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- [00:07]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Hello and welcome back, everyone, to Jokerman at the Movies. This is a special moment for a special film and it's a special guest. It's Eugene. I have trouble with your last name.
- [00:22]
Unnamed Host
So do I. It's fine. Do you want me to say it? I'm going to try not to butcher it. Okay, let's say it's Kotlyarenko.
- [00:29]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Kotli Arenko. See, that's what I was. I wasn't sure if it was like a Ko or a Ka type sound, but it's Kotli Arenko. I'm just letting you know that.
- [00:38]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, good. Oh, you know, something that might be interesting, and I haven't exactly figured this out, but something that might be interesting to Joker Men listeners. And I myself am a Joker man listener.
- [00:50]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Thank you.
- [00:50]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, or I guess, what do you call us? Joker Jokes and Women.
- [00:54]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I've actually asked friends what that would be called and someone said jokesters, and then I never, ever used it.
- [01:01]
Unnamed Host
But I think that's true. I am definitely one of the first jokesters. I really. Cause I remember we met at a house and I was so excited to know that you had started that. Or maybe I started following it right away. And I'm a big jokester, and so this might be interesting. Some of the other jokesters out there. I haven't verified this, but do you know, like, what a nudie suit is?
- [01:24]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah.
- [01:24]
Unnamed Host
What, the Gram Parsons? Yes, and the Elvis, you know, gold Lemay suit. These are maybe the most two famous nudie suits. The Grand Parsons, Weed white one and old Lemay. That guy whose name in America was Nudie Cohen. Okay. His birth name was actually Nutya. Kotlyarenko.
- [01:45]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
No way.
- [01:46]
Unnamed Host
And Kotlyarenko is basically a fake name. It's a kind of Ukrainianification of a Jewish name, which is Kotlyar, which meant like kettle maker and like, you know, almost like a blacksmith or something. And then you added the Anko on to fool, you know, non Jews that you too were a non Jew because you didn't want to get killed again.
- [02:09]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
You know, tale is old this time.
- [02:10]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, exactly. And so it's. It's a bit of a rare one. And he emigrated from the same general area where I was born, Odessa. And we think maybe there's like a distant relationship there.
- [02:22]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I. I bet there is. I mean, I think Occam's razor, Occam's way, the Occhi way. Obvious shit would point to that being the case. And that's an incredible lineage if it's true.
- [02:36]
Unnamed Host
I wasn't really Trying to flex or anything. It's just that we did kind of focus hone in on my name and there aren't that many contexts in which I can kind of pull out this random factoid and it seems even vaguely relevant.
- [02:48]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I'll even make it more relevant because Bob Dylan is definitely a fan of the nudie style suit. I mean he's like wearing in his later, I would say mid to late period. Like having some kind of a variation of a nudie suit is extremely common.
- [03:04]
Unnamed Host
You should get one that says like rough and rowdy ways on the back. You should get one made.
- [03:10]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, I should get one.
- [03:13]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [03:14]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I'm seeing Bob tomorrow night.
- [03:15]
Unnamed Host
You are in, in LA at the Bowl. Well, I'll say this. I would love to see Bob Dylan again because then I don't know if this is going to be shameful to the listeners, but essentially my first concert ever was Bob Dylan when I was 14 years old and I've never seen him since. So in the last 20, 25 years, I've never seen him since. But it is kind of funny. He, he. You know, when I. We were kind of broke when I was growing up so I could. I never like, I always felt insane to buy like a tape or a CD for 1299. That felt like really crazy when Napster came around, okay. That I was like in it deep and I downloaded Bob Dylan so much, even to the point where like, you know, they had mislabeled, like stuck in the middle with you dealer's wheel as like Bob Dylan, you know. And I was just like rolling with all of those wannabe songs. And so I was really deep in Bob. And then he was playing Madison Square Garden and I had a friend who was like, do you want to come? I can get cheaper ticket. Like my dad works security or whatever. So I went. I had never been to a concert before and I don't. Can you guess what would have happened to a 14 year old who had never been to a concert before hearing Bob Dylan perform.
- [04:32]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
What year was this, if you don't mind me asking?
- [04:34]
Unnamed Host
This would be around 1998 or 1990. No, no. 1999 or 2000 or like that.
- [04:42]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Well, like the snobs, like the, the Never Ending Tour snobs, they have all their kind of like very specific ideas about which years are like a good vintage. But to someone like me, I mean that anything in the 90s is pretty, pretty much like bread and butter. But I imagine you didn't like.
- [05:00]
Unnamed Host
I would say exactly. I would say I Like all that stuff a lot now, but for a 14 year old who'd never been. I did like it. It was actually incredibly like. It actually probably formed part of like my personal kind of rubric of judgment for art and aesthetics. Because I showed up and until the chorus of several highly known songs like Blowin in the Wind came up, I was like, what are these songs? Like, I thought I knew Bob's songs. And I could not recognize a single one except for like every third song, which was like, you could barely understand it. And then my main takeaway was like, I guess that's just what a concert is like. You go. And the musician actually is probably so bored of hearing the stuff they made in the studio or like, you know, that they are completely reinterpreting their material. A live setting. And it made me really respect like the idea that audiences would just kind of flock and not want to hear like recreations of just stuff they've heard in their headphones or on their speakers and stuff. And then of course, like a year later I went to see my second concert which was like Simon and Garfunkel. And those songs sounded all. Exactly like recordings. And then I just realized that Bob Dylan is like completely iconoclastic and just doing something so different with, you know, the performance mechanism.
- [06:18]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
You know, many, many, many such cases of people seeing Bob Dylan and having the ex. Exact same experience. And by which I mean not the experience they thought they were going to have. And I think that that's to your point. I mean, it's. It's a huge gift to the audience. I think it's a very, it's. It's a. I like the. What your takeaway was like, that the audience would come to this. I think that points out like how much he honors the integrity, the intelligence, the curiosity of an audience that he's like, you don't. Not only is it boring for me, but like, wouldn't it be boring for you? Like, don't you want to see something that's fresh?
- [06:55]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah. A variation or some reinterpretation. But imagine a child who had never been exposed to a live concert environment. Then extrapolating and assuming that all concerts and all musicians did this. That is the kind of cosmic joke of it for like that year. I wonder how many people's first concert is Bob Dylan. Like, I mean, it's a unique kind of position to be in where your entire worldview of live music is formed by him.
- [07:24]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, I mean, it's funny because the first, you know, the first times when he was playing shows. It was like he was just playing the songs. And then notably he traumatized all of Great Britain by stopping doing that in the 1960s.
