← New Books Network
New Books Network
Eric G. Wilson, "Point Blank" (British Film Institute, 2023)
00:46:43
An interview with Eric G. Wilson
Loading summary
Transcript88 lines
- [00:03]
Depop Advertiser
Kids, they grow up so fast. One day they're taking their first steps and the next they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in. You blink your eyes and their princess dress is two sizes too small. And their dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up. Smile because you can profit off of it for real. There are a bunch of parents on Depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download depop to start selling.
- [00:33]
Eric G. Wilson
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:35]
Nordstrom Rack Advertiser
New Year New gear. Thousands of fresh active styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Save on top brands like Nike, Puma and free people starting at just $35.
- [00:46]
Eric G. Wilson
How did I not know Rack has Adidas? There's always something new.
- [00:50]
Nordstrom Rack Advertiser
Plus, join the Nordy Club to shop new arrivals first. Unlock exclusive discounts and more. Great brands, Clothes, great prices. That's why you wreck this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and saving and eligibility vary by state.
- [01:31]
Eric G. Wilson
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:35]
Dan Moran
Hello everybody. Welcome to New Books and Film, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dan Moran. I'm thrilled to be here today with Eric G. Wilson. Eric is a professor of English at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. His publications include the books Secret Cinema, Gnostic Vision and Film, and the Strange World of David Lynch. His writing has been featured In Psychology Today, LA Times, the New York Times, and Huffington Post. His most recent book, which we're going to talk about today, is in the BFI film classic series. It's a study of John Boorman's 1967 point blank. It's a great book about a great film and the only film in which you get to see Lee Marvin Chase Dean Wormer to get closer to Archie Bunker. So I'm very much looking forward to talking about this today. Welcome, Eric.
- [02:22]
Eric G. Wilson
Thank you so much, Dan. I'm thrilled to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.
- [02:25]
Dan Moran
So your book is a tour of the making and the meaning of Point Blank. And perhaps the best compliment I can give you is that I love the movie, read the book, rewatched the movie, it makes you get excited for the movie. All over again. And on that note, I want to quote one of your sentences to get your reaction to it. You say late in the book that John Boorman's 1967 revenge film is, and this is, you quote, it imbues its grim matter with addictive gusto. End quote. Explain that.
- [02:54]
Eric G. Wilson
Yes. So as. As you know, and as your listeners who have seen the film know, this is not a happy film. This is a film about pain and trauma and it's violent and the ending is ambiguous. So why have I seen the film 35 times if. If not more? Well, I feel about this film like I feel about certain New wave films. Think of a film like Truffaut's Jewel, Jules and Jim, where even though the subject matter of the film is melancholy, disturbing, the filmmaking techniques are so exciting that the films approach what a movement in France in the 1920s called pure cinema. Cinema pure. The idea that cinema at its height should transcend dialogue, should transcend narrative. And ultimately it can work on the level of alinear, fragmented images, which are so engrossing and exhilarating that just looking at them gives you a kind of thrill. This is what makes Scorsese's film so interesting. Raging Bull is a hard film to watch, but yet I watched it almost as many times as I have Point blank. He's using some of those New wave techniques, the, the jump cuts, the inner cutting, the flashbacks, the fade ins, really highlighting film as film. This is a camera creating an artificial reality. It's not an effort to achieve mimesis. It's not an effort to show the real world, as it were. It's an effort to show what the camera can do in the hands of a really fantastic director. I would put David lynch in this category as well. His films are especially disturbing, but he likes to make, and I'm quoting him, what he calls a film film, which is not a film about X, Y or Z, but it's a film about a film. It's a film that is about itself. And so Borman's again, the flashbacks and the intercutting and the cross cutting and the vivid interiors and the haunting LA cityscapes. This I find exhilarating to watch. I use the word gusto in a very precise sense. I don't say so in my book. I'm also a British romanticist and I've read a lot of William Hazlett, and William Hazlett says that the best paintings have what he calls gusto, which means when you look at the painting, the skin seems so alive that you Wish you could touch it or the woman that you're in love with, you want to kiss her in the painting. So there's a kind of pulsating quality to the visual that transcends the actual content of what the work of art is about. That's gusto. And Keats was very keen on this idea of gusto as well, in his own highly visual poetry.
- [05:42]
Dan Moran
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny you mentioned Raging Bull, another movie I've seen a thousand times, but very much like this film, Raging Bull is a mov. Somebody in pain, but yet you smile very often when you watch it at the audacity of what the director is doing in it.
- [05:55]
Eric G. Wilson
That's right. That's right. It's. It's so, so that's. You get this, this, this paradoxical feeling of this film is about how awful life is, but yet you feel like you're on a roller coaster at the same time. So there's something ultimately very affirming. Like the films Raging Bull and Point Blank are stylistically affirmative, even if in content they're cynical.
- [06:19]
Dan Moran
Yes, absolutely. Because you know, Lee Marvin walking down that hallway with his clackety shoes and then the shoes are on the soundtrack and he walks in. I mean, that is so bold as a move that you can't help but grin, even though what's going on is just horrifying.
