That 70s Movie Podcast
A look back at the films that defined cinema's greatest era - the 1970s!
That 70s Movie Podcast
Marathon Man
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This week on That '70s Movie Podcast, Jonathan and Michael go the extra mile for the 1976 thriller "Marathon Man."
While we enjoyed many of the stylistic elements of this film, we had a blast discussing the many glaring plot holes (we came up with 12), including poorly placed carriage bombs, bad tonsorial choices, inexplicable post-stabbing decision-making, strangely bouncing soccer balls, and oddly timed baths.
This was a fun one with laughs aplenty, so stick your stopwatch in your pants, chew down a few carats, and let us know if the latest episode of That '70s Movie Podcast is safe!
As always, leave a review and let us know what you think. And, if you're enjoying the show, please buy us a cup of coffee!
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Very dangerous, be careful.
SPEAKER_01Welcome everybody to the latest episode of That Seventies Movie Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Cohen, joined by my co-host, Jonathan Kirschner. Jonathan, how are you today? I'd say by 2026 standards, uh had a not bad week. You know, I kind of feel the same way. It's like 85 degrees in New York. It's lovely outside. I just came back from vacation with my kids. I'm feeling pretty good. Not gonna lie. Yeah, there we go. It's a new Michael and Jonathan. So enjoy that. Enjoy that while it lasts, which surely will not be long. Um so let's see. I was away for a week. I was just that I was in London, really enjoyed the trip, uh, and I did something that I love to do, which is I watched some movies on the plane. This is when I get to catch up on movies. But before I get into that, Jonathan, have you seen anything good recently?
SPEAKER_02I've seen a couple of interesting things. I caught up with the Jim Jarmouche movie, uh father, mother, brother, sister. I'm not a big Jarmouchian, and this is kind of a trip tick of a movie, but I'm glad I saw it. It's you know a very well-done picture. I really like the the middle of the three segments. There's some talent there sitting around the table that and that is literal. That is just astonishing. So if you like Jarmouche, I think you'll love this. And if you don't, it's uh again, I put it in the category of this is what we want from the movies. It's recognizable as a Jarmouche film. It has things to say. I wish it had a little more to say. The performances and the execution are flawless. It's not really my cup of tea, but I'm I'm happy I saw it and I would see things like that again. And then at the other end of the spectrum, I saw an absolutely ridiculous 1971 movie. Always love to fill in my 70s movies. Uh it was called, I have to look at it up here because I can't even remember, Someone Behind the Door, a beyond ridiculous and not very good movie with Charles Bronson and Anthony Perkins. But I thought Anthony Perkins. How could that not be good with those two? Exactly. And so in that sense, it was such a fun, it was and get get the the elevator pitch. Anthony Perkins is a neurosurgeon. Charles Bronson is an amnesiac, and Anthony Perkins figures out what he can do is trick Charles Bronson into murdering his wife's lover.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02There you go. That's an elevator pitch right there. Anyway, I was it was fun to watch. And then I want to put on a little plug. It's a new TV series just dropped on Apple. Margot's Got Money Problems. I haven't seen it yet, but it has in its cast one of my favorite American actors. I won't tell you who that is. I'll leave that plug hanging. Oh.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I look forward to it. A little uh a little suspense right there from Jonathan. I appreciate that. Very nice. Uh okay, so I caught a bunch of movies on the plane, like this, and one I saw in London, and they were all 2025 movies, 2024 movies, excuse me, that were very highly uh rated. One was Begonia. Oh, by the way, before I get to that, I'm sorry, Jim Charmouche, you know what a movie of his that I love? Night on Earth. That's a really good movie. Do you ever see that?
SPEAKER_02No, but I'm a broken flowers man. I think that's by far my favorite Charmouche. That's a good movie. I think that's to me special.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's great. And actually the soundtrack to that movie is excellent. Like uh one of the better movie soundtracks. Yeah. But uh I highly recommend Nine and Earth. Uh what's the one he did with um Benini? It's um Down by Law is also pretty good, too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I think that one tried my patience more.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell I saw it a long time ago. But I really like Nine Earth. I actually mean to watch rewatch Nine and Earth. Maybe that's one I'll I'll check out again. Um okay, so back to what I was seeing on the plane. First of all, I watched Begonia by Yorgos Lanthomos, who is the uh Greek director. I liked it. Can't say I loved it. Emma Stone, she's always good. I always think she's solid. Jesse Plemens, he's turned into a hell of an actor, I gotta say. Uh, but it left me a little bit unfulfilled. And I like Yorgos Lanthamos' movies for the most part. I really enjoyed the Favor. I think it's a great movie. I also really loved Poor Things. Loved Poor Things. Great movie. And Killing of Sacred Deer is a dark, bleak, phenomenal movie, almost like a horror movie. But I have the feeling you're not a big fan of uh Yorgos.
SPEAKER_02I I am not, but he does have an identifiable style. I like that. And he is a risk taker. I like that. It's just his movies uh I don't really like. But I do really appreciate the way Emma Stone, a big movie star, seeks out very daring roles, works with a director she wants to work with. You know, I give huge props to the enterprise that they're engaged in. But I, you know, you you walk into the theater, you have that reaction, and that's the reaction. He's just never kind of pushed my buttons.
SPEAKER_01I have to say, I um I as I said before, I loved Poor Things. I thought she was fantastic in that much-deserved uh best actress, Oscar she won for it. And she was also in the TV show The Curse with Nathan Fielder. Have you ever seen that show? I have not. So I'm not a big Nathan Fielder guy, and that show I had some issues with, but she is phenomenal in that show. Really good. She's a she's a wonderful actress. I I think of of all the actress working today, uh, I shouldn't say all of them, but she is one of my favorites. And she is somebody who I actually will, if they're in a movie, I'll if I even if I'm not like that into the story, I might say, well, Zemma Stone, I might check it out. I I think she's very good. I think she takes, I think she makes good decisions in who what the the roles that she picks. So I like her. Um and I think I'd say uh you know what I like about Jorgus is that he does, he kind of creates these worlds. He creates his own sort of like ecosystems. Certainly that was the case in Poor Things. Uh, some extent in this movie also, um, and I just appreciate that about him. I think like I said, it doesn't always work. I didn't love The Lobster. Uh, but the one when it works, as I think it did with Poor Things, I think it's phenomenal. Um, I also saw sentimental value, which I think you saw as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's uh Joaquim Trier, I think is his name, Norwegian director. I gotta tell you something. You ever see a movie where you're like, boy, this is really good? And it left me just kind of eh. That's how I felt about this movie. I I thought it was great. Performances were awesome. Um, what is his name? Uh um, the actor who's selling Skarsgard. Yes. He's great. Al Fanning is great. Yes. Renata Rhinesby, she is amazing. And I loved her in Um The Worst Person in the World. But I can't tell you, something about this movie just it just didn't really do anything for me, even though I thought it was really good. So I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how I felt about it.
SPEAKER_02You know, it I think that does make sense. I I think I liked it a little more than you did, but it again, I had that reaction of this is what I want to see in the movies. You know, I thought it was extremely well executed. I thought it was, you know, well performed, well shot, thought it was interesting, and again, I thought he was working through some things he had to say. Uh I was engaged in the story, but I did not develop, you know, my threshold for greatness, I did not develop a close personal, emotional relationship with it.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's how I felt too. I actually really liked the way that he turned the house in the movie into its own character. I loved that. Um like I said, I thought the performance was great. The ending kind of also left me a little flat. I didn't I didn't totally buy the ending. It seemed a little too neat. And I I don't know. I just it didn't really I I'm sorry, The Worst Person in the World I enjoyed a lot more. Uh I thought that movie was much more interesting and uh more compelling. So, you know, it's a good movie, but I didn't love it. And finally I saw uh If I had legs, I would kick you, starring Rose Byrne. She was, you got an Oscar nomination for that performance. Uh I don't know. You know, just a really aggravating movie. Not a bad movie necessarily, like good performance, but I don't know. I I I can't really recommend it. I just didn't love it. Um she was quite good, but literally the whole movie is just like close-up shots of her. And it stars the most annoying child in a movie that I think I've ever seen. You would have walked out if you're not sure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that would that would get to me very quickly. I found the incongruity of the title, you know, off-putting, so I haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_01Fair enough. No, no, fair enough. I it's one of those movies where it's it's I put this in that leaving Las Vegas category. You ever seen Leaving Las Vegas? Yes. Nicolas Cage. I remember watching that film, and I thought to myself, why did I have to sit through that movie? What what did I what what am I a better person for having watched a person drink themselves to death? I don't think I am. And I don't understand what the point of it was. So go ahead.
SPEAKER_02I did not like leaving Las Vegas, but I have a special place in my heart for it because Nicolas Cage could have been one of the great actors of his generation, and he chose not to be. He chose to be a movie star. And in this movie, he's he's leaving it all, you know, on the table. And and I I so admire that aspect of it, even though I didn't really love the movie.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I it's funny because it's the movie I think I should like. It's it's a very 70s film to in a lot of respects. But I just found myself, I remember walked out and I'm like, what what what am I supposed to take away from that? And that's how I felt about if I had legs, I would kick you. I want to mention one other film, and this is really random. Just in London with my kids, they made me go to see um a couple musicals. I hate musicals. We saw the Hunger Games musical, which was as The Hunger Games musical.
SPEAKER_02That's a twofer.
SPEAKER_01I know. Well, actually, it wasn't really a musical. It had one song in it, so it wasn't really a musical, but it was not great. My daughter loves Hunger Games, so I went we went to see. We saw Matilda, which my uh other child is actually starring in his school play. Cool. So it was very cool for him to see it. I gotta say, honestly, you know, the musical, children singing, should hate it. I kind of loved it. I thought it was really fun, really well done. But but we were in the we were on the subway a lot in the tube, and there was uh an ad for this movie called Fuse. Okay, it was like an action thriller. It was Theo Jones and Sam Worthington, a bunch of people I'd never heard of before. And my daughter was like, let's go see this one night. And I was like, all right, you know, I mean, it's like it's hard with kids at night to do stuff. So you're like, all right, we'll go see a movie. So we went to this mall, we saw a fuse. Now here's the thing. I I gotta I gotta be honest with you, and this is like my guilty pleasure. Take me to a 90-minute, tautly directed, well-edited action thriller, and I am all there. And that's what this movie was. And I gotta say, it was kind of terrific. I really kind of enjoyed it. Completely substanceless. I mean, nothing of substance in this film whatsoever. And the dumbest epilogue to movie I've seen in a long time. But it was just kind of fun. And I feel like that's something worth noting. A movie that you go in and you're entertained by. You know, I think there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I have heard it discussed, I forget who the source is, who said that film is one of the rare forms where connoisseurs can also really enjoy mass entertainments. That they look at other art forms, it's rare. There's usually a kind of divergence between the the the broadly popular and the things that they that the cool kids like. And in and in movies you can do both.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Yeah. And I don't I mean, I'm not a usually like the Marvel movies, like I you couldn't pay me to go see those movies and all. I don't like a lot of stuff that like is Hollywood Fair. And I don't even think this qu qualifies as Hollywood Fair, it's more of a British film. But it was just kind of fun and well done and like, you know, well edited and just kind of an interesting thriller. And I like caper movies. I can't help it. I'm I'm I'm sorry. That's my guilty pleasure. I enjoy that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell, you know, as Alfred Hitchcock said, if it's worth the dinner and the babysitter and the price of admission, then it's an an evening well spent.