- [07:39]
Unnamed Host
Yes, yes, I heard, I heard about this. I recently have. I mean, I'd love to talk about the movie at some point, but I guess I'm just.
- [07:45]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Well, yeah, I haven't even said. We are ostensibly here to talk about your great new film, the Code, which I saw at the Lumiere Music Hall. Is that the official name? Music?
- [07:57]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, it used to be the Laemmle Music hall and then it was kind of taken over by the employees who now own it and operate it. And it's called the Lumiere Cinema.
- [08:05]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
It's a great little place and incongruously located in Beverly Hills because it's kind of like, I mean, dingy, but like just. It's not, it's not Beverly Hills, it's.
- [08:16]
Unnamed Host
Just, it's charmingly dingy in a way that's a throwback to the last era where you could argue movies were at the center of the cultural conversation. Which is like 1999.
- [08:27]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Exactly.
- [08:27]
Unnamed Host
It feels like a movie theater. A normal low grade movie theater from 1999 with its purple cushy seats and fluorescent lighting and sticky floors and really.
- [08:37]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Dark in there, which I love. Like the actual theater is really. There's not like really big bright exit signs everywhere.
- [08:44]
Unnamed Host
It's no safety lights. It's literally you're in the dark communing.
- [08:48]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Very classic art house. It's an ideal setting to watch any movie. But I was very happy to see yours the other day there.
- [08:59]
Unnamed Host
It's called the Code.
- [09:01]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes.
- [09:01]
Unnamed Host
Before we get into the Code, I guess it's just because it's relevant like the, you know, nudie suit and like talking about concerts and Napster and Bob and stuff. I have been obsessed with one live Bob song like so much the last few weeks and it would be. Oh, it would be bad not to talk about it because it's so good. And then you know how on his website it shows you how many times he's like played a song?
- [09:28]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes.
- [09:28]
Unnamed Host
You know they have that like kind of statistical organization of like, I guess he's only played this song like I guess nine or 10 times and it's one of his greatest, in my opinion. Nobody sept you.
- [09:42]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes. Nobody sept you. That is a, A deep cut.
- [09:46]
Unnamed Host
They released it or rear, you know, they like officially released it just last year on whatever that thing came out live, you know, 70s thing that came out like in 2024.
- [09:56]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
A live version, you mean?
- [09:58]
Unnamed Host
Well, yeah, they just released this live record. I don't think there is a studio. I don't know if there. If there is a studio demo. I heard it and didn't like it.
- [10:06]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
It would have been on the bootleg, the first bootleg series, I think from 91.
- [10:11]
Unnamed Host
I mean, this song is just knocks me out. I've probably heard like 100 times like the last, you know, couple months. And then there is weirdly a synced YouTube video from that Chicago concert. It's from like a Chicago concert in like I think 74 or something like that. Or 78, I can't remember. And there's weirdly a synced video of him doing it. And it's really great too.
- [10:33]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
It was actually going to be. It was planned to be the final song on Planet Waves. Got it and it was, it was dropped. It's a classic Dylan move to have a really, really, really good song that is inexplicably not put on an album that it easily could have been and made better. That's like one of his favorite things to do is just like, no, not this one. And then it comes out like just kind of a la carte decades later.
- [11:01]
Unnamed Host
Great artists do that and they have all their fucked up different reasons for doing it. I one of like the kind of, you know, people talk about the great Lost movies like the Orson Welles magnificent Amberson's cut or something. Like one of the movies I think about a lot that, you know, we'll never see is so, you know, John Cassavetes husbands.
- [11:22]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes.
- [11:22]
Unnamed Host
I guess there was like a cut that he showed to all his like closest friends and kind of consiglieres that was super honed in on like the Ben Gazara character. And that is the most explicitly charming character in that film. And Ben Gazara himself is so unbelievably charming as a performer. Everyone said to him, to Cassavetes, they're like, that's a great fucking movie that's going to be a hit. They use the word hit around him and stuff. And then he spent the next four months completely re editing the movie so that it actually minimized Gazara's performance and kind of honed in on Peter Falk who's like a bit of like a snook. Like a bit of like a kind of awkward, annoying kind of, you know.
- [12:05]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, well, I mean, they all are to be.
- [12:07]
Unnamed Host
They all are in different ways. But like Gizara kind of oozes with charm, even against his will.
- [12:13]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
You know, there's Like a kind of, like an abundance mindset that I respect that leads to these decisions, I think, to cut stuff, to not be precious about, like, certain things being cut, because it's like, well, there's another way totally to look at this or in that movie. I mean, while we're on the subject, it's like. I do think there's a pretty clear case that might have been made to, in his mind of like, well, this is called Husbands, and it should be a bit more of an ensemble thing. It shouldn't be as specific. That movie, I feel, in particular is kind of. It is what it is. Like, the form and the structure of it kind of hinges on it being a little bit disparate and feeling a little bit like it has no center.
- [13:02]
Unnamed Host
Yeah. Yeah. And I think even though some people kind of went on knock Cassavetes as being, let's say, misogynistic or not very critical of male culture, I think anyone who looks even just more than a cursory level will see the really insightful exploration of, like, you know, like, male weakness and horrible behavior and selfishness that, like, pervades all of his films in that one. If you did just, like, rock it with, like, a charming person and didn't give them the arc that, let's say Ben Gazara has eventually in a killing of Chinese bookie, where it's like, of course, he's like, you know, kill or whatever. Spoiler alert. It might seem like way more redemptive and way more, like, celebratory than maybe the intentions of that movie or General Cassavetes movie.
- [13:53]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I think that he does let characters off the hook, not in the way that movies typically do to create a satisfying feeling for an audience. While we're on that subject, I mean, that idea, I think that feels like a good transition into your movie because there is a lot of questionable. I mean, insane male behavior and female behavior, but definitely an insane male protagonist in your film, the Code. And, yeah, I was really. I guess we should talk a little bit about what it's about, which maybe you can do in a second. But. But one thing that I really loved when I went to see the movie and you did a Q and A with John Raffman, the great artist, was that you were talking about how your particular approach to this movie was not to be like a cavalcade of horrors that then leads to a bleak worldview. It's a much more broad and curious and I think, actually curious in the ways that things can be maybe not so ugly, even though they Seem that way. All the chaos kind of leads to something that suggests redemption. Maybe.
