Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox) with James Chestnut - Criterion Spine #654

"Otto is Forrest Gump."

In this episode of Why This Film?, I'm joined by assistant director James Chestnut to dive into Repo Man (1984), Alex Cox's punk-rock, sci-fi, anti-Reagan cult classic that refuses to sit still or make sense in a conventional way.

Released in 1984, Repo Man follows Otto, a disaffected LA punk who stumbles into a world of car repossession. He soon finds himself caught up in conspiracies, aliens, the government, and the "lattice of coincidence." The film moves with deliberate disorientation, treating genre, narrative, and meaning as things to be challenged.

James brings a filmmaker's perspective to the conversation, helping unpack how Repo Man was made, why it looks and feels the way it does, and how its low-budget ingenuity, location shooting, and practical effects reinforce its punk nature. Together, we talk about Los Angeles as a character, the film's embrace of randomness, and why its refusal to explain itself is exactly the point.

We discuss:

• Alex Cox's collaborative approach to filmmaking
• The mix of punk culture, science fiction, and political satire
• Harry Dean Stanton's unforgettable monologues and personal philosophy overlapping with the film
• How Repo Man uses confusion as a feature instead of a flaw
• Why this film belongs in the Criterion Collection

If you've ever watched Repo Man and thought, "I don't know what I just saw, but I loved it," this conversation is for you.

You can also follow James's new YouTube project, One Man's Trash (linked below), where he documents cleaning up his Los Angeles neighborhood, one block at a time.

One Man's Trash

Hollywood ManeStays - Not a pin, not a clip. Just Better.

Transcript

Ron (00:00)
Hello everybody. My name is Ron and welcome to Why This Film, a podcast where we explore the artistry, cultural impact and legacy of movies in the Criterion Collection. Each episode, I sit down with experts and cinephiles to ask why was this film chosen for the collection and why does it still matter today? In this episode, we're heading to 1980s Los Angeles with Repo Man, Spine Number 654, the 1984 cult classic directed by Alex Cox. Part punk fable, part sci-fi comedy and part political satire,

Repo Man captures a moment of American disillusion with humor and raw energy. The film follows a burned out Repo Man and the aimless punk he takes under his wing as they navigate a city defined by empty promises and an absence of morality. At the center of it all is a Chevy Malibu, an object of pursuit that's equal parts MacGuffin and metaphor. What begins as a street level odd job spirals into something stranger and more unsettling, reflecting the anxieties of the Reagan era through deadpan absurdity and punk defiance.

My guest today is James Chestnut, an assistant director working across film and television. He worked on Euphoria as a second second assistant director from 2019 through 2022 and later as a first AD during the show's most recent production, which wrapped in 2025 ahead of its 2026 release.

His work spans both prestige television and large scale studio productions. James was a first AD on the idol in 2023, a second second AD on insecure from 2018 to 2020, and worked as a second second AD on the tragedy of Macbeth in 2020. Earlier in his career, he got a start as a production assistant on projects like True Blood, Unstoppable, and Hail Caesar, experience that's placed him on sets where logistics, creative vision, and day-to-day problem solving collide. That perspective,

makes RepoMan an especially fitting film for our conversation. And with that, here's my conversation with James Chestnut.

Ron (01:43)
James, I got to catch my breath. Listing out all of those incredible credentials. Thanks for agreeing to come on and chat RepoMan.

James Chestnut (01:49)
It's my honor and my pleasure.

Ron (01:51)
Assistant director. I'm sure you get this question a lot. Can you explain a little about what your day-to-day responsibilities would look like?

James Chestnut (01:58)
Yeah, kind of my canned response for what does an assistant director do is I liken us to a train conductor keeping the train on the tracks. We're pulling so many different elements in and trying to coordinate everything at once. And our assistant director job is to facilitate that coordination.

So a first assistant director We're the ones that are on set calling rolls and cuts and just helping facilitate everything on set, every scene, every shot from moment to moment. Your second assistant director is going to be the one that's more focused on the next day. They're the ones that build the call sheet, which is

your document with all the information for what's happening that day, all the scenes, all the elements needed for said scenes, So your second assistant director is building that and keeping their eye on the future. And then your second, second assistant director is on set, working with the first AD to help.

facilitate what's happening in the moment. dealing more with the extras. you're if you're shooting something with a bunch of background with extras, they're going to be placing and setting the extras and also just coordinating with the production assistants to make sure that our whole department is in line. So making sure that the production assistants are in lockups, a lockup would be like if we're shooting

in a grocery store, say like they do in ⁓ repo man, making sure that people aren't wandering into the frame at any point or making sure that people are quiet while we're rolling.

Ron (03:17)
You probably have to be pretty adaptable in the way that you approach each job that you have.

James Chestnut (03:21)
Yeah, 100%. You know, some directors are going to be more hands on with the extras, for example. Some are going to just be like, you go ahead and set something, whatever, we'll tweak it if we need to. But yeah, adaptability is name of the game.

Ron (03:35)
What kind of director does Alex Cox seem like to you?

James Chestnut (03:35)
Mm-hmm.

He seems very collaborative and open to, in the moment feedback and in the moment changes. Sometimes you'll work with folks who very steadfast in what's on the page and what's in their mind is what has to happen to a T. When the reality of filmmaking is there's so many elements and so many variables that you have to be adaptable.

Alex Cox seems like somebody who, and especially with this film where it seems pretty ragtag, the making of it, you have to be adaptable. You have to be able to roll with the punches. And I think one of the examples he gives is Harry Dean Stanton changing the repo code. was supposed to be a monologue that was shot over several scenes. And it was Harry's idea to condense it into a much more concise

Ron (04:08)
I had the same thought.

James Chestnut (04:26)
know, And some directors would take that and discard it. But Alex, he credits Harry with that and says that the film is better because of it.

Ron (04:35)
when we were talking about what film we were going to discuss, this was one that was seemed to be pretty high up on your list. So is this a top LA movie for you? Is this just one of those things that holds a special place for you because this is where you live and work.

James Chestnut (04:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I guess a little bit more so. I'm drawn to this film just because of how weird and unique it is. I think LA is a character in this movie and lends it a grittiness and just oddness that it might not have in another setting.

It is a great LA movie. And yeah, it probably would be my favorite LA movie. The LA Times just came out with a list of the top 101 LA movies, which I didn't have a chance... I couldn't find... I mean, I could find it, but I didn't want to sign up for the LA Times subscription. So I could...

Ron (05:19)
I saw the exact same thing. I saw the exact same thing. thought,

man, I guess I'll never know where repo man is on the list.

James Chestnut (05:24)
I know and I looked high and low, I couldn't find it anywhere.

I Chinatown was the number one movie on its list. think, I'm sure La La Land was in there somewhere. think Big Lebowski was in there. So yeah, I would say Big Lebowski is another top LA movie for me. ⁓ It was 76.

Ron (05:37)
RepoMan with 76.

76. I think maybe we need to reach out to the LA Times.

right, Chinatown number one, Mulholland Drive, Sunset Boulevard, Clueless, and Blade Runner round out your top five. And all the way down there is lowly little repo man at 76.

James Chestnut (05:46)
Yeah. Mulholland Drive.

You know,

yeah, It's such a great snapshot of LA at that time, and I'm from Pennsylvania, moved out to Los Angeles in 2010. I wasn't even born when this movie was made and came out, so I have very limited perspective of what LA was like at that time. But based on everything that I've.

seen and experienced. It seems like a pretty accurate snapshot of at least the places that they were shooting. It has such a texture and character to it. I am kind of surprised it's not higher up on that list, honestly.

Ron (06:25)
what is the punk rock scene like these days? Does it still exist? are you part of the underground punk scene out there in LA? Is that what you're doing in secret when you're supposed to be working, you're heading to the circle jerks are playing?

James Chestnut (06:36)
as you know, have two kids under five. So those are the only punks that I know.

Ron (06:42)
So you're

saying that you're not playing Iggy Pop, you're playing Miss Rachel instead.

James Chestnut (06:46)
I

were equal opportunities. There's a lot of Miss Rachel, but Josie, my older daughter really enjoys the band Turnstyle, which is kind of a post-punk hardcore kind of band. The LA punk scene, I mean, I don't think any punk scene is the same as it was in the eighties, you know, the DC punk scene, the London punk scene, any of them. But it was...

Ron (06:49)
Ha

James Chestnut (07:10)
a big enough scene that they, based part of their movie off of it and use it as inspiration for this movie. it's very tangible in this movie and having those players, know, the circle jerks as the lounge act and, that first scene where they're all moshing in the random warehouse, parking lot is just like, it's such a vibe.

Ron (07:27)
Parking lot or whatever it is. Yeah

Iggy pop recorded the title song. The studio was not too keen on this film But the soundtrack took off to a point that the studio had to come back and say, Hey, we need to get this movie out.