SPEAKER_01Did he really say that? Did he really say that? All right. Good for him. So I don't know. It hasn't come out in the U.S. yet. It's only in the UK right now. I think it comes out later in the month. Um it's kind of a fun film. So let's get now. Oh, before I get into today's film, I want to just remind everybody if you haven't subscribed uh or following us on Spotify Apple Podcasts, please take a moment right now. Click that button, subscribe, follow us. That way you'll know when we put out new episodes. Uh if you're enjoying the podcast, as always, buy us a cup of coffee. Why not? You know, you can buy us a file cup of coffee, you can buy us a venti latte with all kinds of bullshit in it if you want to. I don't care. But if you want to just say you appreciate what we're doing and you want to uh you know make a little contribution, please do that. And as always, as I tell this to you every time, tell a friend. Tell somebody that about who loves movies, maybe check this out. The best way to get um to get people, you know, to pass word about a creative enterprise is word of mouth. So tell your friends, please. Okay, so today what we're talking about is the 1976 Thriller Marathon Man. Now, why are we doing this film, Jonathan? I believe this was a viewer request. It was a multiple viewer request. We had multiple viewers who demanded that we do this movie. And I didn't really want to do it, but you know, the the crowd has spoken. But I want to tell you right now, for those of you who asked who want to see this movie, you asked for it and you're and you're gonna get it. Prepare yourself. Okay, so Marathon Man. Uh, let's see. It is directed by John Schlesinger, who also directed Midnight Cowboy and Sunday Bloody Sunday. Screenplay by William Goldman, who is credited for All the President's Man, even though I believe he did not actually write it. Uh, it's based on a 1974 novel called Marathon Man, also by William Goldman. Uh, it stars Dustin Hoffman, Lawrence Olivier, Roy Scheider, William Devane, Martha Keller. Cinematography is by Conrad Hall, edited by Jim Clark, and I have some thoughts about his editing performance in this film. And music by Michael Small. What's it about? I was too lazy to come up with my own description, so I stole this from Wikipedia. The film is about Babe Levi, played by Dustin Hoffman, a graduate student and distance runner who becomes unwittingly embroiled through his brother in a plot by Christian Zell, played by Lawrence Olivier, to retrieve ill-gotten diamonds from a safe deposit box owned by Cell's dead brother. If that's confusing, wait till you see the movie. Ill-gotten. Illgotten is carrying a fuckload of water in that particular situation. Okay. A lot of water. Okay. And now comes the point in the podcast everyone looks forward to. It's the highlight of every episode. Jonathan, please tell me. Marathon Man, is this a good movie? Is this a bad movie? Or is this a great movie?
SPEAKER_02So once again, I'm gonna go off the reservation and I'm gonna first stun you by saying it's a good movie, but then I'm gonna say, but I want to attach an asterisk to that goodness. No, good with an asterisk. That's a good category for you. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: When my father wanted to disparage a movie, he would say it's really well made. That was I think his ultimate put-down. He didn't want to praise it, but he wanted to acknowledge that it was well made. And there there are so many elements here that I do admire in its goodness in that way. I'm very fond of the director, John Schlesinger. I think he's someone to be to be reckoned with, and I think he's a sure hand. And we get a huge shout out. And I think the work shines here to DP Conrad Hall, one of the most important new Hollywood cinematographers. And if you haven't seen um In Cold Blood, that was his work in Black and White in the pretty sure was the DP on John Houston's Fat City in 1972. He's just a a terrific and and also kind of beloved figure in the community. And then we have some actors that we like. You know, we got Dustin Hoffman, never always happy to see Roy Scheider. Uh Michael Small's music, I think he ripped off his own score from the Parallax feud, personally, but you know, you're probably allowed to rip yourself off. I don't know. And then there is the the William Goldman question. Uh William Goldman is a very, very capable and accomplished writer, but I think he always thought of himself as a writer for hire. I don't think of I don't find him as a writer with soul. And I've always held that against him. That he's very good and he's very competent and he can write well and make a ton of money. But was he was he writing from the heart? Was he did he have something to say? I'm not so sure. I mean, my my mantra, as you know, is respect the art, respect the artists. But Goldman is an interesting figure in that regard, and I don't mind picking on him because he's so famous, accomplished, wealthy, and happy that he can handle a little internet criticism uh from me.
SPEAKER_01Um am I right? I I believe that that Robert uh Town actually worked on this screenplay as well. I believe he contributed to this uh the later stages of it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02His capacity as the most sought-after script doctor in in that era of Hollywood, he came in and punched up a few things as as I understand it. Oh, and also quick shout-out, one scene, Fritz Weaver. Uh he's very good, but that scene does does speak to your pet peeve about this movie, which we will visit over and over again. But I do want to give a nod uh to Mr. Fritz Weaver. Very small part just shows up and does it, but I think he does it well.
SPEAKER_01Okay. No, I agree. I agree. And I also uh don't think I mentioned it, I don't remember the actor's name, but the guy who plays Al Niddy in The Godfather is one of the heavies in this film as well. I'm forgetting the actor's name. Um okay, so let me just say this. There's a reason I want to do this film. And part of the problem I have with this movie, the main problem I have with this movie, is it doesn't make any fucking sense. It is the most incomprehensible plot. And if you really sit down and try to uh piece this thing together, the plot holes you could drive a truck through.
SPEAKER_02So actually a large truck full of fuel oil.
SPEAKER_01A large Well played. Well played, Jonathan. Very nice. So bec with that in mind, we are gonna do something a little bit different today as we analyze this movie. We are going to we're gonna spend our time talking about, I believe we have, 12 plot holes in this movie that we found the most egregious plot holes in this movie. And we're gonna use that as our jumping off point to talk about Marathon Man. And I want to start at the beginning, because this isn't even a plot hole, this is more of an honorable mention, okay? The movie begins with a short German man going to a safety deposit box and getting out some diamonds, getting out a uh a tin. Is there I forget, are the diamonds in the initial scene? If I don't remember now, I is there just the tin that he takes out of the uh uh the bank? I actually don't remember either now that you mention it. He hands the this container, it's like a band like a like a metal band-aid container. Like the way they sell fancy mints nowadays. Aaron Ross Powell Exactly, right. It was like thinking the 70s. He hands it off to somebody outside of the bank. Why they don't go to somewhere more private, I have no idea, but that's what they do. He gets in his car because right, everybody drives their car to 47th Street where the bank is. I mean, that's just what we do in New York, and then no problem at all. And then he drives and his car breaks down, and a very ordinary man, uh German, I know we should he's German, and the man behind him who gets very ordinary is Jewish, and they get into a road rage incident. They start yelling at each other, the German guy calls him Udin, and the Jewish guy gets really ticked off. Now, this road rage incident, I live in New York, we get we get pissed off when we drive. I've never seen a road rage incident like rise to this level as quickly as this one did. It went from zero to 60 in no time whatsoever. And it's just like two old guys basically arguing with each other. They start driving through the streets of Manhattan. Uh, just want to say for the record that they went down cross streets, and you can't put two cars driving down cross streets to each other, but hell, logic was out the window with this movie. They are driving, they're yelling at each other, it's ugly. They go, they drive past a bunch of Jews to the junky port outside the synagogue, and all of a sudden we see this guy backing somebody up, and we know something bad's gonna happen. So unfortunately, I guess the guy with a pane of glass wasn't available, so they got a fuel truck instead. Back up the fuel truck, these two guys, they see it, they don't slow down, god forbid, drive right into the fuel truck, of course, blow the thing up, they're both dead. Yes. I thought this was the most ludicrous, stupidest car chase I've ever seen. Feeling two old guys in Manhattan arguing with each other, and that the the whole thing about the gas truck backing up was just so contrived. I don't know. It just it it it put me in a bad place when the as this movie began. But I'm curious for your thoughts on this on this particular opening scene.
SPEAKER_02No, I think it's a it's a weak spot. Uh I there are lots of things in this movie that I could forgive because uh I'm gonna say over and over again that this movie was always reaching for style over substance. But in this particular exchange, yeah, I didn't even see much style. So I had to do it.
SPEAKER_01I know exactly start with a bang, as it were. Literally. Like it it's not even like a really well-constructed chase. And and when they drive into the truck, like nothing happened, like the explosion, you see the two cars, and they're both like they seem to be much more hurt than you think they would be. Although it's 70s cars, there's no airbags so maybe they will really hurry. And then the cars are on fire and they're dead. Very dramatic moment. It just felt a little much to me. But you know, I I just I it seemed to me like this is your opening sequence of the movie. You want to have a little more panache. Yeah. And it didn't really have that. But this isn't a plot hole so much, it's just like a scene that I didn't really like so much. But the next thing that happens, we meet Babe, who is played by Dustin Hoffman. He is a graduate student. Student and also a marathoner. And he is running uh through such a park. He happens to see this explosion incident happen, oddly enough. But it does raise a question: why is this movie called Marathon Man? What is the significance of him being a marathoner? And why does it show I I think these are African, Ethiopian or Kenyan marathoners ahead of time? Do you understand the significance of the marathon to the movie?
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. The the flashbacks to the East African marathoners that are obviously inspirational to Babe, I did not follow the logic of that at all. And again, in the pet peeve category, I do not follow the logic of training for a marathon running around the Central Park Reservoir, which is about a mile and a half. You gotta go around a lot of times uh in order to do that.
SPEAKER_01I mean, to your point, you could actually just run around the fucking park, which is like eight miles, I think it is, and that would be your three times that's a marathon right there, or close to it. Um also, why is he wearing a hoodie while he's running, and why does he have a stopwatch in his pants? That none of that made a lot of sense to me.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Powell But you and I disagree about this one thing. I do think we're supposed to think that if he wasn't a long distance runner, he would not later on in the movie have the ability to escape from the bad guys and run at great distance and length, even though he was exhausted to save his life.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell No, but I think okay, that's one way to interpret it. But he does say at one point to someone that that I'm a marathoner, I don't really feel pain, or I, or I can tolerate pain, which comes which does come into effect later in the movie, as we will discuss very famously. Um so maybe that's the idea. But I just I just didn't really understand like the the is there some metaphor I'm missing here? I don't get the connection between the marathoning and the story itself. It just didn't make sense to me.