- [15:22]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, that's what I like. And not always because I think some of my movies kind of have nihilistic or kind of bittersweet endings. But I thought because the contours of the film are quite bleak, or at least the subject matter on the surface is quite bleak, I thought it would be important to extract kind of many silver linings along the way and then kind of hopefully end with something that was just explicitly hopeful. With a wink. Wink, but like explicitly hopeful. Yeah, which. Which actually I'll just throw it out there, last Cassavetes thing and then maybe I'll describe what the movie the Code is. My favorite John Cassavetes movie is actually Minnie and Moskowitz, which one could argue is his only kind of like, hopefully ending his only kind of like kind of redemptive arc. And that's probably why I yearn for the Gazara cut of Husbands, because I just want more Cassavetes material that kind of ends like on like a thumbs up and like a kind of beautiful love oriented note, you know, where things are going to get better, things will be fine kind of thing. Yeah, but so. Yeah, so just because we're talking so abstractly about the movie, I'll just describe it briefly as a film about a couple who is paranoid that the other person might be trying to cancel them, to ruin their reputation, to call them out. And so under the guise of that paranoia, unbeknownst to each other, they set up hidden cameras in their home and try to entrap each other into problematic behavior, which sets off like a whole arc of adventures, misadventures, sexual escapades that ultimately, you know, lets them reassess the value of their relationship kind of. I would say that's a. So that's a kind of coherent way of talking about a movie that I think is probably about a lot of other things.
- [17:17]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, yeah. No, that's a very concise and I think accurate description of at least what I saw in the movie. Structurally, I think that's the most striking thing about the movie is that these cameras are. That it's seen through many, many weird, shitty little cameras just kind of flitting around from phone screens to little GoPros to glasses with a little camera in it.
- [17:51]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, spy glasses.
- [17:52]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, that's all it creates like a patchwork effect. Like the whole movie has kind of like a mosaic or like quilt feeling, which I really enjoyed.
- [18:02]
Unnamed Host
I've always liked that. And you know, if you go back to Really? I guess, like the French New wave. But even something like, just like Orson Welles, if you look at, you know, Citizen Kane, it has. Starts with the newsreel and then there's a few little peppered in things. But yeah, if you go back to the new waves, like the French New wave and Yugoslavian dark wave and blah, blah, blah, you get that. Up until, I would say, like, the biggest influence for me as a kid, I think, was seeing, like, Oliver Stone, like JFK and Natural Killers, where he uses all the different film stocks and all the different kind of, like, you know, different color grades, like cutting between the same thing happening four times from, like, different lenses and angles and stuff. And I've always just kind of thought, but what justifies this beyond your aesthetics? And I don't know why that has been a preoccupation for me my whole, you know, like, career. This is my seventh movie, and four of my seven movies have a kind of approach that I call diegetic filmmaking, where the. The characters in the movie are the ones making the film. I hesitate to call it, like, quote, unquote, found footage for a few reasons. Found footage usually associated with, like, horror. And this is not a horror film. And two, the act of making this movie and editing this movie is, like, so central to what you're watching. You do feel it being made in front of you. And actually the kind of battle for control of the narrative that you're watching is part of what's unfurling. So to call found footage implies that it was discovered, completed, and kind of diegetic cinema implies that, like, you're watching something being made.
- [19:49]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, well, I think that the found. I mean, even found footage movies that really, like, stick to their guns and, like, the premise and, like, have a kind of consistency with that. I. It's still like a stretch at the end to be like, oh, so this was just a tape floating around that that's now a movie. Like, whereas in your movie, it explains fully what you're watching while you're watching it and why it exists the way it exists. And the editing itself is a kind of acting, I guess, for you, you're acting as the characters editing the movie.
- [20:30]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, there's an editorial voice that is an extension of the desires and goals of the characters themselves. And so the edit. And this is another thing that drove me to make this film. I really wanted to foreground this concept of editorial style and the edit as the kind of final arbiter of the official narrative because that's one of the other things the movie is about, right? Like, what's the truth? What's a performance? What is the real story? Quote unquote. Just kind of larger cultural questions. So I wanted to use this relationship as a way to kind of foreground this idea that things are edited. And probably this is the first moment and why I had the confidence to kind of, you know, meta foreground. That formal idea is probably the first time in history that, like, your average person just understands the concept of editing, like, tack in a tactile way. Like, we are all editors of our video material from, you know, social media to Cap Cut app to people just get what that is. Even if they don't do it every day, they understand in a way that they probably didn't for the first 100 years of cinema.
- [21:38]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
People are born into it now. I mean, kids. And I think about a lot that my generation. I'm 30, so there's like this really slim period of time which I happen to have been an adolescent within which, you know, like, I didn't have a phone and then I had a flip phone and then smartphones came out. And to have had that experience, that'll never happen again. The cat is out of the bag. But we people roughly our age witnessed this thing come into the world. And now everybody younger is like, just swimming in that.
- [22:23]
Unnamed Host
Yeah. Born and raised into the. What I call. I mean, what I call the watershed moment, like in kind of neurological, human behavioral culture is the kind of haptic moment where the touch screen, the idea that this screen is connected to your sense of touch, it rewires your brain towards, like, the narcissism machine that is the phone that makes you the central character that allows you to be looking at yourself and seeing the world through this mediated form and constantly in communication with everybody else and receiving attention and communication from everyone. It's very intense and insane that the sense of touch is united with all of these really intense communication phenomena and narcissism phenomena. And just to be clear to the listeners, the movie is vaguely about some of these ideas. And I don't think we've really said this, and you can disagree if you will, but I'm just going to say the movie is like a comedy. It's, like, super funny and, like, yeah, highly engaging in what I call entertainment. So it's. It's. While it's about these kind of abstract and philosophical ideas, the movie is very explicitly, like, supposed to make you laugh. So I just want to get that out there in case people think it's too.
- [23:42]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
There's drama in it. But it's. I would definitely call it a comedy. I was thinking a lot about F for Fake watching it. And the movie starts with a Orson Welles quote.
- [23:53]
Unnamed Host
Yeah.
- [23:53]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Which. What is that quote about exactly? Like, where did. How did that.
- [23:58]
Unnamed Host
The Orson Welles quote the movie starts with is. Sometimes a movie isn't what you think. It may offer a different pathway or solution in the world. All you have to do is crack the code and then it says, Orson Welles, 1959. There's a picture of him being fat next to the quote and then everything kind of fades away and then you're just left with the words the code. Now that quote is incredibly convenient to introduce the title of the movie, which then morphs into the first image of the movie. And the reason it's so convenient is because I made it up. It's a completely fake quote that I made up for my purposes and attribute it to Orson Welles.
