view and so she would also tell me that I could be anything I wanted to be so if you want to understand how I can actually move from this or town in West Virginia and I actually received two post graduate degrees end up with a PhD you know all of this is because the fact that this woman said I can be whatever I wanted to be but whatever I wanted to be be the best of it that I can't and she didn't put any parameters on it she said if you want to be a janitor you want to sweep floors she said that be the best floor sweeper there AS and Fannie told me that I needed to clean in the corners because she said it could floor sweeper will clean the corners because anybody can sweep in the middle %HESITATION I've been a feminist since I was about eight and try to get girls and the little league that was impossible back then so I'm hoping that it will ring that bell loudly this is what we do to women and what we've always done it women in this business and we need to rethink that %HESITATION because it's not worth it no people shelf life it shouldn't be a matter of shelf life it should be a matter of what they can contribute and for how long my publicist you telling me the lot of the people who are reviewing it are women so I would guess that's the natural audience I mean the subtitle is women of a certain age in Hollywood but I think anyone who is curious about how things work you don't have to be a film historian to be curious about how Harvey Weinstein could happen and video such an ogre for so many years how did he get away with that kill the casting couch she goes all the way back home it was on a normal accepted event info woman wanted to be up on that screen triggered a light on the couch first it was just %HESITATION unfortunately and given I don't know that that's true anymore I don't think it is certainly there are rules predators out there but it's not as widespread as it once was and I think anybody who cares about the issue will be curious about the stores at least I hope so it was fun to write because of the feminist background I I'll say that because I was a clinical psychologist for so many years I felt that I could get inside their heads and give the reader %HESITATION some idea about how women think about these things how they process that kind of a precedence and disappointment %HESITATION barrel aging process itself you know if we know some of them did pretty well without I think the strength of my writing is always the internal dialogue it's not so much what happens is how the the woman processes the information and that was extremely fun to write because I think I know more about that probably than anything having been in practice so many years I took some time off in August and released some back up material while I was away from the computer June and July were really busy with recordings and normal service resumed with guests focusing on positivity and creativity respectively Dominic Sam and Daniel Hass hi Michelle younger generation because I'm pretty all right now I'm I'm around forty rise hotels and I can see people young so things like that so that's what I want to say and I want to tell people of course is not good to hear it sometimes the younger people feel like it's that nagging your nagging me right now I'm gonna want to bring it out it either more reality form that this things that's happened it happens to everyone so I want to talk about it happens to everyone we cannot hide it we can we have to break break through the wall and share it the man is difficult for me like for example it's hard for me to show my feelings to my wife sometimes she said you know you don't hold my hands anymore than that %HESITATION why don't I hold my hold on the hold is in well I don't know why it's just it's not like I'm I'm a touchy feely kind of guy you know it's hard to open up sometimes so doing this part because actually helped me as well because I feel like if I do good out there good will come back if I motivate people I will motivate myself as well just like there was a a youtuber dive was watching the other day he told us he said everyone has the same amount of time in the week what we do in that time brings a success %HESITATION differs between different people so if I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is I look at myself on and go to Instagram or whatever instead I could have used that if you know a few seconds and morning when I wake up look in the mirror and say I'm gonna do well today so in that actually brings a little bill impact to your own life and two into anyone's life right or if you're if you're a kid and you in the house if you wake up in the morning instead of going down there say Hey mom what's for breakfast you could say Hey mom good morning right Houston well things like that I mean there's just one tiny thing that can actually bright as a person's life but if my kid if you wake up the monies that had that good morning %HESITATION I feel good you know I feel good and not not a whole good but still good right in just one step up on once they would build upon upon just one tiny happen as a but not happen this eventually I feel like eventually everything will fall into place and everything will picks up from there see details like this the seven habits habits it's been an interesting Sir journey for man and not some space because like I said it was really my my good friend do is a lot more in depth with film I've always grown up watching films and really enjoying cinema but for me it was wasn't something I really thought about getting into what was interesting was I feel like what I sort of looked back and found with everything is that for me personally I think that the storytelling aspect is really where I feel like I've always had the most deaths and success wins but I've always kind of struggled with the transition from page to screen as far as like visualizing what angle is to use and constraining myself to like okay fine but the tripod here with this sort of lands like this is a result I'm going to get I can't do it in my head so %HESITATION you know for a long time I I really was telling myself okay you know I really wanna do writing and directing and I can take on both but with the project that I did in twenty eighteen I really found that you know while I can do it and I can make it happen I feel like it's better for me to have the right people by my side that can actually translate what I'm writing better than even I feel like I can and again maybe that some kind of like weird mental hurdle which in ten years I'll figure out that like it's just me serve protecting myself from actually making the films as a director myself but at least at this stage in my life I'm sort of feeling like where I need to go with things is finding really good directors who can translate the writing and the way in which I can write the writing if that makes sense it's one of those things were as I'm writing something I only see it as kind of a stage play where is like everything just kind of a flat canvas and it's all sort of coming to life around me but I'm not seeing like you know okay when this person's talking like this if if I have this sort of camera movement or something like that none of that enters into my mind even the least bit I think with you know as time's gone on I just sort of made that mental jump so it's been nice because as I look back on everything a lot of the films that I've made or worked on you know I was either more is like as co directors somebody that was there just one set hoping things go smoothly you know maybe more as a producer or something like that and there's always been in my mind the best films that I've made with a good team and not one of those things where you know when I tried to make on I feel like they work and I feel like they have a good message to them but as far as how everything comes out on the screen there's not a lot of refinement you know I feel like I'm more of this let's just have a camera free flowing and stuff like that and that always just doesn't work as fast as it could for something that's just more visualized by someone who can make that transition more than I can in September %HESITATION do you drama producer boleh more help to celebrate our one hundredth episode entry nerd style with fascinating stories about adopting his father's literary works while also contributing to the advancement sent audio technologies and modes of production we then heard from Dr Fiona noble about her researching contemporary Spanish cinema I'm talking about alternative approaches to the academic so they I have to say mystically lucky in that I'm pretty good with the theory of things but not so good with the practice and so I have gained producer editor who is amazing %HESITATION figure out ways of executing the crazy ideas that I come up with and I had his passed away a few years ago but I have this wonderful wonderful engineer what you believe yourself to a stop not only was he triggered recordings but he could just build devices that hi imagine during you need to have the particular thing that we were talking about do you go back so I like working in stereo I like doing as much with the stereo space as I possibly can one of the hardest things was to figure you know do I want to block actors around in the stereo spaced and then somehow walk the production or the creation of sound effects in some way that tracks them and when you put all this stuff in the same recording board line up and sound like it's the same spot this isn't very difficult to do of course the more you utilize the stereo space the more difficult it is and I want to get really clean dialogue tracks I like to not worry about anything but the voices when I'm in the studio that's the only thing I want to deal with I record all my voice is moderate but I need a visual tracks they can be hand around the stereo proceeding on waste with both panting you know so panning and volume and a little bit of reverb to create you know are they from the back of a culture to use things like that but then how to make the sound effects follow rob so I was talking to Howard our engineer and there's some kind of a joke it's only funny to engineers I don't really understand it but they would make this joke about it monophonic Kampot meeting some sometimes you would cancel liberal left to right which of course you can't do it I had heard him say that a couple of times and I was like how hard we've worked with MS technology which I'll explain in a second I want you to build me a monophonic camp and so she did the way you talk about three months later he came back with more acts okay so this is the pattern and over here we've got one of the lot one of the dogs is the volume which is you know basically does your in and out of this does your back and forth and okay now explain how this thing works yeah that's such a good question I think that was one of the key points that came back for and I'd submit the first draft of the manuscript to the publisher is and the talks about four I needed to do to prove that threat and the idea of subversive Spanish cinema city the big not that it wasn't there but that you know just by adding things like and the conclusions each chapter unexploded back you can prove that threads together and the artists such readers on their anonymous obviously they are such pertinent questions that really made me think about the significance of the title and how it related to what I was talking about it because I think if you look at the carcass of material for the big and the filling car pass it probably looks quite mainstream in some ways I'm not necessarily looking hot experimental filmmaking in Spain that's not part of what that be extinct there's some really interesting things happening in kind of alternative cinematic practice says worst filmmaking practice in Spain especially kind of post economic crisis that's not my forte told us not something I'm particularly knowledgeable back to somebody like Rebecca north send you she has the blog nobody knows entity where she talks about Spanish cinema I don't know how active she is barking at the minute she's from the northeast actually and I don't know if you've ever come across %HESITATION but she's a really knowledgeable person I buy alternatives Spanish cinema practices that's not what this because it's not a private kind of we cannot what's happening with the mainstream if that makes sense it's more about looking hot you know the key players all Spanish cinema there are some films in there that are less well known there are some filmmakers you know the likes of petrol model of our who is probably you know the most well known Spanish filmmaker certainly in the U. K. ET bought depict deals rather with subversive nests within those kind of mainstream contacts and looking out hi %HESITATION the positional filmmakers we're working under Franco's the likes of Carlos Salazar or at least customer Langat London about a name he's the uncle off have yet course people like them your last identifying filmmaker is under Frankel working June the dictatorship shooting about a strict censorship conditions that there were at the time so it's looking at those kind of precursors to what's happening in contemporary manifestations of performance and that presentations of performance in Kentucky sponsor and kind of seeing the offense comes through you from those oppositional filmmakers into the present day and what that looks like and how you can become %HESITATION means all speaking out against the common additives or the dominant ideas in society October so a reunion with merry at Spiro sketchy I previously spoke today at the twenty eighteen late shows this time we discussed her ad member French performance landing I also reached out to other friends of artist Sally match and a bunch of us recorded memories of Sally for an episode released ahead of commemorative events marking the first anniversary of her death in case you missed the hidden track at the end well here southeast coast companion and collaborator Tom Jennings reciting his first the North Sea fought in a way I found it in some ways liberating because I'm going to have number %HESITATION while I'm on an island in the Atlantic and that's why %HESITATION that and and the hard to get my head around them has but also very exciting I've got somebody producing will be in Africa during the time of the production and it's and my director is in Ireland it's just kind of also beautiful that I'm someone who's very international and I've traveled a lot and I have friends all over the world for me it's always been about you know other time zones and languages etcetera so it feels like the world is kind of stepped up to accepting that is more common than normal in every day and that excites me because it's just really creating that feeling of collectivity globally and %HESITATION I personally love that so in a way it is deliberating the strike while B. R. R. your chili but streaming islands you they can go worldwide and research that I think is a worldwide competition and %HESITATION we're having an yes it's exciting it's exciting to have that but I performed live for the first time the other week here on the island we had a little open Mike at the cafe and actually there's a lot of performers on the Simons strangely enough and it's the first time I'd perform live the new year and a half last time was in Newcastle actually enough and he was just so exciting for everyone just like all you know we have been sharing this moment an audience it's been difficult yet challenging but if we can find a way to have a balance in the future it's kind of interesting it does open up a lot of possibilities I know there's a lot of companies have in the states and in other countries you know been working digitally already for years they were kind of ahead of the game a little bit if you will yeah it's an interesting chance yet like I'm saying I think it's about the balance I want it all to go online forever now they really don't but how can we find a way to you know make a hybrid form or medium it's interesting we're definitely it's been a learning curve imagine a moderate offshore breeze when the tide begins to wane with the lapping of tiny waves blown back against the grain battles in the sun crackle as they shift this way and that while you stroll along the shoreline with Sally chewing the North Sea fast in November I never did like this museum and Stacy asked McKenzie frankly and caught up with Brandon Conley talking about detecting world a cheese your own adventure calendar that we have very much enjoyed this month's I do really enjoy this topic I like talking about the British Museum because truthfully I have a love hate relationship with that because the very first time I got to visit the British Museum was in the summer of twenty eighteen so I had not yet finished my degree I was the summer before my senior year of budding anthropologist just like jumping in my seat waiting in line to get into the British Museum because it is you're absolutely right this global institution where you can see thousands of years of human culture across the world in one place started walking through and seeing all of the things and wondering where they came from and how they came to be into that institution and learning more about the ways in which those objects were acquired and then some of the contentions regarding the fact that a lot of those objects have been requested to be formally returned and subsequently denied so the more I learned the more that the magic was kind of stripped away from me so it's been really wonderful institution I absolutely believe that something like that should exist but at the same time yeah you have really big ethical questions that need to be answered and yes people do challenge me on this topic they will often say well especially in the case of the British Museum if they started giving things back