WEBVTT Kind: captions; Language: en NOTE There were 4 speakers identified in this transcript. Podium recommends using "Find and Replace" to change the speaker label to the appropriate name. Speaker separation errors can arise when multiple speakers speak simultaneously. 00:11.435 --> 00:19.289 [music, playing, a-chirping sound plays] And welcome. 00:19.309 --> 00:20.279 To pick six movies. 00:20.360 --> 00:21.925 The podcast for every season. 00:21.965 --> 00:34.369 We pick eight themes, then we pick six movies related to that theme, then we pick one of those movies and give you some behind the scenes facts and stories about how and why the movie was made and then a full review to see if the movie has been done. 00:35.160 --> 00:41.810 Then we repeat that process five more times every two weeks for a total of six picked movies. 00:42.080 --> 00:44.549 Hence the title of this podcast Pick Six Movies. 00:44.942 --> 00:50.247 I'm Chad Cooper, one of your hosts, and I will soon be joined by my lifelong friend and co-host, mr Bo Randolph. 00:50.500 --> 01:01.927 This season's theme is Holiday Road, where we're discussing road trip movies, and this is the season finale, where we're going back for a heaping second helping of Nicholas Cage. 01:02.441 --> 01:09.248 This time he's in a David Lynch movie, meaning that things are going to be weird on top of crazy inside a hurricane of insanity. 01:09.621 --> 01:20.224 And what movie is capable of delivering such a force of unpredictable bat shittery while none other than Wild at Heart, easily one of the most romantically disturbing movies I've ever seen? 01:20.600 --> 01:22.527 If you've never seen Wild at Heart, that's okay. 01:22.900 --> 01:26.889 We'll take you by the hand and service your guide through Weirdsville Lynch, sa. 01:27.400 --> 01:40.563 Let's say we get Mr Bo Randolph in here to set up this fever dream of a movie with a pleasant, albeit brief, history of the life of David Lynch and one of his most lynchian pieces of cinema, wild at Heart. 01:41.200 --> 01:56.278 Then we'll talk about all of the totally bonkers stuff crammed into this movie and there is a lot of it, bo take it away the End. 02:04.880 --> 02:12.487 Given that we have already broken our tradition of doing only bad movies this season on Pixx Movies, it seems only right we should break another. 02:13.100 --> 02:19.386 Rather than wait until the end to hear from resident, deceased film critic, roger Ebert, let's hear from him right off the bat. 02:20.100 --> 02:21.626 But first a little backstory. 02:22.140 --> 02:27.787 In 1990, the subject of this episode, wild at Heart showed up at the Cannes Film Festival. 02:28.440 --> 02:39.347 It was coming in hot, like we just finished the edit on this thing yesterday hot and yet it would go on to win the Palm D'Or, the grand prize for films it can. 02:40.060 --> 02:44.926 When David Lynch climbed the podium to accept the award, there was a standing ovation. 02:45.580 --> 02:49.010 There was also a healthy round of booing and jeering. 02:49.680 --> 02:51.828 With that in mind, let's get to Ebert. 02:53.021 --> 03:00.406 At the end of both Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart I was angry, he said, as if a clever con man had tried to put one over on me. 03:01.020 --> 03:02.566 My taste is in the minority. 03:03.160 --> 03:05.943 Blue Velvet was hailed as one of the best films of the decade. 03:06.440 --> 03:08.968 Lynch's Twin Peaks is a cult hit on television. 03:09.760 --> 03:14.667 Now comes Wild at Heart, which won the Palm D'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. 03:15.080 --> 03:16.827 Two great cheers and many booze. 03:17.240 --> 03:18.525 Some of the latter from me. 03:19.380 --> 03:29.989 There is something repulsive and manipulative about it and even its best scenes have the flavor of a kid in the schoolyard trying to show you pictures you don't feel like looking at. 03:30.840 --> 03:42.168 It's a road picture with a 1950s T-Bird convertible as the chariot and lots of throwaway gags about Ripley's snake skin jacket his quote personal symbol of individuality. 03:42.408 --> 03:49.424 End quote Cage does a conscious imitation of Presley in all of his dialogue and even bursts into song a couple of times. 