EPISODE 342: All of Steven Spielberg's Theatrical Films Ranked - Part 6
Perhaps we thought it would never happen folks, but if finally has. Part 6 of all of Steven Spielberg’s Theatrical Films Ranked has reached Loe and Higgins’ Number One. Spoilers for the whole of the Spielberg filmography and Vincent Minnelli’s Lust for Life.
TRANSCRIPT
Folks, we finally made it. My personal pledge to you as a co-host of The Film Talk is that this is our final, very final ranking of all the Spielbergs, all the Theatrical Spielbergs Ranked final show.
I can't wait to get into it, where the theme music is going to pop in here in a second. You're going to hear my co-host. Gareth, you're here right now, you're listening to me.
Isn't it interesting? Isn't it interesting that organically, without us talking about it, we each pick separate films, but actually, maybe they're the same film.
Before we get into whether they're the same film, I'm nervous, Jett, I'm nervous. The first words out of your mouth where we finally made it, don't count your chicken.
That's true. We haven't recorded yet. Let's see what happens.
Hey there, folks. Welcome back once again to The Film Talk. It's one very long conversation on the art and meaning of the movies.
This is episode number 342. It's part six of all of Steven Spielberg's wonderful, wonderful director and appellee, really nice guy. All of his theatrical films ranked.
Part six, I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. The conversation never ends, but we'll see what happens today. Yes, dear listener, 35 theatrical releases.
And we've spent oceans of time discussing them recently. We began in the run up to the release of Disclosure Day, which I believe has recently been selected for preservation in the National Archive.
We've been at this so long and we watched most, if not all, of Mr. Spielberg's films again. And when we came to number one on the list, we just decided we should do a dedicated episode to each of our favorite Spielberg films.
Although is favorite the word or is this best, favorite, greatest, A-list, elite, asterisk?
Yes.
Okay, so how are we going to do this? How are we going to do this? We're going to we're going to reveal to the dear listener what your number one is, and we talk about it first, and then we reveal what mine is and we talk about that.
That sounds, you know, that sounds simple.
We don't plan these shows ahead of time. We're kind of like, you know, progressive acid free jazz. You know, we feel it.
Listen, folks, progressive acid free jazz.
Yeah, it's a genre I just invented.
You know, I'm always innovating. I'm always innovating, Gareth. I'm like Roy Neary, crafting a giant devil's tower out of somebody's garbage.
And I'm not saying our show is garbage.
Which for some reason he has to throw through a closed window.
Now, is it true that that was not in one of the versions? Like that whole scene is cut, right? Isn't that correct?
Like maybe is that in the theatrical version and like, or not in the theatrical version? There's a lot of different versions. I know Carl Weathers is in one version of Closed Encounters because Closed Encounters of the Third Kind, folks.
That to me is my top Spielberg film.
Closed Encounters of the Third Kind.
Closed Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977's box office smash, colorful, thrilling, scary, romantic, sentimental, wide-eyed, terrifying. Closed Encounters of the Third Kind.
Gareth, before I say why I've picked it, are you a fan of the Closed Encounters of the Third Kind?
I'm a fan of the Closed Encounters of the Third Kind, originally titled Watch the Skies. Who's, I think the first pass at the script was done by Paul Schrader. I read, Paul Schrader is really fascinating.
Read Paul Schrader being interviewed these days, read him on Facebook. The guy's unbridled. He just says what he thinks.
He clearly doesn't have a publicist. He said something recently about why his Closed Encounters script wasn't used. He said because it was too full of guilt.
And I'm like, more than ever, I want to read Paul Schrader's Closed Encounters script. It's about a man who works for a utility in the flyover country. No pun intended.
No pun intended. That's his singer. He has an encounter with light that causes him to go on a journey in which he's willing to give up everything that matters in favor of the dream of something greater.
And it's a thrilling film from start to finish. And I'm wondering, Jett, is it possible, is it possible that we might have a clip?
Sure, we can have a clip, but which one? I just kind of want to play the whole film, frankly. Here's one of the most devastating scenes in Spielberg's filmography.
Roy has had this terrifying yet exhilarating experience, an encounter with something that is beyond his understanding, and he's breaking down, and his wife wakes up in the middle of the night, can't find him.
It turns out that he's in their bathroom, locked door, clothed in the bathtub, breaking down. Let's listen in.
