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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:19]
B
Hi, everybody. I'm Dan.
- [01:20]
C
And I'm Mike.
- [01:21]
B
So welcome back for the triumphant return of 15 minute film fanatics. We're very excited this week. What movie are we doing, Mike?
- [01:27]
C
20Th century.
- [01:28]
B
Now, the premise, if you haven't heard the show before, is that Mike and I watch movies separately and talk about them on the show for the first time. We, one of us will recommend a movie to the other guy. We watch it and we don't discuss it till we hear, in part one, we always talk about our overall take in the movie. So today, 20th Century, 1934, directed by, of course, Howard Hawks, written by Charles Bruce Mullahan. Well, he actually wrote the play called the Napoleon of Broadway, which we'll talk about later as a great title, but of course, rewritten by Ben hecht and Charles MacArthur, the same guys that wrote his Go Friday. The movie has a lot of the same energy, Mike. You just saw it. Part one. Overall, 20th century.
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C
Go, man. Ben Hecht can write a screenplay.
- [02:07]
B
Sure can.
- [02:08]
C
This is. This is a tour de force of a movie. This is just a feat of strength. I mean, the only thing missing from it being a real feat of strength is that the whole thing doesn't take place on a train. But enough takes place on a train that it's kind of like that second Wolverine movie. You know, you're just trapped and there's nowhere to go, but it's never claustrophobic. This is. What do you even say? I mean, it falls into a sub genre of movies that we talk about a lot, which are movies about the struggle of art. This is kind of like if the Marx Brothers tried to do the Red Shoes or something, you know, you might get something like 20th century. It's absolutely full of jokes. It's like. And some of which don't even hit you until they've been over for about 20 seconds. That's, you know, that's the Howard Hawks ethos, is you're always 20 seconds late to the joke. And, you know, you're too behind this movie, though. Okay? I love Carol Lombard. We could talk about Carol Lombard all day and her very short career and the many wonderful movies that she made in that time. But, oh, my goodness, does this movie not work without John Barrymore? Like, I don't know how you even find somebody like a John Barrymore to explode like that.
- [03:16]
B
We always say that so and so inhabits a role like, you know what I mean? Al Pacino inhabits the role of Todd, but. But, like, he really, really does. I mean, even his hair gives the performance lifetime. And one thing I thought. And I know I'm interrupting your part one, but one thing I thought was that, you know, there's that great moment in the Departed. Stay with me. There's a great moment in the departed where Leonardo DiCaprio is in the bar and he has to pretend he has to start a fight with that guy on purpose so he gets thrown into jail because he's really a cop and stuff like that. And there's a great moment where Scorsese just shows his face and he kind of, like, works himself up to get ready to punch, hit the guy with the glass in the face. And you just see that intensity. That's an unbelievably great moment of the Departed, this movie. He has that intensity. John Barrymore, for 90 minutes. How did he not have a heart attack making this movie with no breaks?
- [04:03]
C
And I think the brilliant thing is, I mean, John Barrymore is not. Not even a comedian, really, is he? I mean, he's.
- [04:09]
B
It.
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C
He is truly the great Shakespearean actor. Just absolutely unleashed, is the. Is the only way you could say it. It's as though there's something holding his energy back. And then at the beginning of this movie, they just say, go, go. And they do a thousand great things. I'll just pick One, you know, which is that you don't really see him for the first 15 or 20 minutes. You know, he's. He's alluded to.
- [04:31]
B
You see the billboard.
- [04:33]
C
He. He's hiding. You see the billboard, you. You know who he is. He's. He's the great Mr. Jaffe. But he makes that Darth Vader entrance, and it's so unbelievably brilliant. It's very difficult to kind of pick apart what's going on in this movie because it's so perfect. It's like. It's a beautiful, smooth surface, and it's very difficult to get your fingers into. It's kind of one of those movies where it's like, should we even do a podcast about this? Because all you can say is, you know, that moment was great. You're like, we're like Chris Farley on SNL doing interviews with Paul McCartney, you know, just telling him what we like.
