Queer Projection
This is a movie podcast about finding queer themes damn near everywhere. Hosts Alethia St. Joan and Danny Carroll share a 30+ year friendship that has been bound together by a shared love for movies. A trans woman and a gay man respectively, Alethia and Danny explore what these movies meant to them while they were young and closeted, and what revisiting these movies means for the actualized, arguably maladjusted adults they’ve become. It’s a heady, often crass and sometimes crude blend - part nostalgia trip, part queer theory, part film criticism. Check it out!
Queer Projection
George Washington
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No, this isn't a film about the first president. This is David Gordon Green's debut film about the miserable state of forming a self-identity in the midst of impoverished youth. It's very much not Pineapple Express, if that's the only DGG movie you've seen - but it's got remarkable bits of the Righteous Gemstones in there. Or at least I think so. If you haven't seen this one before, make your way over to the Criterion Closet and let's take a ride through the rust belt. Enjoy!
This is the movie about our first president, right?
SPEAKER_04Was he our first president? George Washington.
SPEAKER_06Yes, right. Cherry Tree Man by legend, right? If not by actual biography. Yeah. This actually has nothing to do with George Washington.
SPEAKER_04Nothing to do. Yeah, oh, you know what? That's why I was wondering why my only memories of this were like rust, birth defects, and like traumatic head injury.
SPEAKER_06The protagonist is named George. Washington is not his last name, but there is also a frame portrait of, I believe, George H.W. Bush in um somebody's home. So that's all I've got for that. Alright. I don't really know. It's been quite a while since I've seen this movie, Dan. Um I never revisited it for some reason, and I haven't revisited all the real girls either. It's gonna be exciting.
SPEAKER_04Uh yep, that's right. Today the movie is George Washington, and it is not about the first president of the United States. We're not even gonna talk about the first president of the United States anymore. We're gonna clear it from our minds. Here we go.
SPEAKER_06Fuck George Washington. Slave flesh. Cocksucker. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah, we'll take cocksucker out.
SPEAKER_02And now we're pleased to bring you our feature presentation.
SPEAKER_07Definitely the the style and and the use of narration is inspired, I would say, mm originally by the Sesame Street documentaries that have that naturalistic tone of voice and the improvised style of the children's perspective. Um, but seeing it again and evaluating where the point of view is going to come from, watching films like Terrence Malik's Days of Heaven, where Linda Manns is is not by any means the central character or even necessarily involved in most of the story of Days of Heaven, but her voice and her perspective brings this freshness and this childhood innocence to it that I've always thought was beautiful. And in you know, reading the original script of that film, it's it's not there. And I think that's what to me brings me, attaches me from the very first words of that film to the landscape and the environment and even the story. And it it helped kind of us in in George Washington, it helped using Nausea's perspective as a way to not use it just in a specific expository way, but a way to often even mislead the audience and to show somebody misunderstanding situations and the emotional impacts of that.
SPEAKER_01I like to go to beautiful places where there's waterfalls and empty fields.
SPEAKER_00Just places that are But wouldn't you say, David, also that's quiet. I mean, Terrence Malik's way of writing, like using very stripped-down, basic language, instead of like his very like he can get poetic, but in a very sort of blue-collar way with his words, is talking about bones and dirt and earth and hands, and and it's not. I mean, I think that that probably that's the way that Tim writes, that's the way that you write, that's the way Craig writes, Chris, everybody has this very stripped-down language kind of poetry to their writing.
SPEAKER_07And not making things so pronounced and profound and on the nose. It's it's it's it's using the stutters and the way that real people talk and m communicate and miscommunicate. Um I mean in days of heaven, just the from the very first words and the stutters that she uses, it's just immediately we're listening to a real person talk, and it's not you know, it's not an Academy Award winner. Why has you always been theatrically trained, it's it's a human being, and this is the world she lives in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, my legs are.
SPEAKER_00You know, David cast the people for what they for what they are, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they say that they improvise the whole time, but they bring you know who they are into what they're saying, which is David's words.
