006 The Purple Rose of Cairo

In this episode we discuss Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo starring Mia Farrow and Jeff Daniels.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:10

Don't call it a podcast. This is broader than podcasts. We're rapping about gods and the movies we love. Talking about the art being in the venom of things, the filing cast is family in between your ears. Filing stories, movies, sounds.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Welcome to Filing, where we'd love to think and rap about what we love. I'm Sean Patrick. Brendan Mitchell cannot participate today, but he's here in spirit. We are ideophiles, storyphiles, and cinephiles. Our aim is to share those loves and understand their value and importance in our lives with each other and everyone who listens. Our discussion might be a broad and detailed spoiler, so if you haven't seen this episode's movie, stop listening to us right now, go watch it, and then return to Filing to hear our thoughts and feelings. Or really, for this episode, my thoughts and feelings. You'll be happy to discover that our previous audio issues have been resolved. So if that was irritating you into a fiery rage, then rage no more. The quest to find the best framework to discuss movies on the cast continues. The framework of this episode is a scene-by-scene analysis of the movie because I'm a psycho. Just kidding. But if at any point you begin wondering why I'm doing this, then feel free to resume the fiery rage you had previously reserved for the audio issues. As always, if you find yourself bored with this solo rendition of the cast, or if you find yourself wishing Brandon was here, then make your listen a themed reaction game. Every time you question my sanity during this episode or long for Brandon's voice, do three burpees as fast as you dare. This is the fifth episode of the After the Life inspiration series, which is a collection of movie reviews intended to inspire the production of an original movie titled The After the Life. The After the Life is currently being produced and will screen at an event called The Fest 2026 on July 18th. Go to thefest2026.com for details about the event. In this episode, I reviewed the movie The Purple Rose of Cairo. The Purple Rose of Cairo was written and directed by Woody Allen. The film was released in 1985 and marked the 14th feature-length film written and directed by Woody Allen since his 1966 directorial debut, What's Up Tiger Lily? That movie included footage from the 1965 Japanese film International Secret Police Key of Keys. Woody Allen edited footage from that movie together with new scenes he shot for his movie What's Up Tiger Lily. The result was a new movie with an entirely new plot, including both overdubbed and completely original dialogue. That rearrangement blossomed into the legend of Woody Allen that has so far culminated in 64 feature-length movies, of which 52 he has written and directed, and 42 of which he has acted in. The legend of the Purple Rose of Cairo is that of a pharaoh painting a rose purple for his queen, and now it is said that purple roses grow wild at her tomb. There is a creative similarity between Woody Allen and the Pharaoh. Alan converted a Japanese spy drama into an American comedy collage. Over time, the conversion of that Japanese movie grew into a legendary filmography. The Pharaoh transformed a red rose into a purple rose. The transformation of that rose propagated into a plot of wild purple roses. Woody Allen created all of it, the movies and the legend. Perhaps he did it for his queen, or maybe he did it for the idea of queen, an archetype of a supreme woman. Perhaps she was unalive, only imagined, yet kindling his creativity, sparking the action to make what previously did not exist, to make unique and impossible flowers, to unite and symbolize romantic love, to stir the memories of past love, and raise the awareness of its present feeling and understanding, and dreams of its future possibilities. Love, creation, and its intersections spring from what is, and share the dreams of what might be and of what ought to be. Often they are the same thing since love can be its own creative process. Somewhere in all of that may lie the theme. Mia Farrow is the queen of the Purple Rose of Cairo, playing its lead character, Cecilia, and was Woody Allen's supreme and romantic love before, during, and after the production of this movie. Together, Mia Farrow and Woody Allen collaborated on 13 movies in as many years. This is yet another sort of purple rose array flourishing from real and imaginative love. And therein may also lie the theme. The theme of the Purple Rose of Cairo is the purpose of art to imagine what might and ought to be in order to fuel the soul and inspire action. The plot theme or central conflict of the movie is an internal one. It is Cecilia's dreams and imaginations of romantic love and her love of art's vision of a romantic life versus the reality of Cecilia's life that includes a cheating, lying, and loveless husband during the Great Depression. The value of the theme appears obvious. Art is fuel for the human spirit. Art fills a tank. The tank is the human soul or mind. Art energizes the mind to move the body to make things, to survive, and to flourish. Woody Allen in the Purple Rose of Cairo reminds us we are creatures of actuals and potentials, of what is real and what is imagined. Much of the movie takes place in a movie theater. I often think of a movie theater as a sort of spiritual gas station. We park our minds there, connect the glow and sound to our senses, and pump it in. Sometimes we pump the wrong fuel and stall. Sometimes we are filled with a representation of pure action that inspires real action, such as escaping cruelty or searching for love. Fuel is important. If the body doesn't receive food, it will die, decompose, and disappear. So it begs the question, what is more important than not dying? The alternative to fueling the mind is also death. Perhaps not in the precise and literal sense of a loss of one's life, but rather symbolically, as in the death or loss of one's soul, or a part of one's soul. Those parts are the most important within us. They are the engine parts and liquids. But they are not the entire vehicle. Just those elements that make it go, to reach the previously unreachable, to reach it faster, to see more and be more. To live and love and flourish.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

