The Letterboxd Show 3.23: K. Austin Collins
[clip of Mikey & Nicky plays]
Do you wanna go to a movie?
What do you mean a movie?
I feel sick, I don’t wanna be with a girl tonight. I feel sick to my stomach.
You don’t wanna go to the girl?
No. Go to a movie.
Your stomach bothering you?
Yeah.
Didn’t I tell ya to have something to eat in the bar goddamn you? Here, eat that.
Eat this? If I eat this, we’ll go to a movie?
What movie? What movie are ya talking about, Nick, it’s almost midnight.
On 14th street and Hall, there’s an all-night movie with terrific shows, double features, and they got cartoons. They have fifteen minutes of coming attractions. They got a candy counter that’s open all night long and it’s got ice cream sandwiches. Everything. The works.
Okay…
[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]
MITCHELL Hello, you are listening to The Letterboxd Show, our podcast about the movies people love watching from Letterboxd, the social network for people who love watching movies. I am Mitchell Beaupre and here with me is my, and your, and all of our old pals, Slim. But Slim, we are not alone. With us today is a guest, a man we’ve long desire to have on the show, a film writer I personally have been a huge fan of for many years and am super excited to speak with, someone maybe, maybe a little bit too cool honestly to be here with us, but somehow he agreed to be here so we’ve got him. [Slim laughs]
SLIM He’s a film critic for Rolling Stone, he’s written for Vanity Fair, Slate, The Ringer and Reverse Shot. He’s been on podcasts like Blank Check—nbd—One Heat Minute and was a co-host of Slate’s Flashback where he and Dana Stevens analyzed films from the past with a modern critical eye. Most intriguingly, he is a crossword-puzzle creator for The New Yorker and The New York Times. We’ve got K. Austin Collins here to discuss his four favorite films, which are: John Carpenter’s Vampires, Mikey and Nicky, Atlantics and The Naked Kiss. Kameron, thanks so much for ing us.
KAMERON Okay, I do have to say, these are some of my favorite films. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM A caveat to start right off the bat!
KAMERON I know it’s listed first on my site, John Carpenter’s Vampires, but I appreciate that as a troll as well, because I know not everyone’s down with that film.
SLIM Maybe we should expand on that, because one of the thoughts is how you choose your four favorites, everyone does it differently. Some of us rotate out, maybe they will rotate the fourth one out. But you’ve got a full list of your favorites on Letterboxd that represents a pool you choose from, so how did you come to these four?
KAMERON I basically—first of all, this is born of being asked all the time, especially after, you know, becoming a critic professionally, what my favorite singular movie is. And I think I’m just too ADHD to have one answer to that question. So partially, I just, I choose a different four every month and I add them to a running list of everything that I’ve ever listed. And the only qualification is that when I think of a movie at the top of the month, I check the list to make sure that it wasn’t already there. And then I’ll choose like three really quickly and then a fourth one will be something that was different than the others. And usually every time I surprise myself by realizing that I hadn’t put something on the list already, which is how I felt about it for now, like, you know, The Naked Kiss, a movie that I’ve loved for a really long time. I was surprised that I hadn’t had it in my favorites before. And then John Carpenter’s Vampires, which I’ve rewatched recently and realized that I loved, and immediately had to put it up. [Kameron laughs] But it changes every month just because I... I don’t know how to answer that question with one movie. [Kameron & Slim laugh] Or even just four.
MITCHELL Yeah, I do the exact same thing where I’m somebody who rotates it out at the beginning of every month, my four favorites. I know, Slim, you have a pretty set solid four, generally, right? [Mitchell laugh]
SLIM Yes, I have three that I literally—or at least two—I have RoboCop and Vanilla Sky. If you played the drinking game at home, drink whenever I mention RoboCop and Vanilla Sky, you’re drunk and you’re dead, probably, already. [Mitchell & Kameron laugh] But those are like stalwarts that I don’t really remove, but the other two I’ll rotate in. Like After Yang I just put in my four faves because I just rewatched and just had a great time rewatching that, so I loved it.
KAMERON That’s awesome. That’s new!
SLIM Yeah. I feel alive when you add a new movie a year four faves.
KAMERON I agree.
SLIM You know? I feel invigorated.
KAMERON Yeah, there’s something about—I mean, it’s not like no one else loves the movie. But there’s just something about recency that feels a little bit divorced from say, like, Sight and Sound or something where it’s like there’s a canon, that canon doesn’t go forward very much. Or, you know, like Pulp Fiction or something, which was a long time ago, actually. There’s just something that putting a recent movie on there that feels kind of, I don’t know, adventurous.
MITCHELL Well, I’m excited for us to dive into the four that you chose for this. But before we get into that, I do... the crossword puzzle thing. I have so many questions about like, when did you discover your love for crosswords, kind of what went into the process of becoming a crossword creator? But also, more importantly, how do I get better at crosswords? [Kameron laughs] And how will this conversation teach me to be better at crosswords? [Mitchell laughs]
KAMERON Okay, I would say, how to get better, I would start there. I get better every time I stop, like I don’t solve puzzles every day. I feel like that’s a bad thing to say. Because most constructors are like, diehard solvers. I’m not. I’ll just give up for a month, and then magically, I’ll be better. [Mitchell & Slim laugh] I don’t know how it works. I think just because I let go of any kind of anxiety or whatever. And it just works. In of how I got into it, I was in graduate school, and I was studying for my oral exams. And I needed something to do that wasn’t studying for my exams. But I had watched—this was over an exam that I was studying over the course of a summer, and I blew through all of South Park, rewatched all of South Park. I watched Lost for the first time beginning the end. I watched Battlestar Galactica for the first time beginning to end. I was just going through so many shows, and I was out of shows. And I just needed, I just needed a new hobby. It really was that. My mom loves puzzles, but I would always just like say no every time she wanted to solve a puzzle with me when I was growing up, I just was not into it at all. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh] And then I just found, you know, it’s kind of like when you become an adult and suddenly like, suddenly Scotch tastes good...
MITCHELL Sure.
KAMERON Like you hated Scotch, but then all of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Okay, this is... I’m entering my mid-phase, my wash-phase and I like Scotch.’ That’s how I feel about puzzles. And I just, I don’t know, I got into it, because I just needed like an obsessive thing to do, to like make something. I made stuff with Legos and K’Nex as a kid and I really think this is sort of something similar but with words. But, you know, I don’t know, just have some wine or whatever, and enjoy it. That’s really I think my secret to getting better at solving, just relax, or solve with a friend or do what you got to do. Googling is allowed, especially on my puzzles, because I’m told they’re so hard.
MITCHELL I will say, I definitely was going through some of your puzzles and within like, five minutes, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m an idiot, like this is a struggle for me.’
KAMERON You just got to know, it’s kind of like studying for like the SATs or whatever. It’s like, you know what an analogy is until someone starts testing you on them and then you don’t know words anymore. But it’s like once you learn the little Kaplan Princeton Review secrets or whatever, it really is, it’s a lot of the same stuff over and over and over again. You know what ‘Oreo’ is every time it’s going to be clued. There are only so many ways to clue ‘Oreo’. [Mitchell laughs]
MITCHELL I was watching this interview that you did with The New Yorker where they were asking you about kind of your process for curating the puzzles. And you were talking about how you like to get a wide array of different things into your puzzles, like you’ll have a queer reference next to a Black reference next to like a totally different pop-culture reference, and that you were getting like a really positive response from having all of these different milieus being brought into it. And I was curious how that maybe relates to, do you feel like that relates to your film tastes as well in bringing such like a wide spread of different influences and cultures into the films that you love watching?