James Chestnut (07:41)
Yeah, it sounds like they had released it. was in theaters for a week before they pulled it. then once the soundtrack started, like any studio, they're chasing the money. once the soundtrack started taking off, then they put it back into theaters. And that's when it kind of started to snowball into its cult classic status.

Ron (07:58)
We might be begging for a movie to be in a theater for a week here soon. Who knows where we go with that. someone said this movie is punk rock meets science fiction in Ronald Reagan's house. And when I heard that, I wrote that down immediately because that pretty much sums it up. End of podcast. We can just hang up now, I guess, at this point.

James Chestnut (08:02)
⁓ god.

That's

it. We've explained the movie.

Ron (08:16)
Harry Dean Stanton has a pretty long supplement as part of this criterion release. And I sent it to you last week and said that, I will buy you your next dinner if you could get through it in one sitting, because he's raving about these ideas of nihilism. then soon after upset that he's being labeled as such.

James Chestnut (08:21)
Yes.

Yeah, I watched that last night. I watched the whole thing. I sat through the whole thing, so you want me to it. I mean, what I gathered from that is, he's clearly up there in age and dealing with some form of dementia. Because, he's ranting and raving. And yeah, he's very nihilistic in the interview, but also kind of like...

Ron (08:36)
All right. Next dinner's on me.

James Chestnut (08:53)
referencing the lattice of coincidence in an indirect way.

Ron (08:56)
Yeah,

I thought the same thing. thought when he was talking, I thought he's just become the character of Miller from the movie. It's very similar how Miller talks.

James Chestnut (09:02)
Yeah, but in a much more

nihilistic way. I think Miller's kind of in awe of the lattice of coincidence. But yeah, Harry Dean, love the part where they're playing, row, row, row your boat, singing in harmony.

Ron (09:17)
right. And he went from playing Travis in Paris, Texas. And if you're familiar with Paris, Texas, he doesn't speak for about an hour and a half. And if he does speak, it might be just a few words. He's very subdued in that role. And then we get Bud and Repo man where he doesn't shut up. Anytime he's on screen, he's just going and going and going. I imagine, I don't know. I'm just, I'm not in that world. I just feel like it'd be so hard to get in that head space.

James Chestnut (09:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (09:42)
and to make that switch in a short period of time. Because some of these actors, get into this, not method, but it's hard to change the way that you are approaching a character when they're that polar opposite.

James Chestnut (09:54)
for him to go from that to Paris, Texas, that's just more a testament to acting and actors and what they, and you know, he was late 50s when he shot these movies and a career character actor. I think for him, that probably was just what it was. And if you listen to his, to his interview,

It was always supposed to be like that. just, you know, it just was what it was.

Ron (10:19)
You were always

supposed to be in Pennsylvania and then go to LA and find yourself having a successful career in LA. That's what you were supposed to do. That was always that way. That's right. That's right. You have no free will. knows? Tomorrow's already figured out for you.

James Chestnut (10:27)
I had no choice in the matter.

I'm just a dandelion seed in the breeze.

Ron (10:35)
Wait,

is that something from you or something he said? That's you. Really nice. So the map in the title credits gave me nightmares. I was just in LA a month and a half ago and I got christened with the rental car in LA driving. That map, is that telling us where we are or is that just kind of a random?

James Chestnut (10:48)
Mm-hmm.

I think that

map was kind of, I think that map was like a representation of whatever the government agency that was tracking, Jay Parnell. I think that was kind of like where he was supposed to be. Cause that was the, the map was kind of like, ⁓

out like the outskirts of the outskirts of LA. I think there was Albuquerque on there even. think he came from, I think they're implying that he came from Roswell, New Mexico and drove all the way to LA. I think pieces of the map was New Mexico, pieces of it was through Arizona, pieces of it was right outside of LA. But yeah, mean, it does give.

Ron (11:33)
It's disorienting.

It's a little disorienting. Just like when you're driving around in that area. It's a little disorienting.

James Chestnut (11:35)
Yeah, it's disorienting it.

could be a little disorienting and little claustrophobic.

Ron (11:43)
so the previous five episodes of this podcast, it hasn't been that difficult to segment the film that we're discussing Cause it seems like we have a set piece and then a followup scene or a scene and then set piece. And then we can discuss it from there. I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to break this movie into pieces.

I'm hoping you can help. I'm hoping we can workshop it and figure some of these things out. I just had such a hard time because it just seems like it's so random and things overlap and then they kind of come together at the end with an ending that is a little ambiguous. I don't know how many times you've seen this. Does it get any clearer for you as you have watched it?

James Chestnut (12:22)
I didn't watch this movie for the first time until 2022. I bought The Criterion on a flash sale because the cover looked cool and I've heard of the movie before. And even then, I think, I don't think I watched it until like a year after I got it. And when I watched it, I was immediately drawn to it. I immediately loved it. but I hadn't watched it again until

we started talking and decided that this would be the film that we were going to discuss. So I watched it again for the first time, probably two weeks ago and remember nearly nothing about it from, my first viewing, which is crazy because I loved, I, I remember loving the movie at the time when I first watched it.

Ron (12:51)
no.

There's something about

it, right? There's something about it that I just can't quite put my finger on that's.

James Chestnut (13:01)
You can't

put your finger on it. It's so profoundly weird and so random. the, I'm a sci fi fan, so I'm a sucker for anything sci fi. and I was a philosophy minor in college. So anything philosophic like, yes, like feed me, keep going. so there's something very, weird and punk and philosophic and random, but hypnotic about this movie the other thing is

It's short. It's a 90 minute movie. It doesn't overstay its welcome, which I really appreciate in this day and age. it's a really hard movie to put your thumb on. It defies any kind of trying to box it into any kind of genre. And it doesn't have a traditional narrative flow really. It's just...

It's kind of just the vibe of a movie and I love the vibe.

Ron (13:43)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think I labeled it punk fable, sci-fi comedy, political satire. And I don't know how you roll all that into a 90 minute. And it's funny. It's, seems like everything's all random, but if you talk to the character of Miller, he would tell you that it all overlaps and it all means something. It's all connected in some way. So let's dive into that opening scene and I'm going to really rely on your filmmaking knowledge with a lot of the direction I'd like to go.

James Chestnut (13:50)
Yeah.

It's all connected. It's all connected, yep.

Sure.

Ron (14:12)
So police officer pulls over a man driving a Chevy Malibu, who's driving quite erratically as we'll see. Fox Harris is the actor who plays J. Frank Parnell. I found out through the audio commentary, is that Fox Harris couldn't drive. the first time I watched it, there's a rear shot of the vehicle. It's clearly not him and it bothered me.

James Chestnut (14:26)
Yeah, it's clearly not him.

Ron (14:30)
But it's, we got some sort of explanation that, that he couldn't drive. ⁓ Alex Cox said that they shot these scenes weeks apart where there's a wide shot of the cop walking up to the vehicle. And then there's, think the, closeup shots to the back of the vehicle. What are challenges of matching?

James Chestnut (14:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (14:50)
a scene like this when you're doing reshoots because when the cop is up next to the vehicle, it's clearly Fox Harris, but those rear shots, Fox Harris is nowhere to be found.

James Chestnut (14:56)
Mm.

the reason for a lot of these reshoots was because their DP, their director of photography, Robbie Mueller, didn't like to shoot inserts and was very adamant about what the frames would be, what the shots would be, and didn't want to shoot additional coverage or inserts. Which then when you're...

in post and editorial and cutting it together and you find that a scene doesn't flow because you're missing a little piece here or there, or, you don't have anything to cut away to and the, and the scene just feels too bulky or to, kind of overstays its welcome. but yeah, I mean, the challenges of doing a reshoot like that is continuity. your weeks, months later from your initial production and

You're trying to hair, you're trying to match the set, and all kinds of things could have changed. think, what was it, the Superman movie with Henry Cavill. They did reshoots for that while he was shooting Mission Impossible. And Superman doesn't have a mustache. His character in Mission Impossible does have a mustache, and Mission Impossible...

wouldn't give him permission to shave the mustache. So if you see some of these shots in that Superman movie and his lip looks a little weird, it's because they had to digitize out the mustache. So it's those kind of things where things change and it's just out of your control and you have to do your best as filmmakers to cover it up and use all your film magic to suspend the disbelief.

So yeah, mean, those shots, again, I think it was Alex Cox in the car or it was probably their stunt coordinator.

Ron (16:30)
like no

matter the amount of planning, something could always come up or happen. Like you're saying, you're shooting something, you're not going straight to the editing room to find that something doesn't work.

James Chestnut (16:38)
I mean, sometimes you

are going straight to the editing room and you know pretty quickly what you need. And that's the best case scenario where you're shooting something and cutting together a scene in very quick succession. that way, hopefully you're still in that location or that set is still built so you have the chance to easily get those pick up shots.

Ron (16:56)
Right. Yeah.

James Chestnut (17:00)
In the case of this movie, seems like it was months later before they were doing reshoots.

