Hi, everybody. I hope you enjoy this, the first warm-up episode of my upcoming podcast, The Hip Pocket. Right now, these episodes live over at Patreon, but I will be eventually using Substack to publish the primary episodes once they begin.
These warm-ups are a way for us to get to know one another as hosts and to learn a bit about each other’s tastes in film before we jump in and start inviting guests into the mix.
What’s the podcast? Who are my co-hosts? What am I talking about? Thankfully, all of your questions will be answered below. I’ve provided a largely-accurate transcript that was generated automatically and then cleaned up a bit.
Hopefully, we’ll have some news about the premiere of the actual show for you soon. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been working on…
DREW: Hi everyone, Drew McWeeny here. You may know me from my time at HitFix, or from my earlier work at Ain't It Cool, or maybe you read one of my Substack newsletters, or maybe you ended up here because of a film I wrote, but whatever the case, welcome. I am glad that you're here for the very first episode of what I hope will be my next lengthy adventure, a new podcast called The Hip Pocket.
What does that mean? See, I think of hip pocket movies as the movies that we carry around with us, the films that we see that ring some bell or scratch some itch, so we file them away, and whenever we're sharing movies with people, these are the movies that we reach for. Sometimes it's a litmus test to see if we're on the same page. Sometimes you just want to show them this thing that means so much to you as a way of expressing that part of yourself. And sometimes it's as simple as this makes me happy and I hope it makes you happy too.
Whatever the case, I think you learn a lot about people when you talk about these films and why they matter to someone. I have hundreds and hundreds of movies that are like this, movies that have stuck with me for one reason or another over the last thirty years of writing films and writing about them. I have two friends who are going to join me on this new adventure. One of them is an old friend and one of them is much more recent.
First up, there's my band leader. We met almost twenty years ago when his wife and my wife were both pregnant with our first kids and we lived in apartments a few feet away from one another. We've been buddies ever since, and I'm guessing that you will eventually look forward to checking in every week with Craig Cerovolo just as much as I will. Craig, how are you, buddy?
CRAIG: I'm so good. How are you?
D: I'm good.
C: I feel like I should do like a Paul Schaefer thing. I'm trying to find my touchstones, whether it be like a Paul Schaefer or a... give me another guy.
D: Go for Questlove.
C: Questlove is… that’s a very high bar. But this is my goal, Drew, to be your Questlove.
D: Fantastic. I have always referred to you that way privately.
C: Well, it's a full circle. There we go.
D: No, I'm very excited, man. And part of this is going to be, even though I've known you for a long time, I can already tell just from the lists that we've sent each other for these first warmup episodes, that there's a lot about you I don't know. And I like that. I like the fact that the minute people start picking movies, you go, Oh, wow. Okay. You get a different picture of someone.
C: I think I'm learning a lot about myself.
D: Good! Our newer friend is somebody that I've always enjoyed online, but once we actually started talking, I knew that she was going to be the perfect person to have co-host the show with me. I want someone who's going to bring their own point of view to the show, who has strong opinions, broad tastes, and who's unafraid to wade in and defend that perspective. Part of what makes this exciting for me is knowing that I'm going to learn so much about Aundria Parker as we record the show, and I can't wait.
Aundria, how are you?
AUNDRIA: Drew, that was amazing. I'm so good. I'm so happy to be here. This is really exciting.
D: Been a long time coming. We've been talking about this for a little while and I feel like we've got a handle on what kind of thing we're going to do.
A: For sure.
D: This is really getting the conversation starting and really just figuring out how that part of it works.
A: Yeah.
D: This series of warm-ups that we're doing is going to be a series of special episodes, and we're going to get to know about each other's taste by going through Hollywood history from the ‘40s until today, picking movies from each decade that matter to us for whatever reason. There are going to be big movies and small movies, and it doesn't matter. I just wanted to get to know who you guys are and what movies mean to you. So I figured that we're going to start with a wild card. This episode is you just pick anything from any decade in any genre. And Aundria, we're going to start with you. You picked a recent film.
A: I did.
D: And I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure in doing so that you actively set off one of Craig's phobias. Well-played. So tell me, why did you pick 2022's Fall?