SPEAKER_02That's interesting. Uh thinking in real time, I wonder if it has to do with some of the other unsatisfactions we have with some of the framing of the movie. I mean, he's a history PhD student and he's working on a personal project, and uh he's not someone who can can let go of the past, so maybe he's kind of in these things for the long haul. I am really reaching for this.
SPEAKER_01You're really, really reaching.
SPEAKER_02You're the one who asked the question, though. I did.
SPEAKER_01I did, and I look, I appreciate the effort, Jonathan. I really do. But I think if that's what they're trying to do, I think they could have done better. I just I don't c I didn't understand it. It's not a huge story part of the story, but it does feel sort of odd to me.
SPEAKER_02Um that's I linked it up entirely with the sprinting escape, which was at night and it was visually attractive. We're back to my friend Conrad Hall. Very nicely shot, very, very cinematic. There were so many things in this movie that you could say that about, even if they don't really make a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's true. So we now we find out that Babe is a graduate student. Uh I will call this plot hole 1A. Uh it's because it's not really a plot hole, it's just something that that annoyed both of us. So he goes to this graduate seminar where he uh is one of four students, and they are in a classroom that could hold easily, I don't know, a hundred students. Yes. You brought that up to me as a professor that you this annoyed you. Why is he having a four-person seminar in a fucking auditorium?
SPEAKER_02But the the answer is the kind of metaphor for the weakness of the movie writ large, which is it's a very attractive room. It's really cool to have the four of them in the auditorium, the light through the windows, it's very attractive. If you put them in a proper academic seminar room, it would just be lame. They'd be around a wooden table, be the five of them in a little room. That's just not pretty. And so the scene is really pretty. It just doesn't, you know, and this is a tiny, you know, a plot ball. It's not even a plot ball. It's just it's just the pet peeve of they're always going to do, they're always going to go for something very attractive, even if it's not necessarily coherent. And while I'm monologuing on ridiculous academic stuff, somewhere along the way they say that that Colombia has 200 students in its history of PhD program. That's that's that's not possibly true.
SPEAKER_01Right. According to the professor, my Fitz Weaver, they are j they have like an assembly line in the back there, just doling out uh PhDs to history students. That apparently is what goes on in Colombia in the 1970s. Who knew? There's also an element here, too, where he talks about his father and McCarthyism. I guess his father was caught up in witch hunts of the 50s. Again, did I miss something here? I don't understand the significance of this to the movie. I mean, it says something about his motivation. He wants to clear his dad's name. Yes. But what does that have to do with the rest of the movie? It really wasn't clear to me. And it was like it almost like again, it's like a plot device, so we could talk we could show these sebiotone scenes of Hoffman as a child when his father committed suicide because he was caught up in the in these witch hunts.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I mean, it I think it's there to try and give some gravitas to the entire enterprise. I'm not sure it does so successfully, but you know, we were in 1976. The memory of McCarthyism is still very fresh uh in in minds at that time, uh in certain minds at that time. And so Hoffman, he's the son, it probably was the son of an old lefty who was not uh probably a spy, but nevertheless was hounded out of his uh profession and eventually took his own life. And of course, young Dawson's character, Babe, uh, you know, is the one who finds the body and so forth. And his dissertation is going to be about many things about this heavy hand of the state, but as Fritz Weber says, oh, you're really just writing about McCarthyism. And I really liked Weber's speech there, the whole thing about how he can he can be a very accomplished historian, but he cannot follow in his father's footsteps. I agree.
SPEAKER_01Where it doesn't really need it or doesn't really apply. The thing about him trying to um, you know, uh clear his father's name really doesn't factor much into the movie. If it's an explanation of his motivation, I think his motivation is more getting his teeth drilled by a Nazi, which we'll get to later. It just doesn't really add up to me. So it's one of those things, again, where maybe you're like, look, if you don't really examine it that closely, you don't f about it, not a big deal. But I, as someone who does look at these things kind of closely, I was kind of like, well, I don't get this. I don't understand what the the what the point of it is.
SPEAKER_02Well, again, in tr putting my supportive hat on and thinking out loud, um, you know, McCarthyism was associated with a movement in the U.S. that was very kind of tolerant of dealing with the very far right and of in, you know, we if the if it wasn't former Nazi scientists, we wouldn't have had a space program, right? And the and American intelligence community was engaged in ferreting out uh Nazi intellectuals and Nazi scientists and even perhaps Nazi figures into the U.S. and other parts of the world. And so, you know, it's the the McCarthyite thing, at least it fits that. I I I'm I'm kind of wandering aimlessly here. So let me try and bring it, bring it some substance to it. If you think about the movie as a movie about two brothers, Dustin Hoffman and his brother Roy Scheider, each of them can be seen as people whose lives have been shaped by their reaction to what happened to their father. Uh Scheider goes into the intelligence services and has a very different take, I guess, on a moral life. Uh and and that's a compromised life. And in in that compromise, he has to kind of deal with some of these Nazis. And that's so he and Babe have chosen very different paths. Uh his Scheiders, as we're told over and over again, is a much more lucrative path. Yes. I guess spies are paid really well. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Apparently. Apparently. He's very su very suave, very well dressed. I mean, he cl he has a nice hotel, you know, seems to seems to have a good life.
SPEAKER_02But I don't know. But I mean that's all that's just all a gesture towards trying to say it's more than the effort of Goldman to wake to imbue the film with a certain significance that it doesn't really have.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Okay, so you mentioned uh Roy Scheider's character. He plays Doc, that is Dustin Auffmann's brother. Um and that gets us to plot hole number two. So we meet Roy Scheider at Paris on some kind of a mission. Uh he has the band-aid box, he puts him into a thing of chocolates, he goes visit this guy named the clerk. But as he's visiting him, as you can tell people are watching him. And I actually like the way this this this scene was filmed. There were some nice little moments there, like a little shot of um uh of uh Scheider walking in like a is reflected in a mirror. There's there are clearly people who are shadowy who are watching him. There's this guy named Chen we find out about who is appears to be Chinese of Asian descent who is following him, who later they're gonna have a little bit of a situation between the two of them. And there is this really though, uh there's a there's a there's a guy like a like a merchant, African guy with this little drum thing he's doing. And whenever you see a guy playing with a drum on the street, you just know something bad's about to happen. It's it just felt really contrived again, but alright, whatever. I I'll I'll I'll let it let it go. The point is though, is they you see, and also while Scheider's walking around, you see this baby carriage, and you know something bad's happened with the baby. Yeah, right? You just know it. And sure enough, the baby carriage left on the street, and Scheider gets into a car, and you see the carriage right next to the car, and the carriage blows up. And Scheider's fine. And here's the question that really, and I know bothered both of us. If you're trying to kill Roy Scheider with a bomb in a carriage, wouldn't you put the carriage next to the car rather than next to a restaurant which appears sustained all of the damage from the bomb? This made me crazy, actually.
SPEAKER_02It is a problem, and but it is a problem that's linked up to maybe four other movements in this part of the movie, which is that the movie is committed to professionally making you feel suspense, even if that suspense makes no sense. Aaron Powell Makes no sense. And again, you know, he goes and he there's a contact he has in France, and the he walks into his store, which must be a front for something, and the guy looks up at him, and Scheider immediately knows that the guy is surprised to see him and intuits that perhaps the guy thought he'd be dead by now, but he wasn't. But actually, Scheider isn't the only one in jeopardy because uh this French contact is going to be murdered. Yes at the opera that evening. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But why he's murdered, we have no idea. But again, what is how is it done? It is done very attractively. You go to the opera, it's very cinematic. You have steps, you have the big hallway, you have all these things going on, and then you have the threat pause threat. He goes to the box, there's his contact. Oh, wait, he's in the wrong box. Ooh, take a slide for leap. Then you go to the right back box, and then, oh, there's my friend whose throat has been slit by forces until again, the execution, very deftly handled. The logic of it, unclear. And and as we can then talk about in even when he leaves the opera house, it gets kind of silly.
SPEAKER_01Actually, but back to the carriage, because this really annoyed me because I'm watching the scene and I know that he survives. And I couldn't remember what happened here. And I'm like, I guess he's gonna like walk up to the car, but the bomb's gonna explode prematurely, so it won't kill him, or you know, it'll drive away and then it will explode. No, the the actual thing went off exactly the way it was supposed to. The baby carriage blew up as he got in the car and he was fine. I I I gotta tell you. They bungled the hit. That is exactly right. They but they did everything they wanted to do, and they bungled the hit. If you had left the carriage, I don't know, 10 feet closer to the curb, you would have probably killed Roy Schneider. Yes. But then we wouldn't have the rest of the movie. But that just made no sense at all. No. Uh and but you know, again, I'm I I'm uh you could accuse us of nitpicking here, but again, these things begin to add up after a while, right? I mean, I'm willing to suspend belief with any film, but within limits. And this went, this seemed to go a little too far. Um anyway, so he gets, he doesn't get killed, somehow drives away, and goes to meet uh William Devane, who is it seems to be his partner, mentions, hey, by the way, someone tried to kill me. They they blow up bombs all the time in France. No big deal. Don't sweat it. You know, you'll be fine, blah, blah, blah. And that's the Paris thing. Then we we go from Paris to then we meet.
SPEAKER_02No, no, we have to talk about the is this I want to do the post-opera scene because that was Oh, sorry, excuse me.
SPEAKER_01I'm so sorry. The post-opera scene. Right. The post-opera scene, Scheider runs out of the opera, which by the way, beautiful opera house. That kind of gorgeous. Really great set to set work on that one. Beautiful. He runs to this colonnade sort of section uh with columns, and there's a woman there, and she walks past him toward him.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, hits a contact of his and he whispers to her, you know, don't worry, we can't meet now, where there's danger.
SPEAKER_01Just walk right by. Walk right by. So she walks by, we don't see her, and then suddenly a soccer ball bounces into the area where Borsched is standing. Ominously. What the F. Why is it a soccer ball? What is I don't understand this. What is happening? Why is is did the woman get killed? I have no idea. Definitely.
SPEAKER_02Definitely.
SPEAKER_01Was she killed by the soccer ball killer? Is this what soccer ball killer like kills women and then throws then bounce the soccer ball to sort of say, don't come near thee? I I don't get it. What happens there?
SPEAKER_02But again, it is so style of her substance. Because it is beautiful. He calls off the meeting, she walks by, click, click, click, click, click, click with her heels, you hear in the distance, and then you realize, you know, you don't hear anymore. Probably something's happened to her, but she'd been killed, and then, ooh, ominous soccer ball comes. And he runs Roy knows enough now to run away. This raises so many questions, which is, you know, why was she killed? And as you say, what's up with the soccer ball? And as you would also say, if they can slash the sword of the guy in the opera house and murder Roy Scheider's accomplice outside of the opera house, why don't they just murder Roy Scheider right then and there?
SPEAKER_01They could have just done that, or they could have put the bomb closer to the car. That would have worked too, actually. I don't get it. I also don't understand.
