We Follow A Studio Executive Until Everything Breaks

A studio executive gets buried under endless pitches, anonymous postcards, and one creeping fear that won’t go away: he’s about to be replaced. Then Robert Altman turns the pressure up until it becomes something much darker. We’re talking about The Player, the razor-edged Hollywood satire that opens with a legendary tracking shot and never stops reminding you that everything here is staged, sold, and smiling for the camera.

We walk through Griffin Mill’s world from the inside: the soft power of a “writer’s exec,” the performance of taste, and the way ambition can hollow out a person’s identity. Our notes break the film’s idea of the Hollywood dream into stages, from wearing a mask to becoming the mask, until real life gets processed like casting and script notes. That lens makes the movie’s central tension hit harder: Griffin treats career danger and criminal danger like they belong on the same spreadsheet.

From there we dig into the poison-pen postcards, the film’s self-referential jokes, the celebrity cameos, and the brutal contrast between old-school charm and new-school corporate logic through Larry Levy’s “material over writers” mindset. We also wrestle with the ending, the hypocrisy of the happy Hollywood finish, and Altman’s provocation that the audience is part of the problem, while still defending why people crave escape when life is heavy. If you love film analysis, Hollywood movies about Hollywood, and storytelling craft under pressure, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a movie friend, and leave us a review.

Transcript

Why This Movie Still Matters

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Oh my god, I am so excited for this week's we take Opolis. How long have I been talking about the player?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Like Um, almost for probably as long as I've known you.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

So, for those of you who don't know, old Jay, before he was the Honey Guy, way before he was the Honey Guy, had aspirations to be a Hollywood studio executive. Until I moved to Hollywood and found out what it was all about, some other things happened, and uh we'll get into that at some other episode. But in short, it lost its luster. But when I was a teenager, I saw this movie, The Player, by Robert Altman and Grand Canyon back to back, and I don't know what else to say aside from the spirit grabbed me.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

And I've been talking about it with Louisa for years, and I actually gave a speech about this and Grand Canyon uh to my Toastmasters group. Don't let me forget to focus on the the uh's and the ands.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

And this movie and Grand Canyon were the genesis of the conversation, that they were at the forefront of the of the of the talk. But in the player, Griffin Mill is our lead character, and he plays a studio executive who is on the outs, or is rumored to be on the outs. He plays a writer's executive. So writers come into him in the studio and pitch their stories with the hopes of getting a deal. But the studio can only make 11 to 12 deals a year. So his office and his phone is flooded with phone calls year-round, but ultimately he ends up there's kind of no way around it. He's he's not he's kind of amoral and not a nice guy. But you and I were talking about this about a week ago, that all the commentary and literature on this movie frames him as a sociopath.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

But he doesn't really have that dead behind the eyes quality. Do you think?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Well I wouldn't I don't know if you I don't know the difference between quality and having that look, but he has that look.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

You think?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

I do. Well I couldn't put it into words watching the movie or even after, but I might be a little sympathetic to him. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:24

Just because I like his his.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

No, I still like him. I don't it doesn't make him like worse or like better in my eyes.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

I just As you know, we always do a a notebook on the movies that we review, and Luisa did this one, and it's fantabulous. There is a section in the slide deck that you produced that discussed his he doesn't really see a difference in potentially losing his job and catching a murder rap. That's the other piece of this story. We should start off. I've been to be perfectly honest, I've been dreading doing this podcast because I was afraid we were we just wouldn't, or I wouldn't fully give the best proper review I could give about it because I I hold it in such high regard. This is a movie that makes fun of Hollywood, or at least puts a light on what Hollywood is, and doesn't pull any punches about what it is. In fact, the research that you did pulled up there's a long history of satires about Hollywood from the 30s till now.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yes. I didn't quite realize, but yes, I I saw that.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

And there's so there's so much here, there's no way that we can compress all this into 45 minutes, but we'll start with you wanna just start with the story?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, that sounds good.