[the trailer for Fall plays]
A: Okay. I think the main reason that I picked Fall to begin with is because it is really effective. He is not the only one with a fear of heights. I don't do well with heights. And this movie is the most immersive height-phobic, terrifying, up-close experience that I can remember having at the movies.
You know, there are movies where you're underwater, get that claustrophobia, um, stuck in the elements, but this sort of just up in the air, uh, with no hope, stranded… I had not really seen anything like that before. I also picked it because it's new, and I don't know about you guys, but I feel like ever since COVID and, uh, the movie business being so completely disrupted with release dates straight to streaming, I've missed out on so many things. There are some movies I heard about that disappeared and some streaming things that I just missed that normally I may have been a lot more aware of and this was one of them. I watched it and was like, “This would have been amazing to see on the big screen.” Maybe it’s better that I didn’t because that would have been a little too immersive and terrifying. It’s really tight and super frightening, I think, for people who aren't also afraid of heights. And I just kind of want people to see it. I think anybody who likes to have those movie experiences where you are right with the character, whether it’s, like I said, underwater or trapped in a cave. Uh, this is trapped on a tower in the middle of nowhere, and you are with these characters the whole time. I just, I really want people to see this one. I think it's really fun, really scary, really interesting.
D: It's amazing to me how it was shot because it is very persuasive. You absolutely buy the heights…
A: Right.
D: … and there comes a point where your brain just kind of accepts that it's real. It's clearly not, but dear god, it really pokes you in a very primal place. I find, with height stuff, it's… you can't turn off your reaction. It will get into your reaction chemically, like there is something about heights that plays on our lizard brain…
A: Yes.
D: … and I think you can't make yourself be okay with it.
A: There's no getting comfortable. Yeah. There's no getting comfortable in that situation.
[Another clip from Fall plays]
D: I like movies like this. I think that this is, for any director who's really trying to show your… make your bones and show who you are and kind of define yourself… these closed-space, one-setting, super compact thrillers are a really good way to show off whether or not you're any good with actors. Because you have to… ultimately, this is all about whether or not you get decent performances out of these people. I like these leads. I think both of them are interesting.
A: I mean, of course, there's always the aspect of why did you do that? Why are they doing that? But it comes to a certain point when there are no other options for these two women. They are doing everything in their power to simply survive.
D: Yeah. Craig, had you seen this one before?
C: No, and I'm not going to watch it ever again.
A: I’m sorry.
D: Really got to you, didn't it?
C: You know, I always thought I was like a heights guy. And then once, a couple of years ago, maybe since I got older, I was like on this scaffolding, working on a thing for the kids' school. And I was like, I don't like this. And it was, you know, 25 feet off the ground. So I can't imagine, you know, what was it? 2,000 feet in the air? What was the number?
D: Yeah, it was supposed to be 2,000 feet in the air.
C: It was like the highest, the fifth highest... it's based on a real tower which was like the fifth-largest structure in the United States at one point.
D: That’s insane.
C: So to capture that, it’s a wonderful thing. And there are buy-ins… you just buy in once it gets going. And, uh, it's a very modern movie because the cell phone and all the technology really plays a lot into it, in terms of it's not going to save you.
A: Right.
C: You know what I mean? Like, that was a wonderful part of this.
D: Somebody just recently put up a thing where they were talking about how some of our best filmmakers aren't making movies set in the modern age anymore and they put up a list of like the time period that these directors’ last five or six films have been set, and it's true. A lot of directors are opting not to direct modern movies right now, and I do think part of that is because technology's taken so much drama out of everybody's daily lives. When you can instantly connect to people, when there are ways to shortcut communication, it cuts a lot of the old things that happen in movies in half or eliminates them.
A: Yeah, right. And I do think this movie is smart about finding ways to be grounded in today and yet still really push how isolated and alone you can be, even with tech on your side.
C: Yeah. And it's a great, it's a great twist, which my daughters… I'm not going to spoil it. I want people to watch it. But my daughter also said that's a 28 Feet Down reference? There's some shark movie? Do you guys know this?
A: 47 Meters Down.
C: Oh! Whatever, yeah… 27… I guess 27 feet's not that much. That's only thirty feet. There's not a lot of drama in Thirty Feet Down. That's like the deep end of the pool. Anyway… apparently, it's very similar to that, but there're sharks involved. But yeah, I agree that Virginia, what's her name? Gardner and Grace Carolyn Curry? They did amazing jobs.