SPEAKER_02But it's a beautiful scene. It is a beautiful scene.
SPEAKER_01Look, I'm shitting over this movie, but I will say, and I and I I do think that the Paris stuff is actually really well done and is very, very attractive. And we'll get more later to one CL like in particular. But it is attractive, it's well shot, it does add this idea of suspense, but it doesn't quite make a lot of sense to me. Also, why are they killing all these couriers? It's not really clear either. This is another thing with the plot holes. We don't know why these couriers are being killed. We don't know why they're trying to kill uh Roy Scheider, why they killed this woman with the soccer ball killer. We don't know why they killed the guy in the opera. We don't know. But we do finally meet uh the chief protagonist in the film, which is Christian Zell, who is a former Nazi played by Lawrence Olivier. Yes. And he was known in Auschwitz as the white angel because he had this you know shock of shock of white hair. Yeah. Shock of white hair. I used that word correctly. I'm I'm pretty pleased. Okay. So the Indian movie, we see him in Uruguay, in the jungle in Uruguay. Fun fact, by the way, Uruguay doesn't actually have any jungles. I I I learned this somewhere. But so that was another plot hole, but whatever. I'm being I'm being nitpicky with that one. Okay. So he's in his little house there. There's a woman there, she's making, she's uh uh um cleaning his clothes. He is he has his newspapers around, newspaper about the incident in uh New York with his turned out to be his brother who died in this in this gasoline car crash. The paper made it to the jungles of Uruguay, that's what it was. Exactly. And by the way, a German paper. It was De Velt. So he was, you know, clearly um they I guess they I mean actually it would make sense that they would publish De Velt in South America 1970s. I guess there was there was probably a broad probably a broad audience for that particular newspaper back then uh in in South America. Um here's the thing though, you see him trim his hair. Now, again, his his nickname was the white angel. So you would think that he would either A, cut off all of his hair, or B, dye his hair. No, he doesn't do that. He cuts off the top of his of his uh the hair, but leaves this white rim around the base of his head. So if you you would actually notice that he has white hair. Why does it just dye it black? Wouldn't that be so much easier? You see that vein? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Does it make sense? I did not pick up on that, but uh well, once you mentioned it to me in uh offline, I I thought, yes, that that is a strange choice to make.
SPEAKER_01But we see him leaving this compound, which is guarded by men with machine guns, and I guess he is going, we can assume we find out later, we do find out later, but we can assume he's going to get his diamonds. Right. That his brother was with the case.
SPEAKER_02Just to double check, as I understand it, this American intelligence community tolerates their relationship with Zell because he feeds them occasionally information that they find valuable.
SPEAKER_01Is that is that their relationship that I think it seem so my understanding is this is my attempt to explain this movie. Okay. I believe what is happening here is that Zell is feeding in information former Nazis. Sorry about information for Nazis and so forth to American intelligence services, and in return, they are currying diamonds that he has or his brother has stored in a state deposit box in New York. Yes. It does beg the question why not just have his brother, who, by the way, you know, even before the car crash, didn't look like he had a lot of time left. I mean, he was an old dude. Maybe just get all the diamonds, bring them to Uruguay, and you could just get a curry to come there and sell them, I guess, in Paris, which I assume is where they were selling the diamonds. Uh it just seems like there's an easier way to do this than to leave it to a place where in uh say deposit box in New York City.
SPEAKER_02Also, if we're nitpicking, Switzerland is where you keep your Nazi loot. I mean, come on. You would think, right?
SPEAKER_01Not in midtown Manhattan. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Historically speaking, this is this is where Nazi loot was held. Exactly. Exactly. Now, I want to say a few words about Lawrence Olivier. Now, I mentioned I mentioned this earlier. This film was not nominated for Eddie Academy Awards, except for one, and that was Lawrence Olivier was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. By the way, stacked category this year. He lost Jason Robards, who won for all the presidents' bills. Ooh, very nice. Exactly. But also that year Ned Beatty was nominated for Network, uh, Burgess Meredith for Rocky, and Bert Young for Rocky. I always want you to understand splits the vote. Exactly. I want you to just imagine that the Academy Awards, 1977, Lawrence Olivier and Burt Young were in the same category. Yes. That is that is amazing. So anyway, so this is this is uh Lawrence Olivier, but I used to call him Larry. Larry. I I gotta say, people love this performance, and I really did not like it. I just thought it was really one note, like just kind of cookie-cutter, one-dimensional bad guy. I I know that he's a Nazi, so he's supposed to be a bad guy, but like it just didn't-I just I I felt like it wasn't a very interesting performance by Olivier. People love this performance. They think he's fantastic in it. I I really was not I don't know. I didn't really it didn't do a lot for me, to be honest.
SPEAKER_02Aaron Ross Powell I was neutral on it. If it wasn't Olivier, I wouldn't have liked or disliked the performance. So I don't know, you know, maybe you're grading on a curve, maybe I'm I'm grading on a cover. I think I'm grading on a curve. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think I am. It's it's it's Larry Olivier. I mean, he's a he's a serious serious actor. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02But the people who love the performance might have been loving just being in the being in the room with Olivier. That can happen too. I mean because I thought it was I thought it was perfectly fine. I didn't think I didn't think he was the kind of character that was going to read the phone book and make me cry or anything.
SPEAKER_01I just honestly I haven't seen a ton of Olivier's performances over the years. I mean he's he's mostly known as a as maybe one of the best stage actors of all time. You know, the the one I can remember seeing him uh uh in sleuth, obviously Michael Kane, Spartacus, a movie that I probably don't love that much. I mean I mean obviously he did a lot of Shakespearean roles.
SPEAKER_02There's a late Preminger film called Bunny Lake Is Missing that he's very good in. I think he's interesting.
SPEAKER_01And there's a wonderful story about this movie that apparently uh Hoffman would sometimes he would allegedly didn't sleep for like three days to get into character. And Olivier apparently I mean a apocryphally said to him, have you just considered acting?
SPEAKER_02My dear boy, have you considered Have you considered acting?
SPEAKER_01Right, right. Which is a great uh uh line, but I don't know that's actually true. No, the story's been kicked around forever. Hoffman says they were just joking around. Uh Right. And Hoffman claims he was he was not uh not sleeping for the role, but he was not sleeping because he was going to the club every night. Who knows what's true about that? Um But uh I want to get to the cell the important Zell scene, but before we do, really quick, we have to mention the last scene in Paris that's important. I actually do like this scene a lot. Um, this is where a a um a man tries to kill the Chinese assassin, Chen, tries to kill Scheiter. Now, what's weird about this is there's a scene before where, and this is plot hole number five for those of you who score at home, uh there's a scene where the concierge comes into Scheider's room, it's the wrong with a with a suit, it's not his suit, it's the wrong room. He leaves the closet door open. And the implication here is that the killer who comes out of the closet to kill Scheider, uh, he got in somehow to the room through this civil subterfuge. The problem is, from the scene where this happens to the scene where Scheider is killed, we see him exit the room. We know he's somewhere else. So it doesn't really make any sense as to why he does this. And I think this is actually a case of where I think this movie is has some problems. The editing of this movie is just not great. Right. I there's a scene that was clearly cut here. That's a great point. Yeah. And there's a lack of continuity. So this scene doesn't need to be in the movie. It doesn't make really any sense being in the movie.
SPEAKER_02I never thought about this, but I think you're exactly right. Because they again, this it's beautifully executed cinema. I mean, there's it's you see this through a mirror. You know, the the concierge comes and he c surreptitiously leaves the closet door open or whatever. And if the movie was cut in a different way, that would have been what permitted the bad guy to go about his attempted assassination of Roy Schneider. But then, as you say, actually, no, that you know, then we just leave and do something else for a while, and it and it's it doesn't it is no longer congruous with the action.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus So this just gets to like a point that I think about this movie that that is really problematic. And there's other places in the movie where this happens as well. I just think that it's a poorly edited film. And I think this, and I and you know, I can blame the editor, but I can really blame the director, right? I mean, I I think somebody should have said this doesn't need to be in the film. I mean, look, maybe it was in the film because they like this final shot of the scene where they show the closet door open as if it's foreshadowing, but it it just doesn't really make sense. And I I think there's a lot of stuff in this film like that, where it just felt like this feels like a movie that was written on the fly a little bit and filmed on the fly and and seen and I know the ending trample was was changed, and it just that's how it felt to me that there's a lot of stuff in there that just doesn't extraneous and doesn't need to be in there. And it could have been a tighter, more um coherent narrative.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I I know nothing about this, but I wonder if Schlesinger supervised the editing. This is a Hollywood movie. He's a he's a British guy, he didn't have a lot of juice in Hollywood. Evans was a very powerful producer, probably who put the talent together for the movie. The i it'd be interesting. If if it'd be interesting to know if there was a story about the way in which the film was edited after Principal Photography completed, and you know, how how hands-on was Schlesinger in in that uh process.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's just i i uh again, I don't I I don't know the answer to that question. I just think I noticed this throughout the film, that things just didn't quite add up. Uh then so but but the next thing we see with Scheider is this Jen trying to kill him. Again, I I I I'm nitpicking, but the guy comes out of the closet at the exact moment the Scheiter's on the balcony. How does he know he's on the balcony? Like he could have just been sitting there looking at the mirror and like, hey, why is the closet door opening? But no, he's got his back to the to the to him, he's on the balcony. But it is a wonderfully done scene. Yeah. The guy has with the piano wire, takes the piano wire, Scheiter like senses what's happening, puts his hand up, gets his hand cut, but stops the piano wire from cutting his neck. And it's a great shot here of this man in a wheelchair sitting across the way. Because they're both outside the balcony because there's a strike going on and they're watching it from above. I did love the way that was shot. I love the the the shot of the old man. I love the visual of him watching, seeing the fight from his vantage point. It's really great. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The whole thing is so well executed.
SPEAKER_02But again, it's one of the better scenes in the movie, I think. But it's bad hitman work. You don't kill someone in the window because the old man in the wheelchair across the way can see what's happening. And uh you know, can't you can't get a gun with a silencer? I mean, seriously. No, that's that was one of my pet peeves is if he doesn't. Exactly. He just steps out of the closet with his gun, a silencer, floop, foop, three three shots in the back, and Scheider's been murdered. You know, it's over.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, the your day is over. Go to the cafe, have a drink, you're fine. Uh as you said earlier, he bungled the hit. Again, by the way.
SPEAKER_02And then the thing is also I the thing I love about this particular scene is as you said, it's it's really attractive. They go out on the balcony, he uses the piano bar, he gets the hand up. It's also something I really appreciate in the movies, which is consequential violence. I mean, Scheider's quick instincts prev get his hand in the and prevent him from being garotted or whatever it is to death. But he's he really, his hand is severely injured and it bleeds all over the place, and he's spends the rest of the movie pretty bandaged up because of it. Right. And so I do like I like my movies to have consequential violence, not just violence. I agree.
