Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to five Minute Film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer Library System.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hello, and welcome to five Minute Film Finder, a Pioneer Library System podcast where we talk about movies that you can watch with your Pioneer Library System library card. My name is Tracy, and today I am joined by Ben. Hi, Ben.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Hey, Tracy.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: I'm sorry, I think is how I want to start this conversation.
I picked out both of our movies today.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Yes, you did.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: And I came to you and I said, I want to do some slapstick comedies. I think is what I.
The email that I approached you with.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Sure. And technically, these are slapstick comedies.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Technically, these are slapstick comedies. Do you have any personal affinity for slapstick comedies?
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, like, that was, like, my jam as a kid.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Like, we watched, like, Three Stooges. We watched, like, Animal Crackers and, like, all. All those, like, older slapstick, like, just like, oh, we're just having fun. We're messing with each other. Lots of physical bits.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: I didn't come to Buster Keaton until much later in life, but, like, also enjoy him as, like, a person of that era. Yeah. And ilk. Yeah.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: I would say that both of these movies are heavily influenced by the Three Stooges and Buster Keaton.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: I think one of them is very successful and the other one is maybe less successful, in my opinion.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: But still has a lot to offer.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
I won't get into this comparison too much, but I think they also both owe a lot to cartoons.
[00:01:53] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, they, like the logic, the, like, timing, the, like, idea of them is. Is totally embedded in cartoon, like, history.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: And, like, style and, well, and cartoon violence.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And logic. Yeah.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Both of these films are.
Are weirdly violent but fun.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I think we should get into it.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah, let's get into it.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: So let's talk about our first film. Wilhelm can start the timer.
And our first film we are going to talk about is Popeye from 1980, directed by auteur filmmaker Robert Altman, of all people.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: So I watched that without looking at anything.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Oh, no.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: I was just like, this is a Robert Altman movie.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: This is a Robert Altman movie.
So if we have any real film bros listening, they're screaming at us right now because I think this is the first Altman movie we've covered on the podcast.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: And it's this Altman, known for making Nash, known for making Nashville, McCave and Mrs. Miller.
And then I was talking earlier, Gosford park was a movie that he made in 2001. One of his last really reputable Films that got like a ton of Oscar nominations.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: This almost completely tanked his career.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: So it stars Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall and just a cavalcade of character actors.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: And the IMDb plot synopsis is the adventures of a famous sailor band and his friends in the seaside town of Sweet Haven.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Technically, that's right.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: You said you'd watched this on TV some as a kid. Yeah, I think I had also seen this.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think I was just like happy that it was Popeye. Cuz like, I loved the Popeye cartoons.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yes. And I don't know where I feel like I watched a ton of the Popeye cartoons as a kid. Where I have no clue.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: I don't know where they were airing.
[00:04:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: But possibly.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: I don't know how these got to us.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, possibly. Microchip directly into my brain. Impossible to say. But I remember seeing this as a kid and being like, that's weird.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. It's like immediately like it feels so strange.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Well, okay, so let's talk a little bit about how crazy this movie is. So that town that's in that movie is a fully built set.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:28] Speaker A: It feels like a play in a weird way because of that.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Those are all actual buildings. So this entire town is a functional town. This whole.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: It's inside a building?
[00:04:38] Speaker B: No.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Oh no, this is a real town. This is a town that they constructed.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: On the island of Malta.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Oh boy.
So this whole town, I misunderstood.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: So still exists in Malta is an amusement park and museum.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: That you can visit and if you want, get married at. It has a website. It's called Popeye's Village.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: A real missed opportunity.
[00:05:03] Speaker B: So they spent several million dollars building this. Like all of these buildings are fully functional buildings. These are real houses, like a real fake casino.
So that's insane.
Then talent wise, Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall. This is Robin Williams first feature film.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Oh, that's kind of a bummer.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Yes.
He is doing this directly off of Mork and Mendy.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And like, what a misuse. Like let's have this huge expressive actor mutter for a whole movie.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: So this.
Apparently he's trying his best and I think technically succeeding in doing the Popeye voice in this. But they ended up having to ADR all of his lines, all of the original recordings.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Cause he's doing everything through crunched teeth and a half open mouth and he's.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Squinting one eye just like Popeye. He is actively holding a pipe in his mouth.
He's doing his best with what he can. He also apparently ad libbed a bunch of his work.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: And I believe it. Some of the lines are kind of, like, a little racy.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: The screenwriter was apparently really bad about it. Then on the other end, Shelley Duvall was a longtime collaborator with Robert Altman, but they had apparently been in a big fight for a couple years before this. And then he convinced her to come on.
Originally, he was going to have Lily Tomlin be olive oil. Okay, that seems crazy to me.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Because if you've seen Shelley Duvall, she looks exactly like olive oil.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: I mean, and we discussed this briefly before.