- [05:07]
B
Well, the first time you see him, it's funny. You said the Darth Vader entrance is before. Before he enters on the stage. Remember, the first shot is we see the billboard, so you get all the smoke that's been blown up. You know, his rear end, his whole. But then the first shot, remember, is him lying on the floor with his quill. And then he gets up and puts out his scarf and his cane. I mean, I mentioned before His Girl Friday, and you re. You remember, obviously, that the guy that plays Owen o' Malley is Roscoe Kearns, and he plays one of the reporters with Cary Grant, His Girl Friday. But it's got that. It's almost like this movie was called Screaming and Yelling, and then the sequel is His Girl Friday, and that's, of course, called screaming and yelling 2. The screaming continues. But it's so, so great, like you said before about the artist, and let's talk about that for a little bit. This movie has him as the perfect control freak. Like, the first time he starts doing the bit with the chalk, and you're like, later. And they cut back to all the chalk there on the floor, and he sends the guy out at midnight to get the chalk. He's like, there isn't any chalk. OJ Are the public schools not open? He is. He is truly like the director as God. Like, what? His directions are hilarious. Like when he says to her, that is the way an iceman would enter the house. And the old house does not. Yo. The old south does not y. You realize within a couple of minutes that really he wants to just play every part, which he does, of course.
- [06:22]
C
Yeah. When he wants to do the lines, right?
- [06:25]
B
He wants to do every single reading. And of course, the great thing about the movie is that he takes Mildred Plotka and creates Lily Garland. And just like, of course, Frankenstein, right. He creates this thing he can't control. So Act 2 is all about her becoming too big for him and he has to kind of get her back on the train. But here's what's cool about this movie. He's. He's an absolute egomaniac, but he's not a narcissist. He's still super charming. He's still very funny. There's a big movie everyone's talking about now, Marty Supreme. Have you seen Marty Supreme?
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C
No.
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B
It's. It's very, very bad. Everyone's going on about it, and it's. And it's. When I saw it, I thought to myself, it's the valorization of narcissism. It's just about an unlikable, terrible person valorized somehow for his narcissism. And people will say, you just didn't get it. I got it perfectly. I got it within 10 minutes, this movie. He's an egomaniac, but he's still so funny and likable that even if he walks off screen for five seconds, you're like, when's he coming back?
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C
One of the things that you. That you pick up is that the difference between the artist and everybody else is that other people see obstacles. And so, you know, when he. When he says, like, are the public schools not open? Like, all I want you to do so that I can do this is, I want you to go get me a piece of chalk. Go get me a piece of chalk. And it seems like such a reasonable request, but quote, unquote, normal people, all they see is, well, that won't work. It's. This is unreasonable, right? And the. The artist is in some way unreasonable, but that makes him both likable and unlikable, because an unreasonable person has no boundaries. If you can't see obstacles, you cannot be impaired by them, but you cannot also obey them, right?
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B
He is literally beyond reason. Because when Max Jacobs. Oh, change your name from Max Mendelbaum. When Max Jaco, you know, he gets a new Somerset mom play. He's a big producer and stuff. So OJ's having all these terrible runs. He tries to do Joan of Arc. He has to sneak out of Chicago dressed as the sets of Robert E. Lee. So good all that stuff's going on, right? But he doesn't think it has anything to do with him. His very reasonable business manager, who's also so good. The ensemble cast in this is so good. His business manager says, you know, you have to do something people will like. No, no, you don't understand. So as an artist, yes, he is beyond reason. Everyone else around him is trying to be reasonable, but he says, no, no, no, now we're going to do it. Of course he says, we're going to do the Passion Play.
- [08:46]
C
And of course, I mean, okay, when he plays every part, he does it well. That's. Which is the problem. It's that John. The spectacle of John Barrymore trying to be the servant and the other. And the other people. And like, actually his blocking is perfect and his diction is perfect and it starts to work. And so the question is, like, how unreasonable is he? And how. How can things be dialed up to such a pitch that his reasonableness, like, when he's spot on, it's so brilliant. And then when he's. When he's not, it's just cringeworthy. Awful. This is like if, you know, if Michael was actually funny in the Office, you know, this is about somebody who is doing things to make you cringe and be over the top. But of course, it's John Barrymore.
- [09:33]
B
Well, of course, the whole joke of Michael Scott in the Office is that Michael's. Michael thinks he's funny, but of course he's not. The funny people are the people all around him. Right? And it's kind of like the same thing going on here, right? Like, John Barrymore in this movie does not think he is funny at all.
- [09:49]
C
No, he doesn't. He. He sees himself as a great tragic figure, but the. The inverse is true, which is that by being a great tragic figure, he's a great comic figure. I mean, think about. Think about how difficult it would be to do that dying scene if you did that dying. If you played it funny, it wouldn't be funny. But if you play it tragic, it's hilarious, right?
- [10:12]
B
Which is, of course, why as soon as she signs the contract that he leaps up and he's flashing the contract around. It's so great because he still sucks you in. You're still on his side.
- [10:21]
C
It's the triumph of the scoundrel. Welcome back. In Part two, we always talk about our key scenes. Dan, what do you got?