SPEAKER_01And speaking of consequential violence, the way that he kills Chen is interesting. He basically puts his knee on his back, pulls his head back, and I guess breaks his neck. I I don't know if that actually I'm not gonna test it, just to be clear. But I don't know if that actually works as a way to kill somebody. But it was elegantly done, for lack of a better way to put it.
SPEAKER_02So a really good spy can kill you with a drinking straw, so you know, who knows?
SPEAKER_01It's exactly right. Exactly right. Okay, that was plot number five. Now plot number six. So there's a love interest in this movie played by Martha Keller. She is a character named Elsa. She is in the library at Columbia. It's actually not actually the library of Columbia, it was a library, I believe, at uh UCLA. It was still in in LA. Right, but it is the low library, right? It is the low library, it's supposed to be the low library, exactly. And um the they are flooding with each other across you know the table. She gets up and she leaves, he chases after her. Now we find out later that Elsa, her whole job is to have a relationship with Babe to find out what he knows, because he is Doc's brother, what he knows about the the diamonds and whether it is safe. We'll get to that in a second. Okay. So here's my question. If her whole job is to get close to Dustin Hoffman, why does she play hard to get when she meets him? I this made no sense. She's she's she literally leaves the library, he chases after her, she immediately rejects him, he comes out, he follows her, he's a little stalkerish, by the way. Yeah. He gets to her door, he says, I we could have a great time together, and she says, I don't think so. Like, what the f you're the worst uh uh um honey trap I've ever seen in my entire life. Your job is to get this guy to be with you, not to repel him.
SPEAKER_02For me, that was the least of this problem of this relationship. Go ahead, please. What was the most of the problem? This is some very serious planning ahead. You're you're planting the German woman courier in the library to get her close to Dustin Hoffman. And it's not like Scheider and Hoffman, they see each other less than once a year, but it's like and who is arranging this plant to plant the German woman to be the lover of Dustin Hoffman solely so she can perhaps keep I mean, what is her job? What is she job? No, she's a courier slash honey trap.
SPEAKER_01That apparently is her job. But what is the trap? I mean, we could anybody could follow Dustin Hoffman around. But yeah, actually, you bring up a good point. Like, do we have any sense that they're like, are they emailing? No, 70 minutes. There's no email. Are they running lotion? Are they talking on the phone? Why does anyone think that Doc Shatter is telling Hoffman about this pl and why they've got all this trouble?
SPEAKER_02Set up this woman in an apartment in the city just so she can get into a relationship with Dustin Hoffman again, it's very unlikely that he knows anything to begin. This is just such advanced planning. And every face covered.
SPEAKER_01Look, they are German, so I get there's that part of it too, but it makes it crazy. And also, like if they get into a whole relationship. Like they're dating, they're very serious with each other. I I it's yeah, it's bizarre. Her character is problematic throughout. Yeah. Her character is not well drawn. And uh by the way, at the end of the movie, it just flips sides like and and gives the whole story away at like you know because she feels bad. Aaron Ross Powell Because she feels bad. Yeah. Right. That's that's what often happens in real life. Okay. So that is that is plot hole number six. Neg the plot hole.
SPEAKER_02For me, that is the biggest thing.
SPEAKER_01That is the one I could not get past. I could not get past the idea. I can't believe you're saying this because you haven't gone to plot hole seven, which is the biggest plot hole in the entire movie. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02Maybe I'll change my mind when we get to plot hole numbers done. But I when I was watching the movie without thinking about plot holes, I was thinking about this one. It's like, really? This is their plan. Plant this woman in New York City and have her date Dustin Hopman so that she can. And it's the dot dot zots after the so she so that she can that I could not finish that sentence.
SPEAKER_01No, I know, I know. And look, if you say it the first time, like you don't know that that she's gonna be the honey trap, so maybe you buy it. But when you watch it again, you're like, what the f this is like why are you playing hard to get? Okay. Okay, so let's get to the next one because this is the one that got me. That really killed me. Okay. I mean, literally. So, not me literally, but the character in the movie. Okay, so Scheider comes to New York, he visits Babe, he uh you know, he it's a little foreshadowing because he sneaks into the apartment, he puts a pillow over his head and tries to like scare him. And we see that they're you know the two of them are very close and they're talking about their father and so forth. And then the next thing we know with Scheider is he goes to meet Zell in New York at uh it's it looks like Lincoln Center, but it's actually a smaller. No, no, no. They have the lunch with the lunch first. Oh my god, I'm so sorry. They have lunch with Elsa, right? Where Scheider figures out that Elsa is lying. I like that scene. Good spelling. It is a good scene. Good.
SPEAKER_02And he does it very effectively. I would have fallen for that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. She says she's Swiss. She tells him where she's from, and she says, Oh, I know that place, and describes the mountain that they were at, and then he and then he reveals like you're lying. LL's security couldn't have done it better. Absolutely. Discovers that she's German. Okay? And that should have been the end of it, by the way. Because sh why would she lie about being German versus being Swiss? I don't, I mean, I don't I don't get it. Right. Maybe because Hoffen's Jewish, but we don't know that he's Jewish because it's never established in the in the in the film. Who knows? Scheider's not Jewish. I mean, Hoffman in real life is Jewish, Scheider's not, so it's very confusing. Anyway, so they have this logic on the scene. Maybe they're half-brothers, exactly. Maybe they're half-brothers. That's right. Um, but you know, they they have this he, or I guess it's the lunch, and uh she storms off, and you know, then the next thing you do is see him meeting with Zell at this Lincoln Center stand-in, actually in LA, where Scheider basically tells Zell to go fuck himself, more or less. And Zell says, Well, okay, I got something for you. And we find out early in the film that Zell has this sinister uh knife hidden in his in his uh arm. It's like a bond-like kind of uh implement that he can like pull out this knife and stab people with it, and he stabs Scheider in the gut. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a pretty brutal scene, actually. And we assume that he is dead. Well really, I mean, he doesn't just knife him, you know. He's he goes all in. Like he twists the knife. He twists the knife. It's not just a phrase. No, it's he literally twists the knife. He's like disemboweling him. It's pretty unpleasant. And yet, somehow, Scheider finds the strength to walk, I don't know, two miles up to Columbia. Sorry, I did the two miles to Babe's apartment where he dies on his floor. Now, the question I had, I get it's dramatic. Why didn't you just call a fucking ambulance? Like that would have been a lot easier. Call the ambulance, be like, hey, can I call my brother just to sell him? I love him. I don't know. There could have been something smarter than walking and how he survived. Of course, it's of course it's a movie we know it's stupid, but it's incomprehensible.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. But my medical estimation is he had about two blocks in him max, and you know, he had 40 to go. But again, having your your bleeding brother burst into the apartment and die on the floor, it's it's attractive, it's you know, in the dark and everything. It's it's cinematically appealing. Trevor Burrus, Jr. To your point, style over substance. Style over substance. But I do want a minor peeve, uh Scheider's character, Doc, was defined by his savviness. You know, he escaped execution earlier, he always knew when he was in danger. Yes. You gotta figure he knows that Olivier is a dangerous guy. And you got to think quite vulnerable uh to that. But in in a different if that at a different part of the movie, Scharder would have twisted out of the way at the very last second, grabbed the arm of the bad guy, and definitely threw him over his shoulder with a remarkable judo move.
SPEAKER_01But here he's kind of stabbed to death by an old man. Yeah, exactly. By an old man. An old man stabbed him to death. It's a tough way to go. No question about it. Okay, so he's dead. Yeah, cops come. I actually like this scene a lot the way this is shot. So it's really well done scene. We see uh this character Janoway played by William Devane again. He comes in, he questions him. We don't know who he works for. He tells him later he works for some the thing called the division, which is sort of between the CIA and and um was it the military? I can't even remember the case. I don't remember, but I guess they couldn't get the rights to use the CIAs. Right, right. It's some secret government agency. No, no, it's it's more secret than the CIA. You know, they're not they don't they don't mess with those people. They're like in a whole other world. So Janaway uh basically tells him that he might be in danger and he wants to use him as bait, and babe sort of tells him I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Before you get to your biggest pet peeve of the movie, I just want to double down on something you said, which is that that scene in the apartment for me is actually the best scene in the movie. I actually agree with you. You know, once again it's nighttime, which as you know I like, but you've got the cops, you've got Hoffman, you've got the dead brother. There's some interrogating going on there, because there has to be. But Hoffman's very uncomfortable, he's also comfortable around cops, you know, because that's just the kind of character he is. He's also traumatized by the death of his brother. Then the Dovane character comes in, and obviously he has supernumerary authority, right? He can clear out the local uh cops pretty easily and take over the situation. And then he has a nice chat with Dustin Hoffman. That whole scene I thought was really well done. And that's why I say, you know, good with an asterisk, because it's hard to pull out. That is a really strong scene.
SPEAKER_01I agree. And I think it's also, you know, we this movie obviously falls into the category of sort of paranoid thriller. I mean, that we have talked a lot at great length in this podcast about. We've talked about it with uh um All the President's Men and the Parallax View. And that that scene really kind of captures the paranoia, and it's interesting too because Hoffman is kind of the victim here. Yes. Right? His brother has died in his arms, and he's being treated as though he is a suspect somehow by the police. There's an insensitivity to him, but also there's there's a it's it it's failed in such a way that it really does put you on edge, and you think that that that these guys are all out to get Hoffman. Right.
SPEAKER_00Anything can happen.
SPEAKER_01Right. So I actually agree with you. It's it's one of the better scenes in the movie. Um and you know, there's the starkness of okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna there's a minor point, but Scheider's lying dead on the ground, and they have painted the white lines around him. And I gotta say, I gotta give kudos to the guy from the Peace of Arbor who painted the white line. That is an extraordinarily good job. I mean, he is really there's no he it's like he's got it completely on him. There's like no excess there.
SPEAKER_02In mid-70s New York, the guy had a ton of practice, you know. That's why he was successful. That's true. That's true.
SPEAKER_01That's a good point. But it was really impressively done. I mean, you know, it's great. And then you can, you know, they take the body away and you see the white outline with the blood on it. Really, you know, great visual there. And also, by the way, his apartment is a shithole. And I actually can love the apartment. I love really good production design on that. I mean, it really feels like a graduate student's apartment. Definitely. Um feels like an apartment of a guy who's living like hand-to-mouth and is a grad student and and and basically runs all the time. You really it is it is well done. It the set work in this film is excellent. Um, and then what does he do? Like, what's the first thing you would do if your brother died in your arms in your apartment? What's the first thing you would do?
