Christmas Bonus Episode - Our Family History With The Movies

Just in time for the holidays, The GMR Crew Kyle, Jim & Lori figured that it would provide great context to listeners to understand how we've come to the movies since we were each kids, since we started to understand what we like and don't like in movies, and since we became a family nearly 20 years ago. Further, the trio place these experiences into the context of the start of cinema and how cinema goes forward from now.

Kyle talks through his passion for M.V.P.: Most Vertical Primate, Jim discusses the making of his two independent feature-length movies, and Lori reveals the secrets of B-movie science fiction. Remember, "Show Me The Monster"!

Happy listening and thank you for visiting us at The GMR!

Visit our website! www.generationsmoviereview.com

Let us know what you think about these movies at: generationsmoviereview@gmail.com

We'd love to hear from you!

Transcript

Lori: This is the GMR, The Generations Movie Review Podcast.

Jim: Today, we're going to talk about our history with the movies. Lori and I first met each other in February of 2003. And later that same year, we went on our first date. I was pushing for us to see a film called Into the Cut, which was a Jane Campion art film starring Mark Ruffalo and Meg Ryan. But Lori said to me, I was actually hoping we'd see Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

And I said, uh, okay. Why don't we do that? And in those early months of us first dating, we saw a lot of movies. Now, when Lori and I got involved, I met her then seven year old son, Kyle. And we immediately took an instant liking to each other and he became a regular part of those movie going jaunts that we went on as well.

And throughout the early days of our family developing, we would go to a movie theater at a location called Tiffany Plaza. And on Tuesdays they would have 50 cent movies. Now when you're a young, burgeoning family. A 50 cent movie is a very appealing way to spend an evening. 

Kyle: Even with inflation considered, 50 cents was still a steal back then.

Jim: Very much so. And concessions were cheap too. You would get one of those big popcorn bins, you'd get a giant Coke. I remember, we could do, the three of us, spend a whole evening at that movie theater. And it was less than 20. 

Lori: And sometimes we'd take a friend of yours. 

Kyle: Okay, I remember that. 

Jim: So, reflecting upon that, what are some of those movies that we saw in the early days?

Do you guys have any standouts that you remember? What were movies that we saw in those early days when Kyle was still growing up? 

Kyle: Well, I remember early 2003. I obviously remember meeting you. Uh, but you know, what was going on with me is that's when Operation Iraqi Freedom started. So I was really concerned and involved with the direction our military was taking there.

I was a very geopolitically concerned seven year old. But now that you bring up that old cheap movie theater, I remember that, that we did watch a lot of movies there. Oddly enough, when I think about like watching movie as a kid with other kids, there was this one birthday party you guys threw for me. It might've been eight or nine years old and we saw the animated movie robots.

If you want to put a line in the sand and say, this is where my career as a movie critic started, it was probably then because even though I was like eight or nine and operation Iraqi freedom, wasn't going that well. What I do remember is I was disappointed. I had all my best friends, and we went to the movie theater across the house.

This wasn't the cheap one. This was the United Artists. 

Jim: There was literally a theater directly across the street from where we live. 

Kyle: Yeah, very convenient, but pricey, so we went there sparingly. But I had all my best friends and it was like, okay, we just had this pizza. I think we might have done laser tag So so I mean we're hitting the marks with this birthday party one after the other banger pizza Laser tag always a banger idea But then we went to see a movie Robots, which is an animated movie.

So I thought oh, it'll be like Pixar It'll be like a good movie. We'll have fun. And I remember thinking it was a terrible movie Like, I was disappointed with it, and I started to think about ideas, like, well, why didn't I like that? Not just stopping it, well, I didn't like it. I thought, well, what made it bad?

And then, what do I like about other movies, you know, that I disliked about this movie? Cause there are levels to everything. There are some people that just don't like movies. There are some people that just watch movies for entertainment, and their criticism Or further thought of the movie starts and stops at a blanket statements, like it was good or it was bad, you know, cause there are a lot of people that, you know, they're not into paintings.

They'll just go, I like that painting or I don't like that painting and they don't explore why they don't like the painting. Perhaps it's like a color palette, you know, like if you get more into paintings, you're like, well, I don't know if this color palette really matches what the painter was trying to express.

So it can be the same with movies. You take that next step down, and you become like, uh, more analytical in movies because you start to care more about them. If we want to talk about when that started for me, I can vividly remember it starting there because I was so let down by the whole situation. 

Jim: I actually have a similar memory of that.

And in fact, I remember us talking about that. That you were telling me at the time that you didn't like the movie. I didn't like it either. I thought it was kind of boring and pointless. But that's kind of par for the course for a lot of non Disney, non Pixar animated films. That they dumb it down for their intended office.

Kyle: You know, back then. I mean, Pixar is probably They're coming close to falling off a little bit. So, really it's just open season with animation at the moment. But back then What was that, 2005?

Jim: Yes, that's correct. 

Kyle: Yeah, 2005, I mean, Pixar was like on top of the world. So, animate a movie, I was just so let down.

I mean, Robots, I don't know...how do you mess that up? You know, and we were talking about like, my 8th or 9th birthday party. So, that was the beginning. So, for the younger people listening to our podcast, uh, before the you had the internet, you would watch a movie by putting in a disc, we called it a DVD. And then that would play the movie and it would have a menu and everything.

So my parents had hundreds and hundreds of DVDs.

Jim: We still do.

Kyle: That we'd watch. Yeah. So I always had a wide, like, library of films to choose from. 

Jim: Plus we always had cable and the pay channels as well. The environment that we had at our house fostered film education. I had always been interested in movies going back to when I was a little boy.

And that was an interest that I shared with Lori and Kyle when we all met. And let me say, it's not like they weren't watching movies before they met me. Absolutely. They were watching movies before they met me. 