A: They did.
C: I’ve never seen these two young actors before and I would hope that we see them again because to carry a movie for 90 minutes in that kind of situation, just the two of you basically, it's pretty incredible to pull off.
D: One of the crazy things about, I think, if you want to be a working actor and especially a younger actor who's trying to get into the business now, is you have to be in such insane peak athletic shape to play anything. To play anything! To be in any movie at this point. And that didn't used to be the case. Remember, there was a point in time where the top two box office stars in the world were Woody Allen and Elliot fucking Gould. It did not matter what you ate. You could be 96% donut and just be a sex symbol.
C: Like better, better days.
D: Truly now, everybody comes to the table ready for the Olympics. And it's wild to me. And you get actors like Virginia Gardner, her performance in this is really physical. And you get the feeling that she's just trained to do all sorts of things and ready to go. And it's impressive to me. I do not envy any of them, but it's impressive to me because they really do come to the table with a remarkable set of physical skills to pull this shit off.
C: Yeah, true.
A: For sure.
C: And you know what really got me? The shoe. Put the shoe back on. Put your shoes back on! It drove me insane
D: Yeah, there are little things in the movie that when they happen deflate you so completely that you feel like you're not going to be able to watch the rest of the movie, and so that's a really nice acceleration of this thing.
C: Go watch it. I mean, if you've not seen Fall… Aundria, thank you so much for choosing it.
A: Oh, my God, that was… you're welcome. I apologize. All of the above.
C: No, no, it is… I love to... it's good to feel this way.
A: Yeah, you feel it. And you know, the suspension of disbelief is almost immediate. There are points when you're like, why am I still watching this? I need to shut this off, because it's… it's brutal. It's fast, though. It's a fast brutality. So, you know, check it out. If you're in the mood for that sort of visceral thrill.
C: Scott Mann. That’s the director? I wonder what he’s up to next, because it seems like this is a good calling card for him as a first time out.
D: There's one weird controversy about this film that I find really odd and as a test case… like they prove their point, but it puts us into a weird zone, which is this movie, the way it was originally shot, everybody was allowed to improvise. A lot of the dialogue is just the actors reacting to the thing that's happening to them. Understandably the word “fuck” was said many many times while they were shooting.
C: Oh, yeah, I heard about this!
A: Yeah.
D: So to get the PG-13 they went in and, using AI deepfake software, eliminated all the fucks from the movie and either changed it to “fricking” or just eliminated it so there's silence, so there are little gaps in dialogue and things, and you would never notice it if you had not been told it had been done. It truly is fairly seamless, but it's a weird thing because I would think as a performer… like The Blair Witch Project shot very similarly in terms of giving the actors a lot of latitude to just react to things and sound like real people. And it's one of the reasons Blair Witch Project sounds the way it does, which is every third word is “fuck” after a certain point. As it would be if you were in that situation.
A: Absolutely.
C: Yep.
D: And I do think it's weird as a performer to hand yourself over to a director and then when the footage comes back, there's things you didn't do and words you didn't say or words you did say that are simply gone. It's not the same as editing… or is it? I find myself really wrestling with the ethical questions of this as we move forward because I do think as an actor, your agency… your ownership of the thing that you do on camera… is starting to be taken away and starting to be removed. Those are little choices, and ultimately, yes, the director has the right to do that, but it's weird and it's a very strange line they're walking.
C: Well, I mean the actor is kind of a tool really for the director and the editor… really…
D: They are… but…
A: As long as you know that going in.
C: It feels like it’s going to get lost in the edit regardless, so it’s just a tool, but...
D: It's strange. It is a weird line that we're walking and I'm increasingly nervous about where it ends up. And experiments like this do it so flawlessly, and this is like the beginning of this thing, so if this is how it looks now, there's going to come a point where you'll never ever know. There will never be any fingerprints that will show up, and you'll never know if anything was done like this, so it's just weird. It's a weird moment to observe.
A: There was there was a controversy similarly when the documentary about Anthony Bourdain came out because the filmmakers had used AI to kind of generate some voiceover from him that he never really said.
D: Yeah, his words but that he never spoke.
