RadixJournal - Under the Rainbow

00:00:00.000 Well, gentlemen, let's discuss the most disturbing, erotic masterpiece of the 1990s, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

00:00:12.520 And I'm, of course, referring to Days of Thunder.

00:00:16.280 This is going to be a long, in-depth podcast. No, just kidding.

00:00:21.540 Let's discuss Eyes Wide Shut.

00:00:24.240 First off, John and Romain, how are you doing?

00:00:27.380 I'm doing quite well.

00:00:28.720 So you're back in Hungary, where you're attending erotic Christmas parties with strange people such as Alice Met in Eyes Wide Shut in the opening scene. Is that true?

00:00:40.800 Yeah, and of course, that guy who tries to seduce Nicole Kidman at the beginning is like a close friend of mine.

00:00:47.680 Oh, right. Well, in Hungary, they're all over the place. They're taking women up to sculpture gardens and things like that.

00:00:53.940 Romain, how are you doing? You're our official decadent European on the podcast, so.

00:01:01.420 Yeah, with the accent that goes with it.

00:01:04.020 Right.

00:01:04.440 So, greetings, Richard.

00:01:07.320 So, I'm back in Paris, and as you may know, and I would write a blog post about it, there's a huge controversy now in France about Michel Welbeck's last novel, which is entitled Submission, Submission, which, of course, in Arabic is translated by Islam.

00:01:30.020 And it's about the Islamization of France.

00:02:00.000 I posted before you posted the podcast, but it will be entitled Literary Controversy in the Age of Tweets, because you have people talking about books they haven't even touched because it hasn't been released.

00:02:17.480 And it's telling about, I don't want to sound reactionary, but it says something about our decadent era.

00:02:27.060 Yes. Well, there's no reason to read it. We know it's evil.

00:02:31.820 You know, I would say this, I don't want to get sidetracked too much here at the beginning, but actually, Welbeck, his novel Platform is a very interesting...

00:02:44.120 You mean Platform?

00:02:44.940 Platform.

00:02:45.560 Yes, Platform.

00:02:47.280 The novel Platform, or in the French, Platform.

00:02:50.180 Like, what do they...

00:02:57.440 The French have a word for it, although I don't know what it is.

00:03:02.460 Sorry.

00:03:04.280 His novel Platform, I think, is almost like a complementary novel to Arthur Schnitzler's...

00:03:12.180 Arthur Schnitzler's traum novella, Dream Story, which became Eyes Wide Shut.

00:03:19.800 It's a...

00:03:20.280 I think it is an erotic masterpiece for our time, and we might want to do a podcast on it, because it goes into this...

00:03:30.180 A very kind of, I would say, Americanized, post-modern, and European as well, sexuality of pleasure is a right, and it's all about sex tourism.

00:03:41.240 And I don't want to give anything away, but at the end of it, at the end of the novel, Islamic radicals come in and basically blow everyone up, almost deservingly in a way.

00:03:52.240 The book was released only two weeks before 9-11, so...

00:03:57.840 Ah, interesting.

00:03:58.940 Either he was informed that the Mossad and the CIA were going to blow the tower...

00:04:04.800 Well, I'm sure that's the case.

00:04:05.740 Of course, my preference.

00:04:08.680 Or the other hypothesis is that he was a visionary, but I don't really like this.

00:04:15.100 Yeah, no, no, I would go for the conspiratorial angle.

00:04:18.080 Well, no, I mean, Roman's joking, but also another major theme in Eyes Wide Shut is obviously a conspiracy or a certain kind of terrible elite class that is a secret, invisible class.

00:04:36.280 But I think another thing that you were saying about that, when Platform, or Platform, was released just days before 9-11, it's almost like he psychically prophesied it.

00:04:48.860 And I think this is interesting when we think about this kind of social mood of when some movies come out.

00:04:58.060 I think this Eyes Wide Shut is a very angst-ridden film, and it's interesting that it came out in 1999.

00:05:06.140 It's a kind of turn-of-the-century angst film.

00:05:10.200 It's when, you know, the great Hollywood's power couple, Tom and Nicole, who, you know, did Days of Thunder and a lot of other more popular films, were doing this film where, in a way, they were both perfectly cast.

00:05:25.920 And they kind of, it was almost like a photographic negative of some of their other works.

00:05:32.560 It kind of, it was like Tom Cruise was playing a Tom Cruise role, but he was displayed for all his naivete and duplicity.

00:05:42.060 Anyway.

00:05:42.680 And actually, Kidman's bad acting when she's high and drunk has been often commented on.

00:05:49.740 It's good acting.

00:05:50.540 It was, yeah, but it's good, bad acting.

00:05:54.220 Yeah.

00:05:54.500 I mean, because she's obviously a good actress, and Kubrick is even more obviously a good director.

00:06:02.440 He's more than good.

00:06:03.720 And I think that when she plays them, it's, of course, there's a purpose to it.

00:06:11.480 It's to say that something's wrong.

00:06:12.840 When, you know, when she's, she's high and, you know, laughing at Tom Cruise, uh, at Bill and, um, you know, the first time I saw it, uh, I thought, you know, she, she was just acting bad.

00:06:30.520 And then there was something unfinished with this scene, but I think it was completely, completely, you know, uh, it was something that Kubrick wanted to see.

00:06:42.920 Oh, yeah.

00:06:44.040 Did you happen to, so to speak, fuck them?

00:06:51.080 Um, yeah, uh, yeah, no, it's, it's an amazing scene.

00:06:57.040 And I, and yeah, and her laughing at Bill's character, I, I think it was also very disturbing.

00:07:02.760 She was, in a way, kind of laughing at Tom Cruise as well.

00:07:05.220 I mean, I, I think there's, there's all these elements.

00:07:07.660 Hey, let's do this, um, because we're, we're talking around the subject.

00:07:11.400 I think we should dive into it.

00:07:12.580 Um, John, why don't, why don't we do this?

00:07:15.820 Let's, let's start our discussion by talking a little bit about our first impressions of the film.

00:07:24.540 And particularly aesthetically, because I think this is a, this is a very aesthetically rich film.

00:07:29.620 And it's also, like all of Kubrick's films, a very aesthetically detailed film.

00:07:35.400 Um, yes.

00:07:36.220 Even these little things, like the names of the shops that they pass by.

00:07:40.280 I remember one was called A Touch of Lace.

00:07:42.480 Another was called Nipping It in the Bud.

00:07:44.340 They're just these little messages that Kubrick is sending the audience.

00:07:49.940 Uh, but anyway, why don't we talk about this?

00:07:52.060 Talk about, John, your, your first impressions of the film.

00:07:55.460 Uh, because you, like me, you actually saw it on opening day in the theaters.

00:08:00.020 And, um, talk just a little bit about your first impressions and, and your, your sense of the, the style of the, the movie.

00:08:07.820 Uh, well, I, I was very excited to see it because, uh, I'd been a Kubrick fan since I saw 2001 as a, as a kid.

00:08:18.220 Uh, and this was the first, I mean, I think he went something like 12 years after Full Metal Jacket without making a film.

00:08:24.720 So, so when it came out, I mean, for people like me who'd been, you know, Kubrick fans for a long time, it was like, you know, the Messiah was coming or something.

00:08:33.720 Uh, it was, I mean, I remember following all the, the rumors about it that were online at the time about, uh, what was going on on set and everything.

00:08:42.220 Because it was, I think it still ranks as the longest shoot in cinema history.

00:08:47.360 It was, uh, over 400 days that Kubrick shot.

00:08:50.920 And that, that's not even counting the post-production.

00:08:53.340 Yeah.

00:08:53.740 Uh, but there, there were a lot of, uh, you know, the internet was around by then.