What it is, it's family therapy.
I mean, we all go, we all talk, we don't want to single out, and maybe it's not your fault anyway.
It's waterproof, it still works. Go to your room and close the door.
Ronnie, I'm really scared. And you can't see that in this audio podcast, folks, but in the scene itself, one of his children, his oldest child, sees them and reacts fearfully and in rage, calling his dad a crybaby. It is devastating.
And anybody who's had kids, I mean, this film, I have a couple of kiddos, and this film is incredibly realistic when it comes to family life. And of course, Spielberg has a wonderful affection for children. Amazing how powerful it is.
Can I tell you why this is my number one, Gareth? Because it's a great film. We can talk about the filmmaking.
We can talk about all the wonderful camera work, like all the stuff I loved in Disclosure Day and the blocking and the beautiful cinematography and the soaring John Williams score. But for me, I'm going to tell you why this is my top Spielberg.
Tell me.
Here's the thing. Now we've seen like, what is it? Meet the Fablemans or join the Fablemans or what's it called?
The Fablemans go to Disneyland. What's the name? It's just the Fable.
It's the Fablemans.
So and we all know stories about Spielberg and there's his traumatic divorce, right?
It happens in when he was a child. All this family drama. And what happens in Close Encounters?
There is a traumatic event. As the film opens, it's not like Happy Families. I saw the description IMDB talks to the Close Encounters.
Roy Neary, an electrical lineman who lives a quiet life, and that's not true. We see nothing but chaos in his life. Doesn't seem to be a happy marriage at all.
Wife doesn't seem to be supportive. He doesn't seem to be working well with his wife.
And his kids don't get him, which is fine. I mean, I think it's unfair for parents to think, oh, my children don't understand me.
But one of the things that's established about Roy is that he is very much in touch with what you could call his inner child. He wants to take the kids to see Pinocchio. He has the train set and stuff like that.
But he can't connect with his kids.
That's true. He's trying. He's using his own toys.
And in fact, Roy, you talk about inner child, he has an elaborate train set. So he has in some level, he's, I'm not going to say he's stunted, but he is playing with toys as a child would.
He's not, and this is interesting because the train is a pre-made set. He's working on it. But these are things that he buys.
He is not yet an artist. And what happens? He has this amaze.
He's going through trauma during the course of the film. He receives, he achieves a state where he has a directive. He has a compulsion to create.
He becomes a sculptor. Other people in the movie become like, you know, painters or artists or they're musicians, what have you. He becomes a sculptor.
So we think about young Steven Spielberg and a traumatic experience of this divorce and his family, and he then focuses in on movies. He then becomes an artist.
And this is familiar why Close Encounters is the ideal Spielberg film because it's his own development as an artist. Through trauma, he transforms himself into an artist. Roy Neary becomes an artist.
He becomes a sculptor and he then ascends, like Dave Bowman at the end of 2001, because there's plenty of Kubrick in this, right? It's the same kind of journey.
He goes through this transformative thing and then ascends into the heavens like David Bowman becomes the star child. And for me, that processing of trauma, that transformation makes this my top Spielberg film.
In addition, it just works as a movie, right? What genre is it? It's like a thriller, it's like a conspiracy thriller, like you're watching Parallax View or 3 Days of the Condor.
Hold on, hold on, Parallax View.
That kind of arena where Francois Truffaut does the explanation of the sounds and the guy's doing the...
Yes. Yeah, it's Parallax View.
Is that the same arena at the climax of the Parallax View? I think it is.
It could be because when we think about films like The Manchurian candidate, Parallax View, assassination films, there is always that arena. There's always this idea of this is where people come together. There's empty, luminal spaces.
And it's very powerful in Close Encounters because we have this empty arena. It's like this is a powerful governmental organization.
It's like an 8,000-seater arena with maybe 100 people in it.
A couple dozen people in it and they can book it all out. And that absolutely feels like when you're looking at that scene, it feels right out of the Parallax View. So this film transcends genres and also has such a fascinating structure.
Can you imagine a blockbuster of people always say, oh, they'll make movies like that anymore. I don't think they even made them then, where they'll structure the film as such. We have the family life and sighting incident with UFO.
Then this becomes this thriller. And then the last third of the film is, you know what it is, it's just occurring to me, folks. It's the Stargate sequence.