they have to give everything back and then they have nothing left which is such an exaggeration and far from the truth but I think that certainly concessions do you need to be made very simply the start you told a few items you have in your infantry unless you go through the store you will lose on the choir of right and so the my simple level keeping a record of well I have a small lamb well I I you know I I'm carrying this style the other not to spoil it I need to objecting counted but you keep the title of those the next can influence the choices that are available to you at different points so for example if you got a big cocaine to come across a big gulp padlock you can unlock it and if you don't you can help so at the most basic level yes you're actually do a physical symptoms but there are other things you may wish to record and write down old drawl at various points finally in December I had a delightful time with the of the last of the Cinemalaya Neil's podcast and learn lows but life as a jobbing actor in the U. S. film and television industries from Kate H. anarchists yeah it's I mean it's funny you say it's like kind of like a research project which I mean that I think that's a perfect example of what it is because %HESITATION I went to school for history I'm a trained ademas historian because you know that's not my field and I want to sound too pretentious in there I'm not gonna call myself when the film historian but %HESITATION you know I did study anyway %HESITATION anyway you are to no sales the story no one but no I am I studied history went to school for history because as I said before was a lifelong passion and I really do think that film is a good way of introducing not exactly educating because obviously you know there's too much Hollywood stuff like the last tool which is in the army %HESITATION but now which is actually funny like to go on a limb that little tangent armor medieval representations of armor are better in the first half of the cinema rather than what is going on today unfortunately but I think it's a great way to really see what people are into and see what they're not into and then see how they can relate it back to our world tangy and how to understand what we're doing wrong or what we did do wrong in the past whether it be through art or social movements and how we can fix that today and I think through filmmaking that introduces a lot of topics that are can be often difficult and can really meet people not make people but can really make them feel comfortable enough to talk about those issues so all of it is being an open vessel so to be comedy to be drama and just really being open and so when you're open and you know your team is setting you up for these projects and you're going out for these projects and you're up and you're down and you're crying you're vulnerable you're happy in your court you're sad the most important thing is just to be true to your authentic self you have your bass line and then you have people you study with Susan Batson B. A. T. S. O. and she is an amazing book called truth she's doing virtual people can you drop ins for twenty dollars a day Monday through Friday she has a lot of international people who study with her she's Nicole Kidman's acting coach for over twenty years you'll have been noticed I sure Madonna %HESITATION brushy coach is all these people for their films so being trained by the crown telegram right so you can be trained at what level and and it's like the best investment you're gonna make is in yourself with your time to follow the the food you eat the coaches you study with the podcast you listen to the people we associate with so all of that goes hand in hand with the characters I choose because based on life it's not just linear and I could tap into different experiences that I personally experience or that I've observed to being a great observer I love observing and so something directly hasn't happened to me I can with Google you can research it you can watch some like minded movies you can check out the director projects that they did a part for T. that's for films or TV shows you know the tone of the show grey's anatomy it's always sunny cold case you know the tone of the show you know the casting director like no other body work %HESITATION in there do great work you have to build a relationship with the casting director they keep bringing you when they like your work so if they want you on the show it's just a matter of time before it happens you just have to keep up and just show up and do great work and then make sure you're taking care of your body mind and spirit because they like I said they're very hand in hand with one another you know doing different characters is like it's always sunny it's like corky it's far sign in and they're like oh they like that then you can that's permission to play to take that a step further and discover where you can go when you get on set you've already done the preparation so everything I'm telling you studying coaching researching that's the tone of the show that's the preparation of the character before you show up when you get to set you already know your lines you already know your character and it's an opportunity to get out of your head and get more into your got into the intelligence of your body and to play and be professional because there's the takes a village and there's hundreds of people on set and especially now we want to be very mindful of staying within the parameters of everyone doing their job to make a party is you know the hair stylist like if they ask you your opinion cool but they're already communicating with directors and assistants and people and everyone has the domino effect of how they're showing up in everyone's doing their best so you know when you have the character you that's your ultimate time where you get to play and have a lot of fun well what a year it's been and it's because of you the listener supper still going and approaching four years of learning more and more of a different landscapes and audio visual cultures but I want you to tell me what have you enjoyed what would you like to hear more off and learn to fight and what might be missing that we haven't touched on yet and I know there's lots of topics that we haven't touched on and we're working our way Brian tape let me know by email to the audio visual cultures at G. mail dot com MSH eighty cultures part on any of the socials it's been a tree privilege to speak to so many interesting guests from such a diversity of backgrounds and I'm really looking forward to what twenty twenty to bring I'm always happy to hear from folks who'd like to cast on the show and I'll be back nagging at my artist friends to come speak to you because their class and she really need to know about them for night mind yourselves and catch you next time
transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 33 – A Day at the Fringe automated transcript


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this is audio visual cultures the podcast Patrick Simons signed an image based cultural production I am the creator and host Paul the bladder and this addition Andre Sheila and I spend the day at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and speak to one quarter of just these plays will see back Montefiore apart the comedy trips shows on tonight also talk about it saying she's an improvised silent movie and the play and taken a nine iron we begin though with some thoughts on our previous friends experience why is it that we are speaking out going to help in the background we're in a very face eight %HESITATION during the French the festival anymore do we just do this thing that inhabits the fringes of the festival but which has basically taken over from the first time the enemies make a this is our third time yeah a third time as a unit I did a bit of stuff for me yeah thank M. A. N. meaning the specific reason that we are here we wanted to just do a little bit of it but this year we don't three day stint before this time we just come out for the day there's a reason why we hate us because we just got back from a bit of traveling elsewhere and the specific reason why we are in this the company in the present time and we're just going across Bristol Scranton a bit to see a show at the gilded balloon TV it is the colonels a friend of mine is of a four person comedy sketch troupe called just please please whose show starts in Hoffman and we just bumped into imagination flaring in the places as people are wants to do for their own shows often have a visitor's register at the front and the somebody else doing it use my people to be firing for money for somebody else but someone with the right people who do the show's firing themselves with fliers that contained images of their interface so it's like just a tiny little celebrity encounters although it doesn't seem trusting coach people to go and see the shows %HESITATION anyway we are here to see his name's we'll see back once and he was a student at Nichols university I never told him so that's why I call my friends rather than well afterwards and then going to see at least two more things but tickets for an in person to see if that thing that we haven't because this free stuff on three different things my currency and then clean as anything with leaping straight about Lexaria onto a train and heading back to Newcastle and X. it up a little bit more this year because normally we head straight for the comedy and so we're going to see later we did see if I'm not here but I want something that we did get fired for and we thought oh sure why not let's give it a go we thought the archery interestingly the name of the pay he doesn't display properly on the ticket because the ticket continental and he with a capital even every possible an Irish so it can take in a marriage I think it's a mixture of mention Irish history right down my alley where for the second out right now %HESITATION so what comes as branching out in our lives he's seeing only mostly comedy or an entirely comedy your Highness next year we might see the Hoff committee last year I did a bit of a write up on my blog about everything well most of the things I think we did last year so if you are interested in reading about our adventures from last year and sent me a flyer dot blogspot dot com or something like that but if you don't know you want to read this blog entry because only name did not there was the real any of the past because last year and I have some videos actually and I put some images of the blog post about changing nightmare live it's really good fun yeah people remember that TV show that right here okay game shows on the fringes really it's still in the early nineties one where they wear a helmet which blinds them and they would direct from a that makes but then after awhile I realized it was a bit silly so they gave the machine within our unit so they could actually sure %HESITATION nice the size because I knew you wouldn't be able to see what was going on in the show that you pay for it was very funny because the people there were four people together volunteering themselves trying to become the chosen one those people were not there and they were to women as well which is disappointing so there was one and he was killed off pretty quickly because they want to defend and all the four people right now and then there was only I think you do medicamento very funny he was very different right okay let me to become a performer and a shirt and didn't get to see the show yeah you were very useful as a colleague on that particular day because you're able to fill me making it one of us are not able to do that zero like India's record signed by my technologies are much diminished the moment Phil Murphy people for the first year we came to the we did the last week last year we date the first weekend this year we're in a day right in the middle of the when we did the most weekends the first year and it would look like it's been through traumatized it was knee deep in people with their exhaust just trying to get from a to B. all the performers were at Monaco after seeing it's a really tough time of year and miss so in coming to advise like bringing rice to the biggest rice market in the world six bringing coals to Newcastle times ten but you know what that means is that one of the performers are being beaten to within an inch of their lives for the situation we are spoilt for choice when it comes to companies like the hustling to get people to go into your show that's so much a part of the performance it's a whole other performances exhausting and then supporting each other trying to see the shows is a manual cortex that does attract which involves lots of singing on the way in which they go out of business is they just come out in costume to sing short songs and public service was one thing that you would be well advised to do if you're gonna do a show in Edinburgh is something where you can just go out and do snippets of it in the street conspicuous so that might be %HESITATION would be conspicuous you know you're singing that carries in the sense of amazing costumes whether six weeks away that kind of thing do something about it on the street and that will get you distinguish McConnell but that means planning is going to be with them only to be thanks for your the business is this is what one must bear in mind if you were quite well see we decided to see the menu castle when they're on their way to London is coming out from underneath this is a very good thing about living in Newcastle it is sent to the other one in new castle because they're just trying stuff rounds on the way out and also for the same reason cheaper because they're going to run this for a fiver at this time did you cancel so yeah richer parents usually gets our undivided attention but when she's not getting any of it this time because this thing happened about a month I understand and you got some anyway assisting the feminists and northern states next month yes we are this is the first time you've told me about you know okay right because this would be a cool and yeah I decided to take you with my other ticket okay do I get the chance to decide whether I want to come with you maybe I'm trying to educate it would be the second time you're on I've been sick because feminists together we can happens to be here on Thursday we make it for one day and get it taken care of coming at the end of August this time for just a day so it didn't really work out anyway yeah we're going to be able to see them in half so it's quite rare that they come out for number so citing a demonstrator recording this and put into a criminal record Newcastle's possibly because opposing offensive these faculties they're gonna be fun it's never not been fun it's always very tiring there's always really good things take away so many good memories please check back in after some may even have an interview with Hans a for the comedy we're about to see it would be nice all right so we will if you're interested in giving regular support for the podcast that aren't too keen on peach tree and I know I have membership options and buy me a coffee dot com forward slash P. eight there where you can get the C. Max Strus as well as some others exclusive buy me a coffee head over to buy me a coffee dot com forward slash P. A. B. L. A. I. R. to price membership options or drop a fiver into this charge thanks and enjoy the rest of the episode where site %HESITATION just please please I was really impressive to me finally it was so well written this is a fantastic thing several different variations on the world in the coming minute costumes on registering the six I'm not gonna tell you who we are and then it will become apparent the company reveals during a sketch about who we are and then everything was expected to become funny so that that was the times that they may need to do with it from just a few small repertoire I did foods of twelve thirteen schedule to get the server roughly three and the rules and really really well written mail had four or five big tanks in the longer ones and the short ones for just a single guy activated inside of a minute even in a concert hall and just please please will Tom Georgie and just these days is the name of the troops and also it seems at the moment the name of the show more contestable with having a show that Scott different titles in the name of your committee contact and I think the name Jesse space X. quite telling because it's quite a polite there is some swearing and some gnarly ness and there but it's a very sweet and very good natured show there's nothing maintenance to suppress it hi he takes that one is really good use of musical acts are and that was when you do it for you sure about this in a tiny room that held about sixty people you get an eighty person who does a very limited lighting setup and a bit of audio but the use because there's really retiring constantly switching to pain points to show that they were between scenes because that's the kind of rearranging the furniture just moving around in order to get from the end once into the beginning of the next with very little going offstage as well so that the lights were switched to say now don't run X. sketch with music in between each sketch was always a preparatory sketch this coming up in seventy nine yes I am able I was really good at doing this I was confident character for delivery they were getting into the account is snoozing really confidently for the area for the tiniest restricted area you'd be tempted to get quite distant from the phone at home is to keep the movement of a room we all have done from school training because they were doing dancing singing some points it wasn't tons of what their characters in the sketch we do hundreds of accents they must access I bet that took ten months to write what you want to go for a different time