SPEAKER_07These kids weren't self-conscious, so that wasn't a that wasn't one of the obstacles. They were, you know, very giving and you know, it was a matter of finding a balance between what's gonna be too much and what's gonna be intimate and specific about their character, rather than just letting them entertain the camera.
SPEAKER_04My name is Danny Carroll. This is Alethea St. Joan. We have known each other since fourth grade. Our relationship has really been glued together by movies, and on this podcast, we go and revisit some of those movies from our past and look at them through a new lens as uh maladjusted queer adults. And now this one today is gonna be really interesting because it's gonna be a real new experience for both of us. We haven't seen this one in a minute, right?
SPEAKER_06I certainly have not, no. Uh, but it was one that I was really into for a period of time in my adolescence. Before we dive into that, uh, we just have to say the Oscars were a couple of days ago, and our great hero won three fucking Oscars adapted screenplay, director, and picture. Uh, of course, one battle after another. Please check out our bonus episode about that. PTA. Yeah, it finally happened, and it's good. It's very good. He just looks so bashful the whole time, you know. I know. I felt I honestly I I was I was uh I was crying.
SPEAKER_04It was so exciting because I was in a room full of gays who all discovered at the same time that he's married to Maya Rudolph, and that was just really really lovely. Does that give him bonus points? Oh, that gives him such huge bonus points. Are you kidding? Their eyes were like saucers. They were like, really? Him? Anyway, yeah, no, we are so excited.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, congrats, PTA. We'll we'll have another PTA episode at some point. Not sure what movie it'll be, but um anyhow, George Washington.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, let's talk about George Washington. Let's talk about this movie because this, like you were saying, sort of falls into that adolescent territory of, you know, that a period of time we were obsessed with serious movies, sort of in the aftermath of Magnolia. Uh now, Gummo, which was our, I think, our second episode, third, I don't know. It's just my podcast. And it this really does lock in not just thematically, but also in that time period for us in terms of the style of movie we were watching. So you're I mean, I I'm going to hazard that our average listener probably hasn't seen this movie or has even heard of it. What do you think?
SPEAKER_06Uh, I would say that that's probably true. However, you are probably familiar with its filmmaker by now because he's had one of the weirdest career trajectories of any contemporary uh American filmmaker, I think. David Gordon Green. David Gordon Green. I mean, at the time when when this came out and then All the Real Girls in Undertow, he was like being heralded as the next Terence Malik. Um, largely because uh his his style was was uh visually and tonally very indebted to the early works of Terence Malik, at least particularly something like Days of Heaven and the Southern Milieu, you know, helped that out as well. But then he took like a a hard turn into a mainstream Hollywood filmmaking quite successfully at first with Pineapple Express. Um Pineapple Express. I haven't seen that in a long time, but it was we loved it then.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But it was also really strange because I think it was the first time we'd ever sort of had that moment where some sort of like, you know, young and upcoming director that we had a close, sort of, you know, parasocial teenage relationship with suddenly did a pivot like that. And we were delighted and baffled by Pineapple Express. I mean, it's it's a really funny movie, especially the opener.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it's very funny. It was in it was in the the like you know, the end uh when when Judd Apatel reigned supreme over the box office.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_06Um a very particular time in our culture. And yeah, and then there were just like a lot of weird hits and misses in his career. And I I frankly, I I stopped keeping up with his films until he rebooted the Halloween franchise. The him and Danny McBride, which seems like a crazy thing. And the first the first one in 2018 was a huge, huge hit. Uh it's an okay movie, not my favorite. The follow-up Halloween kills is pretty terrible and was rightfully kind of excoriated, and they kind of and they kind of uh shit all over the goodwill that they had generated from the first one. And then even further, with uh the trilogy Capper, Halloween ends, which uh most people hate. I actually think is quite an interesting Halloween film, but that's uh that's a different subject for a different podcast. Yes, it is. And then uh last year he had the the just like widely maligned uh Exorcist reboot, and I'm not sure what he's doing next. I feel like maybe he's going back into like indie territory. But what a strange but what a strange person. Right.
