What might help us become part of somebody else’s happiness? In the aftermath of the 2024 U.S. election, Jett and Gareth turn to movies not as an escape from reality but as companions for meeting it: After Life, Ed Wood, Starship Troopers, and other films about purpose, absurdity, courage, and remaining human when the weather turns rough.
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One day, we're going to get this show right.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I can't believe we're doing another episode. This is episode number 282, and it's a very special episode of The Film Talk.
I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. Yes, the 282nd episode, notably directly in between the 281st and the 283rd. If indeed we get to the 283rd episode, anything can happen.
There's no guarantees.
There's been political tumult. There's been political tumult here in the United States.
That's how you pronounce it?
Tumult. It's how I do.
Are you a turmeric or a turmeric?
Isn't Mr. Tumult a character in Narnia? I think he's got like a tail.
There's a statue.
There's a statue of him about three miles from where I'm sitting right now.
In your Northern Ireland, right?
In my Northern Ireland, yes. In my Northern Ireland.
So folks, here's the deal. We're recording this. We recorded our last episode about the wonderfully entertaining slice of cheese and ham called Conclave.
We recorded that the day before the election.
Deceptively profound.
Yes, it is. Great movie. Go see it.
There's been an election. There's been a lot of tumult. A lot of people are concerned, rightly so, I would argue, about the state of the United States and the state of the world.
Sometimes, at least for me when I was a kid, the movies were a great escape. Now, movies aren't what they used to be, but when I was a kid, the movies were like a church. I was able to sneak in the theaters, go watch My Dinner with Andre.
As an eight-year-old, My Dinner with Andre, not the most fast pace, but I learned to love it.
So Gareth and I were thinking, hey, what films would be great to help people in a variety of different ways, not just as comfort food like My Dinner with Andre, but also that help illuminate the situation we find ourselves in, and perhaps point a way
forward in this political reality that we find ourselves in. So that's what we're going to talk about today, a couple of quick films, quick little show about some films that can help.
One quick thing though, Gareth, I want to say, we had a comment on our Patreon page from longtime listener Mash wanting to know, are we going to cover the films that were released while we were on our hiatus of a decade or so?
That got me to thinking, dear listeners, Gareth and I played around with a lot of different ideas and formats.
You could do a show reviewing nothing but, I don't know, the new Dune series or something, or do we just review classic films or maybe we look at who won best picture of a year, we recommend a better picture. So we're still working out the format.
Right now, the show is kind of loosey-goosey. Gareth and I are just talking about the movies we're interested in every week.
But if you do have a suggestion, and this goes for you too, Gareth, if you do have a suggestion, please you can just contact us at info at thefilmtalk.org or leave a comment on our Patreon page, or we're also on Facebook at facebook.com/thefilmtalk.
So I think Gareth and I are still evolving the show, and eventually we'll coalesce into something.
We're finding ourselves. It's interesting you mentioned My Dinner with Andre because I was thinking about that film the other day.
If you haven't seen it, dear listener, it's a film, but if you haven't seen and you're into film, you've probably heard of it. I'd heard of it for years. I had no idea what it was.
No idea at all. Then I watched it and one of the jokes that gets made about it today, that it's the original podcast. It's two guys talking over a meal and it is an extraordinary film.
What's extraordinary about it is listening to two guys talking can bring you more life. Who would have thought listening to two guys talking could bring you more life.
And listening to those two particular guys, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, here's the thing, in all seriousness, film made I think in 1981, watching and listening to what they have to say, particularly what Andre Gregory has to say about the future
of communities establishing themselves as oases or beacons of light in a dark time, not only applies today, it has applied throughout history. And it's a comfort to remember people have always struggled with how to organize themselves and how to
treat each other well. But I return to my original point, who would have thought listening to two guys could be so life-giving?
That's why, you know, I'm hoping for this show, eventually, this is episode 282, eventually we're all going to get somewhere, at least in terms of my spiritual growth.
We know what happened during Conclave, and I've been pondering your question, by the way, in case the listeners have heard the Conclave episode and Gareth asked me why, why did I resist the spiritual impulse? I have an answer for you.
We'll do that in the next show.
Okay, I look forward to that.
So there's been this tumult. A lot of people are concerned, again, rightly so. What are some, let's talk about some films that we think that can help.
Of course, you know, my first one is Starship Troopers, but Gareth recommended After Life. And why After, tell us what After Life is, and let's talk about it.
