Plague Remedy Podcast

New Eyes for Old Movies: Oscars Special with author John DiLeo

• Stephen Sacco

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SPEAKER_01

I'm Steven Sacco, and from Bonnie Scotland, it's the story podcast for readers and writers.

SPEAKER_00

And interesting talking about writing versus acting, I never felt one pang of sadness or regret at giving up on my initial dream of, you know, at least 20 years of dreaming, because I found that in writing, aside from the absence of an audience and a kind of an immediate response, I was still trying to communicate with people. I was still trying to focus my thoughts to get an effect. I was still trying to get a laugh now and then. And so I didn't it didn't feel that much different.

SPEAKER_01

Hello, friends, it's Stephen. We've been dealing with a lot of difficult topics. We've been talking about refugee stories and people wanting to ban books. So today we're gonna do something a little different. We're gonna be talking to John DeLeo, who has authored nine books about the movies with an emphasis on things that maybe you haven't heard of, the overlooked performance or the overlooked actor, or the overlooked movie. And I confess I I really like old movies. I don't know as much about it as John does, as you'll see in this interview. I first met John when I was working in a paper in New York, and I was doing a feature on him, and my beat was up to the edge of New York State and into Pennsylvania because there were things back and forth, and people went back and forth for business and work and crime and all that all that kind of stuff. And he is in lovely town of Milford, Pennsylvania, which I'd recommend if you like to go to small lovely towns with good food, go to Milford, Pennsylvania. And this is just a really fun discussion leading up to Oscar time on Sunday. We recorded this in October of 2025, and Diane Keaton had just passed away a few days uh before we spoke to each other. This is one of those interviews that we had a bunch of them where we had some technical difficulty with the remote recording. But I think it it sounds pretty good, and it's just a fun show. So please, if you're enjoying these, pass this episode along and write a review, maybe. It'd be nice to hear from some more people. We got some really nice reviews, which I really do appreciate though. And give us a rating and follow and we can do all those things so we can keep on making more of these. And now here is John DeLeo. John DeLeo, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Steven. It's so nice to be here.

SPEAKER_01

So sadly, we've just heard that Diane Keaton has passed away, and maybe we should just stop with talking about Diane Keaton.

SPEAKER_00

In fact, I was the generation that, you know, she was a movie star of my youth, and I actually can remember seeing Play It Again Sam when it came out in 1972. I was 11, just being aware of movie stars versus characters in movies. And I do remember, I don't know who that woman was, but I really like her. You know, I think we all knew who Woody Allen was going in. He was that guy who did, you know, on Ed Sullivan, he'd do a little shtick or whatever. But who was that woman? I like her, and then the next few years, she was, you know, the woman in all the Woody Allen movies, and she was getting funnier and funnier. And I also remember seeing Annie Hall for the first time in the theater. Now I'm 16, thinking, this woman is so brilliant, but she's her brilliance is of a kind that's easy to overlook, and I'm sure she'll be forgotten at awards time and all that. And then, of course, she won the Oscar for Annie Hall. And I remember being so happily stunned that she was appreciated, and then everyone was appreciating her, and of course, her career went on. And I know later in the show we'll talk about recommendations, so I think I'm gonna want to save that for some Diane Keaton recommendations, but she's been someone that I have admired since I was a teenager and never really lost that. And there really isn't anyone like her. There have been women like her in the past. I think of Gene Arthur in the 1930s, even Shirley McClain had a kind of Diane Keaton quirkiness in comedy when she came along as not a traditional leading lady, but then Diane Keaton and Annie Hall and the fashion element to her, how she was such a representative of a generation. And then Renee Zellwerker's another one, that kind of adorably befuddled young woman who has so much going for her, but is plagued with insecurities, which makes her you know three times as charming to the audience because we connect to that. And so uh she is probably the most iconic of that type. But said the audiences have always liked that kind of star. And like I was saying with earlier about the fashion element also solidified her as an original. She wasn't just the personality, she was the whole look. And you know, people like a Catherine Hepburn or a Marlene Dietrich, people love people who you know live uh to their own drummer, you know, don't let the fashions of the time get in their way, and then they become the the icons and people want to be like them.

SPEAKER_01

That's really good comparison with Renee Zollwiger. I hadn't thought of that, but yeah. Why did you think when you first saw her, why did you think she would be an actress that might have been ignored?