The Opening Tracking Shot Trick

SPEAKER_03 5:06

So as we begin, the audience sees the back the background of the CEO's office where the receptionist sits, and there's a clapper to indicate this movie is starting, and the audience is seeing a manufactured reality. And then the movie begins. So it starts off with phones being answered in the office, and the protege to the head secretary is being critiqued. Griffin Mill, our key character, rolls up in his Range Rover, and this entire eight-minute section is a long tracking shot to give the audience the view of the in of the inner workings of this exec's life and how the studio functions. Everyone is being critiqued, and people are pitching stories to Griffin, and he has to kind of brush them off, and if they're not absolutely electric, he exhibits this vibe of I'm sure there's a good word for this. Just kind of not now, later, you know, we'll set up a meeting, but it's very kind of he has kind of a passe attitude to everything. Everyone's clawing at him to try to get a deal made. And he in his position is very aware of this. Now, I fell in love with this is gonna sound odd, but when I first saw, I just fell in love with something that your slide deck called out, and it took me and when I was 17, I didn't I couldn't recognize it, and I'm pulling up the slide deck now.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

But there's a section that you have that's the subversion of the dream, the comparison between the American dream and the Hollywood dream.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yes.

American Dream Versus Hollywood Dream

SPEAKER_03 7:13

And as a kid, I saw these this high-powered guy whose his job is to pick movies. And he wears these gorgeous suits, drives a nice car, pulls right up to his office, has a big office, and just sits and hears pictures about movies all day. And I remember seeing this being like, that is the only job anyone should ever want. And really, what it came down to when I read this slide deck, it was this was the per this perfectly encapsulated what was happening in my little idiot 17-year-old mind. The American dream requires hard work, effort, and discipline, where the Hollywood dream, even though I couldn't admit this to myself, requires luck, proximity, and something for nothing. This movie really put in focus. A lot of these executives get paid huge sums of money to hear pitches and pick movies. But a lot of Hollywood, and that's what the next slide deck details, is the evolution of the Hollywood identity. First, how it starts out with a conscious identity. And I think there was there they take a picture of George Clooney and they start off with a sketch and they're referencing Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister. Characters actively pretend to be something they are not to fit the Hollywood mold, just to fit in and be seen and be invited to the right parties and start to develop the right relationships and have the right friends. It's a conscious wearing of a mask. A lot of people in Hollywood don't have their own identity. They're just trying to get do whatever it takes, and they don't know what it takes to get seen or get cast or put in a movie or get in a song or whatever. And then the they're sketching this frame out of George Clooney in this picture where it says the subconscious identity is a reference to Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty. The identity infiltrates the mind. Characters begin to view real life scenes as if they were a film or consider real people from the perspective of a casting agent. So people, again, people aren't the authenticity of who people are eroded away by this desire to be whatever someone else wants to be. Someone the the casting agent wants in order to get that job. And this is I had heard about this. I mean, it's all over literature and movies about Hollywood, but when you actually see it, it is absolutely real. Like just being in, and you see it after being in Hollywood for you can see it in a couple weeks or in a couple months, but after like three months, I'm like, God, everybody here has an agenda. Yeah. And they're not look. No, I wasn't having legitimate, genuine conversations with people. Because everyone's trying to get to the next thing. And then stage three, there's an actual photograph of George Clooney. Robert Altman's the player, whereas it stage three is complete identity. The mask replaces the ref the face. The character is unable to view anything outside of the Hollywood context. Literal survival depends on treating a murder investigation like a script rewrite. Which, and this is really the crux of what the player is about. Griffin Mill gets, he starts receiving postcards from a writer. But the writer doesn't identify himself, and the postcards get kind of elaborate. They're self-res referential. They refer, there's you get that one of Humphrey Bogart with pointing the gun at him. He got another one that was like a folded-up piece of film. The one where he opened up in his office on the inside that said, In the name of all writers, I'm going to kill you. And the one from Humphrey Bogart said, You were going to call me back, still waiting. And he said he just keeps receiving these, and he gets really nervous. And he does his own research to figure out who is sending him these poison pen letters. And he narrows it down to a person who he thinks is the culprit. In fact, there was he was invited to, I want to remember this one. He gets invited to where's a where's your studio one? I know I'm killing. No, there's there's one here of uh yeah. He gets invited. You remember he gets invited to where he meets the the agent and the writer who pitching this the movie that ends up getting made? At the Sunset Tower Hotel where he bumps into Malcolm McDowell, and Malcolm McDowell kind of chews him out. Says, you know, if you're gonna talk bad about me, have the have the notion. Oh yeah, like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

100% exactly remember. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Well, he had a call. His secretary said, Joe Gillis wants to meet you there. And he's like, I don't know who Joe Gillis is. And somebody next to him says, Oh, that's a direct reference to the dead screenwriter in Sunset Boulevard. And he knows that since this isn't a real person and it's referencing all the death threats he and pseudo-death threats he's been getting, this is the person who wants, who's been sending these cards.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:20