Kyle: So before the pre Jim era, or just that beginning gym era. When we weren't too involved in movies or spending a ton of time together.

And before you guys were married. So that would be MVP 2. On VHS. MVP 2. Of course everyone knows it's about. In fact it's the second movie. In a trilogy. In a trilogy. Where uh, you know the titular character is a skateboarding monkey. Obviously very funny. Fun and inspirational. To a young me. I'm kind of saving it.

I do want to go back and watch it at some point, but I don't know if I'm mentally and emotionally prepared for that. So I'm saving that one. Of course, the second one, my dad had the foresight to get the first Lord of the Rings movie on VHS. Oh, and then Castle in the Sky, so I had those three VHS tapes.

And that was like my bedrock foundation. So, those were like, my favorite movies for a long time. 

Jim: Did Lord of the Rings make any sense to you at that age? 

Kyle: I mean, it was just a large magical thing. I didn't understand a lot of what was going on. I remember it was very scary to go to bed. I'd always be under the covers and the ringwraiths.

Black hooded entities on horses would ride out and that would scare the hell out of me. And then I go to bed and develop nightmares and probably psychological problems that, you know, still resounded to my twenties.

Jim: It's important for the listener to understand that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is Kyle's favorite film series of all.

Kyle: Yeah. And you know, that, that a lot of those movies and stuff start young, especially with the Miyazaki movie castle in the sky, watching that, getting me into anime. And then seeing more anime on Cartoon Network. That was kind of my foundation of movies until, you know, I got into that era where all three of us would watch movies weekly, nightly, and then I on my own as an only child, you know, bored.

Not a lot of friends at that young age, especially in the neighborhood over there, I would be watching a lot of those movies on my own too. Sometimes they were, it was like a movie like Pulp Fiction. I think I saw that when I was like 9 or 10 for the first time with you guys. A lot of the movies I didn't understand completely because I was so young, but I still could enjoy them and watch them and everything.

Jim: One of my favorite early movie watching memories that we have with you is being in the theater for the movie Anchorman. And the scene where Jack Black's character comes and kicks the dog off the bridge. Lori, Kyle, and I were all sitting in the theater and Kyle simultaneously shot tears out of his eyes because he was sad for the dog, but was laughing because it was so funny.

And that was. One of the most hilarious things I've witnessed in my life was seeing a little boy reacting to the scene and then like two minutes later there's a payoff where they show that the dog is okay and Kyle looked up at me with tears streaming down his face and a big smile on his face saying, the dog's okay.

Now, another great early movie memory I have of you is my parents were visiting us in town and we were all watching Meet the Fockers in the family room. And we were all laughing and enjoying it and about I don't know 45 minutes into the movie Kyle who is probably nine years old or so Stands up and says, you know, this movie is not really appropriate for me.

I'm gonna go on upstairs And he got up and went upstairs and went to bed Which gives you an idea of his own perspective on movies at that point. Because in 2004, 2005, Kyle was 8, 9 years old. He was still developing his taste. He was still developing his interest. But, I affirm That it was in development.

Kyle had an interest in movies at a very young age. He was very intrigued and interested in what happened behind the scenes. Interested in how a movie worked. Interested in special effects. Interested in the overall process of making and watching movies. 

Kyle: You know, I'm 27 now. So when I was a kid, I thought that 27 was a very old adult.

An adult who had all his stuff together and knew everything about the world. You know, 20s, that seemed so far away when I was a kid, and I still remember that. A lot of that passion I had when I was a kid derived from the fact that I knew that you were a director. And I thought that was very cool, because we would watch movies, talk about them, and then you would always say, in my two movies, in my two movies, So in your 20s, you directed two movies, one in your early 20s, one in your mid to late 20s.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Jim: The first one I made was in 1994, and I was 23 years old. And it was called The Solemn Quiet, and it was made on a budget of about 12, 000, which meant that we bought almost exactly the number of 16mm reels that we needed to film. We could do like one, maybe two takes, and that was it.

Kyle: Well, but given inflation, that's probably like 2. 1 million nowadays, right? 

Jim: Both movies I made were very cheap. And in reflection, I realized that I really missed the boat on what I was trying to do. Because at the time, in my early twenties, I was quite pretentious, quite self absorbed, quite obsessed with making the greatest movie of all time.

Now, at the time, in the early nineties, there were A slew of low budget films that were coming out of the Sundance Film Festival that were becoming hit movies, such as Clerks by Kevin Smith, such as The Brothers McMullen by Edward Burns, Sex, Lies, and Videotape from a few years earlier by Steven Soderbergh.

Kyle: Well, yeah, and I'm sure the story of directors like Quentin Tarantino loomed in your thoughts. Especially a video store clerk. Who all of a sudden is the talk of the town in Hollywood making the best movies, right? So those kinds of stories probably resonated with you where you thought oh, I'm not like the Harvard writer That's always had people praising his accolades and his writing But I'm a huge movie fan just like Quentin Tarantino and I have a passion and I have a vision.

Jim: A direct influence was Robert Rodriguez Making his film El Mariachi Which was advertised as the 7, 000 movie. And that made me think I can do this. There was literally a book that was published around that time called filmmaking at used car prices. And I still have this book and it would talk about how to make a movie as cheaply as possible.

Now. What they don't tell you or what they downplay is that in order to make a movie that cheaply you're not actually making a presentation cut of the film where here now it's on 35 millimeter film and it's got a mixed soundtrack you're making something that you would then take to somebody else or to take to investors so that they would then give you more money to turn your film into a more legitimate film.

