The King of Physical Media. Plus: The 10 Best Blu-rays of 2024.

Summary

The Big Picture: Episode Summary

Title: The King of Physical Media. Plus: The 10 Best Blu-rays of 2024
Host/Author: The Ringer
Release Date: December 11, 2024
Guests: Tracy Letts

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Introduction

In this episode of The Big Picture, hosted by Sean Fennessy, acclaimed playwright and actor Tracy Letts joins the conversation to delve deep into the world of physical media collecting. The discussion explores Letts' extensive movie collection, his passion for cinephilia, and insights into the evolving landscape of physical media in the digital age.

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Tracy Letts’ Background

Tracy Letts, a Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright, shares his lifelong connection to movies, which began in his childhood. Growing up in a culturally rich household in southeastern Oklahoma, Letts was exposed to a variety of films from a young age, fostering his deep appreciation for cinema.

Tracy Letts [05:05]: "Yeah, it starts really young. My folks were both English teachers and the house was filled with books and records. They put a real emphasis on culture and the arts and creativity."

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Entry into Physical Media Collecting

Letts discusses how his journey into physical media began during a period of personal and professional challenges. His initial foray involved collecting obscure Italian thriller-horror films known as giallo.

Tracy Letts [25:35]: "So I get this book, Blood and Black Lace, which is a giallo film guide... I just made it a goal to see all these movies."

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Growth of the Collection

Over the years, Letts' collection has grown exponentially, especially during the pandemic, when access to time and resources allowed him to expand his library significantly. By leveraging online marketplaces and specialty labels, he amassed over 10,300 titles.

Tracy Letts [29:54]: "So I moved back to Chicago. My relationship with Sarah ended and I moved back to Chicago in 2001... the collection probably doubled at that point and then probably doubled or trebled after the pandemic."

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Organizational Approaches

Managing such a vast collection requires meticulous organization. Letts employs a dedicated app to catalog each item by scanning barcodes, ensuring he can efficiently locate any film within his extensive library.

Tracy Letts [33:35]: "I do... It's on an app. It's Collectorz.com."

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Impact on Family

Letts balances his passion with family life, involving his young children in the collection. His son, a budding aficionado, showcases a keen interest in kaiju films, reflecting the influence of Letts' curated selections.

Tracy Letts [50:47]: "My son is a Godzilla freak... he loves creature features."

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Current Trends in Physical Media

The conversation shifts to the resurgence of high-quality physical media formats like 4K UHD, which enhance the viewing experience and breathe new life into classic films. Letts emphasizes the artistic value of these restorations.

Tracy Letts [33:17]: "When you sit there and you look at these and you go, oh, some of these movies that were sort of crappy guilty pleasures for me are actually really good."

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Label Recommendations

Letts highlights several niche labels that are pivotal in preserving and promoting lesser-known films. Notable mentions include Radiance Films, Flicker Alley, Canadian International Pictures, and Second Run, each specializing in different genres and regions.

Tracy Letts [55:48]: "Radiance Films... A UK company specializing in forgotten cinema. I feel as a collector, a responsibility to buy everything they put out."

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Movie Recommendations

The episode features a curated list of must-have Blu-rays for 2024, with Letts recommending titles across various genres that have undergone superior restorations.

Tracy Letts [76:43]: "Invasion of The Body Snatchers [1978]... It's a great movie that I own on DVD."

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Personal Anecdotes

Letts shares personal stories about his interactions within the film industry, including collaborations with legendary directors like William Friedkin and the influence of his parents on his artistic endeavors.

Tracy Letts [78:37]: "Bill [Friedkin] was such a straight shooter and had respect for the writer. I miss him terribly. He's a great fellow."

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with Letts reflecting on the importance of physical media in maintaining a tangible connection to film history. He underscores the challenges artists face in the industry while expressing optimism about the enduring value of curated collections.

Tracy Letts [101:39]: "Artists are... I give it up for all artists everywhere. It's hard to be an artist in this country, in this culture."

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Notable Quotes

• Tracy Letts [41:56]: "Trying to fill the unfillable hole with physical media, there's lots worse ways you could go about it."
• Tracy Letts [33:39]: "It's on an app. It's Collectorz.com... They’re getting an acknowledgment here from me where you actually scan the barcode."

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Key Takeaways

• Passion for Collecting: Tracy Letts' extensive collection exemplifies a profound dedication to preserving cinematic history through physical media.
• Evolution of Formats: The shift to high-definition formats like 4K UHD has revitalized classic films, offering enhanced visual experiences.
• Niche Labels Matter: Specialized labels play a crucial role in bringing obscure and forgotten films to modern audiences with quality restorations.
• Family Integration: Letts successfully integrates his passion with family life, fostering a shared appreciation for films with his children.
• Challenges in the Industry: Despite personal and professional hurdles, Letts remains committed to his art and the preservation of cinematic works.

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of the episode, offering insights into Tracy Letts' life as a dedicated physical media collector and his perspectives on the evolving landscape of film preservation.

Transcript

[Danny Chow]

A restaurant's best dishes tell stories. Their flavors embed themselves in our memory, like song lyrics or lines from a movie. So much so that a little slice of a restaurant's story can become part of our own. I'm Danny Chow, and this is Shift Meal, a new video podcast from the Ringer where we're sharing a bite and chopping it up with chefs and restaurant people during their off hours. All episodes of Shift Meal are are out now on Ringer Food. This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Walmart. Thoughtfulness matters during the holiday season. Walmart has a huge selection of great gifts at great prices. So you can find the perfect thing for everyone on your list, like a Samsung Sound Bar for action movie fans, the Lego Sorting Hat for those who queue up a Harry Potter marathon every year, or the Fujifilm Instax camera for the aspiring cinematographers. Give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. All right, here's the thing. I'm obsessed with holiday movies. It's not just about watching a classic for the hundredth time. It's about creating the ultimate holiday lineup. With Prime, I've got access to everything. And when friends swing by for a spontaneous holiday movie night, or I'm just feeling a little peckish, extra snacks and drinks arrive at lightning speed, thanks to free fast delivery for from streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.comprime to get more out of whatever you're into. I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about physical media. I am joined today by a legend in the game, the acclaimed playwright, actor, screenwriter, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Tony Award winner, my friend, and perhaps more than anything, the king of all physical media, Tracy Letts. Hello, Tracy.

[Tracy Letts]

Hi. How are you? It's such a goddamn pleasure to be on the Big Picture. Such a pleasure.

[Danny Chow]

It's such a pleasure to have you. I've asked you here because we were connected by our mutual friend and absent brother in physical media, Tim Simons. Timothy not able to be with us today.

[Tracy Letts]

You know why?

[Danny Chow]

Why is that?

[Tracy Letts]

He's too big.

[Danny Chow]

He is getting a little big for his britches.

[Tracy Letts]

He's too big.

[Danny Chow]

He's on this Netflix show and it's a sensation, and he's blown us off. How do you feel?

[Tracy Letts]

I feel like. Do you know that now they no longer call him Tim Simons in the casting offices and at the studios, what.

[Danny Chow]

Do they call him?

[Tracy Letts]

Hitmaker. Truly not the Hitmaker. Just Hitmaker. Yeah, we have the show Nobody Wants this. In fact, we're going to call it Nobody Wants this. Get me Hit Maker.

[Danny Chow]

He has really. He's elevated every property he's been a part of, but it's amazing what he's doing now. First, streamer, too, you know, not. Not for a company that produces physical media. He's doing it for. No, I'm not going to say the Enemy, because you're a working actor as well, but.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, no, no, there are no enemies. There are no enemies.

[Danny Chow]

But will there be a 4K edition of Nobody Wants this Season 1 made available in Walmart?

[Tracy Letts]

Do they do that?

[Danny Chow]

No, they don't really do that. I do want to talk to you about that because I do have one addition that I enjoyed that came from a streamer. But anyway, you're here because, honestly, when Tim and I started doing these episodes a couple years ago.

[Tracy Letts]

Hitmaker.

[Danny Chow]

Hitmaker. Excuse me? When Hitmaker and I started doing these episodes a couple years ago, you used.

[Tracy Letts]

To call him Secret Sauce, but it turns out that referred to something else.

[Danny Chow]

He was Jonah from Veep to most people for many, many years. And now he is certified hit maker. And Tim knew I had a passion for this, and he knew you had a passion for this. I don't think I know the story of how you guys came to know each other. I don't think that was ever shared with me. Is that something you can share publicly?

[Tracy Letts]

He and I became friends on the movie Christine Antonio Campos Movie. He and I are both in that film, and we became friends because nobody else would talk to us, but so we got along.

[Danny Chow]

I know that's not true.

[Tracy Letts]

The nerds who got along with each other. And then at some point, he knew about my collection. And some point a few years later, he just kind of popped up and said, I'm thinking about getting into this. Do you have any words of wisdom? So I shared what I knew about it, and the next thing I knew, he was on your goddamn podcast talking about physical media. And I wrote to him and said, how is this possible? You just now started doing this and you asked me, and then I said, you didn't even mention my name. And he said, I thought you'd be offended. I was like, no, of course not. So that's how the introduction got.

[Danny Chow]

I mean, I honestly had a somewhat similar mentality where I was like, can I exploit this relationship with Tracy? Can he come on the show to talk about this? Because in the hallowed circles, you are considered someone who has, like, a really a profound collection. You have a Real passion for collecting movies. And when we first met, I was curious about your cinephilia, you know, your interest in movies. Obviously you've been a playwright and a screenwriter, but like, when does the relationship with movies start? 5 years old as a kid.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, it starts really young. My folks were both English teachers and the house was filled with books and records. They put a real emphasis on culture and the arts and creativity. In our house, Christmases were all books and records. Christmases. Right. And yeah, we saw a lot of movies. The folks took us to the movie theater a lot. And they were not. They weren't modern parents in that they didn't necessarily take us to see just kids. Fair. I remember vividly them taking me to see Serpico when I was 6. My boy is 6 right now. I have a 6 year old and a 3 year old and I can't imagine taking him to see Serpico. I think as memory serves, they actually took me to see Dirty Harry. But Dirty Harry was canceled that night and they were previewing Serpico at the theater.

[Danny Chow]

Wow.

[Tracy Letts]

Folks were like, wow, look at this. Serpico and I sat in the front row of the movie theater and watch Serpico so there. And we. You know, I grew up in a time when drive in movie culture was a real thing. And the town where we lived, a small town in southeastern Oklahoma, had one movie theater downtown and two drive in movie theaters. The Ship, which had a great old neon schooner out front, and the Skyview, which was a pornographic drive in. We called it the Skin View locally because you could see it as you're driving down the highway into the city. Obviously the drive ins eventually went away, but we were regulars at those theaters and in those drive ins. The only movie I ever remember my folks taking me out of was Taxi Driver at the drive in when I was 10.

[Danny Chow]

Do you remember how far into the movie it was?

[Tracy Letts]

I remember exactly. It's when Iris took Travis back to her fuck pad and my mom turned to my dad and said, I'm uncomfortable. We rented car.

[Danny Chow]

Was it that they wanted to expose you to more mature themes? Anybody who has seen one of your plays staged, perhaps knows that you're unafraid of the transgressive. Did they want you to see those kinds of things or was it just that at that time it was more common for kids to be exposed to the cinema of Sidney Lumetri?

[Tracy Letts]

I think they wanted to go to the movies and I don't think they wanted. I think they loved their kids and also didn't necessarily want to pay for a sitter. So they just took us to a lot of shit.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

And there was not a lot of. It wasn't like now in terms of kids fare. We got the occasional bedknobs and broomsticks. But, you know, Disney was at a real lull in its history when I was a kid. And of course, I'm from the last generation where we went to see the new John Wayne movie. When John Wayne movie came out, we went to the movie theater to see it. When the James Bond movie came out, we went to the movie theater to see it. You know, so I grew up on that kind of stuff too. But they were also cultured, and I saw the go between at a drive in movie theater.

[Danny Chow]

Oh, wow. That was back in the news last year when they used the score to that film right. In the Todd Haines movie.

[Tracy Letts]

And I knew it immediately when the Todd Haynes movie started, I was like, that's from the go between.

[Danny Chow]

That's so funny. So did that make you, you think a sophisticated movie consumer, or was that was there ever like a dip where sort of after your adolescence you didn't care about movies, or were you addicted from the very beginning because of those experiences?

[Tracy Letts]

I was always addicted. My older brothers, I have two older brothers, they were more into music than movies. They liked movies, but they were not the freak that I was. My grandfather took me to the drive in when I was 6 again to see Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.

[Danny Chow]

These are Hammer movies.

[Tracy Letts]

Yes, a double feature of full sentence Hammer titles. And we used to do those kinds of things. And oh, my God, what an impact that had on my life. So I was always way, way into the movies. My dad also being an English teacher at this small college in Durant, Oklahoma, he taught the only film class. So I would go to his. He would let me go as a little kid to his film class to see Battleship Potemkin or Nanook of the north were sort of the staples of.