03:50.200 --> 03:51.525 I've seen the movie twice now. 03:52.200 --> 03:53.043 I liked it less. 03:53.164 --> 03:56.465 The second time you have to hand it to Ebert. 03:56.761 --> 03:58.968 He knew what he liked and what he didn't. 03:59.400 --> 04:01.227 And Ebert rarely liked Lynch. 04:01.820 --> 04:05.189 He famously hated Blue Velvet and certainly Dune. 04:06.100 --> 04:14.205 When reviewing Lost Highway, lynch's bizarre take on the OJ trial, ebert asked the rhetorical question is the joke on us? 04:15.460 --> 04:18.745 And that's not the worst question to ask when talking about David Lynch. 04:19.320 --> 04:25.043 His films can be challenging to say the least, but he's more curious because of other films in his catalog. 04:25.940 --> 04:44.447 The Elephant man from 1981 was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and Lynch for Best Director, and it plays straight, not unlike the Straight Story, a film in which elderly lead actor Richard Farnsworth was nominated for an Oscar, and Lynch was nominated for numerous awards for his direction. 04:45.260 --> 04:48.928 It's a bit maudlin, but nothing that could be classified as surreal. 04:49.780 --> 04:55.888 Of that one, ebert said, quote the first time I saw the Straight Story I focused on the foreground and liked it. 04:56.580 --> 05:00.323 The second time I focused on the background too and loved it. 05:01.480 --> 05:05.507 The point is, david Lynch knows how to make a so-called normal movie. 05:06.160 --> 05:07.525 He simply chooses not to. 05:07.605 --> 05:14.388 In most cases he is, I would argue, an artist and as such his art is not for everyone. 05:15.180 --> 05:21.070 In fact, sometimes it seems like he goes out of his way to be off-putting, but that's part of what makes Lynch Lynch. 05:21.720 --> 05:23.908 But where did this screwball sensibility come from? 05:24.301 --> 05:25.345 Some hippie commune? 05:25.780 --> 05:27.004 Is he, gasp? 05:27.365 --> 05:28.629 Perhaps European? 05:29.700 --> 05:34.968 Actually, lynch was born in Missoula, montana, his folk, successful but not artistic per se. 05:35.660 --> 05:41.147 His father worked as a scientist for the Department of Agriculture and his mother was an English language tutor. 05:41.840 --> 05:43.065 He was even Presbyterian. 05:44.080 --> 05:51.003 A few years after Lynch was born, he moved to the even less artsy-fartsy land of Idaho With his father's job. 05:51.043 --> 05:56.883 The family was on the move a lot Washington State, north Carolina, back to Idaho, then Virginia. 05:57.900 --> 06:13.327 Of this upbringing, lynch said my childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman building, backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees, middle America as it's supposed to be. 06:13.920 --> 06:21.208 But on the cherry tree there's this pitch using out some black, some yellow and millions of red ants crawling all over it. 06:21.780 --> 06:27.227 I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. 06:27.720 --> 06:31.327 Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast. 06:32.680 --> 06:39.228 He was an eagle scout and spent his 15th birthday in a Boy Scout uniform watching the inauguration of John F Kennedy. 06:40.120 --> 06:42.886 While he was a bright kid, he had little interest in school. 06:43.720 --> 06:46.443 Of that, lynch commented for me back then. 06:46.664 --> 06:48.630 School was a crime against young people. 06:49.120 --> 06:51.188 It destroyed the seeds of liberty. 06:51.720 --> 06:54.545 The teachers didn't encourage knowledge or a positive attitude. 06:56.120 --> 06:58.708 Now we get to the artistic bent of David Lynch. 06:59.460 --> 07:04.046 From early goings he showed an interest in painting and wanted to pursue it as a career. 07:04.540 --> 07:12.045 Encouraged by a Virginia friend of his father's who was a professional artist, he tried a couple of art schools but found no home there. 07:12.600 --> 07:17.905 He wasn't challenged or inspired, and so Lynch took off with a friend to travel around Europe. 07:18.520 --> 07:23.908 They had plans to train with an artist in Salzburg but found out he wasn't available when they arrived. 07:24.580 --> 07:29.625 Disillusioned by this Wally, world-like rebuff, lynch and his pal returned to America. 07:29.805 --> 07:36.789 After only two weeks he landed in Philadelphia where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. 