And he doesn't actually see him there. But this is what I mean about there's so many things in this movie about it being self-referential. They made this with a lot of um Hollywood people who just want to make who are all about making a movie about Hollywood. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 13:43

And I believe a lot of these people, a lot of these actors didn't get their regular rate, they just went at scale just so they could be part of this part of a Robert Altman movie.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Actually, in my research, a lot of them, if not all of them, did it for free.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Really? And this is because this is a movie about making movies, you'll see a lot of there's a few scenes where all the executives are in a screening room watching dailies and rushes, and the movie or the rush that's actually up on the screen while the conversation is happening between the executives is with real celebrities.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

Now, again, this was in 1991. This is an older movie, depending on how old you are when you listen to this. But Robert Altman was kind of, he's been working, he is now deceased, but he worked for decades. But he went through periods where he was considered box office poison, and where he made lot great movies like Nashville, who you know who else was involved with uh Nashville? It was directed by Robert Altman, but Jerry Weintraub made that. Oh really? Yeah, my hero Jerry Weintraub made that. The one who made Karate Kid and Krauty Kid was a band took Elvis on tour, and Hollywood is very incestuous. It's all very related. I'm sorry, I'm going on, running out at the mouth. I'm not letting you talk. You built this thing. I apologize. No worries. Was there some part of the deck that you wanted to reference?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Um, I have to go back to it, but um I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Um This thing is really awesome. And we I should, as you're looking at this, yeah. If anybody is listening, we have a YouTube channel where I we put up the audio, but neither Luisa or I really are big fans of being on camera. And if there is a way to put this slide deck up, or any of the slide decks in the movies we do, we gotta figure out a way to do that. I could probably make there's gotta be a way to make something, either to put it up on YouTube or or somewhere, because these are really good. There is a scene where oh, I you know, I I digressed. I we're gonna come back to you. Okay, but I am gonna point out that Griffin receives so many of these letters or the and these postcards that he tracks down who he thinks is sending the him these letters and he f he narrows it down to a writer who pitched him a story that didn't go anywhere. And he tracks him to his house and talks to his girlfriend who says he's at the Rialto.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah, watching a movie.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

Watching a movie, and he oddly flirts with the girlfriend over the phone and watches her outside of her window, which is another just kind of zeroes in on the idea that everybody is always watching, that somebody is always watching.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Unbeknownst to you because she had no idea.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

She had no idea. And he admitted it to her later, but we today we'd call this stalking.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

For sure.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

But so it we'll suspend that for right now. Griffin goes to the theater and creates a faux a faux meeting. He like pretends to have just bumped into this writer, David Cahane. And David is dejected. He clearly hasn't had a project that's gone anywhere. He's angry and he doesn't respond well to Griffin. They they go out for a drink, and Griffin tries to smooth it over by saying, you know, we'll have another meeting, we'll see if we can make this go anywhere. I can't promise you'll make the movie. But let's start again. Just no more power, which is a look, if you look at it, that's a completely reasonable way to deal with people. I I don't I don't really think that's there's anything psychopic about that. But they have David Cahane is has been drinking too much, and he's already an irritable person, and it kind of goes off the rails. He says mean things, and they bump into each other outside of the bar, and there is an altercation, and Griffin loses his his stuff and kills the writer. And now, faced with the gravity of having murdered somebody, he has to try and quickly because he's in an alley in in Pasadena, he has to cover it up somehow and then pretend like nothing happened.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

And the the rest of the movie is a balancing act between his concern of his job being replaced as a writer's exec by an up-and-comer named Larry Larry Levy. And Larry Levy is played by Peter Gallagher. Yes. It's a balancing act between that concern and the concern that he may be going to prison or he might be arrested or charged with this crime. But they are equally weighed as elements of concern. Of course he doesn't want to go to jail, but he is just as concerned about maintaining his career.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Let's see what else you had in the what did you uh did you find what you were looking for?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Um no, not really. I mean, I think honestly, you're doing a fine job of covering it, so um let's see what else do we have here.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

The recurring element in postmodern semilacra. Okay, the postmodern satires examine Hollywood as a place where the artificial is superior to the real. And having lived there, I can absolutely, absolutely agree with that. Sunset Boulevard in 1950, Norma Desmond is the tragic realization that someone who has lived within a Hollywood simulacrum for so long that she can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction. We should really see that.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

I've seen this movie before. Yeah. It's amazing. Who do they say is in it?