Ron (17:04)
Right. Well, the police officer, of course, walks to the back, opens the trunk, you get a blinding light, a little flash. We see his skeleton and I guess he disintegrates. The only thing left are his smoking boots on the roadside. then J. Frank Parnell drives, drives away or he, right. He's, he's using all the road. He's exploring the space on all the road. So.

James Chestnut (17:13)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

He meanders away. I love it. Yeah.

Ron (17:29)
this doesn't seem very high budget. There's a little bit of a visual effect there that happens after the fact, but we're told right away that we're in sci-fi territory. So from a production standpoint, what does a scene like this require to sell to the audience something that's pretty extreme without these.

James Chestnut (17:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (17:49)
big budget effects that we might be used to from the those higher. I hate to say higher end because big budget doesn't mean higher end.

James Chestnut (17:55)
Yeah, it just means more money to throw at, everything. Yeah, I mean, you know you're in sci-fi territory immediately without having the scrolling ticker of a Star Wars movie to tell you that you're in a galaxy far, far away, a long time ago. Yeah, I mean, I think with this kind of scene, you're wanting, and with any movie, really, you want to hook your audience immediately.

Ron (18:06)
Right.

James Chestnut (18:14)
I didn't remember much from my first viewing and when I rewatched I was like, oh right, this is where we are. And I'm hooked all over again. It's such a simple conceit. Cop stops a guy on the side of the road, guy says don't look in the trunk, cop looks in the trunk anyway and disintegrates. Say less.

Ron (18:32)
Do think Tarantino has seen this movie? That's the first thing I thought of when I saw something open and a bright light shine out.

James Chestnut (18:39)
Yes. Yes, guaranteed. ⁓

Ron (18:40)
I have my Pulp Fiction poster right next to me.

So we have our punk scene. We have that mosh pit you were talking about. Yeah, yeah, please do. Yeah, tell me more.

James Chestnut (18:45)
Here, wait, can we talk a little bit about those effects?

So I mean I've again when you touched on it how it's not big budget effects to get that glowing effect from in the trunk they painted it ⁓ Super white inside and just blasted it with the highest intensity lights that you could so all that is practical effects It's it's a white trunk with

with a lot of wattage inside of it, you know? they open the trunk and ah, disintegrate, that's just, think, I'm not sure, I think I ever read anything about that one, but from what I understand, it kind of looks like they just painted over the film stock with the skeleton.

Ron (19:15)
Yeah.

James Chestnut (19:29)
So it's just a couple, frame by frame, just painted, they just superimposed a skeleton on top of the body and then just cut into a match cut of nobody at the car and just a pair of smoking boots.

Ron (19:29)
It's amazing.

I think it actually, I think it looks pretty good. Like we get, we, we get the idea of what happened. They don't need anything really explained to you. You kind of, you get it.

James Chestnut (19:43)
I think it looks fantastic.

You really don't know. it's

like, you know, drop some dry ice inside those boots right before you roll. it looks like it's just, I love anything. I love old time effects and what, how creative you had to be before the advent of computer technology and CGI. and this is, it's just so fun and really like leans into the punk aesthetic of this movie.

Ron (20:10)
you get the point across to the audience that we don't need a lot of explanation because of the creativity that's coming across and repo man does quite a lot of that. There's quite a lot of visual things here. Yeah. We're to get to the supermarket here next. there's a lot of visual things here that are, telling us without telling us. Maybe that could be, maybe that could be the name of the, the next podcast telling us without telling us that James chestnut. So, so Otto gets fired from his job in fabulous fashion.

James Chestnut (20:15)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (20:36)
Kevin is a character that makes me laugh when I watch this is ⁓ his punk buddy Yeah, Kevin's great because I thought when I first watched it Kevin was gonna be this person that You can walk all over He does kind of get his ass kicked here in the beginning thrown into the stack of cans but Kevin is a very I Don't know how to describe him. He's almost like charismatic in his own way Like when he's going up to the Rodriguez brothers later at the gas station

James Chestnut (20:39)
Yes. Love, Kevin.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (20:59)
He kind of gives the, I got you guys a little a-okay.

James Chestnut (20:59)
Yeah, yeah, I think Kevin's

kind of the characterization of like settling in this punk environment, you know, he's like talking about the upward mobility of being a fry cook in one of the later scenes. Yeah, but also Kevin, I think they wanted to cast Chris Penn in the part of Kevin and there was some kind of beef with somebody on set and they...

Ron (21:07)
Mm.

Yeah, there's room to move as a fry cook he said.

Yes. Yes.

James Chestnut (21:25)
had to pivot and last minute went with this, I can't remember the actor's name, but he was one of the PAs. was driving, Fox Harris, he was his driver, because obviously he couldn't drive. But it's like, they pulled the PA in to play this role and he killed it.

Ron (21:39)
There's so many casting what ifs in a lot of films that I just can't imagine those actors. Like Chris Penn, I feel like he would overpower. Kevin's character is supposed to be not as loud on screen.

James Chestnut (21:51)
Yeah,

he's supposed to be, and this isn't a term that I use on the reg, but he's supposed to be kind of more beta. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think Chris Penn would have made it a little too goofy, which is weird to say because Kevin is very goofy already.

Ron (21:58)
Yeah, Xander Schloss is the actor's name, Xander Schloss.

Right. Well, they auto gets fired and I, I'm assuming Kevin also loses his job with what's the guy's name? It runs the market. Mr. Humphries. think it's Mr. Humphries. Yeah. And

James Chestnut (22:18)
⁓ Mr. Humphreys, yeah.

Ron (22:21)
What is the significance with these generically labeled goods? Because the supermarket is full of them. And then throughout the film, we see alcohol, we see the beer, alcohol meaning like hard liquor when they go to the gas station or convenience store, whatever it is, food. What is the significance of that?

James Chestnut (22:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Well, the from a, there's a couple of different ways, a couple of different facets here. The, they were looking for product placement and they couldn't find any. but the supermarket chain out here, Ralph's actually, did help them out and provided them with a lot of these generic labeled things. These were actual products that they had.

in like, you know, in their supermarket stock room. So I think they, I think somewhere in the commentary, they mentioned that the only ones that they had to make were the beer, the food and, the butyl nitrate, which is like the, the stuff that they ended up like sniffing off of the table. Yeah. but other than that, it kind of sounds like Ralph's, grocery store, like hooked them up with all this stuff.

Ron (23:13)
Yeah, it drops it on the table.

James Chestnut (23:21)
Now from a story standpoint, it's, it's kind of wild. from a story standpoint, it kind of confuses me because it's, this is a movie that is commenting on consumer culture, but to have all of your products, so homogenous,

Ron (23:21)
Shout out to Ralphs.

James Chestnut (23:36)
It seems kind of counter to, the brand competition, Coke versus Pepsi. but, and that's something I didn't really start to think about until for a couple of viewings. And it doesn't take me out in the movie at all, or, make me think any different of consumer culture. I think it's, I think that it was just a.

practical thing like this is what we can have and this is what we're going to use. And we're still going to make commentary on consumer culture, but this is what we have as our set dressing and our props.

Ron (24:05)
Yeah, I guess it doesn't

matter. I guess it doesn't matter what you're buying because the money is going out of your pocket anyway. So which company it's going to, it doesn't necessarily matter. So this, the supermarket is a location, I think. And then, do you prefer, I know you've obviously worked on both. Do you prefer being on location or do you like getting up and going to a studio and being on a set?

James Chestnut (24:10)
Mm hmm. Right.

Right.

Yes.

Ron (24:29)
Does

James Chestnut (24:29)
like to mix it up. You end up on shows where it's like you spend, the episode is five days and you spend four days on the stage and then go out for one day on location. you have other movies where you're entirely on location when you're all in the studio, it's kind of a mental game where

you'll go on stage and it's dark when you get on stage in the morning and then you open up the elephant door when you wrap and it's dark again at night. but then, you know, you have all of your infrastructure right there for you. at the stage, when you're on location, you're out in the wild and you have to deal with all the other things, all the other factors out in the wild. But, I don't have a preference. I like to be on things where we mix it up and, and do both because he,

You'll be out on location for like two weeks and then you get back to the stage and it's like, you know, you can breathe a little easier. ⁓

Ron (25:12)
Yeah. Yeah. The state or the

stage and being in a studio, I imagine you can control so much. You can control the lighting. You can control the temperature to a point, I'm sure. But being out.

James Chestnut (25:19)
Yes, it's.

Yeah. Yeah. Much easier to control

that. And the other thing is let's say you're shooting in like a small apartment. If you're doing that on location, the, your, your apartment is what it is. And you have to figure out how to light it in that apartment, how to get your camera angles in that apartment. But when you're shooting that apartment, when you build it on stage, if you want to get a certain angle, you pull the wall and then you can get to that angle. there's no roof so you can light it however you want.