I think it took a significant amount of time and right here so I need to get it tight and then once you know what the space that is for her saying the transitions while also remaining of the chairs to position them for the next batch coming night stand to get props on and off it takes a lot of practice and knowing high care spaces and because I am a friend with one of the four people with well we are going to try it because going to hospital now we're gonna try to get his own suggestions about what's involved in doing this kind of service Hey we're really super excited to be joining might well come to here I am I saying that correctly the single way and hear from just these plays and we've had a reading in the free time watching on the session if we can just give me a few questions hi would you describe show is twenty five sketches in fifty five minutes from the very fast paced SO of silliness the grown ups that is also quite clever it'll be a very modest yeah I thought it was very clever it's not only to give compliments lightly yeah it's recorded for ever it's a I'd say it's like a classic sketch and we cannot sketch comedy and I love the with the advent of my stand up comedy and character comedy with lots of breaking the fourth wall and trying to the audience which is amazing but it is a group of princes of Maine who do it really well it's like this weird amalgamation standup and sketch but we were just like let's just do sketches just still sketches thirty four if you wouldn't mind because we only remember everybody's first name mine just Rhymin everybody's name yes Philippa Carson Georgie Janice Tom Dixon and myself within Siemens hearing this anytime and so in your own well yes trying to make your way in the world of showbiz thing with day jobs some nine days thirty isn't because yeah so hard to express and getting on the of the the A. B. player graduated from my ear drums because anyone of them who has not got a second job I think that's probably what everyone has of the stuff that I have to do because it's changed so much but that's the compromise you make when you doing something that you love and all the necessary financially stable but it's what you want to do on your own and it killed at the main branch which is probably one of the better known locations venues which might examine how you can convince a lot because it's your first range is a great day this offers them a fringe as a group repeat that just say if you're gonna put the question on is constrained and I we've gotten together billions of because we've been gigging in London just trying stuff out on the fringes always angry because we wanted to do stuff and we found doing things off our own back with anyway tonight on and get his agency in a career that saw that latency and is often not a meritocracy there are so many variables and got you can be the bank like amazing do great job in the state he's too small which is the night it's just about how it works what sentence it wasn't seven that's too small I need of intend to find out is the other thing yeah seventy but we were like we have this thing we work well together we like working together to make something today and if it is in London to indifferent directed you contact people we contacted all the big ones disseminated thousands gathered them under running a bunch of the smaller ones a couple of places offer those places and gilded balloon unpleasantness I came to see us %HESITATION the fall festival because we managed to get into the office today until one night together but after seeing reductions in that package it was on a hiking condition I can understand ten minutes of the show before his run of consecutive minutes I really kind of a still okay and is like awesome stuff but I go to the place off the back of that and so it was a nice balance of work on not getting someone in doing so that was good enough for the people Hey and you and also the kindness of the venue's going oh yeah we're going to take a chance of someone we've never heard of that's how we say so that anyone can do it but it takes a lot of again a lot of and let's be a testament to Hiero day earlier incarnations of the show if they thought well yeah we will give you time yeah I think so I think we'll invested in it because we feel that it was good which I think makes is unique in that address I think everyone has sex with the but yeah definitely I must've been and still is we find of his tights you know leave a lasting contest I really like that the Joe Klein it was very good shares a lot of it was very in a sense that's quite refreshing in a world where everybody's fighting I don't know why we made that choice I think it's the idea of someone going and if we don't going to see shows you feeling uncomfortable let the people in St John St Thomas after I think was definitely like why things are so common tree which we love but we just want to make it a lot alike this is the way we've done it so it's been a long thing to one group of people can see us out a bit sat by it might be Correa's advises one line which I completely disagree with which is over and the work of a crazed by and the only reason I know users from Newcastle because my car is about coming together and it doing exactly what I'm doing because of my it really keeps me up at night and that was one point in the show to do that I think yeah it's not offensive not offensive but also we would never know you know we just we like people have an ice times put in context even at twelve fifteen so in a roughly sixty seat venue it was in the basement we went up and down a lot of states the area and I think it's on just below the ground yeah every single seat in the everything was taken I would check my journal with several human listen to something seventy six yeah the past five or six days we decided to sell out yes that is ME ten seats empty today there's only about three which I think comes to choose a selloff I don't know that's the thing that's really been my gosh this is remarkable because we struggle to get reviews and stuff but without just word of mouth it's friends family and people saying Hey go and see this and then it's also strange is seventy stand is going to say I'm liking it the full coming of a missile was complete without social media would any fertility people you'll hear the same shows ever ever again things and and that's the only reason I can say that we that's amazing %HESITATION service while the kids think this is such a massive parts of friends I guess even the visual culture transistors because right right please bring her phone background and your last name the things you love goes to circle their sections you know maybe do the right thing and the most really very interesting the communication nearly complete circle for the title anyway so it's the same company the card yeah it's a really formation it's very clear and then on the back of the prior year and now you said that you wear during the show yeah which is the state and the computerized how did you go about defining turning for doing the photo shoot there are a couple of things we knew we had today %HESITATION wanted to do one which is helpful about faces on it because I glance that's what you want young people to recognize the poster on the faces not see what's on stage what we were going to say that's what you're selling we so we want to be ourselves we want to look like on comedy we don't want to be today we're approachable and quite lovely anyone in particular as ideas that you would overseas Kim I've been told he's that might be just because he's a full time solicitor but it was this is skeptical that the John and then an old sketch group two guys who went to John this is John financial planner thing says though not so light aircraft was invading neutral but still threw things away and I think I quite like that it was trying to be grown ups but not ready succeeding some rain AS laboratory choice that we're like okay %HESITATION let's see if it works really well she's an Philips %HESITATION decided to buy some white suits on Amazon I just tried it and then we try them on the ground and let them we've today the post and then you can see what we have to and striking there's an it pleasing formation no we so I think it works yeah it is to the rule of three as well I think he's on the line on the faces and the bottom tanks they logo the idea was like a tea stains come down that is the latest version of our friendly development is a friend of ours who design stuff and we gave him a break we took thousands of pictures we've got a friend take pictures Lawrence and download the different formations but this one just relied on the contract it was a real confetti gun more it's Georgie well no she no I know it so for those from Ireland Georgie has second is Jones but she's a glass behind homes could have been because you're almost a four nation yeah Republic of rather than in the U. K. do you do you must have more from it helps because then it would just an Englishman Irishman and a Scotsman it was a little shocking it seems for a couple of the other members of your home when there was some intakes of breath at this point and that point Tom's playing this movie is the kindest meeting that you buy in the shops and the point was when he put the gun in the mouth and nose with officers maybe it's to show just how willingly we suspend disbelief I think it goes I wasn't holding guns even though I know it's made of plastic and because we have different things and this is the shocking images thing the I do you especially with the joke is that she's appearing she goes on a dog because it used to be spoilers everybody the premises and the PA being sent on the behalf of the boss for catch up yeah so the PA has to do everything the bus as a natural extension of that is the boss gets his he does have to go through it just like a very silly just not to the extension of the job but this is you bring suicide so I think what's changed involvements is Jodie's gonna fire but now has been playing with the likes flexible said one six it gives you when it's time to go okay this will be the darkest sounds doctor and disposing of it let me tell you the full scope is waiting for the big this is where another time sketches sculpture and I want to yeah well I mean they were like all the sketches %HESITATION all four of us have input and change and stuff it's just a natural spot every single catching this has been added these are the schedule to and then if it's not to be here yeah the bark for life sketch this is a conversation with you about how life feels neglected they are very it's just a great we accept being fell apart from we've played in different pots so we try and keep the casting by general so judging I've done it Tom and Jody again at the all the policies of the exchange well known in Edinburgh we've kept it the same just a piece of serving as a good representation of a road safety five hours who was on stage at any one time yeah we try our best to do that if it will worry to some people than on this motion I felt my god given rights will punch lines we spend so much time talking about making sure that it's like because I think this is the greatest thing sometimes again this is not always about persons show to join in and I think we've done I think it's a haunted and one who'd brought what which we used to do some I don't yes what we have been doing this initially when we talk when I had written the both of which I want to do that and they're like yeah great just bust the bank tells us that as a boy it's written from a male perspective and written for ourselves and so working with them well god that's not something that we do being you know open and liberal wealthy people and feminists were like how did that yeah it's really it's just so funny how great is that he says that's missing and stuff like that so but it was like I want to write more sketches just women and I was gonna kill like talking to her and we were like that sounds great J. just extended from NASA's further provided receptacles with it's one of those places where people primes entertainment for this contest was with these problems and then the basic even though I am a person who was wearing a seat something else so you have to blackrock questioning you date the bank the best person I'm assuming as soon I'm gonna buy the head home you have to imagine that I wanted your team to be aware that you can generate yeah I'm gonna change my customers in the from now one must be different yeah I am not like when you were done with the the builder and the because posted on yes the business to be complete I think big adds a bit of noise and also I think if you're not doing it really really well I think what you lose in the transition time because I get to the same quickly jumped from the scratch if we have like a minimum cost on something in to fill out this is why we studying onstage this time was like I ran a scan is all about and if we feel that we have to get a bug Hey welcome to the boat and going as you can guess from from some completely willing to go with okay this is one of the and so that's what I specifically did a lot of information there is that still rules of improv this the time that they use which is ironic detachment they're trying to avoid ironic that option and I think we try very hard to play the sincerity of the conversations we have a life in exile as if it was a real relationship the audience laughing I mean we try to maintain the tension the whole basis of my tongue in cheek Matt this is funny we may not always pulls me out the two men are like well this call may be a factor well I guess there's a pipeline okay there's nothing you can push through there's a question mark this is Nancy disbelief people are willing to just there's a few members Russell what these people are doing in front of us is absurd I'm never find myself going I'm in a room watching some of the things that are doing it every month every day from get okay that was my job today I'm going to go and pretend to be with me and then I. F. and I'm like it's very strange so the frivolous and strange things that it'll make sense within the drummer if each yeah there's a serious man this movie is about to give in to me exactly how to be yeah yeah when when is a collection of the most whimsical see the products you get if you survive to show he can how many thousands of Americans is the I think we had enough to give us a seven session in a recent I put my bags in my pocket monocled Wilson alters things on the phones as well we do have a there was a very neat callbacks within the sketches but you kept them relatively discreet my mom's biggest what I think is the minute he was meeting with we never thought I've got a lot that's one of those really strange things that audiences I need to grab the audience's appointed you they just recognize the audiences on stupid and very small and very brave please keep coming to see us it's all becomes like an in joke for that room of people because it's like if we were that and is this something I think %HESITATION sketches about things that people recognize that because Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton sketch people like with the double right I really appreciated that a lot of the sketch is very conscious of being gender neutral and stumble home and interacting with the server bodies this is nice to have those sorts of things just not be an issue you know the the next meeting %HESITATION yeah yeah it's something that I'm in I think we're all very conscious of his listening to each other in the group in a specific time and I who initiate written most of it the knights like I said it's very much a modernist all four of those yeah this escape is that we don't have anymore they used on the web page in it there's a malpractice and all this bitch and it was a high and %HESITATION very setting and I've written a line of sight and then the Filippos sent chills I I'd done things good words for us to be saying I was like I genuinely don't see the problem but let's go not because I don't understand how bout with you since then we came up with a funny word current board it was but we ended up saying something so inane and childish that actually was funny because it took away the status of the it's just about listening when Thomas that's not right the man and I was trying right from the email because sketches tend to be mutual definitely why not just right as a woman because my natural just right so I could just change that and just imagine George into the big old big old liberal con the box a little but it is just because of the women in my life been aware of that and I think that's important sometimes with comedy it's an excessively it's a novelty you know we're doing sketches you can so that I it's easier to make an actor in a limited relationship because but it is funny to do different things remember if you ask the question but I'm almost yeah one of my team needs me being very embarrassed about sex is very cute it seems like the jobs going to have the from the storm the mayor may not it was just nice it was a rather than I was in the in that case yeah that kind of thing and it's just funny more because this is known as thank you to that's something we just find it funny is people have describes like all for nine days yes an interesting that they chose to male names that do you know what for you guys after the friends apart from months of France but myself unit into the girl professional actors and %HESITATION is this this is also a professional the idea is that this will again it's been a mentor Hey Scott how to plan because it's so based on that will definitely happen as I got home for a little bit and then right and he didn't they were very resilient what do you do yeah depends on the time I don't think I can take this much holiday offer free we will have to work on that but we will it's the thing that we do