What a weekend is the theme this week. The guys raise a glass to Billy Wilder's "The Lost Weekend" for its mostly accurate but sometimes cartoonish portrayal of alcoholism. Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" caused some disagreement but not about Anne Hathaway's crazy hotness. Was it the movie or the characters that one of us disliked?
Up next, Psychopaths with White Heat (1949) and Ichi the Killer (2001)
Have your own recommendations? Contact the show:
24theroadshow@gmail.com
What a weekend is the theme this week. The guys raise a glass to Billy Wilder's "The Lost Weekend" for its mostly accurate but sometimes cartoonish portrayal of alcoholism. Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" caused some disagreement but not about Anne Hathaway's crazy hotness. Was it the movie or the characters that one of us disliked?
Up next, Psychopaths with White Heat (1949) and Ichi the Killer (2001)
Have your own recommendations? Contact the show:
24theroadshow@gmail.com
1, 1, 2 Welcome to Tooth for the Road, Movies with Matt and Adam. I'm Matt. And I'm Adam. We are a movie pairing podcast. Every week we'll pick a theme, recommend a movie to the other guy he has not seen. Based on that theme, watch and discuss. And we have a 25 year age difference, so we come with a different set of movies. And the theme this week is, What a weekend. What a weekend. Yeah. Yeah. What a weekend. Yeah. And we're not doing a weekend at Bernie's. And we're not doing a weekend at Bernie's. Despite my protests, we are not doing a weekend at Bernie's. You wanted to do a weekend at Bernie's too. Well, it's the lesser known of the Bernie franchise. It involves voodoo, Matt. I hope there wasn't. And you refused to watch it. No. I mean, I would, but. I know you would, but. No, I feel like the next week I'd be in for something. Yeah. Like, what other animal can own what sports team? Yeah. All right, so yeah, a couple weekend movies. I would say both are a little dark. Yep, yep. Yeah, the first one was, gotta get my mind, The Lost Weekend with Ray Milan. So I thought this movie... Billy Wilder, director and writer. I don't think he... did he write it? Or direct it? Did he do both? He was one of the writers. Yeah, he was one of the writers. He's like third billing in the writers. Yeah, so I didn't really know about this movie. I had heard of it. And I was like, oh, Ray Milan, he's an alcoholic. It's gonna be a fun romp. Yeah. No. Yeah, kind of the opposite. Yeah, Billy Wilder is so great, though. You can tell. I mean, the story, it could have gone a lot of different ways. But yeah, it was dark. And it was done extremely well, I think. So, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I enjoyed it too. I like that it... It was a little cartoonish at times, how it portrayed alcoholism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've never been around a drunk like this guy. I've been around drunks. But not so... I don't know what the right word is. Desperately pleading for a drink in the New York sun or wherever they are. But the other ways that it was portraying alcoholism, I thought was pretty on point. Like which? Like, so, you see all these movies like... Your favorite alcoholic movie, right? We got like Barfly. Yeah. That's a real big one for us. He's just miserable the whole time. You got Leaving Las Vegas. Right, miserable. Literally trying to kill himself, right? This one, even when this guy first gets to the bar, when he first finds his money, he's telling the bartender, he's like, you don't understand, this is fun. When you have a drink, you feel like you're Shakespeare. He goes on this long rant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He can see the book in his mind as soon as he has the drink. Right, which is like, yeah, if it was all just misery, no one would do it. There's that initial hook that you feel good. It just doesn't last the whole weekend. Yeah, I love it when he was in the bar talking to Nat, the bartender. He's going all over the place. He's telling stories. He's telling the book, you know, and that. He just seems so happy. He's in his element. Well, I kind of like, I love bars. I love drinking. I have a drink in my hand right now. I mean, that's one of my favorite places. I mean, you know, and I don't go out much anymore. Mostly breweries is my bars. But Gloria and I did a little bar hopping down in Massachusetts last weekend. A little bar hopping down in old Massachusetts, huh? Yeah, it was fun. She was all for it, and she's not that kind of person. I mean, we only had three drinks. You were literally hopping, right? Yeah, we were hopping. One drink, leave, one drink, leave. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you bump into any old bar flies? Were you drinking during the day? Yes. That's my favorite time. Drinking at night, what a waste. Especially in a bar. Yeah. Daytime bar drinking is a blast. Daytime drinking in general is just superior because you walk around like no one knows. No one suspects, but they probably suspect. Depends on what condition you're in. Right. So any stories from your bar hopping adventure? No, no, we just found a great brewery, you know, and had a beer. Oh, wait a minute, we did have an extra drink because we had a cocktail, too. Okay. So it was good. It was great food, too, down in Northampton, Mass. You don't get a lot of miserable drunks at breweries. No, that's not a miserable place. The local bar is a great place to find miserable people, you know, the local tavern, especially in the 2 o'clock in the afternoon or something. Or even earlier. Yeah, Titusville, Florida, you go to