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The B.E.E. Podcast - 12/13/20 - Aaron Kaufman - SILVER (Patreon)

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2020-12-14 00:44:27
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Content

A party is planned for Buckley's newest arrival and Bret ends up hungover and humiliated in Part 8 of The Shards. Producer/Director Aaron Kaufman and Bret discuss the sad state of independent film finance, the compelling technique of Nicolas Cage and the many hits and misses of Sidney Lumet.

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Comments

Florence

Loved this episode, Aaron was such a great guest, great voice. I happened to watch Shampoo yesterday so I was surprised by the mention of it...I'm watching Heaven can wait and I do agree w Bret...I also wanted to watch it just for the archer reference...good episode :)

Kerry

So so good! Only complaint is that it was short. Also, stopping to listen to some of these bands Bret mentions to immerse myself in the story more. Look forward to the next one!

Alex Waller

Prince of the City is probably Lumet's best movie, De Palma would have had no idea what to do with that material but its perfect for Sidney. Its a close call with The Verdict but its certainly one of his best and a truly great film. Scorsese himself named Prince of the City Lumet's crowning achievement when giving a small remembrance after he had passed.

Alex Waller

I don't agree with Aaron that Nicolas Cage is on to something with all of the VOD movies he makes. There were some solid movies at the beginning like The Frozen Ground when Cage was still taking it seriously so I gave the next few a try and it became apparent Cage wasn't taking his acting very seriously. Yeah he's always had a goofy/eccentric side and its vital to who he is as an actor but now he just acts kind of silly for the sake of it and to me it just comes across as a distraction. I was actually watching The Weatherman this weekend and its just such a great movie, and Cage's best in my opinion, and the difference is night and day between that film and what he's doing now.

Benjamin Terpstra

Agree that it's hard to bring literary novels to the big screen. Of course there are notable exceptions including American Psycho. It works. That said, I see most of Bret's novels shining on tv. Music by Todd.

Fernando

Enjoyed this installment of the shards, Brett is ballsy, his portrait of himself as a teenager is not flattering, unlikeable, and unattractive as a person and yet I get it and am sympathetic. It's getting Good 🤠

Paul Richardson

Loved the Aaron Kaufman discussion. Speaking as a cinephile, filmmaker and former JW it was catnip.

Callan Wilks

Enjoyed this interview. I’ve always thought Sydney Lumet was a good director for hire - a 1970s Ron Howard - but whatever “Auteur” discussions he warrants its overshadowed by the torrent of shit films he’s made. Though I’ve always liked “The Verdict,” even if it is a lefty, sentimental film. Spike Lee while definitely an auteur, I’ve always preferred his films that don’t have his fingerprints all over the canvas (the double dolly shot, starring in his own films, etc). He Got Game and Blackklansmen were good but if you asked Richard Brody or Zoller Seitz I’ve probably left out 9 masterpieces.

Billy Vega

Good stuff! Another brilliantly haunting climax. The inappropatie lust in the midst of a break up/argument - we've all been there ! Bret's friends in this story re actually annoying/dumb enough to actually have me rooting a bit for Mallory tho ! Espec Susan in this section.

Tramp Stamp
>>49560989

Spike creates much better worlds when race and idealogy are less involved like 25th hour

Nick Rowell

Is it too late to make some kind of official protest about titling? The last time I interjected here was to question that abortion of a book title “White”? Did anyone react or thank me? No. But in this case it may not be too late. “The Shards”? This title is so boring I actually nearly fell asleep while writing those two words down. It also smacks of what the leader of this podcast spent at least two years complaining about - victimhood. ‘In pieces? We were in SHARDS!’ Furthermore, it does not sound like some kind of modernist business skyscraper in London, it sounds like a cross between Shit and Farts. I know nobody buys books these days but this title is making that a certainty.

Brian Rooney
>>49571682

I’ll read anything published by Bret. Title be damned. But yes. It sounds like shart, which is what someone does when they think they’re only going to fart but then also kind of shit themselves.

Brian Rooney

One of the better encapsulations of the state of the arts and prevailing anti-intellectualism. “Garbage in, garbage out.” I’ve been digging Lou Reed’s New York lately. Nothing today comes anywhere near its brilliance, precision, rock n’ roll style, and presence in mainstream culture...

Alex Waller
>>49560989

I don't think its fair to call Lumet a director for hire. While its true that he was far less picky about what jobs he took on, and just wanted to get up and make movies instead of having a perfect filmography, you can still put his top 10 films against anybody and he'll always have a case for why he should win. Also, there is definitely a distinct Lumet aesthetic which is hyper gritty realism of environments contrasted with moments that are more akin to big moments in a theatre production

JEREMY ROBERTS

Easily the most emotionally powerful writing BEE has ever shared.

Andrew Hannaker

When Bret was away at college, in those years did he still regularly attend the cinema? Which one? I'm thinking that this may have been a time in his life when he didn't attend the cinema as frequently as he has done every other year of his life so far except this year?