It. Piece that could be then shown in theaters or shown to movie company executives 

Kyle: Yeah, if you could blackmail one or two of your lead actors to work for you for free that also That also saves a lot of money too, right? I'm not saying I I'm not saying you did that I'm just saying that that's one of the strategies that they lay out in that book.

Jim: That's entire that was entirely the strategy I in fact nobody on either of the movies that I made nobody made any money It cost me personally nearly 40, 000 for both of those films. 

Kyle: Yeah, and again, adjusted for inflation. That's, you know, that's like three and a half millions of dollars, you know? So I mean, just for those listening at home, too, I know, you know, we're using a lot of early to mid 90s terms here.

The film is what they used to shoot on before. There were like computers, it was like before digital cameras, like iPhones and stuff, it was like you would shine a light on the film and it would capture a frame. 

Jim: Now that was the experience with my first film. The second one was shot on Hi8 video because, speaking of Quentin Tarantino, if you listened to his director commentary on the Laserdisc, this is another old 90s term, of Pulp Fiction.

He talks about how he understood that you could shoot things on video and then blow them up and it would still look pretty good depending upon the quality of video that you were using. The second movie that I made was something called So It Goes and it was a far more complex Film schedule than my first film my first film had been shot in one location shot on six consecutive days With a seventh day shot at a different location for about two hours so it goes was shot on something like 18 different locations with a cast of 11 people and We were filming for over eight months Wow on weekends In the evening, whenever we had a spare moment, we were shooting, trying to get this all compiled, and then I would edit it very roughly using VCRs and very archaic editing just to see how it looked, how it cut together, just to get a sense of the progress that we were making, and then The guy that actually did help me edit it at the end, we did it in one 24 hour burst where I basically went over to his house with all the master tapes, and then we spent seriously 24 hours in one go, just putting this all together, cutting all the takes together, putting the music on, mastering, mastering.

Trying to get it in a presentable form so that then I could get turned down by something like 12 film festivals that we entered it in. Now, the upside of that is, is that when we made it, it was the early days of the World Wide Web. 

Kyle: This is like pre Google Internet. Yeah, it was like Where you still just had pages?

Jim: Yean, it was 1999 and we put up a trailer for this movie, which is still up on YouTube, I might add. And it's 57 seconds long, and at the time, it would take two hours to download if you wanted to watch it. You would click on it and it would just sit there and spin for two hours. And then all of a sudden it would come up and play.

Kyle: Imagine like, did you ever like try to get anyone that you worked with in your life to, to download that? 

Jim: Are you kidding? I did that all the time. 

Kyle: Hey, you just got that computer. Why don't you sit down for two hours to watch my one minute? Yeah, that's wild. 

Jim: You would download it and then go do something else and then you would come back and then you'd come back later and say, Hey, it's already downloaded.

And you, once it downloaded, you could play it multiple times. It's just that it took so long. 

Kyle: You bet I'm playing it multiple times. If it took two hours to download. 

Jim: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to play it over and over again. 

Kyle: I'm blasting that on my speakers when I'm take showers in the morning for a month. 

Jim: I wanted to go back to.

Most valuable primate for a second and 

Kyle: Me too honestly 

Jim: to say that When you're a kid Those kinds of movies make a huge impression upon you and some of the earliest movies that I remember watching were from the mid to late 70s and Walt Disney Studios Put out a series of live action movies that had very similar themes.

There was a movie called Gus that I saw in the first grade, I think. And it was actually something that they had like a school assembly when I was in elementary school. And they brought all the kids together and we all watched this movie Gus. And what Gus was about was a mule who kicked field goals for an NFL football team.

And that movie made a huge impression on me. And what's funny is years later, Bill Maher made a joke about Gus. And I was like, I've seen that movie. I know that movie. I actually remember that movie very well. All kinds of very silly, what they now call high concept films, a high concept film is something where the plot can be described in one sentence.

Boy runs very fast. Yeah. Or another movie was called the computer had tennis shoes. That also starred Kurt Russell, anything like that. Another example of a high concept movie to go with what you're just saying would be like describing the movie Passenger 57 as diehard on an airplane. 

Kyle: Actually, I want to make a correction and I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are kind of fuming in their seats right now.

You said MVP2 was most valuable primate, it's most vertical primate. If you were calling MVP2, he's tearing up the skate park. Thus going vertical.

Jim: I, that makes sense. That makes sense. 

Kyle: Monkey on skateboard. 

Jim: That's a winning combination. 

Kyle: It's still is. I just pulled this up on IMDb while we're, I keep watching the preview.

It's, it looks good. You know, the interest, getting warm watching it. Oh yeah. Yeah. I actually got into skateboarding probably because of this movie when I was a kid. I mean, he looks really cool in this preview. I forgot. He also wears clothes. You looked just as cool. Skateboarding. With my tongue out and everything?

Jim: What do you call that when you make animals look human? 

Kyle: Anthropomorphize? 

Jim: That's right, okay, yeah, thank you for that. I'm not gonna attempt to pronounce that.

Kyle: I also wanted to make a comment on, um, And this is just kind of a throwaway comment, but I obviously wasn't around when laser discs were a thing but every time someone says laser disc, I think of a lieutenant commander Geordi from Star Trek next generation whenever someone says laser disc.

He's wearing a Yeah, like I I don't know why it's it's something that Whenever someone has said laser. I know that's not what laser disc is, but it sounds I always thought of wearing. Yeah, it's that it's like a I, it's like old ideas on what the future was going to be. Right. It sounds very future. So they were like, cause it was a big CD, right?

Jim: What it was really like was like a vinyl record. It looked like a DVD, but the size of a vinyl record and my introduction to laser disc came because I, again, I was a very pretentious young man. I was annoyed that VHS tapes were all in what they call pan and scan. Which is to say that the image you were watching on VHS was not the full image that you would see if you had seen the film on the screen at the movie theater.