- [06:33]
Eric G. Wilson
Well, and grinning is a great response. I believe that some of these effects that I call the addictive gusto are comic effects where the violence in Point Blank. And you can also say this about raising bull. I didn't know we about raising gold. But, but LaMotta's rage filled jealousy toward his brother, played by Joe Pesci, is so over the top that it becomes darkly comical. And the same is true of, of Walker. Instead of beating up a man, beating up the car the man is in, or instead of shooting a man, shooting the phone near the man. It's as if to say, look at this extreme violence. It's so extreme, it's kind of funny. But also it's impotent because I'm not really hurting anyone. So that's why I say in my book, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, that this film really plays around with genre interesting ways. On the surface, it looks like a pre traditional hyper masculine revenge drama, but yet it's also kind of mocking violence and suggesting that traditional violence is impotent for, for gaining any sort of satisfaction in life.
- [07:36]
Dan Moran
Yeah, because of course, when Walker gets to the last guy, when he Gets a Carol Oconnor. And he says, I don't have. He says, well, someone's got to have the money. Like, someone's got to pay me. Like, all of a sudden he's like, you know, whatever. No one is supposed to say that in a revenge movie. Well, someone's got to have the money.
- [07:47]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [07:49]
Dan Moran
So let's talk about the source material. So this film is based upon the Hunter, which is a 1962 novel by Donald Westlake. He wrote it under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and he invented this character named Parker. And the point of that pseudonym was an experiment for Donald Westlake to see if he could write and only show the bare minimum of character through the actions. His writing becomes stark. And he sustained this for over 20 books. I'm a big fan of those. I read the first 23. I only have two more to go. And so I love them. And they have a lot of Gustavo doing them as well. Now in those books, you grin at Parker being this. This unstoppable force of nature and doing what he's got to do. But here, his name is Parker in this film. But here he's a little more vulnerable. Like he's not like his component in the novels. Right?
- [08:37]
Eric G. Wilson
Yes, yes. So the. Even though the. The Stark novel, the Hunter is terse, laconic, elliptical, based on flashback and fragmentation. Even though it seems like it would be a perfect model for the kind of film that Borman actually made. Strangely enough, Borman did not go deeply into that novel in shooting the film. There was a screenplay based on the novel by the Newhouse brothers that both Marvin and Borman found to be kind of an overly sentimental Raymond Chandler sort of exercise. They felt that the brothers had lost the grit of the novel. Instead, Borman, in reading that novel, thought he saw the new wave cinema of Alain Renee, say, and in particular a film like Hiroshima Man Amor, which is. Doesn't have the same subject matter at all of the Hunter, but that kind of fragmentation, that kind of working through pain and trauma. And also, Harold Pinter came to Borman's mind as he was reading that novel. So Harold Pinter is really the influence of the terse, understated dialogue in the film. And Rene, I think, is the muse of the trauma based fragmentation of the film. I too, have been reading Star. I read the Hunter in writing my book. But since to get ready for our conversation, I read the second and the third, the man with the Getaway Face in the Outfit. The outfit, of course, has also been turned into a great film. Robert Duvall and Joe Don Baker. I love that movie. So that's one part of it that. That Borman wasn't really working from the novel in particular, though working from sources close to the novel in spirit. But ultimately, what I think differentiates Walker, Marvin's Walker, the version of Starks Parker, is Marvin's own history. The reason, according to Borman, that Marvin wanted to make this film is that he saw this character, Walker, as someone who'd been betrayed by his best friend and by his wife, left for dead and ultimately stripped of everything that made him human. And all he wanted to do was try to recover what he lost with erroneously, he thinks that that $93,000 that he lost in the heist will make him whole. We'll talk about that later. But Marvin, in reading this script, said, you know, I was in World War II, and I was a Marine, and I was a sniper, and I was in a. A battle in. In the Pacific theater, and my company was wiped out. I was one of seven out of almost 250 who survived, and I myself was shot. He's selling Borman all this. I have survivor's guilt. I've killed people. I feel like my humanity has been stripped away by my time as a Marine. And I feel like this character is delving into some of those issues. And I think in playing this character, I myself can sort out some of my own problems. So because of that, Marvin brings, yes, his toughness to the film, but a kind of vulnerability and occasional ambiguity and moments of hesitation, which I think give the film a great free song. And ultimately, for. For me, makes Marvin a more interesting, laconic 60s actor. More so than, say, a Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. I love those two guys. That's like Marvin, if you just his. His very kind of soft, puffy, sensual lip suggests a kind of vulnerability. And. And there's those. There's these cold, you know, sort of icicle shard eyes, but then this kind of gray hair, this kind of mix between a young, vibrant man, then kind of an old man. So I feel like there are contradictions in Marvin's presence in this film that make his character deeper and richer than, say, a bullet or Harry Callahan.
- [12:22]
Dan Moran
Yeah, absolutely. So the movie. Let's go through the movie a little bit. The movie opens in Alcatraz. That's where. That's where he gets shot. And we kind of. We have to piece it together the first time we see the movie about what's going on here. Right. But it opens an Alcatraz. But you point out that Walker remains at one kind of prison or another during the film. And Angie Dickinson has that line to him later where she says, you know, you died at Alcatraz that night, so talk about that as an issue of the film.