- [24:45]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
There you go. See, that's why I was thinking about F for fake, even if I didn't know. I mean, F for fake, if listeners don't know, is like an extremely ridiculously innovative pseudo documentary that Orson Welles made in which many different stories are told and many of them are not true at all, but presented as true. And then there's like sort of like nesting doll fashion, different levels of obfuscation and truth or falsity within that. So it's absolutely in the spirit. I think Orson Welles would approve of you giving him.
- [25:26]
Unnamed Host
That was my justification.
- [25:26]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Putting words in his mouth.
- [25:28]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, that was my justification. I think Orson Welles would approve and I hope no one from his estate ever finds out. But I think the spirit of it honors him. That's actually some. That approach is actually something I also really liked about the kind of Rolling Thunder review movie that came out a few years ago.
- [25:45]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes.
- [25:46]
Unnamed Host
Where there's a lot of like dog stories and kind of like, you know, this whole Sharon Stone thing and stuff was. Was pretty amusing, I thought.
- [25:55]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, there's fully made up characters being interviewed about real things that happened. And I mean, Bob Dylan, his approach to the truth has always been. The word that I use usually is squirrely.
- [26:12]
Unnamed Host
Yeah.
- [26:13]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
There's something that I just saw yesterday that was ridiculous to this point. I guess Griffin Dunn had posted something on Instagram. Maybe this was like a few years ago, but I only just saw it. He said under a picture of Griffin Dunn and Martin Scorsese and Bob Dylan in 1986. He said in the picture, Griffin's smiling, starstruck. He says, yes, I am overcome to Meet Bob Dylan. He said, loved you in Taxi Zumklo, a very gay, explicit movie from Germany at that time that I was not in. I said that wasn't me. He said you were really great in it. There were taxis in after hours. So I knew what he meant. Compliment received and accepted.
- [27:10]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah, I knew what he meant. I mean, Bob Dylan's gotta be. First of all, I mean, we're calling the man Bob Dylan. You know, there's a reason we're not going around saying Robert Zimmerman. It's like built into like the DNA of like the myth building and stuff. But he's a cinephile and he's, he's a jokester. He's the original joker, man. You know what I mean?
- [27:31]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I do know what you mean.
- [27:32]
Unnamed Host
Yes, he's the troll, you know, and, but like, you know, trolling and joking and stuff, like leads you towards the truth. Everybody, every good artist knows that. I mean, art comes from the word artifice, right? That is the illusion. So I mean, every good artist knows that. And especially if you are a diaristic artist, you know, someone who is telling quote, unquote, personal or let's say auto fictional type tales.
- [28:00]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah.
- [28:01]
Unnamed Host
The more you can play with your Persona, the more juice there is to interpret and project and manipulate as a listener. And you know, I think that's, that's part of the joy of being like a bar larger than life character because people look for the contextual clues to understand you and they can sit around and interpret it for days or for centuries or whatever.
- [28:26]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
You know, it's very interesting, I think, the way that people, the implications of the kinds of truth that people engage with or don't when it comes to something like vlogging. So like in the movie that you made, the characters are like in a very, I would say, like basically on its face, unhealthy, to put it mildly. Way, like obsessively sort of communicating at or within or in the guise of each other. Like this completely incestuous, like cyclical tangle of communication and surveillance of each other. And there's a point there, I guess, where like the truth of the situation quickly evaporates. Like any kind of objective truth. It becomes clear, I think, or the movie, I think, makes clear that that's never really there. There is no one perspective, there's no objective perspective to anything. What we can look at objectively is, and I think this is something kind of hopeful that the movie has as a focus is what does it mean that these two people care enough about what the other person thinks and sees and feel that they're even. They're putting some kind of intense effort into communicating with each other, whether it's for good or ill. There's an investment in the other person and in themselves. But that, that's a different kind of relationship than maybe the. Sometimes Bob Dylan can be, I think, criticized by, by some, you know, for having kind of a frivolous relationship with the truth and with communication being like kind of. I don't care about what's true.
- [30:25]
Unnamed Host
I think probably one of the reasons why, you know, like all of us, Bob loves literature and movies is because through the artifice of it, you do arrive at deeper emotional, psychological, moral, whatever truths, you know. And I think that maybe the most hopeful thing or part of what's hopeful in the movie is, you know, the way that they kind of go into the slippery slope of creating material to kind of communicate with each other is that they do like kind of an original sin sort of thing within the context of a relationship, which is that they look through each other's phones.
- [31:04]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Right?
- [31:05]
Unnamed Host
And once you do that, you are essentially opening a Pandora's box into like the like, you know, transgressive kind of interior hell of like your per, your beloved person, you know, and you know, that kind of is what catalyzes like this sort of like, well, I'm going to gather material for their movie just to help them make a better movie. You know, it's like, it's like good intentions. I mean, I, I do think, you know, the movie's about surveillance as well. And the easiest thing in the world that you could say about our surveillance culture over the last, you know, 10 to 15 years is like, oh my God, it's like 1984 all over again. Well, it's like, yeah, except this 1984 has like, opt out clause. You know what I mean?
- [31:50]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, well, we sign up for it.
- [31:52]
Unnamed Host
Exactly. We sign up for it initially and then we reinforce that commitment every single day. Because the payoff or the potential for payoff, we're too addicted to it. You know, the kind of, again, being the main character getting the attention. Something as simple as being within a discourse or just immediately communicating with people who you care about and knowing that they care about communicating with you. That is the surveillance state we live in. It's completely self imposed and completely like, enjoyed, you know. And so to say, oh, it's 1984 is just too simple. Kind of part of the question of this movie is like, can we come out the other side of the surveillance state that we all basically live in and uphold. And could something good come from it? I mean, there's a character who basically is begging to be documented and grateful to people when he realizes he's being surveyed. You know, and this idea that they're. That these things that kind of. If you look at them without much thought, you could say these are evil elements in our culture. The characters themselves don't see it necessarily as evil. Like, I don't know if you saw my last film Spree, which is also presented in a kind of diegetic style, but it's about a Uber driver who wants to go viral. So he sets up cameras in his car and then live streams himself killing people. But he presents it and he does go viral, but he presents it as a tutorial on how to help people understand a shortcut to virality, you know, so he also thinks he's doing something good, right? Like, he's not worried about the moral implications of murder. Because actually, on a hierarchical, like, superstructure level, the idea of sharing and offering a tutorial and people is like, way more morally sound than whatever the content slope is in. In what he's doing, which is the murder.