Maybe the only reason this movie works.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: She's kind of incredible.
[00:06:48] Speaker A: Carries it like is a cart is olive oil and carries is a cartoon.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Is so charming.
Did come directly from the set of the Shining to film this.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Wow. What a whiplash.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: And somehow. We are almost up on our five minutes. We're gonna go over it. It's fine. I'll cram. But the whole thing with this movie, they built this whole set.
They built an entire production village. So everyone lived on this island in Malta while they made it. They built an entire studio to do all the prosthesis. We're at 5. I'm gonna kind of breeze through some of this. And they built a studio to record all the songs, even though they recorded the songs live in filming. And did you see who wrote all the songs?
[00:07:38] Speaker A: I did. Harry Nielsen. And I pointed that out because me and my wife were watching it last night, and I was like, huh? Harry Nielsen wouldn't have picked him for making the songs for a Popeye movie.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: They apparently originally considered Randy Newman.
Honestly, I think it would have worked. I'm a huge Randy Newman fan. But also the other side of it for me was like, well, this movie is a cartoon. And they were like, you know who we should get? The lime and the coconut guy.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Oh, was that the logic? Okay, I think maybe that makes more sense.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: I think maybe so. I had forgotten this was a musical at all. So when they started singing. And the songs are wild.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah, they're not great.
Musically, they're good.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: But, like, for musical lyrics, you're just like this. He just was just like. Well, that's the theme. Just repeat that a bunch of times.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: I think Shelley Duvall's the only one who's selling it. She has this entire kind of weird love song to her fiance, Bluto, that's just called He's Large. Yeah, Edit. That was the one where I was like, I'm in that. And then she has another quite romantic Song for Popeye called He Needs Me that was used in Punch Drunk Love.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Oh, that's kind of sweet.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
I would say we haven't covered the plot of this film, but there isn't one.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: There's not. I mean, Popeye's trying to find his.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Dad and then also gets handed a baby.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: And gets handed. Yeah, it's Sweet Pea. Another shining part of this movie.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Sweet Pea is great.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Sweet Pea got a lot of charisma.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Is Robert Altman's grandson.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Oh, great.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: That he, at some point in this movie, attaches to a crane.
Oh, boy. Apparently. Last note. This was just an excuse for Robert Altman to get a bunch of his family and friends together to do illicit substances in Malta.
[00:09:28] Speaker A: Okay, sure.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: I mean, and I think that shows.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Was the style in 1980. 1979, probably.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: So I think that shows.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
Just my summation feeling about this was it feels like a play.
It feels weirdly serious. And they're like.
It's edited like a drama, but all the direction is as if it's a cartoon.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Yeah. It's odd.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: It's definitely something to see, though.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. There's nothing else like it. No, I've never seen anything like this.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: Exactly. Both of these are. I've never seen anything else like this. I think for that. I don't know that this works as well for me as a movie as the next one that we're about to talk about, but as a piece of, like, history where you're just watching it and going, that's a real building that they built in Malta that Robin Williams is going.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Wearing huge prosthetic forearms.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I could wax. I could wax rhapsodic about the forearms.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: They're horrifying.
[00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: We'll leave it at that.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: They're upsetting.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: Okay. That was Popeye.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: That was somehow 1980s. That was 1980s Popeye by Robert Altman. I would say watch it.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Watch it. It's an experience.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: So weird.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: It's a.
I think it would be a fantastic background movie. Like, while you have friends over, just, like, be like. You look up every once in a while and be like, what is happening?
[00:10:57] Speaker B: But there's a level at which you would have to rewind it to figure out if there's a logical way you got to where you are. And, hey, spoiler alert. There isn't. Don't rewind the movie.
But that's on Kanopy.
We're gonna take a quick break, and we'll move on to our next potentially even Weirder film.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah. All right.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Okay.
And welcome back to five minute Film Finder with Ben and Tracy today. And Ben's going to talk about our second movie.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: All right, so if Wilhelm could get our timer started.
We are talking about 2022's hundreds of beavers.
Fascinating semi silent film. Almost like a. A. Like a joke about silent films. Film.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: It's a pastiche.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because, like, it's not actually a silent film. There. There is some dialogue, but it's mostly playing with that form. Yes, it is a.
Okay, let's. Let's read the IMDb synopsis. In the 19th century supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.
Yeah, yeah, sure. That's it.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Except do we want to talk about the beavers?
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So this movie has, I think, five actual people's faces on screen throughout the movie because we got main character, the merchant, the Merchant's daughter, The. The master fur trapper and the Indian fur trapper.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yes. Which.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Which is their name. Their character names. Yes.