⁓

Ron (25:48)
it seemed like the production of repo man presented its own challenges I caught myself on one of the watches thinking I'm not bored with seeing the different ways that they're shooting vehicles Because there's so many different ways they have a split diopter shot, which I want to ask you about later There's a hood mount where I'm not sure if the cars being towed or not I think that who knows in 85 with Cox at the helm if they were towing the car they were just letting

James Chestnut (26:00)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (26:16)
Sire, which is drive the car. There's tracking shots. There's a stationary camera in the car pulls directly up to it. There's car chases. There's long single like I kind of lost track. I just stopped listing them of all the different ways that they approached filming vehicles are car setups significantly tougher to coordinate than others because you actually have moving vehicles

James Chestnut (26:18)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's a question. Every scenario presents its own difficulties and set of challenges. with car work, I mean, you're looking at like all the things you said, if you're shooting in the car and using a hood mount, that's a piece of grip equipment that's gonna either, impede the view of the driver if they're free driving it, or is going to be sticking out on the side. If you're looking through a window. you have to consider.

the spatial ⁓ awareness of that if you're driving hopefully you have a street that you can control. but you're also going to have a police escort to help you, ⁓ navigate the streets and make sure that, ⁓ traffic is cooperating with you. There's a lot of shots where it was hood mounts. ⁓ there's going be a lot of what

Ron (27:09)
Mm.

James Chestnut (27:18)
is called a process trailer and insert car. And that's when the car is on a trailer and you do have a car towing it. And then, the car's on a big trailer that has room for cameras on the side. can mount cameras in the front. A lot of times you'll know it's a process trailer. You'll see people like doing this with the steering wheel and the car is just going to stick straight. And then they did a lot of other shots where it was car to car.

Ron (27:35)
Right.

James Chestnut (27:40)
There's something that we use called the pursuit vehicle, which is, ⁓ a supercharged SUV with a camera mounted on the top. That's a camera on a crane mounted on the top. And then the camera is going to be on a, a remote head, you have your camera in this head and, ⁓ it moves X, Y, and Z axis and, the camera operators controlling it what's called the wheels. It's like video game, they got it they can move the camera around like that.

That's what we use now. I don't think they had that exact technology in 1983 when they were shooting this But I know they did talk about doing car to car work So whether that's off of the back of another car or off the back of a stake bed or a truck or a pass van whatever it looked like there was some dolly shots with tracking with the cars

You know the shots where you're talking about where there's a fixed camera position and the car will pull up into it a lot of times when we do that you'll set up your shot with the car in its final position and ⁓ You mark the wheels or we'll set up a sandbag where we need the car to stop so that way the driver when they're driving they just Hit the sandbag and they know to stop

Ron (28:40)
I imagine Fox Harris would hit the sandbag or not. He hit the gas station, I think, when he was driving. I imagine that's probably something that's on the filmmakers minds that, damn, we have a lot of shots with vehicles. We need to mix up the way that we shoot this. Is that something that you think is on their mind so it doesn't get stale?

James Chestnut (28:43)
I think from what I understand, he hit the gas station too.

Mm.

It depends on how much car work you have and I think in this movie yet. Definitely you are gonna want to mix it up It's also very time-consuming ⁓ To to change your setup and to change your angle like you're taking your entire Rig off of one side and rigging it on to another side now Hopefully you have multiple of the same car that way you can get a jump on on Whatever your next setup that you're shooting with one car in one setup and then meanwhile

Ron (29:07)
Mm.

James Chestnut (29:27)
everybody's back with the other car rigging it for the next setup and you can just swap the car. I think their Chevy Malibu got stolen. it sounded like they only had one to work with pretty much the entire film. Of course. Yeah, of course it did. Why wouldn't it?

Ron (29:35)
I feel like of course it did. Of course it did. It's like, so when you're putting together,

so in your role, when you're putting together a schedule, do you see car work and think, shit, just because of all, just because of all the different moving parts you have to be aware of, are you to the point now, or it's just like, hey, it's just the job.

James Chestnut (29:46)
Hmm.

It's just a job. I worked on, I'm not going to say what the show was, but we worked on one show where our very first week of shooting was an Uber driver and doing a lot of Uber driving at nighttime. And we finished our week of shooting, and we're in the pass van with the director and the show runner at four in the morning.

Ron (30:03)
Hmm.

James Chestnut (30:13)
on a, on what we call a Friday. That's a Friday that goes into Saturday. And, they were talking to each other and we're just like, damn, like we shouldn't have wrote all that car work.

Ron (30:20)
Some regret yeah, they have no choice when you have a mean you have a movie called repo man I guess you're going to have a lot of car work. I thought they were pretty creative with the way that they Didn't allow it to get stale and they kept it fresh with all the different ways that you could you could film the cars

James Chestnut (30:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. ⁓

Definitely.

And there's a of different cars too, which helps with that.

Ron (30:36)
Yeah, yeah auto gets to drive a car here Because his girlfriend is sleeping with dick rudes character duke He gets up to get her something to drink. Yeah, emilia Estavez. This is the second Emilio Estavez Movie in the in this podcast. So i'm gonna have to reach out to him ⁓ He spends a lot of time in ⁓ his underwear in this movie ⁓ and in breakfast club, he's made fun of for wearing tights being a wrestler, so maybe there's a connection there. I don't know.

James Chestnut (30:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, he does.

Ron (31:02)
So he's kind of walking aimlessly through a neighborhood in LA and Harry Dean Stanton's character, Bud, pulls up to him and kind of tricks him into helping him repo this car. And the old man who's hanging onto the car as, and by the way, Emilio Estevez of his character, his character's name, like is that a little too on the nose? His name's freaking Otto in a movie about cars and being a repo man.

James Chestnut (31:15)
Mm-hmm.

Well, then the then the

what's his name the guy at the at the repo house goes auto auto parts Cool

Ron (31:32)
It's like good one

Yeah, you really got him Yeah, as soon as I heard his name I thought ⁓ no, is this gonna be one of those movies? ⁓ no he's kind of pulled into that not kind of he has pulled into that repo job and Doesn't like the idea of being a repo man. They toss him a beer. He opens it up. He pours it all over the ground This

James Chestnut (31:45)
Mm-hmm.

Well, he loved it. He loved

it until they said explicitly, like, you're reap-o-ma-

Ron (31:56)
Yeah, he didn't mind getting the cash. He didn't mind the excitement of throwing that old man who got hurt in real life, holding onto the car as he drove away.

James Chestnut (31:58)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. But like the immediate

punk counterculture reaction for him was like, fuck you guys.

Ron (32:11)
Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And this entire stretch of the film, it's serving as a major character introduction. So we have this big sequence that we can get introduced to all the characters. Well, not all the characters, Rodriguez brothers are coming soon.

James Chestnut (32:20)
Mm-hmm.

Ron (32:24)
I like Emilio's earring. It's this big cross. And as he's driving, he sees the Mother Mary figurine and grabs it and toss it out the window. Like, what the hell?

James Chestnut (32:32)
Yeah, and rips it and toss it up. I know it's,

it's such a, it's just such a punk moment.

Ron (32:39)
Otto goes home and he asks his parents for money and they're just they're sitting staring straight ahead at this televangelist Who's asking for their money? He said something about like I want your money because God wants your money or something like that

James Chestnut (32:46)
Yeah.

Yeah, he

said, yeah, he said I want your money because God wants your money. He also says something about like, he's decrying liberal humanism as an evil basically. It's I mean, I think that's the part that's most on the nose for today's cultural commentary. I do love that scene because his parents are they're brainwashed robots at that point, but they're like former hippies to.

which I have experienced and some of my own friends have former hippie parents who are now uber conservative. what a crazy journey to go from, flowers and love to, Reagan and televangelists.

Ron (33:26)
Yeah. Do want me to give you the floor to talk about Reagan? you want to, you to piss anybody off today or no? No. So how.

James Chestnut (33:26)
out.

pass. mean, fuck Ronald Reagan.

Fuck him.

Ron (33:37)
So how,

How would you describe Otto's life? criterion does such a great job with a lot of the supplements and the audio commentary. feel like I'm in film school And I always catch something that I write down and Cox said Otto is a blank page.

He never really takes any action, but he's endlessly influenced by events without changing his appearance. He goes from being a punk rocker to a businessman. He could have ended up being a revolutionary or a time machine pilot or anything because he has no personality and everybody laughed. But no, that's, a great explanation of Otto in his life. he has no job, no prospects. He has no direction. His girlfriend's, is sleeping with somebody else.

James Chestnut (34:08)
That's accurate. Yep.

Yeah, had a, no, and it's an interesting conceit and an interesting way to have your protagonist. I had a film school professor back at Penn State and I was in a screenwriting class and she was very adamant that any stories where your protagonist doesn't,

Ron (34:15)
He doesn't really have a lot going for him at this point.

James Chestnut (34:38)
make their own choices is like bad. And the example that she gave, and I think the one that kind of resonates with this movie the most is Forrest Gump, where he's another blank page. he goes from being a football player to a war hero to a ping pong player. He could have been anything.