SPEAKER_00

I guess because it's the old thing of making it look easy, you know, Diane Keaton in those Woody Allen movies always looked like she was making it up as she went along, and that kind of spontaneity, oh, she's just playing herself, you know, like an Annie Hall. That's just who she is. She's doing her thing, she's just riffing. And uh, you know, like so many, like Carrie Grant spent a lifetime of being overlooked, not as a star, but as an actor. Again, that's easy to take people for granted when they look like they can just roll out of bed and do this. There's not a lot of hard work that you can see, you know, whether it's accents or crying or that stuff. It's the people who make it their business to make it look like you cannot see what they're doing. You can't see the work. And that's the art.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. And that's that was the kind of the answer I was hoping you'd get. I got there. To to make something look easy is incredible and any kind of art I think is incredibly difficult. Like musicians, you know, I've been trying to learn the guitar uh since the pandemic, and yeah, it's it's it's not easy, but to make it look easy as a special. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And that's the thing of writers sometimes people like who write very fancy prose or maybe very poetic prose, you know, tend to get um well, more critical attention, not always more attention. Um, but it it takes I mean, it's just the type of writer they are. I mean, it takes just as much effort to write something that would be really easy for someone to read.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, in fact, I think in my own work, when I do multiple drafts, when you get to what you think is for now at least the final draft, there's a part of me that's always thinking, okay, now you just this is the draft where you take out the writing. You know, anything that looks it sounds like, oh, that's what a writer would write, but it just sounds generic, like yeah, it's writer fill-in words or you know, adjectives that you know it's just it's the it's lazy. And it's like cut out that and get just back to you and what you want to say.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and that's that's really good. Some actors are just like that, too. It's they cut out all the kind of the frills, cut out the frills, and it's like him I am um actor and acting on the stage, you know, kind of thing that we kind of make fun of now. Sure. And and they're just there. And it's it can be very remarkable, but it's also you can miss it. Yes.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, and I said take it for granted. And it's the yeah, the history, certainly the history of movies, or you know, people when you look at movies of the 30s, often the people who jump out are not the people who won the Oscars those years, where some of those Oscar performances look very mannered and very sort of worked out and you know, sometimes artificial.

SPEAKER_01

And styles come and go. You know, I I think John Gilgott's a wonderful actor, but if you listen to some of those old Shakespeare plays, you're like, oh my goodness. I mean for me at least. I'm like, oh my goodness, he's reciting, you know, and he's not making it sound like something someone would say, which is more of the style now.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. Sure. It is a balance, I'd say, certainly, with Shakespeare, of it's you know, it's impossible to make it sound like the way people talk, because nobody talks like that, certainly, but not going too far where you sacrifice the beauty of the language and you're doing it as if it were a kitchen sink play, and that's as wrong as the other way. So it's always a balance, and like I said, styles change what people connect with more at any given moment. And I guess mostly in like Gilgut's time, it was a mastery of the beauty of the language, and uh maybe not the I don't know, I never saw him do Shakespeare on stage, but certainly I think someone like Olivier then made it a little more physical, and then you know, that everybody connects to the person who came before, like in every other art.

SPEAKER_01

And and it seemed to you really seem to have an interest in small roles that were overlooked, or people who were nominated for Oscars. Your most recent books are not even nominated, and no small parts, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there are no small parts, but yes, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, what is your fascination with that? Because it seems like you have this ability to or an interest in uh calling attention to what's been overlooked.

SPEAKER_00

I think in all the years I've been writing books about film, it's if I've had a sort of mission, which I didn't officially have one, but if you wanted to zero in on what it is he's been doing for you know all these years, it's to sort of bring to light the overlooked, the neglected, because nobody needs help from anybody to discover The Wizard of Oz or It's a Wonderful Life or Casablanca or Singing in the Rain. But there are hundreds of really fine films that a lot of people would love from the golden age of Hollywood if there are a couple of people out there like me to nudge them in that direction. And uh, you know, you always try to write a book that nobody's already hasn't been written by anybody else before, and to zero in on a topic that could sustain you for a couple of years and think that it would catch your eye if you saw it on a shelf somewhere. And so I think I've always had a fascination with character actors, you know, the people uh who have never gotten the attention they deserved. And often that can happen with small roles. And in the case of there are no small parts, it's roles that are less than 10 minutes long. So they could be two minutes, they could be 10 minutes, they could be from Stars on the Rise or Stars in Decline or character actors you never heard of, or just one scene roles, or you know, roles that are scattered throughout a movie. And it was great fun to go from the 30s to the present and uh, you know, just zero in on these people and celebrate how much you can accomplish with such a small amount of screen time. So I I had a great time doing it.

SPEAKER_01

And we've been talking a lot about the intersections here of acting and writing, because every character, we have to say, every character that you're right, you know, thinks that they're the the the waiter thinks that they're the star of the display or the novel. And one of the things I I really love about old movies, and you see it in some contemporary movies, is when they give the clerk or the story clerk or the you know that that kind of part that, you know, they say dinner is served, and they give him some kind of he or her, some kind of quirky thing. And I don't know, it just it just brings things alive a lot more.