- [12:46]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah. So, imagistically, Borman is constantly placing Walker in environments where you see vertical lines. Of course, the opening scene in the prison, you see the shadows of the bars on his face in the cell of Alcatraz, when he finally makes it to his wife's house and she dies by suicide, you see him sitting alone in the room. You see the shutters on either side of him. They look like bars. When he goes in the offices of some of the mobsters for the. The corporation, the syndicate, the. The outfit, there are always vertical blinds, it seems. So Borman's trying to say, imagistically, that this man is still in Alcatraz. Why? I think Mormon's making an argument about how trauma works. You know, if. If we are deeply traumatized by something in the past, the. The challenge is, how can I somehow make the present moment seem significant when really I'm so consumed by this past pain that I'm almost repeating the same action over again? Because all of my actions are driven by either my desire to overcome this trauma or a more perverse kind of desire to repeat this trauma. So I feel like that's kind of a temporal prison, if you will. Borman captures the spatialness of the prism by these shots. I'm telling you about the verticalness of the shots, but I think that the endless flashbacks. I mean, even when Walker is making love with Chris, the Angie Dickinson character, he's flashing back to being shot in the prison. And when he's right in the middle of the throes of passion, he sees his wife dead. Wife went instead of her. So that, to me, that's a kind of prison. The prison of doing the same thing basically, over and over and over again because you're so consumed by a pain from the past.
- [14:31]
Dan Moran
Yeah, He's. When someone says, you got to trust me, all of a sudden, he flashes back to lying on the floor at the reunion with Mouse. You got to trust me, Walker. You got to trust me.
- [14:38]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, yeah. It's like an echo chamber. I mean, whenever. Here's a line in the narrative. I mean, almost every five minutes, he's flashing back to some moment from the betrayal.
- [14:50]
Dan Moran
And that's why the beginning is so great, because when it says after the credits come on, you just hear the gunshot. You're so disoriented. But, like, it really like, it's Borman showing you. This is what it's like to be this guy and to live with this. Right?
- [15:02]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah. Well, so what's so interesting, Just. Just technique wise, about the first 10 minutes, you know, we. We open the film almost as if we're in an Edgar Allan Poe story. There's this man lying in a. In a dark room shot. Doesn't know who he is. Who am I? Where am I? What's happened? In the first 10 minutes of the film? We see Borman first through extremely quickly. Cut. Fragmentation. Showing Walker trying very hard to remember, how did I get here to get here? And then the fragments become longer and slower until finally, you know, 10 minutes in, he realizes, oh, this is. This is how I got here. It's like a man piecing together his own identity by putting the fragments of his consciousness together. So that's one way that Borman, rather brilliantly, I think, uses. Uses his editing to suggest the kind of move from like, total ignorance of self to an emergence of consciousness. But also, I think Borman does something very interesting in terms of what I call trauma time in the film. An example of this is when. So we see Walker, he comes back to life in the prison cell, and we see him floating into the water off of Alcatraz as if he's going to swim to San Francisco from Alcatraz. Just at that minute. We cut to Walker, older, in a suit on a ship where a woman's giving the passengers a tour or talking about Alcatraz. So it's like, for someone like Walker, the only events in his life that have any meaning at all are those that fit into his desire to recover his $93,000. Nothing else counts. So that's why we never see Walker, like, put on a suit or brush his teeth or eat food. He's just. We're just jumping from. From like, he's at one location where he might get his nine, three thousand. Okay, he's done with that jump ahead. He's in another location where he might use 93,000. Because the time, the. The chunks of time that don't feed into his desire for his 93k don't matter. They don't exist to him at all.
- [16:55]
Dan Moran
And that's why you can't imagine him having a meal in the movie or something like that, because he's like the Terminator.
- [17:01]
Eric G. Wilson
He. He is, right. And that's. This is a great tension of the film. So you see him walking down lax, and this is after he gets the address from Fairfax, who's very mysterious early on in the film. Here's where your wife is and here's, here's where Mal is the guy who betrayed you. And then we see the famous clip clop down, down, down the lax. And I say this is Marvin at his most. Marvin, absolutely. Because there's that, that, that fierceness and that focus. It's. It's terrifying. He's walking so fast. These. He's creating a wind current blowing his hair back. Like what. I'm glad I'm not in that guy's way. So there is very much something very robotic about him. But then when he finally gets to Lynn's house and finds Mal's not there, he empties out his gun in the bed.
- [17:42]
Dan Moran
Right.
- [17:43]
Eric G. Wilson
And, and Mormon says he's, he's lost his potency. He's lost his male vitality and he's sitting there spent with his wife. He can't even talk anymore. So that's. There again. Is that, is that kind of interplay between the, the ultra violent Terminator linear. I'm going to get you. And the idea that this kind of violence in this world of trauma is ultimately not going to work.
- [18:06]
Dan Moran
Yeah. Because that, it's funny because that, that first version of him, like we said, I would never want to get in this guy's way. Right. That's, that's why I think after you see this, you can't read the Parker books and not visualize Lee Marvin. I mean you just can't. He's, he's the. But in the books he would never like when he goes to his, when he breaks into her house after he fires in the bed and she gives that monologue about. Here's what happened. I drifted over to Mal. As you know, he's on the couch and he's just holding his gun on his finger and he's like kind of like looking away and that's kind of vulnerable. But like Parker in the novels would never do that.