Ron (34:50)
⁓

James Chestnut (35:01)
So in a way, Otto is Forrest Gump.

Ron (35:03)
That's really interesting because the circumstances in both of those led to what made those characters what they were, I guess. mean, Otto walking around aimlessly, he just happens across Bud who happens to need some help, and it's right place, right time. Or as Harry Dean Stanton would say, it was meant to happen.

James Chestnut (35:11)
Yeah, and it-

right place, right time, or wrong place, wrong time, whatever you want to label it.

It was always supposed to be that way.

Ron (35:26)
Or as Miller would say, it's all coincidence that it all overlaps and essentially it was meant to happen. do you have any sense of where Otto's house is, where Otto is in LA? Because I feel like when I watch a lot of movies that take place in LA, I get some LA landmarks that at least give me a general sense of where I am geographically. I had a really hard time with it watching Repo Man though.

James Chestnut (35:29)
There it is.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah,

yeah, and they're they're shooting mostly in like downtown and East LA San Pedro, which is like down by Long Beach. I think they were implying that his family's house is like in Huntington Beach when he gets off of the bus there it's it just says edge city,

and everybody's getting on to go into the city. And yeah, like when you look at the skyline, don't see any of the, this is before a lot of the iconic LA skyline buildings were built.

Ron (36:13)
the skyline looks small. It doesn't look like a major city when you see the skyline as it's shown in this movie.

James Chestnut (36:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's, I think that's kind of by design, they're in seedier areas of LA, but there's also, they, they show like iconic parts of LA too, the LA river, the car chase with the Rodriguez brothers going through the LA river under six street bridge, a couple of years before that Greece shot their car racing scene in that same area.

Ron (36:31)
Yeah.

James Chestnut (36:38)
Terminator 2, the truck barreling down the LA River underneath the bridge there. So yeah, mean, they kind of mix it up with some iconic LA locations, also stuff that places that I've never been, I've never shot.

Ron (36:50)
By last resort, Otto, I hate to say becomes a repo man. I wrote, he ends up acting as a repo man. I don't know how you become a repo man. During the repo code as Bud is kind of taking Otto under his wing and he's giving him the repo code and the repo, he in ripping, when I first heard the repo code, I thought, this is going to be like a four to five step way to.

James Chestnut (36:56)
Mm-hmm.

and ripping lines of speed.

Ron (37:13)
be a repo man and it's just a line. I shall not cause harm to any vehicle nor the personal contents thereof nor through inaction, let that vehicle or the personal contents thereof come to harm. he's giving this monologue about the repo code and they're doing speed in the car. And then there's another scene thereafter where he has that same level of energy.

but it's not the same location. It could be different days. I'm assuming it's different days that they shot these scenes. Is there a way that someone on set supports the actors in ensuring that that cadence of the dialogue and the speech, the energy that's consistent across days of shooting?

James Chestnut (37:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

yeah, I mean, that's going to be up to the actor mostly, but your director is going to be the one that is, making sure that the performance is in line with their vision. from a crew perspective, you know, we can do everything we can to be consistent and to be efficient,

to provide that set and mind space for the actor and for the director. But ultimately that's an actor-director thing to keep the performance consistent like that over, like you said, who knows, it could have been weeks apart that those two scenes were shot.

Ron (38:22)
because he's kind of ranting a little bit And then we have the coincidence of them going to the convenience store and as they leave, Otto and the other two punks are behind the counter. See, this is where I get mixed up, because I think I'm at the right point of the movie, but there's so many different little things thrown in there that, wait, did that happen? Did that happen later? I think I'm at the right spot though.

James Chestnut (38:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I love that scene. Harry Dean says Bud's trying to hurry up the cashier and he's just like shaking in his boots back there. It's just such a great visual. They pop up out of the counter. That's just good filmmaking right there.

Ron (38:48)
who's being held at gunpoint. Being held at gunpoint and Bud's getting annoyed.

And then we now we're get down to the LA river. Can you explain what the LA river is?

James Chestnut (39:01)
the LA river is a water runway that was constructed. I think there was a major flood in LA in the early 1900s. And there was a ridiculous amount of property damage and citywide destruction. So they built this.

sluice basically to help with water runoff when it rains because the rest of the city, it just didn't have the infrastructure for that in Southern California. So yeah, it's just this big runway that when it rains turns into a river, but otherwise it's just a dry concrete path,

Ron (39:40)
I think my first exposure to that was watching Terminator 2, very, very famous scene. And then we have, I don't know, I guess the third most famous scene in my mind now, because it's a three that I can think of, because you said Grease, we played Terminator, and now we're talking Repo Man. Bud and Otto are just riding around down there, and then the Rodriguez brothers show up.

James Chestnut (39:44)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's like,

I don't know why anybody would ever just be cruising down there. I love it. Yep.

Ron (40:04)
The Rodriguez brothers show up

and There is a car chase where they're up on the embankment of that area. There's water there there I Don't know like drifting I guess in the water

James Chestnut (40:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (40:17)
How long does something like this take to put together and film?

James Chestnut (40:20)
Well, you're gonna have your your prep time which ideally for something like that you have several weeks in advance You know time to prep it because you're talking about stunt rehearsals making sure that you have the vehicles you're gonna want multiples of those vehicles in case anything happens to them

You have to figure out how you're going to shoot it. So you need time with your director and with your DP to sit down and visualize what the shots are going to be. And this is a movie where I feel like they were pretty economical about what they shot. It doesn't seem like a lot was left on the cutting room floor where they shot all kinds of angles and coverage. so you want to be really, ⁓ really prepped and planned from that standpoint. as far as shooting goes, I'm guessing it only took a day.

some car chases, I've been on movies where we'll shoot car chases over multiple days. Um, but I'm this one, I'm pretty certain was all in one day.

Ron (41:12)
And you're pretty involved in that process in the jobs that you've had on set.

James Chestnut (41:13)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

mean, you have meetings on meetings about it. you have to coordinate the stunt rehearsals. if your director and DP aren't able to be there for the summer, or souls, you have to find a way to either record it or, describe it to show them so that they can make tweaks to it. So that when you get there on the day, you're not

Wasting your time figuring out what you're doing. Everything's dialed in and ready to go.

Ron (41:37)
film the stunt so then later you can come back and film the stunt. Essentially.

James Chestnut (41:40)
Yeah, pretty much. mean,

you'll, especially with a lot of fight, like hand to hand fights these days, or like a John Wick style, like gun fu kind of fight. Your stunt coordinator and your fight choreographer are, they're going to record all that and edit it together way beforehand, while you're prepping or while you're rehearsing. That way the director can get it.

and then make the tweaks that they want. that when you're there again, so when you're there on the day, you know what angles you want. You're not wasting film.

Ron (42:09)
So autos really getting into it now because we see him changes clothes Which I love this look I like That's right. I love the look of the white shirt the white plain undershirt and the the blue jacket.

James Chestnut (42:08)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. He's here his earring too. He changes his cross-hearing to a little stud

Ron (42:22)
⁓ I didn't get a chance to put my hair into a mohawk for this recording, unfortunately.

James Chestnut (42:26)
When we do reshoots, you can.

Ron (42:28)
that's perfect. That's perfect. We can edit and post as they say.

James Chestnut (42:31)
Ha ha.

Ron (42:32)
So Otto repossesses an expensive car and there's so many random moments. It's unbelievable. The guy who's bitching at these two young kids in the laundromat, it's set up in a way that this is supposed to be a player here. Like this is supposed to be an important player in our movie, but you never see him again. He's nothing to us. The two kids throw the laundry basket out. So Otto picks up Layla and she shares a, this is where,

James Chestnut (42:44)
Mm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Ron (43:01)
Okay, now we're back in sci-fi. So we went from, open with sci-fi, we've had nothing with sci-fi so far. We have the punk scene, we have the disillusionment of living in LA in the 80s, this American disillusionment. And now Layla is showing Otto pictures of four dead aliens, which are.

James Chestnut (43:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and

the movie manages to hold your attention the whole time in between then too.

Ron (43:23)
Right. you don't get bored. Even though you have no idea what the hell is going on on third, fourth watch. You really don't know what's happening. She shows him pictures of dead aliens, which the picture is condoms filled with water with hula skirts. That's what the actual picture is, he drops her off at a place called the United Fruitcake Outlet. UFO. Good Lord.

James Chestnut (43:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

love it. It's incredible.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ron (43:47)
So the movie feels like it's being deliberately disorienting because motivations overlap, scenes are loosely connected and your job is your job, like your real big boy job, relies on clarity and coordination. So how does it feel watching this with all of your experience and you're watching something that seems to be so disorienting and lacking clarity?