00:08:57.500 So there were a lot of rumors when I, when I finally got to see it, like you said, it was on opening day.

00:09:04.400 Uh, I wouldn't say I was, I was disappointed by it, but I remember, you know, it didn't like amaze me like, uh, some of his other films did.

00:09:16.900 Uh, you know, I, I mean, like you said, I mean, it was, it was visually very rich, but I, I don't think I got it yet.

00:09:23.640 And I think there were two reasons for that.

00:09:26.200 One is that, uh, you know, at the time I was, I was in my mid twenties and, you know, I, I maybe didn't have the maturity to appreciate it, uh, as much.

00:09:35.940 And the other factor, uh, was just that, uh, you have to see Kubrick's films often more than once.

00:09:44.140 Uh, you know, I, I, in watching it in preparation for today, it was, I think the third time I've seen it.

00:09:49.980 Uh, and I, it's still not, I wouldn't rank it among my absolute favorite Kubrick films, but I definitely had much more appreciation for it now.

00:10:00.200 Uh, but when you talk about impressions, I mean, something I can't help but notice or, uh, you know, the connections, I think it bears more similarity to the shining than anything else.

00:10:12.760 Although there's references to, I think every single one of Kubrick's films in it somewhere.

00:10:18.900 Uh, I didn't even know this until I was reading up, you know, in preparation for today, but even a fear and desire, which is his long lost first film that he refused to have shown in later years.

00:10:30.960 So there's even a reference to that, uh, thrown in, uh, but the shining visually, uh, there's a lot of connections there.

00:10:39.020 Like I, I remember once reading an interesting essay about the shining where it talked about how it's almost like a sadistically directed film because it constantly builds towards, you have this sense of impending dread.

00:10:53.080 Like something absolutely horrible is about to happen, but, you know, it never really happens.

00:11:00.200 Uh, and I kind of got the same feeling with, with eyes wide shut that there was always this sense of like something impending that's never completely fulfilled.

00:11:09.140 Uh, you know, I, I think that's a deliberate thing that, that Kubrick is doing.

00:11:12.800 I don't think it's a failing of, of either film.

00:11:15.600 Uh, yeah.

00:11:17.740 I mean, I just to, to, to jump in, I had a, I had a similar view of it.

00:11:21.520 I, I, I too had, um, seen, you know, seen some Kubrick movies, even when I was a kid, uh, seeing 2001.

00:11:29.420 And I think I even saw Full Metal Jacket when I was pretty young.

00:11:32.700 Um, there was a whole slew of war movies, Vietnam war movies coming out at the time.

00:11:37.460 And, uh, so yeah, I, I, and I was, I'm a little bit younger than you are, but I, I think I was, you know, maybe even like 20 years old when this came out.

00:11:45.340 And, um, so I was very excited to see it.

00:11:48.720 And I actually was, um, interesting, these connections.

00:11:52.000 I was in New York City, kind of, you know, fooling around, walking around, probably quite literally walking around Lower Manhattan in a trench coat looking angry.

00:12:02.880 So it was the perfect film.

00:12:06.160 Uh, but yeah, I mean, I remember being, I, I, I, you know, most all critics were either disappointed or dismayed or kind of, uh, um, confused by, baffled by it.

00:12:18.000 And I, I think I was too, to a certain extent.

00:12:21.460 I, I, I definitely had your same experience, but I did like it a lot more.

00:12:26.140 Um, I, I, it felt, it's funny.

00:12:28.500 It, when I first saw it, the movie felt unfinished or disjointed.

00:12:33.460 I was almost thinking like, did, you know, did he die before he really finished it?

00:12:37.940 Like there's, there are missing scenes or, or something.

00:12:41.040 And as I see it later, I, I've seen it, you know, maybe like once every two years or so since then.

00:12:48.620 And, and I like it more and more each time I see it.

00:12:52.140 And not only do I like it more and more, but I also see it as a really tight, precise masterpiece.

00:12:58.560 Um, I don't think it's a disjointed film.

00:13:01.560 I, I think it is a, a very well-constructed film.

00:13:04.620 It is a deeply structural film.

00:13:06.600 It's a, it has a structure of a sonata, really, with a opening thesis and an antithesis and then a synthesis.

00:13:13.660 Um, and there's a great deal of repetition and, and, and a good way in the sense that he'll, he'll show you a scene and then he'll reiterate it.

00:13:22.620 And it's almost as if every single, I, I think probably quite literally every single scene in the film is a reiteration of, and, and a kind of parody, you could say, of another scene.

00:13:34.480 So this is probably most obvious when, uh, Bill and Alice go to the Ziegler's party and then Bill kind of sneaks into the other party off in Long Island.

00:13:45.360 And, um, you can see this again, again, he, he visits the prostitute twice and each time it's different.

00:13:51.080 The first time he's naive and almost childish with this prostitute, he doesn't know what to do and he kind of leaves, uh, gives himself an excuse to leave.

00:13:59.380 And the next time he sees the, another prostitute who's kind of her doppelganger and he learns that he just, you know, she has AIDS and he kind of, you know, there's this sex and death combination.

00:14:10.340 So every scene has this repetition.

00:14:12.520 There's a repetition of revealing dreams to one another, confessing dreams.

00:14:16.080 Um, there's even a repetition of, uh, of, uh, of the, the, the, the orgy scene where, you know, he, Bill is there, you know, witnessing this weird pagan Catholic sex, sex orgy service slash theater performance.

00:14:34.760 I don't know what it is, but, uh, someone with a large stick and a big red, uh, rug.

00:14:41.200 And that's a mirror image of that is given when he visits, uh, uh, uh, Victor Ziegler's, um, uh, pool table later.

00:14:49.980 And there's this red pool table and he's holding the stick.

00:14:52.740 I like when he says, oh, I'm, I was just knocking some balls around.

00:14:56.460 Yeah.

00:14:57.000 I wonder what that means.

00:14:58.820 Uh, but anyway, I, I, so I, to go back to it, I, I, I, I now see it as a really tightly constructed and structural film.

00:15:10.300 Uh, and I didn't quite see that when I first saw it.

00:15:14.080 And, but one thing I did notice, uh, formally speaking, and I think this might've been, this might've been kind of a breakthrough for me is in terms of just viewing art is that I was thinking like, wow, there are all these colors.

00:15:29.060 There's this red, yellow, and blue, and it's very strong.

00:15:34.120 And obviously Kubrick is interested in this.

00:15:36.300 You could think of like the title cards to Clockwork Orange.

00:15:38.980 And I, I was, I remember thinking it's almost like there's a kind of allegory to these colors.

00:15:45.660 They keep repeating.

00:15:47.220 And, you know, you have the blue is very pronounced.

00:15:50.880 The, um, uh, in, when Alice and Bill are confessing their dreams to one another, you, you have blue coming in through the window.

00:15:59.340 And you have that at both night and in the morning.

00:16:02.400 And besides, it's clearly deliberate and synthetic because, you know, in the morning, the sky's not blue.

00:16:07.980 I mean, blue light, you know, it's a, he's, he's clearly trying to create an atmosphere and say something.

00:16:12.600 You have red.

00:16:13.680 The, the, the marriage bed is red.

00:16:15.400 The door of the prostitute's, uh, apartment is red.

00:16:19.360 The, the, the rug or the floor of the orgy is red.

00:16:23.560 The pool table's red.

00:16:25.240 This is red.

00:16:26.600 And then there's yellow.

00:16:28.020 It's also very strong.

00:16:29.220 Yellow cabs.

00:16:30.360 Yellow, uh, when he visits the, the daughter of the man who died, there's like yellow.

00:16:35.220 I, I think Kubrick, uh, the, the poster for Nick Nightingale is bright yellow.

00:16:41.060 Um, I, I think that there's a kind of almost an allegory.