- [18:35]
Eric G. Wilson
Oh, never, never, never. Yeah, yeah. But I do, I do envision Marvin when I.
- [18:43]
Dan Moran
It's impossible. You can't, like, like the casting is over.
- [18:46]
Eric G. Wilson
This is, you know, you can't have it done. It's done. So that I'm glad you brought up scene in, in the room with, with his wife Lynn after he finds out Mal's not there. This is another example of how Borman shaped his script with the help of Marvin. I mean Marvin didn't write the script but, but he tried to find the most non verbal way at every point to render the emotion and this is another example of the kind of what I would call the addictive gusto, the pure cinema. Let's make almost a silent film. So during rehearsals, Marvin was supposed to ask Lynn questions like, where's Mal? Is he sending you money? But Marvin decided, I'm just gonna sit here and see what Sharon Acker, who plays Lynn, does. So she starts asking the questions and answering them while he sits there spent and silent. And it becomes a very haunting, effective scene because of that shutdown. And there are many points in the film where Marvin's input led to that kind of more visual rendering of the emotion than verbal.
- [19:45]
Dan Moran
Right. So you let me. Before you mention the $93,000, let's talk about that. So, you know, it's got the classic plot. The hero wants something, can't get it. What's going to happen? What's going to happen if he gets it or if he doesn't get it. Right. So the whole thing that drives the surface plot is he wants this $93,000, right. Of course, the joke of the movie is, what's he going to do? Is he going to go on vacation? Is he going to buy more suits? He's going to buy a car. Right? But it's the principle of the thing. That's my money and I want it back. Right? But you argue that he wants something less tangible than money. So what does he want?
- [20:14]
Eric G. Wilson
So. So this is a character who doesn't know himself. He, first of all, the $93,000 isn't his right, exactly. Stole it from the corporation. They stole it, and then they were going to split it and Mal took all of it. And so for some reason, in Walker's mind, that's his money now. And, yeah, he's. He's going up, up the ranks saying, I want my money. I want my money. He'll kill anyone with as he actually killed anyone in the whole film. He'll rough up anyone that he thinks can get him his money. Of course, he never gets it. I think the irony is that he's fighting this Mafia ring but also defining himself by the same terms that the Mafia ring defines its members, meaning that someone like Mao can only get back into the mob if he buys his way back in. So you're only valued in that world, and you might say, just as you're only valued in a kind of capitalist economy based on your monetary amount. And even though this. This Mafia ring threatened Walker's life, he seems to be thinking, if I can get money, that will make me worthy and whole. So I Think that's misguided. I think Borman knows that's misguided because the moments when he's, like, slowing down and not violently questing, like when he hangs out with Angie Dickinson and. And puts makeup on to cover up a little cut. He got in a fight last night wearing a beautiful goldenrod bathrobe. Or when he's, like, sitting and having coffee with her in this kind of futuristic coffee shop there. These. Or of course, when he's making love with her in the Curzon Terrace house near the end. I feel like that's what Walker really wants. I mean, that that's where he can find wholeness, is in a romantic relationship with Chris. She's the only one who treats him with inhumanity. When he first sees her, she says, you were always the best thing about Lynn. Which just conjures up this Walker we've not seen before. Like what? Like you knew Walker before this? Was he funny? Was he interesting? Was he kind? And she kind of pulls that, tries to pull that out of him, but he's so shut down because of his trauma that it's difficult for him to accept her offer of affection and support.
- [22:25]
Jack Daniels Advertiser
This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nine nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.
- [22:49]
Eric G. Wilson
Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love. For introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you.
- [23:19]
Dan Moran
Yeah, well, let's talk. Let's talk further about that $93,000 and his desire to buy him. Because that's what Mal wanted to do, was buy his way back into the organization, right? So there's a moment where Walker tells Brewster, and Brewster's played by Carol o', Connor, who's. Who's so great in this movie. It's so funny, this movie. He's so great, right? He says, you know, I want my $93,000. And Brewster laughs at him and says, you know, we don't have that actual cash. He says, cash? We don't carry that kind of cash. He goes, I have $11 in my pocket. And so you also point out that the organization, which is what they call the criminal enterprise here, you know, it reminds us all of like Sterling Cooper, which is where Don Draper works in Mad Men. There's a great scene where everyone's got the shades of green on in the office building. Right? So talk about that, about the movie. Definitely plays with this idea of like corporations and organizations, right?
- [24:04]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, yeah, it's core. Yeah, yeah. These are corporatized criminals where they, they've removed themselves so much from, from the mess of breaking the law that they, they operate like a corporation and they, they live in high rise offices and they've named their company the Multiplex or something.
- [24:20]
Dan Moran
That's a great name for the company.