It's a rethinking of 2001. 2001 in the end, you had the last third going through this incredible light show that David Bowman goes through and he's going through space. You're grounded, you're not going through space.
The light is coming to you, but you're going through sound. And it's a fantastic structure. It's unusual and thrilling.
It's horrifying. There's scenes in the farmhouse with Little Barry that are just as terrifying as Poltergeist and clearly are on the same spectrum in terms of filmmaking as Poltergeist.
In fact, he even re-does a little Poltergeist thing in I think what's going to be your number one film, and we'll talk about that in a second.
For me, for all these reasons, through trauma transformation, artistic transformation, Closed Encounters is my number one.
Well, of course it is. It's a genuinely magical film and there is some bleak magic in it too.
You've already mentioned this totally terrifying sequence when this little boy Barry is abducted by what we have no reason to believe is anything other than evil monsters and his mother Melinda Dillon, great actor, by the way, really, really, really
great at portraying the abject horror of having your child taken from you. I think it establishes Neary's family beautifully. Terry Gahr, God bless Terry Gahr.
Is that a thankless role?
No, she's brilliant in it.
And she is.
But is it a thanks role? No, I mean, I'm not sure what you mean by thankless there. Like she she stands out for me.
There's a there's a moment in it where I think. Please remind me if I'm missing this year, I think he says it was like an ice cream cone and she says, what flavor? There's parts of this film that are that are really funny.
Yes.
And there's this gorgeous moment when when you when you're familiar with this film and you and I have been watching this film.
I mean, I've been watching it for 40 years.
Yeah.
And I feel like I know it really well. There's a moment when when he brings her out to the little bendy road where he has seen the the lights the night before because he wants her to see them too.
And there's a moment where he puts his arm around her and it's moving. And you wish that he will find his way back to her. Because as I watch this film now, it's really hard not to see it as a tragedy because it ends with him abandoning his family.
And all the evidence points to the fact that if he gets on to this craft, his kids might actually be dead by the time he comes back. You know, we've just seen these kind of World War II veterans.
Einstein was right, as they say, yes, the time dilation.
And so, you know, Spielberg did subsequently say that as he grew older, as he became a father, that I don't know that he said that he regretted making Close Encounters, but that he wouldn't do that again.
And it's interesting that, you know, ET ends with it's the alien that goes home and Elliot gets to grow up. I do find the film, it's not that I feel ambivalent about it, it's that I genuinely feel it's tragic that this happens.
That's exactly right. And I think that it's all the richer for it. It doesn't have a happy ending because guess what, folks, we're all on the way out, so act accordingly.
As Jack Nicholson said in The Departed, life is full of tragedy and that tragic element of the film is another reason for me that it elevates it.
Like if Kerry Gar and the kids were there at the end and everything worked out, it just wouldn't have the same impact. Life is full of highs, but it's also full of things that you can't ever change.
I can't go back and change some of the terrible things that I did. Am I haunted by guilt? Yes.
What can I do about that? How do I atone? Do you know what I mean?
Life is full of tragedy.
You're asking that question and you're living immense. You are big on this word fool. That's interesting that you said it's full of tragedy and then you said it's full of highs.
I don't know what fool is. I don't tend to think that we live in this perfectly calibrated universe where there's 50 percent good and 50 percent bad. The question is what we're going to do with the hand we've been dealt.
I don't judge Roy for wanting to get on that ship. I'm sure I would have wanted to do that too.
Maybe I would have thought, well, these magical alien beings, they're probably going to find a way to be able to send me back in time, so it'll all be all right in the end.
As an analogy for how calling, a sense of vocation can drive you mad before it settles, it's brilliant.
Yeah, he didn't ask for this. You can see it as a compulsion. It's a compulsion.
As you can be compelled to create. In my mind, what is it, it invents lust for life, right? Kirk Douglas, as Vincent van Gogh, yelling out at Paul Gauguin, I've got to paint.
Do you know, I've used that line for years and then I rewatched it and he never says that. But for years, I've told people that Kirk Douglas yells that line at Paul Gauguin. And I think it's just because his performance in Lust for Life.
What does he say?
Well, there is no equivalent.
It's just he doesn't got to anything?
No, not like that.