KAMERON Yeah, sure. I mean, I think—well, first of all, as a critic, I think it’s really important, you know, you have your loves, you have your genres, your directors, your stars, your whatever, that you’re in love with, but I think it’s really important to keep cutting your teeth on unfamiliar stuff. Put your takes to the test as often as you can by watching something random. I kind of have a personal rule of watching random stuff that just someone will mention, that I’ve never heard of before. It often leads me astray. [Mitchell laughs] I will not pretend that it is only, you know, it is sometimes like broccoli. But often I think I’m just like, ‘Wow, okay, so now I’ve seen that.’ Like I just watched the 2008 Thora Birch movie Train, basically like Hostel on a train. And I got a couple of things out of it, not that much. But I’m glad that I’ve seen it. None of my friends on Letterboxd or that I’ve asked about it had seen it. Now I’m glad that I’ve seen it. I’m never going to watch it again. There was like a POV shot at being peed on... I’m good. [Mitchell & Kameron & Slim laugh] Once is enough. But I just feel like you have to—I think that’s important. But I also just think as a fan of any art form it it just really helps to put yourself in unfamiliar territory. And then you can retreat back to the familiar, you know, do like a Friday-night movie that you really love. But so much of my watching of films growing up was really just, I had an older cousin, who took me to the movies all the time, and basically whatever he wanted to watch, because he was driving and paying and buying the popcorn, I would watch. That’s how I saw John Carpenter’s Vampires for the first time.
SLIM Oh, wow.
KAMERON And Mission to Mars and also things like [Men in Black] and Independence Day and stuff like that. But often, he had these genre interests that were totally outside of my wheelhouse. And I’m pretty sure that John Carpenter’s Vampires was the first John Carpenter movie that I saw because I was a scaredy cat and I knew I wasn’t watching Halloween. I’d seen enough of it to know that I was too scared as a kid. And this, you know, Vampires is actually, I think I it freaking me out too. But, you know, it was just things like that, you know, someone else saying, “We’re going to see this, you don’t have a choice, you’re not even gonna know what we’re watching until, you know, just shut up and watch the movie, kids.” [Kameron & Mitchell & Slim laugh] “Your mom said you wanted to get out of the house, so you’re just gonna have to see what I want to see.” And that’s sort of just a big part of my movie-going life, has been on journeys with other people. So it is about the unfamiliar for me.
MITCHELL Well, that I mean, that’s a perfect segue for us to just get right into talking about your four faves starting with John Carpenter’s Vampires. This film directed by of course, John Carpenter, if you can tell by the titling there. Released in 1998, 2.9 average rating on Letterboxd. Only thirteen people have it in their four faves, so Kameron, you’re in pretty elite company for that one. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh] The synopsis: “The church enlists a team of vampire-hunters to hunt down and destroy a group of vampires searching for an ancient relic that will allow them to exist in sunlight.” Kameron, I mean, you just said, you know, you’ve talked to us a little bit about that first experience of seeing it, your first John Carpenter movie. Did you know right away that like you loved this movie, when you first saw it?
KAMERON I didn’t. But the thing about this movie, the reason that I ever watched it, maybe a month ago or so, is because there were images from that movie, and this movie came out in 1998, and it’s 2022 supposedly now...
MITCHELL Allegedly.
KAMERON Allegedly, so they say. It’s just, you know those films that you see as a kid, you may not know what the name of it is, you may not know, the plot, who’s in it. But there are just images from it burned into your brain. This is one of those movies. It would be one of those films that if it weren’t John Carpenter, it would be one of those films that I’d been trying to find the name of for a long time, because there were just things about it that stuck with me. I don’t whether or not I liked it. I James Wood[s]... [Kameron & Mitchell laugh] You know, as a kid, I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen Twin Peaks, so I didn’t know who Sheryl Lee was for example. I don’t really know that I had an idea of who Daniel Baldwin is, but of course, the Baldwin family face is familiar, so I’m sure I knew who he was related to. But I had nothing really to go on, I didn’t know who John Carpenter was. So it was all about—and I really didn’t have much interest in vampires despite being a Buffy fan. So it really just was about, I just these very vibrant images of James Wood[s] in a hotel, dismembering dead bodies and setting them on fire. And, you know, the big fire at the end of the film when, you know, he kicks a board and a slat opens and a 600-year-old vampire goes up in flames. I that stuff. And I watched it recently because I wanted to understand why it stuck in my mind. And as an adult, I’m watching it and I know who Sheryl Lee is, and I know about Twin Peaks and I’ve seen a lot of David Lynch and I associate so much of his work with roadside motels, with a certain kind of dreamy darkness. And I’m watching it now as an adult and I’m seeing this, you know, opening vampire slayage, I guess, to be ridiculously corny about it. I’m seeing this guy walk into a roadside motel, disrupt a party and through these images that are fading into each other and collapsing time watching him completely destroy an entire group of people but in a very dreamy way, and I’m thinking, ‘Holy shit...’ [Kameron laughs] Like as a kid, I would not have been hip to what was going on there or had any sense of the stylistic callback. But as an adult, I’m watching this film, I’m watching Sheryl Lee go crazy. I’m watching what feels at first extremely misogynistic, and realizing that her character in particular who’s been bitten, she’s been eaten out by a vampire and that’s a thing... [Mitchell & Slim laugh] Let’s not...
MITCHELL Let’s not beat around the bush—sorry, beat around the bush...
SLIM So to speak. [Mitchell laughs]
KAMERON I was just thinking in my head, like, ‘Am I gonna say that?’ But you know, it starts off feeling pretty misogynistic because it’s an exploitation movie. So it’s, you know, pretty unkind to her character. And then over time, because it’s her, she’s doing the same thing that she did so well in Twin Peaks, which is, she can’t just be a scream queen, she can’t scream in a movie-genre way. She screams in a way that feels very real to me, and very painful to me. And this movie, combined with the James Wood[s] of it all, and the Daniel Baldwin of it all and the vampires of it all, it just becomes for me, it was really sad, brutal James Wood[s] at his most James Wood[s], following his worst impulses, exciting, grimy, ugly exploitation flick that has a real pain in it to me.
SLIM It’s funny, you mentioned exploitation, because for whatever reason, I didn’t even consider—I rewatched this, I think I’ve watched this twice in last two months. I rewatched it this morning in advance because I was like maybe I need to watch it again. But when you frame it as an exploitation movie, I’m almost like now, I didn’t love it. I’m almost more forgiving now. And I can see it in a totally different light because James Woods is like so repulsive in this movie.
KAMERON He’s so repulsive!
SLIM He’s so repulsive. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL The the amount of homophobia in this movie and like the running bits of him just doing this rampant homophobic language. I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus...’ I mean, I get James Woods, I’m not surprised to hear it coming out of his mouth, but... [Mitchell laughs]
KAMERON But this is also, I think part of the reason I love this film is because it puts his finger on a really complicated thing about film to me, which is that like, his character doing those things, we have to face the fact that he’s really good at playing that guy. [Mitchell laughs] In real life, online and in movies, he is really good at playing that guy. But I don’t think that the film, like I think that’s why he’s a benefit to the film. I think John Carpenter knows what he’s doing when he has an ingredient like James Wood[s] in this movie being as repulsive as possible, the hero of the movie. But putting that next to, on the side, the Daniel Baldwin character starts off one way. But then because you know he’s developing feelings for the Sheryl Lee character, the little minor moments of increased sympathy between them, colors the movie in a different way. Also the movie’s skepticism toward the church...