Because the aspect ratio of your television is 4 by 3, whereas the typical aspect ratio of a movie is 1. 85 to 1. 

Kyle: That's 16 to 9. 

Jim: 16 to 9, that's right, yes. You're shrinking. That scene when you put it into the pan and scan VHS tape. And that really annoyed the hell out of me when I was young. Cause once I noticed that, and you don't notice it.

I spent much of my life watching VHS tapes, watching movies on TV without ever noticing pan and scan. But once I did, I never could unnotice it. 

Kyle: Yeah. This was like a problem. Exclusive to back when we had those square TVs. 

Jim: Yes. Because now it's not a problem. Everybody has a wide screen Tv 

Kyle: Everyone has a 16 by nine TV or something like that.

Jim: Right. And now nobody cares about it. But back then people would say, I don't like those black bars at the top or bottom of the picture. Well, those black bars are what. Tell you that you're seeing the whole film screen now rather than just seeing the portion that the editor could squeeze into the box.

Kyle: Well, how many times did you explain that to people at parties?

Jim: I bet about a thousand times.

Kyle: In the 90s. I heard you saying something about the black bars. Sounds like someone here isn't cultured. Do you not enjoy the full movie as the director intended it? Wow. If only we had a time machine, huh? 

Jim: That was the motivation for me to get into Laserdisc.

And in fact, I got into Laserdisc about 15 minutes before DVDs started to come on to the picture. No pun intended. But I had a collection of, I think, 300 or 400 VHS tapes that I sold for about 150. Of course, they all cost me 25 apiece. But I took That 150 and bought myself a LaserDisc player and there was a place at I 25 in Colorado Boulevard called LaserLand.

That was right along the path when I would drive home from work. So I would rent a bunch of LaserDiscs on Friday, take them home, record them all onto VHS. Because again, it wasn't the quality of the picture I was looking for. It was the fact that it was the whole picture. I wanted The aspect ratio. So I would record them onto VHS tapes, then take the Laserdisc back on Monday, and then watch the VHS tape recordings that I made of them at my leisure.

And, funnily enough, I still have all those VHS tapes that I recorded off of Laserdisc. Virtually useless now, and worthless, but 

Lori: Now been transferred to CDs, and now been transferred to the, uh Hard drive. 

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think actually, I think back in 2010, we put most of those VHS tapes in the walls to provide insulation, right?

Kind of just break the wall open and grab them whenever we want to. You see at home, it's, it's, they're useful. Okay. We don't, we don't want to hear that it's a waste of plastic. Okay. It's insulation. 

Jim: It's worth saying too, that there is some value to that because like for an example, Oliver Stone's JFK. JFK is only available.

On Blu ray and DVD and streaming services in its director's cut, which adds about 40 minutes to the film and it actually dilutes it and makes it slightly slower, slightly less interesting than it is. 

Kyle: Hot take of the week. 

Jim: But the original Laserdisc release of JFK was the theatrical version, the three hour, three minute.

theatrical version which I captured onto a VHS tape and then, I don't know, 15 years ago or so I put it on a DVD so that I could watch it at my leisure and I still have that. So there was some facility in recording all those laser discs to VHS tape back in the 

Kyle: Hey Oliver Stone, I know you're listening and, uh.

If you could do us a favor and put the original cut up, that would be great. Yeah, that'd be wonderful. I'm getting tired of having Jim FedEx me this VHS tape every time I want to watch the theatrical cut of JFK. 

Jim: And it's worth it because the theatrical version of that film is a considerable improvement over the director's cut.

Lori, what are some of the early movies that you remember seeing in Wabash, Indiana back in the early days of your life? 

Lori: I didn't see any movies in Indiana because I was five. But 

Kyle: There probably weren't movies in Indiana at that time, right? Well, just the type that they Movies probably arrived in Indiana probably mid to late 70s.

Jim: I was going to say they actually had to crank the film. They were silent films. Uh, they had to crank it up. And then and then you would start watching it. 

Kyle: Yeah. It was always grandma cranking it too. They, they always made Grandma crank the entire movie. She was good at it. Honestly, I, I don't even know if that's legal anymore.

Jim: Well, tell us about some of the childhood movies you remember seeing. 

Lori: I don't know if it's so much childhood, but one memory I do have is that in, it had to have been middle school, which we called junior high. We all went on a field trip and we went to the movies and we saw Sleuth. 

Jim: Oh, okay. And, With Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.

Lori: Michael Caine, yeah. That always made a huge impression on me. I love that film. 

Jim: Still to this day, this is still a movie you still talk about. 

Lori: Yes. Yes. 

Jim: Would you have seen that when it came out? Or would you have seen that sometime after it came out?

Lori: I, I don't know when did it come out. 

Jim: 1972? 

Probably a little after.

Lori: But it was at a theater. Okay. It was at a theater. 

Jim: What are other movies that made a big impression on you as you were getting older into adulthood? 

Lori: Disaster movies, scary movies. I remember one called Burnt Offerings. It's silly now looking back on it. 

Jim: With Oliver Reed, right? 

Lori: Yes, it scared me so much. It just, it was very scary.

That house was very scary. So yeah, I really liked that movie. I liked still like Towering Inferno and 

Earthquake, Earthquake, Poseidon Adventure. That was one of my favorites. 

Jim: I'm just thinking of movies I've seen you watching. 

Lori: Yes, exactly. Even now to this day, those are all very interesting to watch. Like disaster 

movies.

Jim: The earliest movie I actually remember seeing is the movie Jaws. When I was a kid, I was the oldest of eventually four, but much like Kyle, I was raised by a stepdad who found it cheapest to provide entertainment to his young family by taking us to the drive in. So, I went to the drive in a lot as a kid.