James Chestnut (43:51)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I For a long time Especially when I was in like when I was in film school, I would and when I was first starting out in the industry I would watch things with the lens of being a filmmaker I Don't really do that anymore. I just enjoy the films for what they are And with this one, you know you you talk about a lack of

clarity or kind of narrative purpose. But our job, you my job is an AD, the prop master, the cameraman, anybody who's on that film, it's not really your job to question that. if the director has a vision, if the showrunner has a vision, you just shut up and shoot. I do my best to bring everything together and coordinate everything.

And then, you just trust that it will all come together and post. Sometimes you're on something and you know, it's going to be shit.

Ron (45:06)
That was my next question.

Do you feel it? Do you feel when there's something that just something's just not right?

James Chestnut (45:12)
sometimes you do. You know that it's not going to be good. And a lot of times, morale can suffer for that. as a first AD, I try my best to keep morale high and to keep everybody focused. Just keep your head down and do the job. But yeah, mean, totally you notice when something's

off, but conversely, you know, a lot of times when you're on something good and you can feel it and, um, you know, and sometimes those good things can kind of be shit shows and can kind of be disorienting. you don't really know how the final product is going to turn out, but you can also feel that there's something magical happening at the same time. And it from, it kind of feels like this is in that this movie is in that camp

they weren't sure what the ending was going to be until halfway through filming it, but one of the DVD features said that they watched the first They had their first daily screening back in the day you would shoot your film and then it would go overnight for processing and then The next day you would watch it on a screen

And when they had their first daily screening, it was like, ⁓ okay. All right.

Ron (46:13)
It seemed like everybody was enjoying themselves. When you listen to their, I think there's like four or five people on the director's commentary and it seems like everybody's really, one seemed to be enjoying it together, watching it back. There's a lot of laughter, a lot of memories shared. So you can tell that they were having a good time.

James Chestnut (46:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Well, and it's easier to...

Yeah, but it's also easier to appreciate it when your movie is a classic, is now considered a classic and you have a criterion release, you know? It's like... But yeah.

Ron (46:35)
Solid point. Yeah. Solid point.

So the reveal of the aliens in the trunk that's treated without a lot of emphasis. I missed it on the first watch. Completely missed it because it's essentially one line that the, that the, yeah, the aliens are in the trunk of the Malibu. I finished my first watch not knowing what was in the trunk of the Malibu. So imagine my disorientation of what the hell is going on. So why not treat this?

James Chestnut (46:46)
Mm.

That's kind of a throwaway.

Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Ron (47:02)
has a bigger reveal. Instead, it's just treated so casually.

James Chestnut (47:06)
Yeah, I think that kind of just has to do with the punk aesthetic and just the overall punk, like, don't give a fuck kind of vibe. I just also think that's kind of what this movie is. I think Cox said that it was never supposed, it was never a movie about this or about that.

It is very casual about the alien reveal, that's maybe because they didn't want to lean too hard into being a sci-fi movie. also maybe because they didn't really have an ending at that point.

Ron (47:35)
Yeah, guess if it was a, I guess if it's a big, big reveal, there's going to be big reactions to the reveal. So if you give a casual line, there's no need for a big reaction that you have to go back and.

James Chestnut (47:35)
Because I think initially.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think in some iterations of the script, the ending was supposed to be like, you know, it was a thermonuclear bomb in the trunk. And then the bomb goes off and LA disintegrates in a mushroom cloud. You know, the neutron bomb. Yeah. So I don't think, I think part of the casualness of the alien reveal is just due to the nature of them at the time not having

Ron (47:56)
god. The neutron bomb.

James Chestnut (48:09)
the full story or not having a proper ending.

Ron (48:13)
Auto learns from light played by Cy Richardson who is awesome. He's so good in this I love those scenes where they're He they're repowing a car together and that that shot it's I think it's a single where they come the whole way around and Amelia rolls the window down and now we get the shot through the window and and and then the old the first cut is when he opens the suitcase So so I love that scene and then Tracy Walter he plays Miller

James Chestnut (48:17)
What then?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ron (48:38)
And I'm watching thinking, God, I know him from somewhere. Where the hell do I know Tracy Walter from? He was Bob and Batman in 89. That's, that's where I know him from Bob. And he gives this monologue that it's about the lattice of coincidence. And we've touched on it already briefly. Is this the monologue that explains the film? mean, what Miller says ends up being true about a time machine.

James Chestnut (48:44)
⁓ yeah, yep.

I don't know that anything explains this film. ⁓ Like truly.

Ron (49:04)
I keep trying

like everything I have is like can someone help me understand, you know

James Chestnut (49:09)
Well, again,

I think that's kind of the point is that it's punk and it's counterculture and it defies being boxed in. But I do think the lattice of coincidence is really important. It's really important and is part of the big... Because what does he say? says, Miller says, people get so hung up on specifics that they miss the whole thing.

Ron (49:30)
That's me. That's me right now. It's happening to me.

James Chestnut (49:30)
right. Exactly.

but I, I, I love the lattice of coincidence. I feel like it kind of aligns with my personal philosophy. ⁓ I don't know. Have you ever seen I heart Huckabee's?

Ron (49:45)
No.

James Chestnut (49:45)
Check out I Hard Rock Abuse. It's one of my favorite movies and that movie deals with a very similar philosophical conceit. There's a scene where Dustin Hoffman is explaining to Jason Schwartzman's character basically the last coincidence and he takes this sheet and he's like, okay, this sheet is everything. It's like, you here's you, here's me.

Here's a plate of shrimp. He doesn't say a plate of shrimp, but basically it's like this sheet is everything. all connected in this. Again, this is Miller's line, this cosmic unconsciousness. And again, for me personally, that's like such a like, yep. That's what we are. That's what this is. But the way he describes it is so...

First of all, it's such a great scene. It's such a great shot. it's only two shots. It's the two shot of them close with the barrel of fire and the smoke and then cut out wide and to see the bridge, they're standing under the bridge and it's, ⁓ it's so beautifully constructed and when their conversation kind of really lends in, especially to that wider shot where it's just, it's just kind of everything. I also do love the plate of shrimp. You see the plate of shrimp sign later.

when the Rodriguez brothers stopped their car at that restaurant, he goes in the phone booth and just played a shrimp. But yeah, I mean, did, and I think what happened was they, as they were kind of searching for an ending, they kind of realized that Miller's character was a little more important, a little less of a throwaway character.

Ron (50:52)
Yeah

love it.

James Chestnut (51:11)
I can't remember if was the studio head or the producer, the executive producer, told them that they needed to figure out another ending. And Alex Cox, think, one of his co-producers came up to him and relayed that news while they were shooting and Cox was like, I'm too busy to figure that out. You figure that out. So one of the other producers kind of came up with that ending.

But I think it really ties the movie together so well in a way that a neutron bomb exploding the city wouldn't have.

Ron (51:40)
Yeah, that would be a bit of a different ending. Maybe give the movie some different meaning, I guess. But I'm on my constant search for meaning, like taking something so literally, like the more you drive, the less intelligent you are. So now I spend every other watch looking for who drives the most because that, my mind, will be the dumbest character. That's like, I don't know.

James Chestnut (51:45)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah, and then

and then ⁓ Otto says that to Miller after he gets in the car at the end and Miller just kind of shrugs his shoulders.

Ron (52:06)
Well, he's, yeah, I thought at the end Miller was going to scooch out of the way and let somebody else drive because Miller can't drive, right? Didn't we learn that?

James Chestnut (52:06)
You

Mm.

Yeah, but he's behind the wheel of the time machine.

Ron (52:17)
we, we have a dollar amount come in now for the repo men in LA, 20 grand for a Malibu. So now the film finally to my lizard brain now has focus on this film of we're all going to be looking for the Malibu, which of course, J. Frank Parnell seems to be continually driving around aimlessly. And now we have paradigm Stanton.

James Chestnut (52:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (52:41)
in a split diopter shot with Cy Richardson. What is that? How is that accomplished? for those that are not as privy to this, guess, it's two things in focus, but they are different distances apart.

James Chestnut (52:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, mean, basically you have your lens, and each lens has a different focal length, depends on the lens itself, depends on what the aperture is, which is the amount of light that you let into the camera. traditionally you're shooting with a regular lens, be it a 50, 85, whatever the, whatever the lens is. And you only have a certain.

distance of focal length. And a lot of times it can be incredibly, incredibly narrow, the longer the lens, the shorter the focal length. And, sometimes you want a shot where you can have two elements that are a different distance apart, both be in focus. one example would be Jaws. he's sitting on the beach. I think the mayor is talking to him or something, but something's happening in the water.

beyond him. that's kind of a representation of the Roy Scheider character having a split focus at that point. He's trying to focus on what the mayor is saying, but also knows that something is amiss at that beach and sees something happening in the background. Another example, Pulp Fiction, when Butch is like hiding behind a wall and you have Marcellus coming down an alley towards him. Again, it's just to have both of these things in focus.

Ron (53:54)
Mm-hmm.