So After Life is a film from 1998. It's a Japanese film by writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda. And it's about what happens when you die.
And I believe they actually did send a documentary film crew past the other side of the veil and filmed what actually happens when you die, at least in Japan.
And what happens when you die is you go to a fairly nondescript office building in the middle of a forest where you meet with, I guess, your personal advisor, who helps you make sense of the fact that you've died by choosing one memory from your
life, which will then be turned into a short film and projected to an audience made up of that week's intake of the freshly deceased, and when you watch this film, you will disappear into it and incarnate that memory for eternity. What a beautiful,
original, gorgeous idea, and much as it might be hard to imagine it, there is actually a plot. There are power dynamics, tensions, and the possibility of change, not only among the people who are choosing their own memories, but among the staff who
help facilitate them in making those choices. I'm not going to spoil the plot, as it were. But this film, one of the most thoughtful films ever made about death, which of course makes it one of the most thoughtful films ever made about life.
In Western culture at least, I don't think we take death seriously enough.
There are deep spiritual wisdom traditions that say, if you can become more conscious of your own inevitable death, there's a life-giving way to do that, that will enhance the life you have right now. And that's what After Life does for me.
I've been watching it off and on for the last 25 years. I've probably seen it maybe seven or eight times. And as I age, my vision of the memory, I might want to take into eternity with me, changes.
And there's a couple of other things I want to say about it as well. You saw it for the first time for this episode, Jett. Love to hear your thoughts on Hirokazu Koreeda's After Life.
Well, as Captain Picard says in Star Trek, Colin First Contact, it's our mortality that defines us.
And I mention that to your point, right? If you can feel, you can feel imminent in yourself, in your waking life, your own mortality, that this is a finite thing that we are experiencing.
This will allow you, it's a gateway to feel the richness, the fullness, the three-dimensionality of your experience.
Even if you're just sitting on a bus, like, you know, I remember living in London, the crushing commute on the Tube, everyone is miserable. You know, everybody's just like, oh, God Almighty. Just feel that crush of humanity around you.
And you take so, not just solace in it, but then you can always begin to have a kind of a, a revelry in this sort of shared common human experience that we're all in together.
And I think After Life really is not an instruction manual, but is an illuminating manuscript. You know, just like, just like Sean Connery, beginning of Indiana Jones 3, Colen, The Return of Indiana Jones, whatever it's called.
And it's like, you know, made this manuscript illuminate me like it illuminated others. It's an illuminating film, which is what you find in the greatest of motion pictures, right?
Andre Rubilev, Starship Troopers, films that actually illuminate the human experience. Again, listeners, if you haven't seen it, please just stop. Just stop listening to us for the love of, love of whatever you believe in and go watch the film.
Because there is a line I want to talk about. You have people that are miserable, they think they've done nothing with their lives. What was it for?
Why have I wasted it? What is that line? There is a William Shatner talking about Star Trek.
William Shatner is Ben Folds' produced album, Has Been, which is a great album from maybe 2004. He goes like, why have I wasted it? Why didn't I taste it?
There is a character in After Life and feels like, what have you done? You've done nothing. Then he realizes, and I think this is an actual quote from the film, I wrote it down, I was part of someone else's happiness.
If all of you guys listening out there, I'm a cynical guy, I resist the spiritual impulses we talked about in Conclave. I don't like people, Gareth likes people. My wife and I are having company over tonight.
We don't want to do that. It's like, oh God, it's a chore, it's going to drain us. We don't get the energy like, hey, and this is like family traveled.
Many states don't want to do it. An email is fine.
Let's hope they're not listeners.
You know, it's 50-50.
What was it you were saying about those people that are coming over tonight?
Maureen and Clay, can't wait to see you. You guys are awesome. But we're part of someone else's happiness.
When you think about that, you can get away from one's own ego and think about how we're all characters in each other's place. We're not just the main character. Everybody's the main character.
We can be a part in someone else's happiness. I think that it's really profound. In addition, After Life is also visually fantastic compositions, beautifully cast.
You will not find a more adorable old lady in cinema. I mean, it's literally like she's manifested from a Studio Ghibli film. You don't think there's an old lady that looks like this.
It's unbelievable.
It's visually beautiful.
I'm stunned that this has not been remade as a prestige Apple TV+ 12-part. I mean, it's like they have not remade this film. I'm absolutely stunned.