SPEAKER_00

I think the big difference with really old movies and the contemporary movies is that in the old days there really were character actors who had a thing that they did, and they did that thing countless movies, and they were excited to be employed steadily, they loved being appreciated for their particular comic abilities or whatever it was, being a tough guy, and audiences recognized them, loved seeing them over and over again. These weren't actors who were dying to prove their versatility and show, you know, what I really want to do is Shakespeare, as you say. So I think in the current climate or a climate of, say, the last 50 years or more, most actors want to show their range. And I think there was a certain satisfaction in the old studio system when you were under contract, did you know 15 movies a year, some of the simultaneously, and you did your butler or your cassette florist or your uh train station porter or your wisecracking waitress, whatever it was, you were appreciated for it and you were happy to to be special in that particular way. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I don't know. Assuming you grew up in the Northeast too, when yeah, when you know you would come across these people, you would come across the lice cracking wagress and everybody has this story and it and it's kind of like everybody's a character. Everybody's a character. I mean, especially if you're anywhere around New York City, I mean everybody's a character. Some people don't like that anymore. I don't know. I don't know what that is. We we become a little more homogenized, I think.

SPEAKER_00

I guess it's uh more experience of the world, you know, not being uh you know, off the movies used to be the kind of the only way people could uh know the world outside of wherever they were. And of course, certainly the internet, of course, has changed that most drastically. But but you know, the movies for people who never traveled anywhere wherever you lived, the movies were your means of travel to see Paris, or at least feel like you knew what Paris was, say even if you were never gonna get there. If you did get there, you'd recognize it in the movies, you know.

SPEAKER_01

That's that's true. And a lot of those post-war films, you which I do I do like old movies. I don't know them as well as you do, but I do love old movies. Um you really see the connection, World War II connection with the with the United States and Europe very clearly, I think, in those films.

SPEAKER_00

And certainly when by the time you get to the 50s and movies are being made more on location, and so when you do Roman holiday, you're really in Rome. You're not on the back lot at Paramount, giving a sort of reasonable semblance of a place, but you're there. And so that was a big change in terms of bringing the world to to at least the US. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, get to kind of your story and how you got to have this fabulous job of watching all movies. But what are some examples that really stand out for you, either of a small part or somebody who never got nominated? There's some famous actors in your in your book who never got nominated. Well um for movies.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was an interesting example, and it was of course fun to include major stars like Marilyn Monroe, because in All About Eve, she's in it for a couple of minutes. She's got you know these tiny little scenes, but she really makes a mark. And that's really something in a movie where everybody gives is giving it the performance of their lives, and so you can come in. But of course, the key to standing out too is being unlike everybody else in the movie, and that's a movie where everyone is so brilliant, everything that comes out of their mouth you want to write down and remember because you want to use it at a party, it's so witty, and she's not in that league at all, and she's very funny in a completely different way. So when she enters, you're like, Who is that? And so her subsequent stardom is not a surprise, so it's fascinating to just watch when the movie came out. She was on completely unknown by just about everybody, and sometimes those parts are played by complete unknowns who remain unknowns, but in that case, it was wow, look at this. She's in it for two or three minutes. A movie's over two hours long, and anyone who saw it would remember that beautiful blonde who was kind of clueless, but she made you laugh. Like I said, there's some you know memorable movies where they've seen the movie a lot, they don't know the names of these people. I included Mr. Gower from It's a Wonderful Life, who's the great HB Warner. Most people who have seen it a hundred times couldn't tell you his name, but and he's in it for just two or three minutes. I, you know, it's been a little while, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it's very short. But his scenes are so memorable, you know, when he sort of assaults the little boy George, when he's just gotten a telegram that his son has died. And then later in the fantasy sequence, when we see him, this disheveled man who went to prison because of the drugs he mistakenly sent out because George wasn't there to prevent it. It's it's really heartbreaking and kind of shattering. Also in Gone with the Wind, Ona Munson plays Belle Watling, you know, the madam who has that beautiful scene in the carriage with Melanie, played by Olivia De Havilland. And most people who love Gone with the Wind will cry in that scene. The humanity that this actress gets to show and not just be a stereotypical prostitute, tough and you know, all uh glitzy. And you learn she's a mother and and she connects so beautifully with this other mother, two women who would never meet in any way, aside from this reason that they have come to intersect into each other's lives. And it's a very beautiful scene. And again, you know, hooray for her in a in a nearly four-hour movie in a like a five or six-minute role. And again, it was just a way to shine light on these people. It was fun when it was peop movies I knew people would recognize and not necessarily know the names of the people, but then in some, you know, lesser-known movies that I just have liked, and I thought here's an opportunity. You know, it's always an opportunity to shine a light.

SPEAKER_01

What about some of the more famous actors that you you highlight that gave these wonderful performances, but they never got an Oscar for that? They might have got an Oscar for something else.

