Episode 60 – 'Two-Lane Blacktop' & 'Getting Straight'

Two filmmakers’ filmmakers, ones who both honed their craft in ’60s low-budget B drive-thru movies before achieving gradual and undeniable acclaim, died this past week: Monte Hellman and Richard Rush. I’m joined by Ted Haycraft to discuss Hellman’s most celebrated film and, arguably, Rush’s most interesting one. On this episode we discuss:

• how Two-Lane was greenlit in the wake of Easy Rider, only to be abandoned by the studio on release and for decades after;

• its European vibe as a race movie where no one wants to win;

• the chiseled minimalism of its screenplay by Rudy Wulitzer;

• Warren Oates’ rambling, engaged performance;

• and Hellman’s varied resume, including everything from RoboCop to Head to Reservoir Dogs to an added prologue for the network television premiere of A Fistful of Dollars in 1977.

Also:

• If Richard Rush invented the technique of racking focus;

• how Getting Straight is depressingly still relevant today;

• my seesawing views on this admittedly literate film over repeated viewings;

• and whether or not the movie is speaking for itself through Harry (Elliott Gould) when he’s yelling at women who talk back to him.

Ted Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.

Two-Lane Blacktop is not currently streaming or available on VOD. Physical media is available from Criterion.

Getting Straight is available on VOD, with physical media is available from Sony.

Episode 59 – 'The Films of Budd Boetticher' w/ Author Robert Nott

Though born in Chicago, Budd Boetticher was adopted and raised in Evansville, making him somewhat inarguably its most notable filmmaking resident. Ted Haycraft is back and joined by writer Robert Nott, author of The Films of Budd Boetticher, to discuss the director’s movies with Randolph Scott, and more:

• Boetticher’s influence on filmmakers Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino (who named a Kill Bill character after Budd), and Martin Scorsese (who highlighted The Tall T in his Personal Journey Through American Movies);

• his high school (spoiler alert: he went to the same one as someone on this podcast);

• if Boetticher was the first Western filmmaker to use terse dialogue or morally ambiguous antagonists;

• and what his films presents to younger viewers now.

Also:

• His bullfighting exploits, performed and filmed, before and after the Ranown Cycle;

• if the minimalism or violence of his Westerns is the bridging link between John Ford and Sergio Leone;

• what Boetticher’s career would have been like if his success had extended into the ’60s or ’70s;

• and the mythologizing he did in the final 20 years of his life on the film festival circuit.

Haycraft is film critic for Evansville’s WFIE-14 and co-hosts Cinema Chat on its Midday show. He can also be found on Cinema Chat’s Facebook page.

Robert Nott has been a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican for more than fifteen years. Among his other books are The Films of Randolph Scott, He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield, Last of the Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy, and the short story collection The Squatters & Others.

His book The Films of Budd Boetticher is available from McFarland & Company. A DVD boxset of the same name, containing the films The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station is available from Sony.

Episode 58 – The Cuts of 'Heaven's Gate'

Famed as the movie that destroyed a studio and an Oscar-winner, writer/director Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate got its reputation replenished with a Criterion edition in 2012. But why do some sophisticated film-viewers still view it as an eye-roll-worthy indulgence? On this episode is Michael Epstein, director of the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate, as we discuss:

• United Artists’ executive Steven Bach’s book, Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate, from which Epstein adapted his doc;

• if this book is the greatest making-of-a-movie book, or merely the best one written by an insider;

• the bogus narrative that the movie destroyed United Artists;

• how the book contributes to the narrative of Gate as an indulgent slog;

• an alternate theory on how inflation destroyed American politics and film in the 1970s;

• and why it doesn’t matter how much was spent on a piece of art years, decades, or centuries ago.

Also:

• How Epstein’s doc precipitated Gate’s 2004 restoration and DVD release;

• why Cimino’s perfectionism, now timeless, is still treated as a negative;

• whether or not the film could have survived if its “internal rhythms” were cut down;

• my edible-enhanced screening last year where I declared the movie “one of the greatest movies ever made”;

• what enhancement actually led to that declaration (spoiler: not the edibles);

• and the identity of the mysterious “Famous Director” Bach covertly discussed replacing Cimino with if he’d gone through with firing the writer/director mid-shoot.

Michael Epstein is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker whose work has been awarded two George Foster Peabody awards, two Primetime Emmys, a Writers Guild Award, a Clio, as well as numerous other distinctions. His films include House Two, Combat Diary: The Marines in Lima Company, along with the John Lennon docs LennoNYC and John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky. He’s also the writer/host of the Murder in House Two podcast.

The 216-minute director’s cut of Heaven’s Gate is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Criterion. Its 219-minute Premiere cut is available on VOD and on DVD from MGM. The 149 theatrical cut briefly showed up on MGM’s HD channel but is, apparently, only available on the Region 2 DVD. Director Steven Soderbergh’s 106-minute “immoral and illegal” “Butcher’s Cut” is available to stream on his website, Extension 765.