I mean, they remade Vim Vender's Wings of Desire Angels and Angels Over Berlin with Nicolas Cage. So I am stunned I haven't done this with a scars guard. It's shocking.
Well, what you're saying there about sometimes your joy can come from realizing that you've been part of somebody else's.
So when I first saw After Life at about 23 or 24, I was thinking about what memory would I take into eternity. As I've aged when I've watched it, I thought how can I make such a memory happen?
But last week when I watched it for this show, what I thought about most distinctly was, oh, I have the power and you have the power. All of us has the power to help create such a memory for somebody else.
Frankly, every single time we encounter another human being.
Because one way to describe the deepest needs that human beings have in addition to food, water and air, I know I've already talked about this before, we talk about shelter, but shelter is more than four walls and a roof.
Shelter is the story in which we live. And one of the manifestations of a life-giving story that I don't think we can live without, is the story and the experience of mutual recognition. All of us need to be seen.
Some of us have a need to be seen by lots of people. Some of us only need it from one or two people.
If you look at the underpinning sicknesses in our world and what may have, what I think contributes to political polarization, is a sense of not being seen, of being alone.
And then when somebody sees you, you might be willing to suspend some of your judgments to go along with some of the things they say, even if those things are antithetical to your own values.
So it occurred to me in watching After Life this time around, I have less of a need and maybe even less of a desire to have a spectacular life, a dramatic life, a big life.
What I have now is a desire to nest, to have ease and goodness in my life, and to serve the common good from whatever gifts I happen to have, and to not be afraid to ask for my needs to be met.
But beyond that, to realize everybody else has the same needs too. And I can play a role in bringing some life into their day. I don't mean that in a pompous way.
I don't mean it in a self-righteous way. I just mean, I think we devalue our power most of the time. And this film wasn't just a bomb for me in a time of tumult.
It encouraged me to think, oh, what can I do to help make other people's days better?
I think that's great that Gareth has finally discovered that there's other people. I think that's good. I think that's a breakthrough.
Maybe you can start doing some peace-building activities.
Oh, yes.
I think it'd be good for me to think about that.
Thank you.
Thank you. This is a good say.
So folks, tell us about your role in the Northern Irish Peace Movement when you lived here.
Well, I did do a show called Letter to America, which I think is obviously very pivotal.
Folks, see this film, and I think to Gareth's point, the idea of being seen, the idea of community is a great segue into another film that I would recommend in these times of tumult.
We think about community and the desire to find others that can help. And that's the great Tim Burton film Ed Wood from 1994, a film that's so good for me.
I know you love Big Fish, but Ed Wood is, to me, is by far Tim Burton's best film in terms of the way that it's structured. A lot of his other films are very kind of baggy. Even the original Beetlejuice sort of like drags the last 30 minutes.
They're sort of all over the place. Ed Wood is so beautifully constructed. The script is so great.
It's so tight. Everything lands beautifully shot. All the jokes work.
And it's the story, you know, based on a real person, a director that became notorious.
I believe it was the Medved brothers who themselves have become kind of infamous, who were film critics and film popularizers in the 80s, who probably did something like regarded. You know, they popularized Ed Wood's films.
There was more than one Medved?
There's two Medveds. Yes, there are two Medveds.
Abrasive Medveds.
Yes. And they did a book. I don't remember what it's called.
Something like 100 Worst Films of All Time or what have you. And they, you know, they lambasted. As an adult, I read that as a kid, it was like, oh my God, these terrible films.
And they're lambasting like great films like Yoderowski. So they're actually, it's actually, I would say, kind of a native influence, but they helped make Ed Wood famous.
As a notoriously terrible director of films that are entertaining, but in a bad, you know, bad films that are entertaining like Planet from Outer Space. And so for Ed Wood, this biopic, the screenwriters, I think they optioned a book about Ed Wood.
And what they did is they just took every anecdote, built it for screenwriters, every anecdote from the book, wrote that specific anecdote on a three by five card, and then put all those three by five cards up at a wall.
And then you can construct the script from that. And that's probably the same technique they used. I think they did the script about another filmmaker, the Dolomite.
Dolomite is my name.
Dolomite, yes.
But Ed Wood is a more successful film. The Dolomite film is fun, but Ed Wood is fantastic. And the thing with Ed Wood is it's all about the joy of creation and the joy of being seen, to Gareth's point, people finding community.
These are, you know, in the old days, you say misfits or oddballs. And they find community and they make art together. And is it good?