the Gold Line at 2 o'clock in the afternoon? Yeah, we had to drift in two locations. Oh, you want to go to the good one or the not so good one? There was one that was worse than the other. Yeah, in my hometown we had two Denny's, and it's like, you want to go to that one or you want to go to the good one? We'll go to the good one. Anyway, this movie. Okay. So we open up, and you mentioned Ray Molin's character, I forget his name. Don Burnham. Don, yeah, that's right. Boynum. Mr. Boynum. Mr. Boynum. Yeah, so Mr. Boynum and his brother Wick. What the hell is Wick? I looked up, like, what is the name Wick short for, and I couldn't find a good explanation. It comes from, like, old British English or something. I'm like, what the? In the 40s there was a lot of those kind of names. A lot of Wicks? Yeah, not Licks, but those kind of names were like, what? Maybe it was an old name. Maybe there was a lot of people around at the time named Wick. I don't know. I've never heard of anybody. Me neither. But it also made me think that he was rich. I don't know why. I was like, oh, it must be a rich name. So you mentioned he was, like, happy in the bar. The movie starts, and he's, like, packing, and he's smoking, and he's miserable, and his brother's, like, making him go out to the country. For the weekend. Because he had an incident or something a few weeks before that, or several incidents. Yeah. So apparently he went on a bender. He went on a bender. It's kind of alluded to, but that's another good thing about this movie. It kind of slowly unfolds. You're like, why the hell is Wick taking care of this guy? He's taking him out. Like, what do these guys work? What do these gentlemen do for money? And then this woman comes in, and you're like, okay, are they married? Is it his girlfriend? We don't know if he's with Wick or she's with Wick or a sister or whatever. My favorite part of that scene was the opening shot when you see a bottle of booze tied to the window and hanging out the window. That was cool. That's clever. Yeah. Well, you know who did that? That was in another movie we saw. Some guy. I forget the movie. You might know. It was definitely an older one. Oh, the one on the ______. The Asphalt Jungle, I think it was. It was like the incident on the train or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pick Up on South Street. Pick Up on South Street. Yeah, yeah. I was close, right? But it started on a train. Yeah, yeah. Pick Up on South Street where he had his six-pack hanging out in the water to keep him cold. Yeah. They were smart back then. Yeah. They were resourceful. Right. So you see the bottle. You're like, what's going on? You see him packing. And you're just slowly kind of putting it together, right, just based on their dialogue. No one's finger-wagging like, you drank too much, Mr. Boynum. Yeah, yeah. So we kind of get a sense that they're babysitting this guy for some reason. This woman's concerned about him. Yeah. She's with him, but we don't know what their relationship is. Well, she kisses him, but it's kind of a weird, makes him bend down because he's so tall. Yeah. Well, you kind of get that gets their thing, right? Yeah, they are a thing, but we don't know how far a thing. So then the weekend plans kind of fall through. They go to his wick and his girl, his best dame. They go off to the show. Well, because she's going alone. She's going to the whatever, the theater or something. Just say the theater, man. Yeah, yeah, or opera or something by herself in the middle of the afternoon. I don't know why. It just didn't make sense. And he, Don, he doesn't, he says she shouldn't go alone. Wick, you should go with her and that kind of thing. He's just trying to get rid of them. And he says, well, we'll take the 6.30 train. We can do that. Yeah, because they already weren't going to make their train, right? Right. Like, you know, whatever wicks, good parts are like time management, probably not strength. Right. Wick. So they get out of the house. He's alone looking for money. Can't find anything. Can't find booze because he that he hid because Wick threw it out, threw it all out. Wick had already caught him with the bottle out the window. Got rid of that. And then a clean lady comes by. It's her time to get paid. Ten bucks. Ten bucks. That's a lot of money. I think I looked up. I think it was like $187 in the year this movie came out. So he's like, oh, sorry, but he must have forgot it. So now he's got. He says where we left it. In the sugar bowl. In the sugar bowl. He's got ten bucks. That's it. That's all he needs. Smartly heads down, gets two bottles of booze. And I guess the plan is if I got to go away for the weekend, this is going to last me. Well, his plan was was he was going to let Wick find one of them. And then hide the other bottle in Wick's luggage. So he did have at least one bottle. But one bottle is not going to last that guy very long. No. It wouldn't last me a whole weekend. A whole weekend? No. Have you ever drank a whole bottle in one day? Probably in Korea. I mean, a bottle of what? I guess we have to question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A bottle of wine? Sure. Yeah, yeah. But like a bottle of bourbon in one day? What a hangover that would be. I probably have. I'm not trying to act too good. As much as I've drank, I don't think I've ever had a whole bottle. You got to start early. Yeah. You got to really want it. Yeah. Dedication. But yeah, I mean, alone? Probably not. No. I mean, a buddy, sure. Yeah. We've definitely done that. So yeah, so he's got his plan. Of course, he's got to stop by the bar, say what's up to his bartender, who... Doesn't really want to serve him. Not at all. But I like the bartender because he seems to be bound by the bartender duty. It's like he swore an oath somewhere. He's like, I will serve all customers with money. He's got money. So okay. And he starts pouring out. Couldn't figure out how much a shot was. It was less than a buck, I think. Seemed like that. Yeah. Because it went a long way. That $10 went a long way.