Yes, it’s Network. Could you expect anything else after Medium Cool? Maybe. But you’d be wrong. It’s Network. Let’s look at this documentary… errr fictional satire from the mind of Paddy Chayefsky and executed with the deft touch of Sidney Lumet.
Reading off a prompter is difficult. Yes, it still has the plastic on it because I wasn’t shooting video through it. I’m not that much of a maniac. Will I keep using it? Probably not. It’s extremely In The Way. But this is another way that production technologies have been democratized.
I realize there’s an entire laundry list of things that could have been touched upon which I did not. Again, an injury is limiting my computer time. Computer time includes recording and editing so I need to be economical with both. The character of Diana Christensen is probably one of the most interesting because of how she’s written but, also, because the romance plot is actually a larger part of the movie than I sometimes realize. So she’s got screen time and there’s plenty of time to examine her. And I think that, choosing her, to represent what she represents is maybe a bit… biased. Hackett could have easily been that, too, or there could have just been a dude. I know that they, for economy, combined Max’s love interest with Max’s rival and it works but she’s one of the very precious few women in this movie–which is also probably documentarian as well. Maybe bringing this lens to bear on this specific point is fruitless. But it wasn’t brought in the podcast.
I think I did completely forget to mention the other two academy awards. Faye Dunaway takes it and there’s a really good photo of her the next day looking real blase. It’s called “The Morning After” and it’s the kinda photo that would make me want to be a magazine photographer. Getting to wake up in the morning and do shoots like that is the dream. The other Academy Award was given to Chayefsky for the screenplay which, if you’ve seen the movie, is no great surprise.
Hey, sometimes we say the wrong words. This time I said a few wrong words. No, I did not go back in and pick those up. Let me know if I need corrections.
House and House 2 are, apparently, comedy horror “cult” movies from the mid-80’s that live rent-free in my mind (I hadn’t heard about “rent-free” until maybe two years ago so I’m trying to use it more to seem relatable. My life isn’t unique but it is different. Or maybe it isn’t different but it is unique. Depends on how you look at the broad strokes of American life and what that entails–indeed what even “American” entails–and where it entails). This feels like a continuation of the Saturday Matinees series that kicked off with My Science Project.
What is comedy horror? What does any of this even mean? Where do you want to go today? Perhaps not that many answers in this episode but it’s been a fun time. I’m sure I had plans for these show notes but here we are.
Hey, everyone! In this episode I rank things! That’s what people like, right? Rankings? Well, I do that here. This is also the Season 2 finale. I didn’t really think about that until now but that’s what it is. So there you have it. Season 3 coming at some point.
Mark is going to go through 2002’s Men In Black II–sequel to the bangin Men In Black starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. This is a movie that follows big footsteps and has otherworldy themes and is a franchise that is maybe favored among the movies that Mark has seen.
It was really a hastily put together episode–not gonna lie–but it it was still super fun. Men In Black II is a movie that has a lot to give to the observant viewer and Mark goes through it with a fine-toothed comb (WE AINT FOUND S***).
As always you can contact Mark via twitter @coolmarkd and see other episodes of Mark’s Movie Collection on iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Google Play (Google Podcasts), Stitcher, Tunein, Podbean, and usually wherever podcasts are found due to their inclusion in the previous directories. They’re also available on scummbags.com
