A cartoon coyote, Albert Camus, Mira Nair, and Albuquerque walk into a podcast. Jett and Gareth dig into the wonderfully humane Coyote vs. Acme: a film about persistence, absurdity, and the radical possibility of seeing the world through somebody else’s eyes—even when that somebody has spent decades being flattened by anvils.
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Gareth, I have to ask you, before we start the show, I have to ask you, have you read Camus' Myth of Sisyphus? You must have.
I have not read The Myth of Sisyphus, not easy to say. I think I read something else by Camus whenever I was being taught French ideas a long, long time ago, but I don't remember what it was.
Well, you know the thing, Gareth, again, before we do the show, there's a shot in Coyote vs. Acme, this wonderful new animated live-action film, in which we see Daffy Duck. Spoilers, folks.
Spoilers, even though the show hasn't really officially started, we haven't had the theme music before we start. And Daffy Duck is in an asylum.
He's in a sanitarium, the kind of sanitarium you see maybe in the long goodbye, like early 70s Hollywood where film stars go to dry out.
Thoughtfully located at 666 Scary Lane Road or something like that?
And if you know Albuquerque, clearly shot at the wonderful, wonderful Albuquerque Biopark. You can get a year pass, folks, at the biopark. Get your entrance to the zoo, the biopark and the aquarium.
Aquarium is a bit small. But anyway, you'll notice that Daffy is painting The Myth of Sisyphus, the man who's pushing the rock up the hill. And when I saw that in the theater, I grabbed my wife and I said, is Daffy painting The Myth of Sisyphus?
Yes, he is. Spoilers for Camus' book, The Last Line. The Last Line, the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy. And I realized while thinking about that, Gareth, that maybe this show, The Film Talk, is our version of pushing the rock up.
Are we both Sisyphean in our decades long engagement with talking with each other and doing the show?
2:07
Coyote vs. Acme
Oh goodness, folks, we're back. Welcome to episode 343 of The Film Talk. We're doing Coyote vs.
Acme. What a wonderful film. I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins, the conversation never ends.
Dear listener, go and see Coyote vs. Acme right now, if you can. See it in a theatre.
It's a crowd pleaser. And as Jett says, it also happens to be a play on an ancient myth and mid-century French philosophy. You probably know about it by now.
It is a hybrid film, animated and live action.
And it's about what would happen if poor Wiley Coyote realized that all these, all these bad things that have been happening to him, dents on his head, they usually involve concussions of some kind, whether he falls down a canyon, exploding birdseed,
blows up in his hands. When he attaches himself to a missile, the missile goes to a place he doesn't want it to go to. Now, I mean, one might think he probably shouldn't attach himself to missiles in the first place, but Wile E.
Coyote does what he needs to do if he were to realize that this might not be all his fault and that there may be some corporate liability for the suffering that has come his way in his attempt to do nothing other than to get a roast dinner to satiate
himself. It's a very moving premise and an absolutely glorious execution. I imagine, I dream, I hope that we might have a clip.
We do have a clip. Folks, audio podcast. Here's the thing, if you're familiar with these beautiful, wonderful Warner Brothers cartoons from back in the day, you'll know that Wile E.
Coyote does not actually speak. He holds up signs to communicate. In this clip, you're going to hear the human protagonist of the film, Wile Forte.
He's a kind of a low-rent lawyer in a strip mall in Albuquerque. Kind of wonderful, wonderful, shabby, genteel Albuquerque. He's trying to find out why Wile E.
Coyote wants to engage him and why Acme should be sued. But you're not going to be able to see Wile E. Coyote's response.
He's holding up a sign. I'll ask you right now, dear listener, all of you out there, use the power of imagination. Imagine what the Coyote is saying.
Let's listen in or imagine.
Mr. Coyote? Coyote?
Coyote.
All right.
Well, uh, how can I help you?
Oh, one of my billboards. Cost a lot of money to put those up.
So you've been in an accident?
Do you not talk? Oh, but you have signs. I don't understand.
All right.
Is that supposed to be you?
And who's that?