07:37.520 --> 07:47.187 There he found a community and inspiration and a girlfriend, peggy Reavy, with whom he got up to the devil's business and so was sired Jennifer Lynch. 07:48.420 --> 07:50.247 David did the proper thing and married Peggy. 07:50.800 --> 08:03.387 They bought a 12 room house for $3,500 in Philly, which sounds crazy until you hear that it was in a very bad neighborhood, like people getting shot and the house being broken into repeatedly bad. 08:04.180 --> 08:09.948 But if you want to trace the origins of Lynch's aesthetic, this is a pretty good place to start that journey. 08:10.640 --> 08:22.947 Married, a baby, on the way, pursuing an art life and surrounded by the threat of violence and death, he made ends meet by printing engravings, but the artistic itch was always there. 08:23.640 --> 08:25.908 He started putting out feelers for an animator. 08:26.300 --> 08:37.889 Having been seized with the idea of seeing his paintings come to life and move, he finally bought his own cheap 16 millimeter camera and produced a short film called Six Men Getting Sick. 08:38.960 --> 08:44.864 It tied for first prize in the school he was attending and he was commissioned to do an art installation for $1,000. 08:45.560 --> 08:52.630 He bought a camera of his own, did some shooting, but when it came time to deliver, he realized the animation he created was garbage. 08:52.720 --> 09:03.626 Thanks to a bum lens on this new camera, the guy who hired him, in a fit of 60s era good vibes, told him hey, take the leftover money, man, and just make something interesting. 09:04.500 --> 09:05.023 And so he did. 09:06.100 --> 09:08.869 The alphabet was made in 1968. 09:09.360 --> 09:21.449 It was a blend of animation and live action in which a girl, played by Lynch's wife, peggy, scenes the alphabet to a series of pictures of horses and then dies by bleeding to death suddenly in bed. 09:22.380 --> 09:28.944 Also, his daughter's crying was recorded and distorted for even more of an unsettling effect and played behind the film. 09:30.020 --> 09:38.704 When asked about his inspiration for this nightmare, lynch said Peggy's niece was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. 09:39.260 --> 09:41.568 So that's sort of what started the alphabet going. 09:41.980 --> 09:43.606 The rest of it was just subconscious. 09:44.821 --> 09:50.288 Ah, there you have it, the subconscious, truly the key to Lynch's career as an artist. 09:50.760 --> 09:53.569 Let that it go, baby, and see what comes out the other side. 09:54.740 --> 09:58.648 He tried his hand at some other shorts experimental, to be sure, but good. 09:59.060 --> 10:05.227 And in 1971, he packed up the family and moved to Hollywood where he studied at the AFI Conservatory. 10:06.380 --> 10:13.847 There he started work on a short called Garden Back but got pissed off about all the instructors telling him to lengthen it and change dialogue. 10:14.640 --> 10:22.186 He was actually about to quit the school when one instructor intervened and said Lynch was one of their best students and too good to just up and quit. 10:22.900 --> 10:27.228 Lynch said he would stay if all the instructors at the conservatory could keep their filthy mitts off. 10:27.380 --> 10:31.006 Whatever it was he was gonna make, and so a racer head was born. 10:32.040 --> 10:34.308 It took years for this movie to be made. 10:34.900 --> 10:39.688 Lynch lived off grants for the film, loans from friends and a paper route he ran. 10:40.560 --> 10:45.924 At the same time he and Peggy split up, but it seemed like it was a pleasant enough divorce, as those things go. 10:46.740 --> 10:52.606 He remarried not long after, taking up with the sister of the guy he went to Europe with and kept after a racer head. 10:53.400 --> 10:56.288 It was finally completed in 1976. 10:57.600 --> 11:06.084 The film is the story of a guy named Henry, played by Lynch mainstay Jack Nance, who is tormented when his wife has a deformed baby and leaves it in his care. 11:07.060 --> 11:14.726 Lynch called it my Philadelphia story, referencing his life there, with Peggy and Jennifer and the people being shot down the road. 11:15.500 --> 11:20.807 It's bizarre, surreal, filled with imagery that's inexplicable and yet haunting. 11:21.600 --> 11:26.468 There is something engaging about a racer head, even as it defies true understanding. 