SPEAKER_04No, and he's also, I mean, I love the relationship with Danny McBride because it's also his forays into TV, you know, he's a producer and director on The Righteous Gemstones. Right, and Eastbound and Down as well. So Vice Principles, Vice Principles, yeah. Yeah, I love East Bound and Down.
SPEAKER_06So, yeah, like something like George Washington or all the real girls, like are actually like kind of outliers of his career, even though it was the starting point.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, we're gonna wrap up the first part here pretty quickly because again, we have very little memory of this movie, so we want to get to watching it. But I I am gonna want to sort of look at it through that lens of like, okay, who is David Gordon Green now, and who was he when he was making this movie? Who is he trying to be? I want to speculate about that.
SPEAKER_06I think he was a broke college kid trying to make a feature out of his thesis, and now he's uh a quite rich and successful uh Hollywood filmmaker. I mean, he's made a lot of money off those Halloween movies and Pineapple Express and others.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he knows how to do it. One of the things that I do remember from this movie that, you know, listeners that to this listeners of this podcast will know is a particular fascination of mine is just sort of um not just urban decay as it's represented in movies, but specifically suburban decay. And this is one of those movies like Gummo that has this sort of Eastern United States sort of I I I you know what I I feel like all the real girls definitely take place on the Rust Belt, and this might take place in the Rust Belt. I think South Carolina. Okay. But you know, you and I, and I've talked about it on this podcast before, you and I grew up in a part of New York that I've been calling the Mothball Belt, because it's that sort of string of cities along the old Erie Canal that used to be big textile and sort of fashion boom towns that when you know the Erie Canal just sort of stopped being a major artery, they all just sort of dried up along with the fashions that sustained them, like shirt collars and things like that.
SPEAKER_06I mean, I in my family is from like the starkest example of that in in the capital region, Cahoz, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Cahes is a great one. You can see the old mill by the river, it's one of those places. But I, you know, I think the best representation from where we grew up is Troy. You know, Troy, New York just has this vibe to it, especially in sort of the core of the city by the library and stuff. You can tell that the people, you know, who put up all of these statues and big grand buildings and courthouses and things really felt like they were gonna be the next great American city, and so the people that founded it needed to be remembered. I'm going to be looking at this through that lens as well. But now the one thing that we haven't talked about, which is kind of important to the podcast, is where we think the queer themes are gonna be in this. Now, because I cannot remember the plot quite as much, I'm just gonna lob one at the wall here. And I think there is going to be something in it for me about the nature of vulnerability and how, you know, without people that you can other queer people that you can turn to, you know, a a a lone queer in in a in a society in a group of people has a very certain kind of vulnerability. And my memory of the main character in this movie is them being sort of followed and haunted by their own vulnerability when they're young. And and I don't know if that's gonna prove true, but we're gonna find out when we watch. Uh anything you want to say on that matter?
SPEAKER_06An oversimplification of this movie in my mind is kind of like this is Gummo's like much gentler, perhaps properly medicated cousin. I love a properly medicated cousin. You know, un unaffected by like glue fumes, I guess. Glue fumes. Fewer glue fumes in this movie. Okay. Fewer glue fumes, yeah. These are these are more just ordinary uh rural kids. It's not really it's not really like the the sci-fi nightmare vision of Gummo. It's more it's more of a lyrical, I don't say this as a criticism, but like film school wannabe Terence Malik kind of thing. But in in in very successful terms, I would say. That sounds I mean it as a compliment.
SPEAKER_04Well, because you know, all the real girls, which we should do on this podcast someday, is an extremely tender movie, especially when it looks at just sort of masculinity and fragile masculinity. It I think there's a tenderness to David Gordon Green that I don't want to say that Harmony Corrin was lacking, but that Harmony Corrin was disinterested in. Harmony Coreen had it too. He just came at it from a different angle. Yeah, I think. You know what? I'll I'll give you that. Do you want to give us any more? Just sort of background. So this was his first major film. Was this his first like film festival feature?