Andrew Hannaker

In the coming years will Bret write his memoirs?

Vinaches

Thank you for 'The Shards' Bret, it is an always thrilling experience to drive through Los Angeles with you. Let me give you a sprinkle of hope: I, as some of my peers, DO want to make movies, like Peckinpah or Ashby (we don't abide Nolan's circus), and are actively working on It! A hug from Spain

Nicholaus Goossen

The suspense is building. Excited to hear how the inevitable unfolds.

Jose

This was one of the bests for me. Two movie geeks just geeking out.

Andrew Lee

Fantastic conversation. I could listen to these two talk for days.

CRAIG A SCHWARTZ

It's so gratifying to hear BEE praise one of my top three favorite films ever, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS! The latest version is absolute worthless garbage totally unredeemable - but Lumet's is such a stirring, sparkling joy every time you see it! And every time, there's something new to glean - a PERFECT film, in every respect! A film that we'll sadly never see again (for one - there's no stars big enough anymore to fill that kind of ensemble!) Ironically, a big *improvement* on the Christie novel: an early one, her terse, sparsely-styled period, when she was entirely genre-focused. And my vote for a lost Lumet gem (also starring the very recently late Sean Connery, one year before MOTOE): THE OFFENSE (1973) - sordid British cops at their sordidest!

Joseph Orlando

Tastes really does comes down to subjectivity. Every friggin' time Brett mentions Once Upon a Time in Hollywood I roll my eyes into the back of my head. As much as he craps on Sidney Lumet I do the same with Tarantino. I just don't think he's all that. I think he has a great team of publicists that keep his name out there. His first two to me are great, unassailable in my opinion of what they set out to do. Post 'Pulp' it's just a downward spiral for me. Jackie Brown and Django are movies are practically designed to peak my interest as a black man...I can't get through them...Kill Bill Vol.2...can't get through it...the less said about Grindhouse the better...Inglorious Basterds...silly at best...Hateful 8 is one of the worst movies I have ever seen...Once Upon a Time I will give DiCaprio his due, he keeps that movie together in my opinion, but Brad Pitt is as dull as dishwater and the ending is just flat out stupid...I think that movie appeals to people who are from California and that's fine, but in the end I don't think there's anything left in the tank. He will always be a movie director stuck in the 90's to me.

Billy Vega
>>49628892

Agreed. Once upon a time had a few cool scenes but was overly long and ponderous.

Alex Waller
>>49628892

Nah, cmon, both Lumet and Tarantino are great. I would agree that after listening and being a dedicated fan of this podcast that Bret seems to overlook a lot of great films and filmmakers and is also a very easy mark for anything having to do with his area of California or basically anything classified as 'erotic'.

Alex Waller

I think Bret should think about doing a video show just so we can better understand what he means by "spectacle." Not trying to be wise guy or anything. I'm just not quite sure what he's talking about whenever he mentions that. He says that's a top priority for a film to have but then he says he doesn't enjoy films like the Blade Runner movies or the Revenant. He seems pretty lukewarm on Fincher who to me makes engaging, great looking films. Is he talking about films like The Insider that have great visuals but with a more grounded story? Films that have the money to film scenes in different locations with plenty of extras? Its a genuine question.

Joseph Orlando
>>49648577

Really good question. Those two you mention -- Revenant and Blade Runner which I saw at Radio City Music Hall back in 1998 on a gigantic screen -- embody the very definition of the term. The landscapes. The costumes. The practical effects, to me define big screen entertainment where the frame is packed to the hilt with visual information. Yeah he needs to answer for that.

Billy Schafer
>>49628892

Thank you, Joseph Orlando! Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a disappointment. Overall great performances, production value, and soundtrack. I don’t have the nostalgic attachments to the material like Bret, but I could feel it in the film’s mood and atmosphere, and this was obviously a very personal movie for Quentin Tarantino. However, I also thought this was a missed opportunity for him to offer his assessment of the New Hollywood era with the Tate-La Bianca murders as the perfect backdrop. I was expecting the Charles Manson element to be more peripheral, and that the murders would underscore Hollywood’s counterculture renaissance period while simultaneously foreshadowing it’s decline in the 1980s and the eventual corporatization that dominates it today. Instead, he reduces one of Los Angeles’s most horrific and morbidly fascinating homicide cases into a silly, historical revisionist, revenge fantasy, especially since those murders have gained such a lurid mystique in the last five decades – occultism, drug trafficking, Mafia money laundering, CIA mind control, the voyeuristic sexual exploits of Polanski, Tate, Evans, McQueen, The Beach Boys. I didn’t think Tarantino would stumble down any of those rabbit holes, but he’s capable of so much more depth than the tired revenge nonsense he’s been pumping out since Kill Bill that I hoped he’d put that on the shelf and dig a little deeper given its period and location. I know Bret’s a native Angelino with a soft spot for SoCal set movies, but Once…Hollywood is a big, shiny, bloated, self-indulgent pile of meh!