A: Right. Right. And that’s…
D: Very weird.
A: Very weird. Very, very weird.
C: I don't hate it. I can't. I mean, I get the dystopian weirdness of it, but I kind of love that Andy Warhol narrated his entire documentary on Netflix. I kind of love that, and he would have loved it too.
D: I do think Andy would have. There are people that would have gone, “Oh, that's great. I'm a soundboard? You made a soundboard of me and I can live? That's great.” And there are other people for whom I'm sure that is a horror show. The entire notion freaks them out.
C: I guess. I don’t know. I love the weird new Beatles songs that they’re doing. It’s so weird!
A: It is weird.
C: We’re living in this… it’s the future, and I love living in it, and we’re all doomed anyway. Let’s just…
D: That’s true. Let’s not get too upset. As long as I get my robot butler.
C: Is this like a Rocky IV robot butler?
A: That's immediately where I went, of course.
C: Which is the worst part about the new edit is they took out the robot butler.
D: Yeah, what the hell was he thinking, man?
C: I don't know.
D: Okay, so for my first choice, I picked a film that you either know and love or have never fucking heard of. And there's not seem to be a lot of in-between. Made in 1987, this was the first film for writer John Patrick Shanley, who was an acclaimed playwright at the time, directed by the same guy who made my beloved My Bodyguard. I'm talking about the oddball independent film starring Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins and John Turturro called Five Corners.
[the trailer for Five Corners plays]
C: I had not heard of this one.
A: Neither had I. Neither had I. I did not know what I was in for.
D: So in general, are you familiar with John Patrick Shanley? With, like, Moonstruck and Joe Versus the Volcano, that side of his work? Because I feel like there are two writers. There's the guy who wrote Doubt, which is the very serious sort of I write hard-hitting plays that are about something. And then there's the weirdo goofball who wrote Moonstruck and Joe Versus the Volcano. That's the guy I love. I love that John Patrick Shanley dearly. And to me, that's this movie.
C: Yeah, it kind of straddles the line. It's got a… yeah, it's got a weird tone.
A: It does.
C: I have to tell you…
D: Well, I mean, the opening of the movie is a dude catches an arrow in his back and you have no idea what happened or why or why he's just dead in the middle of the Bronx. And then we just cut to someplace else and there's a whole different story going on. And it sets an immediate tone, like, I don't know what I'm watching. What is this thing? And it doesn't really make it easy for you at any point. There's because there are essentially two totally different movies that you follow for a little while. In one of them, there are these two girls who are driving around sniffing glue with one of their fiancés, and he gets tired of them and sells them to two guys to get rid of them.
C: So problematic.
A: So crazy. So crazy.
D: Little bit. Little bit. And then in the other story, there's a young woman who is concerned because the guy who tried to rape her is being released from prison, and she goes to the guy who beat him up and asks for help, and he is now a pacifist who wants nothing to do with it. And so you've got these two sort of parallel stories running and no idea how any of this is ever going to connect or link up. And it's, I find it really wonderful. I find it, it's a movie full of oddball choices. I love young John Turturro in this thing. He is a weird weapon that is just fired into this movie from the moment he arrives. And there is this intensity about him that I really love. I can see why directors Even though this thing was seen by like eight people, all eight of them were probably casting directors because clearly, Turturro's a guy where they all went, Oh shit, look at him, and they had to start using him in other places.
C: Yeah, that's good.
[another clip from Five Corners plays]
C: It's like if you were sniffing glue and watching this thing.
D: Speaking of sniffing glue, how great is Elizabeth Berridge in this thing?
A: Oh my god. Both of them, I was just… they’re messes. They’re just complete messes, but they’re working with what they’ve got, I guess. You wake up on a strange mattress on a strange floor after sniffing glue…
D: “I ain't got no clothes on.” “I ain’t got no clothes on.”
C: Yeah, I don't like this. I didn't like where that was going. I'm like, I'm not really into this. And for the love of God, if you love penguins, don't watch this movie.
A: Oh, yeah.
D: Yes. Oh, yeah. There is some penguin trauma. I will warn you.
C: Spoilers. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to get into it, but trigger warning.