- [24:23]
Eric G. Wilson
So when you walk in to see the, the mob boss, you hear typewriters clacking and you hear receptionists answering phones. So, so I think Borman's obviously saying, look, this is crime and it's most pernicious because you can't see it. But if criminals can become capitalists, then there's also the suggestion that capitalism might in some ways be criminal because I'm not saying this is a Marxist film, but it does suggest that people, if people are only valued based on their monetary portfolio, then that pretty much reduces everyone to a certain kind of financial unit and dehumanizes them. Now how does this strike Walker? That scene with Carol o' Connor is so funny. Uh, and, and o' Connor actually in, in the first, the first round of shots of that scene was really overpowering the scene. You, you, you see Walker's kind of sitting in a couch slumped over, just kind of taken aback by, by Carol o' Connor's comic force. He's so funny. To where Borman had to do some, some cuts later on to, to give Walker more presence in that role. But, but I feel like this is also another statement on, on, on the folly of, of Walker's quest. By the time we get to Carol o' Connor's character Brewster, he's essentially mocking Walker as if like what? Come on, you, you, you want 93, 000? This money doesn't exist. It's just some kind of abstract thing. It's not going to make better. It's not better or worse. Like what are you even doing? And it, I think it makes the audience kind of laugh for the first time in a way where he, he looks kind of foolish in that scene. And so it, it, of course it sets us up for that ending where maybe he is finally offered the money. We don't, we don't quite know. And when he is offered it, well, he doesn't even try to take it. We wonder if he himself has come to understand that the money is not really what he needs.
- [26:16]
Dan Moran
Yeah, I totally thought that he felt foolish because that's why he shoots the phone.
- [26:19]
Eric G. Wilson
Yes, yes, that's right. That's right. I think, yeah, that's true.
- [26:23]
Dan Moran
What you just said reminded me of, about the corporation of criminals and the criminals corporation. You just reminded me. It's the same premise of Glengarry Glen Ross which is like, you know, you know, you have small crimes but going on, but there's also bigger crimes going on in the background. And that one is like the other one. And you also made me laugh. I love the line where Carol o' Connor, before he sees him and he walks by the pool and he's. It's ice cold. Bill. Yes. People do things and just like every other corporation, like you complained about the subordinates, they can't even keep the pool at the right temperature. I got to do everything myself.
- [26:53]
Eric G. Wilson
I know. He's so exasperated.
- [26:55]
Dan Moran
Yeah, nice cold Bill.
- [26:57]
Eric G. Wilson
I love the fact that he calls him Bill. That's very funny.
- [27:00]
Dan Moran
I think you have to test the pool water before you start doing your nefarious deals.
- [27:04]
Eric G. Wilson
Exactly. Yeah.
- [27:06]
Dan Moran
So we've mentioned this a little bit, but I want to get your take on this. You say the film is expressionistic and it's initially confusing. Very much so. In the beginning, and I did not know this until I read your book, I thought this was fascinating. You tell the story of Robert o' Brien who's the president of mgm, thinking that Borman's off script innovations were insane to the point where he was actually calling in a psychiatrist. So talk about that moment. And, and what did he find so bizarre and upsetting about Borman's decisions, which we think are unbelievable.
- [27:37]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah. So, so first of all we have to, to know that Borman was a made man for MGM because he had Lee Marvin's protection. And at this point, Lee Marvin was the biggest movie star in the world. He just won his Academy Award for Cat Ballou and he just finished filming Dirty Dust. He wasn't. He was huge star. He's. And he, he took Borman under his wing and he said he gets final cut. So o', Brien, when he saw some of the, the changes to the script that Borman was making, for instance, to give you one example, when the, the walker finds his wife Lynn dead from a pill overdose with, with Pills. He walks back out of her bedroom into a room that had furniture in it like 30 seconds before, and now it's totally empty. And that's just one of several moments in that sequence where these changes in the space take place with no explanation whatsoever. And o' Brien thought, what are you doing? But all this came out of Borman and Marvin collaborating on the set of making up as they went along. So that's one thing. Two, Borman was used to shooting in black and white. The film he had made before, Catch us if you can, about The Dave Clark 5 was shot in this glorious black and white. Before he shot that film, he was a documentary filmmaker at BBC. Shot mostly. Mostly in black and white. So he wanted to shoot in black and white. Then just says, no, you have to shoot in color. He goes, okay, fine. I still want a monochrome palette. So his idea was that each scene would basically be shot in different shades of one color. So the scene with Lynn early on, everything's a shade of gray. The scene in Carter's office, every. Everything is green. All the different men in the different suits are green. And Brian said, you can't do this. This, of course, Borman knew that when you. The film underwent the emulsion, that some greens would be gray, some would be purple. And it actually looks really interesting. So. So these were two examples of things that. That o' Brien just thought, this is crazy. You can't make a film this way. So he wanted to have grounds for firing Borman, but he knew this was tricky business because he had Marvin protecting Borman. So the psychiatrist. That doesn't sound true. I have to tell you, it sounds like something, I don't know, exaggerated a little bit. But. But I can see for sure the, the. The. The studio suits said, we got to get this guy out of here. He's ruining our film. And they thought that the whole time. I mean, even through final cut, they thought, this is a stinker.
- [30:05]
Dan Moran
The organization did not want this guy.
- [30:07]
Eric G. Wilson
Did not like it.