11:27.320 --> 11:37.469 Stanley Kubrick, director of 2001 and the Shining maybe you've heard of him called it one of his favorite movies and is widely considered a landmark in cult cinema. 11:38.960 --> 11:49.925 The film got Lynch some notoriety, not the least from a guy named Stuart Cornfield, an executive producer from Mel Brooks, director of Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles Maybe you've heard of him too. 11:51.580 --> 12:03.367 Lynch wanted to make a movie about a three-foot guy with red hair and something to do with electricity called Ronnie Rocket, but Cornfield pointed out that Ronnie Rocket sounded like another cult movie and maybe Lynch would like to move up to the big league. 12:04.340 --> 12:09.066 Cornfield said the words the elephant man and Lynch said I'm in. 12:10.140 --> 12:13.387 Before he was hired, though, mel Brooks had to watch a racer head. 12:14.000 --> 12:17.971 Here's the thing people who make movies love David Lynch. 12:18.480 --> 12:21.289 He's like a comics comic or a musicians musician. 12:22.000 --> 12:33.449 Even Steven Spielberg cast David Lynch in his recent movie, the Fablemen's, so when Brooks saw the movie, he came out of the screening, embraced Lynch and said you're a bad man, I love you, you're in. 12:35.040 --> 12:38.209 As mentioned before, the elephant man is very mainstream. 12:38.880 --> 12:40.887 It's also very good. 12:41.600 --> 12:46.088 It was nominated for eight Oscars and it put Lynch on the map as a big time director. 12:46.880 --> 12:54.125 You may have heard the story about David Lynch being offered return of the Jedi, and the elephant man is why it might make sense for him to get such an offer. 12:55.200 --> 13:07.170 But Lynch thought return of the Jedi was a mess of a script and he isn't totally wrong about that and so he decided instead to do his own space opera, an adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi political epic Dune. 13:07.820 --> 13:12.309 It's like he looked at Return of the Jedi and said I can make a bigger mess than that. 13:13.800 --> 13:16.909 Dune had eluded adaptation for almost 20 years. 13:17.560 --> 13:32.404 The guy who did another cult movie, el Topo, alejandro Yodorovsky, was famously going to do an adaptation before that fell apart and you should absolutely watch the documentary Yodorovsky's Dune if you've never seen it for more on that. 13:33.260 --> 13:38.510 But Lynch had a hot hand, but his version and that of the studio were very different. 13:39.080 --> 13:47.087 Because of notes, he said he began to make a series of compromises along the way that left him feeling a little uneasy about the quality of the film. 13:48.100 --> 14:00.548 That uneasiness turned to outright frustration when he was told to cut the movie down to two hours from three and a half, which meant lopping off an hour in change and he was eventually shut out of the editing room completely. 14:01.520 --> 14:07.048 The movie is a fascinating fiasco, but it was both commercially and critically unsuccessful. 14:07.880 --> 14:12.588 Not surprising then that a guy like Lynch decided he was done with big studio movies for a while. 14:13.460 --> 14:20.445 Side note there is an extended cut of Dune that was released for TV, adding back an hour of runtime and some new narration. 14:20.980 --> 14:32.368 But Lynch hated that cut so much he did the old Alan Smithy nameswap as director thing and also changed the writing credit to Judas Booth, tipping his hat to two famous betrayers. 14:33.700 --> 14:38.843 When he signed the deal for Dune, lynch also contracted to do two other movies for the producer. 14:39.660 --> 14:48.307 One would be a never-developed sequel to Dune, assuming that that was going to be a big hit, and the other was a personal film, a movie called Blue Velvet. 14:49.520 --> 14:56.307 Blue Velvet is maybe the purest example on film of Lynch's theme of the darkness lurking behind small town sweetness. 14:57.360 --> 15:07.867 The main character, jeffrey, played by Kyle McLaughlin, finds a severed ear and becomes embroiled in a mystery with his would-be girlfriend, portrayed by a very young Laura Dern. 15:08.580 --> 15:18.770 He discovers Dorothy, a lounge singer played by Isabella Rossellini, and the man who has kidnapped her husband and child, frank Booth, played with wild energy by Dennis Hopper. 