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Norma Desmond.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

And I think that's the movie that I'm thinking about is a glorious Wanson.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

I never saw it.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Um I think I saw it.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

The Truman Show with Jim Carrey film satur satirizes the manufactured small town America dream, revealing it to be a dome of constant surveillance where reality is the unit of production. Mulholland Drive, which I loved, but I think you might have a hard time with.

SPEAKER_00 21:27

I've been told that multiple times.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Because it's David Lynch. Yep. And he collapses the distinction between dream and reality.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yep, Gloria Swanson, I win.

Poison Pen Postcards And Meta Cameos

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Okay. Illustrating that in Hollywood, the the hard work associated with the American dream leads not to success but to murder and suicide. Which is and he does it in ways that are they're they're alluded to. The Hollywood ending, a recurring element in these satires, is the subversion between the Hollywood ending where commercial films demand up endings where virtue triumphs. Satires like the player mock this requirement by providing twisted, happy endings that the characters do not deserve. These endings reinforce the industry's amorality, showing that in the Hollywood Dream bad people can escape unpunished. We'll leave you with that as far as what the the ending was. Who else makes an appearance in this? Sydney Pollock.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Cher.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

Cher. Susan Sarandon.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Bruce Willis. Peter Falk.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

I mean, there's so um it says that there are 66 cameras.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

There's so many. There's so many.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

You can't like they go by so quickly. We talked about this, I think, after we watched it. Like sometimes you're like, oh yeah, that's Cher for sure. And then other times people, John Cusack, people are in the background and it goes into Angelica Houston. Angelica Houston, and you can't comprehend that because I love seeing that in movies. That's one of my favorite things. Like, I'm like, oh look at that.

SPEAKER_03 23:18

Yeah, they they they appear in the movie as as every people, as just they're regular people. They're just not a character on screen.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Yeah. They're having meetings in the background.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

They're having meetings or they're having lunches or they're attending manufactured Hollywood phil philanthropic events.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean so many people.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Were you surprised by this?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I was.

SPEAKER_03 23:46

Did you do two slide decks?

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Um I don't think so, but I clicked on um I might have made two mind maps. They say the same thing. Oh, they do?

SPEAKER_03 23:57

I gotcha. Alright.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Sometimes I forget. That's all right. Um verses.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

You have one here called the Anatomy of Griffin Mill, which I like. It's just it's a photograph, which is an x-ray of a guy in a suit with a water bottle and a postcard in his pocket. What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah, that's from the slide deck.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Yeah. Pools of fear and earnestness that allow him to pass as a sympathetic every man who has fallen out of step with the world. We convince ourselves to root for him. I gotta tell you, at 17, I didn't see any of this. I just saw that suit and the Range Rover. I'm like, this guy gets paid to meet with movie stars and make deals. That sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

And he gets paid a lot of money for that.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

Yeah. The writer's exact label, a moniker giving him the illusion of caring about art, although it ultimately functions as an epitaph for actual creativity. An empty suit. Underneath the tailored clothing, he is a violent criminal as sociopath and chillingly dispassionate. That's one thing I said in my speech was his suits were designed by Alexander Julian. They were they're what's called the soft suit or post-Ralph Loren design. And for those of you who haven't seen it, we live in the Midwest, and in the 80s and 90s, white men everywhere wore conservative suits or bankers wore a lot of pinstripe suits, which he does wear at at the end when he's the studio head. But throughout the movie he's wearing what would be for anyone who knows anything about men's fashion, there is a stark difference between people who work in before AI took over in advertising agencies. They wore soft suits with lighter fabrics and more they didn't have the the stiffness of a banker's tailoring. More uh more soft and relaxed fabrics, somewhat more engaging colors. Like his the colors of his suits were they weren't wild, but they weren't I wouldn't call them wild. They were more like um they were dressed, they were formal dress wear for someone who worked in a creative field.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah. Well said.