and we love to do more stuff with it the idea is to just these days to come up big thing that we can make stuff in the bag and then we can make stuff on the top yeah many great bands the first phase fighters the names of the title going to be expected to remember one thing yeah exactly a month to month to come in to read just please come from is and tightened that is a quick question charming until midnight but and may and then radiation and it was that thing just these please when you put something down a shop just these days because you want to be Brian yeah you know what to say these are just these days it's qualifying is on what could be happening the other this is a way of saying please when you sell meetings I want the same time same place recently nothing else I don't want anymore things that those are like the same justice based just the sketches I still doesn't know what it means anymore because that's where it came from but it's just a name that people keep forgetting do you continue to hold the J. T. something we do and we got a lot of the type and I insist on the common between just these in place at the end of our last visit makes is that okay stacking services we've had a really great time so even if this happens yeah well just a space where can we find you on the internet good just please please someone else stole just these days H. J. U. S. T. H. E. S. E. says just the space but with that one U. S. first team and yet just tease please is what has and then we're on just these days dot com if you search just these these into Google you'll find us and we just released a sketch that has like two and a half million views a new schools which is cool when you order coffee with an Irish name and by financial G. well judging for that that is George's main idea is that this is a difficult yeah George zero and for the rest of us for as well and then we found out together for an incident on a friend I'm trying to get the filming and editing I was online this is just please please thank you would you like to receive updates thanks and special offers straight to your inbox then they said forty visual cultures dot wordpress dot com to sign up to your mailing list yes again thanking you for having been told to go into the thing that I'm going to do it well I wanted to say that one as well before they had a pretty nice and countered with a jaunty chop from my neck of the woods firing poker area something from another area I was the only person to bump into poker you would have been I would have to follow new video converter I should have done was just go way back I have to confess my girlfriend and I would have had it won here calling me a you can keep he's as hairy as possible right the tier three funny men from Northern Ireland here we saw him a couple of years ago may have neglected them for awhile please send me send you counseling and family I think when you see someone firing for sure that they're doing this French and we're definitely not going to see venture for you consider that at some point you become the most forening pessimist possible to be solved and expect nothing but Justin Wallace it was the phone twice entered yes there's a group of I think knowing people pull together KOSPI project the findings will cut off and credits at the end of may %HESITATION name servers a good seven people who doing performance and then there was a guy he was completing the intertitles our favorite topic and writing a sentence and this happened sometimes I could even hear the type I yes it was coach an improvised side in the face of course we have to go through this I couldn't have a have been anybody but Italians because they continue to have probably the most respect for the silent era film if they put even RDMA anybody cinema notes to shame the Italians have reference for it please reference of course because early cinema is dominated by committee I'm a college that and so even though it was supposed to be a drama they were improvising they stopped in those moments of comedy dark comedy having a pair of dark comedy mixed with Anderson Scotty yes it was pretty effective for the wonderful performances particularly there's a couple of people playing what one does find a dog another's pain you can't never particularly for me yeah the visit of gender mixing because there was a woman playing a man very effectively and probably in a calm way both were kind of surprised to getting across the types of characters ever find something we find ourselves observing all the time when you play the six that you're not a customer make up on your side you have to stop and of course the guy playing the woman was coated very much in flux %HESITATION I would say so honoring a faction S. of the performance of the flapper girl and a man in the iron to quite smoking and having a baby gnarly to okay you're on Thomas conventions of the era including lots of poking fun at forms of Damascus and can save twenty five as well a new truck source was used to describe the foreman foreman is coming in and these two guys standing in front of the auditorium completely silent Ali constant acting sit down sign and the bass from the centers and we set the front row and then after I sat down to go notes in the file manager from the room and then they go to any concerts and the principal was someone in the audience had to write down on a slate one of them is holding the touch of a job they did it several times I got the right one so if you wanted to write about whatever was on the site the new one on and then we did a kind of reckoning up between %HESITATION was undertaken and it was the have to find somebody suggested secrets act somebody suggested that with the yeah server there were several that came down to the most lots of hello your clothing so the firm we chose the telephone was the on the take and then they started to improvise this firm I'm aware of that was done where is the screen it was I'd say about three fifteen for a similar scenes behind the pharmacy area such that when it wants on informants area you could barely see the screen written off you could project something on demonstrating what sort of beginning and then the project hello from the lights behind the screen to go on to those lots of surprising Q. seven and then within a performance based performers are coming from either side with a limited number from and I hope and wish to start think they've got a repertoire and they're picking them from that record but then after awhile I started thinking if they're adapting it really really well the principal of one of the characters please stay on undetected because that was a job for Mr they did do comedy along the lines of this character has to pick up this other character and this performance is strong enough to listen to their problems there was a bit more of the onyx detachment that will was saying they didn't do him justice please yeah I'm running for president when one is doing a show about something similar is basically it's because people love off silent films so much even when they're not too even in the dead straight loss because they're so strict please come general happen after the initial while this seems like it's going nowhere was it into pointed type story even if the results of the initially which is the undertakers and started but there's lots of different ways to die service levels darkly comic and people find themselves in buildings and some people falling asleep at the wheel of a car crashing or accidentally knocking somebody off everything just to get you in may for the sorry and then immediately when those are happening deciding right this is the kind of story that we're going to try to do too mature to notice because I was very convincing yeah they call it he said story lines may be there for course to resign and take it up to whatever profession is chosen the three nine right relationship with the person doing the job it shows and then they have the relationship with this person and it breaks down for whatever reason whatever jobs on to the next court hearing that would make sense of one of the scenes in the greater of the things that were specific to take it would have been rougher on the edges of the design process with engine over the course of the trip it seems to have physical not to be they have a specific time today have something called the forty three year I think it was the same person he was playing the woman in the relationship how may I think the name of the character this person it's very we can even get using them thanks for coming to life story told people about paying crews and things like that shorter people are paying out of all of the kind that we often think of it in the film acting is being circulated to contacting you don't it's from Spain it's just a very elementary money combined with other forms of some of the phones that come to mind for us to get us he gets on the phone for anyone landing now doing physical comedy learn some of the ways of using forty used from someone to go I want you to share without blinking but you'll flushing I looks as to how to do that we take hands from the new school year four fingers and promote fire it's great put a new wave your finger check on a man who thinks that yes and I love the way they come and get some youthful liberals believe it turns out and she's showing off the engagement ring on this thing I this is not the shivering after hours but then using the other hand to flash dot something diamonds the timing of course is everything one eccentric define the penis is doing a cracking job because there's both playing music that she's turned and playing notes the sound effects and music and trying to get this is sound effect from this rejection of the long lines if if you just hammering the same note again M. as in court again and again and it's quite a place known as well that tends to come across as %HESITATION that somebody slamming into this is just really insistent music this work to do that unless it is doing very well there was a lot of undertaker characters must be very strong so if he's too strong sometimes and break things tells of door handles over something sign ready have a certain amount of lifting the heavy lifting their assigned if I was doing the metaphorical heavy lifting about that yes which I thought was quite figure just because it was pretend he's lifting their metaphorical heavy lifting about the metaphorical heavy lifting that refers to some user habits that's a matter for instance was clear that they have not just seen a lot of some films but seen some specific phones the idea of a character he just doesn't appreciate how strongly fourteen September is a specific mmhm and it's nice and then cut off the courses taught today yeah for the company from about nineteen or character somehow when was it takes possession or something and I don't think it would be much Linda Phil Mickelson cure for Cavendish and for extra translates as a medicine for strength and he takes his medicine for pain Caledon becomes unnaturally both brave and strong so there's a lot of comedy and people not knowing to expect how strongly also the two rivals for women's affection that's in about every other song from service contemptuous effective at getting back to Poland lots of fun I'm trying to represent a front runner I think so let them into something that I thought was that we could see quite a lot of what was going on on the side to probably figure further back that would have been a bit more of a surprise to us yeah it was very funny but at certain points people who are in the wings not being part of that particular skit no particular scene the heat off of what people were doing the same the fed I think one the woman who is playing the big heavy garden when she was carried off stage which was put down for some reason she found it distracting embarrassed when it's just been done and her face I could just about see if you're desperate times the result from often having done that but this is another instance of a reserve this morning it's the we're gonna put in front of you is not supposed to look like what it represents we are calling upon you to do it again when expressed in disbelief someone from the main on the ticket counter Kevin throws his rifle throws it out the door D. mind throwing one another for McCain on ramps heavy there's a huge fight stuck on the shoulder and lifted her off into the wings for mine the morning interacting with things %HESITATION yeah I mean you can mine being the subject of the actions of things around those willing to put those two together you can have somebody being for someone and again something which works within the scenario is that there's no need to call back somebody pretending to defend every meeting that simply pretending very well to give an impression of I don't know if it was the inventiveness often exploits what was funny at all costs of three coverage even think of selling arms to emulate option but it's not really works because that's very community communicating monitoring and of course they're crossing several language sorry for Sharon's high end that means that they can travel I can do this it doesn't matter but the language they just need somebody within the intertidal second okay and whatever language country houses its dominant language but also it's not language of silence sentiment that so alien and quite car ninety two people might because Sandra hears ago if this was going on did you notice that when the thing looks up at a local footage at the beginning it was the lack of for just fifteen of us universal was formed in nineteen fifteen those are the kind of counter did the music means to determine in nineteen thirty one the universal film company was formed out of a conglomeration of twelve existing from companies it was called universal because the other was already around at that point the film is universal for them to choose from I do no Sir the language because language or style specific characteristics and film doesn't fit this kind of sticks but the universal unknown numbers decrease specific communication means and they were having a damn good government that was like an Italian mostly comedic melodramatic music drama which had been given creative English interface which was a normal time according to some scholars friends of mine are Italian work on Italian cinema I'm trying to take it or so I and I taught in comedy a time companies are really quite dark chopsticks and we're all living above us he showed us some of these Italian comedies that he was looking at the rest of the server British Irish Americans my neighbor family quite distressing thoughts are essential to being about death and the undertaker and not from the edge and the quite dark and tragic despite the settings I do wonder whether there was a bit of manipulation isn't loading this decision making any units we came up with about six different titles yeah it was we would close those down through a process of elimination to to get invited on it was that the guy stopped the process when he had undertaken another one in north he said it was if we had a couple of people which we probably would have been on their minds RT some mystery and what which is about thirty pounds %HESITATION you're free and up is that what you wanted to your investment bank all right I thought you were going to do I don't know I was different RT from historians yeah it's like putting a mirror in front of the mirror just make it really matter after like in the future the address for the starting to be very important for everyone we care very much appreciate Christopher Lambert as it is your right and I think we're seeing is %HESITATION just waiting to see ninety nine yeah so the tech in the bay area so we're not on night of ninety giving him any key to see if we can get and see the skeptics and we're hoping to see the C. K. alley came up off and take any marriage started may and run over so we just didn't make it so that one is over here this was our contingency plan when we can get into this when I get into this so let's see the plane was intense it was probably a bit more intense actual contract everyone sat in the near future brexit has messed everything up toward the north and ardens parts from the apparently there's not very much the same old legacy so if absent fathers stuff that's been done a million times before only this time it's Spain comes over to some women they still are concerned so many ways their father never wanted instead of getting on with their lives on the main character's anti a religious or Catholic the lord's prayer keeps saying number pages Hey she and her other siblings her sister and two brothers their father dies apparently during the contacts they were taken and has children by the reality is Russian Fabian it's apparently situated in west Belfast you seem to be Scottish and had a crack at the accents hello one character was Jerry and all the rest of the characters are specific they all signed in for Terry then that every character dates about their very different accents so we will I think my main criticisms are actually they didn't really seem to know much about anything that under certain actors role for him they worked really hard did a good job with I thought that there may be material was very under researched serves very talky there was a lot of stuff provides the disappears can't get mentioned in a very fake way but when details were given there are entire day problems so things like dozens and dozens one seventeen fictional characters at first J. as being world distance not in the upper prominent loyalists that kind of thing never happens it is usually people who are in the house like for national communities usually accused of some kind of forming for being traitors and most of the time it was probably mistaken identity or it was just a sign today the community this is what we will do to you if you do you inform the types