SLIM Oh, yeah.
KAMERON And their involvement. There’s just a lot going on. And it’s disgusting.
SLIM I probably would have stayed in the Catholic Church had I known that I could hunt vampires. [Mitchell & Kameron laugh] I’d probably still be Catholic, I’d be having that time in my life!
KAMERON I mean, they really don’t that enough. [Mitchell & Slim & Kameron laugh] That you too, could be a God Crusader whose job is killing vampires.
MITCHELL It’s an option!
SLIM Seriously, god.
KAMERON Yeah, I really care about the film now. That said, after watching that, again, I did watch for the first time Ghosts of Mars. And I would say that the assessment on that one has been closer to correct. Although there are still things about that film that I like as well. [Slim laugh] I’m not gonna lie, not gonna lie. There’s still things about that film I like.
MITCHELL Slim and I host another podcast on Letterboxd with our co-host Mia Vicino called Weekend Watchlist where we talk about the new movies coming out. But we also do this thing where we shuffle our watchlists to like pick a movie that’s on our watchlists, and we have to watch it by the next one. And a few months back I got Ghosts of Mars, so I watched that and it was my first time watching it. And yeah, that movie is like... I mean, it’s very, it’s a genre exercise. It’s very like, John Carpenter in space. You can feel the like, it’s trying to be Snake Plissken doing his thing. But it’s also of that realm of the early 2000s, MTV music-video era of filmmaking. I mean, it’s a lot of fun. But yeah, I definitely like Vampires a bit more than Ghosts of Mars I think.
KAMERON Yeah, Ghost of Mars... yeah... um... [Mitchell & Slim laugh] I the trailers from when I was a kid because anything that Ice Cube was in, I was like, as a kid I loved him.
MITCHELL Sure.
KAMEROM Great actor. Yeah, Ghosts of Mars, you know, not his best but what I appreciate about it is like, for its moment, this is what it feels like John Carpenter is trying to do Carpenter things. Like there’s Escape from New York in there, there’s The Fog, there’s The Thing in there. There’s a lot of stuff in there. But there’s also Mars in there. And the Mars of it all... [Mitchell laughs] I don’t know. [Kameron laughs] But I think Ice Cube’s really good and Pam Grier’s in it, like it’s such a weird movie. [Kameron laughs] It’s not the masterpiece that Vampires is. But, you know, maybe in ten years you’ll watch that and be like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe how good this Mars movie is.’
SLIM We should spotlight, maybe at least one review for Vampires before we move on, but Dallas left a review: “The Vampires is pulpy trash, but it’s John Carpenter pulpy trash. Just try to turn it off!” It’s a good point. It is a very good point.
KAMERON Yeah, I can’t stop watching. Yeah. [Slim laughs] I’m so like, I can’t even tell you, rewatching that movie, it was just like, ‘Oh my god, where’s the Blu-ray?’ [Kameron laughs]
SLIM Right, right.
KAMERON I hope there’s like a double-disc special edition, like I’m in. Criterion, I’m so in on that movie.
SLIM I was just on a podcast about The Haunting, the 1999 version.
KAMERON The Catherine Zeta Jones?
SLIM Yeah, I was shocked that there was like this big, elaborate 4K release. It had, you know, some booklet inside and had a really well-designed fold out and I was like ‘Wow, okay...’
KAMERON Okay, another film I saw as a kid that is burned in my—that’s the one where there’s the baby-face cherub angels on the headboard or something and they start moving?
SLIM Yup.
KAMERON Yeah, that freaked me out as a kid. Catherine Zeta Jones had her whole moment, that was a big part of my—
SLIM the Entrapment trailer?
KAMERON Yes! [Mitchell laughs]
SLIM I mean, I... My god. Formative. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL Entrapment movie, I own that on Blu-ray. [Mitchell & Kameron & Slim laugh]
KAMERON Good for you. Knowing that there’s a Blu-ray release of any of these films, that’s splashy, makes me think, ‘Okay, maybe I need to give us another look.’
MITCHELL I’ve got Vampires on the Shout Factory’s branch Scream Factory did like a whole collector’s edition of Vampires, that’s what I watched it on.
KAMERON Good for them.
SLIM But does it come with a cigar? Does it come with like a mock cigar in the case that you can smoke?
MITCHELL I opened it up and James Woods just started shouting gay slurs at me. [Mitchell & Kameron & Slim laugh]
SLIM Alright, let’s drift into our next movie, Mikey and Nicky, 1976, directed by Elaine May. This is moving up in average, 4.0 average on Letterboxd.
KAMERON That’s a big jump.
SLIM That is a giant jump. 613 fans, and the synopsis: “In Philadelphia, a small-time bookie who stole mob money is in hiding and he begs a childhood friend to help him evade the hit-man who’s on his trail.” So this is the second time this has been on The Letterboxd Show. Mia, we mentioned earlier, this is one of her favorite movies. This ranks 39 in the all-time top 100 films by female directors. Talk to us about your first experience with this movie. What was it like?
KAMERON Gosh, I think a number of years ago I had an Elaine May, Cassavetes, et cetera, moment. And I watched this, I think, around the time that I saw Husbands for the first time, around the time I saw A New Leaf for the first time. Peter Falk, I kind of grew up on because of Columbo, he’s like one of the most recognizable faces of my life. But I don’t know what really specifically drew me to this film beyond the fact that it’s one of those that I couldn’t turn off when I started watching it, because I think it’s sort of my favorite movies about men, and about really complicated friendships between men. That’s not some rare thing. But I’ve noticed that some of my favorite depictions of that kind of dynamic have happened to be by women directors. Another one of my favorites is Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker, which doesn’t even feel like it’s going to be about the two men who are on this bad trip and get hijacked. But that too, is a film that’s very sensitive about the underlying resentment amid the sensitivity between men, and this movie just, I don’t know, Cassavetes breaks my heart in this movie. So does Peter Falk, who has like a face that you wouldn’t know, if you hadn’t seen him in things, you wouldn’t know how deft and buried his expressions and his emotional life can be in a movie, he kind of just seems like kind of stone cold, you know, average-looking, gumshoe-cop kind of look to me. But he just, I don’t know, the two of them in this, they just break my heart. And of course it’s an important film also just for the production history and knowing about Elaine May and her troubles with studios and her unique methods of capturing this stuff on film, but I think a lot of that stuff is the stuff that’s probably good about the movie. We won’t see every cut available of the movie. But I’m dying to. [Mitchell laughs]
MITCHELL Yeah, I think the that idea of it being really heartbreaking too, is very interesting and so effective about it, because it could just be a movie that’s about these disgusting, kind of repugnant men, and how terrible they are. And it is, it is that, but it’s also—and which, you mentioned Husbands, Husbands is really that. It really does that for two and a half hours, it makes you feel so sick watching it. But Mikey and Nicky does that, there are so many scenes that are just really great, especially the scenes with women in them. And you see the way these men treat women are just so tough to watch. But at the same time, it’s so much more complicated because you also get those scenes of them just shooting the shit with each other or them like having this real bond between them, and that like fracture of the bond too. So you feel for them so sincerely as well. And you even have fun watching them in so much of it. Yeah, it really navigates that.