[Danny Chow]

And how old were you watching those things? I was a kid, like 11.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. All right.

[Tracy Letts]

I was a kid.

[Danny Chow]

That's interesting because that, I mean, you know, for me personally, my exposure to all of those things was. Film class was 19, 20 years old. Having Battleship Potemkin imprinted on you at a very young age, I assume, like informs, breeds, like an intense appreciation for things. Is that fair?

[Tracy Letts]

I think so. I also remember a time when my dad did a. He did a summer seminar at University of Texas. And so he was going down to The UT campus for about six weeks. And he took me with him. I was about 13. So this was early 80s. And the UT campus at the time had so many screens on campus and also commercial screens just off campus. But every day I was seeing three movies on big screens. I saw Gone with the Wind in a packed movie theater. North by Northwest, packed movie theater. To see how those things worked in a full theater. Right. Because they were designed to work in a full theater. The timing of Some Duck Soup Night at the Opera, I saw in a packed theater. That time is really vividly imprinted. And City of Women, the Fellini movie was just out. And that was. For me, that was a real mind blower. That was like a. Oh, I didn't. It was that moment where you go, oh, I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could break the rules like that. I mean, it's not Fellini's best, God knows. But for a kid who had never seen a Fellini movie, it was mind blowing.

[Danny Chow]

So does that mean you knew you wanted to get into the world of filmmaking because of your love for these movies at these ages?

[Tracy Letts]

I wanted to be a wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, but that didn't work out. I didn't have any athletic prowess or size at that time.

[Danny Chow]

But at least you have Justin Jefferson now.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

You can at least appreciate what a true wide receiver looks like.

[Tracy Letts]

By the way, how is it possible that we've gone this far into this conversation and I haven't given you an opportunity to talk about Soto?

[Danny Chow]

I recorded an episode just this morning and I shouted him out already today.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh.

[Danny Chow]

And I'm happy to do it again. Juan Soto is a New York Met. This is one of the best things that has ever happened to me in my entire life. A player that I have always loved. Now, the last time this happened, it was Aaron Rodgers, a quarterback, maybe not a man, but a quarterback, who I really loved. Watching play. I'm sure he ruined many a Sunday for you as a lifelong Vikings fan. Yeah, I hate Aaron Rodgers, but he was. He was a magnificent quarterback. And when he came to the Jets, I was quite happy because it's been a hard time and I probably over oversold my excitement there, and it's coming back to bite me. I pray to God the same does not happen with Juan Soto. I'm elated. Honestly, Tracy, it's great news. It's great to. It's great to be with the right billionaire sometimes, you know, and I feel like in this case, we are with the right billionaire.

[Tracy Letts]

What about the rotation?

[Danny Chow]

They'll figure it out. They still have a lot of money to spend. They've got a very savvy president of baseball operations. I'm really not worried, honestly.

[Tracy Letts]

Lindor Betts. Here's the thing. I'm a Cubs fan. Can we go down this road for a second?

[Danny Chow]

We're potting.

[Tracy Letts]

I'm a Cubs fan, and so I hate the Mets. And I not only hate them, but I consider. I consider Mets fandom a kind of moral failure.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

That's right.

[Danny Chow]

Like deeply unnecessary on my show.

[Tracy Letts]

I mean, when I think of. When I think of the New York Yankees, I think of Mickey Mantle. And when I think of the Los Angeles Dodgers, I think of Koufax. And when I think of the New York Mets, I think of Lenny fucking Dykstra. What?

[Danny Chow]

Tom Seaver. Tracy.

[Tracy Letts]

Not the first person who occurs to me.

[Danny Chow]

All right, well, we have icons, too.

[Tracy Letts]

But I have to tell you that I've moved to New York a couple of years ago, and my feelings toward the Mets have softened. Now, I'm still a hardcore Cubs fan, and I still root against the Mets, but my passionate hatred for the Yankees has never been stronger. And because of that, I have to delight in the Mets sticking it to the Yankees by getting Soto.

[Danny Chow]

So is it because you've been exposed up close to the Yankee fandom that you flipped so hard on the Yankees, or was this just a lifelong distaste that the Mets seem nicer by design?

[Tracy Letts]

I've hated the Yankees my whole life. I just hate them more now that I live in New York.

[Danny Chow]

That's great.

[Tracy Letts]

And we welcome. Also, you've become a friend. And I don't like long droughts. I don't think it's good for anybody. I don't think it's good for the soul. And how long has it been since you won a world series?

[Danny Chow]

Been 38 years now. And it'll be 39 at the beginning of next season.

[Tracy Letts]

Do you remember the last one?

[Danny Chow]

I was four years old, so, yeah. See, I remember the energy is what I recall. My dad was very, very happy at that.

[Tracy Letts]

So that gets into father son shit. So how am I going to root against that?

[Danny Chow]

Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

Also, I'm a big Lindor fan. I think he's fan. How could you not be a baseball fan? I think he's fan. How can you be a baseball fan and not be a fan of that guy?

[Danny Chow]

Yeah. No, he's wonderful. And I'm so happy he has a running mate. And I have nothing bad to say about the Cubs. I rooted for you guys to win the World Series to break that curse. And I have nothing bad to say.

[Tracy Letts]

I'm a lifelong Cubs fan and Vikings fan, so fuck everybody.

[Danny Chow]

Shall I toggle back or do you do more sports? We can do as much sports as you like. I'm honestly game. I'm a sportscaster. That never was in many ways. Obviously you become this huge cinephile and you set out to have a career in the arts. And how did that go? Was that hard? Was that easy?

[Tracy Letts]

Having a career in the arts? It's incredibly hard.

[Danny Chow]

So tell me about why it was hard because I feel like it intersects a little bit with how you start to become a collector. Right.

[Tracy Letts]

So When I was 15, I did my first play, community theater play. And I was bitten by the bug early. And so I did a lot of community theater. I didn't have much of a high school theater, but what there was, I did. I did one sort of drug addled semester at college and I did theater there. But I became. I just got very deeply involved in the theater and in storytelling for the theater. I had written a couple of screenplays. They weren't any good. I tried to get them made. Moved to Dallas when I was. After my semester of college, I moved to Dallas for a couple of years and worked in the theater in Dallas. But it's not a great theater town. There is theater there. It's not a great theater.

[Danny Chow]

Were you working as an actor at that time? Were you trying to get plays staged? What were you doing?

[Tracy Letts]

I was working as an actor. I had not written any plays at that point. I was trying to, you know, they were making a lot of movies in Texas at that time. They were touting it as the third coast. And they'd built these sound stages out at Las Colinas and they made a hell of a lot of TV in Dallas and in the surrounding areas. That's the time of Tender Mercies and Places in the Heart and all these kinds of movies that were made in Texas at the time, La Bamba. And so I was trying to work in film and TV and I was failing. But I had a girlfriend who was going up to Chicago because Steppenwolf Theater Company had become nationally and internationally known because of some productions they had taken to New York. The true west they made for PBS with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise. I mean, it became a real destination point for a lot of actors who for whatever reason didn't want to go to New York and Los Angeles, who maybe wanted to just do some good theater. And so I was part of that immigration to Chicago in the mid-80s. So I was fully invested in the theater. Now I again forays into film and tv. But Chicago's just not a place where they've ever made a lot of film and tv. A lot of people have come from there and maybe have gone back there. And some have even made lives there. But still, when they shoot the bear in Chicago, they're casting from New York and Los Angeles. They're not casting much out of Chicago. So if you're in Chicago, Dennehy used to say, if you're in Chicago, you're here to do the work. You're not going to make any money. You're just here for the work. Which is because Brian Denny constantly went back to Chicago to work on stage. So it was a great theater town, but not a film and TV town. But I remained a fan and I continued to write bad screenplays and try to get things done.

[Danny Chow]

How many would you say you've written?

[Tracy Letts]

How many bad screenplays? Half a dozen. Okay, not like 50. Half a dozen bad screen movies.

[Danny Chow]

Was there ever a point where you thought, this isn't going to happen and I should stay in Chicago or I should continue on this track and this will be where I make my life forever?

[Tracy Letts]

Well, so after about 11 years in Chicago, I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 1997. And I was 32 years old. And I thought as an actor. I thought I was. Well, I was a character actor slash leading man. I played those parts in the theater. I got to Los Angeles and found that wasn't the case and I couldn't get arrested. I mean, I came here and I did some things. I did a Seinfeld episode. I did a very good episode. I did a Drew Carey show. I did these weird fucking guest stars on Profiler or Pretender. I can't remember these. Really know what I was doing.

[Danny Chow]

Network TV is you were being cast in.

[Tracy Letts]

I was being cast character roles in network guest starring parts. Network tv. I wasn't even getting auditions for series. Regular kinds of things.

[Danny Chow]

Still writing at this time.

[Tracy Letts]

Still writing now. I had had a couple of plays in Chicago that had been successful. Killer Joe and Bug. They had been very successful for the American theater, but still a kind of cult success. They never played theaters larger than 100 seats. They never made me any real money. More money than I was used to making, but never any real money.

[Danny Chow]

Was there any thought to catapulting from the notoriety of those shows to screenwriting work? You know, that kind of like, for hire style work.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, when I came to la, I took a lot of those meetings, but I. To this day, I don't know what I was thinking or they were thinking. I don't know what I was doing in those meetings. I remember going to Disney, and I think it was Disney where I had a meeting. They were making a baseball comedy called Mr. 3000. I think they eventually made the movie.

[Danny Chow]

I believe Bernie Mac is the star of that movie.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. Years after I took the meeting on it, by the way. So this had been floating around Disney for a long time. So they had me in to talk about rewriting this, and I was like, have you read Killer Joe? Have you. Have you read Bug? And the guy I was meeting with, actually, he came around the desk and he sat by me in the chair and he showed me a sheet of paper, and he had written on the sheet of paper, it was a series of names. And he said, see, these are all the people that I've told I have to meet. And after I meet them, I put a checkmark by their name. And then I've met them and I am done. I was like, oh, okay. So in other words, my being here is to just put a checkmark by the name on your list? And he said, yes.

[Danny Chow]

What a brutal industry. Okay, so demythologize that just for a second. Is that because you have an agent who has a relationship with that studio, and they're like, I've got just the guy for you. And then you step in, like John Turturro and Barton Fink, and it's all confusing. Like, why does it happen?

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know.

[Danny Chow]

If you don't know, what hope is there for any of us trying to understand how this works?

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know. I met with somebody who wanted to remake Willy Wonka again years before they did remake Willy Wonka. And I was so naive, I said, you know, there is already a movie of Willy Wonka. It's in color. It's in color. It's pretty good.

[Danny Chow]

It's pretty good. Yeah. That's very funny. So you're in Los Angeles, you're getting the network TV work. This is around when you started getting into this, right?

[Tracy Letts]

It is. So I moved here in 97 with a girlfriend. She died four months after we got here. Her name was Holly Wontuck. There's no way in a podcast I can do credit to her, her life. The impact that had on my life continues to have on my life. Within a year, I was in another relationship with Sarah Paulson. This is public record, so I don't mind saying it. And she's a dear friend of mine now, but I should not have been in a relationship. A year after this death, I was grieving. I was desperately sad. My career wasn't going anywhere. I had left artistically satisfying place in Chicago where I wasn't making any money. And I had come to Los Angeles to find that I had no currency as a writer. I had no currency as an actor. I remember vividly sitting in a movie theater watching the Talented Mr. Ripley and seeing Jude Law and Matt Damon and the talented Mr. Ripley and going, oh, that's not going to happen for me. Right. I think most artists have that moment, a moment where you go, oh, the thing I dreamed about, that I thought about. It's like, I have to adapt. You adapt or you just. Maybe adaptation means getting out of it completely. For me, it meant focusing on other things. So I was not in a good way when I was in Los Angeles, even though when I eventually went back to Chicago, they said, well, why'd you come back? Seemed like you were doing all right. And we saw you on Seinfeld. You know, it's like, yeah, it's not enough to feed the soul. So it was in that state of mind that I started to see a shrink in West Los Angeles. Is this too.

[Danny Chow]

I'm loving it.

[Tracy Letts]

All right, so this is the one we discussed.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

So I'm seeing the shrink in West Los Angeles, and I don't know how the talking cure works for you if you've ever taken it, but for me, it always changes the world. Right. If I go in feeling bad, I leave feeling maybe not better, but altered. If I go in feeling good, I leave feeling bad pretty invariably. So I would always get out of my shrink session and just feel very off kilter. And my shrink was right by Cinephile Video, which I believe is still extant. Still there, still. By the New Art Theater. Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Yes.

[Tracy Letts]

And they had eclectic sections, movie sections. Not the straight sort of drama and comedy of Blockbuster, but Nasty Nuns or, you know, Trouble on the highway or whatever the fuck.