D: I love that at one point, as you were just starting the movie, Craig, you reached out and you go, “How the fuck did this movie afford the Beatles?” And then you get to the producer credit and you go, “Oh, George Harrison's a producer. Never mind. I got it. OK.”
C: Yeah! That was a great moment.
D: Yeah, I love Handmade Films. I think in general, Handmade Films gave us a lot of really wonderful, weird, fringe stuff that nobody else would have financed, and their entire filmography… if you watch Handmade Films from beginning to end, it's like, I don't know, 30 movies? 35 movies? Something like that. And they are all very particular, very personal, and you can't imagine any Hollywood system ever going, yes, I'm making this.
C: Does George Harrison have a hand in all of those, you think?
D: Pretty much. I think it started because they were looking for a way to finance Life of Brian and Life of Brian was falling apart, and the Beatles, with George O'Brien, stepped in and said, “We'll figure it out.” And Handmade Films was the result. And then Harrison really loved dabbling. And so I think Harrison just stayed involved and helped pick these things. And George O'Brien was the guy that was kind of running the company. And so, yeah, I mean, stuff like Time Bandits…
C: Time Bandits!
D: … and Withnail and I...
A: (sighs) Oh, Withnail.
C: Yeah, all of those.
D: We will have, I'm sure, a Withnail episode at some point.
C: It's coming.
D: Come on.
C: It's coming.
A: Oh my God.
D: But I do. I find that the movies they made are all very particular. And this one vanished. It had the hardest time with an American theatrical release in the first place. I remember reading about this in 1987 when Premiere magazine first started being published in America. The first few issues that came out, I found on the newsstand and I was like, Oh my God, someone made a magazine just for me. And they had trading cards for movies that they included in each issue. They would have like eight trading cards per issue and they would pick them based on weird distributors and movies that needed promotion. And one of the playing cards was a Five Corners trading card. And I remember reading the cast list and reading the description, and being like, I gotta see this thing. I gotta see it. It sounds great. And it wasn't until home video because it didn't play theaters in Tampa. It played theaters nowhere. This thing barely got released.
C: I almost felt like a bit of a Mandela effect. Like this movie does not exist. Like where did this movie come from?
A: Yeah
C: It felt that weird. But there's a lot of those that I do. I think it's just me not paying attention.
D: I well, I think in the ‘80s, especially with home video becoming bigger, there's a lot of hunger for home video product. And they had built so many more theaters, and then stuff would play like four markets. And that would count as a theatrical release, and then we get a big video push. So a lot of these things vanished in the video, the early sort of home video hunger. And I do think a lot of them were just used to feed like video distribution deals, and they got killed theatrically as a result. It was a weird moment to see how things were moving over.
C: I loved it. I thought it was a great… it was nice to experience something to see something with these great legendary actors in their prime or even before their prime. Just out of the gate.
A: They were children!
D: This is her making that crossover. This is that weird moment where Jodie Foster wasn't an adult yet. She wasn't a kid still. She was trying to redefine herself. And this is like the era of Stealing Home. This is the year… a year or two before The Accused. Like she's really struggling to figure out who Jodie Foster is to the public at this point. And I love this performance from her. I think she's great.
A: Yeah, she’s terrific.
[another clip from Five Corners plays]
D: Tim Robbins I think is really wonderful in this. You’ve got to talk about what a big goony bird that guy is. He was so strange when he was young and he was 11 feet tall and made of rubber. There was just something rubbery and babyish about him.
C: Yeah.
D: Which is great and I kind of love that. This is one year before Bull Durham. So this is prototypical Tim Robbins right at his rawest. um I love how obsessed he is with sort of the uh the idea of peace and it does a nice job of being grounded in the late ‘60s but not beating you over the head with, Hey, look at all the late ‘60s stuff we're wearing and doing…
C: Yeah, I didn't get that vibe.
D: Yeah, it just feels like it's of the moment and has this lovely sense of what the world was really like versus sort of the nostalgia that hadn't kicked in…
A: Right
C: Absolutely. Great pick. Can you… where can you… where can you get…?