- [10:30]
B
I mentioned before the great ensemble. And of course, when they get on the train, there's all these great characters, right? To the conductor, to the assistant conductor, to the little crazy man who's putting Stickers all over the place that says repent. And I want to talk about something that happens with the Oberammergau players, which are the two guys from Germany with the big beards, right, who do the passion play every 10 years. So when they come in and they try to hit him up for money and the business manager tries to throw him out, Jaffe says, they are the only true actors we have, not like our cheap Broadway hams. And I want to think about that, because what is so great about this movie is that this movie has, like, hamming as a mode of expression. And that's exactly why Oscar's so funny. It's why Carol Lombard is so funny. The bit players don't really ham it up. The guy that plays, you know, his business manager and the. And the press agent, they're always. They're always deadpan. They're always trying to be very, very calm in the storm. But the great thing of the movie is that especially John Barrymore is so hammy all the time. And of course, that's seen both in his actions, like his suicide attempt when he's going to jump out the window, which he knows he's not going to do it, but also his phrases, right? So I started writing them down when I was watching again, like, you, Hoboken Cinderella, stay where you are, Judas Iscariot, you foul Corsican. He says, the sorrows of life are the joys of art. And he gets her, and he says, you are at the foot of the golden stair. When she goes to the play with Max Jacobs, remember, he takes the black paint and he throws it up there, right? That's. Again, he's constantly hamming. And of course, his great line he says throughout the movie is, what?
- [12:05]
C
I must close the iron curtain on you.
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B
The iron door. He says, I close the iron door on you. And he says it very slowly, to the point where I love when Oliver, the business manager, goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, the iron door. Because he keeps firing him. So what I love about this movie is that we all know that being a ham is a bad thing. Obviously, we don't want to see ham actors, you know, Obviously. But that's how he communicates. You never get to see, for almost 10 seconds, like, the real Oscar Jaffe because he's just a giant ham, and he's constantly doing it. And that, of course, is what makes the movie so funny.
- [12:40]
C
It's depressive mania, but inhabited in an art form and spread throughout multiple people. Because, of course, Carole Lombard and her character, she doesn't see obstacles either.
- [12:53]
B
Right?
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C
At first she does. At first she does. But she becomes everything he is and more, which is. She's like a sponge ready to take it in. And so it's not that I think that's important because I think what the. What's going on in the movie is that that kind of mode of expression is not unique to him. It's not like he came out of the womb, you know, and. And got his feather quill and put his. You know, and put his scarf on. So when she inhabits the same mode as him, she. She ceases to see obstacles, but she also ceases to see boundaries at the same time. And so it's. It's more of a. A mode of being than it is a uniquely personal thing.
- [13:35]
B
Which is, of course, why some of the best scenes are when he's in the training department with her and she starts kicking him. And he keeps backing up, but he starts, like, where it's like, totally. Like it's a completely even boxing match. So what's your moment?
- [13:48]
C
Mine is when he's gonna go confront her lover, who I think is named George or something like that. Bill. He's gonna go throw a grenade in their relationship. And he knows it. But he's afraid, because the kid is young that he might get rough because he's gonna get worked up. So he puts a fake sling on. And he has to remind him several times that he's got a sling on. Which is. It's the one exception to his kind of no obstacles, no boundaries rule. Which are. He knows that he doesn't have any boundaries, but other people do. And I think that one of the things that makes him even funnier is his sensitivity to other people's boundaries and what they will or will not do.
- [14:25]
B
Because, of course, the reason he has no boundaries, as we said before, is because it's all in the name of art. Like, are you, like you say a writer said, are you sure you're gonna do that? Well, it's for art. It's for the sake of my art.
- [14:36]
C
You can't keep a foot in both worlds. If you can see the invisible world. If you can come up with the Magdalene. And he, you know, rolls out and.
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B
He starts acting like the camel. Yes.
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C
He says, we're gonna get real sand for the production, which we'll have it shipped in from the Holy Land. He wants to know if anybody knows the Emperor of Turkey's name because he wants to borrow the Dervishes, you know, the sword dancers. And he knows that the two are such Philistines that they A, won't know the name of the Emperor of Turkey, and B, won't know how to ask for the Dervishes. But to him, the Dervishes are the same as chalk, right?
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B
It's just something I need.