15:19.420 --> 15:26.687 It's dark and twisted and horrifying and was of course hated by Roger Ebert and loved by almost everyone else. 15:27.380 --> 15:32.169 In fact, blue Velvet became Lynch's second best director nomination at that year's Oscars. 15:33.420 --> 15:41.668 This run carried Lynch into the 90s, when he would meet TV producer Mark Frost, who was probably best known for Hill Street Blues. 15:42.620 --> 15:52.306 The two of them conspired on a couple of failed projects before hitting on the idea of a girl washing up on a rocky shore wrapped in plastic found in the Pacific Northwest. 15:53.260 --> 16:01.309 Abc picked the show up and Lynch and Frost created a landmark of television part satire, part thriller, part Lynchian weirdness. 16:02.180 --> 16:04.067 It was, of course Twin Peaks. 16:05.220 --> 16:09.147 The question who killed Laura Palmer became something of a cultural touchstone. 16:09.640 --> 16:15.827 Whether you had seen the show or not, you knew about the log lady and Agent Dale Cooper and his love of coffee and pie. 16:17.160 --> 16:29.602 The tale of Twin Peaks is its own twisted tale, but suffice to say that ABC was putting a lot of pressure on Lynch and Mark Frost to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer, which was decidedly not the point of the show. 16:30.380 --> 16:38.087 But Lynch gave in all the while removing himself further from the program due to his disillusionment with working with the ABC executives. 16:39.420 --> 16:46.705 It was during this time he was given a book by a friend of his who wanted Lynch's take on the material that he was thinking of producing or maybe even directing. 16:47.420 --> 16:50.409 Lynch asked what if I read it and wanna do it myself? 16:51.160 --> 16:53.387 His pal told him to go ahead and make it. 16:53.427 --> 16:58.586 Then the book was, of course, wild at Heart, the story of Sailor and Lula. 16:59.660 --> 17:10.986 The author was a man named Barry Gifford who had grown up with a father and organized crime, and, if you're curious about that, he has a whole series of autobiographical works called the Roy Stories. 17:12.060 --> 17:22.548 Wild at Heart is only the first of a series of novels about Sailor and Lula, though the first novel ends with the break-up scene at the end of the film, without any of the Wizard of Oz stuff to go along with it. 17:23.300 --> 17:27.187 Lynch loved the book, though, and the violence and road trip elements really spoke to him. 17:27.860 --> 17:31.985 Lynch called it just exactly the right thing at the right time. 17:33.480 --> 17:36.767 He fell in love with the book after finishing the pilot for Twin Peaks. 17:37.220 --> 17:45.825 At the same time, two other projects got caught up in a mess when his usual studio, the DeLorentis Entertainment Group, got gobbled up by Carol Coe. 17:46.800 --> 17:53.487 The downside was this picture about finding love in hell was slated to start shooting in two weeks. 17:53.567 --> 18:00.544 From the time all this production mess was resolved, which meant Lynch had to write the script in a week and get the party started. 18:00.584 --> 18:07.966 To get the movie made, the first draft was deemed too dark and Lynch added a happy ending and some nods to the Wizard of Oz. 18:08.680 --> 18:19.743 By his own admission, a rebel with a dream of the Wizard of Oz is kinda like a beautiful thing, and for the rebel Sailor, he had only one choice Nicolas Cage. 18:20.900 --> 18:29.785 We've talked at length about Cage before, but the character of Sailor may be the closest to Cage's daring sense of cinematic adventure of any of his roles. 18:30.540 --> 18:35.768 He is of course channeling Elvis Presley and even sings the Elvis songs himself or the soundtrack. 18:36.580 --> 18:42.708 Cage also brought to the set the Snake Skin jacket, something he pitched to Lynch, who naturally ran with it. 18:43.520 --> 18:54.105 In adapting the book, lynch invented some new characters, including the murderous middleman, mr Reindeer, and the scene in which Twin Peaks alum Sherilyn Finn is seen as a car crash victim. 