And that's a very effective way to keep the kids busy when you're first married, because you pull up to a post that has a speaker attached to it. You open the car doors and let the kids run wild until the movie starts. And then the kids all fall asleep while you're watching the movie. 

Kyle: Yeah. I think nowadays we just get iPads for the kids, right?

And then they're just off in their own world. I think that would be like the modern day equivalent, right? 

Jim: Yeah. As opposed to actually going outside and playing on a swing set or, yeah. Well, and Kyle, you had the experience of going to the drive in at least once that I can recall that we went to, right?

Kyle: Yeah. Well, not too memorable. We didn't go too often, but I mean, they seem pretty cool. What I wanted to talk about was, uh, Lori you said something about watching a movie. In school, I probably saw movies in elementary school. The first movie that was played in school that I remember Was in 7th grade, there were two teachers, there was like this removable wall in between their classrooms, and they would remove it, and sometimes we would all get together and like, English and social studies, they would get combined and we would watch like really patriotic movies.

It was the kind of thing where we'd do it like once a week, and instead of doing the Pledge of Allegiance, we would sing, and I'm proud to be an American. Played that entire song, it was so funny, like it was just so funny, of course you'd find that in, You know, upper middle class Colorado is just super conservative.

She had a picture of Ronald Reagan on her desk and everything. I love the class back then, by the way, it was fun. It was kind of political for seventh grade. But I remember at one point we watched the movie glory in class. Okay. Wow. That's what I'm saying. Wow. You know, I, I just set the stage of like super conservative Highlands ranch.

And then they're like, Oh yeah, let's watch glory now. Glory is very patriotic, but it's kind of like a seriously. Critically acclaimed a movie that's violent. You know, we were watching that in seventh grade. So, 

Jim: and about slavery, did we sign a parental approval on that? I don't remember if I don't remember seeing that permission slip appear before me, even though it's great movie.

And I would have absolutely wanted you to have seen it. 

Kyle: Yeah. It's just a, you said that about watching a movie in school. And of course, besides all the bill nine. Content I saw back then, you know, which speaks to our, uh, poorly funded educational system. If nothing else, that guy was practically my, uh, science teacher growing up.

Right. Um, but like, yeah, so apart from that, the first like actual movie I remember seeing was. which is kind of cool to look back and think about that. I know like in high school, there is one cool teacher that we watched Ferris Bueller's day off, you know, in like some other cool movies like that. But I had already seen those movies.

It wasn't anything like check out this critically acclaimed movie you've never seen before. There's also a one time in high school and a AP American history. We went to the movie theater and watched Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis when it came out. Right. I remember that. Yes. And that was pretty sick. So, I mean, really, I never had a terrible experience with movies growing up.

I had inspiration from you, having been a director in your 20s, having watched a lot of movies. And then, it seems like from all angles, I mean, We watched a lot of movies. Yeah, I'd seen a lot of movies growing up. I kind of understood that too at a younger age, cause my best friend Avery, his parents were like that too.

Where we had independently watched Pulp Fiction by the time we were 9 years old. That was weird. Growing up when we did, most parents weren't just like, Hey, before you hit the double digits in age, why don't you watch Pulp Fiction? Where there's sex, violence, nudity. Yeah, Avery and I were kind of in this class where both of our parents watched movies.

So, like, we would have, like, critical conversations about movies. And we'd recommend movies to each other. And it was like a very mature kind of thing. We were both only children. So, it was like, I had this relationship with movies, with these people. And I viscerally remember, like, you know, growing up there were people.

And I'd be like, what did you think about that movie? And they'd be like, I liked it. And I'd be like, what do you like about it? And they're like, it, well, it was good. And I'm like, okay, well, what made it good? And they're like, it was funny. I don't know. Yeah, or, or, uh, you know, you, and that's okay. Like, and we're gonna wrap around to how I started this out.

I mean. With any kind of medium of art, even if it's like, you know, WWE, Wrestlemania, you know, there are layers to understanding it and getting into it. So, like with movies, I know that I've been super into movies for a while because I understood that from a very young age. That some people aren't on the level of being into or understanding movies that other people are.

Jim: That was something that we did all my life. I remember your mom telling me at the Beginning of our dating. She's like, I've never met a family where a bunch of you guys just stand around talking about what makes a movie good or bad. I've never had those kinds of conversations until I met you. 

Kyle: By the way, no judgment to anyone that just watches movies just to unwind or just to be entertained.

That's completely okay. Not everyone has to take some critical or deep angle or think about, well, what did I like about that movie? 

Jim: Well, not at all. But if you're listening to a podcast called Generations Movie Review, I'm thinking you probably are interested in taking a slightly deeper dive into the content and the context of any given movie that we're talking about.

And that was what I enjoyed doing from a very young age. I made it a goal when I was a kid to see all of the best picture winners. And that was something that I did by the time I was 18 years old and kept up for many years since I, I haven't watched the Academy Awards in about 25 years at this point, but for a long time, that was important to me.

And it was, it mattered to me. And it gave me again, a context of what movies mattered or didn't matter in the culture. And therefore it gave me a direction. Through which to watch these kinds of things. And it was very interesting to me. And I loved all kinds of movies. I was interested in the action. I was interested in the comedy.

I was interested in drama and. Laurie will tell you drama is probably my favorite genre of movies. I like human dramas. That's the kind of movies that I really enjoy. And so we make quite a pair because her favorite kind of movie is horror sci fi, the lower the budget, the better.

Lori: I do like sci fi. What's your motto? I do just like sci fi movies. Show me the monster. That's

Jim: the context from where Laurie is watching the movies. 

Lori: That's right. Show me the monster show me the monster

Jim: so to bring that full circle. That's where I didn't have any understanding of that when we first started dating and she's told me many times since she says I dumbed your taste in movies down and I say, no, that's not true.