Anastasia Doniants

I miss going to a place called “Kinocentre” in Moscow in the late 90s and early 2000s until its extinction in 2004. Kinocentre was something else, 24 screens playing movies old and new and some were translated live by a person with a monotone voice. Built in the early 80s. Now demolished. It would take an hour by metro for me to get to it, which was a big deal for a young teen in Moscow. Saw “Persona”, Battle Royale, Head On, Woody Allens, Claude Lelouch “a man and a woman” in a pink print and Cabaret amongst most memorable, but I just went to whatever was playing on the hour I turned up. 2004 was when they closed Kinocentre and jooshed it up to become a nouveau riche rap club. Quentin Tarantino came to Moscow to try and save the prints - I heard him on the radio he was outraged. Hope he got to keep some prints for NB. Old movie theatres are just music venues these days or even sadder - clubs.

Joseph Orlando
>>49628892

No, thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself. All those elements you just mentioned were ripe with possibilities of exploration and for whatever reason those roads were not taken.

Ashley
>>49648577

Maybe you should read “Society or the Spectacle” by Guy Debord.

Alex Waller
>>49648577

I looked that up and it sounds very interesting but Debord sounds like he's defining spectacle in a much more abstract way than we're talking about here. Bret uses spectacle as almost kind of an objective quality a film needs to have in order to pass the movie test or whatever, but then Bret kind of dismisses certain films that have those qualities in spades. This is not a big deal, anyone can like what they like. The only issue is that when those films are dismissed it helps bolster the podcasts' theory that film is dying or whatever. Let's face it, while its true that film is heavily franchise driven right now, and its wild that not even popular comedy and romantic comedy can find any room, a lot of the good films we are getting are more visually immersive than any other era of film. In terms of pure visual immersion, films like Revenant, Blade Runner 2049, 1917, and Ad Astra, can rival any film on those guidelines.

Anthony Giancola

Every chapter of The Shards gets better and better for me. And even though Bret’s monologue about the death of movie theaters depressed me, it was great to hear Sidney Lumet’s filmography discussed with such passion. Also, Bret’s rants about The Vow are PRICELESS

John
>>49583805

I agree. Three days later and I'm still thinking about Bret's harrowing, devastating fight with Matt Kellner. Bret thought he brought things to a close with him in such a way where neither of them got too hurt. A delicate thing to have to navigate, particularly when the closet is involved. But no, it all came crashing down around Bret in the worst way possible. I felt so bad for him (and for Matt for different reasons.) The closet sucks. And it never sucked worse than it did for 17 year old boys in the '80s. Those of us who survived it have the battle scars. Bret really paints an accurate picture, much like the writers and directors of the Versace series, of how it was for young gays guys to navigate life at a certain time in history.

Tom Davidson
>>49648577

Regardless of established definitions of spectacle, when Bret uses the word I get the feeling he’s not only talking about the great visual element of it but that there’s something bold and confident in the story happening too, that the grand confidence is perhaps ‘spectacular’. Like the end of Taxi Driver maybe? My 2c.

Brian Borough

Great point about pre and post empire coming down to people caring. Nothing seems meaningful or important anymore.

CRAIG A SCHWARTZ
>>49628892

My "quality art" antenna has steered me away from seeing OUATIH, and you're all confirming my trust in it. The criticisms I read here, I assumed I'd encounter. Tarantino, to me, will always on some level be that kid down on the sidewalk, hammering at once the entire red roll of cap-gun caps. One can only take so much brilliant irony & sheer spectacle. I've never gone for second helpings of Tarantino, like I have Allen, Altman, Ashby, Hitchcock, Polanski - Lumet! Someday I'm sure I'll stumble across OUATIH, and hope I'm wrong & I love it.

Joseph Orlando

TENET was just released on digital...I am beyond curious to hear what the community here thinks, and particularly you Bret. For all the chatter about comic book movies spelling the doom of audience tastes, I think Nolan might've created unintentionally one of the more beautiful looking and glorious disasters in cinematic storytelling I've ever seen. This one needs a serious dissection.

Darren Ankenman

It’s always great when there’s a bunch rapid fire opinions, back and forth, movie to movie, tangent upon tangent... so funny when Bret would rip a film, and Aaron would saw “awwww”. That was really endearing. Excellent dialogue

Phoenix

One of the best interviews so far. Loved the film banter between Brett and Aaron. Maybe a repeat guest? I feel like there's so much more they could talk about.

Will Cross

Incredible episode, loved the back and forth between Bret and Aaron. Would love to see him return. And The Shards is a such a trip so far, got so many theories brewing and can’t wait for more - has moments that have made me as excited as ‘The Secrets Of Summer’ chapter in The Informers. Keen for a Brett review of THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW too.

Graig Gilkeson

Really terrific to hear Bret and a knowledgeable guest talk movies! More Toback stories please.

grainpulp

Fantastic work Bret! Thrilling book thus far!

GC

This guy gives *the* best answer to The Eagles question...