Etched into my mind, it must have just a pure physicality of Kirk Douglas. You know, etched itself into me.
Great, great.
Close encounters.
On Kirk. One last thing.
Yes, sir.
Closing encounters that I found intriguing this time was the realization that Gillian, Melinda Dillon's character, who is at all costs searching for Barry, her little son who's been stolen from her. There's a parallel here with what Roy is doing.
Roy is actually searching for integration with his own inner child. They're both looking for their child and they both get their child back in the end.
Definitely a mistake that Spielberg has acknowledged when he came out with the special edition a couple of years later that shows footage of what happens when Roy goes inside the craft. You've seen that, right? You've seen that.
I never want to see it again.
I saw it when I was like a child, like, yeah, you don't want to see that because that's like Kubrick saying, it's like Kubrick saying, don't show the aliens. Why don't we see the aliens in 2001? Because you can't show them.
It's ineffable. It's beyond our conception. Therefore, you don't show what it's like being born.
So it's beyond the conception.
Do you remember what actually happens in that sequence? Because I watched it for this episode.
All I remember is it reminded me, does he go up a space elevator? It's kind of like going into San Francisco Hyatt.
So what happens is they use footage that I guess they shot at the time, effects footage of inside the ship. And you see that there's many, many levels that they do look like the inside of.
The Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. Yeah. A big atrium.
You see like figures, lots of what appear to be human beings and aliens on these floors together and they match the effects from earlier.
You still don't need to see it, but they shot a new footage with Richard Dreyfus, who is obviously older than he was when he made the film and has a slightly different hairstyle. And God bless him, he gives it his all.
He stands there with a light shining on his face and all the acting that he does is he kind of looks in awe and big smiles. So it's terrible.
And credit to Spielberg for not suppressing the special edition, you know, in the way that George Lucas has done with the original Star Wars.
You only had so much time in the day.
To suppress things?
To do anything. It's like, OK, yeah, are you really going to spend time on this? Dealing with this issue?
Move on.
Let's make another movie or do some work. On the Blu-ray, you can see all three editions if you're into that.
Now I'm going to. Yes, you should.
You should. There's only so much time in the day, unless you're Jett, who has endless time, because Einstein was right.
I'm traveling very fast right now, my friends. All thanks to our new sponsor, Loe Espresso.
After having watched it, after having been through this journey, the Spielbergen journey, is it still your number one?
Yo, absolutely, for the reasons I said, because I think it goes to the heart of what compelled or helped transform the young man into the artist. Portrait of the artist as a young man, right? Is that the James Joyce book?
It's like that. We get a sense of why he became the great artist that he is.
Very lovely. Shall we talk about my number one? I don't know.
Am I saying its favorite or greatest? I don't know if it's my favorite.
Can't wait to talk about Ready Player One with you.
AI Artificial Intelligence, which, as you know, Dear Listener was a film developed by Stanley Kubrick based on a story by Brian Aldous called Super Toys Last All Summer Long.
And there you know, they've been they kind of received wisdom about this film is that Spielberg decided after Kubrick's death that he was going to make it.
It's it's actually seems more like what happened was he and Kubrick had talked about it for years. And Kubrick had long before he died, said to Spielberg, you should make this film.
And I suspect he decided to make it his next project as a, as a tribute to Kubrick.
The other thing that's that's most known about it is that a lot of people think the ending is is sentimental and the kind of popular mind, Spielberg style cheesy ending.
Now, first of all, I hope, dear listener, if you've made it this far to our sixth Spielbergan episode, you will know that we think that the charge that Spielberg is superficially sentimental just does not hold water.
There is bleakness in his films from the start. There is a serious appreciation of death, of suffering, of loss, of being separated from parents. Yes, there's something moving too.
But if you think about the quintessential Spielberg heartstrings moment, which I would say is the end of ET. As I've already mentioned on this episode, that's a moment in which the father figure leaves to never be seen again.
This is not a happy moment. And the ending of AI is not a happy ending. I do want to say if you've not watched AI, maybe stop listening to the episode right now, because we want to talk about it with spoilers.
I would love you to be able to see it without knowing how it ends. So that's fair warning. We're going to talk about it with spoilers from this point forward.
The ending of AI is one of the saddest endings of any story that I've ever heard. And it tugs on the heartstrings for sure, but it's not a cheesy, sentimental ending.