- [30:08]
Dan Moran
Yeah, well, you know, what is it you say, o'? Brien? He didn't see the gusto. He didn't see the gusto.
- [30:12]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, that's right. He definitely didn't see the gusto.
- [30:15]
Dan Moran
Yeah. So let's. Let's talk about the ending. You mentioned this before. We think we're in familiar territory. Even when we see the poster. We'll talk about the advertising in a few minutes. But you think you know what you're in for, Right? Even when I went to see this for the first time, I had read The Hunter. So I thought I knew what I was in for. And the delight of it is that it's. Oh, it's kind of the Hunter, but it's kind of not right. So we think we're in familiar territory, right. Walker's arranges new drops so he can get the money. He finds that he's been used by this other gangster, Fairfax, who the first time you see him, you think. The first time you think he's a cop or something, or he's an undercover or something like that. But no, he's Fairfax, a guy who signs checks, as Carol o' Connor says, right? He finds out he's been used by this guy to take out the big players in the organization. And you compare this to the usual suspects. You compare this to the end of Fight Club, and the audience might be scratching its collective head like the whole movie's, I want this money, I want this money. And we kind of think it's there. We've been suspicious because of what happened at the. At the drain ditch when it was all the paper money. Funny, you know, the papers up, but he just kind of retreats into the shadows. And you can imagine the original audience going, what the heck is going on? So I think it's a great ending. What do you think?
- [31:21]
Eric G. Wilson
I love it. Well, so, so, so first of all, yes, I mean, the Fairfax character who shows up early on and is feeding this information, he shows. Every time Walker faces a member of the organization, Fairfax shows up and he does look like he's a cop. Borman's likened him to Merlin the Magician, someone who's just sort of, kind of always magically there. And so Walker is fighting against the organization. He's moving up, moving up to the top. And you think he might actually overturn the whole organization and finally get his money. And then at the end, you realize that Fairfax has been using him the whole time, that Fairfax is the head of the organization. He wants all his competition killed or put out of the way. And Walker has allowed that to happen. So it really is like for Usual Suspects, the whole film, you're kind of siding with Chaz Palminteri, his policeman interrogating the Kevin Spacey character. Like, wow, he's smart. He's going to figure this out. Out. And then in the film, you realize he. He just, no, this was the guy you wanted and you. This was Kaiser Soja. You just let him go. And you're similar with the Fight Club. You realize that Norton character is the Brad Pitt character. In any case, what you see what you feel at the end of Point Blank is like there have been two concurrent narratives. The narrative that we've been watching, but then this other narrative that Fairfax has been aware of and is revealed at the end. And this, of course, is the same moment where Walker realizes this too. And when Fairfax says, here's your money down here. Walker's up above in Fort Point, walking around on the balconies. Of course, we don't know if the money's real or not, because, as you say, Walker was tricked in the storm drain. So instead of even going down to check out whether money's real, instead of shooting Fairfax, which he could do, he has his gun. He just slowly fades into the shadows. It's one of the more ambiguous endings, really, in any film. And I feel like we can read it many ways, and here's some that I suggest. I feel like one way to read it is that because Walker has been so bent on finding one kind of identity, the man who will get his money back and be whole when he realizes that's all been a sham, it's almost like I want to annihilate myself. I just want to fade back in the shadows from which I emerge and just sort of be. Be gone one way. That's kind of a negative read almost. I call it kind of like a suicidal impulse. Not literal suicide, but just I want to erase my ego because what I thought was true was. Was profoundly not true. But you can also see it as a kind of transcendence because once he fades into the shadows, the camera rises up from Fort Point, which is near Alcatraz, and then pans over with, through an aerial shot to Alcatraz, which is, of course, where this all started, suggesting a kind of transcendence, a kind of rising above. Of all the trauma and the. And the revenge, I feel like those are the two, to me, the two most compelling ways to read it at the end. A third way would be that this whole film has been a dream. Some have argued this, that it's a little bit like Occurrence at album. Owl Creek Bridge by Amber Beerus, where it's all a dream of Walker in his prison cell. And now he's just kind of waking up from the dream, and now the story's over. I don't find that so convincing because you would think if it were a dream, it would be more of a wish fulfillment, which is true of the soldier's dream and current salary bridge. Like, I'm gonna go back to my wife. This is not a wish fulfillment dream.
- [34:51]
Dan Moran
This.
- [34:51]
Eric G. Wilson
This is A nightmare.
- [34:53]
Dan Moran
And it's so strange at the end, though, because Lee Marvin, as we, you know, he's this force of nature that comes barreling through the. Through the film, but for Retreat in the Darkness, that's all. Like, you would think that was somebody who was afraid to. To, like, tangle with these folks. And then, of course, Fairfax says, just leave the money, and, and they're going to go back in the helicopter. And you're like, wait a minute. Like, was he afraid of those guys? Was he afraid? But the, but the, The. The second gunman, you know, the grassy knoll guy, he's there with Fairfax, so I. I don't think he's afraid. It's just such a strange thing for Lee Marvin, of all people, to do.
- [35:22]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, I see. I actually see it as a move of. Of strength, strength of restraint. I. I feel. I feel like he.