SPEAKER_02I would take off all my clothes and take a bath.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there it is. Same with Dustin. What the fuck? Why are you taking a bath? You have a girlfriend. Go to your girlfriend's apartment. Do you really want to be coming out of the bath and seeing the bloody outlines of where your brother was just killed? And Janoway told him that he was in potential danger. Yes. So, yeah, take a bath. Great idea, Dustin. Great idea, babe. Really good thinking. Of course he does that. And what happens? The two heavies break into the apartment. By the way, the two heavies who we should mention earlier in the film mugged him and Elsa in Central Park. Yes. Which didn't seem to raise a lot of suspicion because the two guys were dressed in suits. Yes. And I don't know a lot about I mean, I wasn't I wasn't around in the 70s New York, but my sense of it is that the people who committed muggings were usually not wearing suits. Right. Less well dressed, typically. Less well dressed, yeah. Anyway, they break in and they take him to see Zell. By the way, this scene is great, by the way. I guess it's another really well-done scene. He he's trapped in the bedroom in the bathroom. He can't get out. He breaks the window. He can't get out from the window because it's I guess there's not enough space. And you see the guy trying to uh crowbar the door open. I mean, I have to say for the record, a well-placed foot on the door probably would have opened that door. I don't think you need to go the crowbar route. Um it's well done. And then you see him.
SPEAKER_02The little the the extraction of him from the bathroom, if he had if you could believe that he would be in that bathroom, it's it's yeah, exactly. It's it's it's flawless.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's well done. Oh I'm not gonna say flawless because of one thing. With if you notice this, when he pushed the crowbar into the door, the not just the door moves, but the wall moves. The wall next to the door.
SPEAKER_02I didn't notice that, but I thought it all had to do with the hinge work. So I think I don't know. It felt like it was just a cheap wall. That is very possible.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Because it was almost certainly a set. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was a cheap set. Anyway, so he takes him to uh to see Zell. Yeah. And this is the most famous scene in the entire movie. Uh I can't believe we're an hour into this, and we're finally getting to the most famous scene in the movie. This is a scene where he's sitting in a chair, Zell comes in, and he says, Is it safe?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Is it safe? Over and over again. Really creepy. And and I gotta say, I don't love Olivia in this film, but his line readings in this scene are fantastic. Yes. And you talk about this because you mentioned this before. Hoffman's reactions to it are also great.
SPEAKER_02Yes. They're they're I I thought they were great because I really feel like that's how you would react in that situation. You're just desperately trying to figure out what the right answer is and provide that answer because otherwise you're in a hell of a lot of trouble.
SPEAKER_01Right. Because he has no idea what he's talking about. Like not a clue. And frankly, neither does the audience. Right. We don't know I mean, I d uh look, I saw this movie for the first time years ago. I don't remember if I realized it at the time. But do we does it is it obvious at that point that he's talking about going to get the diamonds from the safe deposit box?
SPEAKER_02Maybe because another problem with this movie, I feel bad that we're piling on, is that William Devane, boy, is he a monologuing villain. You know, he is not. You know, he should be a little more taciturn. And so I think he may have kind of given some of the details uh about the diamond stuff in that. I remember any.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no. He tells about the diamonds after Oh, in the car. After the fur initial scene with Olivier. Now I gotta say, his endless monologuing drove me crazy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was like we're gonna do this at 2 45 p.m. on Mattis Avenue, 58th Street, just in case you escape and want to go there.
SPEAKER_01Um But do you Okay, so I know you're not a torture guy, and I'm not really either. I mean, what do you what did you think of this scene? What what's your take on this scene? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02So I didn't really I had saw I saw it the first time, so I didn't really watch it with care this time because I I have an aversion to torture. But cinematically, again, you know what's scary? You know what scares everybody? Dentists. Going to the dentist's. Yes, I mean this is straight, you know, all at least back to Hitchcock's 1934 um thriller. Uh I think it might have been the first uh um The Man Who Knew Too Much, uh where a guy goes to a dentist and he's overpowered. It's a it's a scary thing. I'm scared of the dentist's office and they're not even doing it. They're trying to help me. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. I feel the same way. I I think it's an interesting way to to Yeah, I mean it's a really effective way to to terrorize your audience. Yeah. And to really make them feel the sense of fear that he must have felt. I mean, you know, the first time he does it, he basically he goes in there and he like he drills into a cavity, which I I, you know, that's not just thinking about it makes me uncomfortable. And then wait, then he ta then they take him out of the um uh out of the uh the room. They give him this little was it oil? I can't remember what it is. Soothe the thing. And as as they're giving him this oil, Hoffman sees Dave come in. He stabs one guy, one heavy, shoots the other guy, drives him away, does this whole exposition about why Zell is here, and they want to figure out like what Babe knows. Right. Because this is all a trick. He didn't actually shoot the guy, didn't actually stab the guy. He's working with Zell. Now, this brings up a question. Okay. We learn now this is not heavily referenced in the movie. Right. But in the book, uh Doc and Janaway are lovers. Right. And it's a gently hinted at in the movie, but it's more than gently hinted.
SPEAKER_02I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't know to look for it. I wouldn't have.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's there's a scene where he calls him, he says, Janie, why don't you get over it? Get your ass over here. And there's a suggestion that, you know, there's a lot of I'm so naive, I didn't realize I I assume Janie was a woman. I didn't realize it either until later, but it is actually something that that is referenced in the book. But it does raise a question. Why is Janoway and this is a plot hole by the way, uh, number nine, for those of you who keep a score at home. Why is he working with Zell after Zell killed his friend, partner, and lover? Yes.
SPEAKER_02It's uh it's very strange uh uh one might presume that he was at all Always going to betray Scheider because you have that early scene where Scheider says, Hey, someone's trying to kill me, and he says, Right. Oh, don't be silly, no one's trying to kill you. So you at least you have that seed planted. But but whatever plot hole we're at, very soon in movie Minutes Later, he tells Lawrence Olivier, by the way, we're done with you. You know, we don't need you anymore. I mean, so there that relationship was already on the out.
SPEAKER_01Which is, by the way, the same thing that Doc said to him before he before Olivier stabbed him.
SPEAKER_02So I yeah, so his motivations, aside from just being a very, very, very bad man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I think that's right. So, okay, so basically then they'd bring Hoffman back for a second round of torture, which I gotta say, this was the one that got me, because he says, you know, I'm not gonna drill into the other cavity. Right. I'm gonna drill into a fresh nerve. I mean, it's horrific what he does to him. And uh as again, as a torture scene, it's it's effective. I just it's just I I don't know. I didn't need it. I mean, I I shouldn't say I didn't need it. I mean I just it's hard to criticize it because it's it's part of the plot and part of the film. I just not I'm just not that into watching torture scenes.
SPEAKER_02You have to, in my view, do this with great care. There's a French uh television series called Les Bureaux, and it's a spy series, and a lot of it takes place in Middle East North Africa. And so there's going to be torture. There's going to be brutality. But that show usually tied the guy in the chair, had a bad guy come up to him, punch him in the face, and then the camera left the room. You don't need to watch somebody being tortured to understand they're being tortured and to understand the consequence of that torture. And so again, it it has to do with how you responsibly or irresponsibly portray the violence. And torture is especially tricky in in that area.
SPEAKER_01I get it. I mean, I I do think, however, I mean, this is very 70s. It's very I mean, I think it pushes the envelope a little bit in what is acceptable in film. I don't I mean, I don't know how many torture scenes there are in movies and in the 70s, but I I don't think we've seen a ton like this. I mean, this felt like this pushy the envelope in a lot of ways. Um I d I don't hate the scene. I mean, I s it's a terrifying scene. The Is It Safe thing is is legendary and and and and kind of sh I understand why. I mean, as I said before, the the line deliveries are fantastic and Hoffman's reaction is fantastic. I it's it's I understand why people think this scene is the best scene in the movie. It's just for me is not my favorite scene just because I don't look it's just uncomfortable. I mean I watched it again uh a couple days ago and I was just like it was hard to watch. Yes, we've all been to the dentist and we've all felt the pain that we uh you know I've had a root canal done. It's not fun. And to think about someone like I mean, drilling into a live nerve, I mean, uh you know.
SPEAKER_02I I will defend the movie by saying, you know, if Tarantino did that scene, it would have been three times longer. Three times longer.
SPEAKER_01You're right. I think that's probably true. Okay, so basically what happens next? So they they discover that Hoffman knows nothing. Surprise, surprise. We should have known that already. So they take him out of this dental facility to to I assume to kill him.
SPEAKER_02Yes, definitely.
SPEAKER_01They leave him alone in the car and somehow forget that it's marathoner, and he runs away. Yes.
SPEAKER_02And leaps.
SPEAKER_01Leap a uh a leap onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, I believe. Uh yes. No, he le uh he lean uh it's the Brooklyn Bridge, I believe. Yeah. It's from one ramp to the other, he he leaps, if I remember correctly. Oh, then it's onto the FDR? I don't know. We could do we gotta get a map. It's in Manhattan. It's in Manhattan. I'm pretty sure actually it's um it's off the Brooklyn Bridge. And it and they filmed apparently over nine days, they filmed that. And it's you know, it's a well-done scene. It's beautiful. Beautifully shot.
SPEAKER_02Again, Conrad Hall. Don't don't underestimate Conrad Hall as one of the great 70s cinematographers. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01But we've been we've been we've been kind of shitting all over the plot holes in this film, but like there's a really there's some great visuals in this movie, and I think that's one of the like him running through the streets of Manhattan is a great visual. Him leaping you know from one from one exit ramp to the other is beautiful. It's it's well done. It's a well done scene. Um the next thing we'd find out is he gets in a cab and he goes all the way uptown to his apartment. Now, earlier in the scene, we had seen some neighbors of him, some I guess Puerto Rican or Dominican. Yes. They called him the creep. They used to make fun of him, I guess because they he lives in their neighborhood.
SPEAKER_02He goes into one of their apartments, he's which those scenes were undeftly handled. The neighborhood toughts who used to mock him scenes. I thought they were clumsy, actually. And I and I don't find I didn't find the movie clumsy in most of its execution. And so that really jumped out at me as a it felt a little contrived.
SPEAKER_01I kind of agree with you. It doesn't really work so well. But then he goes to his neighbor who has been calling him a creep and making fun of him and says, I need your help. I need you to rob my apartment. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right, because they're the bad guys are staking out the apartment. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01So he can't go to his own apartment. He's he can't go in there that's being watched. He needs the uh the the guys in the neighborhood who call him a creep to rob his apartment. Yes. Now he wakes this guy up, tells him what he wants to do. It could be dangerous. The guy says that's the best part, love the danger, what have you. So what does this guy do? He wakes up like literally the entire building. No, it's not.
SPEAKER_02And they watch eight of his friends.
SPEAKER_01It's eight people. It's eight fucking guys. Okay, I'm just gonna say from a from a profit loss standpoint. This is a grad student. He's got a hi-fi, he's got a TV. This is not a like a high-end job. Like, don't you don't need eight guys. Like, I mean, you just get maybe narrow to three, you all got guns. It's fine. And then there's a great moment there when they get to the door to break in and Davein comes around and says, All right, you guys got to go. And they all pull guns on him. Divane's like, oh, all right, I'm just gonna back away. But like, Davein's not suspicious about this, like wondering, well, I mean, I wonder who sent them over here at two in the morning to go rob this guy's apartment. I mean, which doesn't have much stuff in it. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And what are the what are the odds? The apartment I'm sticking out is the apartment being robbed by A.