18:55.160 --> 19:01.070 But the movie lives and dies by the relationship between Cage's Sailor and Lula, as played by Laura Dern. 19:01.780 --> 19:11.904 She'd worked with Lynch before, on Blue Velvet, you may recall, and this time around she'd also be working with her mother, diane Ladd, who plays Marietta Fortune in the film, her mother in the movie. 19:12.760 --> 19:23.768 To create a bond, though, between Sailor and Lula, cage and Dern went on a road trip of their own, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for a weekend trip, a way for the pair to explore their characters. 19:24.460 --> 19:30.769 What emerged from the trip was a sense that Sailor and Lula were essentially one person compliments to each other. 19:31.260 --> 19:36.207 Where Sailor was raw and overly masculine, lula is the sexual feminine side. 19:37.300 --> 20:03.248 And then the movie is filled out by Lynch regulars Harry Dean Stanton as the hapless detective, johnny Farragut, grace Zabrisky as Juana, one of a trio of Hitman that includes David Patrick Kelly as Drop Shadow, isabella Rossellini as Perdita, the daughter of Juana, crispin Glover, in an amazing cameo, as Cousin Dell, and Willem Defoe in a career sleazy performance as the Hitman, and Ledge Bobby Peru. 20:04.260 --> 20:09.906 The movie was given a $10 million budget, and Lynch took the show on the road, filming in New Orleans and LA. 20:10.840 --> 20:15.588 By all accounts, lynch runs a good set, and most of the actors he works with return for more. 20:16.400 --> 20:22.706 Jack Nance, he of Eraser Head fame, still returns in Wild at Heart as a man with a story about a dog. 20:23.660 --> 20:38.808 The end result was edited, however, shaving a couple of scenes that were deemed too erotic, including one in which Dern tells Cage to take a bite of Lula while sitting on his face and another where she orgasms while talking about being eviscerated by an animal. 20:39.460 --> 20:40.565 You know Lynch stuff. 20:41.461 --> 20:49.590 Also, some of the violence was trimmed, including the scene in which Harry Dean Stanton is tortured and another where Bobby Peru meets his unlikely end. 20:51.020 --> 20:53.849 And because it was so violent, test screenings were bad. 20:54.540 --> 20:58.547 At the first screening, 80 people left after the torture scene with Harry Dean Stanton. 20:58.900 --> 21:03.210 That was eventually cut, but only after 100 walked out at the second screening. 21:04.500 --> 21:10.087 And then came Cannes, where Roger Ebert led some jeers, but Lynch took home the palm door anyways. 21:11.000 --> 21:29.388 After the buzz around the film grew, author Barry Gifford, who would later partner with Lynch to write Lost Highway, recalls being asked by reporters how he felt about the movie, clearly angling for the writer to stamp his feet about Lynch's changes Instead, gifford said this is wonderful, it's like a big, dark musical comedy. 21:30.780 --> 21:40.444 When it hit theaters in the US, the movie nabbed about $15 million domestically, which isn't much, but it covered the budget, and critics were of course split, some saying it was genius. 21:40.645 --> 21:46.126 Others like Ebert, saying Lynch veered into territory where his characters became quote so cartoony. 21:46.680 --> 21:49.630 One is prone to address him more as theorist than director. 21:50.980 --> 21:57.747 Re-evaluations have been kind to the movie, though, and I would argue that this represents Lynch at his most daring and creative. 21:58.260 --> 22:08.982 A preview has Lynch set off on one of his most fascinating periods of creativity, including Lost Highway, mulholland Drive and what I argue is his best film, twin Peaks. 22:09.123 --> 22:10.086 Firewalk with Me. 22:10.960 --> 22:13.826 But that, ladies and gentlemen, is a tale for another day. 22:15.060 --> 22:22.987 Now let's get chat out a PD Corrational Institute and take one more road trip into a whirlwind of Elvis Oz and some incredible cage. 22:23.700 --> 22:58.160 Ladies and gentlemen, sailors and lulas, it's 1990s, wild at heart, music, and welcome back to another episode of Pick Six Movies. 22:58.461 --> 22:59.265 My name is Beau. 22:59.761 --> 23:02.349 I am one of your hosts on this road trip in the hell. 23:02.961 --> 23:05.509 With me, as ever is the lula to my sailor. 23:06.081 --> 23:09.089 And where's always an outfit that shows off his nipples. 23:09.470 --> 23:12.088 Yes, the beloved Chad Cooper, they're perky. 