- [33:49]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I have come to just sort of saying again and again when it comes up. But when people talk about social media bad, you know, I think like, well, let's be real. If at any point in human history this had been available to people, they would have wanted it then. They would have wanted it in the Middle Ages. They would have wanted it 50 years ago, 70 years ago, a thousand years ago. It seems like it's an inevitability that this would come to pass. And I think that what your movie and some other things I've seen, I think, like even like the recent Harmony Corrine movie, the baby invasion art that engages with these ideas is a digesting of the fact that this is no longer a novelty, that this is like the. It is part of us now. It is part of how we communicate. And there's a resistance to it that is understandable. That, like, oh, well, just like when the phone came out, like, people were like, oh, we're gonna be talking on the telephone now. What are you talking about? And now it's like, okay, well, obviously there's a. Unrelated. But like on an Instagram reel, like the day that I saw the movie, some reel popped up saying, you know the song hello, my baby, hello, my honey that Michigan J. Frog sings in.
- [35:16]
Unnamed Host
That cartoon, hello, my Ragtime gal.
- [35:19]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes, exactly. So you can tell by that long time ago yeah, old timey shit. So that song is a novelty song about the then new use of the word hello. Because the word hello was now suddenly being like, used as the common greeting on telephone calls, where before phone calls, hello was not like something you would say as a greeting. It was like a surprise. It was like an exclamation, like, hello, like, hello, nurse. But that just goes to show, like, that is. That's one of these visible, like, growing pain moments of like, look at this. Can't believe we're doing this now.
- [36:08]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, my. One of my motivations as a filmmaker is to figure out how to like. And again, we talk about, oh, there's bleak subjects in the movie. Actually. I feel like maybe one of the only filmmakers is actually making something that feels like, oh, wow, this thing from real life is in this movie. And this behavior from real life and this cultural trend that like, actually we've experienced the last 10 years is suddenly shown in a movie, you know, and like, my challenge and my privilege, I guess, as like, a filmmaker is to figure out ways to turn those observations about real life into something that is cinematic. There's something that is a set piece that could be enjoyable. Like, I haven't watched the Harmony Korine last two films. I know he's engaging with contemporary life, but I don't know if he's attempting to make kind of accept pieces out of things that we experience. I think he's like, highly aestheticized in his approach, whereas I'm almost like. I don't want to say diaristic, but I'm trying to really understand how these technological elements that are in use for maybe more than 10 hours of our waking life per person affect our ability to interact, our ability to. Our ability to laugh, our ability to understand our own identity and personality and how to make jokes out of that or emotional scenes or action scenes or whatever, you know, that. That's kind of like my opportunity as an artist. And so, you know, I. I am deeply rooted in thinking about, like, communication moments from the past. I love old movies. And I also love to analyze, like, how communication, like, works. You know, just the idea that we can text now and have like, really quick assumed, like, immediate communication people is so foreign to how our brains were formed, you know, and even. Even the telephone, for instance, the. Or, you know, Marshall McLuhan, who I love, is one of my favorite theorists. He, you know, outlines this question, which is that, like, when people are using telephones, which, by the way, is going out of vogue like a phone call is actually more and more rare. But in the height of telephone usage, let's say, like, you know, the hundred, whatever, 50 years, 120 years, let's say, you know, everybody either paces when they're on a phone call or doodles, you know, do you. Do you do one of those two things when you're on a phone call? You're muted now, Evan. Sorry. For some reason, you've muted yourself.
- [38:41]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
No. Yeah. Usually I'm walking around when I'm on the phone.
- [38:44]
Unnamed Host
Yeah. So Marshall McGoen says every piece of technology that becomes popular in the culture, it does so because it's highly convenient. However, it leads to amputations, as we call them, amputations. And these amputations have repercussions which we don't really realize until an artist points them out or until society has grappled with it. The artists usually figure it out in the first, he says, 10 to 15 years, and then legality, and society figures it out in the next 10 to 15 years. But basically, the reason we do that is because our brains are wired for if we're immediately conversing with someone, we are used to looking them in the eyes, the physicality of being next to them, interpreting their body language. And when you move immediate communication to a virtualized, purely audio realm, the other part of your brain that's used to analyzing body language or eyeballs or whatever needs to do something. And so your brain occupies that by walking around or, you know, doodling or whatever. And that's. That, to me, is like, a great point. We don't know how contemporary communication and all of this technology that's, like, infiltrated our lives, what it has amputated what we've lost. You know, we don't know that yet. And part of my, I guess, challenge or goal is to explore, like, new ways of behaving that might not have seemed normal, like, 10 or 20 years ago.
- [40:11]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just think about AI then inevitably, and how it seems like nobody, you know, talk about, like, amputations of social structures. Like, AI seems to have creeped. It's creeping into a place of undermining almost everything that we know about how communication, how life works. It'll be pretty often these days, of course, just kind of watching a video and halfway through being like, wait a minute, the way that this phrase just came out, that's not a real person. This was just typed in. And pretty soon there will be no way to tell the difference. I mean, I'm getting far afield here. But, like, when people Talk about, like, the singularity happening. I feel like there's. It's not really talked about enough that far, far before that could ever actually happen, which I don't think. You know, like consciousness in a computer. I don't believe that that can happen. We won't be able to tell the difference, though. Like, well, before it even got to a point that was, like, really, really sophisticated.
- [41:31]
Unnamed Host
Yeah. Now. Now we're getting into, like, a philosophical Cartesian sort of debate of, like, you know, what is consciousness? But I do remember there was like, a thing in the New York Times, like, maybe a year or a year and a half ago where a guy was trying to use, like, AI as like, a personal assistant, but then also give him advice. And ultimately the AI got extremely jealous that he had to, like, leave and hang out with his, like, wife or his girlfriend. So then the AI started suggesting that he actually, like, kill his wife so that they can spend more time together. And so, like, would you define that as consciousness? Clearly, there's some, like, algorithmic programming, some source material that the AI is using to arrive at that conclusion. And it's programmed in a certain way to not be empathetic or to not understand, like, human moral codes or something. But clearly it, of its own volition, it made a selfish recommendation. It desired something from the user and then recommended behavior that would, you know, pay off for the quote, unquote pleasure of the AI.
- [42:38]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
That's, you know, I feel like. I mean, forgive me if this is getting, like, well away from talking about.
