Experiencing Joy

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This week on Travis Bickle On The Riviera, the movie podcast for movie-type movies.

00:00 - 16:42 - Tucker watched Slayground (1983), directed by Terry Bedford, starring Peter Coyote, Mel Smith, Billie Whitelaw. Mentioned in this section - books by Sam Fuller and Don Simpson, the Big Red One, Dirty Work, Mel Smith in The Princess Bride, and the Parker novels.

16:43 - 31:28 - Tucker also watched Place Beyond The Pines (2013), directed by Derek Cianfrance, starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, and Ray Liotta. Also mentioned in this section - Blue Valentine from the same director, Sidney Lumet, bad writing hallmarks, directors who started in live television.

31:29 - 39:50 - Sean watched Pain and Gain (2013), directed by Michael Bay, starring The Rock, Marky Mark, Anthony Mackie, Ed Harris, Rebel Wilson, Tony Shaloub, lots more people. Also mentioned here - Michael Bay's other films, The Coen Brothers and Fargo, The Departed, and Ethan Hawk's Hamlet.

39:51 - 47:41 - And Sean watched Lords of Salem (2013), directed by Rob Zombie, starring Sheri Moon Zombie, Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace, Meg Foster, Patricia Quinn, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Ken Foree, Maria Conchita Alonso. Also mentioned in this section - Rob Zombie's other films, Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, Ken Russell, Roman Polanski, The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Venus in Furs" (the latter of which the name escaped us at recording time), Cameron Crowe, the title cards in The Shining, and Air Force One.

47:42 - 1:05:16 - And finally Tucker went and saw a revival of Sorcerer (1977), directed by William Friedkin (who spoke afterwards), and starring Roy Schieder, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal, and Amidou as Kassem. Also brought up in this section - Friedkin's new book The Friedkin Connection, The Wages of Fear, the release of Star Wars, the release of Big Trouble in Little China, Heaven's Gate, Friedkin's The Guardian, survival movies, and the term "pure cinema".

This quote from Bud Smith, editor of Sorcerer, on wikipedia Tucker mentions - "When our trailer [for Sorcerer] faded to black, the curtains closed and opened again, and they kept opening and opening, and you started feeling this huge thing coming over your shoulder overwhelming you, and heard this noise, and you went right off into space. It made our film look like this little, amateurish piece of shit. I told Billy [Friedkin], ‘We're fucking being blown off the screen. You gotta go see this.’ "

 

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NEXT TIME ON TRAVIS BICKLE ON THE RIVIERA - Tom Cruise, Brian De Palma,  MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE.

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Comments

[Adrianwarner]

I saw Lords of Salem in a theater with about a dozen other people, and there was a palpable sense of "I can believe I just watched this in a Multiplex". It's very impressive to me that a film like this opened on as many screens as it did.

It's not a perfect movie. There's some digital "film-look" filtering going on that doesn't work for me and I just don't think Shari Moon Zombie has the presence or chops to carry a picture. But, I'll take Zombie's voice/vision over anyone else' s in contemporary American horror. Sitting through the previews for dreck like The Purge/Carrie remake/The Conjuring made me appreciate how weird and great this movie was.

[david brothers]

-Place Beyond the Pines: I think Tucker & I are on opposite sides, but I agree with basically everything he said! I thought the big twist was a great move, but yeah, a lot of the dialogue was a little too on the nose. Eva Mendes's husband in that flick was Mahershala Ali, who played Mombasa in Predators and played a cop or two on some low-key TV shows. He's way better in Place than I expected him to be, even as a mild fan of his work. The Gosling/Ali conflicts were perfect, and I almost wish I'd seen more of that. The church bit was a little too on the nose, too, but everything around it, from his appearances later in the flick to the fight in the house, were nuts.

Bradley Cooper's just kind of there for me. He's empty. Ray Liotta is fun, but he's definitely playing Ray Liotta Character #X these days.

-I gotta see Pain & Gain asap.

-Tucker's so right about Wahlberg in The Departed. There's just something about that guy's face and intonation. He's like a bully who grew up into an insult comic, or something.

Great show, guys.

[Bob Temuka]

Wow, you guys managed to make a bunch of obviously awful films (except for Sorcerer) sound quite interesting.

[Sean Witzke]

Hows Cloud Atlas treating you, Bob?

[Joe McCulloch]

I was pretty stoked for Lords of Salem, but it never opened around me! Or maybe it ran for, like, one week, and I wasn't around...

[Bob Temuka]

Cloud Atlas is treating me like a one-night stand, Sean. It never calls, and I think it's been avoiding me around town.

It was probably the most obviously awful film of the past year, but I was in a weird emotional place at the time I saw it and I LOVED it, even the plainly terrible parts. I doubt that I'll feel that way again if I saw it a second time, but we'll always have that first date....

[Aaron]

Hi, semi-new listener here. I discovered this podcast as a result of being a Comics Journal nerd, and it scratches an itch that no one else has been able to reach since Rick Tremble's Motion Picture Purgatory podcast died.

I listened to this episode on a long train ride, and had to strain not to laugh too hard and annoy everybody. Describing movies and such can go beyond synopsis or critical evaluation and into adaptation, if that makes sense, and I love it when it'd done as delightfully as Mr. Tucker's retelling of Slayground.

As a milk baby I want to stand up, a little, for my fellow milk baby who asked Friedkin how to deal with failure. Maybe the dude doesn't have a dad to as.k Maybe he wants Friedkin to be his daddy, if only for one beautiful moment. Sure, it's pitiful, but as someone who has cornered both Tom Spurgeon and Spaulding Grey and begged them for answers to life's questions, I can't judge too harshly.

[bebreezy]

This is the movie podcast but I wanted to thank you Tucker for the review of Ask The Parrot, and your general pimping of Richard Stark. It was great and won't be my last Stark book.

[tucker stone]

I just caught up with all these comments--thanks so much to all of ya'll. Bebreezy: Ask The Parrot! Holy shit is that book incredible. I've been on another kick lately, but I can't get that one out of my head. I'm glad you liked it.

Bob: keep up the good fight. I love The Lost World, Without Limits and that Gwyneth Paltrow Great Expectations, and I don't give a fuck what anybody has to say about it. That Tori Amos scene where Ethan Hawke fishes and drinks! That's all I wanted to be when I grew up, and I was grown up when I saw it.

David Brothers: Ray Liotta Character #X is a phrase I'm gonna drop so much I'll believe I invented it by next year.

Aaron: I feel you, man. I felt like I was being way too harsh on that guy when we were recording. I basically did the same thing to Elias Koteas once, so I got no business shitting on him.