It's actually just that you opened me up to seeing good in movies of all types and I do because I'm inclined to like anything that I see and I try to understand why and Through Lori's eyes, I realized that watching a movie isn't just about how good is the acting, how good is the writing, how good are the special effects, how to, you know, sometimes it's as simple as, it's pure entertainment.

Yeah. How, how scary is the monster? 

Lori: It's pure entertainment. It's just fun to watch or it's so bad. It's funny. It's so bad. It's good. 

Kyle: Yeah. Like the stepping back and looking at the totality of, of a movie. It's kind of like music. How does music make you feel? We could go into a rabbit hole and say, well, the most technically brilliant music was composed in the 17th and 18th centuries by five or six geniuses.

That's my standard that I base the rest of music off of. And there's a case for that. It's very technically brilliant. Took a lot of skill and work to compose those, but Realistically, you don't need that much composition or that much critical thought going into music for it to make you feel something.

So we can carry that over to movies where that has to be factored into the equation, too. 

Jim: Totally. In fact, as you were saying that, I was thinking, yeah, that's right. Johann Sebastian Bach, Brandenburg Concerti, those are some of the greatest pieces of music ever written. But that doesn't mean that Louis Louis isn't good, too.

And There's something that you can derive from Louis Louis that's just as meaningful as what you can get from Brandenburg concerto number two Because making movies is hard I can tell you from personal experience that taking the time to figure out what shots you need and figuring out how to write that screenplay and figuring out how to get the actors involved and figuring out how to get the behind the scenes people involved, and then getting permission to shoot at the grocery store that you need, all of that stuff is extremely hard.

Now, if you've got 35 million behind you, which today would be a low budget, And you're working for a movie studio, they can build you those sets. They can give you access to well known actors. They can have a team of writers rewrite your screenplay, but that's still hard work. And ultimately movies are a form of commerce.

They're making them because they want to make money. Now, as anybody that has seen my two films will tell you, that was not my motivation. Because there was no way I was ever going to make any of that money back if you've seen either of those movies. But, that's part of why I did it. Was because I knew that I was only going to have one or two chances to do it.

And there was only going to be a period of time in my life where I wasn't going to have responsibilities or obligations that were going to take that money and be required to pay mortgage payments, be required to pay for college, be required to pay for, you know, every miscellaneous expense that comes up when you are a family.

Because I was not a family, I was by myself. And I had an okay job, and I was able to funnel money towards doing those things. And it was something that I was passionate about. And I'm glad that I did it, even if I'm slightly embarrassed by what the results were now, looking back on them. I'm still proud of the achievement.

And, I don't know, maybe someday we'll make a movie. 

Kyle: Well, yeah, I mean, like, look, it's something where, like, The top career that kindergarten students want to be at the The day of kindergarten graduation and they got their whole lives ahead of them. Obviously, traditionally it's been like police officer, firefighter, astronaut.

But now the top career kids want to pursue at six years old is content creator. That means putting yourself in front of a camera or making content. And you were just doing that like in the 90s. Imagine if there was YouTube back then, it wasn't easily accessible, so most people weren't going out, getting video cameras, making long form content like that.

But you did, and I think, regardless of what you think of it or how it holds up. The fact that you made two complete movies is nothing to sneeze at. 

Jim: It's funny as you say all that because I literally had 500 VHS tapes made of my second movie and we mailed every single one of them out. We sent them to Movie festivals all over the country.

We sold Extra copies of it on our web page that we had back then which was I think through Yahoo or something Remember when they used to give you a free web page at the time. No No, that was before the 21st century But and literally we were schlepping to the post office every single day with a bag Full of VHS tapes getting shipped off in the mail.

Kyle: Yeah, wow, how times have changed. Yeah, that's why most people weren't making movies and content back then. That was so much work. Like, there were so many barriers in the way, most technological. So yeah, that's nothing to, uh, sneeze at. I wanted to take a little detour here, cause ever since we brought up Most Vertical Primate 2, I've, I've been looking into the main actor here, uh, his name is Louie.

Now this primate, not only did he star in MVP 1 and MVP 2, I think he was a spy in the movie Spy Mate? It has a 3. 9 out of 10 on IMDB, so I wouldn't recommend it, but He didn't just do those two movies, he did a third movie. Wow. Yeah, I mean, look at, guys, here, I'm gonna turn, look at, look at his cover photo.

And again, he's wearing human clothes. Yeah, okay, I just wanna, this chimpanzee, His cover photo on IMDb looks better than any photo I've ever taken. 

Jim: Wait, I see something about it saying that he died in a shootout in 2010? Is that what I literally just read? 

Wait, what? 

Well, you just turned the computer off really fast.

Kyle: He was relocated to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore. 

Jim: Where he died tragically in a shootout with police in 2010. 

Kyle: In 2010. He had a child in 2019. Oh, he's still alive. I think he's still kicking. Yeah, I mean, he was born in 1995, so he's getting pretty up there for chimpanzees, but, I mean, he's still going. 

Jim: He had a child in 2019, out of wedlock, I might add.

Kyle: Yeah. Well, after he had that altercation with the police, he was kind of on the rocks in his marriage. So he cheated and had the kid. That's what happened. Anyway, the final thing I was going to say about our buddy Louie here, um, you know, what a sharp looking chimpanzee, um, is, uh, all the money he earned for being the lead chimp in these movies went to primate reserves.

Jim: Okay. Whenever you see an elephant in a movie, Know that the only way that they got that elephant to do what they wanted it to do was by using an electric shock of some sort. 

Kyle: Well yeah, I mean think about, how do you get a human to not act like a human? It's probably gonna take some force of some kind.