5:28
Deeper Film Analysis
And that is Coyote vs. Acme, a film written by Sami Birch and directed by Dave Green and part of the point of the Roadrunner cartoons, which started in 1949, Jett.
And apparently, I don't know if you knew this, in the early Roadrunner cartoons, Wiley Coyote did actually speak. He was, I believe, limited to simply repeating his name, but eventually a time came where they decided not to have him speak anymore.
I've done my research for this episode.
Anyway, we all appreciate it, myself and the listeners.
Yes, Coyote vs. Acme riffs on the fact that in the cartoons, the coyote never learns.
The reason this film is original is it collides with that idea and says, what would happen if Wiley Coyote stopped, looked up, and wondered, what's actually happening here?
It's a ridiculous premise that gives birth to a totally delightful film that has, it's not just packed full of end jokes like what you've just said about Duffy Duck painting The Myth of Sisyphus. It's actually quite wise as well.
I had a big beaming smile on my face from start to finish. I'm eager to hear how it was for you, dear Jett.
Well, it's interesting. It does a neat trick. I'm curious about your take about him finally learning.
No, I don't think it's any kind of permanent lesson.
Well, does he learn a lesson?
For me, one of the great aspects of the movie, and I did not see the twist coming. Usually, I see all this stuff.
Once you've seen a certain number of movies, folks, you can figure out almost everything that's going to happen in these Hollywood pictures. We're not talking about Bellatar here.
But I didn't see the twist coming, that the coyote only engaged the lawyer so that he would have yet another chance to get the roadrunner, that his motives were completely different than what we thought they were.
But then at the end, of course, we have a wonderful moment in which the bird is communicating through beeps. But the whole film is lovely.
If you're a fan of those cartoons from back in the day, then you will absolutely, like I was, and so many people are, Gareth talks about his smile on his face. I had a smile on my face the entire time. It's laugh out funny, consistently.
So everything else, even strip away the themes. The film is just genuinely funny, full of wonderful in-jokes. I love the bit about the anti-predator spray.
So they deal with things that now might be seen to be outre or not acceptable in society in terms of how the cartoon characters were portrayed and how they acted.
And they do it in a very clever way that sort of, I would say, expands humanity rather than narrowing it. We're not losing language. We're not saying you can't say that.
We're acknowledging that social mores change and that we made mistakes in the past and that we can go forward in the future.
And this is all in the context of a movie, folks, that is, as far as, maybe, Gareth, you have a different opinion and you could come up with some films that I haven't seen.
This is the first real, legitimate, successful sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit established, here's how you could do something like this, this successful intermixing of popular characters we all know in the animated form, Interacting with Humans. And this film is almost as good. I mean, it's that good.
It's not as epic as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but it totally feels like it takes place in the exact same universe. It's just a few decades later. The camera pans over some law books and it's like a dozen law books and it's Anvil Law.
Cartoons are constantly getting hit with anvils. It feels like it takes place exactly in the same universe. Just decades later, instead of taking place in Hollywood, it takes place in Albuquerque in a shabby law office.
It's very delightful that way. It's incredibly successful that way.
Of course, there's been, in case you don't know, dear listener, a huge story that this film was completely finished, like ready to go, press the button, hit it to streaming, send it digitally to theaters.
Then Warner Brothers basically tried to delete it from existence so they could write off their taxes, which dovetails completely with the themes of the film of having an evil company, Acme, controlling everything, including if you look in the film,
everybody's laptops and everybody's phones are Acme phones or Acme laptops. By having this happen, we're inside the film now.
We are now literally in the world in which companies are dictating very consciously working hand in glove with the political actors, what we can see on large scale, large-frame entertainment. We're in that world now.
This film is a tonic to that, and it is part of the thing that it is fighting against, if that makes sense.
The very fact that it got released is the counter-narrative, that it's still all to play for, because I don't know that you'd call it a grassroots campaign, but certainly a campaign involving members of the public is what resulted in the film being
released. The comparison to Roger Rabbit, I think it goes in two directions. Because you're right, there's an epic scale and scope to Roger Rabbit. There's also, to my mind, more interesting human characters than Coyote vs.
Acme. Will Forte, it's the best performance in a hybrid movie since Bob Hoskins. I mean, he's really brilliant.