[Danny Chow]

Great curation.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, yeah. And they had a giallo section. I had seen a couple of giallos. I had seen a couple of Argento movies, but I didn't realize they were part of this subgenre of movie. So I got interested in these jalos, and these jalos became a kind of post therapy, cooling out. It was so nice to go see my shrink, go to Cinephile, rent A giallo. Go back to my place, watch the Paulson. I have to say, had no fucking idea. It was like, what the fuck are you looking at? What is this, like Italian garbage you're wearing?

[Danny Chow]

Putting a blade in the dark in front of her. Yeah, that's confusing.

[Tracy Letts]

I watched everything on the shelf. I got a book called Blood and Black Lace, which is also the title of a seminal Mario Bava later in our conversation. And the book is a giallo film guide. We should probably say what a giallo is.

[Danny Chow]

I've discussed it on the show before. It's an Italian style of thriller horror film that features several significant tropes. Probably the most memorable is the black gloved killer wielding a blade of some kind, often murdering women. But there's a sort of whodunit, mystery aspect to these films. There is a kind of opportunity for extraordinary color. Often the color red, hence the title of the kind of film. And they're sort of like heavily influenced by American and British films. And then those films have now heavily influenced a lot of American and British horror movies in the last 30 years or so.

[Tracy Letts]

Right. Huge influence on De Palma. And giallo is the Italian word for yellow. A lot of the mysteries that came out in paper back in Italy had yellow covers on them, which is why it wound up with that title. Anyway, so I get this book, Blood and Black Lace, which is a giallo film guide. 200, 250 movies that might be classified as giallos. And I just made it a goal to see all these movies, well as the nascent days of Internet shopping. And so trying to track down these films. I got some weird DVD R's and crappy videotapes from London. Now I was still broke ass for the most part. And so I didn't even have a credit card at that time. I had to get a friend to use his credit card to buy these movies online. And he's buying titles like in the Folds of the Flesh. And he's like, am I buying, like, porn for you over there? And so I would write him a check, so he would. So that's really the beginning of the collection. I started to fill a shelf with some of this Jalo stuff. Moved back to Chicago. My relationship with Sarah ended and I moved back to Chicago in 2001. I took a literal vow of poverty. I mean, down on one knee, I am going to go to the city that I love to make the art that I love. Where I felt most fulfilled. I know I will never get paid for doing that.

[Danny Chow]

It's profound.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. And I moved back to Chicago. The first thing I did when I got back was a production of Glengarry Glen Ross at Steppenwolf Theater, directed by Amy Morton. The great late Mike Nussbaum playing Shelley. And a wonderful actor named David Pasquazzi, a dear friend of mine who was playing Roma. And it was the time of my life.

[Danny Chow]

What part did you play?

[Tracy Letts]

I played Williams in the Office Manager. I've never seen the film. Is it Spacey in the film Spacey? Yes, it's a great part. It's an undervalued part in the thing. And I just had the greatest time doing that. And it totally justified my decision, I felt, to go back to Chicago. At the time, I was living at 40 East Oak, which is a nice address. It was a partially furnished studio apartment. I'd put all my shit in a storage cube. So all I had was suitcase with clothes, three cats and a fork. It was all I owned. I remember combing my hair with that fork before rehearsals for Glengarry.

[Danny Chow]

Wow. This is a truly monastic era of your life.

[Tracy Letts]

It was. And during this time, I mean, because it was partially furnished, it had a little TV and it had a disc player, and I was in a tower Records in Chicago. And Contempt, the Godard film, was on the shelf. And I remember doing the calculation. It's like, is it worth it to not cheat?

[Danny Chow]

How much was it at that time, do you remember? 2999, something like that.

[Tracy Letts]

I think you're right on the money.

[Danny Chow]

And was this the Criterion edition of that movie?

[Tracy Letts]

It was just out, as I recall, and I bought it. And that was really it. It really began there. Now, the collection, over time, there have been lulls. There have been long periods of time where I haven't contributed at all to it. August, Osage county sort of blew up my vow of poverty. And suddenly I had a lot more resources with which to. So I would say the collection probably doubled at that point and then probably doubled or trebled after the pandemic. Really kind of exploded with the pandemic.

[Danny Chow]

Interesting. So just for some context.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

You mentioned that when Tim did the first episode where we talked about this, he was at the beginning stages of his collection.

[Tracy Letts]

Hitmaker.

[Danny Chow]

Hit maker. Excuse me, Hitmaker. When Hitmaker and I spoke. And then the second time he came back, he had really gotten the bug. Now, I have been a collector my entire life. I know you have as well. I would say I was kind of shadow collecting for many years, but not with a heavy focus. Sort of like acquiring DVDs as recent. As early as 1997, 98. But not thinking of myself as someone building a library, per se, just getting stuff I wanted. And then something clicked. 17, 18, 19. Probably correlating to when I started doing this. More for work. And correct me if I'm wrong, because you've been in the game longer than I have, but it does feel like roughly in that time, something also clicked in the space where the amount of things that were available, the way that they were being crafted and marketed changed, and it became closer to a proper collector's hobby instead of, I gotta get this disc, I gotta get that disc at Target, at Walmart, at Best Buy, at what have you. And now I feel like we're in this bizarre glory period, if you like to do this. And so I assume that when it doubled and tripled during the pandemic, part of that was because you were being super served with something that was maybe not as available previously.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, I think there are a lot of reasons for it. Certainly, you know, the ability to buy, to purchase on the Internet. Right. Like, you can do all of the shopping.

[Danny Chow]

You just have to go to amoeba.

[Tracy Letts]

Right?

[Danny Chow]

Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

I got a credit card. Right.

[Danny Chow]

During the pandemic was your first credit card.

[Tracy Letts]

I got my first credit card at 43 years old. That's crazy. So I think all of that is true. I think that's right. I recall the early days of collecting. I was collecting movies I wanted.

[Danny Chow]

That's sort of what I'm saying. This was stuff I wanted as opposed to what I felt I should have.

[Tracy Letts]

Right. But another thing that happened is just the explosion of quality. It's one thing to look at these jalos when they're shitty DVD Rs that have been shipped to you from London. And it's another thing to see them on Blu ray or in 4K and you look at them and you realize, well, people worked really hard on this. This isn't just like Italian shit show, just like, let's show up and kill Naked ladies Cinema. People worked really hard on these things. And the screenplays are sometimes really thoughtful, really convoluted. I mean, bizarre and ridiculous, but also sort of operate in this weird moral gray area. And it can be quite transgressive. And yeah, the art direction, cinematography, sometimes it's. Well, try checking out that 4K of blood and Black Lace, man. That is a fucking work of art. It's really something. So I think that's another reason for the proliferation. You sit there and you look at these and you go, oh, some of These movies that were sort of crappy guilty pleasures for me are actually really good.

[Danny Chow]

Okay, so then let's talk about the amassing of the collection and how you go from making decisions versus feeling a sense of obligation. Because now your collection is very large.

[Tracy Letts]

You've seen about 10,300 and you track.

[Danny Chow]

Everything that you've acquired.

[Tracy Letts]

I do.

[Danny Chow]

And is that in a spreadsheet?

[Tracy Letts]

It's on an app. It's collectors with a Z clz. So they're getting an acknowledgement here from me where you actually scan the barcode of the movie and it enters all of the information into a spreadsheet.

[Danny Chow]

So when you say you've got 10,300, first of all, obviously, staggering number. Incredible.

[Tracy Letts]

Stupid number. I mean, it's a stupid number. It's aspirational if you can do the math. I could conceivably watch five movies a day and get through them all before I die, but I'm not going to do that.

[Danny Chow]

I was going to ask you that. I mean, you know, you and your wife are known for watching a great number of movies, tracking them over time, sharing them on social media, saying, here's what we watched. Of those 10,300, are they. They're not all individual films. Are there duplicates of a number of films in different formats?

[Tracy Letts]

Most of the duplicates have been weeded out. Sometimes I keep them because there'll be some special features on one that are not on another.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

A few for sentimental value, but not many.

[Danny Chow]

How do you store these guys?

[Tracy Letts]

What do you do?

[Danny Chow]

Is there a room with an extraordinary series of shelves?

[Tracy Letts]

I have a lot of shelves. I have a lot of shelves.

[Danny Chow]

Is most stuff present in your home?

[Tracy Letts]

It's all in my home.

[Danny Chow]

All available to you at any given time.

[Tracy Letts]

It's all on a shelf in my home.

[Danny Chow]

Is the room climate controlled?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, sure.

[Danny Chow]

Is there natural light in the room?

[Tracy Letts]

Natural light?

[Danny Chow]

Yes. Sunlight able to make its way into the space?

[Tracy Letts]

No.

[Danny Chow]

Is there a screen in the room where you can watch things?

[Tracy Letts]

All of the movies are in two rooms. One of the rooms is the theater where the screen is.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. At this stage we have this. You know, there's this evolution. There's VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu Ray, 4K, UHD, Blu Ray. For some people listening, they're like, I just want the movie. I want to spend 999 and get the movie on DVD or Blu Ray. I don't care. In the last 10 years, but really more, 5 years or so, 4K has taken a huge step forward. A lot of titles are now being made available in that format. Some of these movies look so much better. To your point about Blood and Black Lace being elevated to this format, are you only buying 4k now? How do you make decisions with.

[Tracy Letts]

I buy 4k and Blu Ray occasionally I'll buy a DVD if that's the only way I can get the film that I want to see. Okay, but that's very occasional.

[Danny Chow]

Do you have a list of wants? Are there things that you're like, I'm waiting to get this, or I'm waiting for this to be made available to me, or.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, I have a list of things I wish they would bring out. I mean, why do we not have a Paul Mazurski 70s box from. Why not? I don't get it.

[Danny Chow]

I know, I know. Last stop, Greenwich Village. What are we doing? Why do we not have.

[Tracy Letts]

What are we doing?

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, I agree.

[Tracy Letts]

Harry and Tonto.

[Danny Chow]

I agree.

[Tracy Letts]

Everybody bitches about Art Carney winning the Academy Award over Al Pacino. It's like, maybe if we watched Harry and Tonto, you'd realize why he won that goddamn award.

[Danny Chow]

It's on dvd, I think Harry and.

[Tracy Letts]

It is, and I own it on dvd. But I would like. How about Paul Mazurski's Tempest, a greatly underrated movie. I saw it a couple years ago.

[Danny Chow]

On the Criterion Channel.

[Tracy Letts]

It's fantastic, that movie. Why is that? Come on. Come on, somebody.

[Danny Chow]

Well, that's an interesting thing because obviously, as your collection grows, I assume you have increasingly obscure titles, but the Paul Mazurski movies made for the Studios in the 70s and 80s are not obscure titles.

[Tracy Letts]

I don't get it.

[Danny Chow]

And so it's very confusing when there are huge swaths of movie history. Like the Heartbreak Kid is a very famous example because it's currently owned by a medical supplies company. So there's no way to kind of disentangle the ownership of the Elaine May movie from that. Somehow they found their way to becoming the licensors of that movie.

[Tracy Letts]

Right. I have that on dvd, too.

[Danny Chow]

I do as well. But when it comes to stuff like that that you're talking about, these movies are made for, like, MGM and Columbia.

[Tracy Letts]

Isn't a lot of it music rights?

[Danny Chow]

Some of it, for sure. So when you're making your list, is it because you know that these are movies you've seen and love, or is it because you have a vast knowledge of, like, the movie libraries in cinema history and you're trying to fill out those libraries?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, I'm not trying to fill anything out.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. So what, like what drives it at this point then?

[Tracy Letts]

The labels, the individual labels and the work that they're creating. I mean, I'm talking about the Blu Ray labels and the work that they're creating that drives a lot of it. I mean, there's a real focus on genre work from some of the labels and they can do a great job of sort of upselling you on a bad movie in a nice package. But the truth is that some of the work that some of these companies putting out, not only great movies that we're seeing, I mean, you're seeing so clearly for the first time. I mean, for the first time, try watching McCabe and Mrs. Miller on a 24 inch TV. TV broadcast. I watched VHS 1970. I mean, and then try watching the 4K McCabe and Mrs. Miller, it's a different experience. For that matter, try watching Underground Railroad. Watch the first five minutes of Underground Railroad on Blu Ray, something I brought.

[Danny Chow]

In just special today.

[Tracy Letts]

And then watch the first five minutes of it on Amazon. You watch this and you're going to say, oh my God, that's a work of art. And you watch it on Amazon and you go, oh, that's a TV show.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah. So do you try to watch as much as possible then in these formats, like will you still stream tv?

[Tracy Letts]

We do stream tv.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

I mean we work in tv. I hope to work for Amazon, I just trashed. But we do work in tv. We like working in tv. Plays are better than movies and movies are better than television. It's just the truth.

[Danny Chow]

I knew you would get there at some point in this conversation. So you store everything in your home.

[Tracy Letts]

You now you play golf, right?

