Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And she gives, like, a look, like, ha ha.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: She truly does, like, laugh. And then she, like, steps into a giant mailer box, and they put her on the trunk.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: They cover it, go on the trunk.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: And away she goes. The end of that woman.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Welcome to five minute film Finder, brought to you by Pioneer library system.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Welcome to five minute film Finder, a pioneer library system podcast where we talk about films that you can watch with your library on canopy and hoopla. I'm Tracy, and today I'm joined by Darren, and we're gonna be talking about some Sam Raimi and Coen brothers mashup films today.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Sure that's a good enough description?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Once Sam Raimi directed Coen brothers written. Once Coen brothers directed Sam Raimi and Coen brothers written something like that?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah. They're both involved in both movies?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yes, to some extent, yes. They were friends. I think one of the Coens edited the first evil dead, and he was like, what a film, my guy.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Let's be pals and let's do some more weird stuff together. Yeah.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Do you have a relationship with either. Well, not a personal relationship, but a personal relationship with the films of either Sam Raimi or the Coen brothers more.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Right. So I'm from Minnesota, so, like, Fargo's a thing, obviously.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Can you do the accent?
[00:01:25] Speaker A: No, I'm not gonna do the accent. Not gonna do the accent? No. So, Coen brothers, you know, I liked that stuff, but I love Bruce Campbell.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: More than I'd like to admit to anybody. And I loved seeing Bruce Campbell in both of these movies.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Super fun.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: I can't wait to talk about it.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Okay. I am totally with you. I am more of a Sam Raimi girl than I am a Coen brothers girl. I like the horror, but I love Bruce Campbell. I was telling you a week and a half ago, I had actually started watching one of these movies before you had said you wanted to watch it. And then I also got all of Briscoe county junior on dvd. And then I also got the virtual copy of Bruce Campbell's first autobiography of Chins could kill. So when we decided to do this, I was so ready to go. So I'm really excited. So do you want to go ahead and get into our.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: How appropriate.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: It worked out really well for us. Do you want to go ahead and get into our first film? I think you're going to kick us off.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Yes. We're going to talk about the 1985 comedy film comedy film called Crime Wave.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Crime Wave. Do you want to.
[00:02:39] Speaker A: So it is a slapsticky screwball type of weird movie that looks like it was shot for way, way less money than the next movie. Like student film quality almost.
At times, the visual gags were great, but you could tell that it was pretty raw.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think it's Sam Raimi's second movie. The Coen brothers wrote it. He had already gotten some success as a director. He said, I'll direct it. And from what I've heard read, he was used to. Well, he'd made the evil dead, and that was made by rubbing two nickels together, just barely. And so even though crime Wavy is a studio film, he was like, I know how to. If you give me three nickels to rub together, I can make you a film. But he didn't think about the fact that they were actually gonna have to, like, pay for locations and pay for props and do things like that. So I think it came out maybe not as high budget as he spent.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: All the money on that big, giant rat head on the top of the.
The exterminator van.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: And why wouldn't you? It was the correct choice. But I would say probably the biggest name in this, even though he's one of the smallest roles, is Bruce Campbell.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. There was a couple other semi recognizable guys, but Bruce Campbell's the only one that's really even close to a name.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. And he is doing performance of Ronaldo the heel is his character's name.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Ronaldo the heel. And his opening scene where he blows the dancing girl cigarette. So the one guy blows these crappy smoke rings, and then he goes, blows this awesome little dancing girl smoke ring. It's the best because the plot question.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Mark, there's not much of the film is that two guys who are not the main characters own a security company, and one of them is going to undercut the other one and sell to Bruce Campbell so that he can have a club for dancing ladies.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Yeah, dancing lady club.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Yes. And Mister Trend, who is one of the owners of the security company, decides to have his partner murdered by calling.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Some guys in the yellow pages who.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Are exterminators for any size.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Any size.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Yep.
And they decide to frame a guy who works for the security company.