SPEAKER_06Yes. And it was really successful and got a lot of acclaim. And uh Roger Ebert was a particular champion of this film. I think he put it on his top 10 list, which is really quite an achievement for your first film. But it's um, I remember this is one of the first Criterion DVDs that I owned. And on that on that disc were included uh a number of shorts that he made in college, and then like like video like sort of test reels, like for certain scenes in this film that he made while he was uh still at the um, I believe it was the North Carolina School of the Arts, which was my second choice for art school to go to if I hadn't gone to SCAD. Right, remember that period? And then he um he went and shot this full version on uh glorious anamorphic 35mm and he was off and away. Yeah, so that's we don't really have to go on much longer. I mean, it's been so long that I I don't have much else to say. I just I'm really, really uh excited to dive back into this and maybe get back to that place where I was when I was 15 and I saw this for the first time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I really do hope it it you know yanks some memories out, good or bad. All right, thank you everybody for joining us. We'll see you after the break. And if you're watching along with us, I hope you enjoy George Washington. All right, we'll see ya. See ya, Dallas.
SPEAKER_02Okay, the next film on my list at number five is George Washington, a film that doesn't follow a plot so much as weave an unforgettable mood involving some young teenagers during a warm summer in a lonely urban cityscape.
SPEAKER_01Hey, how's he do not? No, you don't.
SPEAKER_02George Washington was directed by a newcomer, David Gordon Green, who shows an astonishing confidence and mastery of style. His film is like the classic Days of Heaven by Terence Malik, and the way it tells its story through indirection, so that although it develops in full view, we only gradually realize what the movie is really about. George Washington is one of those films you don't watch, you inhabit.
SPEAKER_03It was the most impressive debut of the year. Yeah, it was. It's not quite as impressive to me as it is to you. You've got it way up on your list here. But what I liked about it, that you know, you talk about these small and independent films. This doesn't try to be tricky or showy, or look at the digital camera work. It's just about the story and the characters in very well.
SPEAKER_02And you know, it's it is independent, but it's not small. I mean, the detail of the color photography in this film is so exquisite, so lush, so beautiful that it absolutely creates the space and puts us inside of it.
SPEAKER_03Well, you made the comparison to Days of Heaven, that's high praise. Yeah, I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_04Okay, everybody, welcome back. Hello, Alethe.
SPEAKER_05Hello.
SPEAKER_04How are we doing?
SPEAKER_06Uh, good, I'm doing quite good. Wow, that was uh quite a haunting little rewatch.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that brought a lot back. This was nice because this was one where we really haven't encountered it for a while. And yeah, I mean, uh again, very specific to not just a time period for us in the kinds of movies we were watching and considering, like, you know, important good works of art, but you know, just for a moment in time in small filmmaking for young up-and-comers, how I don't know. I I I I might be mistaken, but I feel like you can't make a meditative piece like this anymore and hold anybody's attention in the film circuit, you know?
SPEAKER_06I mean, like David Co David Gordon Green can't even really do it anymore. No, yeah. Whenever he fall whenever he falls back on this, for lack of a better term, let's say indie style that he sort of started and and uh achieved beautifully in George Washington. Like I put on another one of his more recent when I say recent, it's like 2014, but this Al Pacino movie that he made called Manglehorn. You could see like the evolution of the style that began in George Washington that was so fresh as cinematic language in George Washington just feels like a lazy like thing that he just leans on and doesn't take too much effort anymore. And it's just so Wait, what do you mean? At least in that at least in that film, like the like like the very kind of flowy, sort of improvised kind of feel that a lot of his scenes have that feels so beautiful and organic in something like George Washington.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Um feels very out of place in a lot of his later films, at least the ones that I've seen. And particularly in Manglehorn, I couldn't get through the film. It was so schmalzy. Schmalzy. Unfocused, yeah. It was really poor, I felt. Interesting. And like there's that filmmaking style in his Halloween films, too, and it like it doesn't add to them. It takes away from them, like really drastically, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_04Uh huh.