KAMERON They’re kooky! They’re the kooky guys. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh] Kooky actors playing kooky characters. But yeah, it is that tension, like the push-and-pull of like, I feel bad for a man who knows he’s going to die. And he keeps looking at the clock, because he knows even calling in your best friend to kind of help you move around and evade the hitman. Like you can do whatever you want, but you kind of know that your time is up. And there’s something so sad about that, even as he’s a terrible guy. Yeah, I can’t rewatch this as often as I watch others, like A New Leaf I could watch every day, because it’s a comedy. And this is... is not. [Kameron laughs]
SLIM How important is this kind of like the vibe of this movie? This filmmaking style? When I first watched it for Mia’s episode, I thought it was a Cassavetes movie. I had no idea that it was Elaine May, and I was like so, I was so respectful of that she was able to pull this off. And I feel like this kind of movie, this kind of filmmaking can be invigorating to a critic, or a movie-lover.
KAMERON Yeah, this is one of those films that, I think it’s a really good point, because this is one of those films that I think every once in a while, you need to watch something, in the midst of watching all the new things you have to watch as a critic, you need to kind of return to these sort of just punch-in-the-gut masterpiece films that aren’t really like anything else. Or if they are, it’s like specific, as you say. I think of this, and I think of other Cassavetes films and like that moment, and this kind of crew of actors. But beyond that, there aren’t other things that really remind me of this period, and this moment with these specific artists. And I just sometimes need to revisit it to just remind myself of like, this is what this feels like, let’s just put your hand on the third wheel for two hours or however long, just be shocked back to life and just that, you know, this is something that sures time and it sures, it just sures everything. It just has that kind of quality where you’re just like, ‘How did this happen?’ And of course the answer to that is partially, because Elaine May kept the camera running. [Mitchell & Slim laugh] She has these people who know how to work together and who because of their other work and because of her work with them, they know what they’re doing but she still kind of massages it into something that even with all the kind of, the different cuts and all the trouble, the financial trouble, the studio trouble and all that, this just, I didn’t watch it with a sense that it had been interfered with.
MITCHELL Yeah, yeah.
KAMERON And you kind of know what it feels like when something’s been interfered with.
MITCHELL Yeah, you really feel like you’re seeing her vision fully on screen, and I know it took a long time to get it to be her vision that we’re actually seeing. You mentioned the studio troubles. I wrote a whole essay about this movie for Paste last year, it’s one of my favorite movies of all-time. And doing that, that was the first time that I discovered that the movie was a Christmas release when it came out, which is like staggering to think about his studio being like, “Yeah let’s throw this—this is what everybody wants to see. The families are going to see Mikey and Nicky for Christmas.” [Slim laughs]
KAMERON Wow, all the depressed men were eating that Christmas. Wow. [Mitchell laughs] They were like, ‘Finally a film about me.’
SLIM They were feasting. They were feasting at the movies.
KAMERON They really ate this one up. Yeah, wow, I didn’t realize it had a Christmas release. I don’t even know what Christmas release is supposed to mean anymore because there’s so many films that come out on Christmas that I wouldn’t watch on that holiday... [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
MITCHELL You’re not watching the new Disney+ series The Santa Clauses coming out this year with Tim Allen back in the role that made him famous? [Slim & Mitchell laugh]
KAMERON You know, I survived it once. I’m good. Actually when that came out, I will not lie. I think I saw that in theaters three times when [The] Santa Clause came out.
SLIM Yeah, that might afford a movie for the three of us, because I was thinking about your Letterboxd, your childhood list, that would probably be on mine.
KAMERON Jingle All the Way was my other.
MITCHELL Yes, absolutely.
KAMERON You know, just, man...
MITCHELL Turboman, baby!
KAMERON They don’t make them like this anymore. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
SLIM No they don’t, they don’t make them like The Santa Clause, they don’t make them like Mikey and Nicky anymore. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL The two movies, the two movies that they don’t make anymore.
KAMERON But as I said, I think I being in the theater and being like, ‘Oh The Santa... Clause... like it’s in a contract, I get it.” Like as a kid, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so smart.’
SLIM Yeah, there’s a review, let’s see, where is it? From KYK: “One of those movies. I feel like I’d never get tired of I put this on close to 3am last night because I couldn’t sleep possibly the perfect way to watch it. Late-night snacks and beers with the boys...”
KAMERON With the boys. It is one of those 3 AM ‘can’t sleep’ movies.
MITCHELL 100%.
KAMERON I mean, depending on the mood. Depending on how I’m feeling, yeah.
SLIM Some Letterboxd lists this spotlights on, let’s see: Wet Streets on Film by John Frankensteiner.
KAMERON Sure.
SLIM I love that. Oh my god, so good.
MITCHELL I love Alva’s list: movies that are actually gay rom-coms but are d as men being cool. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM So how was your journey with her films, Elaine May? How did it go? Are there any other ones that jumped out at you besides Mikey and Nicky?
KAMERON Oh, you know, the only one that I haven’t really been able to wrap my mind around is Ishtar. Something about that doesn’t connect for me, but otherwise, I mean, like she’s a genius. I mean, this is someone who after seeing her films, I was like, let me go on YouTube and watch some of her, you know, her comedy, her Nichols and May comedy, because I just think she’s an absolute genius. And really, I think the story for me with her, it’s just like, I wish there were more. I wish it were like when I, you know, had my Brian De Palma moment and there were more films than I even realized that he made. Or John Carpenter, right? You know, I just wish that there was so much more, and it’s not been satisfying, really, to also add the stuff that she’s written because I do think that she, as a director, has a particular finesse that I would just like to see more of her directing. She’s still alive... so...
SLIM I know Elaine’s listening. Elaine, please. We’re making the call right now.
KAMERON She’s out there! She’s like, offline, but not really. She lurks. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] She has to.
SLIM She only listens to The Letterboxd Show on Tuesdays and Weekend Watchlist on Thursdays. Elaine, please, we’re begging. Please.
KAMERON We’re really begging.
MITCHELL Somebody else that I’m very excited, I’m hoping that we get a new feature from, is Mati Diop.
KAMERON Yeah!
MITCHELL Who, you know, we can move into talking about Atlantics, your next fave, which Mati Diop, her directing debut came out in 2019. 3.6 average rating on Letterboxd, 219 people have it in their four favorites. The synopsis for that film: “Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt—until a miracle reunites them.” Mati Diop, an actor who’s in 35 Shots of Rum, the Claire Denis film, which I have the poster of right behind me.
SLIM Oh my god, look at that. The camera just shifted to it. Looks great. [Mitchell & Kameron laugh]
MITCHELL Huge fan of her, so I was super stoked myself when or just her directing a movie came out. The first film to play at Cannes by a Black director, which is absurd, 2019—a Black female director, sorry. Absurd that it took 2019 for that to happen. But Kameron, what was your first experience with Atlantics?
KAMERON It was one of the critics’ screenings for New York Film Festival that year, when it was at Cannes, when it came to New York. And I’d seen her shorts, I’d seen her short of Atlantics which is different, it’s different than its film related though, in that it’s about refugee crisis and it’s also kind of elliptical but, you know, it’s like a different animal. I would seek it out if you know anywhere to find it.
MITCHELL It’s on Criterion Channel now. Yeah.