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C
Now, it's easy to judge that. But again, imagine you were walking around in VR goggles with headphones on. If you were walking around in VR goggles and headphones on, you would be able to see things that I couldn't see, but at the same time, you could not see what I see. You would. You would bump and you would trip and you would be a menace and a hazard to all and sundry, but you would inhabit a universe of your own that only you could interact with. And I think that that's the experience of dealing with this film. Welcome back. So in Part three, we always talk about the ending or the title or the key takeaways. I don't know where you want to start. Maybe the ending.
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B
Sure, we could do the ending. I'll mention this about the title really quickly to go back to what you said earlier. You know, this movie does move like a train, but of course, it's a runaway train. The original title of the play, you know, the Napoleon of Broadway. Well, that's a lot more indicative of what the movie's about. But let's talk about the ending. You mentioned something before. You mentioned a quotation that I wrote down because I think that the movie ends twice. It's got its thematic ending and then it's got, like its screwball ending, right? So the thematic ending is when he says, you know, if you don't come with me, I'll cut my throat. And she says, if you did, grease paint would run out of it. And she has that one moment, like you said before, where they kind of like, focus in a little bit, and she says, that's the trouble with you, Oscar, with both of us. We're not people, we're lithographs. We don't know anything about love unless it's written and rehearsed. We're only real in between curtains. Now, that's kind of like the thematic ending, right? Is that we talked before about hamming as a mode of expression that to them everything is drama. So in our real lives, when people say, stop being so dramatic, they really mean stop being so melodramatic, right? But also it means that, like, the way you are behaving and the way you are carrying on is more appropriate to a melodramatic 19th century play about you know, the shooting on the lawn. She has that epiphany about herself and about him, and it's there. But to Howard Hawks's credit, it's over in a second. And then you get that here we go again ending where he's drawing the chalk all over again. So I think it's cool that Howard Hawks get. If it ended just at the first part, then you would say, that's a. That's a strange, sentimental ending. Like, with this epiphany. Like, what are we reading Dubliners? Like, no, it's got to end with him doing this. Because of course, when they're back on the stage and he says again, like, I just want you to know that I love all of you. No matter what I say, you know, he's gonna start screaming at them all. So it's kind of like one of those, here we go again. Except now, of course, she's screaming back at him. Unlike the beginning, of course.
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C
But the truth is, okay, there's. There's more truth in this movie. It's a screwball comedy. But, you know, Carolyn Bard's rise to fame, for example, started. I think she was recruited when she was a teenager or something. Somebody thought she was pretty.
- [17:48]
B
She was Mildred Plotka, wanted to put.
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C
Her in the movie.
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B
She.
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C
The. That is the point. She was Mildred Plotka. She was married to Gary Cooper. And someone else before that, super famous.
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B
The same thing.
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C
William Powell. It was like William Powell and then Gary Cooper.
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B
And the same thing happened to Ava Gardner. Someone saw her picture in a photography studio and said, who's that? And she becomes Ava Gardner.
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C
So there's something in which real pain does make good movies. And I think that that's encapsulated in the way that he gets her to scream, if you remember her screams.
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B
No.
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C
Good. So he does all the parts and sets her up and gets her guard down. And then he sticks her with a pin and she keeps the pin. And so I think that the movie is allowing. There actually is an epiphany somewhere. But it's on the outer edge of this movie, which is that Hollywood is messed up, show business is messed up. These people are messed up. And that's. That's acknowledged in the pin and the fact that she keeps the pin. But then you can also sentimentalize the pin because after her epiphany, when she hears that he's dying, like Socrates, you know, and he's. He's making his final dispersions and wishes, she's right next to him. And of course, she wants to sign her name to whatever piece of paper. And so she's. She's roped in, because there's a sort of center of gravity about drama, but it comes from actual lived experience. But uncontextualized lived experience is funny. Or I was watching a documentary on Mr. Bean, of all people, and I think he quoted Charlie Chaplin when he said that life is a tragedy in close up, but as soon as you pan out, it's a comedy. Because what we actually want is for a select period of time, a short period of time, is to ride on the train, but you wouldn't want to lay down on the tracks.
- [19:43]
B
Thanks for listening, everybody. We hope you enjoyed our conversation about 20th century. It's a great, great movie. Even if you've seen it 100 times, it's worth a rewatch. You can find both of our stuff on Substack Mike, what's yours?
- [19:54]
C
The Grumbler's Almanac.
- [19:55]
B
And you can find me at Pages and Frames. They're both free. You subscribe, you get. You get the whole archive for each of us. You could also find us wherever you get podcasts. If you could leave us a rating or subscribe to the podcast, that helps us out a lot, too. Thanks for listening, everybody.
- [20:08]
C
We'll see you next time. And we take suggestions.
- [20:11]
B
I close the iron door on you.