James Chestnut (53:58)
Lot of times we use diopters in macro shots when we need to be really close up to something you get so close with your lens But it's out of the focal length so you add a diopter to get it into that focus And a split diopter is going to be that but with

either a divide down the middle or however they make it, but there's a divide in the focal length So when you watch that scene in Repo Man and you see light, sitting there smoking the roach. And then whenever he puts his hand down, you can see his hand is way out of focus, but it's right underneath where Harry Dean Stanton is in the background. You would want to use that again, like I said, when

Ron (54:21)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓

James Chestnut (54:30)
the tone of the scene calls for it, like in Jaws. This one, I don't know exactly what the motivations were, but it didn't really seem like story-wise it needed to be like that. from an economic filming standpoint, if you're on a very low budget and you have very little time, that whole scene was two shots. There's one that looks at the back of the cars. Then you come to the front with both of them in focus and you have the whole conversation there and then you're out.

Ron (54:55)
Yeah, was just yet another, way to shoot two guys talking in cars in this respect. They're in separate cars with the camera. Look like it was behind the steering wheel and we're shooting between like in the gap of the steering wheel. Yeah, we could nerd out on that stuff.

James Chestnut (54:55)
That's two slots.

It's a great shot.

the motivation, again, the motivation, who knows what the motivation, I know what I think the motivation was, but whatever the motivation was, it worked out and it looked great.

Ron (55:19)
It looked awesome. we're all looking for the Malibu and the Rodriguez brothers are the first to find it. They take it from the gas station.

James Chestnut (55:25)
Mm-hmm.

Ron (55:26)
All that we get Kevin. Yeah, we get Kevin's I got you guys, you know vacuum gentlemen, how am I? He's like, hi, my name's Kevin. It's like a dork the Rodriguez brothers then stop for soda because the car is so hot They're they they jump in the car and it's just way too hot in there So they stopped to get something to drink and while they're up Yes, well well done while they're out of the car the punk trio led by Duke

James Chestnut (55:43)
literally and metaphorically hot.

Ron (55:50)
They steal the car because they are on a major crime spree. They're robbing convenience stores. They're stealing cars. This there's a scene very soon after this where auto repossesses an old woman's car. When auto goes to repo this woman's car.

when he comes out of the house, the wheels are all clearly on the ground. When he goes to leave, there's a wheel off the ground and he can't drive away. Then there's a shot directly after that where he's trying to get away. after the filmmaker has established there's a wheel off the ground, there's another shot right after that where you can clearly see all four wheels are on the ground.

Is continuity something that you are constantly discussing

James Chestnut (56:26)
No, mean, the continuity is definitely a thing that's in constant discussion.

Ron (56:30)
because it goes beyond the wheels being on or off the ground. You were talking earlier about hair, makeup. I mean, even sweat has to be something on your mind.

James Chestnut (56:36)
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh, 100%.

I mean, my wife is a hairstylist. with hair and makeup that you, got to, do you have a whole book of continuity? once you establish a look in the scene, you gotta take photos and, um, notes and just mark out things where a, in case you're coming back for reshoots, but

because we're shooting things over several weeks several months and These two scenes that happen concurrently on the same day in the script aren't happening concurrently in the same day in real life and so everybody on the set has to think about continuity, but you have your script supervisor who is Basically your person who's with the script

⁓ making sure that all the words that are in the script are being read. If that's what the director wants, keeping those, keeping those detailed notes of okay, so this last take auto and Bud were driving and, ⁓ blood had his arm out the window, you know, and then the next take he, didn't have his arm out the window and that your script is going to be like, the last two takes you had your arm out the window,

While continuity is important.

you'd rather the vibe of the film and the vibe of the scene be right and be what it needs to be rather than worry about, know, I don't care if we cut if we're driving and his arms out the window and then his arms back in the window. If the take is better where his arms in the window, that's what I'm going to use, but there are glaring ones like that one. which again, I think my, I think might've been because of

the DP not wanting to shoot inserts, because that's an insert. That's an insert shot when it goes to the wheel off of the ground. So I'm guessing that they filmed the scene. He's in the car and then gets his ass kicked. And then when they're cutting it together, they're like, oh shit, wait a minute. Maybe no one will notice.

Ron (58:17)
Hey, maybe no one will notice.

Otto's repoing a car and he's with light who's, besides Kevin lights, maybe my favorite character in this movie. And there's a repo gunfight where he's shooting. We find out later he's actually shooting blanks back at the person in the house. CIA now takes Layla. If you're just hearing, if I cut together myself reading through the sequence of the film, you might think that like I maybe didn't watch it. Just seems so random. CIA takes Layla.

James Chestnut (58:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (58:45)
Then there's the infamous John Wayne conversation. And this is followed by sending the helping hands group to Mr. Humphrey's house. Alex Cox said someone he knew told him the story about John Wayne and he actually did install two way mirrors at John Wayne's house.

James Chestnut (58:56)
Yeah, that was a first-hand

story from somebody that Alex Cox knew who claimed to have ⁓ actually installed the two-way mirrors in John Wayne's house.

Ron (59:02)
That's insane.

Who, you were

an alien, since we're talking about aliens, and someone said, show me a picture of what Americans would represent masculinity, a photo of John Wayne may be near the top of your list.

James Chestnut (59:22)
Yeah, and you know, John Wayne's another,

controversial figure. Yeah, like you said, somebody who represents rough and tumble American ideals and he's constantly portrayed as a military man and a rough rider and he never, he never served was arguably a draft Dodger. and they're accusing him of being a homosexual. Just, I mean, it's just an amazing scene. It's just an amazing scene.

Ron (59:43)
Well, yeah, because he just

comes out with it. he just says it randomly.

James Chestnut (59:47)
And they all get so

offended at first, then, what's guys like, what's wrong with watching two of your friends have sex with each other? It's just amazing.

Ron (59:54)
You're right.

that sequence of Otto getting beat up, the John Wayne conversation, going to Humphrey's house, which by the way, when he opens the door, if you look in the background, Kevin's there. What the hell's Kevin doing there? I wonder. And it felt like that was only there to serve to the amusement of the filmmakers. But is there value to sequences like this that don't seem to do anything narratively, but might reinforce the vibe, the attitude that the film's going for?

James Chestnut (1:00:21)
Yeah, I mean, think that's exactly what it is. It's the vibe. again, in a movie that's, not the most focused on the narrative, those vibes, those kind of scenes do perfect for setting up the vibe of the film. mean, the John Wayne scene is hilarious. And what's it like being like, fuck John Wayne.

Tell us his name, you little pussy. And then go straight to them, going to attack Mr. Humphrey's is just unhinged and wild, but it absolutely adds to the vibe of that film. And I feel like I would really miss that John Wayne scene now if it wasn't in there.

Ron (1:00:43)
Yeah

That's so funny.

Yeah, obviously prepping for this, you watch the movie multiple times and soon as I started the second watch, I was looking forward to it just because it's so outrageous. You really get a sense that these people are having fun making this movie. They're really leaning into the ideas and the attitudes that the film is going for at this point.

a punk is vaporized because Parnell finds the Malibu and Duke and his crew.

Come out to find Parnell trying to get back into the car This is after Otto's being questioned by Leila and the CIA and the circle jerks are performing at the club So we see them for the first time everything's really finally converging on the Malibu and Yeah, yeah and Otto spots the Malibu later and and we get the same special effects that we did in the beginning of the film with this Punk being vaporized and this is where we get

James Chestnut (1:01:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's like a rat race to get through the mouth though.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (1:01:47)
two other very famous lines, let's go do those crimes. Let's go get sushi and not pay. I started to write down quotes. I told you had a list of all these quotes. I had to stop. I had to stop. There's too many. Laugh away, fuck face. Yeah, that's so stupid.

James Chestnut (1:01:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, there's too many. There's too many. It's endlessly quotable.

love when they

get back to the repo shop the first time and Otto's like, what about your wife? And Bud's like, oh shit. And he's like, you know what? She'll take the bus. She's a rock.

Ron (1:02:10)
Ha

She's a rock. Yes. So there's so many good ones that it's just, I started to write them down and thought this is just the life of a repo man's always intense. You could just go on and on and on. There's very, you don't get a five minute stretch without something that you could write down as being quotable.

James Chestnut (1:02:15)
It kills me every time.

But yeah, it's amazing.

100%.

Ron (1:02:28)
So Parnell takes the Malibu. I don't really know where Parnell is going. If he's driving from Roswell, I don't know where he's going. You would think he would have been there by now, because he's been driving around LA for days.

James Chestnut (1:02:34)
Yeah, that's...

Yeah, unclear.

I think, you know, I think, cause he says he was lobotomized. think he's just a, a crazy alien scientist with half a brain who's, who's driving around with some aliens in the trunk who are vaporizing the rest of his brain.

Ron (1:02:52)
Are we to think, so when Parnell dies, are we supposed to think that he died because of complications from this lobotomy or is it something from in the car that's causing his decay? I wasn't sure where.