- [35:30]
Dan Moran
He.
- [35:31]
Eric G. Wilson
He now understands. And instead of like, okay, I can play into their trap, which. And. And he probably would have been shot because the sniper is up there hiding. I feel like, this restraint. I'm just. I'm just gonna. I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna pull back. It's. There's something beautiful and graceful about that pull. It's one of my favorite moments of the film. It's so quiet, but it's just gorgeous to look at this extremely strong man who's been so forward, pounding, clipping, clumping the whole film. Just. There's a kind of calm and a kind of tranquility to it.
- [36:03]
Dan Moran
Yeah, it's like what Portia argues in the Merchant Event is the quality of mercy is not strained. He's supposed to be. You're stronger by. By not showing your strength.
- [36:11]
Eric G. Wilson
Yes, yes.
- [36:11]
Dan Moran
Than you are by showing it. So. So. So we've gone through the film. Let's talk about how it was marketed and sold. I think this is fascinating. The chapter about the marketing of this film reminded me of a film I love, which is John Huston's film, wise adaptation of Flannery o' Connor's novel. Same, same deal. New Line Cinema had no idea how to market that film, and they sold it as, like, this comedy about the South. What happened with Point Blank at mgm? Because it seems like this movie would be very easy to market if you fudged a little bit. And so talk about the marketing and the selling of this movie.
- [36:45]
Eric G. Wilson
Well, so even though. Even though Borman had final cut, the head. The head of editing at mgm, I want to say Edna Booth. It may be Edith Booth. I may not get the first name correct. She'd been editing films since the silent era and everybody totally trusted her, her, her opinion. So Borman says, she sat with me and all the suits in a, in a film room. She had her, like a little electric heater. She was heating her feet. And everyone thought she would hate it. And everyone thought that if she came down hard on it, that would yet again give them the option of at least recutting it, because they thought it was. They thought it was going to. Entirely. But she loved it. She said, you know, you don't change anything about this film. If you do, it's over my dead body. So basically, Borman got to make the film that he wanted to make. So what did MGM do? MGM thought, all right, what in this film can sell? Well, we got a lot of violence. Even though Lee Marvin doesn't actually kill anyone. We can, we can, in the trailer, we can show him shooting the phone. And we have, even though there's no real sex, we have scenes between men and women which seem kind of sexy and also kind of violent. So they really push the sex and sadism angle. Walker comes in trying to find Mal and finds his wife, Lynn. He pushes her aside from the door to try to find Mal. It's not wanton violence. He's simply trying to get her out of the way. But you see that on the poster. You, you see him throwing her down, basically. And you see her on the poster lying down. Yes, in, in another scene. So basically Marvin is cast in, in, in the paper and you know, in, in the, the paper publish the posters and in the, in the trailer as a kind of sexual sadist who, who's. Who's out to hurt women and, and, and for sexual pleasure. And the film's not that at all. But that's what the poster is all about. And the, and the, the trailer is all about that as, as well. The, the, the gap between the publicity and the actual film is wide as it is.
- [38:55]
Dan Moran
Yeah. I want to read you that. What it says on the poster here. This is how it was sold. It says there are two kinds of people in his uptight world. His victims and his women. And sometimes you can't tell them apart.
- [39:04]
Eric G. Wilson
There you go. There you go.
- [39:06]
Dan Moran
You know, the last thing he's. The last thing he is is in Othello, bent on revenge for, for being cuckold at her. That's not who he is at all.
- [39:14]
Eric G. Wilson
No, no. I mean, he. Not, not, not in the way he wants. When you get a sense he wants to reconnect with his wife. I mean, when he finds her dad, the way he puts his, his takes his wedding ring he's still wearing and puts it on her finger so gently. It's extremely touching. So no, it's, I mean the film, the film didn't do that poorly. It made about 9 million, which is not, it wasn't a blockbuster. But we have to remember that Marvin was going up against himself that year because Aldrich's Dirty Dozen was released the same year. And so the Aldrich Marvin beat out the Borman Marvin a little bit. And also that was the year Bonnie and Clyde came. Came out, which took up a lot of cultural space for thinking about violence and sexuality.
- [39:58]
Dan Moran
And the Aldrich. I'm sorry, yeah, the Aldrich Marvin is the more like, that's more. That's like the hundred proof Marvin. That's. There's no vulnerability in the Dirty Dozen.
- [40:07]
Eric G. Wilson
Exactly. And that's, that's the, that's the great Marvin. He who first comes out. I think maybe in the professionals we start getting the. I'm cynical, I'm sardonic, I'm very good at what I do do. I'm, I've got a sense of humor. The kind of Hemingway esque, grace under pressure male hero which he kind of started developing back in the 50s even, or early 60s rather in this TV show called M Squad where he plays a Chicago policeman. But here he is, as you say, he, he's, he's kind of that character in Point Blank. But, but no, I mean the, that, that, that tough exterior keeps getting compromised.
- [40:46]
Dan Moran
You mentioned that the film grossed about $9 million. How was it, how was it critically received and how was its reputation grown over time, you think?