D: I don’t know where you can find this, and that’s one of the things that we’re going to… as we cover things on this show, I know there are shows that really make sure they only cover things that are available on Netflix or that are widely streaming. I’m not going to really do that, because I want to build some energy for getting some of these things back into the mainstream. If something like Five Corners isn't available right now… and there was a weird rights issue for a little while where people thought it had gone public domain, but it hadn’t, and so I think there were real distributor problems. But if these things… if we can build some sort of interest or audience for them, and hopefully distributors listen, maybe we can get some of these things back into where they need to be, back into the conversation. I don't mind occasionally bringing stuff up that isn't easily accessible because maybe it will become that way.
I do think this last film that we're going to talk about… Craig, you beautiful lunatic…
C: I know, I know.
D: Your choices really tickle me because I've known you for as long as I have and I would not have predicted some of these.
C: I get it. I get it.
D: I certainly don't think I had you pegged as a giant Bringing Up Baby fan.
C: Okay, let me tell you what happened. Okay? Because I do love, I do love Bringing Up Baby. I'm also not very smart, so I misunderstood the assignment. Notice it's from 1936 or 1938. So I thought we were doing the ‘30s instead of the wild card. However, when I figured it out, I was like, screw it. I'm keeping this because it is a weird one. Let me tell you why. It's both of them, Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, at their finest. It's amazing, rapid-fire dialogue. It's screwball comedy at its screwball comediest, and there's a goddamn leopard involved.
[a delightful clip from Bringing Up Baby plays]
C: It’s just great. I love it. I love watching it. It’s so weird. He’s, he’s incredible. I really love him.
D: Are you also a fan of What's Up Doc?
C: Yes.
D: To me, they're very similar characters because Bogdanovich obviously worships this film. You can tell. And like Barbra Streisand in What's Up Doc, who is just Bugs Bunny, she is a pure chaos agent. All she does from the moment she meets Ryan O'Neal is fuck with him because it entertains her. That's the same thing in this movie. Katherine Hepburn is oblivious to what a force of nature she is, which is kind of delightful. Like, she has no idea of the chaos that just, in her wake, is constantly happening. And the only person to ever call her on it is him. He's the one who acknowledges what is happening. This is insanity from the moment they meet.
C: Absolutely. And I'm starting to shy away… just because it just seems like an awful term… from the manic pixie girl trope. But this is kind of the proto-that in that she is just doing her own thing. She's smart as a whip. She's controlling every situation from beginning to end. And it's her movie. It's her show, man. Everybody else is just a, you know, supporting character.
A: Orbiting around her.
C: And I love that about her. Aundria, had you seen it before?
A:I had not seen it before, so it was a trip. It was such a trip. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. One of the weird things I picked up...
C: What did you think when you saw it? Were you like, hey, what is...
A: I let... This is going to sound... I should get this out of the way, right? (sighs) I don't have a lot of experience with movies from that era or the ‘40s or even the ‘50s, because a lot of times I feel like I can't, I can't connect to the energy.
C: I get that.
A: So something like this, that's pure fireworks from the jump was so easy to connect with because you just get in it and you're you're going for the ride whether you want to or not, right? I just, I was just so charming and the dialogue is so smart and it's so fast. A weird thing that I noticed was Katherine Hepburn's voice sounds like the inspiration for what Megan Mullally was doing on Will & Grace years and years ago, that kind of high but not squeaky, breathy sort of thing. I'm like, this has got to be what her inspiration was because she just sounds incredible. Hepburn is, you know...
C: Yeah, I love her. And then I immediately watched Philadelphia Story because I was like, I need to. I need more, you know?
D: What’s wild… because she wasn't confident doing this. This was not her strength, her bread and butter. And she really wasn't sure if she was the right pick for this movie. I can't imagine anybody else. And it's funny because we mentioned Shanley, we mentioned Joe Versus the Volcano. The three different Meg Ryans… in the middle, there’s the one of them in the middle, the richest version… the one who’s like, “I’m a flibbertigibbet!” That one reminds me of this performance.
C: Oh, she definitely pulled from this performance.
D: It’s that very mannered, very presentational version of yourself. Susan is so aware of who she is and sort of the impact she has in one way and unaware in the other way which is what makes her kind of delightful. She's very feminine, she's very confident about that, but she truly does not realize the sort of chaos that she introduces. Just watching the uh, the golf course sequence, and watching her first take his golf ball, then take his car, and then watching him just try to get through to her, just get her to listen to him once. At that point, if you're not onboard for the rest of this movie, I don't know what you're watching, because…. yeah, I find by the time he's being driven out of the golf course on her running board… on his running board… and yelling at her, I'm 100% on for whatever happens. And you would never guess then that it's going to involve dinosaur bones and leopards and big game hunters and million dollar grants, like, it's so out of control crazy.