SPEAKER_00

Well, but you know, two of them did win because the where they famously had such small roles, Beatrice Straight and Network, and Judy Dench and Shakespeare and Love. So everybody knows about those, but I couldn't not include them. They were too famous to ignore. But, you know, famous people making cameos like Gene Hackman's hilarious cameo in Young Frankenstein, which is not he's not even billed, and a lot of people didn't even recognize him. But you know, he had obviously a hoot of a time, and uh, you know, he proved after a series of very dramatic roles, you know, I'm pretty funny when someone lets me be funny. Or speaking of uh young Frankenstein makes me think of Gene Wilder, who has that cameo. It's his film debut in Bonnie and Clyde, which has its funny moments, but it has a really funny little you know chunk when Gene Wilder's kidnapped by Bonnie and Clyde and is at first terrified, but then comes to feel like one of the gang, and he has a lovely transition in a like a six-minute role. And so uh yeah, it spans the decades and it was it was great fun for me. But of course, I had to make sure they were only in it for 10 minutes or less. So I did actually use my little stopwatch, and if it hit 11 or 12, sorry, I'd love to write about you, but you're out. Someone will will, you know, check someone and say, you know, this book is a hoax.

SPEAKER_01

So can you talk a little bit about how did you end up writing about film?

SPEAKER_00

Well, as you know, I I originally came to New York at 21. I have to go into Ithaca College to pursue an acting career, which I did. And I did well enough to hang on for a while, but not well enough to keep going. So I kind of ditched it at age 35. Or was it me? I think it was 35. And I think I kind of panicked at the thought of 40 approaching and still being where I was, which wasn't far enough along to really feel encouraged or to sustain the belief in myself. And so I just thought, well, you know, I've always had that love of film and that sort of encyclopedic memory since my you know early teens about particularly old movies. I wonder if there's anything I could do with that. And so just kind of blindly, I started compiling what I thought were clever quizzes that I thought could be, you know, maybe in premier magazine or something like that, something fairly small. And a friend of mine who I got to know because he was a writer of film books, he was, I had sent him some of the quizzes and he said, you know, this could be a book. And I can remember laughing out loud, like, oh, please, Jerry, I'm not a writer. I'm just some actor looking for something to do. And I took his advice and sort of compiled it into book form. And the first agent I sent it to wanted to represent it. The first publisher she sent it to said they wanted to publish it. And I thought, I am not used to this at all. I'm used to going to auditions with 150 people, maybe getting a call back, then losing out to somebody else. And I'm used to the answer being, you know, good job, but the answer is no. And to see suddenly the answer was yes, it was a nice feeling. And I thought, I'm going to go with the flow or go with the universe, as we sometimes say, and go in my late 30s where the answer is yes rather than no. And that's kind of how it happened. And interesting, talking about writing versus acting, I never felt one pang of sadness or regret at giving up on my initial dream of, you know, at least 20 years of dreaming, because I found that in writing, aside from the absence of an audience and a kind of an immediate response, I was still trying to communicate with people. I was still trying to focus my thoughts to get an effect. I was still trying to get a laugh now and then. And so I didn't it didn't feel that much different. So there you go.

SPEAKER_01

And I think when I first met you, I first met you in Milford, Pennsylvania, and I was working for the Times Herald record there. I did a something on one of your books, I forget what it was. But you told me about this role where you were in a gorilla costume dancing.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Cabaret, it was the MC in cabaret, and the actor who got to be fairly well known, Jimmy Smith's, was in the gorilla suit. Now he was a star of every other play that season, but because he was already, you know, there for the season, he was in that show and we had a wonderful time together. I I adored him. But yeah, it's all now a very long time ago. And when I'm I'm around friends or family that knew me as that guy, it's kind of nice just for the nostalgia of it. It's like, oh that's right. That that isn't just something I made up in my head. You remember that that I did that too. And so, because people like in Milford or anyone who's met me over the last 25 years, that they don't know that guy at all, which is fine. I like being known as this guy.

SPEAKER_01

You know, as you get older, you do, you know, you go to different types of things. You know, I really enjoy writing fiction. I like being a reporter, but I really like being where I am now, teaching people about literature and writing fiction. And one of the things I really liked about being a reporter, which it wasn't the gore, it wasn't like the front page stuff. It was more like finding something out about somebody that was hidden. Like if we do a talk to a business owner, I thought he was in Bangladesh during this horrible thing that happened there. And he saw, you know, some US soldiers and US medical aid, and then he wanted to come to the United States, and and I don't know, those stories were were great. Yeah. So you just didn't look back. How many books have you written?