SPEAKER_06Well, I mean it's funny you should say that because like his his directing feels lazy now, uh unfortunately.
SPEAKER_04But what I do think carries through uh successfully is how much moments in this movie felt right out of any of his Danny McBride stuff. Remind me the name of the main uh uh uh the guy who's the lead in All the Real Girls. Paul Schneider, who's in this movie too.
SPEAKER_06Paul Schneider I love him.
SPEAKER_04Paul Schneider. Yeah. But Paul Schneider riding around on the motorbike is so like righteous gemstones. Oh, yeah, yeah. And him shirtless on the motorbike.
SPEAKER_06He's like, I got two chili dogs somewhere in my pants.
SPEAKER_04Right? Okay, so that's a good opener right there, that moment, that sort of like boys hang out moment. Because I was really searching around for the queer themes in this movie, and I think, you know, it was a little bit of a stretch, but you know, I think I found it, and I think I found it in a lot of the stuff that David Gordon Green likes to look at and the kinds of characters he plays with. There's a lot of mate like intense homosocial behavior in this movie. You have groups of girls grooming each other, you know. You you have boys being very, very physical all the time, you know, roughhousing and stuff, but like there there is a gendered intimacy throughout this movie.
SPEAKER_06And there's a way to open heartedness with the male characters, too, in some of those scenes.
SPEAKER_04Very open-hearted. So here's my argument there is that I think there that is particularly a southern thing about this movie. I genuinely it's okay. So, you know, for decades there's kind of been this like vibe in masculinity where it's like we're not allowed to be intimate and sort of like we can't touch up on our boys anymore without people calling us gay. So now we just like don't do anything. Like when when in reality there is a kind of homosocial love and affection where these men just want to touch each other and they just want to grab at each other and hug up on each other, and now they can't do that anymore because of all the gay stuff, you know? And I feel like that's a thing in certain cultures, maybe southern cultures especially, where there's a lamenting of that because it is so key to their socialization and relationships and things. And and maybe that's a stretch, maybe that's a a kitchen sink sociologist thing. But I I really see it in this movie, this intense desire to just sort of like touch each other, you know? In a non-sexual way that is that is um connected to a lot of the the ways that these characters are reaching for intimacy and the way they talk to each other. You know? And I yeah, I don't know. It it is it is interesting how much this movie is sort of a a cousin of Gummo. Because Gummo shared that same sort of like intense longing that is that has never stepped over into the sexual and yet is very physical and and body forward and I don't know. It it it it is I don't think it's unusual to this milieu. I think it's actually sort of baked into this milieu, and that's being sort of like lost, if that makes sense, and they're blaming it on the gays.
SPEAKER_06When really it's the party of the uh president that hangs in a framed portrait on George as well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, even just like I just think about how quietly beautiful and and uh that moment where it's just like the Like the boys have a shared bed, you know, this is poverty. They're falling asleep and they're having a pillow conversation. And, you know, I don't know. It's like it is unfortunate that people do sort of try and find the sexual connotation in so many things these days. Where you can't just have like two teenagers having an intimate conversation in bed together without there being conversations about its sexual overtones. And i it's throughout this movie. There's like a there's a locker room scene where and and and they're just hanging out in the locker room, and it's clear that they're just there because it's like a third space where it's not qu like it's not it's sort of like safe because it's free from prying eyes, and yet at the same time I don't know. It again, it's this homosocial stuff.
SPEAKER_06But what I also love about that is that that group of boys ages uh ranges in age from say probably seven to say thirteen or fourteen, and the way they're all play acting like adult behavior with like you know, throwing the the high fives and you know, whatever else. It was very, very charming. So uh this this movie has uh maybe my favorite example in films of just like perfectly calibrated amateur performances from non-actors. Oh yeah. Definitely like it's it's just so exquisitely rendered. And I remember there was a fair amount of workaround or like preparation, uh working with the kids before they actually started shooting. There were like sort of prototypes done for the film, like shot on video a year before or whatever. But I was very impressed, and I remember I remember being fascinated, like trying to conceptualize in my mind when I first saw it how you would get performances like that out of non-actors, especially young ones.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's tough. The one not George, not the not Buddy. What was the other character? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, the one that runs away at the end.