SPEAKER_03 26:58

Like he wore you know what suit I really liked his was that that brown jacket with the with the cream tie with the spirals on it.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

Like no banker would ever wear that, no stockbroker would ever wear that. But someone who runs a movie studio, definitely. Lots of silks and linens. Postcard in the pocket, harassed by male reading your Hollywood is dead, a physical manifestation of the artist he has discarded. This is yeah, this was the interest one of the more interesting decks that you have one in here by that breaks down the Hollywood Simolocrum, which is kind of a spiral made up of a film reel. It's a little bit well. I think maybe before I talk about that, there's one that breaks down the new and the old evil.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Like, there are two up from that right under the anatomy of Griffin Mill.

SPEAKER_00 28:10

Also, um Did you mention that Griffin Mill his character is played by Tim Robbins?

SPEAKER_03 28:16

Tim Robbins. We got 30 minutes into this before Tim Robbins is he is a tall drink of water to begin with. And he's I don't want to these suits definitely fit him, but like Lanky, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

Who else was um Byron James plays the who is no longer with us, but he plays Is it Levison?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Plays the studio head. And what I found interesting about the very intro of this is when this is a studio that is financed by a bank in Boston. After his morning pitch meetings, Griffin goes in to see Levitzen, and there is a there is some 20-year-old frat kid in there in his office looking at photos of celebrity women and trying to put together a date with them.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 29:31

And you find out that he is the son of the bank in Boston that finances the studio. And this kid, did you catch at the end what happened with him why Levison got fired?

SPEAKER_00 29:47

No, I don't think so.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

So you remember when Griffin and the Ice Queen are at the spa and they're in the mud bath?

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

And he gets a call from Sidney Pollack, his attorney.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 30:01

And he says, Levison's out. Um what is that kid's name? He's like the this kid went home with the clap or something. Did you get that? Nope, I don't know. So he he was whoring around all over Hollywood. Yeah. Under he was under Levison's watch.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Because he was really Levison kind of, for lack of a better word, had to babysit him. And he was running around Hollywood and he got an STD and he went home, and Dad found out about it and then fired Levison.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Oh, he missed all that.

SPEAKER_03 30:41

Yeah, he said he said uh the kid went home with the clap.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Yeah, yeah. Now I yeah.

Murder Cover Up And Career Panic

SPEAKER_03 30:48

So definitely. Yeah. So like they just they just kind of, but this was right before Griffin has to go in for a lineup to see if he's been identified. So the old evil, the subject being Griffin Mill. Griffin represents a harmless greed curdled into psychopathy, maintains the pretense of caring about film and the artistic process, fears a murder rap and the corporate demotion with the same exact level of anxiety is actually getting hit with a murder charge. The new evil is Larry Levy. Played with effortless smarm, and that's what Gallagher did a great job of that with his dark suit, glasses, kind of slicked up hair. And he just kind of had a everywhere that Griffin went in this movie, Larry Levy was either talked about or showed up. Yep. And it really starts making Griffin anxious. He's like, why is it why is everyone talking about Larry Levy? Now Larry works with what is it? Griffin works with writers. Larry works with material.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

And his he's brought over to Griffin Studio from Fox. All business, no show, represents cold hard, macroeconomic corporate synergy, believes writers are overrated and executives could easily do the creative work themselves. He mentions this in his first meeting that people like Griffin are shuffling through thousands of scripts a year. And he says that's just crazy. You can just pick a story out of the newspaper and modify it. And he does, he goes through this little exercise where he he takes a piece out of the newspaper about a woman who was hit by a car and paralyzed, and in a couple sentences, frames that into a story about tragedy and then overcoming overcoming tragedy through the power of the human spirit. Like that's just a premise. That's not a full story. But he pitches this and clearly he has already been brought over to the studio, which Griffin doesn't like. And Griffin hears this and he's like, You're like, you're cutting the legs out from what I do in front of me. He's like, that's we can't, we're not doing that. We're not getting rid of you need the writers to develop the story. But Larry Levy is looking at this as like we can eliminate a whole there, we have the potential to eliminate an entire component of the storytelling process and save a bunch of money because we don't have to pay writers anymore. Which does it doesn't end up happening, but these are the things that create all this anxiety within Griffin. You have this section called the hypocrisy of the happy ending, the final cut and the delivery. The film wraps up with a highly contrived, unearned happy ending where they I don't know if I want to say this part.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:22

Test screenings, oh, but we can talk about the movie that gets made that Griffin brings in. The test screening fails in Canoga Park. Final film features Bruce Willis busting into the gas chamber with a shotgun to rescue Julia Roberts. And when this story is being pitched to Griffin, the writer is like, we want no stars.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

We want no Hollywood endings. A good person is wrongly convicted of a crime and they are executed. And that's reality. And then when they test it, everybody hates it. Yep. But then the writer is like they reshoot, they rewrite and reshoot the whole thing, going against exactly what he was pitching the story on. And now he's all for it. Because his movie's gotten made and he's getting paid a bunch. And this kind of calls back to the previous piece of the slide deck where it discusses character characters actively pretend to be something they are not to fit into the Hollywood mold. Andy, I believe, was the writer's name. He was all on, he had this idea, I believe in it, that this is really gonna move people, and he's able to sell it.