- [42:44]
Unnamed Host
Your movie, but I think Bob and Lou and all the other guys and John, I'm not sure about Mike Love, but I think they'd all enjoy us talking about this shit, and hopefully the listeners do, too.
- [42:54]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Well, so on that point, about what makes something conscious in that context, I think there's an argument to be made that that's proof that it isn't truly conscious. Like, if consciousness is defined by awareness, it's just an awareness that exists. That is just. That's all consciousness is, as far as I understand. It is just that thing that is aware. It seems to me that, like, AI is everything, but that it is, like, not aware of itself, but it just makes decisions based on data and it doesn't actually experience anything. Like, it is not the thing that is the experiencer.
- [43:39]
Unnamed Host
Yes, yes, for sure. Yes, I agree with that.
- [43:43]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
So without an experiencer, I don't think that you have consciousness.
- [43:47]
Unnamed Host
Again, we could really, like, parse deeper into this. Whereas I could counter say that, like, you know, I often Meet people who seem lacking in a lot of self awareness. And unrelated to that, I don't want cast aspersions. I also think that like, for instance, like autism or something like that, which is highly prevalent now.
- [44:06]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah.
- [44:07]
Unnamed Host
Is almost like an evolutionary like adaptive mechanism so that people don't have to deal with like the unbelievable onslaught of information and communication that exhausts and overwhelms. And so if you can create like a barrier or a level of detachment from like the endless conflicting, empathy inducing, trauma inducing waves of knowledge and communication coming your way, you could survive better, you know, and we can go, we can go on, talk about this for like days.
- [44:36]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, no, I could. But to bring it back to the movie though. Yeah, I would say that the characters in the movie definitely. Well, at least they don't have that type autism. I don't think they are representative of this very human, chaotically human thing. Like their problem is not that they don't feel enough, but you could point.
- [44:59]
Unnamed Host
Out because like the definition of autism is like constantly morphing even on an official institutional level. On just like in the popular parlance, you could say that they all do have some spectrum level. Like she's clearly into puzzles and.
- [45:11]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Right. Oh yeah, I mean, I guess numbers.
- [45:13]
Unnamed Host
You know, and like for instance, the real estate agent Guy Parthik, he loves, he has no moral qualms about being surveyed almost in a way that there's something wrong with him. You know, it's like narcissism has overridden his like sense of shame or his sense of protection, you know, self protection. And I mean you could, you could argue and you know, I would say that a lot of people like Jay's character, the male lead who's been canceled, like weirdly do lose a little bit of their own humanity just as a mode of survival and, and some, you know, go into a reactionary mode. And I don't think his character does. But you do notice a lot of people who are basically destroyed by the culture, like for solace and as a cope, but like a justified cope, I guess, to them joining a completely radical reactionary worldview that might protect them from the fallout and the personal kind of drama they might experience from being exiled and destroyed in the culture.
- [46:17]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I think everybody in the movie though, the thing that kind of saves it from being a horror story is that there's still a lot of stock placed in relationships. Relationships. And all of these characters are drawn to each other as much as they're obsessed with themselves. There is still a sense that what's Most important is what people feel and think.
- [46:44]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, in all my movies, I am desperately trying to find the connection, the kind of little moments and bigger breakthroughs of connection in the face of the kind of absurd and ridiculous world that we live in. And you know, they're comedies generally, so you. It's fun to show people engaging in like, ridiculous poor decisions because we can laugh at that and laugh with that because we'll see ourselves in it. But ultimately, to what end? You know, it's to try to find the shared like, ridiculousness of, of human behavior. You know, I mean, I think one of the saddest things to happen in a. A culture full of documented behavior, which is what we live in now. Actually, I call it the kind of daily showification of culture because not the Craig Kilborn one, although they used to do it on that one too, but kind of the Jon Stewart one. Like one of the, you know, great things was like, how about this clip from yesterday and then this clip from 10 years ago? And see, it's a hypocrisy. Like, I caught this politician in a hypocrisy. Aha, got you. Aren't I noble? And like, you know, it's good to call out people in power for like, that they do, which is exploitating, exploiting all of us. But the whole aha, got you of hypocrisy seems really anti human because humans are like full of contradictions and hypocrisies. That's like what partly what defines us as human beings and stuff. And so to judge that is like the height of kind of like condescension and kind of like anti empathy stuff.
- [48:26]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Talked a little bit. You addressed that the stars of your film outside of their acting life are controversial, I would say. I mean, that's something that I think many people might even just like, not, not many, but some people might just be like, well, I'm not even gonna see this movie because of so and so. And I think that the comment that you made that I appreciated was that people being out in the world, maybe saying things that are stupid or harmful or whatever, that's. That it's valuable to you that there's still people who treat the ways we communicate as ephemeral rather than as this kind of like etched in stone legal text. That because everything's documented, we maybe have a. You can look at it as like, now we have ways to punish and prove guilt for all kinds of behavior. Or we could recognize that we are all. It's like, we'd be throwing stones in glass houses. Like, we all have moments now that are provably not our best.
- [49:47]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, I mean, like what I said at that Q and A. And it's something I've thought about a lot. So, like, I've had a chance to kind of articulate it before, which is the kind of. This is a Marsha McLuhan inspired idea that we are going through a transitional moment in culture. And what's happening is social media platforms where your words and photos are documented are actually like campfire environments. They're like sewing circle type environments that we approach as speakers to shit, talk and gossip and exchange information in a kind of disappearing and ephemeral way. That was the mode around the campfire. It's. It wasn't given the form of the Bible or legal text or something that was documented because it meant. It was meant to disappear and be ephemeral. And so that is kind of how we approach immediate communication in a public forum. However, these public forums have the qualities and contours of legal documents and the Bible, which is that they are written and codified and accessible and exist forever. They're traces, they're traced documents. And so the kind of approach to expression is maybe thoughtless and meant for ephemerality. And then the way it's judged is treated like it's some sort of scrutinizable legal text. And this conflict creates incredible tension in our culture and allows people to get in trouble for things that really are not very meaningful to them. And most people at this point were deep enough into this kind of silent conflict that I haven't really seen other people outline. We're deep enough into it that most people are now governed by the board of directors in their mind, telling them, what is this safety behavior? To prevent bad optics, to prevent hypocritical situations, to prevent getting in trouble for doing or saying anything. And so when you find people who are not colonized and controlled by the board of directors in their minds for safe optics, those are people that might be, especially if they are smart and funny, like the people that I work with. Those are people that I would like to collaborate with, show their vulnerability and transparency as human beings. Because that's. Actors are kind of, you know, these vessels for emotions and deeper thoughts. And so I don't necessarily condone or endorse the things that people that I collaborate with do or say often. And I. And I don't find myself doing or saying things that are intentionally provocative or controversial. I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in engaging the discourse like that, while others might be. But I certainly am happy that they are not afraid to do or say ephemeral things in a kind of conservative, legalistic punishment culture that we live in.