SPEAKER_04He's got some stunning moments.
SPEAKER_06He has he has a monologue where he's like just wrapped with grief. That's it. He just says these kind of crazy things like, Man, I wish I I wish I had my own island, or I wish I had my own planet, or I wish I could just sit around all day with computers and brainstorm.
SPEAKER_04It is so heartbreaking, but but also see, that's another moment where I think the queer representation comes through because I wrote down in my notes and underlined it. I wish there was one belief, my belief. Yeah, he says, and that's what's sort of like they go out on. And it is that intense feeling of being like I think the way I see the world is right, and I and I see that contrasted fucking everywhere, and it's and it's in intensely painful, you know. That is such a experience of adolescence. Um, especially when you're trying to triangulate, and I think this is a major theme of this movie. You're trying to triangulate, like, am I a good person? And is that even a question that I I can ask that is askable, you know?
SPEAKER_06And then the little girl who just straight up like declares that she believes she is not a good person.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Like that girl, that girl, um at the to me to be so advanced in your ne uh nihilism at such a young age is is tragic.
SPEAKER_04Right. But they also do sort of like tease the idea that she's like the youngest with like five older brothers. And I just look at that character, I'm like, yeah, that's what you end up with when you're the youngest girl in a family of six with five other boys in poverty. Like, yeah, you become an animal. You know, I think uh the title character, George Washington, is very interesting in that theme as well, because he's trying to process the question of, am I a good person after this death, and landing firmly on, like, well, I have to be because I must be, because that's who I am. And, you know, and and and George Washington, he not only has this mythology in his social group that is talked about at the beginning of the movie in monologue and voiceover, but then you see him lean into his personal mythology that is such a standard of adolescence. You know, we build suddenly in late adolescence this like big version of the story of who we are, you know, as this like outline that we're gonna try and fill, but also at the same time it's already who we are, because we have declared it. And and doing that in this movie, it's really elegant and sad the way that he positions it. Although I will say, when he evolves into his final form in the fur dead dog hat and the wrestling singlet and the cape.
SPEAKER_06I forgot that his hat was his dog. I totally forgot that.
SPEAKER_04It's like, oh my god. It I that is kind of queer representation for me. That's some like radical fairy shit right there, where it's like we're bounding into the woods in our capes and our singlets, and we are wearing the remains of our beloved pets, and we are dying our beards green and pink, and like I don't know. There is a lot of othering in this movie. I also love that again, like the pasty ginger white kid in the neck brace is like extremely the other in this movie.
SPEAKER_06I know that it just fits so well. The older kid tells him to go fuck himself so immediately. I know, it's so good. It's so good. I was so bowled over uh by this again, not only in just having not seen it in such a long time, but it the memory of receiving these images and the mood of this film and the style of this film and just everything it had to offer and what it led me to cinematically. Experiencing all those things again but from sort of the other side of the fence. Yeah. It's not new cinematic language being presented to me anymore. It's almost it's it's almost like passe in terms of what used to interest me. I agree. I was But it's still a but it's still a great little piece of work. I love it.
SPEAKER_04Right. It felt remarkable, like almost like a cinema verite thing I've never seen before back then. And and now you're right, it did feel like trodden territory. And I will also say that the whole time I just had this cynical thought floating in the back of my mind where it's like, of course, these young and upcoming filmmakers do like meditations on urban decay because it's so cheap to shoot, you know? Yeah. Like the like all of those places, so goddamn easy to steal shots in that kind of environment, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And uh I not that I'm saying that he did, but I'm sure, you know, to park on a slab of cement in an abandoned water park for two or three hours, what is that thousand bucks max if you're in that part of town?
SPEAKER_06The most expensive thing I think was that they were shooting on 35mm.
SPEAKER_04Maybe.