KAMERON Oh good. Right, right, right. Praying that the Criterion Atlantics Blu-ray set comes out—
MITCHELL Crazy! This is in my notes! This is in my notes in all caps! [Slim laughs] They told us, they promised us it was gonna happen. Where is it, Criterion?
KAMERON I have a friend who works there and every once in a while, I’m just like, “So... Where’s Atlantics?”
SLIM Elaine May, if you have an in that Criterion too, please! [Mitchell laughs] We’re begging you!
MITCHELL She’s still listening!
KAMERON Right, like come on. But you know, I saw it at the critic screening there and I distinctly , as I was watching it, there’s that early moment of when Ada, she sees her boyfriend, like across the street and a train es between them. And the shot-reverse-shot between the two of them, like gets closer on each face, and they’re just... something lit up for me about their romance, their love, like that moment, did it for me in of just making me feel this kind of flicker in my stomach for them. But it’s a film that sticks with me because I love, I love when someone’s able to take something like a ghost story or like zombies or any of this kind of genre stuff, and make it kind of fluid and luminous and weird. Rather than like what I usually get with ghosts, which is great, like scary, because they are scary. I think they’re terrifying, I hope they don’t exist. But the idea that you could take something that’s sort of horrifying. And in this film, it’s like, pinned to the people who come back and reinhabit the bodies of the living are people who died at sea, or people who were refugees who were going to go to Spain for money, because they’re owed money from this construction work that they’re doing in Dakar and when they drown at sea, they come back and they’re on the hunt for what’s owed to them. And it becomes, you know, it becomes a lot of things. And it re-engages the idea of romance when it becomes clear that one of the people who’s come back is her boyfriend. But that concept in itself can be so many different things. It could be beautiful, it could be terrifying, it could be creepy, it could be political. And this kind of straddles multiple fences for me. And when you just have, there’s just images in this film, you know, a wedding party, where there’s a fire all of a sudden, or just the images of the women who’ve been inhabited by these ghosts sort of wandering around. It’s like, sexy-terrifying. It’s like this clashing, this clash of tastes in your mouth. It’s like a lot of things at once. But it’s political as well, but it’s also just a good-luck story. You know, it’s just one of those films that sort of does everything for me. And I think about it a lot. I don’t even know how to really define it.
SLIM Yeah, that’s a great comment, because I watched it for the first time this week. And there are very lo-fi, fantasy, ghosty, horror elements, where I put in my notes that I could totally see this being a Shudder 2022 movie. And it would fit because I think Saloum is also going on Shudder or is already on Shudder. I just watched that for the first time. And there’s one list and then one review that kind of connects with this: soft horror, Liam’s list, and “Nontraditional ghost stories are one of the most beautiful things imaginable” and that comes from Sarah. So yeah, I loved how it was kind of low-key all of those things. I wasn’t really expecting it on my first watch.
KAMERON Yeah, and it’s one of those movies that like, again, it’s like a test case for, it helps me figure out how I feel about this kind of project, which is really ambitious, but it’s a small film. And it’s straddling a lot of fences. But it’s so fluid in the way that it moves between them that, you know, I’m just sort of in awe of how it just sort of evades my grasp every time I think I understand what it’s doing. And I just think it’s beautiful, you know? And a great soundtrack, also great, you know, I think that’s an important thing that connects to my childhood, a great soundtrack. I miss the days of like, being obsessed with like a Batman soundtrack.
SLIM Oh my god. [Kameron laughs]
KAMERON Don’t get me started. [Slim laughs] I miss a great soundtrack, and this has one.
MITCHELL Yeah, there’s a great line when Ada is speaking with Souleiman, her boyfriend in it, where she references, “the salt of your body and the sweat of mine.” And I thought that phrasing is just so beautiful and so evocative and speaks to the sensory elements that Diop is tapping into throughout the whole movie. You mentioned the score too, like it is a movie that feels like it really just roots itself inside of you as you’re watching it. And it’s a tough one too, like watching it this time, I didn’t write a lot of notes for the podcast on this one compared to the other ones because it is really so much a movie that you feel more than you intellectualize while you’re watching.
KAMERON Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is one of those like, ‘My brain is alive, I’m thinking a lot. But I’m also just feeling a lot.’
SLIM There’s a Letterboxd list that I have to spotlight, and I we recently posted this, I think this is the list we put on Twitter and some people were angry at this list. I love this list. Quote, “nothing happens—yeah but the vibes”.
KAMERON Oh cool.
SLIM And people took that as like a negative but no, that’s a great positive!
KAMERON That’s a great positive.
SLIM Like you want to feel, I want to feel the vibes for two hours, for 90 minutes. Sometimes that’s just what you want.
KAMERON It’s not that I’m anti-plot, it’s more... I do think that plot can cover up a lack of vibes. I don’t really care—I mean, I do care what’s happening in the movie, I care about the plot, I do care about the action. But the thing that really sticks with me about a film is often the vibes. Like when I’m thinking about John Carpenter’s Vampires, I don’t the plot. What I ed is James Wood[s] and vampires being on fire and it’s extremely evocative as a series of images. That’s what stuck with me across spacetime, Interstellar-style, just like, reached out to me in space. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] That’s what caught me, right? It was that. And I mean, there are films that definitely are so good at maneuvering plot, I feel this way about Fincher a lot of the time. Like, you can take a lot of plot, like Zodiac has a good amount of plot, but because it’s all textured by this obsessive hunt, and the sense of the city, and the sense of fear and panic, but really, obsession, it just... the plot I forget and I restart it every time I’m watching, but the obsession and the fear is what I , the vibes. And that’s hard.
MITCHELL Yeah, I , so I saw the movie when it first came out, and I absolutely loved it. And so I was really excited. I hadn’t seen it since then. So I was really excited to revisit it for this. And yeah, it is one of those things where I didn’t a lot of the specifics of the plot and the maneuvering of the plot, I just ed how it made me feel and some of the images, like the women and what she does with their eyes to reflect them being, you know, inhabited by these men. And one of the reviews that Jack pulled out for us is our friend of the show, Demi’s review: “Let yourself be a bit confused and then feel the joy as it all comes together.” And I just that experience for me too, especially the first time that I watched it, not understanding—I didn’t know a lot about like the history of this area, the real-life kind of migration story that this is a little bit based on, which the short is very much more about that specifically. And I just being transfixed by and hypnotized by what I was seeing and like discovering it as it was happening and then after it was over, reading up more about it, reading interviews with Mati Diop, and being more enriched by learning more about the backstory of it, too.
KAMERON Yeah, yeah, we need a second feature. Let’s go.
MITCHELL Come on, Mati! Where you at?
KAMERON She’s been acting, and she’s made short, she’s made a pandemic short. She’s out here.
MITCHELL Yeah, I saw she popped up in Claire Denis’s Both Sides of the Blade.
KAMERON That’s right.
MITCHELL A small role in that, I was very excited to see her but also was like, ‘Mati! Where’s the new directed movie? Where you at?’
KAMERON Atlantics 2, let’s go. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
MITCHELL Atlantics 2, Criterion, fund it!
SLIM Final of these faves—I’m not going to call them your four favorites. These four favorites.