SPEAKER_01Right, exactly. What are the chances of that? But that's what happens. Uh so they anyway, they go rob the stuff. They bring over to Hoffman, I guess, a change of clothes and the gun that he ha we saw earlier in the film, the checkoff gun that we saw in the first act that is his father's gun that he used to kill himself.
SPEAKER_02But I don't know what plot hole number we're up to, but they don't even bother- This is 10. They don't bother showing us the transfer of the clothes and the gun from the Hood's to Dustin Hoffman's character. Why? Because it makes no sense, right? They have to they have to go leave his apartment with his stuff and then reconnect with Hoffman and give him the stuff while Hoffman's apartment is being watched by bad guys. I mean, who's who you think about it? And while these guys are being watched by the bad guys. Yeah, no, no. These are all professional killers. I I just would I I would keep one eye on where those guys were going if I was in that business.
SPEAKER_01I would as well. But apparently they don't because Hoffman escapes. Next thing we do, we see him with Marta, I mean Elsa, and she takes him to this house that she claims is a friend of his, and Hoffman quickly figures out that this is not a friend's house, but this is Zell's house. And he says to her, Is it safe? He says, Is this I think he says it's Zell's or is it safe? No, I think it's his brother's house, right? I think the brother owned that house. Oh, yeah, you're right. It's Zel's brother, the one who the one who crashed into the truck.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01She he basically says you're working for Zell, and she is such a well-trained spy that she gives it up within five seconds and says, Yes, in fact, I'm working with Zell. This, by the way, I didn't mention this in the plottle. This is not one of the plottles, but my God, this whole scene makes no offense whatsoever. Because okay, he gets there, she flips to defend to basically be on his side. The the guys show up, uh, Jan away with these two heavies, he either outside the the the house or for some uh inexplicable reason, he invites them inside. I don't know why. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's get to a more confined space. Good idea. Yeah, that's nothing bad can come from that. Then one of the guys, uh the guy plays Alan Niddy in Godfather movies, he tries to pull a gun out in a very ostentatious way, which means he gets shot by Hoffman, and then Janaway kills the other guy. Right. What and then Hoffman escapes and Janoway kills Elsa. And here's my question. If he's gonna kill Elsa, if he was like she was expendable, just kill her when you get there. Shoot her, shoot Hoffman.
SPEAKER_02End of discussion. Trevor Burrus, Jr. There's a lot going on here. I mean, you know, first of all, you know, not since Goldfinger has a woman change change sides so easily for her lover. Right? Yeah, exactly. You know, but that's a Hollywood thing, right? She's bad, but she loves Dustin Hoffman, so she so she switches sides. She fell she fell for him. She fell for him. Why they go in the house, utterly um implausible. Why the bad guy pulls the gun unless he's supposed to, but he's obviously not supposed to, that's not good training. And then Dane shoots him. That's an odd choice. But then Dane says, I'll let you go, I'll kind of trade you, um Olivier, because you know, I'm I feel responsible. Suddenly he feels responsible for his brother's death. And somebody says, So, you know, uh almost like in honor of your brother here, because he had again monologues. You know, this is the thing where he tells him exactly where Olivier is going to be at exactly what time of day. And he's like, if he's going to kill him, why is he doing all this monologuing? I don't understand. And then he Hoffman leaves, and then he looks like he's going to shoot him, and then she screams out, then he shoots her. Again, this is and then you've got four dead people in in in the By the way, by the way.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if you notice this. Jen Oway shoots her like in the leg. Yeah and somehow just kills her. I guess like a magic bullet that like entered her leg and went right up to her heart. I don't know how that works.
SPEAKER_02Well, eventually the bullets were flying in that scene.
SPEAKER_01No, no, she he throws she falls on the floor, Jenway runs out, stops, says, you know what, I should kill her, shoots her in the leg, kills her somehow, and then runs out and gets shot in the face by Dustin Offman. Uh that scene, I don't understand what happened at all in that scene. Why does he shoot the two heavies? Why does he shoot Elsa? Why does he want to protect Babe? I don't no idea what's going on here.
SPEAKER_02It's as if people are changing their minds in real time, second by second, as to what they're trying to accomplish. Makes no sense. It does. That that that scene may not, but it leaves you've got four dead bodies in that house.
SPEAKER_01I don't even think it's that even that elegantly of a film scene, to be honest. I everything about that scene just annoyed me. Uh so then the next thing we see is Zell back in the city. He goes to the Diamond District. Why? I guess he wants to find out how much the diamonds he's gonna get later in the day are worth. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes. Why that matters, it doesn't really matter. Why that matters? I mean, I I know you can't check online because it's 76, but I know, but if let's say they're worth less than he thought, is he not going to get them anyway? I I I exactly. Make a phone call. Hey, listen, I got a couple of carrot diamonds. What are those worth? Just, you know, I'm just ballparking here. There's no point to why he goes to Diamond District. None. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And you'd think he'd get the diamonds first and then he'd go to the diamond district and say, hey, look at the diamonds I got. No, doesn't do that either. It it's an incomprehensible scene. It only is in the in the film, it seems, to produce this moment where this woman and this man who is a survivor of Auschwitz uh recognize him. Right. Well, you know, again, this speaks to the earlier issue that maybe you should have dyed your hair black.
SPEAKER_02So um so you know, I gotta say I was a bit of a sucker for that though. I I just have to copy that. I I I didn't think about it at the time, and I thought, oh, that's kind of clever. These are I did. I feel like a you made me feel like a total sucker right now. But when he's wandering on the diamond district and the and and it's like, yes. Wow. That I thought that was fair. I thought that was actually clever. Okay. All right. Look, but now I just feel like total losers.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I I'm sorry that I made you feel bad. But what happens there is you know, the old woman sees him, she yells out, Zell. I mean, actually that was quite an affecting moment, I thought, in the film, and she recognizes him. She runs after him, she gets hit by a car, she seems to be fine. The other man who recognized him, who had the uh had the tattoo from the camps, he runs up to him. Uh uh Olivier doesn't go well for him. Olivier stabs him uh with his with his secret magic knife in the his trusty uh um what's it called, arm knife he has there. He stabs him in the throat, get gets away. Again, uh look, i I'm just gonna say this to put us out here. If you are a Nazi war criminal, okay, and you like can be recognized by survivors of uh the Holocaust, I just want to say for the record, maybe going to a place that is known to contain a great many Jews is not a good idea. It just seems like a bad bad idea. Like of all the places you could have gone to, the one place where there's a reasonable chance someone might recognize him is this street, 47th Street, in Manhattan, Diamond District.
SPEAKER_02So here again, I I just I just totally missed it. I mean, if would he is it necessary that he would know that, right? He's a Nazi, he's fled to Uruguay. How up on the Diamond District is he? You know, it's not like he's going to 47th Street Records or something. It's like I I I liked I uh before you get to the stabbing parts, and before you get to somebody fingering him, I liked he's wandering down the street and he's just surrounded by these very Jewish-looking people. And I just liked I liked the visual. I like the you know, he I thought if if if he did good acting in this movie, that was the acting that I admired.
SPEAKER_01Okay, just a question for you. You're right, he may not have known that this was a place where a lot of Jews hung out. But he once he got there, he sort of realized it. Oh man, I gotta get the hell out of here. You know what? These are not my people. These are not my people. Right. But no, he stays and you know, and chaos ensues. Then, of course, he goes to the bank, gets the diamonds. This is an interesting scene where you see all the diamonds laid out. Apparently, if more than a couple of diamonds, you see a shitload of diamonds. And by the way, just so we're clear for those of you who see the film, he got these diamonds because when when the Soviets, I guess we're getting close to the camps, he basically told everybody there that he could uh he could get them out if they gave him if they had diamonds to give him, he could somehow get them to safety. Uh how they still had diamonds after the remote.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's not how I read that. That that's what he said, isn't it? I thought his reputation was that he would steal the gold fillings from people he had murdered.
SPEAKER_01And that he said over the years converted that gold into diamonds because they were even more uh No, Janoway says in his exposition that he started with gold to get out of the teeth, and then he went to diamonds. Right. Trevor Burrus And he tra and basically people were trading him diamonds in order to get them to safety. I guess people who would smuggle diamonds on their body, like into the camps, I suppose, and there's a lot of diamonds there. I'm not going to go back and look, but uh uh th I I heard it slightly differently. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I i i it doesn't make a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_02It's not really important. It just has the diamonds. He ha he's what's really important is that William Goldman likes safe deposit boxes because he featured them in the Hot Rock, a movie he wrote just a couple of years before Marathon.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus Do they still have safe deposit boxes?
SPEAKER_02So he also likes diamonds.
SPEAKER_01William Goldman. Where was the in what movie was they were they're They're The Hot Rock?
SPEAKER_02And it also takes place has a number of scenes in a safe deposit box room. And yes, they still have them. Oh, yes. You still have them? Of course. Where are you else you're gonna keep your ill-gotten gains if not in a safe deposit room?
SPEAKER_01Can I tell you a great story about a safe deposit box, actually? This is a great story, actually. I'm just gonna go off on a on a tangent here, but this is pretty funny. My grandfather, sort of a little bit of a tyrannoid guy, uh went to he used to keep things in safe deposit box. Went to safe deposit box once, and he he he comes out of the comes away out of the bank and calls my father up. This was his son-in-law, and says, Gene, that's my father, the bank is stealing my money. And my dad says, Okay, all right, what tell you know, he's heard this before, but tell me what happened. I went to say deposit box. I was looking for a um, I guess like a bond, a T-bill or something, and I couldn't find it. It wasn't in the safe deposit box. And my dad says, you know, sometimes what happens in those boxes is they get they get a little bit uh like um uh I don't know what's the word, like condensation or something. Or there's some kind of like airflow. I don't know what exactly what causes this, but sometimes things will stick to the top of the safe deposit box. So go back tomorrow and see if this is on top, on the top of the safe deposit box. Like when you reach your hand in, like you see the the the the the what's what's what's what's down there, it's on the top. Sure enough, it goes back the next day, and there it is. Wow, yeah, seriously problem solving. I I was very my dad told my story, I was like, wow, that's pretty impressive, actually. I never would have figured that, would have guessed that. No. Anyway, sorry for that tangent. I love that story. So that is brings us to now plot hole number 12. Okay? Because what happens at the St. Deposit scene, he gets all the diamonds, he leaves. It is, as it turns out, not safe because Doug Soffman is outside the bank waiting for him for uh Zell.