The other human characters in the film really didn't make that much of a mark.
They're thin. They're two-dimensional. You kind of wish you knew more about his...
They're good, obviously, solid comic actors in his law office, but we just don't get...
John Cena is great.
We don't get enough of them. And then we get two of the cast members of Wolf of Wall Street, which is interesting because it does have a Wolf of Wall Street vibe.
So the associate lawyer for the works for John Cena is just a delight from start to finish.
Well, the positive contrast with Roger Abbott, it will come as no surprise to you or to the listener. But it did come as a surprise to me that this film is the, it's the third, I guess it's a blockbuster, I think it is a blockbuster.
It's made a lot of money, a lot of people are going to see. It's the third large scale film released this summer that critiques the myth of redemptive violence after the Odyssey and Disclosure Day.
And it's ending, spoilers, dear listener, it's ending is one of the most philosophically, psychologically profound statements about what we might call the positive benefit, the benefit of non-lethal competition, of non-zero-sum competition.
A moment that really actually does tug on the hardstrings when Road Runner communicates. Are you coming back? Because Road Runner's purpose is to be chased, and Wiley Coyote's purpose is to chase and fail to catch the Road Runner.
And Camus' last line.
It's like me getting married over and over again.
Oh, Lord. Well, that has had a Bonnie conclusion, I believe. Yes.
And whereas, you know, Roger Rabbit, it's a little bit like Iron Man 2, where the bad guy is sort of the good guy. You know, Mickey Rourke's character in Iron Man 2, you should really feel sorry for him. He's been terribly wronged.
And Judge Doom in Roger Rabbit, played by Christopher Lloyd, not a human character, a self-hating toon, who you could guess that part of the reason he's doing what he's doing is to protect himself from anti-toon sentiment.
But who from Roger Rabbit doesn't exactly reflect on these things? There is something philosophically rich about Coyote vs. Acme and to have it in a package that's so delicious is wonderful.
13:38
Albuquerque Portrayed
Yeah, you know, a lot of it also goes down to it.
It's great to have a version of Wile E. Coyote in human form because Will Forte looks beaten down and he also looks very authentic as an Albuquerquean. I live up in the mountains.
It's a long time listeners of the show know Albuquerque is about a half hour away, about 2000 feet down. I live on the other side of the I'd call the shield wall like in Dune. Right.
Albuquerque, the landscape, it ends at the Sandia Mountains because you can't expand further. They go up 2000 feet. I live on the other side.
Do you have sandworms outside your house?
We got lots of critters.
I'm today I've never written one of them down to the chemo theatre there in downtown Albuquerque.
No, I haven't.
The rabbits are pretty small. But I saw some rabbits today. I saw a bull snake and a few pocket gophers.
Then I got the cats, Sammy and Laszlo trying to get the birds. It's a lot of critters. But yeah, no, I'm not writing.
Can you tell us, is Laszlo named after Laszlo Kovacs?
The cinematographer?
Yes. We adopted Laszlo from the shelter and he was already called Laszlo.
Okay, may have had a cinephile previous owner.
No, it's probably the character from What We Do in the Shadows, I think. He's my guess because he's all black. Our other cat, Sammy, is all white.
Who's Sammy named after? I don't know. I want to say Samuel Johnson.
I don't know. I'm not sure. I think one of the kiddos named Sammy.
But my point is that Will Forte looks like, you live in Albuquerque, it's deserty, and you get a deserty look. You also get a little, I'm going to say shabby, you get a little slightly beat down. Will Forte is fantastic.
So Will Forte looks like a beat down character. And he is in the film and so is Wile E. Coyote.
And I think one of the great tricks of the cartoon and this film does it as well. And it's a hard trick to pull off. You feel great sympathy for Wile E.
Coyote. At the same time, it's always funny when he gets blown up. It never, he gets hit by a train or a car, you laugh.
You shouldn't, but you do.
But you also love the guy. Maybe you don't laugh. Maybe you don't laugh the first time you see that because you know he's going to be okay.
Yeah, but it keeps happening.