MITCHELL We cannot, we’re not legally allowed to say, Kam will sue us. [Mitchell laughs]
SLIM I’ve already gotten a legal letter in my Letterboxd email. I see a letterhead. It’s starting to freak me out. 1964’s The Naked Kiss, Samuel Fuller, 3.8 average. 35 fans. The synopsis: “A former prostitute works to create a new life for herself in a small town, but a shocking discovery could threaten everything.” This is Samuel Fuller’s fourth most popular and highest-rated film. It’s been on Jack’s watchlist who puts our facts together forever, he says. And man, I wasn’t prepared for this movie. [Mitchell & Kameron laugh] I was getting slapped around by her watching this movie. [Mitchell laughs] From the onset, she’s slapping that dude. A pimp’s getting slapped. Everyone’s getting slapped by a purse or a shoe.
MITCHELL The wigs are coming off.
SLIM The wigs. [Slim laughs]
KAMERON It’s incredible.
SLIM Incredible way to start this movie. And then the shocking turn later in the film, but where were you when you first saw The Naked Kiss? What was that experience like?
KAMERON I was on a Samuel Fuller journey. This was, unlike with, you know, Carpenter say, where I’d seen a few films and then later in life was like, ‘I really need to go deep dive into this guy.’ Sam Fuller was someone that I didn’t really–I knew of, you know, I’ve heard about in college, but I hadn’t seen any of his films. And I watched I think The Steel Helmet first. I was like, ‘This is great, very interested.’ And then I just, I think this is back before Criterion Channel was Criterion Channel, back when it was FilmStruck, I want to say. I just clicked on the Sam Fuller tab and in one week, just blew through as much of his work as I could. And this one in particular, I mean, frankly, he’s one of my pantheon directors. I love a number of his films, even the bad ones I love. But this one, it’s the moment of the big reveal that you mentioned. The way that we cut back to Constance Towers’ face and it’s a different but plummeting expression each time as she realizes what she’s seeing. That combined with the opening combined with just the idea, you know, this idea that she’s a sex worker, she’s going to try to move to the suburbs, you know, clean slate, marry what she thinks is a nice guy. And then it turns out that the suburban life is just as depraved, is more depraved than the life that she apparently, supposedly, stands for as a sex worker, that like, society has decided that she is worse than this upstanding man. But the reason that he is attracted to her is because he thinks she’s just as bad as he is. I feel since it came out in the ’60s, we could just spoiler alert, not even—yeah, let’s spoiler alert.
MITCHELL Let’s do it.
SLIM Do it. Spoiler alert. We’re gonna get into spoilers. Let’s get into it.
KAMERON She walks in on him molesting a child. And this is a pillar-of-the-community, upstanding guy, the idea that he knows her past and that’s why he wants to marry her because they’re just as bad as each other, is...
SLIM So crazy, so wild.
KAMERON Crazy and societally, I know exactly what Sam Fuller’s getting, I know exactly the idea politically behind this. And that’s, I think, what I liked about Sam Fuller. He has these really, you know, he worked in journalism for a while, he’s made these amazing war films. He’s really gritty. He’s created noir. This was shot by Stanley Cortez, who shot, you know, [The] Magnificent Ambersons. It looks amazing. It hits all these notes. But the thing that’s really Sam Fuller about it for me is that he takes things like noir as a genre and reminds me of how political they can be. Everything I’ve seen by him is political cinema, but it can always as something else. This could just be a fucked-up movie. [Kameron & Mitchell & Slim laugh] But there’s a deeply, there’s a very political idea, to this idea that over the course of this film, she is going to have to prove her worth as a trustworthy citizen, because she kills this guy who’s a child molester, that she is going to have to clear her name because of her past, because we as a society have decided that as a sex worker, she’s at the margin. It’s just crazy. And she acts the hell out of this role.
MITCHELL She’s so good. Yeah, and I love the the ending of it to where it’s like, and this is a thing that Samuel Fuller was so good at too. She like, technically wins, more or less with the end, but she still is an outcast from society, essentially. And so there is the, there’s not a triumphant feeling at the end of it, there is still that feeling of society has not changed for the better at the end of this movie. Like it still is the way it is.
KAMERON It’s such a Joan Crawford role, like Constance Towers is amazing and I wouldn’t replace her. But it reminds me a lot of Joan Crawford, partially because of the work with the face, and Joan Crawford, I mean, her face was one of a kind, she could absolutely have done that moment of the reveal. But also it just makes me think about Joan Crawford, because here’s someone who worked in sex work, who had to kind of cover her tracks, cover her past in order to kind of get ahead in the Hollywood studio system. But this question of virtue, as it’s linked to sex work and other forms of work that that because we push them to the margins, because we’ve decided they’re morally corrupt, we put this expectation on these people that they have to kind of prove their virtue to the rest of society, and what this film does by making the rest of society disgusting. It’s just really something. And it’s the same with Joan Crawford, like the idea that someone who had been in, you know, pornographic films early in her career would have to kind of prove her virtue to Hollywood... [Kameron laughs] The parallels between them, it’s pretty astounding. And I wish that Joan Crawford and Sam Fuller could’ve work together because I think they really would have hit it off.
SLIM Yeah, unreal viewing experience for me. I have to point out too, if everyone can go to Samuel Fuller’s Letterboxd page, he has some of the most, he has this OG pose.
KAMERON Oh, yeah.
SLIM His hair is everywhere. And he’s got like the biggest cigar. He doesn’t give an eff in this photo.
KAMERON He doesn’t give a fuck. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] And that’s why he’s one of my director heroes, I think, because he just, his movies go hard. [Kameron laughs]
SLIM Super hard.
KAMERON It is so strange to link up his films to whatever else was coming out at the same time, and I think about how much harder he was going than everyone else.
SLIM Yeah, I also wonder what the perception of him at that time was, you know, when this had come out, like what was the view of his films or even this film at the time?
KAMERON Yeah, because it’s hard to measure because he’s been, I think recuperated and put in the pantheon by people like Scorsese and others, like, directors, major directors love Sam Fuller. He is a major American director in of a legacy. But I think of the moment, like this is not someone that I was learning about when I was learning quote, unquote, “Hollywood history” even though he made some of the best Noirs. Like Pickup at South Street, maybe, is the one that I heard about, or The Big Red One for war films. But even then, he wasn’t making the films that when I was younger that I had to see and I think part of that is because he was going way harder than these other people. And I think his relationship with the studio system was what it was. I don’t think that he was working with, you know, I don’t think that he had the kind of career that people who weren’t in the know or who weren’t going out of their way to seek him out, would sort of know to valorize, which is too bad, and which is why I think it’s just so necessary to watch as much of this stuff as you can because... dude’s crazy.
SLIM Do I need to grow my hair out like [Sam] Fuller on this Letterboxd profile photo?
KAMERON You need to.
SLIM I feel like I have to. [Mitchell laughs]
KAMERON I mean, and do the cigar.
SLIM Just constantly hold a cigar that’s never lit, and just every meeting I’m in, it’s just always in my hands at all times.
KAMERON Just total straight-shooter, just wild, wild director. Yeah, I really would push everyone to watch this film. If this opening doesn’t get you... [Kameron] I don’t know what to say.
SLIM Nothing will. Nothing will.