SPEAKER_02And he knows where the bank is because Devane monologued in the house. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yes, no. Like a great point. He gave away the whole fucking thing, by the way. You're absolutely right about that. So what happens? They're in midtown Manhattan, yeah, but they walk all the way up Central Park for some god knows what reason.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And minimum minimum a mile, I estimate it as a mile and a half. Okay, maybe yeah. They get to this, I guess it's a pump house in by the reservoir where he runs all the time. This scene is a plot hole for me because I have absolutely no clue what Babe's plan is at the in this scene. Does he he makes what do you mean he makes Zell eat the diamonds? Yes. Right? So you can eat the ones, you can keep the ones that you can eat. Is that his plan? I don't understand what his end game is here.
SPEAKER_02I don't, you know, he's had a rough couple of days. I don't know if he really has a coherent plan. We have the nice symmetry of starting at the reservoir and ending at the reservoir, even if it's a bit of a hike for an old man like Boris Olivier.
SPEAKER_01But also a hike for Hoffman who just had somebody like drill into a live nerve in his mouth. That is he's probably feeling under the weather, I'm gonna suspect.
SPEAKER_02And well, I have a question for you, though. When Olivier starts to trash talk Adam, he says, You're weak, your brother is weak, your father was weak. Does he know the whole story about the dad? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01I How would he know that? I have no idea how he knows that.
SPEAKER_02Trevor Burrus, Jr. Maybe he and you know Doc were just swapping stories about their families, and Doc said, Oh, my dad killed himself in the McCarthy era?
SPEAKER_01Who knows? It's very strange. But I don't get what he's trying to accomplish with this scene. And like, wouldn't it be easier just to steal the diamonds, trim over the cops? Now, in the original the book and the original screenplay, he takes Olivier to the Central Park and shoots him and kills him, and he's arrested by the police. Technically speaking, he exacts his revenge. Exacts his revenge. And by the way, I uh Pauline Cale, who who for the record hated this film, God bless her. She said this movie was a Jewish revenge fantasy. And it kind of is, except that Hoffman, we know Dustin Hoffman's a Jew, but we don't know if Babe is a Jew. Right. So we don't know it's a revenge fantasy, really, for the guy who drilled into his mouth. But I really look, I I kind of hated this final scene. I don't understand it. I don't get what the plan is. And I felt like this is this is this is where I'm I'm judging Olivier by his reputation. I just kind of felt like this was beneath Lawrence Olivier to have the scene where he throws the diamonds into this into the water. He Olivier, rather than trying to stab Hoffman and, you know, whatever, he runs to get the diamonds and of course he falls on his on his arm knife and kills himself.
SPEAKER_02Which is gutless, right? That's really that means that Dustin Hoffman doesn't have to kill him. Exactly. He's hoist on his own wrist knife. His own wrist knife.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. But like what the f like that actually is a great point. I thought about like it takes all the onus off of Hoffman to make a decision because he says to him, You're weak, you can't do it. And guess what? He's right. Hoffman doesn't make a decision, doesn't decide to shoot him, and he kee he kills himself with his own greed. Ooh, metaphor alert. I mean, I just I just found the whole thing really silly. You I get how it ends up, but how do you get to this point doesn't really make any sense. You know, he goes into the pump house, there's a guy in there, he says, he shows him the gun, tell him to get out of there. You'd think the guy would call the cops immediately. The cops like never show up. Yeah, I mean when he leaked again, this is New York in the mid-70s. It's gonna be a lot. Fair enough. Fair enough. He doesn't take the diamonds with him. He could have just taken a few diamonds, wouldn't have killed them. I mean, they're probably worth a lot of money. And actually, you know what's funny? When I saw this a few months ago, I didn't hate it as much, but I I didn't already dislike it as much. I hated the ending. I thought the ending was just stupid and just didn't make any sense and just felt like and felt cheap and and like a cop-out. Like, you know, have them shoot Olivier. That makes more sense.
SPEAKER_02So I think it makes more sense to shoot Olivier. Let me let me tell you what I think they think the ending was about. Okay, please. Which I don't think is earned or justified by the movie or the action in the movie. But let's go back to our friend uh Joe McCarthy and Babe's dad, who kills himself. Babe discovers the body. This is not surprisingly the traumatic event in his entire life. Let's think a little bit about his name, Babe. And so, you know, in in some senses, he's never not been that child. And and to our surprise, he retained this the gun that his father killed himself with. We learned that when sh, you know, Scheider visits or or early on in the movie that he has the gun. What's the last thing that happens in the movie? He throws the gun into the reservoir. Oh, right. He throws the gun in the reservoir. Speaking to that gun literally since childhood, for his entire life. And I I believe that the movie thinks that the throwing of the gun into the reservoir is some sort of liberating thing for the babe character, and he is now matured from being the arrested You're probably going to change the citation topic at this point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he he might actually. You're right. But um but that would make sense if he if not for the fact that Olivier dies because he literally falls on his own knife. Yeah. Right? I mean, he doesn't make a decision. He basically to torture Olivier to make him eat diamonds, which I have to imagine is not an enjoyable experience. But I I I'm sorry, I just I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from the film by that ending. I I don't understand what it meant. I don't understand like what symbolically I I I take the point you just made, but I don't buy what you just said. Because it I I know that's not yours, but I know you're trying to interpret it. Yeah. But I don't really I don't buy it. Because he's what is he liberating himself from? Because the guy fell on his knife? He didn't do anything. He kidnapped the guy, made him eat a diamond, and then he and then he screwed up, like lost the gun, and then threw the diamonds and then Olivier killed himself because he was greedy. What am I supposed to I don't think?
SPEAKER_02The problem is, why is this experience cathartic of the burden he's been carrying for his whole life about his father? That doesn't make sense. But I but I it must throw the gun into the reservoir to end the movie and giving us the gun and having that gun be the one his father killed himself with and all that jazz, as it were, uh it it has they have to be thinking about something about the letting go of the gun. But again, I cannot connect the dots of well, I've been tortured by Nazis, my brother's been murdered, I had this fake girlfriend who was also murdered, and Laurence Olivier just killed himself on his knife, and uh my doctor, I'm cured. You know, I don't think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. I don't need to come back. I'm cured. No, I I I I go back to what I said earlier. I think this movie imparts profundity where it is not deserved, right? Or it's not um it imparts themes and ideas that are not followed through on. And I just to me it just uh it's it's it's um it's disappointing in that respect. I think it is a movie that, and this is sort of your point earlier, it's a lot of spectacle, and there's some and we've discussed a lot of scenes movie that we like, that we enjoy, that we think are well done. But overall, this does not cohere as a movie. And I think that it's it it as I said, it tries to be something bigger than it is, which is an action thriller, and it doesn't work. And this movie would have been a lot better, frankly, if they had spent more time trying to go with a coherent plot and less time talking about Babe's father and uh and showing clips of marathoners and that that all of that stuff. Right. And and just think about how does this movie hang together and make sense. That they didn't do that, and I think that's to me why I don't like it. But I know people love this movie, right? People request we talk about this movie, people love this movie. I don't understand why, but people love it.
SPEAKER_02And I gave it the good with the asterisk, so you know.
SPEAKER_01You I I I I'm not I I can't even go that high. I I just think this is a bad movie. I really do. I know that's an I know that's an unpopular view. I know some of the people. Those are the only ones worth having. I agree with you. I just really didn't like this film. I just think it's a silly film. And um I think there are much, much better thrillers, much, much better 70s films, much better Dustin Hoffman films that we've actually discussed on this on this podcast. Um you know, Straight Time, we did what, two weeks ago? I mean, I think it's a much better film than this, a hundred times better film than this.
SPEAKER_02But if I may if I may be mean, I'm gonna hang this what you don't like about this movie, I'm gonna hang it on Goldman. It was his novel that was the source material. He wrote the screenplay. Schlesinger, I know, because I'm very fond of him, was really a director for hire to a certain extent for this film. He was a bit on the run in his career because he had just had a big flop uh with Day of the Locusts, and he was trying to reestablish his his Hollywood bona fides. Evans, a very powerful producer, and I think that again, I was critical of Goldman in the beginning, which is something I don't enjoy doing, but uh I think he's a writer for hire. And so I think that the McCarthy stuff and all this heaviness was I didn't buy into it. It wasn't real. It was just used instrumentally to try and give the story some sort of, you know, artificial weight and uh and superficial profundity.
SPEAKER_01Right. I think that I agree with everything you just said. I think that's exactly right. Um so sorry guys, you know, you asked for it. We gave it to you. I watched it twice. Um, you know, I just and I and I tried to approach with an open mind because I'd watched it a few months ago and I didn't really like it. And I thought maybe I missed something here and I got to watch it again. And actually, the more I watched it, the more frustrated I got by it because I I just picked up on all the plot holes. And I'm sure by the way we missed a bunch of.
SPEAKER_02So our loyal listeners who love this movie, remember uh one of our many mottos is we love disagreement. So you love disagreement? Yes, we're not we're not here to always agree. So let's just disagree about this one.
SPEAKER_01Right. You know what? We can disagree. And and I respect everybody, you know, every one of the things I've learned from this podcast is that people say they love movies that I can't stand or they hate movies that I love. And my response is not like you're an idiot. My response is okay, that's fine. That's your that's your perspective. I can't tell you that you're wrong. You know, it's art and everyone interprets it and has a different emotional connection to it. And some people can look at this movie and say, I don't give a shit if the plot holes. I think it's a great story, and it's a fun movie. Okay, great, good for you. And I think that's awesome. It's just not for me. Uh just not for me.
SPEAKER_02Personally, I that's not true, but and it'll be an exaggeration for me to say that I like arguing about movies almost as much as I like watching movies. That's not true. I like watching movies more, but I love arguing about movies.
SPEAKER_01I like watching movies only slightly more than I like arguing about them. I love to argue about movies. It's fun. I enjoy, I enjoy discussing them. And that's why we do this podcast, because we enjoy this. Um so again, that's Marathon Man. Thank you, everybody, who recommended it. And we like I said, we appreciate your input. And we took your input and we said we're gonna we're gonna talk about this movie, even though we didn't care for it. Hopefully, next week we'll come up with a movie we like more. I do want to remind you that one of the credos of this podcast is not every 70s movie was made in the 1970s. Yes. And we have done primarily pre-70s movies, but we are lining up to look at a few later uh movies, uh, 90s, aughts, what have you, that were that are 70s films that were made in those decades. Yes. Now, here's your assignment, your homework assignment for those of you listening. Tell us what you think. Give us your suggestions for 70s movies, but give us your non-70s suggestions. We want to hear them. We have something in mind that we want to talk about. I can tell you. We'll be it'll be a big surprise. But let us know. And of course, as always, subscribe, follow, buy us a coffee, do whatever, tell your friends, and uh send us your notes because we'd love to get them. And um, I think that's it for this week. So, Jonathan, thank you. Great, great to talk to you again as always, and we'll see you all next week. Alrighty, bye-bye.