SPEAKER_00

I'm currently working on number nine as we speak, and I'm nearing the halfway point. But uh, you know, it's so funny because I never would have guessed that. I thought the quiz book was a one-off, and then it gave me the encouragement to to try to write essays, you know, on individual actors, whatever. Then each book gives you a little more encouragement to try something different, or again, a book you think no one has written before that you would like to be the one to tackle. And then after every one, I'm sure it's the last one because I mean, I don't I never have writer's block for what I do because I choose the subject. And once the subject's chosen, then I know exactly what I'll be doing. The writer's block comes in between projects when you think I have no more ideas, I will never have another idea, and you're certain, okay, five books is good, and then whatever, then it's six. And so when the eighth one came out last year, I was certain that was it. And then it's just you never know what's going to happen. One day you just wake up, and like I said, from some subconscious place, oh, I have an idea, and I can see it, I can visualize the whole sort of outline, and then you're off and running, and here we are. So for right now, I feel certain number nine is the last one.

SPEAKER_01

You must have uh learned a lot about how America has changed, how society has changed from watching movies from the 30s to now.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's always also I have a classic movie series here at the Milford Theater where most Sundays I'm there introducing an old movie and doing a QA after. And so I'm constantly, it's not just me, I'm getting perspectives of the audience of seeing old movies and what it means to them. And often they've never seen these movies from the 30s or 40s ever before, and so their reactions are interesting. But you know, the thing about as movies get older and older, the movies stay the same. We change, times change, and so there are often different colors to them based on a history that they don't know is coming up, but we're very aware of. And I think I'm constantly struck by the duality of it all, where so many things are exactly the same, so many basic things, while other things are wildly different. And it's I just showed Mr. Smith Goes to Washington yesterday, perfect example. The movie holds up in so many ways because whatever period of time you're in politically, historically, there's something in that movie that resonates with whatever the country the current situation is. That one particularly at this moment, but but it never goes out of style. There's something about what's going on in Washington that you can connect to the current day, whereas the old movie element of it is the sort of ultimate optimism that we don't necessarily end things with nowadays, but there's always that encouragement of, but but don't worry, everything is just perfect. And I guess since maybe the late 60s, movies have been tinged with the ability to let that pessimism see sneak in. Whereas in the days of the Hollywood production code, you were supposed to, if you dealt with an interesting, offbeat, challenging, slightly scary subject, it was built in that the movie had to end up on a note of hope. And that that certainly changed. So there's that sort of reassuring, nostalgic, warm, fuzzy feeling often in an older movie. But there's also those recognizable situations that they're still happening. And it's it's kind of comforting that, oh, they were talking about this 85 years ago, and we thought, oh, it's only something we've been talking about now. And that's just political things, but basically emotionally, movies are it's basically about getting people to care about characters and get you involved in a story. And I do think older movies are still way better at that. Telling a story succinctly, telling a story that grabs you and keeps you compelled, telling it with characters that you immediately want to stick around with. And I mean, they think they felt that was their job. And I think it's still their job, but they think there are other jobs as well. And I think storytelling is one thing. I think it's just it's very leisurely now, and it's very cryptic now. And I in the in some ways you could say much more sophisticated, which can be a really great thing, that there's more respect for what the audience can handle, more respect for how much they can absorb. But sometimes you feel it would be so much nicer to just grab me and keep me wanting to know what happens next, as simple as that.

SPEAKER_01

How is it talking to people who because I remember I was you know, I was, I don't know, I was 18, 19, I guess, when I really discovered old movies when I watched Bringing a Baby for the first time, and I was blown away by it, and then I watched Sturge's films and I was kind of on my way. What is it like when you're when you're in the the theater in Milford? We should say Milford's little town in in Pennsylvania, very nice town, really nice town if you were if you ever go there, near the near the water gap, um, and they have kind of an arts community there sometimes.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, or a lot of transplanted New Yorkers like myself. No, it's great. Like I said, I love when particularly when I show something that either uh people have never seen before or they've watched it at home, but it was they were doing something else, so they only saw the end or they only saw the beginning, and they never sat down and watched the whole thing. And you know, I I saw scenes I never saw before, but and it's usually I'd say my audience is mostly middle-aged and older because that's their interest in is more in in looking back on on those movies, and they're familiar with those stars, even if they don't they haven't seen everything, but they know you know they're interested in Carrie Grant and Katherine Hepburn and you know that kind of thing. So yeah, it's it's it's certainly gratifying. And I think it's like I said, it's gratifying in terms of the books, too, to try to get a spin on something that everyone thinks they already know. So the most recent book is not even nominated about the it's 40 overlooked co-stars of Oscar-winning performances. So it's people in a movie in which someone won an Oscar for this movie, but this other person in it was overlooked. And again, so it's taking the subject of the Academy Awards, which have been beaten to death by everybody, and sort of like, I wanted to do an Oscars book, but I just wanted to have my own spin on it. So it's to try to get you to look at something you know, but look at look over here in the corner here, where you're not really looking to view this from a different perspective. So to look at the awards from how they chose somebody and how they also were able to overlook that taken for granted person. Again, it's usually again, that's the theme of the neglected. And so uh and so that was a fun way, again, to look at famous movies, but sort of turn it slightly on its head.