SPEAKER_02 35:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

And they get it made.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

And people see what his premise is, and they're like, that sucks. And in short, Andy takes on the position, you're right, we're gonna change it. And I don't care what we have to do to make it a viable product. And he does it. Which just goes to show you how the people who work in that industry, like they're really morally bankrupt. And in a way, I kind of understand it. You know, and that like they want they have an idea for a story and they want to make money on it. They have like everybody's trying to get paid.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Yeah, that's all, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

And if you're gonna get paid, your idea is going to be put on screen. And this is before, this is before AI and TikTok and YouTube and Instagram. Having a movie made was a big, it was a way big, it's a big deal now, but it was a huge deal. Because these were there was only what like 15 movies, 15, 20, 30 movies that came out of your big movies? Probably, yeah. In the 80s and early 90s? So I guess I I do kind of understand, especially since now there's there's no gatekeepers. If you have an idea, you can make it. I I've made things when you went off to see when I you went off, who'd you go out? You went out somewhere yet last night? Yeah. Where'd you go? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

To celebrate 21st birthday.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

Right. You went to see Monica. While you did that, I made a little movie on reels for Instagram.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

And there's nobody who's telling me not to. Yeah. Or that I can't. I just made what I what came into my head.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:42

No, it wasn't, it doesn't have the reach of an a picture from Paramount or RKO or Warner Brothers. Right. But anybody who wanted to view it could.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yeah.

The Twisted Happy Ending Problem

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Which is so different from what movies were in the in the 80s and 90s. Now, I realize it's not the same scale, but that's kind of not the point. I didn't see this bit, the ultimate target. The enemy in the film. The enemy in a film like this is the audience. If people don't go to see these manufactured films, they're not going to get made. That's by Robert Altman. He says Altman's equal opportunity approach to satire pinpoints the beaten state of the American decency and blames the viewer for the carnage. Which, in this humble reviewer's outlook, again, kind of makes sense. We cheered for Griffin Mill. We wanted him to beat Larry Levy. We wanted the happy ending. No argument there. By rooting for the psycho sociopath to win, the audience proves they prefer the artificial, consequence-free Hollywood dream to reality and justice. It is a bully hitting you with its own fists, with your own fist, asking you why you are punching yourself. And he is not wrong. But I would counter to that. People go to the movies, not all the time, but a lot of the time. People want an escape.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

Life's tough. Lots of it. Yep. And everybody wants an aspirin. They want a sedative or something just to give you a break, give your mind a break. Yep. That's what the movies exist for. And to watch something. Who wants to see something when they've had a hard week? They want to see something about somebody else having a crappy life in another country. Right. And then it never getting better. Walk out of that theater and throw yourself off a bridge. I think when I read reviews like this, I'm like, I feel like these reviews kind of miss the point. So, yeah, of course we want that. And yes, Griffin Mill is a sociopath who murdered somebody. And in not a he goes through some crap, but gets away with it. Yeah, we want that. Because we know it's not the audience, even though we're playing a part in the movie when in that beginning tracking shot, we're watching everything unfold. That's us watching it unfold, but it's not us, us. It's not the human being who can differentiate between this is artificial and I am here watching this, but I'm in my real life watching the artificial. And I feel like a lot of these reviews kind of suspend that. They suspend the idea that, like, you know, we're just allowing this and we placate this kind of behavior in Hollywood. No, we expect you to make the story play out the way it doesn't play out in real life.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:33

Because on some level, we want to see, we want to feel what we don't get to feel.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

That's why I would go to the movies.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Right. So that's. And I always feel the need to apologize to the audience if I talk. I spend a lot of time talking. I don't let you talk, but I just have a lot to say about this movie because it's been, it's, it's just played such a big impact in my life.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 42:01