$10 went a long way. He buys two bottles. Yep. And he's got five, six bucks left. Well, okay. So if 10 bucks is $187, how much is a bottle? 20, you think? Couldn't be much more than that back then. Oh, I don't think it's... I would think it was about $2 of what he was drinking. No, I'm talking about like the equivalent of today's money. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if that's 20, then he's still got 140 left. He's drinking Rock Gut Rye, which is probably a buck 50 a bottle. Is that the brand name, Rock Gut? Yeah, it's pretty much. That's what he says, give me the cheap stuff. Yeah. Well, don't do that fast. Yeah, yeah. He's not sipping it. He's not savoring. So yeah, he's at the bar. We meet this other dame who... Doris, I mean Gloria. Who's like a fast-talking city girl who is apparently a prostitute, right? Right. That was the implication? Yeah, she's a call girl who lives with her mother, I think. That's a sentence that starts off nasty and gets real wholesome at the end. She's a call girl. Yeah, she speaks, she has this kind of weird... She shortens things. She shortens words. Don't be ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure her language was scandalous at the time. Yeah. Can you believe a dame talking like that? Yeah. So she's into him, he's not into her, he's really just into booze. So, you know, points to him for not being a low-life cheater. Right, right. Yeah, she's all over him and he says, you know, this is who I love. Yeah, he's not a bad guy, he's just a drunk. Right, right. If he's a bad guy, you wouldn't care about him. Right. So he heads back up, realizes he's too late, he's got to kind of hide from his brother and his wife, and then he realizes, oh, I've got the weekend to myself because they don't know where I am. Drinks a bottle, hides a bottle. Yeah. Wakes up the next day, doesn't even remember he has the second bottle. He's hungover, he's still got money, and now he's on a mission to get some booze. The only problem is, he's going to sell something. Typewriter. Oh, his typewriter. That's right, he's out of money. So he's got to sell his typewriter, or pawn his typewriter, but it's Yonkipour, and all the pawn shops are closed. What about the Italian ones and the Irish ones? The Irish ones, they have an agreement with us. We close on St. Patrick's Day. Okay. Yeah. Sure, we'll just roll with that. But this is after he's searched the whole city. Yeah. He's walking around, he's in a black neighborhood, and he's sweating, and he just looks miserable. The way it's shot, you'd think this dude walked 15 miles, just looking for a pawn shop. And then we get the flashback. Right. And we see how he met his lady. Helen. In a theater with a coat exchange mishap. Played by Jane Wyman, who was at one point married to Ronald Reagan. Whoa. Yeah. That's a tidbit. Yeah. Is there anything else I should know about this? No. Wyman? No? No. She didn't really move the needle for me at all. She's one of those actresses in the 40s and 50s, they did a lot of movies, but I think Johnny Belinda may be the only one that really stands out. I don't even know what that is that you said. Yeah. So we get the flashback. It's like, okay, they have a cute meet, so they have a story, and you can kind of see that he does have a little bit of charm to him. And it's a little bit understandable why she is attracted to this guy who apparently just went on some crazy bender that we just missed from the opening scene. And then he goes on the wagon for a while until he has to meet her parents. Relatable. Yep. Yeah. Gotta be drunk. Look, if her parents were nice people, this would have never happened. Right. But they're over there talking smack about him, judging him. And he's behind them in the hotel lobby waiting for Helen to show up, and they don't know him, and he doesn't know them, but he hears them talking about him. And they're not really nice. The father is kind of a dick. Kind of a dick. So he takes off on a bender. But then when he's finally—so then he's at home, he's confronted first by his brother. His brother tries to lie for him when she shows up, but he owns up to it. Yeah, he's honest. He's an honest drunk. He's an honest drunk. Not a bad guy. Right. Resourceful. Right. Honest. Not a cheat. Yep. Just would prefer to— Just drink. And then kill himself. Yeah, that's what he wants to do. I mean, it's a—you know. Yeah. We salute you and your efforts. You're our hero. I don't know about hero, but, you know, I feel like in America you have the right to do yourself in. And he gets a great shot, because he put it up in the— The light fixture. Light fixture, and there's that great shot of he's looking all over for it, can't find it, and all of a sudden he looks up and there's the, like, shadow of this bottle on the ceiling. That was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, Wilder really had a couple nice shots in this that I remember. And the other one I'll tell you in a minute. All right. So, yeah, I think I'm getting things out of order a little bit. Yeah. So I think he goes to visit the girl. He gets money from her. Yeah, he kisses her, and she goes, oh, okay, you are into me. And he says, you