Doesn't matter. To that point, here's a clip from Ed Wood in which Ed is trying to pitch one of his films. Let's listen in.
Mr.
Felbin?
Ed Wood.
Yeah, listen, I haven't been able to get through, so I just showed up. Yeah, right out front.
So we gonna be working together? Really? Where's the film you ever saw?
Well, my next one will be better.
Hello?
Hello? Well, my next one will be better. So he's got this relentless optimism in the film.
In real life, there is issues of alcohol addiction and poverty. But the film posits a world in which there's such joy in creation that one's whole life is elevated. And to that end, I cannot recommend Ed Wood enough.
It is a beautiful, lovely film. Great performances all around. Of course, Martin Landau is brilliant in it.
If you haven't seen Tucker, Man is Dreams. A couple of pictures you should. Ed Wood can't recommend it highly enough, especially in these tumultuous times.
You make me, I realize I have not seen it for 30 years.
And it's time. I'm going to watch it again. The Joy of Creation, of course, is also embodied in doing a podcast.
If only.
With people you love, with people you love.
The Joy of Creation in which the quality of the outcome doesn't matter as much as the process. And so, and the listeners.
Dear listeners, and the listeners.
If you're one of our listeners who likes what we do, thank you. We love you. We appreciate your support.
Are you asking for money now?
Are you asking for money?
No, no, keep listening and tell other people about what we do and encourage them to listen too. And if you're one of those listeners who isn't sure if you like what we do, I'd ask you to be happy for us because we're creating something together.
And it's the process that matters.
Can I just mention one little thing from the election? You know what I nearly did after the election results came in? I put on Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers.
Yes. And the reason for that is probably obvious to anybody that's seen the film, or most folks out there that's seen the film, was that Starship Troopers famously is a satire that a lot of folks didn't get at the time.
It's not clear if the studio knew what Verhoeven is doing. Hard to believe, considering the budget of this film, that there's a big budget Hollywood film in which the heroes are actually the bad guys.
You know, to the famous British comedy sketch, Are We the Baddies? Everybody you see is actually the bad guys. In Verhoeven's takes place in a future world in which basically humanity is one world government, and it's just out and out fascist.
And you know, in Verhoeven's previous film RoboCop, Relate Motion Picture, there's a moral center of the RoboCop, Murphy, right? He's the moral center. And in this film, there is none, and there's only one line that gives it away.
Someone is talking to a TV, to a news reporter, and there's a passing mention. It's like, some might think that, you know, we invaded the Bugs territory, that we started this when we invaded the Bugs territory, something like that.
There's only one line. If you go out and for a cola, Diet Pepsi, you'll miss that line, which reveals the entire film is, these are the bad guys. But it shows a version of American fascism.
And my immediate response to put it on is because the rhetoric of the film, which has this world in which fascism has won, authoritarianism has won, is so similar to the rhetoric that's coming, and was coming, and is coming out of the campaign of the
folks that won the election. And so I wanted to see Starship Troopers, are there clues for how to defeat authoritarianism? One of the obvious things is that everybody's an idiot, for the most part.
We're watching a bunch of very dumb people, the Starship Troopers making terrible decisions. Why they send people with guns walking around to be slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands is not clear.
Now, they do course correct, because the person that makes these decisions does resign. So it does say that, well, you know, the system is working a little bit better, but they are pretty idiotic.
But it is very clear in the film, you know, in the beginning of the picture, Gareth, I don't know if you've seen it recently, the wonderful Michael, wonderful wonderful-
Michael Ironside.
Michael Ironside delivers a lecture about political systems, and he says, you know, force is the only thing, violence is the only legitimate way of organizing societies.
No spoilers, because it happens in the first 10 percent of the film, but in Gladiator 2, which I don't believe you've seen yet.
I have not seen. You're spoiling Gladiator 2 for reliant on the show.
No, it's only like in the first 10 or 20 percent. Violence is the universal language, yes, says one of the characters in that film.
Well, they've been watching Starship Troopers.
About which I feel, shall we say, ambivalent.
There's alternatives. Well, and here's the thing, they don't win at the end of Starship Troopers. They say they will, and it's chilling, and it's interesting in the grammar of the film.
So, familiar with Starship Troopers, there's a narration done by a newscast of some kind throughout the picture. At the end, they talk about how we're going to defeat the bugs. But it's interesting, they don't say, we'll keep fighting and we'll win.