I feel it's a metaphor, again, the Sisyphean thing, and that's a, they make it explicit. It's not just the painting of Daffy Duck. They make it explicit in the plot.
There is something called Project Sisyphus. It's a metaphor for the human condition. And like I said, at the top of the show for The Film Talk.
So the film's very successful in that way, in placing the avatars of the human experience in Will Forte and in the coyote himself. We think about how often we try, we try, we try, we keep failing. And again, it's made explicit.
You have John Cena who trades on his character as someone who's successful, right? He was a successful film star, he was in wrestling. And he points out to Will Forte that basically Will Forte's existence is just to continuously fail.
But then by the end of the film, and they do fail the court cases, but they win something else, which is they win the love of a community. And that's when you ask yourself, what is really important?
The film also makes a case for political accountability to be exercised by the people over corporate abuses. There's a moment at the end where like, what do you call it? Not the shield.
The seal.
The seal of the Senate.
There's a moment where the end where the seal of the Senate is both played for laughs and a reminder that it really is possible to have democratic accountability over abusive practices.
I think maybe the last thing I'll say about this, I've often quoted the great Indian American filmmaker Mira Nair, saying that she wants more films to be more accessible that enable us to see life through the eyes of the other.
Now, when she was saying that, I interviewed her a few years ago, she was talking specifically about what she called non tent pole releases.
And this film is a strange example, because as you've already said, it was clearly designed and produced as a tent pole film.
It was going to be a big Warner Brothers release, and then it ended up being nearly disappeared, and then brought into the light of day by a kind of a scrappy company called, they're called Ketchup.
Ketchup, yeah.
I believe, yeah.
So, what Mira Nair was talking about was films that take us off the beaten track, and particularly films that are made either outside those kind of centers of New York and LA, you know, big Hollywood style filmmaking, and films made in other parts of
the world. What I love about this film is that it's a Hollywood movie, no doubt, and it is ultimately about helping us see life through the eyes of the other. I never felt sympathy for Wile E.
Coyote before now, and I also never saw Roadrunner as having a heart and a mind, and what a delight that I'm actually thinking about these things. They might even have parallels and applications for human beings.
Maybe that's the thing with the best films.
You feel them enter you and they make you reflect and possibly spur to action different ways of being, or they enlarge your sense of community and your sense of engaging, if not necessarily with community, engaging with the world.
Maybe that could even be the trees or the incredible desert landscape that you'll see in this film. And I kind of want to end on Albuquerque because you know that documentary, this is an amazing documentary, you got to see it.
I know there was copyright reasons, maybe you can't see it, but you can find ways to see it called Los Angeles Plays Itself.
Yes.
There's other versions of it that people have made when they always put the name that so-and-so doesn't play itself because you have like Vancouver is always playing New York or whatever. And Albuquerque never plays itself, right?
They'll shoot here, Netflix Studios is here, we have the tax breaks and there's not as much shooting going on right now, but historically less since the Breaking Bad Days and various tax breaks.
There's been a lot of below the line talent here and there's been a lot of productions here, but Albuquerque is always playing somewhere else. For instance, in No Country for Old Men, you want to show Texas in the 80s, where do you shoot?
You shoot in Albuquerque because New Mexico is not, I don't know if I've ever heard anybody say, New Mexico, it's on the move. You know what I mean? And I'm not saying it's in a bad way, but our population is pretty stable around 2 million people.
2 million people in an area that's two-thirds the size of Spain. So we don't have many people here. And I like a lot of American and even outside, you know, US conception of New Mexico is that it's all desert.
And they think Arizona because even in this film, this film does it constantly. They always put saguaro cactuses everywhere. Those are the cactus with the two prongs sticking up, which we basically don't have.
There might be a couple. I've never, maybe I've seen one saguaro cactus in New Mexico, but people think it's like Arizona. Instead, New Mexico has a totally different landscape.
It's huge and where I live as you go north, it's astonishingly beautiful. I mean, it's beautiful parts in the south as well. But it's sort of like a hidden secret, dear listeners, too.
I guess, is there such a thing as an open secret? Yes, but it's a secret about how beautiful New Mexico is. But this film get, this film.
Is a hidden secret like a billboard?