got any money? And she gives it to him. Gives him $10, or $5, $5, which probably that's what she made off our last drink. I don't know. He just made this movie dark. I like to think that she was a wholesome prostitute who just talked to these guys just to make them not feel lonely. Yeah, she would meet these older guys from out of town in the bar. And we don't know where it went. It could have been just companionship. Could have been. Yeah, who knows? She lived with her mom. She probably didn't take them home to the mall. Right, right. Probably took them to a flop house, right? That's what they used to call those? Yeah, yeah. Flop house. You know, these guys had money. They probably took her to a nice hotel. Possibly. Yeah. Was that actress, was she famous back in the day? Doris Dowling. I've never heard of her. I don't know what she's famous for, if anything. She kind of had that, like, I'm a body broad kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. I just imagine she played 25 roles as being a body broad. Most famous for the car, Blue Dahlia, which is a pretty good movie. I don't remember her in it. Not this? Oh, yeah. Lost Weekend and some other French movie. But she did a lot of TV and stuff in the 70s and 80s. So she stuck around. Good for her. She got 64 acting credits. All right. She's fine. She's doing well. So the evening kind of culminates in this scene at this cocktail bar, right? It's like jazz club cocktail bar. Oh, he tries to steal, he steals a woman's purse. I think we're kind of mixed up on the timeline here. At the bar. Yeah, yeah. He gets to the bar. No, this was a different bar. Whatever, a lounge. A lounge, it was a lounge, yeah. It wasn't, Nat was not the bartender. It wasn't Nat. It was kind of a swanky place. Okay, he's at the swanky place. And he's wasted, he's drinking something different, right? Like gin and tonics or something? Yeah, something. Or a gimlet or something? Jim Gimlet, I think. And so he's drinking those. They were so awful. I don't think this guy was drinking for flavor. And this lady's not paying attention, she's on a date. He grabs her purse, goes to the bathroom. Okay, curious thing here. I've never been in a 1945 swanky bathroom. Is there no stall? Didn't look like it, did it? It's just like him, the attendant, and a sink. And I guess like a urinal or something. It's just like, there's no place you can go in. You know what, they didn't show those kind of things back then. They didn't show stalls? They didn't show bathrooms generally. Or toilets or anything. What? Yes. Because that's going to make us communists? I don't understand, what's the connection? I don't know, there was all sorts of rules back then. You couldn't show two people in bed on TV back in the 50s. Okay, but toilets? Damn. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, we got mixed up on the timeline. He gets confronted when he comes out of the bathroom. Yeah. And they boot him out. And he's still hard up. So that's when he goes to her place. He's really drunk, I think. Oh no, and then he falls down the stairs. I thought he went to her place in the daytime. Yeah, we're all over the place. I guess the point is... We had our own last weekend. I guess the point is, it doesn't matter. Right. The events don't matter, the order that they happened. I would argue. The only thing that matters is he ends up at home. He ended up in a drunk ward. Right. Where the other scene that I was talking about was he's sleeping. And the guy in the ward is telling him, you're going to get the heebie-jeebies here in a little while. You're going to start seeing shit. And he doesn't believe it. But then there's another guy in a bed. He starts screaming, and he's howling, and he jumps up. But you never see his face. He's in the corner, and his face is almost blacked out. You never see it, but he's screaming and everything. I love what Wilder did there as far as the shot. Apparently to prepare for this role, Ray Milan spent a couple of nights in a drunk ward. Oh, really? Wow. Can you imagine? Drunk wards? They don't even exist anymore. Now they're just jail cells, right? Well, now they put you in for 28 days. So, okay. All these things have happened. He's in the ward. He manages to slip out. He gets free. His orderly... Was that guy famous? Yeah. I was like, wow, that guy is like... It's really interesting the way this guy is playing this character. I couldn't tell if he was friendly or not. He was really walking the line. I'm trying to get back there. It seemed like he was treating him with kindness, but also there's the sinister side of, I can't wait until you suffer. There wasn't that edge to him, I thought. Yeah, this guy appeared in a lot of movies. His name was Frank Phelan. But he usually played guys from New York or whatever. I just thought he was great. Yeah, he was. Oh, he was the cab driver in It's a Wonderful Life. I've seen it, but a thousand years ago. Yeah, so that's why I recognized him. Okay, cool. Gets out of the ward. Manages to get home. Steals the doctor's coat. Steals the doctor's coat. And steals his girl's coat, right? What was it like? Oh, yeah, he got home, and he started seeing things, like a mouse coming out of the wall. And a bat. And then a bat, and the bat starts eating on the mouse. He's just freaking out, and that's when she shows up, I guess. And she's trying to take care of him, blah, blah, blah. She's doing something, and all of a sudden, you see him coming out of the bedroom and grab her coat and take off. This nice coat that she wore. Which is significant, because that's the reason they first got connected with each