Yeah. So when you see an elephant doing non elephant things, I wouldn't say that's true nowadays. Most of the time. 

Jim: Well, I can't even think of a recent movie that featured a real elephant. 

Kyle: Well, and in fact, like, you could, like, there are videos of elephants on elephant reserves, you know, doing little paintings or seeing themselves in the mirror.

But, but there are different ways to get to it, right? But I think for sure those older movies, if you see them behaving in some weird way, they just didn't have the technology or there wasn't the culture around animals back then to stop that abuse. 

Jim: And it was prevalent because all those old westerns where you would see the horses fall.

If those horses are falling in those movies, those aren't stunts. They're literally tripping with metal wires and falling on their faces. And numerous horses died during productions. And you're right, they just racked it up as part of the cost of doing business. That hey, this is how it goes. Sorry. We had to kill 14 horses in that shot, but hey, John Wayne looks heroic So let's keep moving 

Kyle: There's a lot of stuff like that Not movies, but they used to throw rice at weddings So like every wedding they would just have all this rice on the ground and birds would eat it and just die Just dry rice

Jim: I'm so old that as you say that I'm thinking to myself, they don't still do that.

I didn't realize that that's, 

Kyle: they don't do that anymore. Cause you can't cause the birds like die. 

Lori: They throw bird food, bird seed. 

Kyle: Yeah. 

Jim: So if you throw bird seed at the wedding party, do all the birds attack the groom and the bride that turns into an Alfred Hitchcock thing when you're getting married, is that what it is?

I've never heard of that. Birds. Yeah. Thank you. That's what I was. That's what I was talking about. Yes. That's, that's very good. Before we wrap it up, let's talk about Van Helsing for just a brief moment. 

Kyle: Why not? 

Jim: Because that was a pretty influential movie on your life, wasn't it? 

Kyle: It was good. 

Jim: But it's a memorable movie.

That's what I mean, is that it was something that made a big impression on you at a very young age. 

Kyle: It was cool. You had like an Aragorn discount. As the lead in like a vampire movie. It was pretty cool. I remember I saw that movie with some of my neighborhood buddies back when we lived in the condo. And at the end of the movie, we were all like rocking back and forth in those movie theater chairs, like pretending to ride the horse off into the distance.

Well, you guys had that mini DV video camera growing up. So I used to make a lot of dorky videos on that when I was a kid, like little stop motion ones, that's good. You know, little videos like that. I think in general, I think Miyamoto Musashi once said, and for those that have Miyamoto Musashi is probably one of the coolest people that's ever lived, certainly one of the most famous samurai that ever lived.

And he said something like, once you see the way narrowly, you see the way broadly. So I think no matter what it is, for me, it was movies growing up, but it instilled that idea of like, narrowly, I could see, you know, the intricacies of something and understand how brilliant it is more than just a surface level interpretation.

Movies were like the first art form where I had like a narrow vision into it. Where I was like dissecting it and analyzing it, but then I was able to take that framework and Put it towards other things like learning history or being into music or being into anything really It's like the first kind of art form you're ever into it kind of structures How you get into other forms of artwork in the future?

Does that make sense? 

Jim: It makes a tremendous amount of sense. It's interesting to think that a technology from the 19th century is still impacting audiences in the 21st. 

Kyle: Is it from the 19th? I don't think so. 

Jim: No, they were making movies in the late 1890s. 

Kyle: Yeah, like the first of 1896. Yeah. That's what jumps to my mind.

Jim: That's the late 19th century. 

Kyle: But the first mo okay. But the first movie was Birth of a Nation. Am I going crazy? No, no, no. So, so, okay, so I, I think the history of cinema is like, you go for like, in the beginning, just really short movies, cinema was first introduced, like projectors, big projectors, and like, they had a train coming towards the camera and people in the theater freak out, right?

Yes. Yeah. 

Jim: There was also another one where the guy points a gun at the camera and shoots at the screen. There were all kinds of. There were variations on those themes beginning in the late 1800s. Birth of a Nation is the first feature length movie. There were movies that came before it, obviously. Charlie Chaplin had already built a pretty impressive filmography prior to that.

It's just that they weren't full length films. And Birth of a Nation Was a movie that was in excess of three hours. Nothing had ever been presented like that before. And it would be shown at a theater in much the same way that an opera or a play would be presented there. Yeah. And you know, sure. And an intermission 

Kyle: and yeah, I mean, we give credit where it's due.

Uh, thank you to the daughters of the Confederacy and the lost cause for giving us the first full length cinematic movie on one of the Woodrow Wilson for showing it in the white house. That's right. Am I making this shit up? That really happened, right? 

Jim: It did happen, yes. Now, some of it might be apocryphal insofar as Wilson's quote was, It would be sad if it wasn't true.

Now, I don't know if Wilson actually said that, even though Wilson was a well known racist. 

Kyle: Hey, betting odds? I put my money on yes. 

Jim: Yeah. Birth of a Nation, for better or worse, has been a very influential movie, and like I say, it's kind of weird to think that the foundation of modern cinema is based on a truly dangerous film.

Kyle: Oh yeah, well, okay, so I got 1896, that's right, so the, I think it was like 1888 when the technology was like, first displayed or something. But the first The movie with a narrative was La Faye Au Chaut, the fairy of cabbages. So interesting, interesting. So it wasn't the full feature length movie, but it was the first like short kind of thing with a narrative had financial success.

Very interesting. So, yeah, I mean, what's been wild about the past almost 150 years, it's just. Humans, Homo sapiens, our relationship with screens. So, think movie, but then think TV, but then think everything past TV. Cell phone, iPad. Computer. And just anything that has a screen now. Our relationship with the screen has defined our relationship with technology.