[Danny Chow]

I do.

[Tracy Letts]

You're pretty good.

[Danny Chow]

I'm okay.

[Tracy Letts]

You and Hitmaker, he's pretty good too.

[Danny Chow]

No, he's good. He's playing in pro ams.

[Tracy Letts]

He's better than you.

[Danny Chow]

He's quite good. Yeah, yeah, he's much better than me.

[Tracy Letts]

Okay, so, and you're also, what are you, 43?

[Danny Chow]

42.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, 42 years old. And Hitmaker's around the same age. So you guys have enough self awareness to know that nobody gives a shit about your golf game. Nobody cares.

[Danny Chow]

I've tried to avoid discussing it on this podcast.

[Tracy Letts]

Nobody cares about your golf game. Maybe the guy you play with cares only because he wants you to care about his. But you know not to bring it up even in polite conversation because nobody cares about your golf game. That's how I feel about the display of Blu Rays. Nobody gives a shit. Why do they look? Nobody Needs to see your.

[Danny Chow]

I have to correct you. I hate to correct you. You're like a wise, gifted and thoughtful person who's been very kind to me. But you're wrong, because here's how I know. When I curate a screening at a rep theater here in Los Angeles and do a meet and greet afterwards, there are some very lovely women, but there, it's a lot of men. And those men, they want to chat, they say, Want to say, hey, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. They want to shake my hand, and they want to show me a photograph on their phone of their Blu Ray display.

[Tracy Letts]

And how much do you care? How much do you care?

[Danny Chow]

Well, as an ambassador to this hobby.

[Tracy Letts]

You feel like you have to care.

[Danny Chow]

But what I want to do is have empathy for the experience that they're having that I also enjoy and that I'm frankly fascinated in with you as well. Like I'm asking in part because it's a sick thing. You've pointed this out, too. This is a sick thing. And you very generously sharing your personal experiences and how they led to this, I think is an identification of a very safe and gentle sick.

[Tracy Letts]

Do you want to talk about the sickness now? Shall we talk?

[Danny Chow]

Is it. Do you see it that way? Do you see it as a sick thing?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, I do. Sick is a strong word. You're trying to fill an unfillable hole with physical media, and you're just not going to fill it that way.

[Danny Chow]

No.

[Tracy Letts]

Some people fill it with booze and hookers. Some people fill it with golf. Some, you know, people fill it in different ways. The unfillable hole, trying to fill from.

[Danny Chow]

A lot of different angles.

[Tracy Letts]

So to fill the unfillable hole with physical media, there's lots worse ways you could go about it. Right. It's a pretty benign illness. I mean, it can cost you. And this is a key thing. The shelves, the reason nobody cares is because they look like shit. The books on bookshelves, Fantastic. They look fantastic. And there's not a better home interior decoration than books on bookshelves.

[Danny Chow]

I believe this is changing. There is something that is happening that is correlated to the financial aspect of this, too, which is that a great many people can't afford to collect. Certainly not at the level that you're collecting. Not at the level that I'm collecting.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, and ours are tax deductible, too, let's be fully honest.

[Danny Chow]

Which is a great benefit to me as the movie podcaster and you as the creator of art. For example, one of my New favorite labels is Cinematograph, which is an offshoot of Vinegar syndrome. And they are doing. Actually the thing that you're describing, which is they're a series of films from the 70s, 80s and 90s that are studio pictures, often Paramount, that have been undistributed on these formats. And they're not only licensing them, they're licensing like Little Darlings or Paul Schrader's Touch or a lot of different kinds of movies. But they're packaging them really beautifully in these hard boxes with slip cases and booklets and extras and often 4k UHD. And if you put little darlings on your shelf, two things will happen. One, if you have a three year old like we do, they'll pull them off because they're like, what is that pink thing? I'm really interested in that.

[Tracy Letts]

Sure.

[Danny Chow]

And two, they look good in your house, do they not? Do they not look like those books on the shelf?

[Tracy Letts]

You don't. If they all looked like that, maybe, but they don't. Most of it looks like plastic shit and it looks like you live in a fucking gamestop. They just don't look good on a shelf.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, it's not untrue, but I'm working toward a greater beauty in the world of home video purchasing.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, to that end.

[Danny Chow]

But that's expensive is my point. These editions are very expensive.

[Tracy Letts]

They're not like they're very expensive. That's another change that's happened, right? I mean, the DVD market has shrunk down to literally something like 1% of what it was 15 years ago. And. But these companies that have produced these beautiful specialized things for collectors and now they're. I mean, how much do you pay for? I'm so grateful to you for finding the right syllabic emphasis on a cinematograph. I've not known how to say it.

[Danny Chow]

It may not be correct. I may be getting it wrong, but.

[Tracy Letts]

I don't cinematograph, I think.

[Danny Chow]

So I try to wait for sales. Candidly, I don't want to spend top market dollar. In fact, when Tim and I did the first episode, Hitmaker, Hitmaker's God damn. It's going to take a while to stick there. Despite his stature, I think I made a rule of I try to not go above $35 if I can. Now that's a good rule. I've broken the rule. I've broken the rule many times this year. Many times.

[Tracy Letts]

So it's not really a rule anymore.

[Danny Chow]

It's not a rule anymore and I've broken it. And I was mostly keeping to it when I said this two years ago and I'm not keeping to it now because there are more specialty labels than ever. There are higher quality additions than there ever have been. They are more super serving the collector than they are serving the common casual target shopper who's grabbing stuff and dropping it into their cart. And so I get drawn in. Now there are exceptions, obviously. Like for example, there's one on your list. I think the Conversation is one of your picks this year that had kind of like a very expanded edition. I think it was like 79.99 or something like that. Like a very expensive edition. That's a lot of money to spend on a piece of physical media, especially for a movie that you probably already owned in at least one format.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. That comes with a cassette tape of the score. It's like, what the hell am I gonna play this on?

[Danny Chow]

You don't have any tape decks left in your house. It's funny. Like I've been doing these semi serious, semi joking videos about unboxing. You're familiar with the unboxing phenomenon. And there is. I found my laserdisc copy of 7 Samurai and I broke it out because Seven Samurai was just reissued on 4K UHD by both Criterion and BFI.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

And the first Criterion I ever owned was Seven Samurai DVD and I also had it on VHS when I was a kid. So I have all four editions in front of me.

[Tracy Letts]

Is that your most purchased movie?

[Danny Chow]

Well, that was where I was leading was sort of like, at what point are we done adding on top of the pile? Because there's going to be a new format. It's going to happen.

[Tracy Letts]

You know it's going to happen and you know you're going to buy it. So you're not done.

[Danny Chow]

But so are you. Are you resigned to just being screwed with this? Where when they introduce 8K that you'll just be like, I'll start replacing?

[Tracy Letts]

I am now, yes.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. What does your wife think about that? You've got young children to think about.

[Tracy Letts]

I have a six year old and a three year old and a wife who's so lovely and patient. Again, this conversation about nobody gives a shit. So I told you, we've got two rooms. There's the theater proper which has a lot of shelves in it where the movies are. And then there's a little room outside the room, also in the basement. When we moved into this house, the basement, it was finished, but it just looked like a Marriott ballroom. So we went down and we put A couple of walls in there to seal off a little enclosed theater. And there are shelves inside there. And then right outside there, there are other shelves that we had put in. And so those are more public. Right. You go downstairs and you see those shelves. So I thought for my wife, wouldn't it be nice if I made them look like something? Right. That didn't look like you lived in a GameStop. So I tried to make them. I tried to arrange them by label and by color. Now this is so against every organizing principle I have.

[Danny Chow]

Honestly having a panic attack hearing you say that. That's awful.

[Tracy Letts]

But she doesn't know where to find anything anyway. So if I am looking for Invasion of the body snatchers on 4K, I know. Oh, it's in the arrows. Oh, and I know the box is white. I can find it pretty quick.

[Danny Chow]

So you're organizing by label first, then.

[Tracy Letts]

Color through label in that outside section. Now inside I have. Inside the theater, I have box sets. I have sort of A to Z by title. I hate it. But the directors have been pulled out so much for the labels that I don't feel I can organize by direct. So that's just like an A to Z by title. And then I have a couple of sections of TV documentary For Shame tv. And there's some TV in there.

[Danny Chow]

For the longest time, the only way you could watch Homicide was on dvd. That's right.

[Tracy Letts]

My Barney Miller set is treasured. To me, it's the greatest television show ever on TV.

[Danny Chow]

Has that been issued in 4K?

[Tracy Letts]

Barney Miller is not. It's just on DVD. Maya, the prisoner on Blu Ray is a must own for me. It was great pandemic watch for me and my wife to go through the prisoners. So some. So you and Hitmaker asked me about my organ and I didn't want to even talk to you about it. I was. So you're embarrassed. I'm embarrassed by it.

[Danny Chow]

It's a horrible thing you did for. Did your wife. Was she like, thank you for doing this?

[Tracy Letts]

This is what I was trying to explain. She's so lovely and patient. I can't tell you the number of times I've tried to engage her in this discussion and bring her down and say, now look, I'm thinking about doing this. And her response is always, you should do what you want to do. It's your collection. You should make it the way you want.

[Danny Chow]

It's very nice and it's very sweet.

[Tracy Letts]

Then when I'm out of town, I get some angry call. I was like, I can't find Sinbad. It was like, well, if you had engaged in the discussion, you could have found Sinbad very easily on the shelf.

[Danny Chow]

It's nice that she's even just looking for anything while you're gone.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, the kids, you know, my boy wants to watch the Sinbad movies.

[Danny Chow]

Well, do your kids, have they been exposed to the collection? Are they aware of this as like a way to watch things?

[Tracy Letts]

My six year old boy is very aware of it. And now he has his own shelf.

[Danny Chow]

Really?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, he has his own shelf of stuff that he can go and look and say, pull something out and say, I want to watch this.

[Danny Chow]

Would you mind sharing? Was there one thing that he really feels passionate about?

[Tracy Letts]

Well, he's a Godzilla freak. Again, the pleasures of physical media before he had ever seen anything. I had the Criterion Godzilla box, which is a big book with big comic book style illustrations. And he was obsessed with that as a two year old or three year old. He wanted me to teach him the titles of the movies. He learned all the titles of the films, so obviously he'll be fluent in Japanese of an age. I put a Godzilla movie on for him and that was it. Man, he is hooked on Kaiju.

[Danny Chow]

Wow.

[Tracy Letts]

My kid is hooked on Kaiju.

[Danny Chow]

That is fascinating. I wonder if that holds the same way that your predilection for the transgressive held through your adult life.

[Tracy Letts]

You know, perhaps a monster. He has seen. He's seen all of the Godzillas multiple times. He has seen all the Gamera. The Arrow has a couple of great Gamera boxes. He's seen all. He can identify the different eras of the Gamera movies. He has a lot of collectibles.

[Danny Chow]

Oh my God.

[Tracy Letts]

Tracking down some of that shit. Tracking down the Frankenstein monster from the movie Frankenstein vs Baragon, a particular Japanese Frankenstein from the late 60s. And there was an action figure and we found it and we bought it and it is a treasured toy of that kiss.

[Danny Chow]

That is fantastic.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Your wife is okay with him becoming addicted to this now?

[Tracy Letts]

Oh yeah. He watches maybe a movie a day, maybe not. No more than a movie a day. He prefers movies to tv. He has some TV shows he watches, but mostly he's a movie kid. He's been through all of the Universal horror he loves. My proudest moment was when I put on Creature from the Black Lagoon. And as soon as it started, he said, yay, it's in black and white. I was like, oh, okay. All right.

[Danny Chow]

You have trained him well. There will be a rejection at a certain point, right? I Imagine at some point he was going to be like, dad, get the fuck out of here.

[Tracy Letts]

He was like, dad, you're a total dork and I never want to see you again.

[Danny Chow]

That is genuinely heartwarming. And I have to seriously consider it because you obviously watch a lot of contemporary films as well. You're an academy voter, for example. You keep up with a lot of stuff. Obviously, you're working in the business, too. Do your kids care about contemporary stuff because of. Despite having this access to all of movie history, essentially, I don't know what they care.

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know why they care about what they care about. He loves the Dark Crystal. That's one of his favorite movies. We showed him Dark Crystal. There's a great 4k of dark crystal, and he loves it. He's seen that movie many, many times.

[Danny Chow]

He's really after my own heart with the creatures and the horror. Amazing.

[Tracy Letts]

We tried, without trying to steer him into any one thing. We did try to present him with a lot of handmade stuff early, as opposed to cgi, CGI or that sheen. I mean, Carrie said Toy Story early to me. Now. I've never actually seen Toy Story myself.

[Danny Chow]

It's a wonderful film.