other. Their coat mix up. He hawks it. She's going to follow him. She gets in the pawn shop, and she's like, how much did he give you? Did you give him for it? I'll buy it back. And the guy's like, he didn't want money. And the guy's like, I don't want money. He didn't want money. He wanted a gun. Earlier, he mentioned about wanting to kill himself, thinking about that, but not having the guts to do it. And he has this whole thing about, there's two of me. There's the good me, and there's the other me. Go back to the apartment. There's this cool confrontation where she knows he's trying to kill himself, but she doesn't want to say that. But she's trying to distract him. It would be the point of, let's have a drink. Yeah, let's have a drink. Let's celebrate. And he finally wises up, decides to write his story. Live happily ever after. I was hoping this movie was going to have the balls to end darkly. That's probably the only thing about this movie that could have been done differently, I think. Or at least left it up to your imagination of how it ended. Yeah, one of those. But as soon as she showed back up at the place, you're like, okay. They're not showing toilets. They're sure as hell not going to show him blowing his brains out in front of her. We just never know. It would have been better if we just never know what happened. But yeah, we live happily ever after. But I think it's a great movie. I think it's really well done. It's great. A lot of great lines. I loved his philosophy about benders. He's like, you can't just stop them. You gotta ride it out, man. Yeah, you just want to go home. What? No. This ain't a car. I don't have a steering wheel. This is a train. I'm just on it. And there's nobody driving it. Yeah, there's no steering. Someone's driving it. It ain't me. But yeah, I appreciated that. I mean, it's really just, if I describe this movie to someone, what happens? This guy gets drunk and wanders around the city. He'd be like, that sounds stupid. Yeah, it does. It was very compelling. I love the writing of the 40s movies, the quick wit. There were so many great writers in Hollywood at the time who knew how to write dialogue. Like Quentin Tarantino knows how to write dialogue. We don't have a lot of that anymore. Not compared to, I think, some of the 40s movies, like Philadelphia Story and things like that that we watched. Well, okay. I mean, yeah, it's quick and it's fun, but it also sounds so unnatural now. Yeah, yeah. That's true. Nobody talks like that anymore. Do they ever? I don't know. That's why nobody can write it. That's probably true. Did people ever talk like that or is that just a Hollywood fantasy? It could be a Hollywood thing. I don't know. You know, like 30 years from now, people are going to be watching Pulp Fiction and be like, oh, people just talk like that? No. Some people in this one movie. But yeah, this movie was good. I would say probably my favorite Ray Malan movie we've watched. Yeah. I didn't realize he was from Wales. Oh, man. Another Brit taking our jobs. I didn't realize that until I was looking him up. I went, wow, I didn't know that. This is his best movie. This is his best movie? Yeah. He won an Academy Award for it. He won a Best Actor. There's something about his character that I know he's supposed to be charming and all this stuff, but he was also a dick in a way. We said how nice he was, but he did have that selfish dickhead streak. Most drunks do have that side of them at some point. There is that single-mindedness of where the hell is my coat? I just want to have my booze. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. This is definitely his best film. Another Billy Wilder. Great movie. Does he have any stinkers? Not many, I don't think. I looked him up. I think he and Quentin Tarantino might have the highest... I didn't look up the rating on this movie, but I looked up a lot of the other movies. They're all high sevens, even eights. Tarantino is the same way. They probably have the highest average of IBM directors. That would be interesting. I bet there's a couple of modern people who are up there. I bet Christopher Nolan is up there. Yeah, probably. And I bet the guy who did Prisoners of the Enemy, Bill Naueve. We're experts at pronunciations on this show. I bet he's pretty high too, as far as those go. It would be interesting to see what that list is. Right. But he had 20... Wilder only directed... He's more prolific as a writer. But he only had 27 films that he directed. You say only 27? All those other people I just named, I don't know how many. I don't know how many. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. But his average is still up there. And he's from Austria or someplace? Billy Wilder? Billy Wilder's not his real name. So he came over here right before World War II, I think. Good timing. I did see his criticism about this movie that they kind of yada yada the Great Depression and World War II. During the flashback, it's like, what? How'd you all make money? What's going on here? Do you have any money? I don't know. I don't know. During the flashback, it's like, what? How'd you all make money? What's going on here? Either of you fellas go to the war? What? Are we still fighting Hitler? It's unclear in this movie. What's actually happening? He was a screenwriter in Austria. He was writing script for German films until Hitler came to power. Then he emigrated because he was Jewish. He went to Paris and ended up in... I can't remember who his roommate was in LA. Ronald Reagan. No, it was another German, former. Oh, Peter Lorre. Our favorite. See, in fact, Lorre's not here to do her