We're rapping about gods in the movies, we lie. Talking about the all meaning of sending a things, the final cast, we finally in between.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

But if we're trying to identify or analyze the value of the movie, you have to look at the plot. You have to look at the theme and you have to look at the conflict. And if the plot is a logical series of events guided by a primary action, then who's taking the action? The characters. And so let's look at Cecilia. The movie opens at a movie theater, and Cecilia is staring at a movie poster. It's a close-up on her face, which is also how the movie ends. And there's a song playing in the background. It's a Fred Astaire song called Cheek to Cheek. Even more interesting in the title sequence, the cheek to cheek song begins over top of the Orion production logo. It's this dreamy logo of outer space. And there's some motion graphics swirling around, and this old roaring twenties Fred Astaire song Cheek to Cheek slowly fades in. We're immediately pulled into a dream. And cut to a shot of Cecilia gazing at a poster that is just another representation of the dream. And the song is continuing to play. And what pulls her out of it is something hitting the ground. There's a man working on the marquee of the movie theater, and he drops something, maybe a letter or a tool. And the object hits really loud, and the song the song cheek to cheek fall cuts off. And Cecilia and the audience is immediately pulled out of that dream. She starts walking away, and the worker shouts at her while she's walking away. Oh, Cecilia, be careful. You're really gonna love this one. It's more romantic. Brilliant introduction. Brilliant writing, brilliant direction, brilliant editing, brilliant sound design. I can't say enough about that intro. Very next scene is Cecilia in a diner, and in this diner, she's a waitress, and she's a very unfocused waitress. She may be a good waitress, but she can't stop talking about the movie that she just watched. And she's being pushed by her boss, and she drops some food and some pr some plates. Great scene. It just is a very obvious display of how she's distracted by the movies, by the romance of movies, by the romantic vision of this movie that she keeps going to see. And then we cut to her interacting with her husband. We meet her husband for the first time, played by Danny Aiello. He's gambling, he asks for money. We learn he owes money all over town. He's been unemployed for two years. He likes to drink, and he doesn't like spending time with Cecilia. She went to this industrial area to speak to him just to ask him to come to the movies. Basically saying, Hey, husband, man who's supposed to love me, come join me in this romantic event. And he doesn't want to go. Instead, he wants to drink and gamble with his friends. When Cecilia confronts him about it, he completely deflects. And then it cuts back to the movie theater, specifically a POV of the worker in the box office selling tickets, and people are coming to the box office to buy tickets and asking for two. First, a woman comes up, she asks for two tickets, then a man comes up, he asks for two tickets, then Cecilia comes up. She just asks for one ticket. Brilliant writing right there. Just emphasizing her alienation. And then she's in the theater. And she's watching uh the Purple Rose of Cairo. And this is when we're introduced for the first time to Jeff Daniels' character. In this scene, Jeff Daniels' character, Tom Baxter, explains what the legend of the Purple Rose is, which is the Pharaoh painting a rose purple for his queen. Then it cuts to a nightclub in New York, and they're all all the characters are sitting at a at a table watching the nightclub singer Kitty Lane scene. This scene, we're just introduced to a couple core scenes that repeat that repeat throughout the movie. And it's basically an introduction to all the characters in the movie within the movie. And the movie within the movie is The Purple Rose of Cairo. So this is the second time Cecilia's at the movie theater, but the first time she's actually watching the movie. And then the next scene is Cecilia back at the diner, daydreaming about the movie, demonstrating how unfocused she is. And then we're back at the movie theater. This time it's nighttime, and she's with her sister, and they're watching the movie together, and we see a new movie scene within that movie. And then for the first time, we go to her apartment. Cecilia comes home from the movies to her apartment, finds her husband entertaining another woman, and he leaves with her. And when she gets there, he's dressing, as you know, tastefully implying that he was undressed and they were having sex. But that's all you see. You see him buttoning up a shirt, and then she appears and he pulls out a deck of cards and is trying to show her a trick. And she leaves and he follows her out. And Cecilia then packs up her bags and leaves. And then walks toward a tavern where she sees two women approaching the tavern, which again tastefully implies they're going to