It would be hidden like three billboards outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
A hidden secret is like in plain sight?
A sequel.
Yeah, possibly. Okay. Yes.
Anyway, what's the open secret, the hidden secret or the secret secret? This film actually shows you Albuquerque. Albuquerque has a certain shabby gentility.
Our landscape is incredibly beautiful. It's gotten a bad rap. And I think I talked about this in one of the blog posts of The Film Talk.
When we think about Pluribus, the great TV show that's on Apple, made by the same folks, by Vince Gilligan who did Breaking Bad.
And to me, it seemed clear that Pluribus was an active atonement in a lot of ways, because Breaking Bad gave Albuquerque such a reputation.
Sure, it brought in a lot of money to the town, to the city, but it basically made you feel it made Albuquerque like some meth hellhole, whereas Pluribus shows a different kind of Albuquerque, which is these incredible piece.
Where everybody's hypnotized.
I'm talking, yes, right, okay, you're funny. Is that one of your zingers?
Oh, you know, the listener expects it. The listener expects it.
They do, they expect the patented Gareth zingers. But Pluribus shows you how beautiful New Mexico Albuquerque is, and there's a peaceful too. There's a certain tranquility and beauty in New Mexico that Pluribus captures.
And Coyote vs. Acme captures a sort of, that kind of run down shabbiness that's also very relaxed.
Sure, it has character.
Yeah, it has character. You know, we see them outside, there's the alleyways behind the strip mall law office, and it's like, these are real. They haven't done, it doesn't look like they've done anything, the film crew.
It doesn't look like they've done any set dressing. We see the Sandias where I live in the background, we see all the junk in the alleyway, it just feels real. They did a great job with it.
Will Forte, at one point, he's wearing an old Balloon Fiesta shirt from the 90s. He's wearing a Frontier shirt, Frontier is a famous restaurant here.
Of course, that's the kind of thing you do, like in The Office, which was shot in LA, the TV show, they would put little brick of Brack from where it was supposed to be shot, but it feels real in this film.
And while talking with Gareth about it now, I sort of feel that that shabby tranquility of Albuquerque and the beauty of Albuquerque kind of seeped in somehow into the writing and the production process, so that the film has an Albuquerque vibe, so
that when the community does come together, when things kind of turn out OK against the large corporations, it feels that's kind of a New Mexico vibe. That's kind of New Mexico thing we've got going on here.
It has the opposite of the anonymity of so many films. And you're right, Jett, I do not live in New Mexico, and so I'm not biased like you are. But I've been there many times.
And you're absolutely right. And particularly the drives around the city of Albuquerque are frankly some of the most beautiful drives I've ever taken.
One thing that's really intriguing to me, I hope this is still the case, is if you go between Albuquerque and Santa Fe or Albuquerque and Taos, there are very, very few billboards on the interstates. And I don't know if that's a state law or...
Yeah, I don't think so. There's no money here to put up stuff. It's just we don't have money.
There's no commercial disincentive.
But it is literally and figuratively extraordinary to take a long drive in the US and not be bombarded by billboards. The only other place that I've really felt that has been Wyoming and Montana for probably similar reasons.
There really is a sense of being outside time. And the shabby chic of the bric-a-brac, I think bric-a-brac is a word we should use more often.
A big word here.
Of Albuquerque is on full display in this wonderful, wonderful film, Coyote vs. Acme, that will, it's bound to repay at repeated viewings because of those little in-jokes and so much information going on. Just glad it exists.
24:37
Sisyphus Revisited
I am too.
It got released, folks. It's a win. And you know what?
Sure, maybe all of us are just pushing up that rock, up the hill.
The question is, can we enjoy it?
Well, here's a question. Yeah, can we enjoy it? Here's a question.
Wait a minute. If we're like, if this is Sisyphean, you and I, my friend, if this is a Sisyphean exercise, which one of us is the road runner?
The rock.
Which one of us is the rock? No, which one of us is the road runner? Wait, am I the rock?
Who's the Coyote here? Am I the Coyote? Are we both the Coyote?
Are we the bird? Are we the rock? Are we the hill?
I do not, you know, my great uncle Jack, when I was about nine years old, he came back from an overseas trip.