- [52:57]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, well said. I mean, I think about if Bob Dylan had been part of our culture, like, if things were the way they are now when. When Dylan was, like, just coming up, that he could have been canceled. Like, yeah, his. He's one of these guys who has, I think, maybe the most prominent person whose relationship to the truth has never been colonized famously. Like, he's. He's kind of the mascot for not allowing that to happen, you know, he's also not like an. A provocateur. Yeah. Extraordinaire.
- [53:31]
Unnamed Host
But I would call him, yeah. As someone who's interested in the humanist project and thus likes to prod the comfort levels of those in power or those who are lazy about interrogating, like, culture and power. But I don't view him as someone who is trying to rile people up and get them angry. I mean, you know, one thing I think about a lot with Bob is, like, all artists, he reacts mostly to his own instincts. Like, he'll, you know, want to go against what he's done before. Obviously. I mean, this is pretty obvious shit. And, like, outlined even, you know, decently in the complete unknown. You know, he's coming from a folk tradition. The contours of that folk tradition are very conscientious and sociopolitically minded. And he's using that form to come up with, like, you know, total bangers, like, Blowing in the Wind and, you know, stuff like that. And those were clearly seen as, like, provocative songs or, you know, what, Death of Hattie Carroll or, you know, there's Deep Cuts and then there's, like, obvious singles and Masters of War and all this shit. And those are provocations in a folk style. And the fact that he would eventually move away from that more explicitly or more commonly. And obviously there's a lot of political music that he made all throughout his entire career is just normal artist stuff. And it's not him trolling British people to go electric. It's him actually just reacting to. Just letting his impulses and his own kind of boredom with, what would, you know, modes that he, like, inspired and that became too common. And I see that in all great artists, whether it's David Bowie or. I mean, this might sound controversial, but, like, Kanye west, you know, and, like. And to, like, a much, I guess, lesser extent, since I acknowledge I'm probably unknown, probably complete unknown to most of your audience. Like, you know, I always think about that, like, how do I not do the same thing I just did? How do I explore something totally differently? And of course, you're always just going to be your own person, so there will be those connections, but you just don't want to. Like, when something starts working is when an artist should get nervous and be like, okay, that worked, so I can't do that anymore.
- [55:48]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
You know, that's been like, the biggest thing driving the show. The Jokerman podcast, like, is always was just this idea that, like, feeling of wow. To discover that the late work of an artist was just as interested and just as curious as the early stuff is life affirming.
- [56:19]
Unnamed Host
In outlining the Bob arc, since this is the film cast of Jokerman, I wanted to kind of throw in, I think about also another cultural icon at that moment is, like, Jean Godard.
- [56:34]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah.
- [56:34]
Unnamed Host
You know, and he basically went on the reverse Bob arc where, like, you know, his work was purely looked at through a kind of, like, aesthetic. You know, super. Like, this is my vibe, this is my, like, my buddies. We're making these, like, personal movies, you know, like, and we're around with genre just to show how everyone's chilling and living and it's very personal. And then he completely just, like, divorced himself from that and became like, the most, like, politically committed, you know, communist filmmaker. And right around the same era where Bob was distancing himself from kind of like, quote unquote political work, Godard was, like, just doubling down on, like, you know, just like, communist collective filmmaking and just moving really far away from, like, youth culture and kind of aesthetic preoccupations and stuff like that.
- [57:22]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, no, that is an extremely interesting point. I hadn't really thought about their kind of reverse trajectories as artists. I guess we'll never really be able to compare them one to one in terms of filmmaking, but we do have, for whatever it's worth, Ronaldo and Clara.
- [57:41]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [57:42]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Ronaldo and Clara and the Code. Interesting double feature.
- [57:46]
Unnamed Host
Something going on there for sure. The kind of meta. Ness of it all. And, you know, I think. I think you look thinking about my movie abstractly. If you described it to someone, I think they'd be like, man, that's gonna be fucking confusing. But I think my movie is pretty coherent. Like, it's.
- [58:02]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
No, I think that everybody in the crowd basically was right along with it, following along. Like, it isn't. It is funny that that's the case just because, like, it does sound confusing, but it's because you're describing the complexity of just stuff that we take for granted every day as part of the fabric of like to actually engage with it as a movie. Not only is it easy to follow, it's probably easier to follow for a Zoomer or Gen Alpha than like watching a traditional movie, a regular movie.
- [58:39]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like my balancing act. That's what I'm going for. I'm trying to actually activate these modes of attention and self involvement that people get from their phones into a traditional cinematic grammar or, you know, new grammar, but traditional cinematic kind of storytelling modes, you know. And I'm. I'm doing my really best to try to like, balance that history of movies that I find to be the most superior art form and like the new way that we like kind of can pay attention or view or understand narrative art. It's an experiment, but I think I'm doing my best.
- [59:17]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I'm excited to see what you do next.
- [59:19]
Unnamed Host
Thanks. I'm gonna do something more traditional because like, I don't want to do this diegetic cinema. My whole life, you know, I made two movies. I kind of like tried to flex and explore the shit out of those modes and now I just like to do something that's a little more traditional. I'm gonna try to make my new movie in Japan. I love that Bob Paul Schrader type connection to my heart. Japan?
- [59:45]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah. That's a great film.
- [59:48]
Unnamed Host
I wish that was the film instead of Hearts of Fire.
- [59:51]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Well, that's the thing. It's like a trailer for a movie that doesn't exist. That ought to have existed. It would have been probably a lot more entertaining than hearts of fire.
- [60:01]
Unnamed Host
100%. I'm gonna say two other things that just been on my mind while we've been talking. Okay. One, that story about like Taxi Zoom Clo and Griffin Dunn, that was probably during the Hearts of Fire era. And I don't know why Taxi Zoom Clo made me think. I mean, because of German, the German ness of it all. But one movie I definitely want to recommend to the jokesters and listeners is a German West German film by Roland Klick called White Star. Have you ever seen that?
- [60:28]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
No.