[Tracy Letts]

She wanted him to see Toy Story. She had shown it to her baby brothers when she's older than her baby brothers, and she had remembered showing it to them. I didn't fight her on Toy Story. I did say, I'm afraid once we introduce that computer sheen animation to him, it's going to be hard to go. I'm afraid he's not going to want to watch Universal horror movies after seeing them. Wasn't the case. She showed him Toy Story. He thoroughly enjoyed Toy Story. He had a great time. He never asked to see it again.

[Danny Chow]

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's just a kind of certain kind of storytelling that he likes, too, that can be accomplished in.

[Tracy Letts]

That Lion King he loved. He's watched Lion King a bunch.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

He's watched it a bunch.

[Danny Chow]

Interesting. My concern, yeah. Was computer animation versus hand drawn. But my daughter, to this day, this Sleeping Beauty is probably her favorite film. That's like one of the most beautifully animated movies ever made.

[Tracy Letts]

We do try to. He's seen all the Disney stuff. We don't lean into the Disney stuff. Right. Because he likes creature features. I mean, of all that Universal horror, Creature from the Black Lagoon was his favorite. And he's. Well, he's pretty much into Frankenstein, too. He went as Frankenstein for Halloween. Yeah, he likes all that stuff.

[Danny Chow]

I really. I don't know If I'm jealous. But I'm fascinated by his ability to get that far into that stuff at that age. It does remind me of. Yeah, I would sit in the library for hours and just look at books about monsters and try to understand the creation of monsters and mythologies and so I could.

[Tracy Letts]

That's his first question about any movie. Are there creatures in it? So he loves the Harryhausen movies. He loves the Sinbad movies. He loves that stuff.

[Danny Chow]

Okay, well, talk to me about labels because then we can use that to talk about what. What's been good this year. Are there any labels that you think I must own everything that they do?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. Radiance films.

[Danny Chow]

This is the big winner of 2024.

[Tracy Letts]

I feel you have to own everything on Radiance films.

[Danny Chow]

Can you explain what. Who they are?

[Tracy Letts]

It's a UK company and they are purveyors of. They seem to specialize in. In a kind of. Well, some forgotten titles.

[Danny Chow]

A slightly overlooked world cinema.

[Tracy Letts]

Right. Absolutely.

[Danny Chow]

But not. That's not. It's not highfalutin. These are not arthouse movies for the most part.

[Tracy Letts]

No, it's. First of all, they do have a couple of American titles like the Hotspot, Dennis Hopper movie or Miami Blues, a great transfer of the Great Miami Blues.

[Danny Chow]

They had another one. They had the Landlord recently as well.

[Tracy Letts]

Landlord. Early Ashby. Right. Panic in Year Zero. I don't know if you've ever seen that. Ray Milan. Well, you should see it. It's bonkers. He directed the movie. Ray Milan. And it's post apocalypse. And now everybody needs to get a gun to survive. It's really kind of scary.

[Danny Chow]

Sounds relevant.

[Tracy Letts]

Scarily relevant. Messiah of Evil also was a big release of.

[Danny Chow]

That was my favorite release of last year.

[Tracy Letts]

Right?

[Danny Chow]

Yes.

[Tracy Letts]

But Italian gangster movies like Tony Arsenta with Alain Delon, which is great. I'm a hitman getting out of the business. Come on.

[Danny Chow]

We've seen it before. We'll see it again.

[Tracy Letts]

The 1960s Yakuza movies. Some of these titles I did know, like Sympathy for the Underdog and Yakuza Graveyard. These are Fukasaku movies. They are great. Big time Gambling Boss Yamashita movie that I had never heard of.

[Danny Chow]

This was one of their first releases and a good indicator of what they're doing, which is they're really mining for kind of micro classics, for lack of a better phrase, like films that in their home countries or to cinephiles in those countries are meaningful movies or meaningful contributions, but that were not picked by Criterion or Kino Lorber or any of the other kind of classics titles and giving them a huge spotlight and amazing transfers.

[Tracy Letts]

So I feel as a collector, a responsibility to buy everything that they put out, not only because I want it, but because I want to support that company and what they're doing and because I'm in a position to be able to do that. So if I already have a perfectly fine transfer of Brideware Black and they come out with their edition Brideware Black, I'm still buying the Radiance.

[Danny Chow]

I bought that one as well. One of my picks for this year is Dai Gothic, which is three ghost stories from the Japanese studio that produced Rashomon. Some of the Kurosawa classics. One of the most important Japanese sort of government funded Japanese movie studios of the 50s and 60s that in the great tradition of Japanese ghost stories, created some movies. I'd never heard of any of these three films. They're all fantastic. They have incredible features like Kiyoshi Kurosawa talking about why these movies are impactful and how they informed his movies. Radiance is a great company.

[Tracy Letts]

A great company. Thumbs up. Radiance. More.

[Danny Chow]

Give me a couple more. Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

Canadian International Pictures.

[Danny Chow]

I'm at a loss. Break it down. This is why you're here.

[Tracy Letts]

It's a Canadian company and they focus on forgotten Canadian cinema. Love it. They are platformed on Vinegar Syndrome. Vinegar Syndrome is their own label, but they also platform a lot of smaller labels and one of them is Canadian International Pictures. Denis Arcan, who. The French Canadian filmmaker who made Barbarian Invasions and Jesus of Montreal, got his start in the early 70s with an informal trilogy of crime films. Dirty Money, Rajan Padovani and Gina. All really good low budget crime films. Sort of. It's like, what if Ken Loach made. Made a crime film? There's some social consciousness to them too, but really good, interesting stuff. And you realize watching that stuff, it's like, oh, every country has its own cinema and its own heritage and some of it we just don't have never had access to.

[Danny Chow]

Incredible. Have you spoken to Hitmaker about this label? I feel like he is. As he digs deeper and he's like starting to get a little bit intrigued by the smaller.

[Tracy Letts]

He's too big. He's too big. He can't get through to.

[Danny Chow]

He's just buying Warner Brothers discs at this point.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, he's just on the lot. He's on the lot.

[Danny Chow]

All of the lots. Okay, one more. What's one more? I see you giving love to smaller and powerful new labels, which I appreciate.

[Tracy Letts]

Flicker Alley.

[Danny Chow]

Yes.

[Tracy Letts]

Which is A they focus primarily on silent cinema, but they've also teamed with an organization called the Film Noir foundation to put out some obscure noirs, including a couple of Argentinian noirs. The bitter stems, from 1956, which Carrie and I watched last year, which is fantastic.

[Danny Chow]

You are digging in the crates, Tracy. You have brought your A game to this. The Bitter Stems.

[Tracy Letts]

The Bitter Stems.

[Danny Chow]

Going to add it to the watch list right now. I'm not familiar with that title.

[Tracy Letts]

And El Vampiro Negro, which is an Argentinian remake of M from 1953.

[Danny Chow]

Intriguing. Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

I got two more I have to mention. Fun City Editions.

[Danny Chow]

Huge fan. I've got a couple right here.

[Tracy Letts]

And again, I buy every release. This is a New York company. I wish they were a little more prolific. They really only come out with about one title a year. This movie, Deep in the Heart, was a revelation to me. I did not know that movie at all.

[Danny Chow]

I purchased this because of your recommendation.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, my God, it's so good.

[Danny Chow]

Fantastic. Also bizarrely relevant film right now.

[Tracy Letts]

Bizarrely relevant.

[Danny Chow]

1983 or something along many lines. And a Texas production to your point, about moving to Dallas, right?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

And this is their edition of bad company, the 70s bad company, which we.

[Tracy Letts]

Needed on Blu Ray for a long time. They also put out a great edition of Rancho Deluxe, the Frank Perry movie, Smile, Michael Richie's satire of beauty pageants, Cutter's Way, which is always on the list of movies you haven't seen that you need to see. And it's certainly one of my favorite movies.

[Danny Chow]

All World John Heard performance in that movie.

[Tracy Letts]

And another one that's not on those lists called Heartbreakers, a Bobby roth movie from 1984. Do you know this film?

[Danny Chow]

I do. I've watched it this year.

[Tracy Letts]

Nick Mancuso and Peter Coyote. Back when Peter Coyote meant something in a movie.

[Danny Chow]

True leading man performance.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Very curious film.

[Tracy Letts]

Curious film. Yeah. But a very specific personal point of view in that movie. So I really admire that movie. They also did a couple of box sets of TV movies from the 1980s. They called them Prime Time Panic. We saw Carrie and I watched a movie called freedom from 1981. You know this movie directed by Joseph Sargent, written by Barbara Turner, who's Jennifer Jason Lee's mother, and she would later write a movie called Georgia, directed by Ulu Grossbard with Mare Winningham and Jennifer Jason Lee. Mare is the star of this movie, Freedom, and it's about a mother and a daughter who cannot get along. The mother is played by Jennifer Warren, who you would know best from Night Moves The Arthur Penn movie.

[Danny Chow]

Yep.

[Tracy Letts]

The mother daughter scenes, they're not getting along in the movies about the daughter who is trying. They're going to legally emancipate the 15 year old daughter from this family. The scenes between the mother and daughter in that movie are better than mother daughter scenes. I mean, it's just like, wow, this is so good. This is so well written. These are so beautifully performed.

[Danny Chow]

This has also been added to the watch list. That's the primetime panic box.

[Tracy Letts]

Yes, prime time panic box. Very good. And you know, TV movies used to be. Well, I guess they still, they still.

[Danny Chow]

Make Tarantino about this many times because he has this incredible knowledge of television movies, which was just a huge thing. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, even Joseph Sargent, you know, directed taking a Pelham 1, 2, 3. I mean, this is a, in theory, a major filmmaker who's just making movies for ABC at a certain point, four or five years after the release of a major studio movie with a big star like Matthau. So yeah, some of that stuff is lost to time. That actually could be the next wave to pilfer from collectors over time is the rediscovery of a lot of titles like this because there's still so many that are untapped.

[Tracy Letts]

So Hitmaker was in a miniseries about the housewife in Texas who murdered her neighbor with an ax. I'm not going to come up with any titles here. They may. Jennifer Beal, Jessica Beale. Jennifer Beals and Jessica Beale. Jessica Beale was in this with Hitmaker.

[Danny Chow]

Is this the Sinner?

[Tracy Letts]

No, that's a TV show I was on.

[Danny Chow]

We're talking about Candy is the series that Hitmaker was on.

[Tracy Letts]

And Candy came out the same time. Candy came out the same time as another story with Lizzie Olsen playing. Right.

[Danny Chow]

That was the Max series. Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, what nobody remembers is that this story was Filmed in the 1980s, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal with Barbara Hershey playing the mother in a performance that will knock your socks off. Wow, she's fantastic. Is it called Murder in a Small Town or Killing in a Small Town? One of the actors, the reason I know that movie is because one of the actors in that film was Dennis Letts. My dad plays the sheriff.

[Danny Chow]

You didn't share this.

[Tracy Letts]

The role that Justin Timberlake plays in Candy, My dad played somehow.

[Danny Chow]

So it's a Killing in a small town 1990 film with Barbara Hershey, Brian Dennehy, John Terry is your father. Your father, Dennis Letts is listed here on letterbox.

[Tracy Letts]

There you go.

[Danny Chow]

This was already on my watch list.

[Tracy Letts]

Wow.

[Danny Chow]

Now, why is that?

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know.

[Danny Chow]

How did I know about this film and why did I edit?

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know. Maybe Hitmaker. Well, he didn't know about it. After he had shot Candy, I said, you know, they've already made. He was like, what?

[Danny Chow]

Hal Holbrook is the sixth lead of this film. This is a murderer's row.

[Tracy Letts]

It's really good. I mean, she will chill your blood. It is a great performance. She's a great underrated actress.

[Danny Chow]

By the way, you didn't tell tale of your father who after years as an English teacher, did become a performer.

[Tracy Letts]

Both of my parents had amazing second careers, which is not supposed to happen really ever for anybody and certainly not supposed to happen when you live in a town of 12,000 people in southeastern Oklahoma. But my father, who was seeing me go down to Texas and audition for films and stuff, decided he'd start doing that too. And he made about 40 films and television shows.

[Danny Chow]

Looking at his letterbox page here, it's populated with tons of Hollywood productions.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, he worked with Robert Zemeckis. He worked with Clint Eastwood. He worked with Francis Ford Coppola. I believe he was cut out of the Rainmaker. So I don't think you'll see that credit here. But he worked with some big names and we were all worried when he retired from school teaching early. It was like, you're not going to like. And he never looked back.

[Danny Chow]

He's amazing.

[Tracy Letts]

He had a great time doing that. And then my mom wrote a book. Her first novel was picked up by Oprah Winfrey for her book club. It was called where the Heart Is, which was eventually turned into a film as well with Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd. So, yeah, they both had remarkable careers.

[Danny Chow]

This is the sound of your ride.

[Tracy Letts]

Home with dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes brought to you by the fda.

[Danny Chow]

Future you faces some big expectations.

[Tracy Letts]

Work out more, go to bed earlier.

[Danny Chow]

And most importantly, make smart money decisions.