00:16:45.240 And I, and I think there, there's some connotations with these.

00:16:48.360 I think red has a connotation of blood, of lust.

00:16:52.600 You know, the marriage bed is red.

00:16:54.280 Uh, there's, there's obviously blood and lust connected with sex.

00:16:57.740 Blue, I think, has some connotations with being blue.

00:17:00.860 That is being vulgar or sexual or, uh, uh, you know, those connotations.

00:17:07.780 Um, I, I think yellow might, might almost be a kind of symbol of repression or something.

00:17:13.600 Maybe even fear.

00:17:14.580 Yellow often associated with fear.

00:17:17.540 Um, so I, I, you know, I, I remember seeing that when I was like 20 and I was, I was thinking

00:17:22.940 like, wow, Kubrick isn't just filming something.

00:17:26.640 He's, he's like creating a painting or creating a, and also complaining, creating a kind of

00:17:32.740 subliminal message.

00:17:35.060 And it really did kind of blow my mind, so to speak, in the sense that I was, um, it was

00:17:41.720 one of the first times I was thinking, wow, uh, this film can be an art form and the director

00:17:47.280 can, can communicate to the audience in other ways than words in the script.

00:17:52.980 And, uh, so anyway, that, that has always stuck with me.

00:17:57.180 So I, I think this movie, I don't, I agree with you.

00:17:59.500 I don't think it's his greatest film and it's, it's probably not his most iconic.

00:18:03.520 You would have to go with 2001 or Clockwork Orange.

00:18:06.480 Um, but I think it is an amazing film and it might be one of his most tightly constructed

00:18:13.260 and most like structurally, uh, complex films.

00:18:17.880 But anyway, um, Romain, let me, let me pass over to you.

00:18:21.740 Why don't you, maybe you can talk about your first time seeing it or your kind of impressions

00:18:25.940 of it, or, or you can pick up on any thread that I've, uh, started.

00:18:31.660 I do know I'm slightly younger than you, Richard.

00:18:35.160 Uh, so I didn't see it in theaters.

00:18:39.000 Uh, so in 99, I was 16.

00:18:42.600 I was allowed to see it.

00:18:44.220 It was, um, I think in France you had to be 16 to see it.

00:18:48.800 But I actually, uh, years later when I was a student, I bought the DVD and I really can't

00:18:57.880 remember the year it was because it's not that I was disappointed, but I, you know, maybe

00:19:04.700 like beer, I thought that something was wrong there and, uh, but I didn't know what.

00:19:11.080 Uh, and so I didn't watch it until years later and it brings me to a rather recent period in

00:19:21.160 2011 when I was, uh, indulging in a new guilty pleasure, uh, then which was reading, uh, conspiracy

00:19:31.580 theory websites like Vigilant Citizen or watching Alex Jones' documentaries.

00:19:38.840 And then, you know, it's, you know, most of the time your ideas pop up when you're doing

00:19:46.080 nothing or being idle.

00:19:48.700 And I just thought, I don't know why, but I just thought of, I'd watch it.

00:19:52.820 And I said, I have to watch it again.

00:19:56.500 And then, you know, everything was clear and I, I recognized this movie, um, as a kind

00:20:06.640 of allegory of the cave, you know, battle's allegory of the cave with, you have, um, a sensible

00:20:14.580 world that is deceitful.

00:20:16.620 And then you have people casting shadows behind, and of course the movie can't be reduced to

00:20:24.540 that, but it's a part of it.

00:20:27.820 And when I watched it the second time, I could see many, many things that, uh, we can discuss

00:20:35.420 later, but that really indicate that, uh, Eyes Waited Shot is a kind of conspiracy movie,

00:20:43.580 even if it's more than that, much like Matrix or They Live by Tom Carpenter.

00:20:51.260 So the second time I saw it, I, it was much more clear.

00:20:56.240 And since then, since I was, I think I've been, um, watching and reading conspiracy stuff

00:21:04.020 for maybe two years from 2011 to 2012.

00:21:08.720 And it's not a coincidence that it was that very time that many people in Europe and in

00:21:16.840 France were announcing the crash of the euro currency and of many states, uh, in Europe,

00:21:24.200 like France, Italy, or even Britain.

00:21:26.700 And it didn't happen.

00:21:28.240 And so in 2013, I began taking conspiracy stuff less seriously because all of their predictions

00:21:37.380 started wrong.

00:21:38.400 And then I, you know, I just looked in the past and saw that Alex Jones had been predicting

00:21:44.780 the collapse every three months or maybe 15 years.

00:21:50.740 So I took that list less seriously.

00:21:54.160 And I started appreciating Eyes Waited Shot for what it was, not only a conspiracy movie,

00:22:00.420 but something more, um, a kind of, uh, maybe it could be termed the end of innocence.

00:22:08.520 So this expression, this phrase has always, uh, has often been used, uh, to describe the state

00:22:15.780 of America after, uh, JFK was murdered, you know, the end of innocence.

00:22:20.700 You can't believe in stories anymore because you have to face truth.

00:22:25.300 And when I watch it now, it's more or less, uh, you know, I accept what female sexuality is

00:22:34.560 and I accept that our elite might be corrupt, but it's no more corrupt than the people who

00:22:41.460 vote for them or who support them or who benefit from them.

00:22:45.240 So I'm more adult.

00:22:46.900 And if I, and I'm closing on that, um, you know, if I'm looking at my Eyes Waited Journey,

00:22:56.280 so to speak, I first watched it when I was a student.

00:23:00.660 And at the time I was a bit naive and foolish.

00:23:04.500 And then when I started to see truth, I was, uh, you know, uh, crossing, you know, the dangerous

00:23:14.360 path between, uh, the teenage years and all the post teenage years and adulthood.

00:23:22.180 And now I see it with more, um, relaxed eyes.

00:23:26.080 So, or it is corrupt, but you know, it's, it's fine.

00:23:30.420 And we're going to replace it by another one.

00:23:33.060 So now I'm, I'm just seeing it as a kind of swan song of a certain kind of Western

00:23:40.620 civilization.

00:23:42.700 Yeah.

00:23:43.380 I think that is, I think that's the right way to see it.

00:23:47.160 Um, I don't, why don't we do this since Romain brought up this issue?

00:23:53.180 Um, why don't we go into the, uh, conspiracy side of the film?

00:23:59.200 Um, and, and for one thing, for almost like, like Romain, I almost want to get rid of it.

00:24:05.560 Like, let's, let's, let's talk about it because it's there.

00:24:08.720 I don't, it's not, Alex Jones is not being silly to see this as he's revealing the Illuminati

00:24:15.380 cult.

00:24:16.280 Um, that's clearly in the film.

00:24:18.600 Like that's part of the author's obvious intentions.

00:24:21.480 But I, I think in a way, if you focus on it only as that, I think you in a way misunderstand

00:24:27.440 the film.

00:24:28.260 Uh, there, there's actually a, a link to this in the show notes.

00:24:31.200 There's a, a movie review by, uh, the blogger who goes by the name Yggdrasil, um, who talks

00:24:37.900 about this.

00:24:38.740 And, um, I'll just mention a couple of things real quick and then I'll pass it to you, John.

00:24:44.100 Um, but yeah, I mean, I, it's, it's hard not to see the, a couple of things.

00:24:51.640 Um, one of which is the very strongly Jewish character of, uh, uh, Victor Ziegler.

00:24:59.860 Uh, he's cast by Sidney Pollack who's a, a film director and sometime actor.

00:25:05.060 Uh, I, I think John, you mentioned that, um, Harvey Keitel was actually originally cast.

00:25:10.780 Uh, and, and they actually even filmed some scenes with him.

00:25:14.720 Uh, Harvey Keitel is Jewish, but he, he's, he's less obviously Jewish.