SPEAKER_06I don't know. Maybe there was yeah, I don't know. You know more about that than me. Boy, David Cording Green is a fucking freak. He is a freak. For his filmography after this, with this being his debut, like when he started making like Pineapple Express was received well, but then he started but then he made like fucking Your Highness and the City Sitter after that. I remember Roger Ebert in his reviews there, because he was an early champion of his work. He's like, what is happening? But what is going on?
SPEAKER_04Good for him by not being weighed down by his genius and being happy to shrug off his genius altogether.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and being like it wasn't genius. Right? He's like, he's like, fooled ya. It's wild.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, again, I uh I think I'm just gonna sort of keep trying to excavate this for random queer theory stuff because I think what we what there is to say about the film in a critical way is it's it has been said.
SPEAKER_06Oh, it's beautiful. I loved it even more. And it was just such a it was just such a warm reminder of where my my head w once was. And so and and and a reminder of a time of innocence when a movie like this felt like a new world opening up to me. Yeah. It was really wild. And all the all the real girls more so at that time, though, because that's I think like more kind of an easier watch than this one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06I am really eager to revisit that one now. He uh Because it's been it's been about as long.
SPEAKER_04I I think, you know, like all good comedians, I think David Gordon Green is best directing comedy because he's you know haunted by the specter of death, and he tries to like underline how and why in this his first, you know, debut film. I think that's fine. I think that's great. Also, this that the movie being about adolescence and about uh traumatic death, I also think late adolescence, one way or another, is haunted by the specter of death, you know? Early, early adulthood as well.
SPEAKER_06You're more familiar with his more recent television work than I am. I've only really seen like East Bounded Down, and that was like way back when it was first coming out. I would like to hear a little bit about how this compares to your experience watching what what you say, like Righteous Gemstones or any other shows that he's directed. Well, I think that's an easy enough sort of thesis there.
SPEAKER_04He has you know, so okay, especially in Righteous Gemstones, they are lampooning a certain kind of southern religious culture that is ostentatious. Like megachurch? The mega ch Yeah, megachurch, but beyond that. Like mega church is is sort of the subject, but there is a sort of kind of southern wealth that is intensely local, but also just intensely present, and and it nudges right up against what would qualify as sort of like a appellation, white trash culture. Um and and and and what I think David Gordon Green has that extends from this all the way through to that, is in intense affection for these milieux, even when they are gaudy and gross, even when they are depressing and and disgusting, he still has an intense affection for them, and there you know, therefore, in his filmmaking, even in his TV making, will paint them in this light that demonstrates affection and makes you kind of see that it's okay to lampoon this stuff because there is a abiding love for this stuff as well. And that's that's a great success in any art, you know? So for me that's what I think it is, and I think it's as easy as that. And anything else would just be I don't know.
SPEAKER_06Because my exposure to his recent work is not that television stuff, it's his last almost decade of you know rebooting horror franchises to uh mixed degrees of success. More uh, except for the first Halloween, more on the side of like these are not respected films generally.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know what? I hope he has a nice house to wake up to every day.
SPEAKER_06You know? Oh, he's rich. He's definitely rich.
SPEAKER_04I know, but I hope it's tasteful.
SPEAKER_06Well, but this is this is how um prolific he is. He has three other projects, like either like in post-production or in prep or shooting. He also, like, I didn't even realize this, made a fucking Christmas movie at the end of last year with Ben Stiller called Nutcrackers.
SPEAKER_04You gotta do the Christmas movie.
SPEAKER_06You gotta get the Christmas movie in there. I'm like, I have my I'll give that a shot. That's probably fun.