Hijinks ensues.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Much hijinks.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: I would say 90% of the best parts of this film are the fact that the visual gags are off the rails.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: The scene with the doors is just insane.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: The safest hallway in the world.
[00:05:37] Speaker A: Safest hallway in the world.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: That is simply 97 different colored doors that you slowly close as a man. Who is the size of Andre the giant. Bust through them.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Kool aid manning through every single door right behind this lady.
[00:05:51] Speaker B: It's incredible. My favorite joke was actually the exterminators have an electric extermination machine. And it is set to rat, rat whenever they start. But whenever they go to kill the security guy, they turn it to man.
And then there's a car chase at the end where the main character is there and he switches it from mandev to hero.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Be that extra power for the hero.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Take more. Cause he's gonna put up a fight. It is.
We were saying before, it is a looney tunes cartoon.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: I mean, the movie starts out with no explanation. Nuns in a car driving like crazy. Like no explanation at all. It's so weird.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Nuns, who, it turns out, have taken a vow of silence.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Integral to the plot.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Yes. Plot, plot, question mark, exclamation point.
It is a frame story of a man who is the.
I can't even remember his name, which is horrible.
Who is the security worker who is going to be put to death saying, if only you can find my lady friend.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Nancy. Right?
[00:07:05] Speaker B: Yes, Nancy. I remember they say that all the time.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Who cares about him? Cause he's like, he's the most, like, he's awkward and terrible and you don't want him on the screen ever. You want these other guys who are insane.
[00:07:18] Speaker B: You want these murderers. But basically he's going to be put to death. And the whole frame device is him explaining what actually happened that night, hoping they will think he is innocent so that he will not die.
And it's just crazy. Crazy, crazy, weird slapsticky joke and weird sight gag for a cool hour and 26 minutes.
And I think that's the end. Do you want to have any wrap up points?
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Couple jokes that don't age super well. But other than that, it's kind of a weirdly solid, odd movie to watch if you're interested in weirdness. I don't know. It's. It's. It's a. It's a movie.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: I think it'd be a good one to have on if you are maybe going to be doing something else and you. Maybe you're having a party and you want to put it on the volume really low.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah, good party.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: And you can just see the side gags. Right. Even though you will miss Bruce Campbell saying things like, oh, you'll pay for the cab. I don't want to break 100. He's so gross in this movie. It's really fun.
So certainly crime wave. I think an undersung gem. I would recommend. You would recommend?
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Why not?
[00:08:39] Speaker B: And Sam Raimi, a genius. He made Spider man three.
So we're gonna take a break and then we'll be back with our other movie.
And we're back with five minute film finder. We've got one more movie for you that I think I'm gonna be taking the lead on today. And we are going to be talking about 1990 four's the Hudsucker proxy. So I don't know if you know this, Darren. We've actually never done an episode before this. I don't think we have. I'm obsessed with IMDb plot synopsis. So it says a naive business graduate is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam, which I actually think nails it. Often, IMDb plot synopses are completely different than the movie that I've seen, but I think that nails it. So, unlike crime wave, this movie is chock full of people you've heard of.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: So our main character is Tim Robbins. He plays Norval Barnes, a Norval, such a dork name.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: It's so good for his character.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: He is such a dork. I do love Tim Robbins as, like, an ingenue, simply like, a wide eyed, innocent man who comes in and is like, what? Who, me? I ain't never done nothing. And that's basically his entire.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: His aw, shucks.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Like the whole time. Who is brought onto the mailroom of Hudsucker corporations, who is recently in need of a president. Because at the very beginning of the movie, this is an extremely dark comedy, she says before she outlines the next plot point. A man during a board meeting is Mister Hudsucker, who is being told that his company is as successful as it will ever be, gets on top of a table full, runs down like, one has to imagine a 20 foot table and swan dives out a window.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: And you see him doing it, you know that's what he's doing. And it's like, you know, the weird thing with the watch, it's an interesting scene.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: It is. And like, you follow him all the way down, he's like gesturing to people in the street to move. And that's when you're like, oh, this is a dark movie that I have entered.