00:25:18.900 Um, I, I would say, but, uh, Sidney Pollack is very obviously Jewish and, uh, has a, I

00:25:26.140 don't even know where he's from.

00:25:27.440 You know, he has a, maybe something, a quality to them.

00:25:31.940 Yeah.

00:25:32.460 He has a quality to them that seems maybe a little bit LA or maybe a little bit New York

00:25:37.280 as well.

00:25:37.680 Like, you know, Hey kiddo, you really gave us a scare.

00:25:40.740 I, well, he didn't say it that way, but.

00:25:42.500 Oh, the, the way he talks is, you know, exactly what I grew up, grew up with.

00:25:46.540 You know, I mean, that's New York Jews.

00:25:48.480 That's how they talk, you know, yeah.

00:25:51.760 He was classically New York.

00:25:53.200 Yeah.

00:25:53.660 Well, to any, to anybody doesn't.

00:25:56.960 Yeah, but they see all going as prostitutes.

00:25:59.740 So.

00:26:01.780 Yeah.

00:26:02.780 Um, so, I mean, I think the fact that he did that is interesting and, uh, to say the

00:26:10.280 least.

00:26:10.760 Also, I would also mention that, and I think we should get more into this later, but there's

00:26:16.260 a very strong old world flavor to Eyes Wide Shut.

00:26:21.740 Uh, there, you know, the, the fact that it's based on this 1920s novel by Schnitzler that

00:26:27.380 connected with Vienna and all this, but there, there's this old quality, like the Synodic

00:26:32.800 cafe, the, the, the, the Venetian mass themselves.

00:26:37.160 The Minsmore Towers, the place was the orgy.

00:26:40.900 Oh, right.

00:26:41.960 Oh, you mean the actual.

00:26:43.100 I know.

00:26:43.460 I didn't know the name of it.

00:26:44.660 Yeah.

00:26:44.880 They, they go to this.

00:26:45.800 Actually, what's interesting is, is that it's a Rothschild's house, which is no coincidence.

00:26:54.600 Uh, you know, I don't want to insist too much on that, but it's not a coincidence.

00:26:59.220 And it was used by Nolan in, uh, Batman Begins.

00:27:03.120 Oh, wow.

00:27:03.880 As Wayne's Manor.

00:27:06.060 Do you remember it?

00:27:07.140 It's the very same house.

00:27:09.800 That's amazing.

00:27:11.100 I did not put that together.

00:27:12.900 And, you know, when, actually, I put it in my outline, Richard, but it's fine.

00:27:19.700 And, uh, it's, uh, no indication that, uh, Nolan is walking in Kubrick's path.

00:27:27.720 Yeah.

00:27:28.000 Without question.

00:27:29.440 That's interesting.

00:27:29.940 And Minsmore Towers, obviously, is in England, which actually, I, I think almost all scenes,

00:27:36.580 uh, have been, um, shot in England, maybe a few ones in New York streets.

00:27:42.360 And, uh, it's a Rothschild's house, one of their houses, and it's an Indian palace.

00:27:49.900 So, the outside is very European looking, it looks like Westminster in a way.

00:27:55.480 Yeah.

00:27:56.040 Uh, but the inside is, looks like a kind of Indian palace.

00:28:01.600 And, uh, and there's Indian music during the orgy, so, um.

00:28:06.500 Yeah.

00:28:07.200 And it has a, like, an arabesque quality, um, that you could, it's so, and maybe perhaps

00:28:12.060 associate with indulgence.

00:28:13.620 And, you know, when you say that it has a 1920s flavor, it's, you know, the Orientalism

00:28:21.600 of European elites at the time, especially in, it was no longer Austria-Hungary, but, um,

00:28:30.700 it was still influenced by it, was very important.

00:28:34.560 And, um, and there's no coincidence to it, but we were mentioning the conspiracy stuff,

00:28:41.340 and, uh, like you, I don't want to insist too much on that because it would be, uh, reducing

00:28:47.520 the movie to what it's not.

00:28:50.440 But, not only is there the Rothschild's house, but you also have, um, one of the first characters

00:28:58.000 with very old world, and it's, uh, Sandor Savas.

00:29:01.760 So, the guy, the Hungarian guy who tries to seduce Alice at the opening party.

00:29:08.440 Yeah.

00:29:08.980 Actually, Sandor was the second name of Anton Sandor Lavey, who was the founder of the Church

00:29:15.140 of Satan, which, again, can't be a coincidence.

00:29:19.100 No.

00:29:19.560 There's also, during the orgy, uh, there's a black mass.

00:29:23.000 It's a Romanian orthodox mass played backwards.

00:29:25.840 And, when you play a mass backwards, it means that it's a satanic mass.

00:29:30.780 So, I don't think that, you know, Kubrick just, uh, reversed the tape and, oh, it's fine

00:29:37.560 like that.

00:29:38.040 Let's say it like that.

00:29:39.220 It means something.

00:29:41.160 Another thing, I, I, I'll be quick.

00:29:44.140 I promise, Richard.

00:29:45.700 Um, is that the high priest at the orgy, so the leader of the, of the gang, or maybe not

00:29:52.280 the, the actual leader, because the actual leader might be the guy with the, the old

00:29:58.500 mask, but the high priest, um, so he's dressed like a great inquisitor and with the cardinal's

00:30:08.400 purple, but on his throne, or so to speak, throne, there's a double-headed eagle, which

00:30:14.960 is a Masonic symbol, and maybe one last conspiracy thing is that, uh, just before, um, uh, Bill

00:30:26.740 Crawford is, um, you know, encircled by all the, um, uh, participants, he crosses a room

00:30:35.460 where there is a kind of ball with people dancing and you have, um, a very, a very Masonic, uh,

00:30:44.240 scene with, uh, so, uh, prostitutes are naked and they're white and, uh, men are with a black

00:30:53.800 cloak and you have, um, a white guy naked dancing with a guy in black and a woman with wearing

00:31:03.900 his, uh, tuxedo and cloak and she, so she's black and dancing with a, with a prostitute

00:31:10.500 who's white and, you know, the, um, opposition between black and white, the feminine masculine

00:31:18.500 principle, uh, can be found in many, uh, Masonic symbols, like, of course, a checkerboard or,

00:31:25.620 uh, things like that.

00:31:27.320 And again, it's no coincidence and guess what?

00:31:31.280 I'm done.

00:31:32.300 Just one note in passing.

00:31:35.300 Ziegler at, uh, one, at the, one of the last scenes says, uh, to Bill, if I told you their

00:31:42.660 names, I don't think it'd slip so well.

00:31:45.260 So you can imagine that there's maybe, uh, the Federal Reserve, uh, chairman or people like

00:31:51.980 that, or maybe, I don't know.

00:31:54.180 So there's a guy who sounds British, uh, so maybe it's a prime minister.

00:31:58.620 I don't know.

00:31:59.000 But when he says that to someone, uh, Bill Crawford with obviously belonging to the upper

00:32:06.820 middle class, when he says that, it means that it's people who are very powerful, not just,

00:32:13.140 uh, some guys, it's not like, uh, you have, um, Rush Limbaugh or you have people really at

00:32:21.160 the very upper crust of the elite.

00:32:24.500 Oh yeah.

00:32:24.920 Maybe bank governors, uh, CEOs, people like that.

00:32:30.960 And it's, uh, so all that's, you know, taken together means something about this conspiracy

00:32:39.900 stuff.

00:32:40.500 And I'm really not talking about that anymore because I don't want to pollute, uh, the podcast

00:32:46.180 with Alex Jones material.

00:32:47.800 No, you've been reading too much Vigilant Citizen.

00:32:51.200 Uh, that's a fascinating website.