MITCHELL Oh my god, yeah, I had seen, so from Fuller, I had seen Shock Corridor which is kind of like paired with this. Shock Corridor is the one that he made like right before this, right. And so I had seen that like a few years back because the premise of it sounded so interesting to me. It similarly is a movie that really tackles taboo in a way that Hollywood was not tackling and yet still, I was not prepared for the opening scene of this movie. I was just, yeah, my wig was snatched by the opening scene of this movie. [Slim laughs]
KAMERON Even today, no one starts a movie like this, so I cannot imagine what it would be like in the ’60s and you have a nice date night going out to the movies. [Mitchell & Slim laugh] ‘Seeing a film, I’ve never heard this director, wonder what this is about. Constance Towers, looks interesting.’ What the fuck? [Mitchell & Kameron laugh]
SLIM There’s a Letterboxd review from Cole: “There’s no way on earth this isn’t David Lynch’s favorite movie.” There’s some other ones, let’s see. “Kind of feel dumb for believing for a couple of minutes that Kelly was actually a traveling champagne saleswoman.” Comes from Chris. [Mitchell & Kameron & Slim laugh]
MITCHELL I do, I really liked the list on Letterboxd from Madison, the list is called abs die, suffer, or rot in prison. I feel like that’s just a list of bangers, right? That’s gotta be.
SLIM That’s a great list. [Slim laughs]
KAMERON Absolutely. I mean she is beating her pimp’s ass. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL She’s got the shoe, she’s taking no shit.
KAMERON It is incredible. Man, yeah.
SLIM When she goes to that business and she asks for her office and she’s like, “Are you taking me to your office? Where’s your office?” [Mitchell & Slim laugh] She just starts laying into her. She put the cash in her mouth! Oh my god.
KAMERON Oh my god. It is so good. It also just really works as this just this shit-talking, aggressive, seeing bad people get their asses beat, satisfying film that has a lot going on as well. But yeah, she... man. Oof.
MITCHELL You know, before we wrap up, one thing that we do our guests, is kind of dive into their Letterboxd, get a look at their stats, see some of like the interesting things that we can pull from there. Kameron you, usually we like to look at kind of what ratings people give and what they are rating higher. You take the interesting approach of not rating movies on your Letterboxd.
KAMERON Yeah, I like—this is also why I pushed at my current job, early on, I was like, “Can we get rid of star ratings?” [Slim & Kameron laugh] Because, I don’t know. There’s this kind of classic Siskel and Ebert fights where I think Ebert, I forget what movie they’re talking about, but he gave four stars to some stupid kids movie—
SLIM Free Willy, probably.
KAMERON Or something like that. Ebert’s unpredictable, I couldn’t even tell you what it was. And Siskel gets on his case, because there’s this not as good movie, but an adult movie that Ebert like totally shat on and Ebert’s like, “it’s all relative.” And I’m like, yeah, exactly. It’s all relative. And one of the things that it hinges on is how I feel that day. And that’s just too many factors for me. Something about the math of star ratings, I felt like whenever I would first do it, I’d look back on it like a year later and be like, ‘Why did I give that like two-and-a-half or four and why is that cemented in history?’ As if anyone cares. It’s just like, ‘Why is that like my take on this film?’ Now I just do heart or no heart and people read into it anyway. [Slim laughs] For me, it’s much simpler.
MITCHELL I like the approach because it is, like I do ratings but I don’t put that much thought into my ratings. I definitely am not watching a movie, thinking about what I rate it. I just rate it on vibes, basically, like if I feel like it’s a five, it’s a five. But it also, I like your approach because it helps encourage people to read the review, right? A lot of times you can see the rating and you’re just like, ‘Okay, I know what that person thought of that movie,’ just on seeing a number. But I discovered your work through Letterboxd because I think it was your review of My Brother’s Wedding, which I read and just really loved that review and then found your work because of that. But yeah, not having that rating helped propel me to read the review. But one thing that you do, one list that you have that I thought was really interesting, you have a list on your Letterboxd called List of Movies From My Childhood, which you described as being “An ongoing catalog of the movies, I spent my childhood watching and often rewatching up to the end of high school.” Could you tell us just like a little bit about that list? And like why that idea is something that you really want it to specifically have a list of those movies for to reflect on?
KAMERON I don’t know, I just, I wanted to try and every film that I watched until I graduated from—or I guess up until the start of college. So like, summer after I graduated also counts I guess, but I just, I wanted to see—because I think about them a lot. And because there are just so many films where I didn’t even know the name of them, where it was just like Saturday on TBS. I’m planted on the couch. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM The Superstation.
KAMERON I was a Superstation-ass kid, let me tell you. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] So, so many and even to me, that’s like an entire aesthetic of film. Like I’ll watch a movie from that period now and be like, ‘Oh, this is Superstation as hell.’ [Kameron laughs]
MITCHELL Absolutely.
KAMERON You know, it’s like I’m editing the commercial breaks into the movie as I’m watching. But like, I just wanted to try to those films in particular, the ones where it wasn’t because I went to the movies, necessarily, but it was because I saw it on TV. I mean, I’m thinking like the film Clockwatchers, which is a film that was on, I think it was showing on HBO once and I was watching it with my cousins, and just channel-surfing. And we stopped on this movie, and Lisa Kudrow was in it and we knew her from Friends, and an umbrella gets stolen. It’s the biggest thing that happens in this workplace. We were hooked. [Mitchell laugh] And for a long time, before I really started using IMDb, I wanted to know what the name of that movie was. And I think this list is made in the spirit of that person who’s always searching to the names of all those random movies. And I mean, you know, I thought that I was done with the list and then earlier this year added like 150 things that I didn’t realize weren’t on the list. Once you start it, you’d be amazed at how often you’re like, ‘Oh shit, I didn’t add Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I didn’t add Scream, I didn’t add all the Batman movies that I saw, all the Denzel/Tony Scott collaborations that I literally grew up on.’
MITCHELL All hits. Every one.
SLIM Man on Fire...
KAMERON Bangers, all of them. That is that is a set that I want, just like Denzel and Tony Scott. And then add Domino in there, because I have respect for Domino. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL Domino hive, we’re rising. [Slim laughs] We’re a small but devoted group of Domino lovers
KAMERON I’m very into that film. But yeah, I don’t know, maybe it’s nostalgic. I don’t know.
SLIM I love that list, because I often look back on movies that I grew up with that in my head I have this deep love for because I watched it so many times. And I am almost afraid to rewatch because, does this hold up? So when I was watching Vampires and also when I was watching The Haunting, I felt like I’d seen these movies, but in reality I’m just thinking of Scary Movie, the parody of all those movies that have come out around the time. James Woods I think is in Scary Movie 2, he starts out in that [The] Exorcist bit. And I have, that’s like most of my childhood knowledge of James Woods probably comes from Scary Movie.
KAMERON That’s incredible. [Slim & Kameron laugh] I’ve never heard that before.
SLIM It’s so formative. So when like, Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. came out, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Where do I know her from? Scary Movie!’ And those kinds of movies shaped my humor, but there are so many other movies from that timeframe that like, you know, you quote unquote, ‘love’, whether or not they’re quote unquote, ‘great movies’ but they’re imprinted, like you say, on you and you have memories of those times you watch it where they’re almost in like a different echelon of like a four favorites, where they’re like the untouchables and it’s just different.
KAMERON And it’s like at a time in your life when, it’s not you didn’t have—I mean, maybe we didn’t have taste, which is fine. I feel like you don’t need to have taste until like you’re old enough to vote or something. I don’t know. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] As a kid, it’s okay to not have—
MITCHELL The taste age.