SPEAKER_01

Sometimes I think the whole purpose of art is is to look at something that we have neglected and look at that in a different way, and that's wonderful. Tell us about that, about the new book and tell us about maybe one or two of the the actors that stood out to you who didn't get because there's some famous actors in the world, but they just didn't get it.

SPEAKER_00

This one is much more about big big stars. And uh well, the Philadelphia story is a great example. Jimmy Stewart won as best actor, and he's terrific in it, but you know, Cary Grant is also terrific in it, just as funny, just as memorable, and he wasn't even nominated. And that's a kind of an interesting thing to tangle with like what about one guy made him the winner, and the other guy just as famous, just as talented, just as charismatic, so easy to overlook. And you know, sometimes it can be something as obvious. Well, Jimmy Stewart has a long drunk scene, and what's nothing's as showy as a drunk scene, where Cary Grant's comedy is mostly those under his breath kind of witty line readings that again easy to oh, he's just doing Cary Grant. He's just in the corner saying lines that uh that are dryly funny. So it's just an interesting to peruse or to just look at the whole movie from the Cary Grant character's point of view and what he brings to it and how he actually makes the whole plot happen, you know, orchestrating it sort of from behind the scenes, but it's all about him getting back to Catherine Hepburn over the course of two hours. And you know, it's her vehicle, it's her movie in a sense. She's the shiny object, and she's fabulous. So, or something like Roman Holiday, you can't take your eyes off Audrey Hepburn. She's the newcomer, she wins the Oscar, and you get it. You can't not be charmed by everything she does. And there's Gregory Peck, who is so funny in an again, low-key, very low-key way, but getting every one of his laughs and connecting with her. And it's this beautiful love story between two people, not one. And of course, he wasn't nominated for it. And so, I mean, they're not all comedies in the book. You know, another with Halloween approaching, a really, I think a strong example is Frederick March wins for playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And you know, anyone playing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you think, well, I can see how that's an award caliber role. Look at what you're going to do. But if you see that movie, and that's from 1931, if you really if it and when it's over and you look at it, you think, what was so scary about that wasn't really his makeup as Mr. Hyde. It was Miriam Hopkins's reactions to every time he came in the room, and the look on her face made you think, oh my god, the things he has done to her that they're not going to show us. But the look on her face, every time he touches her, it's so terrifying. And that's what you take away from that movie. So if anyone deserved an Academy Award for that movie, it was Miriam Hopkins, not so much Frederick March, who's a great actor, and I adore him. But uh so again, it's just like look over here is is how I I would say. And that MOOC book also goes from the 30s to the present. Well, actually, that book goes from the silent era to the present, but there are so many examples of and it doesn't really take away from the people who won. Sometimes I do, but in most cases, I applaud the winner. Just I'm kind of stunned that the people in the industry that you know could overlook such obviously great work by someone else.

SPEAKER_01

And sometimes it's it's a matter of the chemistry between two people really bringing out the performance in the actor who won. And the actor who was a little bit, you know, a little bit more in the foreground doesn't get the attention. But I shouldn't think I don't that's me. I also think that actors win Oscars sometimes for movies where they weren't at their best. Yeah, there was they didn't get anything.

SPEAKER_00

You get it for the one that you should have gotten it for. I think some of the examples like Joan Fontaine winning for suspicion by Alfred Hitchcock when she was had a better role and a better performance in Hitchcock's Rebecca from the year before. I mean, that that's an obvious one. Even Jimmy Stewart, they say he got it for Philadelphia story because he didn't get it for Mr. Smith goes to Washington. And so that that seemed to be particularly to happen particularly in the older days, not so much now. They're not as sentimental now, and they don't seem to try to right their wrongs as much now. They seem to have a shorter memory of the past nominations, and that they don't sort of give those consolation prizes as they used to.

SPEAKER_01

You're right. I don't think they do it so much now, but they did they have done it in the past where you know, guy doesn't have an Oscar, you should get an Oscar, and then he gives a performance, you don't think it's his best, but they give it to him because he needs to be there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, or he's popular or the timing's right. So much of the Oscar's timing of certain people would have won the year before if this movie had just come out that that much earlier. And it's it's so it's there's a random quality to it. And of course, as I say in the opening of the book, you know, a war awards between artists, competitive awards between artists are inherently stupid. But if you want to play along, you know, let's dig in and have some fun with this stuff, you know, if you're so inclined. Because if you love movies, Oscars are something not only to applaud, but to get very angry about. And they're just as fun to rail against as they are to praise. And so grappling with that, you know, you can choose to engage or not, but if you want to, it can be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you're right. And I think all these, you know, best of lists and book lists to, I mean, it's all kind of to discover things you haven't maybe haven't discovered.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01