make some money by selling themselves to the men inside. And I want to take a second to talk about the shot selection in this scene. Um, it's excellent. We only see a neon tavern sign or a neon sign that says the word tavern. And we see a silhouette of men inside the tavern through an opaque window with some distant sound of men talking. So we just know it's a late night, maybe somewhat rowdy tavern filled with men. And then two women approach, but you only see one of them. It's a close-up. And the woman turns to the other and says, Come on, we're gonna make a buck. So efficient and tasteful, the way it applies the behavior is astonishing to me. And Cecilia sees all this and she turns around and walks home. Another real interesting thing about this scene is you know, after she leaves her apartment with her husband, she has nowhere to go. I mean, that's her home. And so where does she walk? She walks to the movie theater, which is magnetic to her. And I think that's really interesting because she doesn't know where else to go except to the building that is inspiring her to leave. But after seeing those women on the street implying that they're gonna go sell their bodies to these men in the tavern, she turns around, she goes back to her apartment, and her s her husband is snoring. And then we cut to the diner where she's working again. Her sister, who also works there, introduces her, introduces her to an eligible man who has the occupation of an exterminator. Um, and then she drops another plate in the flurry of activity, that is being a waitress and trying to be kind to this awkward man who her sister is introducing to her as eligible. And then after dropping that plate, she gets fired. And the next scene, she's just walking along in the street again with her head down and she's crying, mascara running down her face. And she goes to the movie theater. It's unclear how much time she spends at the movie theater, but it is clear that she watches the movie The Purple Rose of Cairo several times. We see the scene before the characters venture to the nightclub several times, and we cross-dissolve to the title sequence, and then to another scene, and then to the title sequence, and then to the scene before the nightclub scene again, and probably for at least the third time. And this is a really efficient way of demonstrating that she's at the movie theater watching this movie over and over and over again. And it's in this scene where Tom Baxter, the character in the movie, walks out of the screen and grabs Cecilia, exits the movie theater, and expresses how excited he is to be free. She's concerned because in the movie he marries Kitty Lane, the nightclub singer, but Tom says he doesn't want to marry her because she's too bony. Pretty shallow. Pretty shallow reason. It probably would have been better if he said, I don't love her. But being so shallow made for, you know, kind of a funny joke. And so Tom and Cecilia run off, and it's at this point that the movie gets pretty ridiculous and really, really funny. Uh, the theater manager starts talking to the actors on the screen and tries to get them to perform for the captive audience that is still in the theater, and the actors begin to argue about whose storyline is the main storyline, essentially arguing about who the lead character is. And then other actors enter the scene and realize something is wrong, and the actors beg the manager not to turn the movie projector off. And then chaos ensues, and then Cecilia and Tom walk to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park. And they get to know each other, and Cecilia still has the popcorn she had from the movie, and Tom's feeding it and Marveling about the taste of it, and at the same time complaining about how the rattling of the bags is annoying during his performance. He also describes his father. Again, this is all like first date or second or third or fourth, fifth date talk. You know, you start talking about where you came from and who your parents are and who your family is. And he talks about his father. He starts describing his father because he describes Cecilia as quote-unquote fetching. And Cecilia goes, What do you mean by fetching? And he says, I don't know. My father used to describe my mother as fetching, but I never got to know him because he died before the movie begins. And immediately he tells Cecilia he's in love with her, like right away. And then it cuts back to the movie theater, and uh the actors in the Purple Rose of Cairo are continuing to lament about their situation, and they complain they're dramatic actors that need to be moving forward, and then more actors enter the scene and they're all confused, and then the audience begins to argue with the movie, and the actors make fun of one of them, and the rest of the audience cheers, and then it cuts to Cecilia again going back to her apartment, and Cecilia lies to her husband about plans she has to babysit, but she's really going to hang out with Tom. So we cut to the movie theater again, and there's just mayhem. This is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Patrons are complaining. There's reporters there asking the manager what's going on and come commenting on the situation. And at one point, one of the men there, in response to someone telling the manager he should shut off the projector because of communists being behind it. One of the guys says, You can't do that. You're liable to strand this Tom Baxter out there in the world someplace. You want an extra guy running around? I'm not doing I'm not doing it justice whatsoever. Um watch the damn movie because it's hilarious. Um, so the audience and management continue to converse with the actors on screen, and eventually the theater manager calls the producer of the movie, and that