23:12.320 --> 23:16.223 They point up and they say hello, yeah, that's what my daddy always said he liked. 23:17.302 --> 23:28.020 I'm very interested in discussing this movie with you because it is truly unlike anything we have ever discussed on this podcast and we have reviewed a lot of movies. 23:28.301 --> 23:34.960 I feel that Wild at Heart is, dare I say, more artistic than any film we've ever reviewed. 23:35.122 --> 23:36.379 Yes, I dare do say that, beau. 23:36.622 --> 24:05.009 Yeah, I think that's accurate, but we've never talked about David Lynch to this degree Not directly and Lynch is somebody that can absolutely do a line drive down the middle if he wants to like straight story and even a lot of Twin Peaks is not as weird as people give a credit for until you get into like that third season, that and straight story and Elephant man and he's done some documentaries and things like that but he's also a first-class artistic weirdo. 24:05.310 --> 24:05.971 Absolutely. 24:06.160 --> 24:12.748 This movie is like a club that Stefan would describe on SNL Weekend Update. 24:12.880 --> 24:39.048 This movie's got it all Nicholas Cage, laura Dern, the Wicked Witch of the West, underwear, cockroaches, manslaughter, obese ladies in lingerie, rape, bad oral hygiene, exploding heads and pantyhose, abortion, an old man with a vacuum cleaner, elvis impressions, voodoo, leg braces, car crashes, isabella Rosalini's carpet vomit, homophobia, silver dollars and lap dances while you shit. 24:39.220 --> 24:41.008 All of that is 100% accurate. 24:42.365 --> 24:43.248 And that's not all. 24:43.400 --> 24:46.049 There was so much more that I could have added to that. 24:46.301 --> 24:47.466 Every bit of that's in here. 24:47.760 --> 24:49.167 None of that is an exaggeration. 24:49.340 --> 24:53.709 All of those things are included in this movie, which is sort of what makes it wonderful. 24:53.760 --> 24:57.811 Like I get why people don't like this version of Lynch. 24:58.260 --> 25:00.208 I don't think I liked this movie. 25:01.203 --> 25:01.726 I get that. 25:01.920 --> 25:03.386 You know what this movie reminded me of. 25:03.900 --> 25:29.409 It reminded me of that time that you and I and a few of the other vagrants that we grew up with, when we went to the local county fair in Bug Tussle, america, right, and there was a trailer that said you could come in and you could see these Haitian pygmies or something like this, and we were like just idiot teenagers and we were like, oh my God, we totally got to do this. 25:29.429 --> 25:47.377 So we paid our two bucks, went in this trailer and then they pulled back this curtain to show these two little people that played a guitar and started howling music and it went from this is going to be entertaining and fun to this is one of the most disturbingly sad things that I will remember for the rest of my life. 25:47.718 --> 26:08.318 Yeah, that's how I feel about Wild at Heart, because when you hear about it on the surface of a movie with Elvis impressions and Wizard of Oz imagery and it's David Lynch being wacky and goofy and you're like this will be a pretty good time and seriously, 60 seconds into the film, it's like oh no that's the thing about this movie is it's a real roller coaster ride for me. 26:08.679 --> 26:09.944 I don't dispute that at all. 26:09.964 --> 26:29.866 Like you said, it begins with this scene of incredible violence and then gets kind of goofy and then gets really dark and sexually disturbing and then it gets goofy again and then it gets super violent again and then it just gets weird and then goofy again and it goes all over the place. 26:29.906 --> 26:46.306 But that's I think, if I'm defending Lynch and I kind of am in this situation, it follows the idea of a road trip with a lot of destinations along the way and I think you end up in a happy place, but along the way you're going to see some really sick shit. 26:46.868 --> 26:51.737 It had been decades since you or I had seen this movie and I can take. 26:51.777 --> 27:12.064 For some reason in my head, this movie got mashed up with true romance, oh yeah, and the movies kind of follow some of the same beats, and true romance came out, I think, three years after this and it just made me wonder if Tarantino was directly influenced by this movie when writing true romance. 27:12.344 --> 27:13.567 I wouldn't be surprised. 