impression. Matt, you want to get some scores real quick? Yep. Let's see. 39,000 people on IMDb. I'm going to go 7.9. Nailed it. Why didn't you go 8? Why didn't you put it over to that 8 part? I don't know. Not many movies make it to 8. There's a lot of 7.8s, 7.9s. He's got a few 8s in his background. I didn't think this was one of them. This movie's about alcohol, right? Was it really about something else? Was it really about heroin or anything? It's so extreme, the alcoholism. I don't know. If you've ever seen real alcoholics, I used to wait on them. They're like that. They can be charming. They're always looking to get something from you, a free drink or something. Or they can be angry. I used to know a lot of them. It just seemed a little over the top at some points. I've never been down there on Skid Row, so what do I know? All right, Matt. Rotten Tomatoes, 73 critics. I'm going to go 94, 97. Critics love Billy Wilder. Yeah, they do. And the audience, over 5,000 people. I'll go 92. 92. All high scores. All high scores. All right, this is the consensus. Director Billy Wilder's unflinchingly honest look at the effects of alcoholism may have had some of its impact blunted by time, but it remains a powerful and remarkably prescient film. Yeah, that is kind of what I was thinking, blunted by time. It's like, talking about alcohol? It's like we've got fucking fentanyl. Right, right, right. We've got the opioid. That's a real addiction. Yeah, there wasn't much around then. Right, which is obviously not anything that's in their control, but it is something that as you watch it, you're like, hmm, I know people with real problems. All right, Matt, shall we take a break? Yep. All right, we'll take a break, and we'll come back with Rachel's Getting Married. Where do you live? Where do you eat? So she plays Kim, not Rachel. Kim with a Y. Yes, Kim with a Y, because why not? So we see her and she's getting out of rehab, but just for the weekend. I guess they do that in New England or Connecticut. Got a weekend pass. And so she's going out to her sister's wedding, which is at their family house. They're in Connecticut. Is that where it is? I don't know if that's Connecticut, southern Vermont. I think somebody mentioned Connecticut. Okay, it fits. But it's prominently, it's like, they don't like rub your nose in or anything, but it's like it's on display, I guess. I don't know how to say it, but like there's like dancing and stuff that's like very much not a white Connecticut kind of dancing. And the theme of the wedding is India? Yeah, so let's start there. So I love the way that you really got to know these characters very quickly. And when Kim sees her sister Rachel, older sister, right? I believe so. And her maid of honor for that moment, her friend, they're getting dressed in like these saris. And I was like, oh my God, like immediately I'm like, I don't know this girl, but I know this girl. I know this kind of woman who spent a week or a semester or whatever in India and was just transformed. I just had such a magical experience and I was in love with the culture. Even the food is Indian, you know, it's just like music. Yeah, it's like, okay, yeah, you spent like a short time in India and probably not in real India. And you knew that you could leave at any moment and now you're in love with the place. It's not a wedding I would have loved. It's not a wedding I would have loved, but it would have been a fun weekend. Would have been hard to stay sober. So hats off to Kim. Yeah, I'll get to that at some point. So it's hard to describe the plot of this movie because it's so chaotic. And it's just like you walk into a house, right? Like you walk into a house to a party, especially a place you've never been to. You just kind of like walk around looking for people you know. Handheld camera. Jonathan Demme was the director who did Silence of the Lambs in Philadelphia. Yeah, he nailed this. Written by… Oh, Lumet. Yeah, his daughter. Wonder how she got the gig. I don't know. Wonder how she got the opportunity to write. Last name. But it was well written, for sure. Well written, well acted. I thought well directed. I hadn't seen this since it came out. I was like, oh, I like it even more now. Sorry, I'm talking too much. What did you think? I didn't really like it that much. Really? Yeah, I was… I don't know. I just… I saw it before, too. And the only scene I remember, literally the only scene I remember, Gloria and I saw it at a matinee one day downtown. And the only scene I remember is the dishwasher scene. Okay. That's really the only scene I remember for the whole movie. Yeah, I was just bored. Really? I just didn't like these people. I don't know. And I acknowledge that it's really well acted and it's really well directed. I just didn't like it that much. Interesting. Yeah, I just… I don't know. It was one of those movies I'm watching, I'm going, you know. I didn't like it the first time, I guess, I saw it. I didn't really like it this time. You didn't like the people because they seemed sort of out of touch or they seemed like very different than your experience? I don't really know. Maybe it was the narcissism of some of them, you know. It's just like, I don't know. I really don't know what was… I was watching it and I was kind of irritated watching it. I didn't really like it. I love Anne Hathaway, I didn't really like her character that much. Really? Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it was just having a bad day when I watched it. I did watch it all in one day, which, you know. One, you know, three-hour sitting or something. I paused and… Walked around, smoked a cigarette, thought about watching Anne Hathaway, started watching it again. Had some bourbon. You know, I don't know. I just, something about this movie, I just don't really like it that much. It's kind of, you know, it's okay, it's good, it's got all the things you want, it's well written, it's well directed, it's well acted. I just didn't like it. Now, this movie was called Ben Gazzara's Getting Married. I would love that. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know why. You know, I just, I don't know. Yeah, I think, maybe I'm projecting here, but I think that maybe it's because the kind of people are typically annoying, like in the real world. Like, I wouldn't want to talk to most of these people, but it was interesting to watch them interact and I really like just like the craft of how they're setting up the scene and how this scene is brief, but it's really revealing a lot of like the story and the character and there's these small moments and you know that, you know there's a dead family member somewhere in there, but you don't quite know how it happened. Yeah, yeah. There's some reason she's like this, because nobody else in the family is even close to being like this. Yeah, I don't always, yeah. I guess that's usually the case, but people I know, sometimes they're just like that. But yeah, we get these moments where, and I like when the preacher got up and he's like, we got to talk about little Ethan, and you're like, okay, dead brother. And like the family cries a little bit, but like they cry in a way that you get the sense like they're all fucking cried out, you know, like they've cried all their, you know, it's like this isn't the first time they've thought about this kid since that happened, so they're not gonna... Nobody really sheds a tear. They cry a little bit, but they move on. It's kind of like I'm gonna acknowledge it, but also like I'm gonna fucking cry about my dead brother every single moment of the day. It just doesn't make any sense. I'm glad they didn't do that. No, that would have made it worse. Yeah. Would have made it worse. Anne Hathaway jumping into bed with the groomsmen, like that was pretty quick. Like hour one of them. Never met them before, but... Yeah, that's how she finds out she's not a maid of honor. Right. She said, we should be a tradition. You're not the maid of honor. What? That was pretty funny. I liked him. He was good. Yeah. He hadn't done much, right? No, no. Yeah, I feel like he's like a real estate agent or something. I feel like he's successful in whatever he's doing. That's the vibe he gave me. Yeah. What was his name? I don't even know. Looking it up. He's probably the star of some CBS show we've never heard of. Right. It's 285 episodes. What was his name, Walter? Who was Walter? No, no, no. His name was like Ari or something. I don't know. It was something. It definitely was not Walter. Oh, Kieran. Kieran, right. Shouldn't have been Walter. Mather Zickle. What is that? I feel like it's some old ingredient I've never heard of. Put some Mather Zickle on it. He's known for this. Balls of Fury. Rachel Getting Married. Balls of Fury. That's the Christopher Walken ping pong movie? I think so. Okay. You've never seen that one? 5.3. Whatever. I Love You, Man. Okay. And The Ten. Okay. Which have the Ten Commandments, I guess. So he had a run. He had a good go of it. Yeah. He gave it a good college try. He's got 68 acting credits. All right. Well, that's more than that Body Broad of the last. It does a lot of television. Okay. He's probably British. You're probably right. Kieran is not a... Oh, that's his character name. That's his character. Nice. He's from New York. He was born in New York. All right. Well, we like our own. We like our good Americans, not these Brits taking our jobs. So, yeah. So she bangs him first hour they meet. And I was like, okay, I guess that's what alcoholics do. I don't know. Like, got to get that really somewhere. Speaking of which, she's smoking constantly in this movie, which seems like a thing you do when you're nervous, uncomfortable, and you don't want to. Oh, you're in rehab. A lot of people start smoking in rehab. Like, I got to find something. Yeah. It's healthier than heroin, probably. Yeah, probably. Probably. Jury's out on that one. Yeah, right. And, yeah, I mean, just like the weekend unfolds, right? I mean, like, Rachel getting married. Rachel gets married. We have like the high peak of action is where she confronts her mother. Right. Kim confronts her mother and basically is like, why did you... You knew I was a junkie. Why did you leave my brother with me? And she's just no explanation. No, and I also like that part because the way I read that is that the mom is like, well, it's not my fault. Right. It's everyone else's fault versus the dad who is like... He's the one in the family that feels. He's like internalizing it. He's like, you know, we're all kind of at fault. I'm at fault. And you can just understand how those two could not have stayed married. Right. Right? And they're like, well, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to stay with the dad. That was good. Yeah. That was good. Yeah, I don't know. I guess the family dynamic, even though they may have been annoying or don't want to hang out with them, it felt real. And it felt like this is what this person's party would actually be like. First of all, it would be a weekend. It would not be like a three-hour wedding. It would be a weekend wedding. And it would just be all this kind of... All sorts of music and all sorts of everything going on. Everybody's setting up, and it's raining all weekend until right before the wedding. And, you know, it's just a lot going on. You know, she goes out and wrecks her car, wrecks the family car, and spends the night in the car. Walks home busted, black eye. Right. Which I was like, is that from her mom or is that from the car? I think unclear, right? Yeah. Because her mom does deck her, and she decks her right back. Right, right. And then that was kind of the end of that. Yeah, one punch. Yeah, that was weird. You know, then she just disappears for the night and comes back no explanation. Yeah. You know, nobody says, what were you doing? Nobody cares. When someone walks up to a wedding day with a black eye and bloody clothes... 