[Tracy Letts]

Thankfully, today you has bank of America.

[Danny Chow]

One place with tools and guidance to.

[Tracy Letts]

Help balance tasks from budgeting to saving. So you can just be you with big plans.

[Danny Chow]

Do more with the bank that asks what would you like the power to do?

[Tracy Letts]

Explore our tips and [e-mail] futureu Deck.

[Danny Chow]

Your home with blinds.com DIY or let us install free design consultation plus free samples and free shipping.

[Tracy Letts]

Head to blinds.com now for up to 40% off select styles plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply.

[Danny Chow]

When you were a kid, did you know your parents were very creative?

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, my dad did a lot of community theater, college theater. I think the first play I ever saw was To Kill a Mockingbird with my dad playing Atticus at the college. So he did a lot of theater and mom was always writing. How my mother raised a family in a pretty traditional family of all boys in a pretty traditional household where she did everything and worked full time job and wrote books. I don't know how the fuck she did it.

[Danny Chow]

I'm struggling just to yammer twice a week about movies on this show. It's honestly insane the way that people are able to do that. And do your kids know that you guys are creative, you and your wife? Not yet.

[Tracy Letts]

Maybe. Who knows? Because now it kind of gets. It's just in the drapes. Like they have a couple of. They have Carrie's action figure from Ghostbusters and it's just like, oh, mommy. You know, they've got crazy. You know, there was even a little like stuffed sheriff figure from her season on Fargo. So they have two mommy dolls.

[Danny Chow]

That is fascinating. Do you want to shout out any individual picks this year? You've made a list. I know you've made a list. I brought some of what I have from your collection though. Of course you have more than I do.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, I guess I was going to talk about just some of the 4k releases from. I mean, because in terms of those smaller labels, the things they're finding, the things they're unearthing are the story in terms of some of the bigger labels, it's not so much what they're unearthing, it's the 4K restoration of these things, the presentation. And it's extraordinary. We just watched Happiness the other night. It was the first time I'd seen it since I saw it at the Angelica when it was first released. And of course I've worked with Todd since then. I made the movie Wiener Dog with Todd. That's an amazing movie.

[Danny Chow]

Incredible.

[Tracy Letts]

That's an incredible piece of work.

[Danny Chow]

It's one of those titles that you're talking about that people were begging for, basically because it's such a signature 1990s film and such a signature independent film. And yeah, hopefully Todd makes his next movie soon.

[Tracy Letts]

I think he lost. I know it seems he lost financing at the same time that Todd Haynes was losing his movie. It was really depressing, very sad.

[Danny Chow]

But this is an incredible addition and a deeply uncomfortable in a good Way film.

[Tracy Letts]

I told Carrie. Carrie had never seen it, but it was a rewatch for me. And I told her, I said, you know, when you read the comments and there's horrible, like, troll. Like, you know, like the Nazis who were on. You know, I said, always in my head, what I picture is Philip Seymour Hoffman's character and happiness. That's the person I see writing. And that's one of the ways I keep it in.

[Danny Chow]

In context of.

[Tracy Letts]

In perspective.

[Danny Chow]

Right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's healthy. Okay, what else is on your list?

[Tracy Letts]

Pat Garron and Billy the kid in 4K. Oh, my God.

[Danny Chow]

Another movie that we yearned for in this. In this format for a long time. And rip. Kris Kristofferson, obviously, it's the last great.

[Tracy Letts]

Peck and paw movie. Right. He would not make another great movie after.

[Danny Chow]

I am pro Cross of Iron. I am pro Part of Convoy. I'm. What else? What am I forgetting?

[Tracy Letts]

Keep digging.

[Danny Chow]

Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is before this. It may write a very similar timeframe.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, it's after this. Yeah, it's right after.

[Danny Chow]

Okay, so that's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. That's.

[Tracy Letts]

All right.

[Danny Chow]

All right. But. But maybe the last masterpiece. How about that?

[Tracy Letts]

Okay.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. I've actually. I'm about to rewatch this because I'm doing an episode on a complete unknown, and I'm looking at Bob Dylan at the movies. And this is, of course, a Bob Dylan performance and soundtrack score.

[Tracy Letts]

And he's also an expert with knives. And if you remember the end of Dune, Timothy Chalamet is an expert with knives. Have I told you my Dune two quandary?

[Danny Chow]

No.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, we haven't seen it. And I don't know how to watch it because I'm quite sure my wife doesn't remember any single thing that happened in the first Dune movie.

[Danny Chow]

It's the same issue that I'm having. My wife, obviously, she also watches along with many of the Oscar films with me at this time of year. We usually do it in a screener's circumstance. And she can't remember what happened in Dune. And she's like, I don't have five hours and 45 minutes to watch Dune part one again and Dune part two. It's funny.

[Tracy Letts]

That's exactly the situation we're in. Not only can she not tell you what happened, she can't tell you who was in it. She can't tell. She knows that there's sand. And she remembers at the end me turning to her and saying, I'm pretty sure you could take Timothee Chalamet in a knife fight. You've met the man.

[Danny Chow]

Is that true?

[Tracy Letts]

And she could take Bob Dylan in a knife fight too.

[Danny Chow]

He's not very gifted, ultimately. Great movie, though. Okay, what else?

[Tracy Letts]

Peeping Tom in 4K. I love that too. Wow, look at you.

[Danny Chow]

I know. As much as I could, I'm pretty up to date on my criterions these days.

[Tracy Letts]

An important release, right? The movie that, for all intents and purposes, ended Michael Powell's career. It was very unpopular at the time, but very influential and great horror movie.

[Danny Chow]

And nice round shape to your giallo introduction because this is obviously a hugely influential movie on those Italian filmmakers.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Okay, what else? Let's see what else.

[Tracy Letts]

I have McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

[Danny Chow]

I don't have the 4K, unfortunately. I only have the Blu ray, so I didn't.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, again, I go back to the earlier point. Try watching it on a 24 inch screen in 1978 and then try watching it in 4K now. It's revelatory. They really are revelations. You go, oh my God. They will actually change the meanings of some films for you. When you go, I never realized that's what that person.

[Danny Chow]

Well, in the pan and scan, when those movies are on TV, you can't see. That's right, 40% of the film. The edges of the frames are just gone. So, yeah. Now with the way the televisions are and the way that these restorations are working, a movie like that is fascinating because also Altman as a director, obviously the way that the camera moves is unlike most filmmakers. And what's happening over here matters.

[Tracy Letts]

Right?

[Danny Chow]

So to lose it. You're right. You're learning something new. Yeah. Great recommendation.

[Tracy Letts]

New information.

[Danny Chow]

Altman would have turned 100 next year. So I'm doing a big episode about him and about his films and hopefully his lost films. You know, the 80s stuff.

[Tracy Letts]

I auditioned for him once.

[Danny Chow]

What was the film?

[Tracy Letts]

The Company.

[Danny Chow]

Oh, yeah, the ballet film.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, he shot in Chicago. I didn't get it.

[Danny Chow]

Was he.

[Tracy Letts]

He was running so late in the auditions that he stopped taking people individually and he started taking us in groups.

[Danny Chow]

That's not common.

[Tracy Letts]

It wasn't great. Great director.

[Danny Chow]

What else?

[Tracy Letts]

Blood and black lace in 4K from Arrow.

[Danny Chow]

There you go. Here's that.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, man, it's fantastic.

[Danny Chow]

This is a beautiful movie.

[Tracy Letts]

Invasion of The Body Snatchers, 1978. Phil Kaufman. I watched that this year.

[Danny Chow]

It's just in the hitmaker text chain that we share. You were touting this quite loudly a few months ago.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, My God.

[Danny Chow]

There have been a couple of editions of this movie. Now this movie has really been rediscovered and reappraised. Actually. Adam Naiman often regularly, I guess, on the show. This is one of his favorite films of all time. He's written about it multiple times, I think, for the Ringer. But absolutely amazing movie. Also lost Donald Sutherland this year as well.

[Tracy Letts]

That's right.

[Danny Chow]

One of his great performances.

[Tracy Letts]

That's right.

[Danny Chow]

What else do I have? Can I keep matching it?

[Tracy Letts]

Wages of Fear.

[Danny Chow]

I have that.

[Tracy Letts]

Wow. I'm doing good.

[Danny Chow]

This is Wages of Fear. This is not the Criterion edition of this film.

[Tracy Letts]

Right.

[Danny Chow]

This is the BFI version in 4K, 4K restoration, which is obviously the film that Sorcerer Friedkins, your collaborator and friend, sort of adapted for Sorcerer.

[Tracy Letts]

He would always say, it's not based on the Wages of Fear. I'm like, eh. But he was like, well, it wouldn't exist without the Wages of Fear. I was like, yeah, that's true too.

[Danny Chow]

I've been joking that there's a certain kind of man in Los Angeles recently whose whole personality is. I love Sorcerer. I don't know if you're aware of this that like guys who just go to rep theaters. Hitmaker might be one of these guys. Actually, he also loves Sorcerer. But if you really are a Sorcerer, boy, this is a film you should watch.

[Tracy Letts]

We have a nanny slash friend. She's a dear friend of ours. When we get really busy, we have to double nanny. And so she lives in Los Angeles. She's gonna come up and introduce herself to you at a movie theater at some point. She says she sees you there all the time.

[Danny Chow]

Fabulous.

[Tracy Letts]

So she was with us for a few months while Carrie was in Thailand making White Lotus. And so I showed her some movies she'd never heard of. Sorcerer had never heard of it. And I showed it to her and she's like, this is now my favorite movie. She's the one who made us watch all those goddamn Mission Impossible movies.

[Danny Chow]

What do you mean all those goddamn. You mean all of those wonderful features, superb Impossible movies?

[Tracy Letts]

It's just not our genre. And Carrie and I watch it and we go, okay, we don't see a lot of this stuff. And we're happy to know that that's one of the best examples of that kind of stuff.

[Danny Chow]

Can you. Can you give me just like a couple of minutes on Freakin. And your experiences with him and getting to know him?

[Tracy Letts]

I adored him. He was such a lovely, generous man. He was so good to me and my family. I just adored him. And you Know, I missed the days of Hurricane Billy and all the kind of wild behavior and stuff, but he was very open in talking to me about those days. And he was the kind of guy you could say, hey, tell me about Megan the Exorcist. And he'd just sit down and talk to you for a couple of hours about making the Exorcist. He loved to tell the old stories. He was such a great guy. Bug was happening in New York. Michael Shannon and Shannon Cochran in the New York production of Bug. And he saw it and he called me out of the blue while I was. Was actually acting in a production of who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? At the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. Not the one we eventually took to New York. But I thought it was a joke. I thought somebody was playing a joke on me. Hello, this is William Friedkin. When he eventually convinced me he was actually who he said he was, he just said he saw the play and that he thought it was great and he loved it. And that was it. He called again 24 hours later and said, I want to make a movie of this. I can't get it out of my head. And I said, great. He said, I'll fly you out to Los Angeles tomorrow. I'm like, I'm doing a run of a play. I can't go. So I finished the play, flew to la. I met with Billy and he was one of the few people I ever dealt with in the movie business who did everything he said he was going to do. I mean, he was just a straight shooter and such respect for the writer. Just a great guy. I was not on set for the production of Bug or Killer Joke because I was doing plays during both of those, when, when they shot those movies. But I was. Was always deeply in conversation with Bill while he was making those movies. And he continued to be a part of our lives and the lives of our kids and stuff. And he's just. I. I miss him terribly. He's a great, great fellow.

[Danny Chow]

Those are such great films. And that. Actually, I. I think there is a bug 4k restaurant just came out on.

[Tracy Letts]

Came out.

[Danny Chow]

And what. Do you have a special place in your home for the, for your work? Do you own those things?

[Tracy Letts]

It's in the A to Z, baby. No.

[Danny Chow]

You're a true democrat.

[Tracy Letts]

I do not put it on a separate shelf.

[Danny Chow]

You want to keep rolling through titles.

[Tracy Letts]

Paths of Glory.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, I think I have. I think I forgot to bring it. Yeah, I have.

[Tracy Letts]

It's both on Eureka and Kino Lohrber on 4K. I think maybe the Eureka is.

[Danny Chow]

I believe it's just Blu Ray. The Eureka, I think the Kino Lorber is 4K. The other way around, Eureka.

[Tracy Letts]

I think they're both 4K.

[Danny Chow]

Oh, I only have one. I don't remember which one. I think I have.

[Tracy Letts]

And I think Eureka is.

[Danny Chow]

What does that mean when you say a touch better? Because people, they'll go shopping, right? They'll look. And for example, Inglourious Basterds is available in 4K. It is now available in an arrow 4K. The arrow 4K maybe has one more special feature and nicer packaging, original artwork. But it's the same transfer. It's basically the same movie.