It's a confrontation with the possibility that human beings might wipe ourselves out. Along the way, it's an exploration of similar to what you said about Roy in Closing Cards, why do we create?
One of the characters actually says, didn't God create Adam to love him? Why does anybody make art? It's a haunting film.
It's a challenging film. There's elements in it that are as troubling as anything in Schindler's List.
I shouldn't say that because Schindler's List is obviously about factual events, but really bleak, horrifying stuff, and gorgeous set design, and gorgeous pacing, and extraordinary performances, not just from Haley, Joel Osmond, but it's the best
Yes, absolutely.
Frances O'Connor as the mother character, what happened to Frances O'Connor?
Why isn't she in every movie? Sam Robards, too, it's just delicate is not the word. It's tender in the right ways.
It's distant in the right ways. I love it. I've been watching it for 25 years.
I remain haunted by it. While I don't know that it's my favorite in terms of the Spielberg film that I most want to rewatch, I think it's certainly his best film. What do you think about AI, artificial intelligence, Dear Jett?
Like I said, before we kicked in the theme music, it's interesting we picked these two films because, as you mentioned, Roy Neary at the beginning of Close Encounters wants to take his kids to Pinocchio.
And the whole narrative thrust of this movie of AI, colon, is there a colon, common? Just AI, artificial intelligence, little clunky title there, is a riff on Pinocchio explicitly. David wants to be a real boy.
A real boy. And so the similar themes of how to become, right? Roy Neary has to-
But he's also the most human character in the film.
Well, what about Brendan Gleason?
Brendan's human in all the wrong ways.
He reminds me of somebody.
No, they're both about films about how to become, right? Roy Neary has the compulsion, through his trauma, he makes art. And it's similar with Haley Joel Oldsman.
He wants to become, he wants to become real. He realizes he's artificial and he wants to be made real. So they're very similar in that respect.
How does one become? And as you said, this is a gorgeous film. You watch it today.
This was made, we talked about this before in our Field of Dreams episode. Before digital took over, film stock, this was the high point of film stocks. So it has this incredible lush, beautiful look.
It is a gorgeous looking film, maybe his most best looking film. Look at the scenes of David in the woods when his mother abandons him like a dog you're trying to get rid of that you love, but you can't take care of the dog or the cat anymore.
The film is absolutely gorgeous, grounded by, you talked about Haley Duell Osmond. It's an extraordinary performance.
I mean, you'd say this is up with one of the greatest screen performances of any movie I've ever seen, much less the fact that the guy is a child. It's unbelievable. Of course, Spielberg has a deep affection for children, so he knows how to direct.
Look how he directed Barry. That's amazing how he got the performance out of the child that played Barry in Close Encounters.
Is there anything more mysterious yet oddly terrifying in Close Encounters when we in the audience, having not seen the aliens, see Barry's reaction to the aliens and we're creeped out, but also full of terror and full of all at the same time.
We get that in AI, artificial intelligence, incredible performances.
Something I noticed watching it this time around is the effects in this film are utterly, seamlessly integrated in ways that a lot of effects in movies made today don't feel real. Like, it's kind of there's a risk.
I don't know if it's just that there's restraint or it was imposed on them because the technology hadn't developed enough yet. But when you see, you know, flying into drowned Manhattan, and you know, this film famously came out in June of 2001.
And there are images of the Twin Towers that have been damaged through the climate apocalypse. And three months later, the Skyline had, they had disappeared from the Skyline, of course.
Really interesting to me that they haven't been like digitally removed after the fact. I always thought that was a strange choice that Scorsese made at the end of Gangs of New York, a film that was finished after 9-11.
And you remember that the last image of Gangs of New York is the New York skyline and how it has changed over the, I don't know, 130 years or 150 years since the film's setting. And he chose to end it with The Twin Towers intact.
It felt like a really strange decision.
He's a New Yorker. I can understand a New Yorker feeling like he did.
He's a New Yorker, you know. Yeah, that it would be more distressing. But I also thought there's an argument for saying, show the disappearance of The Twin Towers as a way of honoring the truth.
And I'm also just remembering not the only time the Twin Towers appear in a Spielberg film to make an important point for the Munich fans among us. I mean, I could just list wonderful things about this film.
I'm not sure that that's the best use of our time.