C: It is, and the chemistry between the two of them is literally just electric. It's just, it's such an amazing performance. I just love watching the two of them together. He… obviously he's Cary Grant, right? But I mean, you forget how funny he is. Like, he's got great comedic timing. The whole thing where he has to get the clothes and, like, she's trying to hide the clothes from him because she doesn't want to get married and… it's great. It's great. I love everything.
[Another clip from Bringing Up Baby plays.]
C: I love everything that he does. It's Howard Hawks. Come on. It's… it's definitely… it's, it's so…. I can't even. I'm gushing.
D: I know. Well, it's wild that it wasn't a big hit when it came out. It kind of…. there was this mixed reaction to it. And I think part of it, and Hawks has talked about this…everybody in the movie is a screwball. Everybody. Every character they meet… her aunt, the people that he's dealing with, a lot of times screwball comedies are, you have the one or two screwballs that you set loose into normal society, and that's the fun of it. Here Hawks really went and said every person in this movie is insane and he felt like he may have gone too far, like he gilded the lily. He just put too much in. That's the reason to me that it is the standout, that it's so wonderful, is because everybody who shows up is having a great time. Whether it's the dude who works at the house, who goes outside to get a drink and he's like, if I see one more thing tonight, and the leopard comes and sits next to him, it's... you know…
C: Man, the leopard… man. I mean, come on. It's a great performance from the leopard. Or the two leopards, I guess.
D: I love Baby. I love George the dog. He's a little shit and delightful.
A: George is great.
C: Children and animals, man.
D: I think that is that is the thing. It's really charming and it is utterly uninterested in anything except making you laugh your face off. And it reminds me in that way of, like, Duck Soup where the energy is unrelentingly I want to entertain you.
C: Right.
D: And so few comedies now do this.
C: Exactly. And I always think about movies from the ‘30s… because we’re only, what, 20 years into the whole film experiment at this point? And to have that already, 20 years out of the gate? I mean, are we going downhill because it fucking reached the pinnacle? I feel like an old man right now.
D: No, but there is something to the idea that the sophistication here is so high in every level.
A: I said the same thing almost last night to one of your other picks, Craig, when I was watching it for the first time. And I was like, this is not that far after the invention of the moving picture. How are they doing this so well now? It blows my mind. It just blows my mind. It's so interesting to watch, especially as someone who's fairly uneducated in that entire, you know, those decades of film.
C: Oh, I'm so happy you liked it.
A: I did!
C: I'm so happy. That makes me happy that you liked it. That's why we do this, right? Because it's like, oh, this is, I love that you love this movie.
A: I was just
D: Well, and this one, this one's a really fun one to drop on someone. This is a great one in the room with somebody. If you can be in the room and hear them laughing at this film and you realize that it's working for them, that's a real delight.
C: Yeah, totally. But yeah, it's definitely worth watching. I think it's available.
A: I think it's on Criterion.
C: Criterion normally has it on the Criterion Channel.
D: Yeah, it's part of their collection and deservedly. It's, it really is one of the high watermarks of early comedy and with a cast that just… every single person shows up ready to play and pitchin’ heat. I forget how funny it is until I watch it again. And then it just is brutally funny.
C: Yeah, I'm so glad you guys liked it. That makes me happy.
D: Well, listen, I love this. This is exactly what I was hoping for was that when we got together and we started having these conversations that would just be that the films we would bring would be wildly different. And to me, the idea of in one week watching Five Corners and Fall and Bringing Up Baby. That is why I love movies. I love the fact that you can have three radically different experiences like that, and they all reflect this very high level of craft in different ways.
A: Yeah.
D: All right. Well, listen, thank you guys for making the time today. Yeah, I'm very excited about our next episode where we are going to pick films from the 1940s that we hold near and dear. It is a very fun group of titles, and we will see you right back here in a week for the next episode of The Hip Pocket.
The Hip Pocket: Warm Up #1