brings in the producer and his team who start panicking about the scenario, worrying about hundreds of Tom Baxters running around. Because there's hundreds or thousands of movie theaters in the country and hundreds or thousands of prints of this movie screening the purple rose of Cairo. So if one Tom Baxter can leave, hundreds of Tom Baxters can leave. And if hundreds of Tom Baxters can leave, well, you have, according to the producer's team, a bunch of potential lawsuits coming from that. Because who knows what these guys are capable of doing. And so that's interesting, and that brings up, I think, a sequel opportunity for The Purple Rose of Cairo and where that's actually happens. Where movie screening in a thousand theaters and like hundreds of one character get out of the movie. Or maybe multiple different characters. I had this thought earlier than I thought. Oh, I think this has already been done possibly in the movie Last Action Hero starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it's been so long since I've seen that movie that I do not remember. So that's something to look into. And the question would be in the movie The Last Action Hero, do multiple characters exit a movie and then begin interacting in quote unquote reality outside of the movie. I don't know. Something to look into before writing the screenplay for The Purple Rose of Cairo 2. Anyway, so Cecilia and Tom they start rolling around town, getting to know each other. They go to a restaurant. Tom tries to pay with well, before that, he's he's dancing uh with Cecilia, and she's just talking about the hardships of life. And then and then in the next scene, we're introduced to Gil Shepherd, the actor that plays Tom Baxter in the movie, both played by Jeff Daniels. So Jeff Daniels performing in two different roles. One is the character in the purple rose of Cairo, Tom Baxter, and the other character is the actor playing Tom Baxter in the Purple Rose of Cairo, whose name is Gil Shepard. We meet Gil Shepherd at this LA mansion, and he's told by his agent that his quote unquote creation has escaped the movie, and he's being recruited to help resolve the issue. Hilarious scene. And it does a really good job differentiating Gil Shepherd, the actor, from Tom Baxter, the character. Because Gil Shepard, the actor, in that scene, very quickly is shown to be very insecure and wishy-washy and uncertain. But he listens to his agent and he decides it's in his best interest to go to the town where Tom Baxter has escaped from the movie in an effort to get him back into the movie because it could ruin his career. So and so then we cut to a restaurant. Tom and Cecilia are still at the at the restaurant, and Tom tries to pay for dinner with fake money, and then they try to make a run for it, and he tries to steal a car by just getting into a car and expecting it to go, which is how it works in the movies, according to Tom. And then Cecilia explains to him, you need a key. And so they have to jump out of the car and make a run for it. And they get back to the abandoned amusement park, and they're sitting in some seat from some ride, and they kiss. And in the middle of the kiss, Tom is wondering about the lack of a fade out. Because normally after he kisses a woman, there's a fade out, and then he's automatically at some place making love to her. And Cecilia says, Well, my heart just faded out when you kissed me, and I closed my eyes, and I was in my own private place, so that was nice. And he's absolutely fascinated by the fact that there's no fade out during lovemaking, and he's trying to get right to the sex, but Cecilia explains to him, you know, I'm not that type of girl. She explains that she's married and that he's not that bad. He just hits her every once in a while, and it's at this point that Tom promises to defend her if her husband hits her again. Not because it's the right thing to do, just because it's written into his character. And so the next day, Cecilia's at her apartment, and her husband's questioning her about her babysitting money because part of the lie she previously told when she wanted to go out and meet Tom was that she was babysitting. And her husband also tells her a story about being told by someone that a woman was dragged out of a theater by somebody. So there's already this story circulating around town of the situation that Cecilia's in, and her husband is catching wind of it. And so she lies to him again about the money, and he says, or she says, they're gonna pay me later. They only had big bills. And his response is taking, you know, keep in mind he's been unemployed for two years. All he does is drink and gamble. And his response is, well, you know, if you leave something up to you, you can bet it'll get all fouled up. So super nice guy. No wonder she's escaping to the movies looking for, you know, positive emotional experiences elsewhere. And so we then cut to the movie theater again, and the producer and his team are with Gil Shepard in the theater, talking to the actors in the movie that are still on screen. And the actors start to argue with Gil Shepherd about the importance of his character in the movie, Tom Baxter. And then he storms off and he leaves. And then it cuts to an interesting scene, and it's Cecilia buying something for Tom. She's in a diner, and Gil Shepherd is in this diner, in a phone booth on the phone talking to somebody. And she, I think, is buying some food for Tom. She pays for it. She starts to leave. At the same time, Gil Shepard is hanging up on the phone and leaving, and they just bump into each other. And she thinks it's Tom, and he has no idea at first who she is, and eventually figures it out and then asks uh her to take him to Tom. But this is a bizarre scene because it's a total chance encounter