But can we talk about the fact that it turns into The Running Man at one point? It becomes The Running Man, it becomes, like, it's fortunate it's Running Man. And it's like, mmm, mmm.
Can we...
I'm talking about the Motorcyclists of the Flesh Fair.
Oh, good Lord.
Can we talk about...
Not a high point.
Can we talk about the greatest character in the film?
Chris Rock?
Teddy.
Oh, Teddy, sure.
Teddy's single focused love of David may be the most committed relationship in any Spielberg film. He seems to love him for, we have a couple of thousand. Yeah, the film takes place over the course of a couple of thousand years, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That Teddy character is hauntingly beautiful, and you can actually get a mechanical Teddy toy that they brought out as a tie-in with the... There was actually AI merchandise, hard to believe it.
Can you imagine being the marketing folks and you watch the film, let's say you see a rough cut, okay, we got to do Spielberg, it's got to have sci-fi, it's going to be great, we're going to make a fortune.
And then you watch the movie and you're like, oh, we're screwed. That's like when they're trying to market the Dune toys, David Lynch's Dune, it's like everybody wants, everybody wants a Baron Harkonnen action figure. Oh, shoot.
Couple more things, couple more things.
Yes, sir.
When, when David is praying, gosh, it's going to make me cry even to talk about it.
I mean, that sequence under the sea, when the little heli motor, whatever they're called, has settled at the bottom of the sea, and the Coney Island Ferris wheel has become detached from its moorings and collapses on top of David.
Just one of the most exquisite images in any film, and he's looking at the blue fairy and he's praying, and his prayer is eventually limited to him just saying, please, over and over, please, please, please, please. He gets his prayer answered.
He gets his prayer answered. There's something hopeful in the fact that these entities, these beings that we meet at the end of the film, people have often confused as aliens or robots, they're actually the next stage of human evolution.
They're who we become. That they answer his prayer. They actually have grace in them.
They have generosity in them. They, in the voice of Sir Ben Kingsley, want to give him what he wants.
And so maybe that actually, what I said there about the ending of the film being, it's not cheesy and sentimental, but it's not entirely tragic either.
The ending of this film is kind of an assertion that what humans could evolve toward is utterly benign and utterly generous.
Stop you there because what you're saying what humans can evolve toward, you're talking about humans offspring as machines, because they're not human beings. They're the machines that are evolved.
They're what replace us. They're not aliens, so that...
No, no.
I think a lot of people thought that they've come from other... They're what comes next. And that's not to say that that's what should come next.
I think they're what comes next if we don't find ways to discern how to be rather than just let it happen.
I think it's very possible that that is what's going to happen. And I would imagine that someone like Kubrick thought that as well.
I know one of his collaborators talked about when she was working with him on his years of development in the film, talked about how actually this may have been someone who worked on Eyes Wide Shut. We were talking about AI. I don't recall this time.
I'm sorry, Gareth and dear listeners, but she talked about how he said explicitly he wanted to create an anti-Frankenstein myth. His films are so powerful, they change culture.
Not a week goes by, I don't see a 2001 parody somewhere and that film is 50 years old. They shift culture. He wanted to create an anti-Frankenstein myth to say basically it's okay.
It's okay if these are the ones that come after us. Because if you don't have a problem with humanity being gone, then it's not a tragic ending. Humanity is gone at the end of this film.
The machines, advanced, if you want to use the word advanced, a evolved, if you want to use that word, evolved version of the machines are the ones that have inherited the earth. And if you're not bothered by that, then I think that we're okay.
And here's the thing. You know, we don't have, we think about chatbots right now in AI.
We don't have those working inside of really relatively functional mechanical beings yet, or machines yet, robots that can walk around, no matter what Elon Musk says. But we're getting there. But we're getting there.
And we're almost at the point now where you can kind of suspend your disbelief that you're dealing with somebody that's sentient. You know, yesterday, I was working, I'm editing a documentary I shot in California a few weeks ago.
And one of the cameras I'm using, I was thinking of replacing. And so I asked the chat, I'm just going to use, I'm not going to say which platform, I'll just say the chat generically, right? Because who knows, they're changing constantly.
I asked it to compare three different types of cameras, create a table of pros and cons, of different features.
I shouldn't even say pros and cons, here's the different features, like what's the bit rate of the recording and what file formats and the kind of lens mounts and all that, three different cameras. And it did that instantly.