27:13.747 --> 27:18.926 As I said in the introduction, lynch tends to be the director that a lot of directors love. 27:19.086 --> 27:22.254 Yeah, because he kind of puts it all on the field. 27:22.534 --> 27:26.510 I also got this movie a little bit mashed up with Raising Arizona. 27:26.711 --> 27:30.278 Not the plot of it, but Nicholas Cage's performance in this. 27:30.605 --> 27:40.032 I don't know how many months away it was from when he filmed Raising Arizona, but there are whiffs of HI McDonough in this character. 27:40.333 --> 27:49.946 HI McDonough is a little more slapsticky than this character and a little more innocent, even though, I would argue, sailor is not a bad guy. 27:50.087 --> 27:55.902 He's kind of a low level crook at worst, and even though he banse lauders. 27:56.383 --> 27:59.551 HI McDonough never split somebody's head open like a pumpkin. 27:59.792 --> 28:03.972 Well, that's true, Right, I don't think he ever had any malice in his heart. 28:04.052 --> 28:10.175 But again, in both of these movies we do rob a feed store and we do wear pantyhose on our heads to comedic effect. 28:10.336 --> 28:12.585 This is true, there's a lot of like crisscross. 28:12.725 --> 28:15.393 And again in my head I was like is that what happens here? 28:15.473 --> 28:16.476 Is that what happens there? 28:16.576 --> 28:23.294 And it was interesting to go in and tease out, because I truly thought at the end of this movie that Elvis Presley is who wakes up, Sailor. 28:23.434 --> 28:25.644 And then I was like, oh shit, no, it's the other one. 28:25.664 --> 28:28.471 Yeah, that's true. 28:28.572 --> 28:40.510 There are moments in this movie, though, that I find so endearing, and one of them is the story we'll get to it, but you know the story about Cousin Dell and Nicholas Cage's reaction of oh hell, peanut. 28:40.730 --> 28:40.992 Yeah. 28:41.132 --> 28:45.588 As that story is, we told, it's still one of the funnier things I think I've ever seen in a movie. 28:45.928 --> 28:47.051 It really makes me laugh. 28:47.412 --> 28:58.771 One thing I think that's important to touch on is the time period in which this movie came out, because this was really at the forefront of this rise of the independent filmmaker. 28:58.962 --> 29:14.377 Like Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival was this thing, and you had, like, people like Sotterberg with Sex Lies and Video Tape, and Gus Van Sant with my own private Idaho, and even people like Spike Lee or the Coen Brothers or Kevin Smith or Jane Campion. 29:14.625 --> 29:35.873 There was this track of getting films into theaters, where you went to these small festivals and then studios would come in and scoop up movies and then throw some marketing dollars behind them and then they would get some real notoriety, and then it was almost like the independent filmmaker became a brand in and of themselves. 29:36.113 --> 29:52.745 Tarantino is a perfect example that it was this person's next film and, even more so than the movie itself, that audiences were going to see what these new artists were creating, and I don't think that that exists in the world today at all. 29:52.905 --> 30:00.383 I mean, you have movies like Moonlight and Lady Bird, things like that, where it almost feels like big independent studios like A24 or the things like that are putting these movies out. 30:00.524 --> 30:10.314 It was a very different time where you could make a freaky, weird movie like this and then be able to find the fast track to getting it into theaters in small town America. 30:10.475 --> 30:12.808 This is a movie that would end up on streaming today. 30:13.049 --> 30:15.016 And get lost in all the noise of streaming. 30:15.197 --> 30:15.698 Absolutely. 30:15.979 --> 30:34.451 I think that with all of the noise in the world of streaming, not that I need someone to curate movies and tell me what's good or bad, but I need someone to curate movies and tell me what's good or bad, Like if a studio is going to come in and say, hey, this is a quality film, there is buzz about this movie, there's something here worth seeing. 30:34.572 --> 30:36.543 Then you put some dollars and you begin to market it. 30:36.703 --> 30:40.875 I think just putting it on streaming and like, oh, the audience will find it, that doesn't work. 30:41.015 --> 30:46.040