that propels the plot for the rest of the movie. And I think it's notable because it's it's random, it's coincidental, it's just a chance, and maybe Gil Shepherd would have eventually found her, you know, as the writer of the movie, how do you bring those characters together quickly? You know, that's hey, that's a way to do it, you know, a chance encounter, something to keep in mind. It's certainly something that can happen. You know, both of those characters made the choice to go to that diner and do what they were doing there, and they just so happen to bump into each other. Things like that do happen. But it seems maybe a little too easy, but a good movie trick to keep the clock going. So for all you writers out there, chance meetings can happen, but there might be a better way, a more exciting way to bring them together. I certainly can't think of one, but I haven't given it much thought. I just thought it was interesting that it was so s as simple as, oh, hey, you're here. What are you doing here? What? Who are you talking about? Tom, why are you acting this way? I'm not Tom, I'm Gil. Oh, you must be the woman who is interacting, who's been dragged out of the theater by the character that I created. It's pretty crazy. Um, but the movie is, I mean, it's a comedy, and so the plot line of a comedy can be looser, and it's easier to accept certain things, especially in a movie as ridiculous as this. I mean, if you can accept a character walking out of a movie screen and trying to live a new life, you can certainly accept two characters bumping into each other for the first time and it being a pivotal interaction that causes any and all events for the rest of the movie. When Cecilia and Gil leave the diner, this is the first scene where Cecilia kind of fawns over Gil and he becomes immediately flattered. And it's really well played because it seems as if he's surprised by the fact that Cecilia is so uh much in admiration of him as an actor, especially after the scene in the LA Mansion with his agent when we're introduced to Gill, and he uh demonstrates uh a kind of lack of certainty, a certain degree of insecurity in himself, uh, which we can immediately understand, mainly because of Jeff Daniels' performance. It's so good. And the efficiency of the writing and the direction and the editing, it's just everything's perfect. And it's it's it's interesting to note this because even when he's interacting with actors who are in the movie, like when he goes to the movie theater with the producers to scope what's going on when he initially gets to town, and he's talking to the actors, and he gets into an argument with the actors regarding who the lead character is, or whose storyline is the most important. That just again exemplifies this insecurity. Where, you know, you're in a movie, it doesn't really matter if you're the lead or if you're a part, every character is important. Well, you know, the argument is who's the most important, and he obviously has ambitions to be a star and uh continues to demonstrate this sincere insecurity throughout the movie. You know, he's a successful actor, but he doesn't think he's a star. And so when Cecilia fawns over him, expresses her admiration of him, it's as if nobody has ever expressed that to him in his entire life, except his agent, or he's so insecure that anytime somebody takes a moment to admire him, he's immediately swept up in the vision of him being an amazing actor, which uh in his mind is uh not real. It's still a dream to be a star. It's still an imagination. We later cut to the industrial area again where we see Cecilia's husband gambling with his friends, doing what he does. And one of his friends tells him someone told him they saw Cecilia at a restaurant with another man, and the husband steps aside and starts thinking about what's going on. And we cut back to the amusement park, and this is where we meet, or pardon me, this is where Gil Shepherd meets his character, Tom Baxter, who walked out of the screen. It's a very confrontational encounter, it's pretty quick. Tom basically refuses to cooperate with Gil after he tells Gil he's in love with Cecilia. And Gil tells Cecilia to tell Tom to go back, and she's reluctant to do that, and he asks her, How can you be in love with a fictional character? She never has expressed her love of a fictional character, but she's void of love. So when there's this dream of a man expressing this love to her, it's obviously really dizzying for Cecilia, and Mia Farrow plays this so well. We then cut to the producer's office. An assistant to the producer is on the phone working out a plan to get Tom back into the movie. Uh, he's told that Tom Baxter at another theater is forgetting his lines. And so that concern of hundreds of Tom Baxters leaving the theater or this movie no longer promising a romantic view of existence and the financial consequences of that are continuing to concern the producers. Then we cut to a montage of Cecilia and Tom walking around, and Tom is trying to learn about the real world with Cecilia, and he says, No more plots. I said I was gonna learn about the real world with you. Show me. And then they go through a montage of him checking out a bunch of things and eventually come to a church, and Cecilia tries to explain God to Tom, and Tom thinks he understands, and he says something to the effect of, oh yeah, the writers of this movie are God. But Cecilia explains he needs to think about it as um the reason for everything, something bigger than just a movie. And she says, other otherwise, everything would be like a movie with no point and no happy ending if there was no God. This reminds me of a line said earlier by one of the customers at the movie theater who is complaining about the fact that the movie The Purple Rose