even more tense for tap on the actual contract was in many ways one thing was there's a character called a author and it's actually a leader and then union carnation of loyalist paramilitaries McCall there at times what was the right essay our age you read something wasn't terribly and my sister but anyway this character to fight it with quite a lot of compassion which anyway was different from the typical depiction of the loneliness because usually there are stand alone as she was but they're usually so I called back and really enjoyed torturing people they would have just done away with people the way that she does so I don't know if the writer not knowing how it all works for the city because of some of the S. and room to run and take a man's stories of Sophocles and then it's all these religious infractions I wonder if I'll if this may be trying to take on more than they could come to the right team speaking nothing they're just young and starting right I don't know who this person is it's a good attempt and everybody worked really hard C. company hopes anybody for me and all I know is we but as lesbianism thrown in there for good measure of representation is scared but not if it's a shame on them for the crack yeah the traffic citations and that being said one thing I recommend to play for I did make a point of there being a multiplicity of Ireland's somewhat higher than it is everybody is a very individual thing and what it meant to the previous generation the next generation is very different from one of the younger people many of the same they were crumbling under the pressure of trying to keep that up and I just the excess study hard if not how to been explored a bit more and make more effectively probably would've warms more it was I think it just got buried under needless pointless violence all honors very simplistic canceling that didn't really make anything anywhere maybe that was the point but it's just not really reflective of the current time and it's you know in twenty nineteen to twenty this is when there's no sitting assembly the house in order to be referring to women's and eating with the price of well we wish we could get back to that actually it was written after the brexit referendum I just called about his reference often the reference but before the assembly start when their time was for a small window of time time and it was quite a long time ago sales nine along top and had a lot of key thinkers have died have retired so it's very difficult to write something like that to make it relevant because the crying dissecting underneath it so quickly it's a very difficult I read research I just really have been trying lately because everyday something no not somebody else's fire and so hard to keep up with everything to try and do something creative and not something I right reuniting Ireland Austin not really understanding what it is we probably ought to be changed location haptics he was quite large and it seemed like it was going to start quite nano my worried by making a chance without we just tell I haven't changed how to decompress because if you try to do too much and I guess really overwhelming and I think three big things and I was actually quite a good day trying to give some credit to dance again even pretty fearless when serving humans getting into conflicts where that brutalize making it something that's not to say in the real world may have been a mistake maybe it should have been able to set an alternative world read the names of the fractions roommate the countries are made up of my thinking okay I think we're on the same page being a religious who is going to lead to conflict suddenly suffering lying on the being willing to commit violence whole have them turned up to eleven the main character was not a fan practicing I don't really know maybe that is generally known by people the research extensively on willing to be six we ran it does seem there but I think their points we can pick up on other times to explore more taps thanks very much for listening there are links to many of the acts and shows mentions in the expanded show notes which are available to patrons fi a Petri on dot com forward slash P. E. A. prior where we gratefully received funds of any amount to keep the podcast going and improve what we do please help the community grow by liking the audio visual cultures PH on Facebook and emailing audio visual cultures at G. mail dot com I keep a list of ideas for future episodes and requests are very welcome we'll get to the mummy can and we encourage you to join us and discussing your chosen topic thanks again for all your support and catch the next time
transcript

Audiovisual Cultures episode 31 – Frankenstein automated transcript


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hello this is the podcast that explores aspects assigned an image based cultural production and their wider implications I'm the host and creator Paul the pliers as this is episode thirty one and it's being released on the thirty first of October I thought I'd do a Halloween spectacular focusing on the story behind one of the most iconic faces of fright building on the last episode on the little stranger that went into the paranormal and adaptation this time but go back to where it all began with Mary Shelley's eighteen eighteen novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus and its impact on film and visual culture via theatre mainly focusing on the nineteen thirty one universal pictures classic Frankenstein is a story about a budding scientist who is consumed with the notion of creating life in nontraditional ways and in doing so brings but mass destruction Victor Frankenstein is the ultimate dead beat dads he abandons the creature he toiled so hard to create art of the detritus of tasks deeming the creature as a grotesque abomination Frankenstein refuses to face his responsibility for bringing it into the world the creatures monstrous behavior is incited by continual for Hammond to rejection in response to his gruesome appearance in physicality has life is so miserable that he fights to destroy his creator by killing his loved ones and wearing him dying over an arduous GS merry called when was a young woman of nineteen when she first conceived the story during the summer teen sixteen around that time she experienced various family debts including of her half sister funny and her first child with her lover Percy by Shelley whom she married later that year after his wife took her own life Frankenstein can be read as a family drama centering on a lack of parental nurture while their prime richer baby was dying Percy Shelley Galavant it with merry stepsister Claire Clairmont history also so involves the failure of communication and mutual support and the death of the gentlest most vulnerable members of a family name in this sense depict can be read as an imaginative re working of the author's left experience that is subjective allegory history originated when merry called when and Percy Shelley spent an unseasonably cold summer in Geneva Switzerland in eighteen sixteen with Claire Clairmont Lord Byron and John Polidori he published the first English language vampire story to from peer based on the TLC hard when traveling in the Balkans stuck indoors the group held a ghost story competition Godwin's ideas apparently developed from conversations about three contemporanea scientific proposals aimed at tackling the problem of violence and violence and being a skill if medical philosophy following the belief that non nothing and today's lack the vital spark or sold possessed by living organisms empirical scientific evidence has since the early nineteenth century superseded such ideas the proposals the group discussed where Rasmus Darwin's hypothesis that single celled parasites generates spontaneously the corpses could be restored using a galvanic battery and the third suggested reconstructing a body to be reanimated these romantics with a capital R. so these ideas as scope for county and lighten and soft tyre Mary Shelley herself engaged in the adaptation process for Frankenstein when she published a revised version in either team's thirty one and which narrative details are changed and some awkward writing and praised literary critic mired in Butler states in the Oxford reprint of the first taxed that the eighteen eighteen version is the more important and serious spec calling it a pioneering work of science fiction Butler also discusses Shelley's own knowledge of the works function %HESITATION position pointing out that in Shelley's preface to the eighteen thirty one reservation she contends quote with many signs that her tax originated and sophisticated satirical conversations which traded the gothic historically as a symptom of the feudal mentality and dusty occasion for a modern critical appropriation above all her action turns on the classically comic motive of the protagonists incompetence on quote Shelley appropriated the scientific thinking of her day and a heart wrenching S. grisly dramas that ultimately sends the message that love and being loved are all that matter in addition to this I college I used to reading by placing different versions of the story within their own contacts we can consider the story of Frankenstein as a malleable allegory reinterpreted both for each new generation and place of production throughout the rest of the nineteenth century there were many theatrical adaptations of the story and the film versions that led to the creatures globally recognizable iconography our doctors from the performance dramas rather than either version of the source taxed the first phone to stem from the east that we know of was made by Thomas Edison's company and a ride to nineteen ten and such silent era compressions verbal language is lost and fever of tableau depictions alongside the emergence and rice of synchronize signed and sent him out more talkies in the late nineteen twenties the studio systems in Hollywood which has come to dominate the global market by then we're beginning to forge marketable genres many genres and styles of filmmaking developed from the adaptation of existing stories many of which had already been me as has compressed silent one readers and cinemas first two decades from adaptations of what in the early twentieth century may have been considered low or middle priced examples of that gesture and Broadway theater the smaller studios like universal and Warner crafted for example early horror and musicals universal's nineteen thirties creatures features have injured with consistent cycles of updates including the dark universe series currently under way although it seems to have stalled a bit recently while monster movies are perhaps less respectable than hyper I. each in Austin or Shakespeare on film the universal pictures releases of adaptation psych Dracula and Frankenstein both in nineteen thirty one at least percentage pictorial realize Asians of what cinema can show the taxed cannot in the case of life imitating art a decade after the novel's initial publication Kim the park and hair martyrs and had number of William Burke and William hare work career for a purse or press erection men from Ulster he and eighteen twenty it took to murdering people and selling the bodies to Robert Knox one of the pioneers of anatomical study and teaching and the ticket is on clearer Frankenstein finds his supplies of body parts the nineteen thirty one film directed by James whale fills the blank by showing the nine named Henry Frankenstein played by Colin Clive and his accomplice Fritz played by Dwight Frye he also played around field and Dracula the same year retrieving the body of a hiring to mind and deter Fritz stating the wrong type of pre and from an anatomy lecture auditorium just on that name change and the universal film Victor Frankenstein has been given the first name of Victor's friend and then awful Henry clerical while his name has been transferred to a fiance Alyssa best friend Victor Moritz in the film and a love triangle between them and the less effective March is she is played by Mike Clark perhaps the irony of the connotations of the name are transferred as Henry is triumphant at the end of the film will factor laces site on Elizabeth that Fritz destroys the normal brand and must stand still the abnormal or criminal brain raises the issue of eugenics the belief that better human beings can be produced from selective breeding also notable here is sat Frankenstein senses servant to carry out the theft on his behalf he transfers to crime to human specimen lesser than himself in terms of class education and appearance frets as a hunchback while Henry is present degree of roping he directs frets his criminal activities are mediated by his servant absolving him of direct involvement in criminality it's notable does that Henry also passes on his romantic and familial responsibilities to Victor he never looks after Elisabeth himself Fritz and Henry and body the differences or lack there rose between normal and criminal brands the brands to generate characteristics as Henry picked sent banks a question of the characteristics of his and France's brilliance as they seem to have no ethical or moral compass and no empathy for fellow humans the notion of the line of thought coined as eugenics and the late nineteenth century first emerged with the ancient Greeks Shelley knew her Greek myths adding her fictional scientists about pantheon of gods ironically though Prometheus means for thought that love what Shelley's eponymous doctor has this is likely because the romantics saw Prometheus as a figure he strived so hard for improvements in human life he often over reached with unintended negative consequences Frankenstein mirrors but also sits in tension with the Greek Titans other traits Prometheus created a man from clay and to fight the chords by stealing fire for which she was severely punished he is highly intelligent champions human kind and give them the resources that enabled their progress Frankenstein fancies himself as a modern Prometheus updated in the nineteen thirty one film as Henry saying now I know what it feels like to be called meaning the cost of monotheistic Christianity he created a defined burst but the creation does not here to the plan like humans depicted and religious to acts such as the Christian Bible the creation wants to determine its own life and destiny like the floods the solution to combat its disobedience is to destroy the experiments Henry it's not so much punished for his blasphemy but is taught some humility and convinced of the proper order of things by the end he is absolved and forgiven by his family and Tignes folk even though they suffered because of his hubristic and short sighted vanity projects zero eight Henry claims to be perfectly sane it is his morals the need to be questions the fact that few do you question them under one person Dr Waldman who does is killed and it certainly faia Henry's negligence is troubling given the Frankenstein families high social standing his father is a Baron Henry's ability to get away unpunished on questions and on ski it's with his disregard for the consequences of his actions it's evidently dying to his privilege and social status another example of how I found even when compressing and changing and novels narrative can also redress its emissions occurs in the pivotal scene of the creatures animation and Shelley's tax this scene is sketch basically and vaguely and one short paragraph here is the eighteen eighteen version and which Victor Frankenstein the kind stay experience making it seem like a supernatural phenomenon it was on a jury every night in November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils with an anxiety that almost a mind to tie Kinney I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet it was already one in the morning the rand powdered dismally against the peons and my condo was nearly burned to each plan by the glamour of the half extinguish lights I saw the total yellow hi if the creature opened it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs when the film takes over the role of narrator the V. Jill spectacle is privileged what matters is the audience's reaction and engagement and the wonder and horror erupting into life as a witness and wheels film we also witnessed the emerging trademarks of a franchise and the spectacle of horror that would excite the audience who've been for warned of the spectacular reanimation by the address at the film's opening the framing device such as a actor Edward found Sloan who plays Henry's mentor Dr Waldman onstage cautioning the fears on harder to come is identified as a method of adjustment and adaptation studies and an instance of expansion and a story that has otherwise been compressed and shifted to have big time yet it does in a way reflect the bank's own framing device as a story related by Walton the arctic explorer and letters to his sister understaffed %HESITATION Xing the epistolary narrative presentation the problem stoker waited out for Dracula later in the nineteenth century a film like Frankenstein can be considered as a hybrid adaptation and that it departs from the original but remains treatise on authorized later versions the animation scene became so pivotal and theatrical and cinematic treatments of the story because it bears the most potential for drama thrills suspense and visual spectacle while retaining the strangeness of its original description what is so spectacular about this first feature length film of the story as such the reanimation is dependent on electric charge as of course is cinnamon as Thomas each point site in his pick adaptation and its discontents films about reincarnation are often themselves reincarnations monsters and medicine carnations that can never really die whale's Frankenstein is an example of a tax that goes beyond adjustment on instead