They switch it to they'll keep fighting and they'll win. It's almost like as the narrator is saying, talking about fascists in general, fascists will keep fighting and they'll win. But they haven't won at the end.
And the fact that everyone is such an idiot, with possibly exception of multi-talented Neil Patrick Harris. Everyone is so idiotic in the film that it gives me hope.
So I'm hopeful the bugs will win in Starship Troopers eventually, and I'm hopeful for us as well. Any other films to recommend before we get out of here, Gareth?
The Dam Keeper, The Red Balloon, The Muppet Movie, Yes. Ikiru, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Koyanskatsi, The Fisher King.
Stop, stop, stop, stop. For a few Jett Mash's point, future shows, we can just do a whole series on-
Just good films?
Good movies. Do you know when I first talked about Koyanskatsi? That's when I first saw My Dinner with Andre.
It was a double bill, My Dinner with Andre and Koyanskatsi. Listeners out there, think about why they would program that double bill. If you've seen the films, the answer will come to you.
Anything else, Gareth? What else?
It's worth thinking about how you can help induce the memory in the life of another that they would want to take into eternity. That's immense power. That's immense power.
Benign, sacred power that most of us never even consider.
What if you just went around every day trying to be decent?
Well.
What if you just looked at someone and said, maybe- What if you treated other people? Hold on, I got an idea here.
Yes.
What if you treated other people like you would want to be treated?
Don't be ridiculous.
I'm just saying.
Don't be ridiculous.
If you could do that, the more people that could do that, then we might get somewhere because the end comes for all of us.
Just as it may have come to somebody who was thinking about the other day, Quincy Jones, great film composer. Is he still with us, Gareth?
He's in the ways that matter to those of us who are his fans and not necessarily his loved ones. He will always be with us.
I'll tell you why, dear listeners. This man, of course, multi-talented, multi-hyphenate.
Mulfi? Sure. Mulfi?
Listen, I'm very tired.
We're in different time zones. I'm in Mountain Time in the US, you're in Belfast. We need grace.
Treat me like you would like to be treated. That's my revolutionary breakthrough concept. Here's the one thing I'll say about Quincy Jones.
Forgive me.
He always, everyone talks about John Williams.
Amazing.
The one thing.
John Williams. Oh, he's so great. Yeah, he's great.
Nothing against John Williams. You think about his big breakout score Jaws. He's like, oh my God, it's amazing.
Is that the music from Jaws?
Now, here's the thing.
Go watch if you want to. It's not that great a movie, though. It did win the best pictures.
A lot of better pictures that year. In the Heat of the Night, from the late 60s, the Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, famously turned down Patton. Oh well, not the best career move for Rod.
But anyway, in the Heat of the Night, some bad guys, we're in the South, racists, hurting, killing black people. Driving, they're driving a big old, I don't know, maybe it's a Cadillac from the 50s. It's got big fins on the back of it.
Big fins, the soundtrack score by Quincy Jones. This is years, seven years before Jaws. What do you hear whenever you see those big fins coming in?
That's right. John Williams, consciously or not, saw those fins in the Heat of the Night and took Quincy's bit, or also called Quincy and said, I don't know what the relationship was.
I mean, Jones, I imagine much bigger at the time than John Williams. So great artist steel, folks. Quincy Jones.
I'm sure.
These things, they happen at a subliminal level as well. Interestingly enough, until the last few years, the first time Steven Spielberg made a feature after the Sugarland Express, which is when he started working with John Williams.
The first time he had a composer other than John Williams was what? Quincy Jones did The Color Purple.
Yeah. Smart guys. They know what they're doing.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
I'm going to meditate on that remarkably new idea that I'm so grateful to you. I'm so grateful. Well, give us another while we're here.
This has been a baggy kind of loose show, but I kind of like it.
It's helped reinvigorate my soul. Thank you. Thank you, Gareth.
And thank you for listening, dear listeners. Don't forget, you can always contact us.
If you kind of let us know where you think the show could go, because we're being very loose these days, you can contact us, info at thefilmtalk.org, or go to facebook.com/thefilmtalk, or go to patreon.com/thefilmtalk, or follow me on threads.
So many options.
And dear listener, in all seriousness, if there's anything you think we can do within the bounds of realism to help induce the conditions whereby you have the kind of memory that you'd like to take into eternity, don't hesitate to be in touch.
I've been Gareth Higgins.
I've been Jett Loe.
We'll keep talking.
Next time.