of the Cairo isn't the same. And it's a woman, and she's complaining to the manager. She says, This is not what happens. I want what happened in the movie last week to happen in the movie this week. Otherwise, what's life all about anyway? And so it continues to be this existential crisis for everyone, pondering the meaning of things. And this comes to a head in the church when Tom is being explained the reason for everything. And Cecilia doesn't do a great job explaining that. Perhaps it's because stories of God are just that stories. Some of the best stories. Have a happy ending. And she tries to articulate religion in terms of the structure of a good movie. But it's confused and I think done really, really well. You know, trying to try to imagine explaining God or religion to somebody who's never heard of that before, and get them to expect that. She analogizes it to a movie. You know, if there wasn't a God, if there wasn't a reason for everything, there would be no point and no happy ending. Then suddenly Cecilia's husband arrives, fights Tom, and this is the first time that Cecilia stands up for herself after watching Tom stand up for him. Tom sees that and she and says she's very brave. And Cecilia says, You inspired me. Then we cut to outside of Cecilia's apartment, and Gil is arriving, and he sits on her on her porch, and he's waiting for her to arrive. She eventually does. And at first he's bothered, but she begins to praise him again, and he appears flattered, and then they begin to discuss his acting ambitions, and he asks to take her to lunch, and he also begins to praise her. So they begin this at this point, this relationship of mutual admiration. And then there's a couple of scenes with Tom and some prostitutes. Tom's at the amusement park. He's approached by a prostitute who eventually invites him to where he works, a brothel. And he just very innocently hangs out with them. He learns what a brothel is. He expresses to them how much he loves Cecilia. So he can't accept their offer to have sex with him for free. And then we cut to one of the better scenes in the movie, this music shop. Cecilia and Gil and Gil, uh, they play a couple songs. She plays a ukulele while he sings. And during the second song, the shop owner plays a piano. And this is after Gil says it's one of his dreams to become a classical violinist. Again, this idea of dreaming comes up and imagining something more. They're actually standing outside of the music shop, looking into the music shop, looking at a violin, and Gill's expressing to Cecilia his dream to be a great classical violinist. Then they go in and they start playing. And after they play a couple songs, she's just immediately starts marveling at one of the characters he played in a movie. And then they perform that scene in the music shop together. And he embraces her and he kisses her, and he starts talking to birth talking to her about how his heart is aflutter or it's racing, or he starts to talk about it, and then he just makes like this sound, like it's it's really weird. And then she starts to scurry away and just try to make sense of everything that's going on. She's like, I'm married. I'm I think I might be in love with Tom. You know, he's fictional, but you can't have everything. Another great line. And then we cut back to the movie theater after Cecilia scurries away, away from Gil. And in the theater, a female theater worker is just sleeping. And the actors, again, on the screen, are contemplating what appears to be communist talking points, and they're also questioning the reality of their existence. One of the actors says, Perhaps we're the real world, and out there is the illusion, out there is the dream. And then all the other actors are like, you know, this movie's been playing way too long. You need to relax. You're starting to unravel like a film reel. And then we cut to the producers again, and the producers come to realize that other Tom Baxters in other cities are trying to get out of the screen. And so all of their worst fears are about to be realized. And so they decide to shut down all showings except the one that is still missing him, in order to get him back into the movie before they burn all the film prints and all the negatives forever. So serious existential consequences for Tom Baxter are being introduced as well. And then we cut to the amusement park, and that's the scene where Tom again expresses his love for Cecilia, and for the first time, he asks her if she loves him. And she Mia Farrow's performance in this is brilliant because she's tripping over her words. She's trying to figure out what's going on, and she can't, and she's it's almost as if she's just blurting out sounds at some point. She says, You're you're just some kind of phantom. And then Tom says, I think one of the more important lines in the whole movie, which is, I don't want to talk anymore about what's real and what's illusion. Life's too short to spend time thinking about life. Let's just live it. She asks how they do that and decides to take her to dinner again. But real quick, I think that line's really important because, you know, part of living life is thinking about life. Part of living life is differentiating between what's real, what's not real. It's a pretty important component to thinking and acting. And Tom doesn't want to do that. Tom just wants to feel what he feels and he wants to just wants to quote unquote live it. But he doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know that he can't pay for dinner with whatever paper's in his pocket. He doesn't know that when he gets into a car, it doesn't just automatically turn on and go. He immediately started expressing his love for Cecilia. And that's not real life. Can you see something and love it immediately?