James Chestnut (1:03:04)
My assumption was

a little bit of both. know, driving for days upon days with aliens radiating who knows what into the car. But yeah, also because of the lobotomy and also when was the last time he ate or hydrated or did anything other than drive.

Ron (1:03:23)
Otto then takes Parnell out of the car and just puts him on a bench on the street. Okay. Yeah. We've just dispose of dead bodies and the side of streets of LA

James Chestnut (1:03:27)
Yeah.

He dumps his body on the bench, casually.

come back later and just like... burn him just so light his ass on fire. Yeah. Yup.

Ron (1:03:38)
So yeah, yeah. And Jimmy Buffett makes an appearance in the background taking photos

of the body that's on fire. Which is just crazy. Bud is fired and he later breaks back into, well, we don't know it's him breaking back into helping hands and steal the Malibu. We just see a shot of someone breaking the lock to get in there. And he's in a different vehicle.

James Chestnut (1:03:47)
Yep.

threat.

Ron (1:04:01)
And he picks up auto, leads to a convenience store shootout.

James Chestnut (1:04:04)
Mm-hmm.

Ron (1:04:05)
Then we get more gunfire and crazy sequences. Like the movie's starting to feel like an action film. Did you feel that shift as we're kind of hurtling towards the end here? Did you feel that shift of almost felt like an action film?

James Chestnut (1:04:16)
Yeah, well, I don't know about, not an all out action film. felt, I did feel like the pace picks up and there's more action, there's more action elements. But I never felt like it truly leaned into being an action film. But yeah, I do like that, the quickening of the pace there and how it all kind of crescendos into this climax.

Ron (1:04:37)
I was able to follow pretty easily and then things they jump around so much in different locations that I had to really pause and make sure I had at least the sequence right of the order of events. I don't want to mess up anything in this movie. I think this has a cult following. I don't want to upset anybody. Uh, but is wounded in this shootout security guard who was originally resolved in the supermarket. He dies. Convenience store worker. He dies. Duke is killed and we get another very famous line. He says, you're

James Chestnut (1:04:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (1:05:05)
a white suburban punk like me. What's he say? says, it doesn't, it still hurts. it still hurts. And there's another action sequence at helping hands where, that's killing me. I can't remember the female character's name that works there. Otto is taken by this Marlene, Marlene.

James Chestnut (1:05:07)
Mm-hmm. It goes, but it's still, but it still hurts or something.

Amazing.

Marla,

Ron (1:05:27)
She's there. She's kind of playing both sides. She's with the Rodriguez brothers and she's also working with helping hands and auto is taken by the CIA and then he's rescued by her and the Rodriguez brothers from the CIA torturing and there's more gunfire. They go to hospital to find bud and we get one of your favorite lines, with the poor lady on the crutches. She goes to take the elevator out of order, take the stairs. There's more gunfire and then

James Chestnut (1:05:31)
Yeah.

and the Rodriguez Brothers.

You go elevators down, take the stairs. Out of order.

Ron (1:05:53)
the CIA seems to think that Otto knows where the Malibu is, which makes sense because he did take it. But Bud has it. Bud has the Malibu and he's at helping hands. And the pacing really did really, really picked up here. Is this something that you feel in production when you're recording these sequences that you can feel a change in how things are moving or you can't really tell it's all happening in the edit?

James Chestnut (1:05:58)
you

I think with that, it's more happening in the edit. You'll feel, you'll feel the pace pickup, but like from a real world, like, we're way behind schedule kind of deal. but not, it's, it's not like you feel, you don't feel the pace of the script so much as the pace of the schedule.

Ron (1:06:31)
Yeah, yeah, I guess that makes sense.

So everyone is now converged on helping hands. We have all our characters except for almost everyone we've met except for like Otto's parents and anyone that has since perished at this point. ⁓

James Chestnut (1:06:43)
Yeah, I think

the Rodriguez brothers and Marlene are gone at this point.

Ron (1:06:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even the televangelist shows back up and the Bible catches on fire. ⁓ Everyone is at helping hands and Bud is sitting in this glowing green Malibu, which looks very low tech

James Chestnut (1:06:50)
Yeah.

You

that's just practical effects. They painted the entire car with like a reflective, like, know, whatever you would paint on like a high-viz. Like, you know, if you're wearing like a high-viz vest and it has the strips of reflective material, they basically painted the entire car like that and just shined a lot of lights at it. I tell you, they did the lightsaber effects in the early Star Wars too. They just had reflective material on a stick for the lightsabers.

Ron (1:07:12)
Yeah.

think more should go back to that. know Nolan does a lot with practical, does almost everything practical.

James Chestnut (1:07:28)
shine a bunch of light on it.

Mm-hmm.

Ron (1:07:33)
the CIA arrives and Bud gets out of the car, starts yelling at the helicopter and they shoot him. I presume he dies. I mean, he has gunshot wounds all over his body.

James Chestnut (1:07:38)
Mm-hmm. was still,

yeah, I he was still riding around when the car ticks off. He has another great quote there, he goes, I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Ron (1:07:49)
Yeah, yeah, that's another good one. That's I think I was already at the point where I stopped writing them down but if I was still writing them down that would have been added and No one can get to the vehicle people are approaching the vehicle and there's almost like Lightning or something. There's electric stuff coming out coming at zapping them Yeah, but Miller is able to puncture that aura because he walks slowly right into the vehicle and gets in the driver's seat

James Chestnut (1:07:54)
Yeah, it was amazing.

Yeah, like a protective aura.

Yeah.

Ron (1:08:17)
And is it Otto that yells to him and says, you can't even drive. And that's when Miller gives him the come here signal. And, then my favorite line of the movie, when the Layla says, what about our relationship? says, what? So what about our relationship? And he says, fuck that. And then he gets in the car and the movie ends with the car lifting off the ground, ascending into the air and zipping through.

James Chestnut (1:08:21)
Mm-hmm.

And he's like, they come hither.

This is last effect

Mm-hmm.

Ron (1:08:44)
LA.

James Chestnut (1:08:45)
probably also zipping through time and space.

Ron (1:08:46)
Alex Cox does say that this is a time machine and Bob, I my gosh, I wrote Bob in my notes. Miller, Bob is his character's name in Batman. I wrote Bob. Bob from Batman was right the whole time. Does knowing this help clarify the ending to you at all? did you already answer this question by saying, Ron, relax, you don't need answers. Just enjoy the vibes.

James Chestnut (1:08:50)
Mm-hmm.

Basically that yeah, yeah, I don't I don't think the ending really clarifies anything it does It does lean into what Miller was talking about with the lattice of coincidence But again, and I don't think this is a movie that was ever seeking a clear ending or you know satisfactory ending but Yeah, I think

once again just lends to the vibe of the entire film. And then the credits roll in reverse.

Ron (1:09:43)
of course we have to do something different. You know, we have to be.

James Chestnut (1:09:43)
But that was just another thing where it's like, yeah, it just leans into that

punk vibe. Everything is counterculture and we're going to roll our credits in the opposite direction.

Ron (1:09:52)
So as we close every episode, the guest gets the chance to give their answer to why this film. So why Repo Man? Why does it deserve its place in the Criterion Collection?

James Chestnut (1:10:00)
I think I think it would help to read the criterion mission statement.

The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of the film. So I think why this film is in the Criterion Collection, there's nothing like it. It's such a unique one of one film. And

despite how fragmented it is and you keep searching for the meaning in the specifics, but the whole picture, the whole thing is just such a vibe, a, it's charming, it's hypnotic, and it's a legit cult classic. So why this film is, because it's fucking awesome.

I would chalk it up to the lattice of coincidence of why this film, the lattice of coincidence.

Ron (1:10:49)
You know, I decided to do this podcast and then we met each other and look at us now. Glad us a coincidence.

James Chestnut (1:10:53)
that have a look at us now.

You want to hear another good lattice of coincidence? the first ad on this movie, Betsy McGruder, I worked with when I was a PA on hail Caesar. So she, you know, she did this movie and then later became the Cohen brothers first ad. And then I met her when I, uh, did hail Caesar.

Ron (1:11:12)
Maybe she'll listen to the episode.

James Chestnut (1:11:14)
I'm banking on it.

Ron (1:11:15)
Well, thanks again for coming on and hanging out and talking about repo man Welcome to come back and talk about something else you have in your collection over there anytime

James Chestnut (1:11:22)
Thanks for having me and would love to make a return visit.

Ron (1:11:23)
Thank you again to James Chestnut for taking the time to speak with me about Repo Man. You can also check out James's new YouTube channel, Another Man's Trash, where he documents cleaning up neighborhoods in LA one block at a time. A link is in the episode description. You can follow the podcast on Instagram for updates. And if you'd like to support the show directly, my Patreon is linked below. Next time, I'll be joined by Jesse Thorne to discuss Pee-wee's big adventure. Thanks again for listening. Be sure to follow, share, and keep an eye out for the next episode.