revises the source taxed mysteries are transposed and changes are made for the purposes of re contextualize ation films like Wales based on the nineteenth century gothic fiction re write the stories and rather than denigrating the pics the films on one level and getting critical assessments of them an introductory framing device is also present in the sequel to bride of Frankenstein released in nineteen thirty five and also directed by we'll this time it is free and this merry Shelly narrating the story to Percy Shelley Lord Byron this film is a revision of volume two of the pick and which the creature relates this tale of how he learns language and desires a mate of his own kind Elsa Lancaster plays both Mary Shelley and the creatures meant he is animated and the finale and credited simply as a question mark and the closing credits which is the same as the creature and the opening credits of Frankenstein and similar to the a name of a creature they said in the first theatrical production in eighteen twenty three while there is long understates conflation between Frankenstein and his creature the bride of Frankenstein does this with the author and her creation both the story and defeated brides the story is re contextualized in the sense that Shelley's novel was anti scientific warning of the dangers of meddling too much with the natural order and based on medical research in Europe at the time and nineteen thirties Hollywood there was a fascination with scientific discovery pushing the limits of possibility and of course use an artificial life for becoming demands and obsessions already intense full time the film's irony lies in the fact that dialogue could not be heard but the articulate voice the creature develops in the bank never emerges just a monstrous grown fashioned by actor Boris Karloff in the first film and spar statements in the second in many ways the creature reflects the nature of sentiment thinking again about his story and film as allegory the themes in Frankenstein and create ostracism of of being perceived as a deviantart cider technological innovation first this is supernatural and morally ambiguous monsters and victims it's hard to tell which is which and theatrical productions from as early as eighteen twenty three the monster was voiceless and infantile wild Frankenstein surf and frets he goads the creature with others the creatures innocence and sense of morality and justice arm up to fight on the implied fears empathy grows as we witnessed him being tortured by the idiotic and contemptuous frets political reading suggests that the creature personifies violent radicalism while the inept liberal politician who unleashed problems is helpless against them it is natural then that when transferred to cinema the creature symbolism would become equally relevant to the medium as well as T. I. she's in contemporary society and sentiment dad passed moments and people are revived reanimated made on dad's like sentiment the creature is the product of technological innovation and experimentation like a film tax to creature comprises still fragments spliced together to form a whole entity that is given movement that is scientifically explicable it seems to many of us like magic and develops a life of its own I do for each of its creators thinking here by the film's capacity for reply and the legacy in popular culture of the film and its characters their iconography remains classical must developing along with the contemporary like sentiment in mute creature one way or another finds its voice his existence is given a degree of immortality adaptations ensure the survival of characters like him the cinematic nature islands the interchangeable idia Frankenstein with his creation are communicated visually in the nineteen thirty one films finale noted Plato episode nineteen twenty seven play by Peggy Webb playing from which this film is directly adopted that first gave the name Frankenstein to the creature after his maker directly linking their fractured and merry Chang identities a sequence in the film that signify says is one in much detail at first race face each other through the turning mechanism of %HESITATION when males interior as light passes three it's and casts on Karloff's creature it looks like a film projector while the divisions and the spending mechanism resemble individual film frames passing through the machinery the sequence cuts back and forth between close ups of the two faces seeing each other through the wheel and the shots the film evokes sentiments even nation from already moving image devices such as the Jewish trope and C. praxis scope as it faces almost planned to gather in the rapid sequencing and a wide shot of the Moabites site the milk they L. there is a merger but it is unclear who they're pointing up at as the river shot shows both Henry and the creature when the scuffle seems to be over with Henry the apparent factor that he's alive exclamation as repeated further converging the creator and his progeny the final sequences of the film are perhaps where it deviates most from the novel rather than driving Frankenstein tear torturous deaths the creature instead meets a tragic end and the fire sacked by the angry Lynch mob formed after he accidentally joins that'll Maria and exemplary moment of blame culture and racial prejudice the mop violently chased him to his fiery death of course he isn't quite dead and as a precursor to all such cinematic undead murderous phantoms returns for more in the sequel the images at the film's climax have much to say about eight thirty nineteen thirty CSA as well as what could be shown and pre Hayes code Hollywood the film may be set vaguely in central Europe but the issues are prevalent in north American society and politics the disused mill is the site of Frankenstein's lab on the creatures birthplace the young thinking mob and the urgency to kill the thing they do not understand burn dine this place if industry science and creation the fire spreading up the windmill shown and a long shot invokes the cross burning K. Klux Klan under violent persecution of African Americans the times folks who need little evidence thought or discussion to form of vigilante Lynch mob not to capture but to kill the creature reflects real intolerance and serious violence against those of third and society notably Henry feels the idea of exterminating the creature is murder but has no qualms about taking bodies and creating a life from parts of cadavers it is only after the creatures attempt to communicate with a less oppress the Henry grace T. and seats the lynching on the wedding date the cried celebrating the heteronormative upper class union quickly become defense full mop without considering the issues at stake the death of the young girl is caused by the combination of the naive creature and both their negligent fathers with an absence of mothers both Maria and the creature are innocent children she shows him kindness but he used to be infantile to know his own strength and possesses no language yet her father and the Chinese people decide that the dry and Maria was murdered with a question or investigation no one take self responsibility it is perfectly possible that she could have trying to applying a loan why has a child for each living so close to water where she's allowed to play alone never been taught to swim there is no evidence of the creature or in fact any kind of unknown assailants no one checks the girl for cause of death no one questioned her father who walks through the time carrying her lifeless body no one blames Henry as the creator of the creature and he certainly doesn't blame himself the comment times tracks back from Henry showing his lack of responsibility for the life he created and hi it's resistance to maltreatment pits the times people and his loved ones in danger the camera also tracks back when the creature goes for Elisabeth suggesting that the lack of responsibility is also experienced by the film's implicit narrator and by extension the audience returning to the family narratives the nineteen twenties and thirties and Hollywood so increasing interest in psychoanalysis and the Frankenstein creature dynamic couldn't be more easy to pull in the film the creature takes a shine to Elizabeth Henry Frankenstein's fiancee if Frankenstein is the creatures father than Elizabeth is at least the step mother to baby and this operation of life making if we take Shelly as the creatures mother and another sense than else along casters to roll a Shelley and the bride to page the analogy even further he tries to do away with his father to find happiness with his mother and the pics though the creature kills Elisabeth on the wedding night to make factor suffer the Hollywood version sees Elizabeth surviving as a price for Henry and his means to create a son of natural births this correction of Henry's behavior reduces the potential queerness of Frankenstein's relationship with his creation for much of the film Frankenstein is immersed in the homo social world of body snatching and scientific experimentation we learned early on from Melissa best conversation with family friend Victor Henry's experiments began after their engagement he uses his work to resist heteronormative domesticity marriage an undertaking familiar two days namely producing a male heir to carry on the family Snowblind at least in what is regarded as the natural way his resistance to committing to your woman and the social mores of its class perhaps indicates homosexuality or at least a preference for self pleasure he spends more time with friends and allies the best and he cannot create the creature alone and the fact it has two fathers both of him abuse and neglect him Henry sexuality is further cleared and debased and the creatures animation the raw materials for the manufactured sun rise through a hole in the roof at the top of the mills tar a lightning storm creates a frenzied climax and Henry repeatedly exclaims it's alive all the actions to create life combine and exert of performance and Henry serenity after the animation is almost post coital the creation manifests an anxiety over women biological conception and birth thing that is women sleeper and place in society the depicted home a social world of science and effective of the tournament progeny for the heights of Frankenstein must be if woman born the meal %HESITATION night mother this creation of life is seen as a poor aunt and unnatural this gives rise to the abuse of the creature showing high it becomes monstrous he is the progeny of what is viewed as an unnatural union and the silenced victim of domestic abuse provoked into defensive actions that scene and a blinkered way make him seem inherently violent mostly because he cannot communicate his experiences that is not to say that no one is willing to try and isn't very it knows the creature is inherently goods and does not fear him Elizabeth also senses something amiss on her wedding day but she does not share the child's lack of fear of difference even if she could articulate her intuition Henry is unwilling to lessen unlocks for sites and a sense of responsibility he finished he locks her in with the danger of safety in company but the creature decides not to harm her he has not yet become vindictive the importance of the story Frankenstein and its impact on culture should not be underestimated on the bicentenary of the novel's first publication this is an endearing story and symbol of the risks of human achievement and the darkest recesses of human nature not only that but merry wells and craft Shelley Nagel it when the daughter of an early feminist activist long before such a thing was a notion at just twenty years old give us a story if you press desk grief and destruction that not only spawned a life of its own but the science fiction genre and influences across media she could never have anticipated I hope some of these ideas cause a bit of discussion because there's a lot more to say about all of this if you find this useful they're interesting please consider making a regular pads via Petri on dot com forward slash AV cultures or donating to pay pal dot me forward slash PDA prior to sustain and improve the podcast subscribe on iTunes so you never miss an episode and sure why not give it five stars thanks to all previous episodes are listed on the podcast page of the website at forty of visual culture style wordpress dot com thanks very much for this the next time
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Audiovisual Cultures episode 96 – Fading Fame with Pam Munter automated transcript


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this is audiovisual cultures the podcast that explores different areas of the arts and media join me your host paula blair and the researchers practitioners and enthusiasts i meet along the way see our website at audiovisualculture.wordpress.com and other links in the show notes for more information for now enjoy the show hello thank you for tuning in to another episode of audiovisual cultures we’re taking a virtual trip to hollywood today with my very special guest pam munter who is a former actor a musician an author and a film his story and we do love those on this show we’ll mainly be talking to pam about her latest book of short stories and plays fading fame women of a certain age in hollywood published this year in 2021 with adelaide picks before that though i’d really love to give a very warm welcome to pam it’s so wonderful to have you on the show hi pam hi paulus thank you for having me this is quite a pleasure to be speaking to another film historian that’s a rare treat for me awesome that’s great i’m hoping we can get into some proper nerdy business if i film uh especially early film in hollywood um and i can learn a few things from me as well before we talk about your book as well just wanted to ask how are you doing where bites are you joining us from i live in palm desert california which is about two hours east of los angeles it’s in the desert it’s really interesting when you think back to early early cinema and read about basically what a desert california was you know the whole of it before hollywood was built out of that arid landscape we’re catching up with that a little bit later on with your work would you be happy to tell us a bit more about yourself and your work and your interests sure i had the good fortune i think to be born and raised in los angeles which is a stone’s throw from hollywood uh my parents they weren’t into the business at all nor were any of the neighbors they were pretty solid traditional blue collar kind of folks but my mother took me to a film when i was five years old believe it or not and i remember the movie even and i was hooked i thought you know that’s the kind of life i want to know more about i wanted to be in it i mean it was so different from my everyday life with housewives gossiping about their husbands and drinking coffee and that’s maybe crazy i just couldn’t imagine a life like that so i kept going to movies even as a kid i spent my babysitting money going to movies and where i grew up even though my parents weren’t in the business a lot of people were i went to school with some famous kids in my high school for instance there was ryan o’neal and sandra d and nancy sinatra and a lot of the kids of celebrities sitting next to me in my english class was a mousekateer if you remember those and so fame just didn’t seem that far away to me you know it seemed like a doable thing but back in those days paula there was no mass media telling us what these people really like that we saw on the screen the hollywood was controlled by five major studios and five white men who were lord master of their domain and the only thing we knew about these stars that we adored came from the publicity departments of those studios who funneled the information to movie magazines that was it that was all we had you know there was no cable tv there was no not even any uh national enquirer you know or any uh newspapers that would tell the truth because all of that was controlled by the studios who were very wealthy and usually pillars of their communities but you know i never quite bought that i always wondered even as a kid could all these people be so freaking happy all the time i didn’t understand you know we saw pictures of women and men hugging and there were no gay people of course they were invented later on