[00:11:00] Speaker A: He's cleaning his glasses. He cleans his glasses all the way down.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: The details in this movie are so weird. More of a plot than crime wave, but it's got just as many weird visual gags in it. So Norville Barnes get brought up to the top by the evil villain Paul Newman, who's doing incredible work in this movie.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: His evil is weird businessman, smarmy, still extremely charming. He takes the cigar that the dead guy had been smoking and just like, can't waste a good one.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: It's so good. It's so good. But they think that they will bring in this pansy to kind of, or patsy, I guess, is the word. I'm looking to bring down the stock so they can buy all of it and take over the company. But what they don't know is that Norval Barnes has one extremely good idea, a circle.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: He shows it to people from the start. He's got this circle he loves on a piece of paper, and it has a right direction because he turns it around when he shows it to Paul Newman's character.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: And he goes, you know, for kids.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Every time, you know?
[00:12:08] Speaker B: And what it turns out that Norville has created is the hula hoop, which ends up making the company a lot of money.
But he has become this news article because a woman has tricked herself into his employ.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: That is actually very easily because he's, you know, from the sticks and doesn't know anything.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: It's from Muncie, Indiana, and it's Jennifer Jason Lee doing her absolute best. Rosalind Russell from his girl Friday.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. Just laying it on completely thick. Just pasting it on there.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: It's so insane. I did really like it. There's a really great bit where so Bruce Campbell is in this movie as well, and he's sort of like her newspaper Mandy friend. And they just sort of have, like, the newspaper banter back and forth of, like, he's never heard of nothing yet. Like, just all kinds of things. You ain't seen anything.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Yay. See? Yeah.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: It's so weird and it's so fun. And it is a combination of, like, three or four different genres of films from the 1930s and forties that has got, like, that Rosalind Russell, his girl Friday kind of thing. It's very a wonderful. It's a wonderful life. It's very Mister Smith goes to.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. It's a wonderful life. The bit with the angel guy.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Yes. It's very Mister Smith goes to Washington, where this guy who just has pure intentions, comes into this kind of evil place and changes things around. It's got this giant clock tower that is very, like, 1920s Fritz playing metropolis nightmarescape.
The whole look of this movie is delicious and insane. And then it's Coen brothers and Sam Raimi jokes on top of that because this one is Coen brothers, directed and co written and then co written by Sam Raimi. And it's just dark and weird and hilarious.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: And spends the whole movie in this building mostly, right?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: And you kind of. You see him just change and that's kind of the movie. Yeah, it's. It's weird because, like, you like him at the beginning and, like, you're supposed to hate him in the middle, but it's just a weird, you know, change for him.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Yes. It's a following of personality from rising to the top, falling to the bottom, rising back up again, literally falling.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Literally falling to the bottom.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: To the bottom, and then getting a second chance. So it is a tender story.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: The clock tower guy. Yes. And the teeth guy.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: There's some magical realism in this. There is a fight between heaven and hell, I think literally in this movie. It's got a lot to offer and it looks great. It's got people you love in it. It's Coen brothers and Sam Raimi.
I would say it's a big yes for me.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: I agree.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Okay. I think both of these were on Canopy as well, just so you know where to find them. Yep.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Canopy. Maybe Hoopla's. I think it was on there. I think they were on both.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Oh, great. So you can use your pioneer library system library card to access those anywhere. But any final notes, Darren?
[00:15:22] Speaker A: No, I don't think so.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: That's.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Go watch some movies.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Go watch some movies. Yeah, that's always.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Even if they're not these movies. Go watch the movies.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Go watch the movies. And then tell us if the movies were good and then we'll go watch the movies.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah. That sounds like a great plan.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Yeah. You can reach us at podcast ioneirliverysystem.org. if you have any comments, criticisms, compliments, we'd love to hear them. Otherwise, we will see you on the next episode of five minute film Fighter. Thanks for hanging out with me, Darren.
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Bye.