You know, when you when you're watching all the movies, I'm gonna give you an example. For me, I I love Breakfast at Tiffany's because I love Audrey Citron. I I like I like that movie, but then there's the Mickey Rooney portrayal of the Asian comedy, which is stereotypes that we just wouldn't use today. How do you deal with that when you when you're getting a movie, you're watching a movie, and you know, that kind of is there and could spoil that for for people.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I showed Breakfast Antiphonies at the Milford Theater, and I I I did address it, I don't know if in the intro or the Q ⁇ A, but that you know, there's a lot of older older movies are going to be problematic in certain ways, but to cancel them completely because of one element when there's so much to celebrate is not right to me. Like to to give up on Audrey Hepburn's performance, Buddy Epson, his small role is in my There Are No Small Parts, or his beautiful performance, which is also kind of a dicey role considering their backstory. But he he plays the character fully and movingly. You've got Henry Mancini's incredible music. The Mickey Rooney thing is like in another movie. It is like a it's like a sketch on a variety show, a bad sketch, and it's so off-kilter. So I think it's horrible, awful, but I would hate to say we should never watch Breakfast at Tiffany's again, which is also a weirdly successful adaptation of a dark book that when you read the book, you think this could never be a movie because it's such a downer. And they kind of brilliantly turned it into a commercial success by altering it significantly. But there's some kind of weird triumph in that ability to do that. Much of it is coasting on her charm and turning it into a love story, which it's not. But Mickey Rooney thing is so out of sync, even with the movie they've created. So, yeah, I think you have to. I mean, you can certainly say, I don't want to watch anything like that ever again, and that's fine. Don't don't, but there is much to save her, and now things can be dated in that way if they're five years old. It's not even, you know, movies from the 30s or the 60s, but of course, how can you expect anything of a certain age to be held up to a standard of the moment that's going to change? My response also is what are we doing right now in 2025 that some teenager in in 50 years from now is going to say, I can't believe you thought that was acceptable. And you're like, we'll be saying, We didn't have a clue that that was going to be something that would offend you. But that's just the way it goes. And often with movies, certainly of the 30s, that can have offensive elements, you'll think. But you know, they're kind of on the continuum of those were little baby steps, and that's as far as they got then. But then it inched along a little bit through this moment, and which is also a little offensive, but better than the one before. And it's it's all part of how do you get to where you are now, and we're still on a road, whatever the issue is, we're still moving along. And so if you want to be have look at things from a historical element, you have to have kind of a forgiving eye, at least looking at art.

SPEAKER_01

I I think you know, those instances, and there are instances in books too, that we just you know wouldn't write a character that way. I think when we see that we should feel actually that we're making progress. And now we've kind of come to realize that that's that's not a fair way, that's not a fair portrayal of anybody who is Asian. I think of course. Yeah, Vicky Rennie thinks an egregious kind of example, but but still there's some lovely moments in that film.

SPEAKER_00

Sure. And the and you don't want to be someone who cuts yourself off from history because then can you really see everything through a prisma right now without the knowledge of, and again, I'm just really talking about movies, the knowledge of all those things that happened, not just technically in the art of film, but in terms of what was on the screen, how they dealt with these things. Because, you know, if you're there are so many things that can literally just say, well, I'm never gonna watch anything of that time. You know, you say I don't watch black and white movies as the mildest version of that, of course, but but things about whatever the issue is, because you have to have some, as I said, some kind of forgiving eye to see the greatness that's there, alongside some things which you're gonna have to say, yikes. I wish that weren't there. And sometimes you see movies from the 30s that kind of hold up weirdly well. It's like there's this is this really still plays, and often they're not the most celebrated movies of the time, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Getting back to Diane Keaton for something, because you know, and you mentioned Preston Sturgeon, you mentioned All About Eve, which is the Preston Sturgeon's film.

SPEAKER_00

That's a that's a Joseph Elmankowitz movie, all about Eve. You're you're you're close. The Lady Eve is the great Preston Sturgeon, Barbara Stanwick.