00:32:52.840 It's a guilty pleasure for me too.

00:32:54.640 I, I, some people look at the pornography.

00:32:56.960 I, I will go read Vigilant Citizen at 2am when I can't sleep.

00:33:00.760 But let me, I'm going to, I'm going to pass it to you, uh, John, but I, I, I, let me set

00:33:06.780 it up a little bit because again, I, I think, I think we're all agreed that you can't ignore

00:33:11.940 this, but you don't also don't want to reduce the film to that.

00:33:15.020 But it, you know, we, we were joking before we turned the recorder on that, um, you know,

00:33:21.260 every country, famous saying by a very famous man, every country, every people has the government

00:33:26.860 it deserves.

00:33:27.340 And in a way, every people has the elite it deserves, which is in some ways the same

00:33:32.880 maxim.

00:33:33.800 And so I, I think this, the elite depicted, um, the, the Sidney Pollack elite is something

00:33:41.300 in a way that the, the Hartfords, uh, deserve.

00:33:45.040 I, I would also say this, um, that in some ways, uh, I don't think, I, I, I, I think everyone

00:33:53.200 is aware that every society will inherently have an elite, but who, who they imagine that

00:34:01.180 elite to be is in a way quite telling.

00:34:04.260 And I think in, in good times, like in a, a positive social mood, economy's doing well,

00:34:10.920 everyone's happy, we like to imagine our elite as, as certain types of figures.

00:34:17.480 And that is, we like to imagine them as politicians, like, oh, that darn Nancy Pelosi, she's supporting

00:34:23.180 gay marriage or, you know, Nancy Pelosi is the elite or Perry Reed, or this is the Fox

00:34:28.760 News type thing, but also like, you know, famous, uh, entrepreneurs, you know, Steve Jobs

00:34:33.980 is the elite and, you know, again, a kind of, you know, powerful yet extremely benign man

00:34:40.740 who wants to sell you phones.

00:34:42.760 He, he, he doesn't want to, you know, control the world.

00:34:45.780 But I think in, in darker moods, we almost start to see there's another elite.

00:34:50.520 And it's the, you know, it's that, it's the chairman, that person who works on the Federal

00:34:55.460 Reserve Board who no one even knows his name, yet he has, he's a billionaire and, and immensely

00:35:00.280 powerful.

00:35:00.680 We start to imagine this darker elite.

00:35:03.140 And it's interesting that this Eyes Wide Shut kind of is a, can be compared with a very

00:35:09.760 famous Alex Jones video where much like Bill Hartford, he, he sneaks into the elite's pleasure

00:35:17.280 palace.

00:35:18.160 And in Alex Jones's case, he, he snuck into the Bohemian Grove party and he kind of films

00:35:25.600 these, he sees these bizarre things.

00:35:27.580 What it is, you don't know.

00:35:28.800 I mean, Bohemian, Bohemian Grove really is a, an actual elite event.

00:35:33.800 I mean, I don't think anyone could deny that.

00:35:35.340 I mean, very famously, Richard Nixon attended and said, he said some very funny line like

00:35:41.060 that's on tape.

00:35:42.140 It's like, ah, it was a bunch of faggy shit or something like that.

00:35:46.500 But, you know, there, there are these parties, you know, I mean, everyone gets together on

00:35:52.000 weekends or during the summer.

00:35:53.280 And so we shouldn't be surprised that bankers and politicians and CEOs get together.

00:35:58.800 Uh, and, um, they'll have parties.

00:36:01.280 But, you know, again, much like Bill, Alex Jones saw this stuff and he didn't see any actual

00:36:08.020 backroom deal.

00:36:09.140 He didn't see any actual crime really, but he just saw this bizarre theatrical pagan right.

00:36:17.800 And, uh, and it's pretty shocking.

00:36:20.700 It's, it's a, it's a kind of companion video to Eyes Wide Shut.

00:36:24.860 Um, but, uh, you know, so, so what do you think about this, John?

00:36:28.620 Before we put conspiracy theories to bed, what, what do you think about all the, some of these

00:36:32.960 threads that I've mentioned and then, and just that element of like, uh, of in, within

00:36:38.960 Eyes Wide Shut of like, there's a, there's a something behind the other room that's going

00:36:43.540 on that you don't see that's really sinister and, and really nasty done by the rich and

00:36:49.880 powerful.

00:36:51.600 Well, since you mentioned the elites, Richard, uh, you know, if, if you want to, you know,

00:36:57.000 connecting this to our recent Abela podcast, if you want to look at it from a traditionalist

00:37:01.500 point of view, uh, you know, Abela would say that what we have today is, yeah, of course,

00:37:07.560 you know, a society always has an elite and, and, you know, traditionalists are always in

00:37:11.520 favor of a social hierarchy.

00:37:12.980 Yeah.

00:37:13.720 Uh, but what happens in, in times of modernity is that the hierarchy is reversed.

00:37:19.500 So it's the worst people who form the elite.

00:37:22.860 Yeah.

00:37:23.380 And actually the other people who are the true aristocrats seldom have any actual power or

00:37:28.340 at least very little.

00:37:29.640 Uh, so yeah, you could see that, uh, you know, this idea that the elite is somehow like sexually

00:37:35.940 perverted and very materialistic, you know, which is, which is definitely suggested in

00:37:40.660 the, uh, in the film, uh, it was present.

00:37:43.940 I'm not saying that Kubrick is a traditionalist, but you know, that, that would be one way to

00:37:47.920 read it.

00:37:48.360 Uh, I mean, as far as, I mean, I, I, certainly the element is there, uh, and I, I wouldn't

00:37:56.720 deny any of the things that Roman, uh, pointed out, uh, you know, that, that it's, I'm almost

00:38:02.160 certain that Kubrick must've been aware of those things.

00:38:04.680 Yeah.

00:38:04.760 Uh, I just think, I, I don't think Kubrick set out to point the finger at anyone specific.

00:38:11.960 I mean, you know, this was the late 1990s.

00:38:14.820 We'd already had Oliver Stone's JFK and the X-Files.

00:38:19.140 I mean, you know, everything in the nineties was conspiracy oriented.

00:38:22.960 Uh, so I don't think Kubrick wanted to sort of, you know, add to that.

00:38:26.400 I, I kind of see it as part of his general critique of power relations, which, you know, runs

00:38:32.400 through all of his films, uh, in various ways, uh, you know, I, I think, you know, even in

00:38:38.740 Barry Lyndon, like we talked about before, uh, you know, it's about somebody trying to get

00:38:44.400 admitted to the elite, uh, you know, and finding out that it isn't quite what they thought it

00:38:49.480 was and being out of, uh, yeah, I mean, that's, that's a recurring theme in, in many of Kubrick's

00:38:56.520 films, maybe even all of them.

00:38:57.820 Uh, although I think another aspect of that is something that struck me when I was watching

00:39:03.520 it is that, you know, you've mentioned Richard before that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in

00:39:08.360 the film sort of represent this, uh, 1990s bourgeois, you know, upper middle class kind

00:39:15.000 of elite.

00:39:15.780 But I, I think the film is also about them discovering that they're not the real elite.

00:39:21.020 Yes.

00:39:21.680 Uh, you know, I, I think this is something that's, you know, I, I, a lot of the people who I think

00:39:26.780 imagine themselves as the elite in America today, you know, are the furthest thing from

00:39:31.560 it.

00:39:31.800 I mean, they're, they're really just, you know, consumers with a bit more money.

00:39:35.360 Yeah.

00:39:35.860 Uh, but yeah, I think they're actually lulled to sleep with this idea that they're the real

00:39:40.520 elite.

00:39:41.260 I mean, one, one of the things that's funny for me is how in the film, you know, whenever

00:39:45.980 Tom Cruise wants to convince somebody that he's never met before, that he's telling the

00:39:50.560 truth, he, he shows them his medical board card.