they were moving or they were vacationing or they were on the set and they’re all immaculately dressed and i just was so fascinated with that world well i realized very young that even though i loved it and i wanted to be a movie star as all kids did at that age i knew that probably wasn’t really likely so i went into other fields i actually became a clinical psychologist and practiced for a quarter of a century and saw a lot of celebrities in therapy which is interesting and fun for me but i always kept writing about the business it was something that fascinated me i wrote i don’t know maybe two dozen articles very lengthy articles on not so famous movie stars for some of the magazines like classic images and films of the golden age and the ones that told the truth this is after the era of the five studios and i love doing that because i was afraid that people like i don’t know joan blondell or celeste home or joan davis would be forgotten so i took a lot of time out of my life to do that so i was writing nonfiction that was my life i read it i wrote it i loved it never read fiction never liked fiction it was not very politically correct to say since i just produced a book of fiction but that’s the truth i had left the practice we closed it down because of managed care it was just so intrusive it was very hard to feel ethical about doing lengthy psychotherapy when there was so much intrusion into the process from the outside and i went into an mfa program in performing arts creative writing and performing arts and i wrote a autobiography a memoir called as long as i want to be and i was fine i got through with that and then the head of the department said you know you need a second field i thought oh i’m in real trouble now because this is the only one i know he said why don’t you try fiction oh man wow that’s like saying why don’t you fly to mars tomorrow morning you know i just didn’t know how to do it how to go about doing it but then i thought you know i have an awful lot of information about hollywood history in my head to serve no functional purpose at all to anyone what happens if i take some of those stories fictionalize them and in some cases make them anonymous some of the stories in the book fading fame aren’t about a specific movie star but about a collection of people thought maybe i could get away with that you know maybe we could call that fiction because it was now the stories i tell there’s one in particular about joan davis who was a vaudeville performer i don’t know if you’re familiar with that name her history was amazing really she was in radio she had her own shows on radio she was did films for years she had a hit television program called i married joan in the 50s and then there was nothing they canceled their show what happened to joan davis what happens to women who get too old for the studios for the public no they’re no longer desirable even female comediennes like joan davis apparently had a shelf life that ran out so i wondered i wondered a lot i had written some place years ago that she had had an affair with another comedian named eddie cantor who’s also very famous more famous than she actually vaudeville movies all that kind of state a lot of stage work television i thought i’m gonna make a story out of that i mean i don’t know if it’s true i don’t know how long it went on but coincidentally both joan davis and eddie cantor had had homes just a few miles from where i live well as a former researcher i couldn’t help myself i had to drive over there and take a look which i did in joan davis’s house they were working on it i don’t know what they were doing but obviously she didn’t live there anymore she was long dead as was cancer but there were open doors and i thought ah should i go in and look around you know it helped my story maybe if i knew exactly what the setting was and i stopped myself come on come on this isn’t a research piece this is fiction back off but i discovered that even though they had long ended their affair if they ever had one they only lived a mile and a half apart in the palm springs area so what a great story this could be so that was the kind of way i fictionalized real stories for fading fame and there were a couple of others like that where i took the a nub just a little nugget of the reality and turned it into something i thought i could use that’s brilliant to hear yes i wanted to thank you as well for so generously sharing the text of your book with me i really enjoyed the short stories i didn’t manage to get to the place but i really enjoyed all of the stories and that one was really poignant in particular and i was wanting to ask you about to what extent you was anything from historical documentation and how true even is that in the first place um and then how much of it was imagined you know and played with that sort of thing so that’s really interesting to hear that stuff was in my head you know i i didn’t have to do the research i knew that joan davis had been an alcoholic which he is in my story also because of biographies written by other actors who worked with her and talked about her difficulty functioning sometimes because of alcohol in fact a lot of the women in these stories drank too much it was one way of coping i suppose with the loss of their fame you know the people who were in that era of show business had nothing else many of them started very young in mary pickford’s case she was on stage at six supporting her entire family on the vaudeville stage not much education which is true of all of these women none of them were well educated or college graduates few of them were high school graduates for that matter and they didn’t go through the normal developmental stages so their lives were filled with dare i say fame or the acquisition of it and when that was gone it’s like their identity had just been stripped away there was not much left and as you say it’s poignant to see people who were so talented uh mary pickford is a great example of that and she was the first female executive in hollywood she ran her own studio big star in the 20s she was called america’s sweetheart married douglas fairbanks and they were this dashing couple all over the papers and that’s also in my story because anybody who knows hollywood history knows mary pickford i didn’t really have explained who she was but a lot of her success was due to her screenwriter francis marion uh and they became good friends now i have them doing francis marion wanting a little more from mary than friendship but clearly fictionalized i hope i think i don’t know who knows this stuff but mary pickford had such a sad ending she ran the silent films ran out and she ran out i mean there was not much left she had gone through her entire career even up to the age of 40 playing young girls with curly wrinkly hair and at 40 you know you just can’t get away with that too much anymore and the public didn’t want to see her as the actor she had become as mary pickford so she kind of faded away the interesting part was that francis marion went straight up from there she won two academy awards for screenwriting the first woman i think to win two academy awards for writing film and mary who’s really the sad part to me is not just dissolving in alcohol which is sad enough but the fact that she lived in this mansion in hollywood from the early 1920s through two husbands and ended up living there still as she died you know you think about movie stars norma desmond you know the famous fictional character in sunset boulevard and she wasn’t too far from that it was a hard story to write but i thought it was a story that needed to be told even fictionalized because that’s what happens to women who get too old they get thrown away yes i had thought about that comparison with sunset boulevard.com was in my mind quite a bit when i was reading some of those earlier stories and how that’s depicted and i mean it’s made into a film noir and surrounded by you and murder and everything it’s glammed up a bit but there’s so much about what happened and and who didn’t make it when the talkies came in really sad yeah it is sad when technology comes in like that a lot of people get left behind actually with most of the men who got left behind the women get uh jettisoned because their age mostly you know the film moguls want someone they can imagine having sex with and once they got into their late 20s no sorry you know next they didn’t want the ones that actually they had signed the contracts i recently watched bombshell i don’t know if you’ve seen that film but that’s a very contemporary example of that very sort of thing happening at fox news based on a real story it’s very prescient so although your stories are set in the past they’re set in another century depressingly now it’s a very prescient issue is that idea of women needing to be stuck at a certain age and having value only because of what they look like and it doesn’t matter how talented they are or how committed they are how hard they work or any of it yes it’s still very much with us i particularly enjoyed the stories jerry’s interview and the curtain never falls i think because as well as those stories that look at perhaps the more negative impact of all of this context those two stories they have a bit of a lift in them and the characters that are depicted geraldine leonard and maggie bose they get to be quite heroic in their own ways so i was wondering you know if you had any thoughts on that because there are more positive ending stories in the book as well but also are there any any other favorites of yours or any other highlights you’d like to mention well the curtain river falls came out of a single line i heard i don’t know if you’re familiar with rosemary she’s gone now but she was probably best known for a television show called dick van dyke show she was one of the main characters in that but she had a long and illustrious career again on stage nightclubs and stuff like that she had there was a documentary about her just before she died and the interviewer said you know how are you doing and i don’t know she says you know at night when i’m in bed i go over my act i thought ah how poignant is that here’s a woman 80 something at that point and she’s still thinking she’s going to get back to it so there’s a story there’s got to be a story in that and everything that came out of maggie beau’s story came from that one line in the documentary so you never know when uh inspiration is going to strike actually my favorite story i think is the one that’s called dinner with daddy and it’s the story of irene selznick irene mayer selznick who was the younger daughter of elbie mayer the kingpin of mgm really one of the founders of mgm as in metro golden mayor and i have her in the story coming back to the family mansion in bel air which i have actually seen and uh it’s been years since she’d been there she doesn’t know why she’s there it’s a family dinner and daddy’s being daddy and ordering people around and there’s a butler and there’s a younger sister or older sister actually who is on her constantly and all like most of us when we go home as adults some of the old patterns come back so easily in spite of ourselves and we see that in dinner with daddy there’s a lot of history and dinner with daddy that i threw in sort of incidentally i have irene challenging her father on why he would invite charlie chaplin to dinner with a high school girl well it’s again a fact that charlie liked young girls i don’t know if he ever had dinner it’ll be mayor’s house i don’t know if they were friends i don’t know if they work together but it was an irresistible tidbit i also threw in uh in the story about mary pickford a tidbit about peg entwistle who is a sort of a footnote to history she uh was a young actress who is probably best known for killing herself by jumping off the hollywood sign which is very sad i bet i have her at the dinner party with mary pickford and francis maria so any story where i can insert real history even as a parenthetical aside it’s just more fun for me and i think that’s why i like the selznick dinner with daddy story and that’s one that ends happily too incidentally i mean she one of the reasons the family is there is that they’re announcing their divorce and irene helps her mother learn to cope with what she knows will be an awful ending in the family again i don’t know if that happened i do know that irene sort of made her bones as a producer on broadway in the streetcar named desire in 1949 she completely changed careers which one of the things that makes this such a positive story i think she wasn’t a victim like some of the others sort of feels like they were she made the best of a bad situation married to an awful person david selznick who was obsessive-compulsive and a womanizer she had the good sense to leave so some of the stories as you say are positive i don’t know that whether they end well or not affects how i feel about them some of them are harder to write than others everything that mattered was very hard to write because it’s about a real person who actually did kill herself by whom i knew so that made it a little tougher to write in many cases i had met these people in different settings i had met doris day for instance a couple of times i was a huge fan of tourist day i consider myself the world’s expert on doris day so i couldn’t not put a story about her in the book even though it’s it’s kind of dark comedy more than positive or negative and she just never learns her lesson and never did accidentally right up to the end she always put her life in disreputable men’s hands it was a fun book to write really and and as you suggest all the stories are quite different we have young women in their 40s who have been shipped out because of age and we have older women like ethel barrymore who’s probably the oldest subject who is on set with frank sinatra doing a film in which she kind of it’s not a walk-on but it’s a character part it’s not what she has been used to doing and that was hard to write because i knew that she struggled in her later years and i knew she was in that movie because i had seen it it was one of my favorite films i knew the lines and everything was embarrassing and i just had to include her in it somehow so all these stories are a part of me really and they involve people that i felt some some emotional connection with in jerry’s interview to you mentioned she’s in sort of a nursing home sort of a last stage of life dementia process and i knew an actress like that i kind of watched her go through all those difficult stages and she had people around her which gary didn’t have she didn’t have family at least in this story but i thought it was an important story to tell because all the memories you know when you get older like that come flooding back not necessarily in sequence you know she’s an unreliable narrator we don’t know if these things are true she talks about a murderer you know we don’t know if this actually happened the plays are a little different you say you hadn’t hadn’t read those they are also a little bit about real people but they’re lighter there are dark comedies intended to be kind of oh my god did she say that kind of situation same theme though it’s you know the post-metoo era what happens to women after they pay their dues what do they do themselves and how do they cope with that and what are they willing to do to get it back and one of the stories we see one of the women in the plays janet drake private eye we see two women who are fighting over the same role and they’re both older you know they’ve played it once one of them played it on television one of them played it in on the radio which tells you their age and there’s a movie now being made with this character and both of these women want that part well what are they gonna do to get it it was a fun thing to write because i sort of knew those people in a way i hope you’ll enjoy reading the plays when you get to yeah i’m looking forward to it yes just thinking about drawing out more on some of those things that you’ve mentioned as well that idea of competitiveness just runs right through the whole thing that how so many of these actresses and writers and musicians performers in general they were pitted against each other and pitted against other people and new things coming in all the time and and just how much that eats away at them and there’s a lack of really developing deeper relationships that i hope has changed to an extent these days um it seems that actors are more or at least they will maybe continue to perform solidarity and collaboration but i don’t know i feel like some of that’s more genuine these days and so that’s part of the pathos i think of so many of those stories is that they’re underpinned by that competitiveness yeah i think that what has changed today for the better has been the strength of women’s networking you know they didn’t do that then they were at the mercy of men sadly there are still no women at the head of studios they’re still all white men but more at the secondary and tertiary levels of authority and they have helped other women i think rise you know it wasn’t until the 70s that another woman ran a major studio after mary pickford in the 20s took him 50 years to do it which is pretty amazing and discouraging but sadly that was not to last that was a short-lived era we had sherry lansing at 20th century fox and i think she was a ceo at paramount for a couple of years we had don steele at columbia and amy pascal and stacey schneider at universal but i don’t think there are i think a couple of them are dead but i don’t think any of them are in power anymore again the competitiveness at that level was uh every bit as vicious if not more so than competing for a part against a younger actress it’s a tough life you’re never quite good enough yeah it’s that idea of even if you’re more than good enough you just don’t look the way somebody might want you to look or you’re not prepared to do something that a producer wants you to do in private i mean hopefully the landscape’s changing because you mentioned as well earlier that of course these were all white men highly privileged people at the tops of these studios and today we maybe don’t have studios but there are certainly maybe independent production companies so somebody like aveda renee can have her own production company and you know in a way we’ve come so far but it’s been such a difficult fight for somebody like that to you not only have the gender barrier but the racial one as well so hopefully that landscape is changing maybe not fast enough but i don’t know there is a legacy to what these women suffered as you depict well we still have netflix and amazon you know to control the uh cinematic universe as you say there are smaller independents but then there’s people like harvey weinstein who ran them one of those smaller independents who’s notoriously predatory of course we know that he’s in jail which is a good thing and and many of his cohorts have had to resign their positions there’s a group of men at cbs who had to resign because of sexual harassment even feminist ellen degeneres had to explain to her fans why producers were harassing women on the set and fired them or they quit i’m not sure what happened actually so you’re right it still goes on i think that women banding together to help one another climb to wherever as they want to go is probably the best antidote for the sexism in the industry and talent is wonderful but as we know it’s not enough yeah very true