SPEAKER_01

I was confused. That's okay. Yeah, I'm in the day. That's all right. Two great movies. Yeah. Two great movies, yeah. That's sometime. Do you find sometimes that comedy can go more unnoticed?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Certainly if we're gonna talk about awards, but yeah, certainly the one of the genres of the classic era that holds up particularly well is screwball comedy. As you said, bringing up Baby, the Lady Eve, My Man Godfrey, His Girl Friday. I think there's all there's an abandon, there's a kind of reckless, ruthless, take no prisoners quality to those movies that keep them fresh. They also have women in much more sort of aggressive roles that are very appealing, that they they're not uh dominated by the men. They're often driven by the women, and they're usually not put in their place, as we as they those movies used to say in school ball comedies. In more romantic comedies, they are kind of put in their place by the end to uh satisfy the customs of the time. That don't worry, women are still at home. And those don't date so well. Something like Woman of the Year with Tracy and Hepburn, where it does end where you feel like she's had to be diminished. But in something like Screw with Bringing Up Baby, she's still as wild and crazy at the end as she is at the beginning. The Lady Eve, Barbara Stanwyck, or his girlfriday, Rosalind Russell, there and they take charge and they get to be their seem to be their full selves, and that's very appealing. So comedy, that those kinds of movies can hold up way better than, say, some of the heavier biographical films of the time, which feel very sort of preachy and a little hokey. But it's funny, and some of the things that weren't considered necessarily art are considered art now. I'm thinking of the universal horror movies or the Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers musicals, or some of the most prized movies of, say, the 1930s, the Marx Brothers movies, which could have been dismissed more as mere entertainment at the time, but that's the stuff that people want to continue to see, and whether it's laugh at or be dazzled by in terms of musicals, whereas some of the, you know, the life of Emile Zola, which has its merits, but it's not something that holds up in quite the same way. Some of those loftier dramas. Whereas in the pre-code movies, which are much more sexual, you know, a movie like Red Dust with Clark Gable and Gene Harlow, people will still enjoy that very much and still be a little surprised by how explicit they are, not so much in nudity, of course, but in the way they talk about stuff and the way they do stuff. We like, I think she just did that, or they just did that in the other room, kind of thing. And so that kind of stuff holds up and makes you think, oh, people were talking about and thinking about sex, you know, 95 years ago. Because sometimes if you just watch a certain kind of movie, it's so sanitized you don't believe anyone ever thought those things with their twin beds and all of that, you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yeah. Some of our twin beds. Yeah, we always seem to be surprised that people had sex before we were alive. Because the sitcoms we were raised on, you know, my partner, she's a medievalist, and and you know, they were up to all kinds of things in the medieval period. They were not sexless and and proper. She reminds me um that the Pope had to uh issue two edicts that people were not to have sex in church.

SPEAKER_00

That's funny.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean always our second to last question. What now you could choose, you could do two films and two other or two books and two other.

SPEAKER_00

I guess we'll do films because I was gonna do two well, we'll do a double with Diane Keaton. I was gonna say if you want to celebrate her instead of just going right to uh Annie Hall or the Godfather movies, let's do films and I'll give you a new movie, but then I'll give you a duo of old movies. How's that?

SPEAKER_01

Great.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'll give you first, I'll give you uh a new movie that I just saw that I was really excited about was One Battle After Another, the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, which is a really wild ride, but it justifies its length and its ambitions. It's funny, it's exciting, it makes you think, but it's not preachy. You'll pick up what you need to pick up without them ramming it down your throat. And it's got some wonderful performances, notably Sean Penn's. For something older, I'll give you a Diane Keaton double feature to really appreciate her. You all don't need help from me to see Annie Hall again or the Godfather movies. So I'll give you the drama Mrs. Sofel, in which she's wonderful from 1984, beautiful performance, opposite Mel Gibson, and the comedy Baby Boom from 1987, which is a total Diane Keaton vehicle, and she is quite delightful. So those are my those are my two, well, kind of three movie picks for now.

SPEAKER_01

What about two other things? Just anything you'd like to recommend? We've had kinds of recommendations for again.

SPEAKER_00

I was thinking of recent stuff. I'm a big fan of the novelist Ann Tyler, and her latest book, Three Days in June, came out earlier this year, which was really beautiful. And she's been writing for over 60 years, and she still has the magic. And so that's a lovely book. Just again, another simple, small domestic drama that speaks volumes. And uh Broadway musical that I love this season, Maybe Happy Ending, which swept the Tony Awards deservedly. And it's about it doesn't sound like something I'd want to see about two robots who fall in love, but of course, it's about so much more than that. It's basically about being human and what that feels like and how precious time is. And it's I'm sure it's going to be done everywhere because even though it's a gorgeous New York production, it can be done very intimately, very modestly. And I'm sure everyone will be doing it. And it's got a beautiful score, and I kind of quietly cried through the entire show. So I loved it.

SPEAKER_01

That sounds great, and I'm sure it will come to life. I'm sure it will. In in a big production, yeah, in a big production. And our always our last question, which is where can people find you? Your books, look you up on the interwebs.

SPEAKER_00

So I I have an author's page on Amazon, but you can look up my name, D-I-L-E-O, John, J O H N on Amazon or any of the sites where you can buy books. You can follow me on Instagram, J O H N D I L E O dot one two. That's Instagram, and I'm a Facebook author page. So yeah, I'm not hard to find, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01

If you're looking. Yeah. You're sure people aren't that hard to find today.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, Steven. Pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

This has been the Story Podcast for Readers and Writers. The Story Podcast is produced by Christian Livermore and Steven Sacco. It is hosted by Steven Sacco and edited by Steven Sacco. Please remember to follow us, rate us, and write a nice review. You can also buy us a coffee or a pint in the link in the show notes. And as always, thank you for listening.