And I knew you enjoyed it, but like when I saw like things just changed for me when I saw him, like, this is right. Like I saw it with Ryan Hill.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

And he's like, yep, that's where we're going. Like, I can yes, it is. And after a year out there, I'm like, oh, this place is awful. Well, at some other time, I'll tell you the story of getting booted out of Paramount. But um, yeah, very just a great movie. Like, and we say that about a lot of the stuff that we see, but this is verified, rated 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. I I didn't see any comment on YouTube or in Rotten Tomatoes that was anything other than congratulatory and fawning over this movie.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:01

You make you can comment beyond yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

I agree. I mean, I you've seen this movie a lot. Probably. I've only seen it this one time. Yeah. I mean, I've heard you talk about it and reference it a lot. Um, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 43:20

I feel like this is a movie for people who like stories about Hollywood. Like for any of you folks who went to see La La Land, which I did not, but that was about Hollywood, yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Mm-hmm. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

Especially if you have a like they throw in a murder with it. So there's a story to the story. There's a story to the story. Yeah. But you also see the pressures of the people who work behind the scenes or the executives putting it together. I remember I had the hardest time trying to make my old man understand that he's like, you know, if you're try if you go out to Hollywood, you're just gonna try and be an actor. I'm like, no, I'd actually like to get into There's a business behind it. But the more you learn about the business, the more they're right. It is amoral.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

Mhm.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

They manufacture things and They manufacture things with people, their hopes and dreams, and you're surrounded by people all over that city who have desires to get to where everybody wants to get to the same place. And a lot of people know how to do it, so they're just willing to throw anybody or the next of their best friend under the bus to get there. It's a brutal town, but they tell good stories.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

They do.

Robert Altman Legacy And Farewell

SPEAKER_03 44:51

There's no getting around it. And I feel a little. I'm a little dismayed that we can't spend more time on this in order to be to get our quota in for the amount of time we have on Buzzsprout. We can only spend 45 minutes on it. But I could, I kid you not, I could talk about this movie for three hours. I could talk about this movie for the length of time that the film runs. Over. But I think we're gonna be, we're pretty much at time here, so we're gonna wrap it up. But for oh, yeah, I gotcha. Shut up.

unknown 45:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

Anything else you want to close with, or we uh I just want to add that Robert Altman was a great film director, and um he just his like I I believe, and I'm not like an expert or anything like that, but his style was different than a lot of people's. And that has been pointed out, and I and he was um a faculty member at the University Um of Michigan, yeah, in the 1970s. And really then I think he went on to like do his film directing career and that other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 46:16

Who was he a faculty member of?

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Uh the School of Theater.

SPEAKER_03 46:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

And so, um I had it up here for a second. Um oh, because he went to the university, I think when he passed away, they acquired, um, I just love this, but 700 boxes of like things from his like career. Wow. And so they're at the live that are at a library and you can I get I don't know if you can have to go up and look at them or like, but I just I remember when they when the university got this um I don't know what you call it collection and what a big deal it was. And I was like, I know I know that name. Um, who is that? And I just yeah, so the Robert Altman collection is a massive array of some 700 boxes containing documents, scripts, photos, props, costumes, and paraphernalia related to the enormously influential career of a cinematic titan.

SPEAKER_03 47:19

That's at the which library? Um the graduate library.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

I'm not actually exactly sure. Because I wouldn't want to say the wrong library without making sure I was correct.

SPEAKER_03 47:34

But it's one of the U of M li just type in where's Robert Altman's stuff at U of M.

SPEAKER_00 47:42

It might be at the Duder Stadt Center because there's a um a thing on the website that I'm looking at that says it's gonna be closed for maintenance issues and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

And it's the art and the architecture and engineering library.

SPEAKER_03 48:00

We're gonna have to go up there at some point. He made another movie called Shortcuts, which Oh yeah, they referenced that. That's we should watch that at some point. I did see it, but it's long.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 48:15

I remember being charged up to see that, but like having struggled to stay awake for it.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Okay, I thought it. He taught in the Department of Theater and Drama. His tenure included directing and mentoring students in various productions. He was this was he was known for his innovative approaches to theater education.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

More on him in another episode. Yeah, thanks for watching. It was like a movie. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

Or watch it again.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

We're on to another one. Listen up next week. Hugs and kisses, toodles.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

Uh goodbye, thanks for listening.