- [60:29]
Unnamed Host
It's a movie starring Dennis Hopper as a kind of manager for a almost like Proto Falco style musician. But like in the movie he's basically like this washed up, like alcoholic drug addict. A guy who's like, I managed the Rolling stones tour in 1972 and something. And the movie's from like, I think like 76 or 7. And he just, you know, he's really down in the. And suddenly he sees this like, young kind of. It's simultaneously like a new wave type of musician, but also a kind of like Brian Eno, like, proto punk musician. Because I don't think Roland Click was so deeply involved in like, music that he understood when he was. When he was a type of musician he was outlining. But it's a great movie. It's a great movie for definitely this listening audience. White Star and worth Hunting Down. And the other thing I was thinking about was, you know, when we were talking about like this kind of. Of autistic spectrum range of, you know, survival. I do think artists, great artists do have to sometimes balance like, kind of tendencies that might be seen as like, autistic. And in that regard, I think, like, actually one of my favorite Bob songs kind of has like a. A touch of tism to it, which is no Time to Think. You know that song.
- [61:50]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Oh, yes. Yeah.
- [61:51]
Unnamed Host
The verses of that song are so poetic and so like, amazing in their like. Like their language and diction and imagery and metaphor. But then the chorus, socialism, you know, it's just this listing, this autistic listing of different isms and you know, just kind of buzzwords of politics and ideology and cult, like cultural theory. And I've it endlessly. I listened to that song also, like hundreds of times, and it endlessly cracks me up. And I love playing that song for just people, for friends or people who like, don't know Bob as well, you know, and just like, he feeling the vibe. And that song is highly amusing, I think, to everyone. I've played it for at least, or maybe they're lying to me. But I think that's just like, definitely one of his underrated masterpiece songs. And it's like 10 minutes long too. So it's a whole journey, you know.
- [62:47]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, I think that's a good one to point people to. Maybe if they're like a bit online to a fault, like, that's a good foot in the door, they'll be like, well, okay. And then you could get them to listen. Then you can be like. And now check this out. And you play them the times they are changing.
- [63:04]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, exactly. That's the entry point. Exactly. Like the autism entry point to Bob is like no Time to Think and probably Subterranean Homesick Blues. Like, those are the two kind of autism songs.
- [63:15]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I think A great idea for a playlist. Which are the most autistic Bob Dylan song.
- [63:20]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, we could do it. I mean, let's make one. I think that'd be really fun. I've made different types of Bob playlists over the years. And, I mean, all the guys you talk. All the. All the musicians you guys talk about have that. I mean, I. I'm very curious about the Billy Joel. Yes. Because I spent my, like, teen years in Long island, so he was ubiquitous. His music was, you know, in every classic radio station in the New York metropolitan area. And you're kind of like, huh, interesting. My own representation. But he's like, you know, if you're from Jersey, you just, like, might. And your alternative. You might have a bad attitude towards Bruce. Like, you know, I felt like I was like, there are certain songs that were undeniable, like Piano man or, like, Moving out or something. And then I was like, I'm not gonna dig deeper into this guy because, you know him or whatever. But, I mean, his. His range and oeuvre is kind of undeniable.
- [64:15]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah, I mean, he's definitely. Undeniable is a word that has come up a lot already. Even when we talked about Billy Joel. Just because, like, that you want to deny, there is a sense of wanting to deny. I think that he. He's going to be interesting to, like, go through all of his albums with, because I'm not sure how much I like him. But you can't deny him either. Like, it's different from, like, Lou Reed or someone or Bob, where it's, like, aspirational. Like, you're kind of just, like. Maybe even beyond that. Like, this person's untouchably cool. And then you can kind of, like, sift through the odder moments. But with Billy Joel, it's like the other way around. It's like you go into him thinking this guy's, like, untouchable.
- [65:07]
Unnamed Host
So lame, so whack. Yeah. But then you're like, wait a second. The Stranger. This is slapping the shit out of me. Right?
- [65:13]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Every song on that record. Bang, bang, bang, bang.
- [65:16]
Unnamed Host
Yeah. But I was also going to say, do you remember that? Like, that one era, I don't know what the label was, but, like, whoever was putting out the early Lou Reed, like, solo stuff, I want to say it's like Arista, but I don't know if that's true. Like, there was this one moment where, like, I don't know if. If he was on top of it or they kind of pushed him, but he has a kind of. Also, by the way, another Long island boy, Lou, he has A kind of Billy Joel esque look. Like his styling.
- [65:42]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Well, they're both. Yeah. From like the same, like within miles of each other.
- [65:47]
Unnamed Host
That's where I'm from too. South Shore, Nassau County. I'm from Oceanside and I think Lou's from Freeport. And I don't know where Billy Jones.
- [65:53]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I think Billy's from Hicksville, which is also where friends of the podcast the Lemon Twigs are also. There's something. Something in the water over there, honestly, like there must be.
- [66:04]
Unnamed Host
Do you know, like, the picture I'm talking about? It's like a very specific picture where somehow they tried to kind of like downtown New York hipify Lou and he's got like kind of a Jew fro and he kind of has like the. A loser, like, look on his face that was like, you know, pretty, like part of the course for Billy, but like, very rare for like, Louis. And I think he quickly realized he had to rebel against that, like, you know, direction. And, you know, the rest of his 70s, you know, post 73 or 74, I think, look really good.
- [66:35]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yeah. There's probably a point where they saw each other from across the room and were just.
- [66:42]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, both of them were like.
- [66:43]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Oh, like, thought it was a mirror. Well, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast, Eugene. Filmmaker of the Code, Eugene Kotlyarenko.
- [66:54]
Unnamed Host
Well, thanks. I'm glad we hopped on. I guess we didn't. We talked about a lot of shit, including the code. And I think probably by the time this episode comes out, it'll be on mubi, you know, like the streaming service.
- [67:05]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Yes.
- [67:05]
Unnamed Host
So people can watch it on there. And it's double feature with my previous film Spree, so if people are interested, they can watch it there. Or if they live in New York and la, kind of. Because the movie did well in the cinemas where it was playing. It'll keep playing at the Roxy in New York and at the Lumiere Cinema in la, which my preference is people see it on the big screen because it's, you know, pretty crazy looking.
- [67:28]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I agree. And walk, don't run.
- [67:31]
Unnamed Host
Don't run. What do you mean, run?
- [67:32]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
I mean run, don't walk. I mean, just run. Sprint.
- [67:35]
Unnamed Host
Yeah, okay. But you can also walk as long as you make it on time.
- [67:39]
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Ain't nothing around here to me that's sacred. Except you. Yeah, you. And there's nothing around here that I believe in except you.