00:39:54.180 They're like, it's supposed to like show them that he's in like, Oh,

00:39:56.780 Oh, I'm a doctor.

00:39:57.660 Obviously I'm telling the truth.

00:39:59.620 I mean, it's, it's kind of like, and he shows that in the worst circumstances, like he's

00:40:04.180 trying to get a costume in order to, uh, go to an orgy.

00:40:08.660 And he's like, I'm Dr.

00:40:10.400 Hartford.

00:40:10.940 Here's my, he's like, he's a police officer.

00:40:13.220 I, I, yeah, it's very funny.

00:40:16.840 Uh, because it shows that duplicitousness of, uh, of even some of, of, of the, I hate to

00:40:23.680 say, of Tom Cruise and in a way, his, his persona, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's all,

00:40:29.160 it's at all an act.

00:40:30.800 I mean, it's during the day that he's wearing his costume that he plays this very, um, you

00:40:36.900 know, obviously very down to earth, but also very, um, respectable, reliable type person.

00:40:43.560 You know, when he, when he's leaving to go to the Ziegler's party, he goes to the, the

00:40:48.860 babysitter Roz and, uh, who he doesn't know her name, her name, forgets her name, but

00:40:52.980 then he goes to the babysitter and he goes, you know, I'm, I'm going to have a cab waiting

00:40:56.800 for you, uh, when you get back.

00:40:58.700 And it's just this kind of bullshit, you know, type, you know, uh, gesture or, uh, you know,

00:41:05.500 putting his, when he visits his patient who's dying, putting his hand and, and, uh, you

00:41:10.860 know, all, all of this thing, you, you see this kind of mask or this pretense, uh, of

00:41:16.260 a, uh, of, of, of this man and underneath it, it's someone who really is, is both duplicitous

00:41:22.820 and naive, someone who doesn't know himself, who his, his eyes are wide shut.

00:41:27.780 Yeah.

00:41:28.380 And also, yeah.

00:41:29.160 And part of that is the idea that he's not nearly as elite as he thinks.

00:41:32.980 I mean, obviously, even though Sidney Pollack is his friend, he never got invited to any of

00:41:38.980 these parties, so that was probably quite a blow to, uh, his ego.

00:41:43.160 No, he does, he does house calls for the elite.

00:41:46.180 Yeah.

00:41:47.340 Basically, yeah, to clean up their, their messes and, and, you know, at the beginning of the

00:41:51.160 film.

00:41:51.740 Yeah.

00:41:51.920 Although I, I didn't want to talk.

00:41:54.720 Oh, go ahead.

00:41:56.100 Actually, I was just jumping in because you were saying that he was no, not really elite

00:42:01.840 and, um, it's, it destroys another myth of the nineties, nineties, that, you know, money

00:42:10.320 can't buy everything.

00:42:11.980 Uh, so as the Beatles said famously, the money can buy, but it also can't buy you power.

00:42:18.700 Power is not, you know, money is just the consequence of power.

00:42:22.460 So Ziegler obviously is very rich, but he's not powerful because it's rich.

00:42:28.520 He does the other way around, even if, uh, Tom Cruise, uh, Bill Hartford, I said Crawford

00:42:35.440 before, forgive me, uh, Bill Hartford is, is wealthy and is by any decent standard, rich,

00:42:44.940 he's not powerful.

00:42:45.880 And when he starts crossing the boundaries that were, uh, you know, put around him and

00:42:53.720 his family, he discovers that he's as powerless and, you know, uh, as a hooker that turns up

00:43:01.360 dead at the end of the orgy, just a servant of the elite is a doctor.

00:43:06.020 And, uh, it's another myth of the, um, and, uh, Richard said it, you know, when he weighs

00:43:11.540 his, uh, doctor card, uh, everywhere, uh, you know, with, uh, the therapeutic state, we've

00:43:19.340 been led to believe that doctors are a kind of elite, but before that, before the welfare

00:43:25.420 state, uh, doctors were more like middle class and that's what they've been for most of

00:43:32.620 history.

00:43:33.120 And, uh, it's only because the obsession of the Western man, uh, since 1945 about his health

00:43:42.960 and actually his own death, uh, which gave so much wealth and power to doctors, medical doctors.

00:43:52.100 But even, even with, you know, uh, the increase of power by, by doctors, um, it just, um,

00:44:02.620 a kind of ancillary function to the elite.

00:44:06.680 So Ziegler is, uh, very, you know, pleased with having, um, his doctor, um, you know,

00:44:15.220 when, uh, Mandy is, uh, drugged out in his bathroom, he's very pleased that his doctor can

00:44:21.320 come and come in one second and save him because his wife is just around.

00:44:26.500 And it's very convenient for him, but he's just a lucky guy for Ziegler.

00:44:31.620 He's not friend.

00:44:33.160 He's just, uh, he's just serving him.

00:44:36.260 And even if he's rich, he's far less rich than Ziegler and the other guy.

00:44:41.360 Well, I think it's buying, just the mask, uh, sorry, Richard, but just the mask he's bringing

00:44:47.240 at the party is very cheap.

00:44:48.740 It's just, you know, it's $25 because, you know, he forgets it or maybe he, uh, kills

00:44:57.660 it when he's at the OG, but the Venetian masks that, uh, the elite guys, and it's not

00:45:03.840 $25, it's at least 100 times more than that.

00:45:08.640 Oh yeah.

00:45:09.400 Well, I would say Bill, I mean, when you just think about his name, Bill, uh, Dr. Bill,

00:45:15.420 Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Bill, uh, it's a dollar bill.

00:45:20.540 Yeah.

00:45:20.680 Like you'd be asked to pay or a dollar bill.

00:45:23.300 Yeah.

00:45:23.540 He's always, yeah, right.

00:45:24.700 It's both in a way, like his, his debt, his burden, and then also just his dollar bill.

00:45:28.980 I mean, he, he's, I don't know how much money he spends in his like 48 hour period of the

00:45:33.580 film.

00:45:34.320 He's just, he's his wallet gets smaller.

00:45:36.700 He's handing out like $2,000 in cash effectively to, to, to, to little people doing stuff for him.

00:45:43.940 Like, Oh, here's, I want to pay you anyway, 150, you know, it's just, you know, and that's

00:45:49.640 all it is.

00:45:50.500 That's all he is.

00:45:51.520 Is that bill is actually the first line bill's first line.

00:45:54.960 I think it might actually be the first line of the movie is honey.

00:45:58.280 Have you seen my wallet?

00:46:00.060 Yeah.

00:46:00.620 Yeah.

00:46:00.960 Oh yeah.

00:46:01.760 You're right.

00:46:02.420 You're right.

00:46:02.940 Again, there's no, that's who he is.

00:46:06.120 And I, I totally agree with Romain's view.

00:46:09.460 I mean, he, he discovers what real power is real power is not giving the tabby a hundred

00:46:15.700 and thinking that you're a bad-ass, you know, that's, that, that's the, that, again, that's

00:46:22.740 the power of this person whose eyes are wide shut.

00:46:25.160 You can't really see the world and can't see that his place in it.

00:46:29.820 And I think, I think maybe we can use that to transition to the relationship between, um,

00:46:34.960 Alice and, and, and bill, but before we do that, can I, can I just touch on one last

00:46:42.080 conspiracy related thing?

00:46:43.700 Oh, good.

00:46:44.140 Uh, I, I did, I did think it was worth mentioning since Romain did bring, and you know, you as

00:46:50.340 well, Richard mentioned the Jewish connection by having Sidney Pollack as, as, you know,

00:46:55.380 the only identifiable part of this, this elite, uh, is that, you know, Frederick Raphael, who's

00:47:02.120 Jewish himself, who wrote the screenplay of the film with Kubrick, uh, did in an article

00:47:08.840 very publicly accused Kubrick after his death of being antisemitic and, you know, quoted all

00:47:15.520 these things that he, he claimed Kubrick had said.