And then at the bottom, it made some suggestions. And it said, you know what? You might be tempted to get this one, but you should get this one, because when you're out in the field shooting, you're going to want to build an ND filter.
And started making references to my past projects, because it had developed the call sheets for this documentary I just shot.
So it knew the kind of requirements that I had and how I liked to shoot, and unprompted started making recommendations based on what it thinks my creative vision is.
So that consciousness, or it's not a consciousness, whatever that is, whatever we're going to call it, maybe we need a new name. It's not implanted in a mechanical boy yet, but boy, folks were really close.
So I think, I mean, everything you're saying is totally, totally germane to the film.
I hope so.
I don't think I am okay with humanity going away. And I...
Well, you're very, you're attached.
I prefer to evolution and a move toward what Teilhard de Chardin called the Noosphere, where there's a kind of, in its most benign form, the possibility of everybody knowing what they need to know and understanding life through the eyes of the other.
It can only be a good thing. And the role that, you know, quote unquote, synthetic technology plays in that is something that needs to be guided with discernment.
But I prefer to see the ending of AI as not, not being literally about what's going to happen to humanity in the future, but about what each of us is invited to do in terms of making peace with the prospect of our own death.
And, you know, there's the old, the old saw of if you knew today, if you knew you're going to die today, what would you do with it?
There's an interesting philosopher, Roman Karadzic, I think is how you pronounce his name, who says that's not the most helpful question. It's more helpful to ask if you knew you were going to die in six months, what would you do with today?
Because if you found out today you're going to die later on, today you'd probably just go into a panic and you wouldn't be able to prioritize.
But to live your life in six month increments, and if you had the choice, if you knew that the power existed, to spend that day sharing love and being loved, that's a really good way to choose to spend your time.
You wouldn't want to spend a watching that end of Close Encounters where you go inside the ship.
Just watching the light on Richard Dreyfuss' face. I hope that, I mean, frankly, all my struggles in life are about, am I going to choose to share love or am I going to choose separatism, selfishness, and scapegoating?
I don't know about you, Jett, but when I slow down enough to get conscious, I realized that's what I'm being faced with every single day. Are you going to choose separatism, selfishness, scapegoating, or are you going to choose to share love?
And you can say it's cheesy or you can say that it's simply my way of paraphrasing all the wisdom traditions that human beings have ever evolved. It isn't clearer than that to me.
And this film, as with many films that we discuss on The Film Talk, I'm kind of changing my perspective on what it means to me. I don't think it's as tragic an ending as I thought before. It's about what would happen if you knew.
What would you, what could you choose if you had one day left? And he chooses to give himself to the experience of becoming more alive.
And given that this is our last episode in the Spielberg rotation, what will we choose to do with the last few moments of this episode? Episode 342. Is 342 numerologically significant?
Dear listener, if you are a numerologist and you believe that 342 is numerologically significant, please let us know.
Every number is numerologically significant. That's why they call it numerology.
When I was a child, there was a TV show, I think it was called Why Don't You? It was this cool show where kids learned how to make things together. And I remember in one episode, one of the kids said, they discovered this great revelation.
They said, did you know that if you get a map of the world and you get a ruler, you can draw a straight line between Belfast and any other capital city in the world? Isn't that amazing? Every number is numerologically significant.
We're all connected, even if it's by a child's ruler.
You can draw a straight line between any city and any other city.
Yes, you can.
Or any three cities, you can draw a circle between any three cities as well. Not necessarily a circle.
Not necessarily a circle. Yes, you can.
Between any three cities, you can draw a circle.
It might be more like an oval.
No, you can draw a circle. A perfect circle? Yes.
Let's spend the next 40 minutes arguing about this.
That's what I would do if I knew I had one day left to live.
I'm feeling like I don't have much time left here. This show is going to start dragging on here.
You know, can I say one thing about AI that does make, because we didn't talk too much about the Kubrick aspect of it, which is one of the things that makes it so unusual, is that because Kubrick had worked on it so long, and I think we talked about
in a previous episode, how I did that short documentary series, I think I did six of them called Seen, back in early 2000s, and we interviewed, was it Chris, is it Fangborn? Chris, the artist who did all that work on AI, all the sketches.