SPEAKER_04I have my Christmas movie idea kicking around, and it is so schmalty and it is so derivative, and it's gonna, you know what? It might buy me my house someday. No, we're never gonna win houses. What are we talking about? Okay, a couple quick points I do want to make. One last sort of like one more like queer idea here. You know, I I was thinking in this movie, you know, right after the kid died, you know, and they're trying to figure out what to do. I I really had this like time warp moment where I felt myself, the adult me going like, kids, like, listen, this was an accident, this was bad. You need to get an adult right now because you can figure this out and you will get past it, but you need to like do the right thing here. I felt myself so intensely, but then I I snapped back to being young and making your first great mistakes and the instinct to conceal it because you don't want to be the person on the other side of this thing. You want to keep being you and the person that was before this thing happened, you know? That is such a youth idea. And you know, it was key to me spending a year of my life telling basically nobody that I had HIV. Because I again I was I was very quickly fine, very quickly healthy, but like I didn't want the identity yet, and I was taking my time with that. And and in retrospect, what a what a poor decision. I could have had so much more help and guidance through a really terrible time. I I think I was really heartbroken by understanding the youthful instinct to hide something that could just be fixed, you know? And and that made me so sad, but also recognizing so much that instinct in youth. I it's just it's it's very good. It's very well done there.
SPEAKER_06I I really I felt very palpably like so the the just like nightmarish and destructive weight of the guilt that they'd be carrying around after that, and how it would like warp their relationship to their environment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Like putting myself in those shoes. I've had nightmares where I have like secondhand knowledge of a murder or something like that, and that it's too late for me to disclose it without being implicated with will. And that's some very real stress that I don't I I hope to never ever actually experience in my life. Yeah, that would be bad. Very bad. Very, very bad. Yeah, it's really bad.
SPEAKER_04Alright, to go out on maybe on a lighter note, there's something else that I was thinking in this movie because of just a lot of some of the sort of meditative shots that were throughout. So I consider myself somebody who like understands scope, you know, who understands the size of the world and the numbers of people and like all this stuff. Like I feel like I can wrap my head around just, you know, that kind of thing. It really struck me again during these garbage dump bulldozer moments that like I just I really don't get where all the garbage goes. Like, you know, like I really firmly like I look at all the garbage my house produces in a single day, and I think about the city of Los Angeles, and I think about landfills, and I think about garbage barges, and my my brain, I can't wrap my head around the scope. I don't know where it all goes.
SPEAKER_06There's an island of garbage the size of Texas floating around in the ocean. No, I know I know that.
SPEAKER_04I know that, but even that to me is like too small. Like Yeah, yeah, honestly. Like there's like why isn't that why aren't there mountains and mountains of garbage that are like everywhere? And I and I know historically, pretty young man living in Atwater Village, you don't see mountains of garbage, do you? Uh yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_06But No, just just walls of flames once again.
SPEAKER_04Right. But anyway, you know, I just it there is so much decay and so much waste and so much just like crumbling rebar that I'm amazed it's not just everywhere. But maybe it will be. Very soon. Who knows?
SPEAKER_06You know what's wild is um what you just said is pretty much the opening monologue of Steven Sauderberg's first film, Sex Lives and Videotape. It's Andy McDowell saying exactly that to her therapist.
SPEAKER_04Okay, okay, good. I'm at my sex lives and videotape phase of psychosis. Uh alright. This was a good one. Alright, this was Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Sorry, this was short but sweet, but I think we I think we said um some some uh interesting things about this film. And it was really so lovely to revisit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, this was a good one. This did me this one really did bring me back to to a to a summer day in the mid-aughts.
SPEAKER_06I should check out Righteous Gemstones, perhaps.
SPEAKER_04Oh, you would I mean yeah I I I love it. I love it. It's not for everybody. I've tried to show the pilot to some people, and it's super hit or miss. You know, like you either you're either locked in or you're not, you know.
SPEAKER_06I forgot to mention I met David Gordon Green once.
SPEAKER_04Did you?
SPEAKER_06How was it? Yeah, like in like 2013, I want to say, but he was hosting a screening of Robert Altman's Brewster McLeod, which is one of the funniest fucking movies ever made at the IFC Center, and I went up and chatted with him for a minute afterward, and he was super cool. What's his demeanor? Very chill and nice and just super enthusiastic.
SPEAKER_04I love it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_04All right, Alethe. Have a good rest of your day.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, have a good rest of your day, and watch that documentary, Den. They're real. Okay. Bye bye. Bye.