And everybody else is in mascot costumes of animals.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Yes. This is a man. A man versus nature film in which almost all of the nature are human beings in mascot costumes.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: It's something to behold. Like, we had. I had issues with Popeye. I was just on a. On a ride with this movie.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: It works.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: That's the thing that I kept waiting to, like, be tired of the bit. And it just like, kept finding ways to twist and have fun and do a new thing. It's like.
It's like your favorite, like, compilation Looney Tunes.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: It is a Looney Tunes movie with human beings in it.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. So many cartoon bits.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yes. It's so bonkers.
It's inspired by the two main inspirations that I saw was one was, of course, like silent films. Buster Keaton films.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: It was also apparently originally meant to be a pastiche of the Revenant, which is hilarious.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: That's so funny. That's so good.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: And then the other big inspiration was. Let's play YouTube videos.
Because there is a huge part of this movie that has a video game element.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's like. It's so much. Yeah. Like a video game. Yeah.
So we have our applejack salesman. He loses his.
His orchard and distillery. Gigantic distillery.
And must then survive the winter by becoming a hunter and leveling up, literally leveling up by increasingly hunting more and more animals and beavers and wolves.
[00:14:43] Speaker B: And wolves and the rabbits.
This movie has a Lot of animal violence, but all of the animal violence is people in mascot costumes and in.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Classic cartoon format, when they are killed, their eyes are just replaced by X's.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Well, I think the best example of that is his first fur that he collects is the raccoon.
And since it's a full human in a raccoon suit, they managed to make him a whole raccoon outfit. But his hat is just the raccoon face with the X's over the eyes and the tail down the back.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: And he continues to wear that for the whole movie.
Yeah, it's so, it's so fun. It gets so weird and goes so many places that you wouldn't expect a movie like this to go.
And like, it gets raunchy at times.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: It's really raunchy at times.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: At times. But like it's. It's always in that, like light hearted, like we're just having fun.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Well, this is sort of what I was telling. I was talking to a friend of ours about specifically the Native American tracker and I was like, well, it's pretty obviously a stereotype.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: But this whole movie is playing in stereotypes.
And I would say, oh, but they have no character development. But no one has any character development in this film. It's not the point of the movie.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: The point of the movie is to kill hundreds of beavers.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So the motivation behind that being that he falls in love with the merchant's daughter, and the merchant says, to marry my daughter, you must bring me hundreds of beavers. That's time. But to sum up, if you like cartoons, if you like video games that are silly.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: So silly.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's just a incredibly fun movie. If you like the Artist, like, if you like high concept, fun, funny movies, it's very much that. It was nominated for a bunch of.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Oscars, it was nominated for a bunch of independent awards and went around a bunch of independent festivals. And just to sort of little bit diatribe, this movie was made for $150,000.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Incredible.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Yes. All of the after effects were done in Adobe. Yep.
And they made the first part of the film, showed that to people, got money to invest in it, made the last two thirds of the film.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: And that makes sense.
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yes.
Decided they got a lot of distribution offers for this movie, decided not to sell it to any film distributors, went on a festival circuit all on their own, raised all of this money on their own, eventually sold the rights to have it streaming somewhere. And that's why it's now on Kanopy and In a couple other places.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: It's incredible.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: It's so bonkers.
It works, though. And you can just tell these are guys who absolutely bootstrapped it through this movie.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I just stumbled across a little piece of trivia about this that really shows just how much they pulled out of so little costumes per animal featured in this film.
Six beavers, five dogs, two rabbits, one raccoon, one wolf, one skunk, one horse, and this. They pull hundreds of animals.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Yes. The horse is maybe my favorite.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: That's the horse. I believe that is the funniest one of the animals for sure.
But it's like they pull out such a menagerie of creatures out of this.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Well, yeah, if they only had six beaver costumes.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:45] Speaker B: And there. I don't know how to surprise you guys. There are hundreds of beavers in this film.
They have.
They have a scientific community.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: They form a mecha beaver.
They form a distillery rocket and shoot it off into the sky.
It is something to behold, and it is available on Kanopy right now, so you can watch that.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Can't recommend it enough.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Tracy, thank you so much for suggesting these wild movies.
[00:19:22] Speaker B: Hey, Ben, thank you for trusting me enough to commit to this episode.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being here with me today, Ben.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: And that's it. We'll see you guys next time.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Bye.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Five Minute Film Finder is a digital program brought to you by Pioneer Library System in Oklahoma. All opinions expressed in this episode are those of the host and not those of the organization.
Five Minute Film Finder is produced, recorded and mixed by Ben Si. Theme music by Ben C.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please email podcast@pioneerlibrary system.org remember to, like, review and subscribe. Thanks for listening.