But one of the fun things about watching AI.
He goes by a pseudonym, doesn't he? He goes by a pseudonym. Yeah, he does, yeah.
Do you remember the pseudonym?
Is it Fangborn?
Something like that.
Fangborn. But one of the fun things about the film, the film to me is very melancholy, and it's very uneasy throughout much of it. But one of the fun things is all the Easter eggs, if you want to use that.
More of the homages to Kubrick, right? We have the overhead lighting from the War Room, and Dr. Strangelove is the lighting in the kitchen table.
There's a shot out of Clockwork Orange of the kids riding to Rouge City.
Going into the tunnel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Going into the tunnel. It's out of Clockwork Orange. And one of the things I know, the film is sprinkled with these folks.
And one of the, so it's kind of fun to watch from that point of view, someone paying tribute to Kubrick. And I caught a new one on the last rewatch last week.
When David has this horrifying scene of eating spinach, his face starts to melt, and his dad tries to stop him. And you know what he says to him? He says, stop David.
Will you stop David? It's, he's saying he's doing, he's doing the Hal 9000. I'm like, oh my God.
And the film is full of that. And it's a lot of fun.
And I also, I noticed in watching Close Encounters, the scene where La Combe, Truffaut's character and Bob Balaban's character, the translator are gently interrogating Roy Neary. And there's a shot where Balaban and Truffaut are in close up.
Neary's at the back.
And it's, I was gonna say homage, it's an absolute delicious, friendly ripoff of the scene in 2001, where Bowman and Poole are talking to each other, thinking that Hal can't understand what they're saying, because Truffaut has decided to speak in
French to Balaban, which of course Roy doesn't understand, but just a gorgeous little grace note there. Okay, so I have a question for you.
I'm here to answer all questions.
As we come thunderously toward the end of our Spielberg sojourn, what do you think of Steven Spielberg?
As a filmmaker, because we haven't even gone into, we've been doing all these rankings, which is absurd to apply metric star. We haven't talked about his collaboration with John Williams. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
Did you see the footage of John Williams from The Night Before Last, I think at the Hollywood Bowl?
Wonderful. They did a big tribute to John Williams.
Still with us.
And he made a surprise appearance at the end. He was wheeled on in a wheelchair. They gave him a baton.
They put the brakes on the wheelchair, had him facing the audience, they gave him a baton and he conducted the Imperial March at the end.
Well, that's fitting.
For what?
Our current situation.
Well, he seemed to get a lot of joy out of it, as did the audience.
That sounds wonderful. I would love to have been there. Did you ask me what I think about Spielberg as a filmmaker?
The Pantheon? Are we doing ranking? Is he up there with Hitchcock?
Of course he's up there with Hitchcock.
The only reason that anybody... Don't be ridiculous, Gareth. I think the reason why he doesn't have in the public mind the reputation of being a great artist is simply because he's popular.
There's nothing in the content or substance of the films that should detract from the notion that he's one of the greatest filmmakers there's ever been.
Although I'm not really, you know, neither is particularly interested ironically in the ranking thing. I just think this is a wonderful storyteller who has advanced the medium. He's been doing this for over 50 years.
There aren't a lot of Spielberg films left coming down the pike. I think we should treasure them while we have them.
The thing is, but also keeping in mind, you talk about how people regard him, and I don't think he's regarded because filmmaking isn't the primary art form of our time anymore. Hitchcock passed away when films were still a primary art form.
And, you know, like the kids today, yeah, maybe you go see Obsession or Backroom, what have you. But it's not a primary art form, whereas for them, it's gaming, right? Just like novels aren't the primary art form anymore.
It's more, it's in the mix. Maybe we don't have a primary art form like we did in earlier days.
I think it's two guys talking about movie podcasts are the primary art form.
Where do we rank? So you can put that in the context, but who cares? What does that matter?
Let's go ahead 200 years.
Just do good work. Just do good work and share love.
You know, that's it, man. Guys, gals, everybody's, whoever you are out there, just love one another and make some art today. Doesn't have to be a compulsion.
It has to be something that you feel. Is it making things better? Is it making you better?
Then do it. Make that art. That's all I've got to say.
Thank you for listening, folks. 342 episodes of This Business. I've been Jett Loe.
I've been Gareth Higgins.
We'll keep talking.
Next time.