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i was wondering as well pam who do you expect to be the reader for this book and do you have hopes for it it would be great if your book could be part of that landscape of change yes i would hope so i’ve been a feminist since i was about eight and tried to get girls into little league that wasn’t possible back then uh so i’m hoping that it will ring that bell loudly that this is what we do to women and what we’ve always done to women in this business and we need to rethink that because it’s not worth it you know people shelf life it shouldn’t be a matter of shelf life it should be a matter what they can contribute and for how long my publicist was telling me that a lot of the people who are reviewing it are women so i would guess that’s the natural audience i mean the subtitle is women of a certain age in hollywood but i think anyone who is curious about how things were you don’t have to be a film historian to be curious about how a harvey weinstein could happen and be such an ogre for so many years you know how did he get away with that you know the casting couch goes all the way back and it was a normal accepted event if a woman wanted to be up on that screen she had to lie down on the couch first that was just unfortunately a given i don’t know that that’s true anymore i don’t think it is certainly there are those predators out there but it’s not as widespread as it once was and i think anybody who cares about that issue will be curious about these stories at least i hope so it was fun to write because of the feminist background i’ll say that because i was a clinical psychologist for so many years i felt that i could get inside their heads and give the reader some idea about how women think about these things how they process that kind of oppressiveness and disappointment and uh edging process itself you know as we know some of them did pretty well with that i think the strength to my writing is always the internal dialogue it’s not so much what happens it’s how the the woman processes the information and that was extremely fun to write because i think i know more about that probably than anything having been in practice so many years yes i think there are a lot of the characters who tend to almost build themselves back up again by tearing down another woman there’s quite a lot of that and that’s part of the system that’s part of the culture you know you have to really put it in that context and remember that this is conditioning that everybody’s going through that’s right part of that competitive nature the adversarial nature of the business i think continues i i don’t think that’ll change there’s so few slots for stardom and so many people will want to get there and not just women of course but women i think are subjected to a different kind of criteria than men are men can age gracefully carry grant i think is the greatest clark gable the old stars i mean they they acted until they died in their old age and there aren’t many women like that you think of who they might angela lansbury is a favorite of mine and she’s what 93 or something 94 now and it’s acting up until last year i don’t know if she’s still working that i mean there are women who can do it but that’s because she’s so powerful she has produced her own television series has the money and the backing to pretty much do what she wants there aren’t many performers who have reached that pinnacle that she has yes i think they start to get thin in the ground in the uk we’ve got people like judy dench who’s in her 80s now um i think helen mirren would probably be in that category i think she’s in her 70s you know so i think in a way it’s loosened up a bit it has changed but you have to build a lot of power to have that level of control yeah and you can count them on one hand or maybe two if you’re lucky yeah i think there’s still so much discussion of what these women see stars what they do with their bodies what they are socially permitted to do and expected to do and often being hauled over the coals for doing something they’re expected to do that they get criticized for not doing and what are they meant to do you know because i think there’s instances of or there are mentions of facelifts and geoplastic surgery and that sort of thing quite a bit in the book and these are just necessities that especially hollywood stars have had to meet but yet even today the headlines are very derogatory towards people who do anything cosmetic with their bodies there’s still say pressure on people you when when somebody’s had a baby for example to get that weight back off as soon as possible and it feels quite glacial any change in mindsets there i agree i agree in fact there are pictures in the press of mostly women who’ve had bad plastic surgery we don’t see that but men are having it too you know they are under the same pressure that women are to appear to be younger how sad that is i mean the people you’ve mentioned and i’ve mentioned even katherine hepburn who worked almost to the end was old and grizzled and beautiful you know it’s a different standard perhaps that we need to evolve to where the aging process is a thing of beauty not something to be shunned and plastic surgerized out of existence that’s it yeah i mean there’s so much talk now about body positivity and loving your body as it is but yeah there’s still so much tension with you need to be this sheep and that size and hide your wrinkles and dye your grey hairs and all of this stuff i just want people to be able to breathe yes it’s a silly example maybe but i’ve been watching um star trek voyager and there’s the character of seven of nine and played by jerry ryan and she’s squeezed into these corsets and she’s made as tiny as possible and you in these skin tight outfits and i just look at her and i think gosh that’s really painful looking and yet all these teenage boys 20 odd years ago were getting very excited over you know and it’s very strange to me but the whole barbie doll thing you know when i was a kid you could put your fingers around your waist easily you know with one hand the thumb and forefinger and what are we telling girls if that’s the standard to which they have to adhere you know it’s unrealistic and not very healthy i might add be part of the conversation with av cultures pod on twitter instagram and facebook pam was there anything else you’d like to tell us about some of your other work as well while we’re chatting and you know because you’ve mentioned your psychology background and your autobiography as well and you know is there anything else you’d like to point out that might be interesting for listeners to think about too well i think as a writer i’ve pushed myself beyond my comfortable limits writing fiction and writing plays for that matter and i would suggest to people that they do the same thing that they make the best use of themselves they can to use themselves up so to speak to access all their skills and develop some they didn’t know they had to sounds corny but to live life as fully as possible because it’s a it’s a carpe diem world you know we don’t know how long we have and why not take advantage of what you do have and make the most of it whether it’s helping other people or you know writing books like i do in essays i have essays up the wazoo and on my website pamundr.com by the way you know why not it’s part of making life meaningful and you know if you don’t do it who will that’s great yes because i was going to ask you as well if you had any movie advice or just anything you’ve learned over the years as you say you were um you’ve met so many and spent time with so many of these types of celebrity before and i mean if there was somebody who’s maybe aspiring to or is just starting out in the entertainment industry as well as um those really important messages you’ve just said you is there any advice you would give to anyone in that position well i think what we’ve learned from at least the stories in fading fame is the importance of getting an education when i was a kid i thought that walking down sunset boulevard or going to the brown derby would mean i would be discovered you know and some talent agent would come up to me and say you’re the one i want for my next movie well there’s still some of that fantasy i think going on among young actors that if they put themselves in certain settings they will be discovered well if that is ever going to happen you need to get grounded in education first and i mean standard education honor doesn’t mean actors studio education i mean a good liberal arts education so you have a sense of how the world is not just your little world or the world of show business but all of it and it will also stand you in good stead when the fame starts to fade if you’re ever fortunate enough to be famous it’ll give you something more to it than just seeing your name in a marquee and sadly the women in my book fading fame that’s all they wanted and pretty much all they got for the most part wasn’t enough it’s our responsibility to fill our life responsibly i think those are really accent points that puts me in mind again of so many of the characters in the stories they don’t understand their own downfall quite a lot of the time because as you say there’s not that basic education they don’t understand the maths around the money that is disappearing on they don’t understand what because they don’t have basic legal understanding either and again it calls to mind for me the um character of geraldine leonard who has the humility to go and get a job in a typing pool when her work dries up i mean i love that about her i love that she just didn’t care she just i need a job i could do that and she had had that education to be able to do that you know i really loved that part in the story we had her feet on the ground and a lot of these women sadly did not she was a good example of that she knew what she had to do and she went and answered fan mail for an actor who was more famous than she would ever be again as you say humility it’s really nice to see him somebody who’s almost famous she wasn’t quite famous but almost famous yeah and we so often forget about actors who play the smaller characters or supporting characters it was so lovely as well to just have it i really i think that was my favorite story i just i just raced through it because i just loved her so much you know i just wanted to give her a cuddle or something i really admired her you know that she’d been a supporting actor to a much bigger actor and was doing a lot of work in westerns and then tv westerns i was that a bit of a reference to rawhide oh no it was probably before wrong i didn’t okay it was uh i think probably early 50s is where i i had her having her career at small studios i think if she’d been on rawhide she would have been more famous real she didn’t have that happen to her i liked her too i liked her a lot as i was writing her and you know sad that her mental faculties were declining and as you say i wanted part of me wanted to go and say it’s okay it’s okay this is gonna happen to you and you’ll be all right everybody cares about you and you know just a lovely person i think yeah i think she was awesome and because it was sad in a way the dimension how that affects her but her attitude was just so lovely and positive that he just thought oh she’s awesome she’s just so awesome and she doesn’t know how awesome she is it’s great i really fell in love with her she seemed to accept any you know whether it was famous or having to get a job or losing her faculties or having mismatched shoes or whatever it was nothing seemed to bother her very much it’s admirable i think i wish i were selling flat absolutely yes it felt like life goes it’s a really lovely example actually that she wasn’t bothered that she just i think i will shoot him oh well yes oh god i’m glad you like that one yeah i did actually it was one of the last ones i wrote i felt i needed to have something lag ethel you know where the person is clearly coming to the end ethel was not declining mentally but she was declining physically but jerry had uh some issues with dementia as you say and it didn’t diminish her enjoyment of her life though as you say it was uh inspiring that she could look back and still wonder what happened in certain instances and and still miss the man she loved and was with just good memories that she had which is wonderful i would hope that we would all have good memories in our 80s yeah or be a total hero like maggie yes yes indeed pam is there anything else you’d like to chat about today anything we haven’t got to that you really want to say well i could tell you how it all started really the writing thing oh yeah it’s weird it was strange when i was a little girl there was a republic studios and monogram studios which are bmc studios and best sold their entire film load to television stations which were having trouble filling the content and so they would show old movies all the time and one time i saw a movie and i was just captivated by the people in the film there were teenagers and i was just a kid i was probably eight nine maybe and then i saw a couple of weeks later there was another film with the same cast on tv and every time after that i saw it was in tv guide was what we used to those days i would somehow get sick you know i would get a headache or i just couldn’t bring myself to go to school i would come up with some faux illness so i could stay home and watch these movies and there were a whole bunch of them and i couldn’t figure out who they were and how many there were and when i got older and started to do this writing about people i’ve looked up the cast which you could do more easily at that point you know years later decades later and i found that the star of the these movies was freddie stewart and it’s probably the only thing he ever did were these eight movies starring quote the teenagers two words uh and it had the same cast june pricer was in it i wanted to write about him and i wanted to write about them because it was unfinished business from my childhood who were they well the only person left alive was noel neal who was best known as the original lois lane of superman fame and she was still alive she was in her 70s i think by the time we met and i spent a lot of time with actually we became friends a lot of time asking about these movies well they were all shot in two weeks this wasn’t rocket science this wasn’t metro golden mayor if you know what i mean they get the thing and they if they made a mistake they just keep going they just roll right over the mistake and i think it was that that got me interested in knowing more about these people from my own childhood that i saw on television and in movies that transfixed me for some reason freddie stewart had a glorious a conscious soprano voice he sounded male certainly but it was very high and clarion and in fact one of the songs he sang penthouse serenade was one of the songs i did on stage in new york when i was performing because it was like an ode to him you know he had made such a difference in my life in so many ways i met his daughter and he was long dead by the time i was writing but it’s little things in life you can grab onto like that and value and uh you can change your life because you’ve just had so many experiences weird part of being alive it’s supposed to be interesting yeah yeah make it interesting yeah you’ve been so generous with your time and your stories and everything and um it’s been so interesting to hear about that process of doing the historical research and carrying it with you for such a long time and then doing something creative with it that’s a really interesting approach and hopefully it will attract people who maybe aren’t too bothered about reading history or biographies or anything but might go for those you know if they’re framed as stories and you know they’re pretty quick to read as well you know you can sit down and read one um and not that long an amount of time and you know it’s very digestible and they stay with you i think they’re you know they’re visually i think quite striking too so it’s been really great to hear just about that creative process but also just the background that you’re coming from and the you know the psychology of these people and what they what they were negotiating with in their own minds as well as in the outside world i can’t thank you enough for taking so much time oh thank you for having me let me put in a plug for fading fame it’s available on amazon.com also as an e-book as well as a paperback so if your listeners are interested in knowing more about some of these stories they can find it at the end of their keyboard brilliant and i will be sure to put those links for the book and for your website in our show notes wherever people are finding this as well so you’ve no excuse but to go and check them out oh great pam hunter it’s been just such pleasure i’ve really really enjoyed spending this time with you and thank you so much for your generosity with your time and ideas and taking so much out of your morning well thank you paul it’s a pleasure to be with you thank you for having me

this is a cozy people production with me paula blair the music is common ground by airton used under a 3.0 non-commercial creative commons license and is available at ccmixter.org if you’ve enjoyed this episode please give us a good reading subscribe and recommend audiovisual cultures to your friend all of our contact details socials information ways to listen and our mailing list sign up can be found on our website linked in the show notes thank you so much for listening and supporting take care and i’ll catch you next time