SPEAKER_00 52:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

Probably. But that's not a very mature form of love. So again, there's this immature, infatuated sense of love that Tom exhibits, and he just wants to be in the moment because that's how he's written. And that is certainly good and fine, but it's not a very sophisticated notion of love. Certainly not a very mature sense of love.

SPEAKER_00 52:50

That's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

It's infatuation, which isn't a bad thing. It's an immature love, which isn't a bad thing. I mean, all love starts as immature love. Perhaps all love starts as infatuated love. And then when you get to know the thing or the person, that love matures into something that is romantic. That is romantic love. That accounts for one's total needs psychologically, intellectually, emotionally, physically, sexually. You don't do that. You can't do that within a couple minutes. And so I think the line is really important. The whole interaction is really important because it demonstrates Cecilia, Cecilia's conflict with negotiating reality and imagination, and also the dangers of imagination. It could be wrong to dive too far into something that is uncertain. Or perhaps the consequences could be really bad. You often don't know those consequences until after you do that. So perhaps it's not wrong to do that. It's just very risky. And so that's why she's conflicted. But most importantly, it demonstrates that Tom is not a well-developed character. Or perhaps he's not a deeply developed character, which gives Cecilia pause, but is also likely because he's the product of nineteen twenties or nineteen thirties or forties cinema. Most characters were not as deeply developed then as they are now. So in the next scene, Tom brings Cecilia to the movie theater and into the movie with all the other actors. And Cecilia is introduced to the cast, and they just decide to continue the movie with her in it. And Cecilia's presence disrupts the plot of the movie. Tom's should have been fiancé, Kitty Lane, discovers Cecilia is Tom's fiance and faints at the nightclub. And then Tom leaves with Cecilia and says the plot is off and it's every man for himself. And then the mater D decides to stop working and busting tables and immediately goes into a tap dancing number. And then there's this great montage, classic style montage of all these shots cross-dissolving on top of one another. One of the shots is Cecilia and Tom walking in and out of the frame, and you're seeing all these neon signs glowing and buildings illuminated in the city as they go for a night on the town from one nightclub to another nightclub. They're just dancing the night away. And eventually get they get back to uh a room, like an apartment room, and Cecilia remarks that she always wondered what it would be like on the other side of the screen. And she had a blast. And then and then Gil enters the movie theater and sees Tom with Cecilia in the movie. And they start talking to one another. And Cecilia just walks right out of the movie, right up to Gil and starts talking to her. And Tom follows her out of the movie, and there's a back and forth. And eventually Gil convinces Cecilia to be with him. And he tells her, he tells her he loves her. Now Gil is telling Cecilia that he loves her. Which, again, also seems pretty fast. But they had some they had some good scenes together. You know, they had the scene in the music shop, and every other scene, they were expressing mutual admiration for one another. Gil asked her to come to Hollywood with him. And she eventually tells Tom, I'm a real person, and I have to live in the real world. And Tom is devastated, but he returns to his movie. And then Cecilia goes back home and tells her husband she's leaving him. And then she goes to the movie theater to meet Gil. And she's met by the manager of the movie theater who tells her that Gil went back to Hollywood already with the producers. And she's obviously in a state of shock at that point. And the manager tells her the new Fred Astaire movie starts today. And then we cut to a really interesting scene of Gil Shepherd, the actor who plays Tom Baxter by Jeff Daniels. He's on an airplane heading back to Hollywood, and he's sitting there thinking, with his hand on his chin. And that Fred Esther song, Cheek to Cheek, begins to play as he closes his eyes, seemingly to indicate that he's feeling something inside himself. I think typically the closing of one's eyes kind of locks in that feeling. You know, it cuts off more sensory information from coming in so you can focus on the internal feeling. All the while this Fred Estare song Cheek to Cheek is playing with the lyrics. It's almost as if he looks bad. Or pardon me, it's almost as if he feels bad, and he's conflicted about what he did because Gil put on a performance with Cecilia. He manipulated Cecilia, which is what actors do when they make movies. But he was a real person in the movie. To us, in reality, he's an actor, or he's a character, rather. He is Gil Shepherd played by Jeff Daniels. And so he's contemplating his saving of his career floating in the clouds on an airplane, listening to Fred Astaire, imagining and feeling what he just did. As if he's not certain that what he did was right. And I think there's a lot of that in the art world where there's this uncertainty regarding the real and deep value of art. Which, as I said at the