And movies were the first medium where we had a relationship with a screen. It's like what Star Trek got wrong. Because in the Star Trek world, there weren't screens everywhere. Even though Star Trek was a TV show that was on a screen. But now, we're approaching the future from, obviously, you know, in the late 19th century.

This is definitely the future to them. It's almost like most of our day is defined by our relationship with the screen. You look at your computer, a TV, a phone. You're at work, you look at your work computer. And that all started with These brief, short, la fait au chaut the fairy of cabbages, as shown in 1896.

It was like the historians 200 years from now will be looking back at our time now. It's like, oh, this is when humans started to look at screens. Started off with movies. 

Jim: That's an interesting, yeah, I, I like, that's, that's a very interesting background that you provide there. Are movies a dying art form? 

Kyle: I have a great answer to this.

My buddy, Alex, and I at work, we're having a conversation. He's into movies, too. I sort of jokingly said this, but the more I think about it, the less of a joke it becomes. When I grew up, it was, oh, this person reads books. There's a new strata of intelligence or ability That we perceive people as who read books, or that's just always how it's been culturally.

But as we move into the era of internet content, podcasts, yawn, YouTube, all these shorter forms of visual content, obviously podcasts aren't shorter forms of content, but, I mean, you get what I mean, that visually, it's like short little videos online. Will it be like, when my kids are my age, they'll be like, instead of, oh, they read books, it's, oh, they watch movies.

Oh, that person has the attention span and the willpower to sit down and watch a two hour movie. Wow. Because when I was growing up, that's what it was with books. Wow, you sat down and read that whole book. Even if, even if it was a Harry Potter book where the content was good, but it wasn't particularly challenging, There was still some kind of, uh, accomplishment and recognition felt with reading a book.

Perhaps that's what it's going to be like in the future with longer forms of content like movies. I also want to point out that Martin Scorsese penned a piece in like 2019 or 2020. I do think there's a distinction between cinema as an art form and like content. So on one spectrum, you could have me shooting a video of myself going, Hey guys, like the stock market's pretty crazy.

Wow. Look at my crypto portfolio. Like that could be content and I can make that entertaining and maybe do some artistic things with the direction of the editing and the special effects. But it's not a cinema in the sense of it's a long form idea that's like expressed through the medium. I think that distinction might blur in the future.

For example, the Marvel cinematic universe, I think there are like one or two of them that I think are good. Like the original Iron Man and the Marvel's end game that like they're good, but it seems like a lot of the new ones that come out, it's just kind of content. Like there's no cinematic impetus or direction.

It's just, Oh, let's just pump another one out. And I know like the movie industry is famous for doing that, but with the rise of like shorter forms of content on YouTube and Tik TOK and it'll be a more prestigious thing to make a whole movie. As opposed to making a 20 minute video or

Jim: if cinema is going to survive, they're going to have to differentiate themselves from content.

Kyle: I think so. Obviously you could do it by having the title and starring and all that. And although a lot of YouTube videos do that too, but. What's the differentiating factor? It's just, you set out for the one thing. So like, if I'm a YouTube channel, my goal is to produce as much content as possible. I think, when you're making a movie, it should just be about that movie.

Not the, oh, we gotta continue the cinematic universe of the Marvel characters, so we'll just fill this gap with this movie. No, it should just be, I'm setting out to make this movie the way I want to, it's my idea, and it's a longer form of content. Doesn't even have to be good But I think that differentiates itself like it exists For itself inside itself.

It's not a continuation of my brand or my business That might be what do you guys think? 

Jim: I agree with you. I think that cinema ultimately has to evolve into something more prestigious because ultimately Everybody can look at a screen on their phone. Everybody can look at the screen on their computer.

Everybody can look at their own television at home. And if they're getting away from the whole idea of watching a movie in the theater with an audience, then it's not going to survive. It's not survivable without the full context. And the experience itself is part of what makes moviegoing its own special thing.

Seen it in a theater on a big screen with an audience and it doesn't have to be a big spectacle like a Marvel film. I am ambivalent about Marvel films. I don't personally like superhero films, but I appreciate that they're popular and that people like them. But if that's all you've got, Well, they can do that on HBO Max where they can do that.

On Disney plus, they don't need to have a big screen. They don't need to have an audience to enjoy that. I think actually something like a quieter drama is something that could be appreciated. You could get something more out of it if you're seeing it with an audience. 

Kyle: Yeah. And also a huge focus on writing.

Yeah. Not just writing yourself, as you would in perhaps like a YouTube script, but like a, like a serious revision after revision and idea of the story from a writing and a script perspective where you have multiple, multiple characters interacting with each other, and the setting is taken into account.

I want to bring up, so Jeffrey Katzenberg, really rich guy, when everything was said and done, his drama with Disney was over, but he worked on some of the best Pixar movies and Disney movies. Um, Visionary guy. His next venture, which was Quibi, Quibi was like, our conversation here, but one of us had 200 million dollars and was like let's do it.

His idea was everyone's on their phone nowadays, let's make short movies. And then like, they'll just watch it vertically on their phone. And then it crashed and lost like millions and millions of dollars. So that does give some kind of hope. And especially with the rise of podcasts and everything, like, I think there's always going to be a desire for some kind of long form of content.

Where it allows emotions and ideas to fester and grow and have a stronger impact not saying it all needs to be terribly long But I mean because shorter pieces of content and YouTube videos or whatever They like they can have an impact for sure But I think there's always gonna be a yearning for longer forms of content, especially good quality cinema 

Jim: Let me stipulate with one last comment to that.

I think 20th century cinema We'll always be with us. I think it's an art form unto itself. And 

Kyle: well, yeah, I'm burying you with all your VHSs. So we'll literally always be with you. 

Jim: So that's a history of your crew.