[Tracy Letts]

Then I would say it's not worth the double dip unless it is to you. Unless you say, I want that Arrow packaging on my shelf or I want that special feature or just the completest in you is just like, I need everything associated with this movie. I need the poster, I need the cassette tape, all the bells and whistles. Who knows?

[Danny Chow]

I fall somewhere in the middle. I like a nice hard case for the presentation. I do not need any of the toys.

[Tracy Letts]

I don't need the toys either. Have you seen the Third Man?

[Danny Chow]

I have. I mean, it's my favorite film of all time. I did not buy that edition because I don't want that toy in my house. I don't need it. I don't need a Ferris wheel.

[Tracy Letts]

You open the box, not only is there a pop up Ferris wheel, but the score plays when you open the box.

[Danny Chow]

I do love a zither. Wow. Maybe you've compelled me to. I think that might be sold out. Actually. It may not be available.

[Tracy Letts]

I want you to know that that transfer is a legitimate. In anticipation of this podcast, I looked at it again. Compared to the other. I mean, Third Man's one of the most purchased movies in my house. And yeah, it's worth it.

[Danny Chow]

I am waiting for them to issue just the regular edition of that and I will get that right.

[Tracy Letts]

Kino Loyber this year. Oh, you talked about the conversation. Yes, that transfer as well. Whether you want the big packaging and cassette tape or not, that transfer is really impactful. You know, when the movie first starts, it has that kind of waxy 70s film look where the credits look a little blurry and you're like, oh, shit, it looks like an episode of mash, right? This is like not quite. And then the movie proper starts and you've never seen it with such clarity. Okay, it's really superb. Keno Loiber High noon, North Dallas 40. Prime cut last year at Marie and.

[Danny Chow]

Buddy, two of those. I have Prime Cut on Blu Ray, so I didn't bring that in. But I have High noon here on 4K, one of the most significant American films ever made. And Last Year at Marie and Bad.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, Bill Simmons, favorite movie, I would guess last year.

[Danny Chow]

At least he's seen that film. But we can call him if you'd like to speak to him and ask him. The Alain Rene durational mindfuck that is Last Year at Marian Bad.

[Tracy Letts]

It's not for everyone, I'll just say that. But for those of us, it is. For that transfer is superb.

[Danny Chow]

This is a general question, since you're such a cinephile, better to see a movie like Last Year marrying in Bad, which is narratively challenging.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

When you're 19 or when you're 45.

[Tracy Letts]

There are different movies at 19 and 45.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah.

[Tracy Letts]

For the longest time I was. I would have ranked several Fellini movies above La Dolce Vita. And now that I'm an old man, La Dolce Vita is the shit La Dolce Vita is.

[Danny Chow]

Maybe I should revisit it as I.

[Tracy Letts]

Get on in years. It's tops on the list. It's an amazing movie.

[Danny Chow]

Eight and a half was always my favorite. Okay. Is that it?

[Tracy Letts]

I have a few opera on 4K from Severin.

[Danny Chow]

I couldn't get my hands on this. I believe it's gone.

[Tracy Letts]

Really?

[Danny Chow]

I believe it's sold out. This is a late Argento or a mid Argento, I guess late 80s, maybe.

[Tracy Letts]

The last great Argento.

[Danny Chow]

I wonder I was introduced. I've told this story before. I think I might have just told it that I was introduced by Argento when a friend sat me down to watch Deep Red. And I very quickly went down the hill and watched all the giallos and got very into them. And around that time, the Stendhal syndrome was coming out and I went to the art house and it was the first time I saw an Argento movie in movie theaters. And I told people the Senholme syndrome was good. And it is not very. It's not my favorite of his. It's not actually very good. But I believe trauma comes after opera. And trauma, I think, is pretty good.

[Tracy Letts]

There are good, good parts. There are good parts of trauma. And I love the American actors like Frederick Forrest and Piper Laurie who are just, like, having the time in their lives. Like, what is this crazy, like, head lopping shit I'm seeing in?

[Danny Chow]

I mean, it's no different than David Hemings cropping up. And you're like, what is David Hemings doing in this Italian movie?

[Tracy Letts]

It's a trip to Italy for some of them.

[Danny Chow]

Right?

[Tracy Letts]

That's right.

[Danny Chow]

That's right. Okay. Have you got through your list?

[Tracy Letts]

I think I have.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

I think I have a couple more.

[Danny Chow]

I want to add to the stack, please. So I mentioned Cinematograph. I've got two of their titles from this year. I've got Red Rock west, the John Doll, Neo Neo Neo Noir. I've got Going south, which is one of the very few films directed by Jack Nicholson.

[Tracy Letts]

What do you think of that movie?

[Danny Chow]

I really like Mary Steenburgen in it.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, he discovered her, Right. That was her first movie.

[Danny Chow]

She's very, very good. I think it is a bit over. Over cranked. But I love Nicholson. I've always loved Nicholson. Is a real portal into movie history for me. So I had to own it. Two more Criterions, very simple. More movies that I've wanted to own for a long time, which are Greg Araki's movies, which were very, I would say, creatively instructional for me as a young movie watcher. More movies that I didn't know you could make movies like this. Oh, right. Particularly Nowhere, which is his sort of, like, omnibus tale of, you know, slightly disassociated existentialist teens.

[Tracy Letts]

His shortcuts.

[Danny Chow]

His shortcuts. Well put. And then Trainspotting, which I wanted to bring with me for a couple reasons. One, I love Trainspotting. Of course, this is a 4K edition. I just hate what they've done with the packaging of this film.

[Tracy Letts]

It's a real fuck you to people with shelves.

[Danny Chow]

It is longer than all the other titles here. You can see. If I can just show you that these don't match. Why the fuck did you do that? Criterion don't do that anymore. That's not cool. And then the last one I wanted to point out, I had a director named Arkasha Stevenson on the podcast. She directed the first Omen, which is the prequel to the Omen movie, which I liked quite a bit. I think she's a real talent. And at the end of every episode, I ask filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. I'm going to ask you that question momentarily. But I asked her and she said, Hollywood 90028, are you familiar with this?

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, see, I don't know this at all.

[Danny Chow]

So this comes to us from Grindhouse Releasing, and It is a 70s independent film that is. Gosh, what is the American Jacques Demi film? That takes place in Los Angeles. Oh, my goodness.

[Tracy Letts]

Starts with an M. Oh, my goodness.

[Danny Chow]

You know what I'm referring to.

[Tracy Letts]

Yes. With Gary Lockwood from 2001.

[Danny Chow]

Yes. I'm going to look it up right now. And we're going to have.

[Tracy Letts]

I haven't had any protein. I knew this was going to happen. Starts with an sure of it.

[Danny Chow]

Model shop. You were right. Jacques Demi's model shop, which is like one part art house movie and one part weird genre guy picks up girls and has sex with them movie. This is kind of a version of that. It is one part art house existentialist drama, one part horror slasher movie. Arasha is actually quoted on the back of it, as is Ti west, as is Sean Baker. This is one of, like, the major genre discoveries of the year. Grindhouse Releasing doesn't put out very many films. I also have their copy of Death Game, another movie I love.

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know this at all.

[Danny Chow]

So this is a. I put you onto something.

[Tracy Letts]

You have put me on something. I don't know at all. You watched it?

[Danny Chow]

I watched it.

[Tracy Letts]

Thumbs up.

[Danny Chow]

Thumbs up. Yes.

[Tracy Letts]

Cool.

[Danny Chow]

It is not exactly what you're expecting based on the packaging here, but actually the pink will probably likely draw in my daughter as well in the future, though I don't think she's ready to watch that one just yet. It's been a great year for this sort of thing.

[Tracy Letts]

What sort of thing?

[Danny Chow]

$59.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, yes.

[Danny Chow]

Four K UHD editions. Can we can. You know, that conversation box is pretty pricey. The Third man is pretty pricey.

[Tracy Letts]

What we were saying. This is where it is now, though. I mean, there are just fewer and fewer people who buy these things. But the people who buy them are so passionate about owning them. The collectors are passionate.

[Danny Chow]

You're going to stick with this, like, till the end. This is. This is your lifelong hobby now.

[Tracy Letts]

There's no other way. There's no other way to live again. You know, I'm a sober person. I've been sober for a long time. I don't have any hobbies to speak of. I've been collecting these things for 25 years. I gamble on sports, but I'm very conservative about it. I have a business manager who's also got a lot of years of sobriety. So he's watching me, so I can't go crazy with him.

[Danny Chow]

You putting money on Sam Darnold?

[Tracy Letts]

I have been winning with Sam Darnold this year, I'll have you know.

[Danny Chow]

Congratulations. I hope that continues.

[Tracy Letts]

So I don't think there's I don't think there's any other way for me.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

And the truth is, my wife, she does love it. She's patronizing about the collection, but the truth is she loves it. I will tell you about our movie nights, please. So during the pandemic, I had amassed this collection, but we never watched it because we were always doing theater. So we never had a chance to watch movies. And then the pandemic happened and the quarantine, and we all found good qualities to the quarantine, and one of them was that we would put our son down. At the time, we didn't have a daughter yet. We would put our son down and we would clean up the kitchen, and then we would go down and watch a movie. We watched a movie a night. And it was a time when everybody was sharing the way they were getting through a difficult time. And we weren't baking bread and we weren't watching the Michael Jordan documentary, though we eventually got there and watched that. But for Carrie, I think it was. She just started tweeting the title of the movie, Movienight or hashtag Quarantine Life or whatever. She would do this every night, and people enjoyed it. No review, no thumbs up, no thumbs down. Just here's what we're doing. And instead of watching Friends or Tiger King, you could also watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller. You could also spend your time doing.

[Danny Chow]

The Devils was one of those where when she tweeted, did you guys watch the Devils together?

[Tracy Letts]

We did. There is a very good BFI DVD of the Devils. It's never come out on Blue, but it's actually quite good dvd. And she had never seen it. And I had not seen the new again. I had watched it on fuzzy old television back in the day. But it's one of my favorite movies of all time. I mean, it is a great, great movie. And so she thoroughly enjoyed Movie Night, and she continued it even beyond the pandemic, as we would watch movies and she would enjoy movies from the collection. It's gotten a little challenging now because Twitter's, you know, all of the Nazis. There's Nazis all over Twitter.

[Danny Chow]

It's not what it used to be, that's for sure.

[Tracy Letts]

And so she's trying to get off of Twitter.

[Danny Chow]

Well, Blue Sky.

[Tracy Letts]

She's gone to Blue Sky.

[Danny Chow]

I didn't even know that.

[Tracy Letts]

And she started sending out the movie Night on Blue Sky.

[Danny Chow]

Oh, I didn't know.

[Tracy Letts]

We have just joined the letterboxd community.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, let's speak about that. I'm so glad you brought it up.

[Tracy Letts]

Well, it's because of Nazis on Twitter. That's why we're on letterboxd.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, there was. I did an episode with Chris last week, and we talked about. Is there any concern about the kind of gamification that comes with letterboxing? Of course. My first instinct when you were telling me titles I'd never heard of was to go to letterboxd and add it to my watchlist and make it a part of the spreadsheet of my life. But I find that it's just an amazing, for the most part, a very nice community of people who actually care about movies. And if you go to the right corners and recommend the right things, they will pay it forward, which is a really nice thing.

[Tracy Letts]

Right. So we've done that. She's continued to. Here's another unique thing about my movie night with Carrie. I choose 100% of the time. I make the choice of what we're gonna watch. Now, before you decide that I'm, you know, some caveman, the truth is it's her choice that it's my choice. She's like, I'm overwhelmed. Your collection is. I'm overwhelmed by it. I make choices all day long. I don't want to choose. I don't want to be part of this. She's overwhelmed by streaming all the tiles on streaming, all the different streaming services. She's just like, it's too. You put something on and I'll watch it. That's been our arrangement for many years now. Of course she has veto power. She's never exercised it.

[Danny Chow]

There's not a single kind of movie that she won't want to watch or God bless you both.

[Tracy Letts]

And it makes the curation. I mean, I feel a certain responsibility about the way I curate it. Right. I'm not gonna follow the Clint Eastwood movie with the Dirty Dozen with Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Right. I don't think I would do that anyway, just for my own tastes are more, I hope, a bit more diverse than that. But I'm conscious of the fact that I have an audience that I'm programming for. And so. And I've even said to her, hey, do you want to try and do, like, a deep dive on Bunuel? Like, shall we spend a couple of weeks? And she said, I'm not in film school. I don't. This is not what this is for me. I like the variety. I like mixing it up. I like going from movie to tv, from comedy to drama, from old to new. Just mix it up for me. So it's a great arrangement.

[Danny Chow]

That's wonderful. If this wasn't my job, I think I would probably try to do it a little bit like that and maybe one day I will be able to. My wife is very similar. She is very much. I'm in your hands and this is something you care about. And there will be times occasionally where she'll say, I want this. But for the most part she lets me roll with it. It's a nice way to be. It makes justifies the sad amount of time I've invested both financially, emotionally and personally.