beginning of the podcast, is fuel for the human spirit. Motivation to act to be something more or something else, or to go get something more or something else. Certainly not all art is that, but perhaps Gil Shepherd represents the uncertainty that exists when exploring the imagination. He has these tools and techniques that he can employ to manipulate, but to what purpose? Is he helping Cecilia? Is he just helping himself? Is he doing both? I think he's struggling with that. But it's real subtle. He doesn't say anything in this scene. He's just on a plane in the clouds, in heavenly clouds, with a heavenly song playing, and he's contemplating events and closing his eyes, perhaps to hide from reality, or perhaps to cut off the world to think more or feel more, or both. It's a really interesting scene. And then we cut it to actually we I think we cross-dissolve to the movie theater. The new movie, which is a Fred Astaire movie, is playing the song Cheek to Cheek, which is how the movie began. Now we're ending the movie this way. And Cecilia walks in to the movie after leaving her husband and her apartment for the second time in the movie. She still has her luggage, or she has her luggage again, but this time she gets into the movie theater. Before the movie theater was closed, she couldn't get in. And this time she has a ukulele, which she didn't have before, but she's really dejected. And she sits down in the movie theater seat and she's just looking down at the ground. And the movie is reaching a musical climax, and she slowly looks up and still looks dejected until her mouth makes the slightest and most subtle turn upwards at either end. She doesn't appear filled with ecstasy. She doesn't appear particularly happy. She looks like a mix of disappointment, longing, sadness, relief, understanding, and just the faintest sense of joy. As if her face is a blurred reflection of the ecstasy on the screen glowing in front of her. The lighting in this shot, it's a close-up on Mia Farrow's face with lighting that I think sets the mood of all those feelings. There's shadows around her left eye that almost make her seem a little angry. But then there's that little smile. And right before all of that, there's a fade of light that increases on her face. As if like there's this glow that starts to shine. And then it stops. And she's just watching the movie. And then the movie's over. She's parked at the gas station filling up. She's got everything that belongs to her, and she's gonna need some fuel on her journey. Maybe she can get a job at that movie theater. Or maybe she's gonna go somewhere else. The point is she's on the move. And it's because she was inspired to do so by the art and by the reality of her life intertwining. You know, when she played that ukulele in the music shop with Gil Shepherd, it's as if she was painting the air purple. Final thoughts on the Purple Rose of Cairo. I will end with some fun facts. Originally, Michael Keaton was cast and spent days shooting before Woody Allen replaced him. And Woody Allen replaced him because he didn't have a classic 1930s look, uh, according to my Google AI research. And also, uh, principal photography with the movie started in '83. And so Allen wrote the screenplay, obviously before that, but he initially started writing the movie inspired by bringing a character from a movie into reality. He wrote 50 pages and didn't know how to finish it. So he put it aside for some time, possibly years, before eventually returning to it. And he was supposedly inspired by the Buster Keaton movie Sherlock Jr., which is the story of a movie projectionist who is infatuated with some girl, and he goes to the movie theater and he's doing his job and he falls asleep and starts dreaming. And then a dream version of himself emerges from his sleeping body and starts checking out reality and then walks into the movie screen and starts interacting with the movie. And then the movie starts cutting from one scene to another as Buster Keaton's character is moving through the scene. So, for example, at one point he's walking along, and then it suddenly cuts to him walking along the precipice of a cliff, almost falling off, and then he backs off at the last second, and then he's looking around, and then it cuts to him being in a zoo surrounded by lions, and he's looking around, and then he starts running or walking away, and then it keeps cutting through all these different settings of him moving through this movie. It's really interesting. The movie's called Sherlock Jr., it's a silent film that was produced in 1924, and it supposedly influenced Woody Allen uh when he was making The Purple Rose of Cairo. So I haven't seen many Woody Allen movies. Uh I believe I've seen Blue Jasmine and Sweet and Lowdown with Sean Penn a long time ago. So I don't really remember those movies too well. Uh, this movie is one of my favorite movies, and I think as a result, I may be a Woody Allen file. I'm certainly a purple rose file. All right, well, I think that's a wrap. Go paint a flower or anything for that special person, or if you don't have a special person, go watch the Purple Rose of Cairo. And I hope you file it.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:42

Don't hold it about this road in the bath. We're rapping about guys in the movies we lie, talking about the all mean and the cinema theme. The filing caps is finally in between your ears. Filing stories, movies, sounds.