He must have gone to Disneyland or something like that. And he had won at a theme park, a six foot tall plush Wile E. Coyote.
That was, it's probably my earliest memory of having an almost demonic possession of envy. I wanted that Wile E. Coyote, that six foot tall plush Wile E.
Coyote. I wanted it. I didn't get it.
You know, and you've moved on, life lesson.
Can I retroactively go back and enjoy the struggle that did not result in me getting what I wanted, but that the chase itself was the journey?
Is that what Camus was talking about?
The chase is the journey? That sounds like some sort of motivational poster that I don't want to be involved with. That's a Pepe Le Pew thing.
Can you, I'll tell you what, I want you to, here's my assignment for you, Gareth. I want you to think about your envy.
Yes, I want to think about my envy, okay.
And then on our next episode, I don't know what we're going to do, we might do John Borman, we might do Exorcist II documentary, we might do Spider-Man.
We're ahead of the curve, Exorcist II. We're always up to the minute.
We're going to have to talk about Exorcist II at some point. I want you to think about this envy you had for Wile E. Coyote.
No, I envied my uncle.
I didn't envy Wile E. Coyote. I envied my uncle for having me.
Yes, of course.
Well, that would be, yes. No, you envied your uncle. I understand.
He did let me.
I think I was allowed to play with the Wile E. Coyote.
I feel we should move on quickly, quickly, quickly from this bit.
All right. I want to ask you a question before we close. I want to ask you a question.
What do you call it? The Bio Park? The Albuquerque Bio Park?
Yes.
That's where the sanatorium is in the film.
If I come to Albuquerque, will you show me around the Bio Park?
Yes, we can set up an easel and one of us can play Daffy. And I don't know if I'll be the nude model that was talked about, but we can do all the locations.
Even when the film moves to Washington DC for the last third, but they're still shooting in Albuquerque, so it's a big chase scene.
And they went right past multiple times, the place where I get my oil changed on the Subaru, the good friends, my good friends over at Fiesta Subaru, kept seeing them in the background on Lomis.
Dear listener, I hope you're having as much fun as we are. If you'd like to help us out, the best way you can do that right now is to send an email saying which one of us you think is the rock, because we'd like to poll you and find out.
Absolutely.
I consider you, even if you are a rock, even if you are a rock, Jett, you're a gem.
Heavy lifting. Yeah, you can email us. All of our shows are on the filmtalk.net.
Don't forget, you can go to the filmtalk.net and you can email us or look at blog posts or all the good stuff. Don't forget, when on Albuquerque, it's Fiesta Subaru for all your oil change and tire rotation needs.
That thermal control valve, that failed, 1800 bucks. It's not Fiesta Subaru's fault. I blame Subaru themselves.
They switched over from their very simple thermal control valve system to a more complicated one.
Interesting. As a fellow Subaru driver, genuine, actually potentially helpful tip here. Last week, my car wouldn't start and it said something about the emission control system was failing.
So I researched what this meant. It turned out that my petrol cap, my gas cap wasn't fully closed.
It will do that. The car started again.
If you don't know that, dear listener, if your car doesn't start and it's not a battery issue, try clicking your gas cap closed.
There you go. That's true.
I think we're offering help to the people.
Absolutely. What the Subaru does, it's very naggy, it nags you. It'll turn off all the safety, it'll flash everything up at you if there's any one problem to force you to go get it fixed.
Again, I'm reminded also of earlier relationships. But anyway, on that note folks-
Hold on. Are you being negative about Subarus or are you saying Subarus? No, because I love my Subaru.
Love is what makes a Subaru a Subaru.
This feels like sponsored. We are not being paid for this. No, I love my Subaru.
My Subi, I put 140,000 miles on it, and it works as well as it did on day one.
I got 195 on mine.
Well, see again, which one of us is the road runner? Which one of us is the coyote? I'll leave it up to the listeners.
No better person to decide than the listener.
That's exactly right.
Thank you so much for listening, folks. We really appreciate it. I've been Jett Loe, possibly the bird, possibly the coyote.
I've been Gareth Higgins, and we'll keep talking.
Next time.