[Tracy Letts]

How does she. What, what's her response? What, what about when she doesn't like something? Does she tell you to take something off?

[Danny Chow]

Not usually. But I can't show her the devils that won't. That wouldn't be in conversation. She wouldn't watch that. She wouldn't. She wouldn't care for it. She wouldn't care for the substance. She wouldn't. I know what kind of thing she's going to like. But she's very open minded. There is just a limitation. Extremity, I think is just not going to work. Everything else she'll roll with.

[Tracy Letts]

I think there's some extremity I haven't shown like martyrs, which is like I'm not going to put martyrs on for Carrie. I don't think that's her.

[Danny Chow]

One of the most extreme films ever made.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. I can show her upsetting things. She'll watch an upsetting thing. And a lot of the times obviously we're watching movies. I haven't seen either. Right. So I was like, I have no, I bear no responsibility for this.

[Danny Chow]

Right. Yeah. I mean I tend to have an overwhelming amount of information about movies before I even sit down to watch them, unfortunately. So I tend to know what we're getting ourselves into.

[Tracy Letts]

I also, I laugh, I cry. I'm very emotionally involved. My wife is just.

[Danny Chow]

She does dead inside nothing.

[Tracy Letts]

She's just dead inside. She's.

[Danny Chow]

That's after my own heart as well. Yeah. It takes a lot to move me.

[Tracy Letts]

There's no fucking response. And I was like, really? I had to stop showing her WC Fields because I'm just over there just chortling and crying. It's just nothing. It was just like, oh, wow. You don't even respond to this humor at all. It's like I'm going to stop putting myself in this position.

[Danny Chow]

I feel like she saves all the emotion for the work, you know. Are you enjoying your time as like a. You're a true that guy now. You know, you're an esteemed playwright and an incredibly gifted man. But, like, you're now a person who's like, oh, hey, Tracy Letts. I know that person.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. Isn't that something?

[Danny Chow]

Is it? I mean, it's got to be a great way to make a living. No, not a great way to make a living.

[Tracy Letts]

It's a mixed bag. I mean, being an actor can be pretty degrading, really, but. Well, you're.

[Danny Chow]

Because you're the show pony.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. They move you around and they say, do this, don't do this.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah. Oh, don't tell him that. He's an actor. You know, and I've been on the other side of the table as a writer. No, don't tell them that they're acting. They don't.

[Danny Chow]

They can't.

[Tracy Letts]

You know, it's like you can't handle the truth.

[Danny Chow]

Do you feel more sensitive or less sensitive than when you were first moved to LA back in the 90s about all of those things?

[Tracy Letts]

Define sensitive about the way that you're.

[Danny Chow]

Treated and understood as a performer.

[Tracy Letts]

I don't know. In some ways, my skin is so thick because I'm a playwright, and nobody, Nobody fucking takes the beatings that playwrights take. We take a beating like. No, most people could not handle the beatings that playwrights take. So the skin is pretty thick. I'm very fortunate. Well, I'm fortunate in many, many ways. I'm very fortunate that my wife's career has continued the sort of upward trajectory which has put me in the position of, you know, I can do something or I don't have to do I do something I want to do.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah. That's kind of an odd thing to ask, but I'm gonna ask it. She's become a big star.

[Tracy Letts]

Big star.

[Danny Chow]

At a minimum, a big TV star. I mean, she's a part of number of shows now that have a huge.

[Tracy Letts]

Following and doesn't ever get recognized really anywhere, ever.

[Danny Chow]

Stop.

[Tracy Letts]

Anywhere ever.

[Danny Chow]

I find that impossible to believe just from the leftovers alone, which people have built shrines at this company. People have built shrines to. I mean, is it worshiped?

[Tracy Letts]

I'm telling you, man, she doesn't get recognized.

[Danny Chow]

That's fascinating. Well, that's nice for you guys.

[Tracy Letts]

And, yeah, it's rare you guys are around the same age. And normally it's a time or has been historically a time where. Where jobs for women tend to fall off the table and hers have just continued to sort of go up. And so it has allowed me a certain freedom to say to be choosy and say, I'll do this, I won't do that. Also, we've got two young kids at home. So the first question both of us ask is, where does it shoot? The idea that she went to Thailand for six fucking months for White Lotus and it was really challenging with two little kids. I was a single dad living in Westchester for six months is hard.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah. That's a one season show though. So in theory, White Lotus.

[Tracy Letts]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danny Chow]

Okay. Well, at least there's that.

[Tracy Letts]

But it's.

[Danny Chow]

But 15 million people will watch it. Is that meaningful?

[Tracy Letts]

A lot of people will see it and you know, it's obviously proven to be kind of a golden ticket for a lot of actors who do it. She loves Mike and we both love Mike's work. In fact, after she got the gig, one of the first things we watched was Chuck and Buck. She had never seen it. I owned it on dvd, so I showed her Chuck and Buck.

[Danny Chow]

It's still not issued on Blu ray. The other 90s Sundance classic. Yeah, that's funny. You feel good about the state of movies.

[Tracy Letts]

There are many, many amazing artists doing amazing work in this country and internationally. It's always been hard to make movies. It's always been hard to make good movies. It will always be hard to make movies and make good movies. So I don't necessarily. I mean, what's going on with streaming and exhibition of movies and all those kinds of. I don't pretend to know any of the answers to any of that, but.

[Danny Chow]

I pretend to know them all the time.

[Tracy Letts]

At the end of the year, you look at the list and you say there's a lot of good movies there. Right. Invariably. Whether they're movies, whether they're domestic product or international product. We've been international voters in the academy since I joined and we love it. We love watching those films and we see some pretty obscure stuff as a result, but there's always a lot of great work going on. So look, man, artists are. I give it up for all artists everywhere. It's hard to be an artist in this country, in this culture. It is really hard. Especially struggling artists who are struggling to get their voices heard. It's really hard. So I'm not doom and gloom about the state of the art.

[Danny Chow]

Then I'll tee you up for the way we end every episode of this show, which is by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen? What have you seen that you've liked? Have you prepared for this? Did you know this was coming?

[Tracy Letts]

I didn't okay. Because I. Because I'm here. You know, as soon as we started this, I could almost hear the groaning disappointment that Hitmaker was not on your physical media show. No, stop groaning disappointment.

[Danny Chow]

No. He would have run the risk of self parody if he had been here for a third time. So we don't want that for his ascendant star. That being said, you will come back with him, and then we will have a bit of a sad nerd off, I think.

[Tracy Letts]

And I'm not going to give anything away, but there's a chance that I'll be back on this show. Maybe four.

[Danny Chow]

We have. We have given you. I don't mind saying it right now. We have given you the run of show, the pick of show, that you'll join us for a draft and you can choose the year.

[Tracy Letts]

See, because I've already won this draft.

[Danny Chow]

Okay, settle down.

[Tracy Letts]

No, I've already won it. I mean, that's. That's a foregone conclusion. I'm not playing to win the draft because I've already won it.

[Danny Chow]

This is what they all say.

[Tracy Letts]

I'm playing for third chair.

[Danny Chow]

You know, Chris is getting a little bit sensitive about this because he believes that it is his birthright, just given how close we are. But many, many new voices have come to the show in the last few years. You now have staked your claim, and when you win. What do you mean by win? You mean voting by the people or you mean in the cosmic knowing?

[Tracy Letts]

In the cosmic knowing.

[Danny Chow]

Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

There will be no.

[Danny Chow]

Did you choose your year yet?

[Tracy Letts]

I think we have.

[Danny Chow]

I don't remember. I think you were toggling between two.

[Tracy Letts]

No, I think we chose.

[Danny Chow]

All right, well, don't reveal yet.

[Tracy Letts]

We'll reveal.

[Danny Chow]

You'll be back.

[Tracy Letts]

You'll be back.

[Danny Chow]

Do you want Tim to be on that episode?

[Tracy Letts]

Hitmaker.

[Danny Chow]

Do you want him to be? You really held the bit. I give you credit. Would you want him to be that fifth participant in that draft? Sure.

[Tracy Letts]

Why not? It does.

[Danny Chow]

He's available. I mean, he might be.

[Tracy Letts]

I've won it. Okay, you bring whoever you want. Bring. Bring your friend Quentin Tarantino. I'm winning it.

[Danny Chow]

One season with Sam Darnold and this is what you get. Did you see something good recently?

[Tracy Letts]

Can I give two?

[Danny Chow]

Of course.

[Tracy Letts]

I'll give a modern one. Just because people should see movies. The Devil's Bath.

[Danny Chow]

I still haven't seen this horror fan that I am. It's literally in my queue at home on Apple tv.

[Tracy Letts]

I think it's on Shutter.

[Danny Chow]

It is on Shutter.

[Tracy Letts]

Is it possibly On Shutter. Yes, it's really good.

[Danny Chow]

This is the filmmaking duo that made Goodnight Mommy, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

[Tracy Letts]

And the lodge.

[Danny Chow]

The Lodge, Right.

[Tracy Letts]

It's really good. It's disturbing and it's dark, so it's not for everybody.

[Danny Chow]

Did Carrie sit for that one?

[Tracy Letts]

She absolutely did. And she loved it.

[Danny Chow]

Oh, great.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, she loved it.

[Danny Chow]

Maybe I'll watch that tonight, St. Jack. Oh, yeah, please.

[Tracy Letts]

We watched it. I was surprised to find that it's on Blu Ray. I didn't realize it had been out on Blu Ray for a while. And the Blu Ray shit is it Imprint?

[Danny Chow]

Isn't it overseas?

[Tracy Letts]

It's not Imprint. Imprint, a very good Australian company.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, I don't own it. On Blu. I have it on dvd.

[Tracy Letts]

Shit, I left one out. Real quick.

[Danny Chow]

Yeah, shout something out.

[Tracy Letts]

Second Run.

[Danny Chow]

I don't know Second Run.

[Tracy Letts]

Second Run is a British company. They specialize in a lot of Eastern European cinema. It's a very. It's a small label, but they're really good. And the guy who runs that place is really passionate about his thing. And I didn't mention them. And I want to. Okay. The Hungarian Masters box set is excellent. Interrogation by Rizard Bugaski. 1982 is a harrowing movie about living in a totalitarian state. I advise you all to familiarize yourself.

[Danny Chow]

With Transform into Gene Shallot. It's amazing. You were born to do it.

[Tracy Letts]

Tomorrow I'll wake up and scald myself with tea.

[Danny Chow]

That's the title of a film and.

[Tracy Letts]

It'S a great movie.

[Danny Chow]

And my memoir.

[Tracy Letts]

It is a Czech sci fi comedy about Neo Nazis who get a time machine and go back in time to deliver a hydrogen bomb to hit. And it is hilarious.

[Danny Chow]

I'm making a note of this film.

[Tracy Letts]

Tomorrow I'll wake up and scald myself with Tea.

[Danny Chow]

Yindrich Polak.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, Love it.

[Danny Chow]

You mentioned St. Jack.

[Tracy Letts]

St. Jack is a great movie. A great underrated Peter Bogdanovich movie. An underrated Ben Gazzara performance. And then watched him a few days later in Happiness. That guy was good and stayed good. The goodness never went away from that guy. We also watched for the first time. We had not seen Lars Von Trier's Dogville. Oh, and Ben Gazzar is great in Dogville.

[Danny Chow]

Remarkable movie.

[Tracy Letts]

Yeah, he's just always great. But Saint Jack, that's the shit. That's really good stuff. That's a great book too, by the way, for those Paul Theroux. I believe he pronounces his name differently than his nephew, Justin Theroux. Paul Theroux is the author of St. John.

[Danny Chow]

I don't know how that could be possible, but nevertheless, you're just. You. You really. You brought it today. I really, I. It is with great affection that I say thank you for joining the show. You are something we are aspiring to as. Not as an artist, because I'm not an artist, but as a collector, certainly I can. I can reach for your stars.

[Tracy Letts]

I love this show. You guys are great.

[Danny Chow]

Thanks, man.

[Tracy Letts]

I disagree with you guys so frequently. I hear it sometimes and yet I don't hate, watch, hate, listen to the show. I listen because I have genuine affection for you guys and the work you do on here. You're clearly, you're working hard to make something look very easy, which is just great. So I really enjoy the show.

[Danny Chow]

That's very kind of you. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you so much for indulging all of this magnificent physical media here. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Thanks to Bobby Wagner. What are we doing later this week? We do have a draft. We have a very strange draft. Actually. It's the 2021 movie draft. 2021 was when you were starting your movie nights or I guess in the middle of your movie nights. It was a harder time and it was ultimately a very weird.

[Tracy Letts]

Have you already done this?

[Danny Chow]

We have, yeah. We pre recorded with Amanda before she left.

[Tracy Letts]

Great.

[Danny Chow]

And well, it went off the rails. That's what I said. Tune in for that later this week. We'll see you then.