00:47:18.360 I, I mean, I hesitate to make too much of it because just about everybody else who knew

00:47:24.260 Kubrick has said that, you know, this is preposterous and, you know, they don't believe

00:47:28.120 he actually said these things, but, you know, I, I, there is a lot of evidence that, you know,

00:47:32.280 he was aware of it.

00:47:33.340 I mean, it's, he specified that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, uh, in their role, uh, you

00:47:39.080 know, that any trace of Jewishness should be expunged, uh, from the way, because in the

00:47:44.460 original Schnitzler, uh, novel, uh, it's suggested that the couple is actually Jewish.

00:47:50.740 Hmm.

00:47:51.700 Uh, and Kubrick very deliberately reversed this.

00:47:55.180 Hmm.

00:47:55.540 Uh, so he, he must've had some awareness that people were going to read that into the film.

00:48:00.680 Uh, you know, I hesitate to say.

00:48:03.180 Yeah, interject real quickly.

00:48:04.540 That is very interesting of just this, you know, changing role of Jews.

00:48:08.860 I mean, in the sense that, I mean, I mean, in 1920s, in 1926, Vienna and then 1998, New

00:48:15.960 York city, I mean, it's a very different world.

00:48:18.660 I mean, I, I, I'm not saying that Jews were not powerful, uh, for quite some time, uh,

00:48:24.380 but nevertheless, in, in Vienna, you know, being a Jew, it still is a bit of a mark against

00:48:30.900 you.

00:48:31.380 You're not quite in the in group.

00:48:34.080 Um, you, you know, you might be very, again, you might be very wealthy, but not be powerful.

00:48:38.100 You're kind of, you know, a bit of an outsider.

00:48:40.000 I mean, Freud was a, uh, uh, obviously a successful bourgeois, uh, but he, he was without question

00:48:47.560 an outsider of society.

00:48:49.520 Um, you know, in our world and postmodern America, the outsider is the insider.

00:48:54.120 I mean, you, you could not claim that, uh, Jews are alienated from, uh, modern society.

00:49:01.040 Although some have this almost fantasy of themselves, uh, that that's the world they see that evangelical

00:49:07.060 Christians are the true powerful people who are, who are anti-Semitic or some weird view

00:49:12.340 that they have, uh, but no, you, you can't go to a, um, you know, meeting of AIPAC or something

00:49:18.860 and be like, oh, wow, these, uh, these Jews really don't have any power in this country.

00:49:22.960 You know, it's, it's, it's the, uh, opposite.

00:49:26.240 Um, uh, but anyway, I think that's interesting that Kubrick saw it that way.

00:49:30.320 I think making, making, uh, Bill's Jewishness a kind of dark secret that he wants to avoid,

00:49:37.160 uh, I think that is kind of in a way untrue to the, uh, the modern world, but go ahead.

00:49:44.780 Yeah.

00:49:45.360 I, I mean, I don't know exactly what to make of it.

00:49:49.040 I mean, we can only speculate, you know, what Kubrick wanted us to get from it or whatever.

00:49:53.260 I mean, I'm not trying to suggest that, uh, you know, Kubrick was trying to do a, you know,

00:49:57.800 culture of critique, you know, he was trying to be Kevin MacDonald or something, but I think

00:50:02.960 at the same time, actually, at the same time, uh, about the same time as a book.

00:50:09.760 I don't think these are coincidences.

00:50:11.400 I, I think there was something, you know, it's interesting that Alex Jones, you know,

00:50:16.100 stormed the Bohemian Grove, Eyes Wide Shut, culture critique.

00:50:20.520 I, I think.

00:50:21.180 And Matrix.

00:50:22.140 And the Matrix.

00:50:22.920 Again, I'm not trying to reduce these, all of each of these artistic or scholarly achievements.

00:50:28.520 I'm just saying that there was almost something in the zeitgeist that people, there, there

00:50:34.080 was an unease or an angst that was being expressed itself.

00:50:37.440 Uh, but what would, did, um, Kubrick said something, he said something like Hitler was

00:50:42.020 right or some pretty outrageous statement like that.

00:50:44.520 That, that was one of the things that Fred Raphael claimed he said.

00:50:48.840 Yeah.

00:50:49.060 Uh, and I, I think another thing he, he, uh, asked Raphael, like what New York Jews talk

00:50:55.520 about when they're like alone together or something and Raphael claimed to be horrified.

00:51:01.440 Cause of course, I mean, I assume most people listening to this know, but Kubrick himself

00:51:05.120 was, you know, at least racially Jewish.

00:51:07.360 I don't think he was religious and was from New York.

00:51:10.340 So, you know, I mean, uh, it would, if he actually did say it, it was a somewhat ridiculous

00:51:15.680 question.

00:51:16.620 But, uh, I mean, well, but Kubrick, I mean, it's funny cause you know, there's, there's all

00:51:21.620 this duality to Kubrick's films and there's a duality to Kubrick.

00:51:24.960 I mean, he's, he was, he's a New York Jew who was in a way had a very, uh, European

00:51:31.580 Gentile sensibility, you know?

00:51:34.740 Oh yes.

00:51:35.260 You know, Barry Lyndon is not a, Barry, you, you, you can't get much further away from Woody

00:51:43.160 Allen than films like Barry Lyndon, you know?

00:51:47.140 So.

00:51:47.400 By the way, Woody Allen was also considered for Ziegler's role.

00:51:50.440 Oh.

00:51:50.980 I just want to throw in there.

00:51:52.560 Really?

00:51:53.260 That's hilarious.

00:51:54.080 But it would have been a comedy, so.

00:51:57.080 But Woody Allen is, uh.

00:51:58.600 Kubrick wanted to make it a comedy originally.

00:52:00.700 Well, it is a comedy.

00:52:01.940 It's a side remark, but Woody Allen is more European than, uh, Sidney Pollack, for example.

00:52:07.540 Well, that, in your looks.

00:52:08.860 Oh, he's fascinated with Shakespeare and, uh, French literature, so.

00:52:12.880 That's a good point.

00:52:15.360 I, you know, I kind of like Woody Allen and every time I say to my right wing or far right

00:52:21.400 friends, I, you know, it's just look at me like I'm going to, you know, uh, bring some,

00:52:29.940 um, butt joint or, uh, join the, you know, Hare Krishna brotherhood.

00:52:37.020 And it's just, no, there's something interesting with Woody Allen, but not, uh, not as much as

00:52:43.720 Kubrick, obviously.

00:52:44.620 Yeah.

00:52:45.580 Well, just to go back to what I was saying, I mean, there, there's a duality of Kubrick.

00:52:48.900 I mean, he's an American Jew, but he's, he's a European.

00:52:51.680 I mean, he would live, he lived in England.

00:52:54.060 He lived, his, his films.

00:52:55.480 With a gentile wife.

00:52:57.180 A gentile wife.

00:52:58.160 His films have a very strong.

00:53:00.020 Who was related to a Nazi filmmaker.

00:53:02.860 Oh, wow.

00:53:03.440 I didn't know that.

00:53:04.060 Interesting.

00:53:04.260 His wife was the niece of, uh, I forget his name, but, uh, he was, yeah, he was one of

00:53:09.840 the main, uh, film directors of the third Reich and, uh, uh, Christiane Kubrick, uh, was

00:53:16.040 his niece.

00:53:16.660 She's German.

00:53:17.740 Uh, interesting.

00:53:18.880 Uh, I'll put that in the show notes.