- [40:54]
Eric G. Wilson
So its reviews were good to mixed. Like for instance, Roger Egbert gave it three out of four stars. He said, I love the pulpy elements, basically. I love the violence. I love the kind of energy of the masculinity. And Bosley Crowther for the New York Times said kind of the same thing. So the early reviews almost all said we like the violence, we like the Marvin that we've seen before. But what is this weird fragmentation stuff? What is this weird flashback stuff? This doesn't make sense at all. So almost no critic, First American Run praised the more experimental parts of the film. Some critics criticize, other critics said, not really interested. But then what happens is this. The film gets released in France a year later. 68. And the French critics take the opposite attack, more or less. They start saying, oh, this, this experiment stuff is fantastic. This is amazing. And. And that's when the film really started getting some pretty serious critical clout as a work of art and not just a work of pulp, but nonetheless, the film kind of faded out of consciousness until the 80s when, say, someone like Brian, you know, Brian De Palma said, oh, one of my guilty pleasures is Point Blank. And then in the early 90s, you have Michael Mann and you have Steven Soderbergh, you know, Quentin Caron, Tarantino, all championing this movie and admitting that they're profoundly influenced by this movie. So that's when the movie really started making a comeback. And. And I think now everyone would consider it a classic, certainly the British Film Institute does. But it took a long time for the film to get there and a long time for the film to get its audience.
- [42:35]
Dan Moran
Yeah, you. It's funny you mentioned Steven Soderbergh and Torn Tina, but especially Sorterberg. I mean, you watch his movies and. And Point Blank Blank is. The fingerprints are all over him. Like.
- [42:44]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:45]
Dan Moran
Movie like out of Sight, where you see, like, you know, where you. The different flashbacks going on at once and the non. Diegetic sound and all those things. I mean, it's right there from Point Blank.
- [42:53]
Eric G. Wilson
Absolutely. And that's true of the Limey too, which is really a British. Not a. Well, a British Walker, a remake of Point Blank. Soderbergh does the commentary with Borman on. On the dvd Point Blank. And it's really. Soderbergh loves Borman. It's really fascinating. You can learn a lot about both guys from listening to that commentary. I really highly recommend watching the film with that commentary playing.
- [43:17]
Dan Moran
That's great. So, last question. You know, so this is. This is one of your. Your, you know, your. Your favorite movies, one of your pet projects. And when we love movies like this, like, love, it can be irrational. We just. We just can't sometimes even articulate 100% why we love this movie. Right. We try to share that love with other people. What kind of funny reactions have you gotten from other people? Like, have you ever showed this to students or friends or family? And so you got to watch this movie because people react in a lot of different ways to movies. Right. Can you talk about that? Sure.
- [43:45]
Eric G. Wilson
So I'll just. I'll just leave back and quickly say that I didn't see the film until 2017. I saw it fairly in life, even though I was a Marvin fan my whole life. My dad was a huge Marvin fan growing up. We'd watch Dirty Dust all the time. So I felt. I came. I came to the film late and fell in love with it for very personal reasons. And so yes, it's a film that is sacred to my heart. I did show it to a group of students and colleagues just a week ago in relation to my, to my book coming out out and they were good sports but, but, but I really feel like this is the kind of film that on first watch doesn't really pull you in. I feel like there's. You have to work so hard to kind of figure out what's going on from scene to scene to scene. It's just, it's hard to get some kind of synoptic sense of the movie and, and the emotional power of the film I think doesn't. It is kind of tapped down by that because you're working so hard cognitively understand what the hell is going on. So I'll say that for the most part with my wife and my good friends I've shown it to everyone and I've sat there. You're a little anxious always. I didn't like it. I think people have been surprised at how interesting it is. They weren't expecting this. They were expecting a kind of pulpy shoot em up and then when they start seeing the kind of psychological depth and the subtlety they're interested and I would say half of the people I've shown it to recently, recently have gone back and watched it again and then they say oh, I get it now.
- [45:15]
Dan Moran
Well that's a high compliment.
- [45:17]
Eric G. Wilson
Just like that. Yes. Some films like, well we're like Hiroshima on Amor. I mean some of, some of those great new way films are amazing but for me anyway, the first watch just sometimes I don't get hit watch it a second or third time.
- [45:31]
Dan Moran
Yeah, the first time I saw it, like I mentioned before I wanted to see the Hunter.
- [45:36]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah.
- [45:37]
Dan Moran
And I was like well obviously it's going to be Lee Barb and it's going to be. And then I'm like wait a minute. And it's kind of off putting but then when I watch it a few more times like oh this is great. Like this is great in its own right. It doesn't owe anything to the Hunter. It's not what that's trying to do. It's just. But it's, it takes a couple shots.
- [45:50]
Eric G. Wilson
Yeah, it does, it does. And I encourage your listeners to give it, give it a try. It's. It's a special film. It's a one of a kind film.
- [45:57]
Dan Moran
It's well worth it. Absolutely. So Eric Wilson, it's been great talking with you today. Point Blank is published by Bloomsbury. It's available wherever books are sold. It's a great book about a great film. It was a great talk conversation. Eric, thanks for coming on the show.
- [46:10]
Eric G. Wilson
I had such a good time. I really appreciate you having me on.