KAMERON Yeah, like it’s okay to just be a piece of shit who just watches everything, because that’s the time—I mean, I really, as a young person, I really would watch whatever. I had an aunt who got me randomly like Three Colors trilogy and some Almodóvar films and I ate that up, but I also was watching like The Pagemaster, that Kieran Culkin loves-to-read book. [Slim laughs] If people like us hadn’t seen it, no one would . [Kameron laughs] It’s just like, I just wanted to catalog that. Because I think when you list it all out, you’d be surprised by the range of stuff that you watched. It wasn’t just me watching Willow on WB every weekend because I came on after Hercules and Xena. I feel like Willow was always on. [Kameron & Mitchell laugh]
SLIM What a triple threat too. You’re sitting at home, like your night is planned, my friend. I’m not going anywhere.
KAMERON That was like my whole day. But, you know, I’ve just been surprised by how much I watched. I’m surprised that there are hundreds of films.
SLIMI I when I was a kid, we were into Power Rangers. I think we’re like on the edge of like, ‘Is it cool for us like Power Rangers?’ And we did. And I we used to go to comic conventions, and my friend got a bootleg Japanese Power Rangers tape. So we were like watching the legit Power Rangers that before—
KAMERON So you knew early on about like the truth of Power Rangers?
SLIM Yes. Like we eventually discovered that like, ‘Wait a minute, these American kids aren’t the real Power Rangers? And then like, it’s pretty—I being kind of, ‘What am I watching?’ [Slim laughs] There was so many weird moments that would not translate to US audiences. But I was like, blown away by what was out there, and that was one of those formative memories.
KAMERON I that Power Rangers discovery and just being like, I didn’t think that the people, I didn’t think, you know, they were the ones in the suits. But I didn’t know—I mean, that was my foray into, okay, internationally and rights-wise, this is how some of this apparently works. I did not know that this is the thing that they were doing. [Kameron & Slim laugh] Where you can just—
SLIM Just make your own version, add in five minutes of footage.
KAMERON Right, I mean, I didn’t really realize that about it. But it explains—like a little thing like that, for me as a critic, it’s like an entry into something because it’s like, okay, that explains the aesthetic difference between the fight scene and the being-high-school-losers scenes. [Mitchell & Slim laughs] That explains why the lighting is different, why the fight scenes look old, things that I noticed as a kid, but as an adult, I was like, okay, there’s actual structural business, et cetera, aesthetic reasons for all of this. And it just becomes the thing that like, I have a question mark about that I try to fill in. And I think that’s also part of what this list is about. Sort of like, all the question marks of like, why were things the way that they were in the films that I was watching? When I catalog it, it helps me really kind of investigate some of that stuff. Because you’re lied to a lot as a kid. You don’t know what’s going on. [Mitchell laughs] You don’t know why all the Batman movies were different, like, you don’t know.
MITCHELL Right, yeah.
SLIM I being so pissed that Keaton wasn’t back for the third one. I was reading Wizard magazine trying to get the details. But man, I was not happy.
KAMERON And yet, because Val Kilmer took over, like I tried to understand why he looms so large in my imagination. It’s like, ‘Oh, probably because of Batman Forever. Probably because I was obsessed with that movie.’ Or Bill Paxton was someone I was just thinking about because I just rewatched, what did I just rewatch with him in it? I just watched something with him in it. And I was like, damn! Bill Paxton was in Titanic, he was in Twister...
SLIM True Lies.
KAMERON It was True Lies that I just rewatched. And I was like, ‘Why was I obsessed with Bill Paxton as a kid?’ And I was obsessed with Titanic and Twister as a kid, and Apollo 13! Things like that, I just, I don’t know why I’m so interested.
SLIM Mitchell’s president of the Bill Paxton fan club, I think. 0001?
MITCHELL So good. I just watched a Tres, the Walter Hill movie with him and Ice Cube, who we were talking about earlier.
KAMERON Nice.
MITCHELL Tres rules. That is an early-’90s bop. I love that movie.
KAMERON Paxton had hits. Rewatching True Lies, I was just thinking, ‘I cannot believe that he’s dead.’
MITCHELL Literally right before you came on to this, Slim and I were talking, Slim had just watched True Lies again recently.
SLIM Yeah, on Hulu.
KAMERON Did everyone just watch True Lies on Hulu?!
SLIM That’s what we’re talking about, I was saying, I don’t think I can any time in the last ten or fifteen years where that’s been streaming anywhere.
MITCHELL It hasn’t been on iTunes or anything for such a long time.
KAMERON That and The Abyss are the James Cameron films that have never been really around.
SLIM I wonder what the backstory is, this is another thing we’re being lied to. I wonder what the backstory of the True Lies rights are, like maybe they’re planning a 4K release, hopefully for some of his movies.
KAMERON I think I read somewhere—this is me being a truther or something—but I think I read somewhere that like, there were restorations of these things available, but I just don’t think he’s—he’s on [Avatar: The Way of Water] right now.
SLIM He hasn’t given one sign off or whatever.
MITCHELL Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard too.
KAMERON It was wild to rewatch True Lies, I have to say.
MITCHELL It’s crazy. [Mitchell laughs]
KAMERON Crazy.
SLIM I mean, it’s the heyday. It’s like the perfect time capsule for Schwarzenegger and Cameron, I feel like.
MITCHELL The stuff with Jamie Lee Curtis in that movie is...
SLIM Oh my god. The whole middle section, the fact that it’s like three movies. Three movies in one, basically. The middle section is a completely different movie. It’s bonkers!
KAMERON I was like, so what happened to like the art? [Mitchell & Slim laugh] Because it’s basically kind of like a screwball comedy about this couple. And as an adult, I’m just watching it, like, man, I do not this being this way at all. I the helicopter, I Jamie Lee pouring out the vase water and that whole section is just... wow. I that, because I was not adult enough to be watching that as a child. I being very awkward about watching it with my parents. But wow, what a film, yeah.
SLIM Where are we even to go from True Lies? Where do we go from Jamie Lee?
MITCHELL Yeah, I think that’s the end of the episode. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
KAMERON I don’t even know where to go. This is exactly why I make that list, because it’s moments like this where I’m just like, ‘Man, what the hell was that movie?’
[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]
MITCHELL K. Austin Collins was our guest today. You can follow him on Letterboxd using the link in our show notes or read his work regularly at Rolling Stone and check out those crossword puzzles if you dare. As I mentioned, I tried my hand at a few and I’ve never felt more scared and alone. [Slim laugh]
SLIM I don’t think I will ever do a crossword puzzle. I’ve never felt more inferior as a human being when I look at a crossword puzzle.
MITCHELL Samm got me the A24 crossword puzzle book for my birthday. I haven’t cracked it open yet. They delineate the different crossword puzzles as easy, intermediate, hard. I feel like I’m gonna try the easy one and just throw myself out a window. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Be sure to check out Weekend Watchlist, which is our other weekly podcast where me, Mitchell and Mia explore the latest releases in theaters and on streaming every Thursday. And thanks to our crew, Jack for the facts this week, Brian Formo for booking and looking after our guest, Sophie Shin for the episode transcript, Samm for the art and to Moniker for the theme music. You can always drop us a line at .
MITCHELL The Letterboxd Show is a Tapedeck production. Slim... let’s go watch True Lies. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
SLIM Done and done.
MITCHELL Done and done.
[clip of Vampires plays]
Padre, can I ask you something?
Yeah.
When I was kicking your ass back there, did that give you wood?
What?
Huh, did ya get a little mahogany from that, a little ebony? Come on, tell the truth. … I’m just fucking with you padre, forget about it.
[Tapedeck bumper plays] This is a Tapedeck podcast.