7.30 in the morning. You don't ask a lot of questions. Right. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I liked it way more than you because I thought the relationship between the characters was like, it was just interesting. And it was really, I don't know, it was like a really good example of show, don't tell. I liked, there's so much to like about it, and I just don't know why I didn't like it. I mean, I love the way it was shot. I think Demi did a great job. You know, to catch the reactions of people, things like that. I'm sure the editor had a great time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure they had a good time. Thanks, Demi. The only thing I don't get is at the wedding, the wedding seemed to go on, or the reception seemed to go on forever. You ever been to a white person reception? They go on forever. Nobody was really drunk. No. You know, also, but you know, that also kind of makes sense, right? Like if you're, I don't know, like if my sister who's an addict is coming home, maybe I'm not drinking a ton. You know, you're probably having to keep it on her. They're all drinking wine and stuff, but I just didn't see anybody in the corner go. Yeah, that's true. Or fight. Matt, they're not from Florida. They're from Connecticut. They're civilized. Man, I'm bummed you didn't like it. I'm bummed I didn't like it, too. Well, I don't know. It's one of those things. Yeah. You don't have to like everything. Nope. I liked your movie, but... Just kidding. All right. Yeah, Anne Hathaway nominated for an Academy Award for this. She lost, obviously. So this is what she's up against. This was a sad year for movies. Melissa Leo in Frozen River. Don't know what that is, but sounds sad. Oh, that's a wonderful movie. What was that about? People across the border. On a frozen lake up in New York. Okay. Sounds like a tough topic. Sounds like there was no bans. Angelina Jolie in The Changeling. Didn't see it. Meryl Streep in Doubt. I think I saw it, but I don't remember it. And Kate Winslet in The Reader. Didn't see it. I didn't either. Did she win? She wins everything. Just give it to her. But yeah, I don't know. I really liked Anne Hathaway's performance. Was Demi nominated? I don't think he was. So would that be Best Director? Let me pull this up real quick. Ron Howard, Frost, Nixon. David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Which I never saw. I didn't know that was Fincher. I didn't either. It didn't seem like a Fincher movie. I didn't really like it. Stephen Daldry in The Reader. Gus Van Zandt from Milk. Harvey Milk. It's fine. And then Danny Boyle won for Slumdog Millionaire. It was that year. It was a bad year. I mean, it's a fine movie. It's not Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire. That was one of our bad... I think we did that on a show. That being a mistake. Alright, speaking of mistakes. This movie that I recommended from Matt. Let's see how your incredible hatred for this movie Just kidding. Is going to affect your pick in the score. So 50,000 people checking in on IMDB. 7-2. You went high. 6-7. People agree with me. 6-7 is not bad. But it's also not great. I wonder what the beef is. I guess people do agree with you. I can see someone watching this movie and ending and saying, Fucking so what? That's probably much better than what I thought. That's a valid criticism. But it's not meant to change your life. This is a weekend in these people's lives. Enjoy that for what it is. That would be my counter to that. Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. I think you're confusing not liking the event with not liking the movie. Alright. This is the critics' consensus. Rachel Getting Married is an engrossing tale of family angst highlighted by Anne Hathaway's powerful performance and director Jonathan Demme's return to form. That's kind of a basic consensus there. I bet your boy Ebert liked it. Yeah, I didn't even look it up. I bet he did. Seems like an Ebert movie. Alright. Next week we are doing what's the theme? Psychopaths. So we're doing White Heat, James Cagney from the early 40s I believe. I cannot pick James Cagney out of a lineup. You will love him. Even if there's people who look very different. I'm assuming James Cagney is a white guy. I don't know that 100%. I'm going to sing and dance and be a mobster. And then we are both going to experience for the first time Ichi the Killer from 2001. Japanese. Get ready for bloodshed. Sounds like it. Alright, let's get out of here. Bye-bye. He's a philistine. What's a philistine? It's a guy who doesn't care about books or interesting films and things. Then I'm a philistine. No, you're interested in books and things. No, I'm a philistine. You've been shitting in my yard. I have not. You want me to hold the chicken, huh? I want you to hold it between your knees. So Jane, what you do here in effect is count boners. I am a revolution I'm coming to get you! It's fun!