00:53:20.440 And then also, you know, I mean, there, there is a very strong element of satire to his movies.

00:53:26.560 I mean, uh, you know, uh, Dr. Strangelove, uh, but, but you see satire everywhere.

00:53:32.540 You see satire in Beryl and Linden satire, obviously, in Eyes Wide Shut.

00:53:35.800 But then at the same time, there's almost this other element of, of very earnest, um, uh,

00:53:43.020 of, uh, heroism.

00:53:44.760 I mean, there's heroism in Beryl and Linden, although it's kind of masked in a little, little

00:53:49.380 ways.

00:53:49.940 Obviously, in 2001, uh, that is not satirical, what he's doing.

00:53:54.520 Uh, so, uh, I think there's just this, and, and even in Full Metal Jacket, Full Metal

00:53:59.560 Jacket, as I've mentioned before, I can't wait till we get to it.

00:54:02.340 Full Metal Jacket is the ultimate anti-war movie, while at the same time being the ultimate

00:54:07.700 pro-masculinity, pro-war film ever filmed.

00:54:11.900 And it's, it's both.

00:54:13.940 It's anti-American and then also, like, pro-war for its own sake.

00:54:18.380 I don't think I'm exaggerating.

00:54:19.900 It's a very, it's a pro-masculinity, yet weirdly kind of anti-masculinity.

00:54:24.520 Again, it's just this duality to Kubrick.

00:54:27.840 You can't, it, it's there.

00:54:30.680 Um, oh gosh, I'm now, uh, rambled.

00:54:34.040 I've forgotten my original comment.

00:54:35.300 We're talking about Irish, I think.

00:54:38.860 I'll just, I just came back to me, uh, Christiane Kubrick is the niece of, uh, Veit Harlan.

00:54:45.200 He was the director of, uh, The Eternal Jew.

00:54:48.060 Oh my God.

00:54:49.300 In the Third Reich.

00:54:49.920 What a connection.

00:54:51.260 But I guess what I was saying is that in terms of the, the, the, the dualism of Kubrick,

00:54:57.360 it's kind of like both.

00:54:58.620 Like, he wanted to make, there was actually a point where he wanted to make a, uh, a movie

00:55:03.900 on the Holocaust.

00:55:04.660 And I think, and, you know, again, he was, he, he was friendly or, or friends really

00:55:10.260 with, uh, Stanley, um, excuse me, um, Steven Spielberg.

00:55:14.000 And I think he felt at post Schindler's List, he didn't want to make that.

00:55:16.920 At the same time, his ultimate fantasy, unrealized dream, was to making this Napoleon film that

00:55:22.640 I imagine would not be satirical.

00:55:24.600 She's suspicious.

00:55:25.060 Yeah, I think it would probably be Riefenstahl-esque, perhaps.

00:55:30.800 You know, who knows?

00:55:31.580 No one, no one does.

00:55:32.580 But, uh, so I think there's a, there's a, they're very strong, there's a dual element

00:55:37.620 to it.

00:55:38.040 So I could, in a way, imagine Kubrick saying something like Hitler was right, as, as kind

00:55:45.240 of, you know, simplistic as that might sound.

00:55:47.340 But then I could also imagine him saying something, uh, very ironical and the opposite.

00:55:53.500 I mean, I think it's...

00:55:54.580 I was wrong, you know, in an ironic tone.

00:55:58.080 Yeah.

00:55:58.720 Yeah.

00:55:59.620 But you know about, uh, his Napoleon project, uh, if he had done it, uh, to the end, I think

00:56:07.040 most of his liberal fans would have been really embarrassed because, um, you know, there's

00:56:14.860 the Israeli historian, uh, Ziv Sternhow, who said that, uh, fascism began with Napoleon

00:56:21.720 and especially in Napoleon the third, so later in the 19th century, but which indicates

00:56:28.260 that any fascination with Napoleon is suspicious.

00:56:31.940 Even when it's left-wing people, because, you know, there's a left-wing tradition of Napoleon

00:56:37.760 and a right-wing tradition.

00:56:39.260 Um, now it's more the right-wing one, obviously, but, uh, in the 19th century, there were very

00:56:46.940 like left-wing people where Napoleon fans, but, you know, um, you know, that fascinated

00:56:54.620 with, uh, uh, historical figure, which was ambiguous, but at least, uh, for half was related

00:57:03.860 to empire and authority and, you know, masculinity, uh, at least half of it, uh, it's suspicious

00:57:12.700 and it makes Kubrick more than just a New York Jew, you know, uh, trying to uncover the

00:57:19.260 reality of Western civilization.

00:57:21.220 Right.

00:57:21.600 I mean, if, if Woody Allen, if Woody Allen made a Napoleon film, it would be...

00:57:27.240 It's, you know, it's, uh, love and death in 75, and it's very funny, actually.

00:57:34.200 We should do a podcast on it.

00:57:36.340 Not just on this one, but...

00:57:38.300 I don't know enough about Woody Allen.

00:57:39.720 I was about to say that it would be a lot like his, his version of Casino Royale, his James

00:57:45.200 Bond film, which was this totally absurd farce.

00:57:49.340 Actually, it was, it was absurd, you know, there's, um, there's, um, a kind of, uh, copycat

00:57:57.740 of Napoleon because he feels he's going to be assassinated, and there's a scene where

00:58:03.120 you have the two Napoleons fighting, and it's absolutely ridiculous, and Napoleon is just

00:58:09.840 a short Corsican with an Italian, a sick Italian accent.

00:58:14.640 Uh, right, I mean, that's how he would do it, but Kubrick, if Kubrick did do his Napoleon

00:58:20.240 film, it would be something else altogether.

00:58:23.480 I mean, I, I could, I could imagine these battles.

00:58:27.000 Yeah, it's really a shame he did.

00:58:29.720 Oh, I know.

00:58:30.340 But almost, it's almost better as a, in our imagination.

00:58:34.020 I've heard a rumor that Spielberg wanted to actually turn that into a miniseries, and...

00:58:40.280 He's working on it now.

00:58:41.280 He's working on it now.

00:58:42.060 And Spielberg has obviously done war films, but, and, and, and, you know, he's, he can...

00:58:47.460 Spielberg is a very talented and very skillful director, um, and kind of interesting.

00:58:51.680 But he's not Kubrick.

00:58:53.040 He's not Kubrick, and he won't have that, for lack of a better word, fascistic element,

00:58:58.460 and it won't be...

00:58:58.960 Well, he also doesn't have the depth.

00:59:00.940 No.

00:59:01.120 He doesn't have the depth of, uh, intellect that Kubrick had, or, or aesthetics either.

00:59:05.660 No, no, no, I don't think so.

00:59:07.160 I, I think, I actually think, I, there's an article that's bubbling or brewing in my mind

00:59:12.620 on, on, on Spielberg that I think I want to write.

00:59:15.720 So, and I, and I wouldn't want to write on Spielberg if I didn't think that he wasn't

00:59:20.060 important and interesting.

00:59:21.400 But, um, you know, he, it's, he's not Kubrick.

00:59:25.460 Kubrick is someone who kind of amazes me.

00:59:27.340 Well, Spielberg is, yeah, Spielberg is Spielberg.

00:59:31.260 You kind of have to, you need, in order to, you kind of, it helps you understand modern

00:59:35.960 America.

00:59:37.180 Spielberg does.

00:59:37.700 Yeah.

00:59:38.040 And, and, and a certain kind of Jewish element to it as well.

00:59:41.360 Um, but.

00:59:42.180 Obviously.

00:59:42.880 Yeah, but I think Kubrick is almost like an artist, like you want to read him, like you

00:59:46.740 want to re, re, read a philosopher.

00:59:49.480 Um, but anyway, let's do this.

00:59:51.140 We've, we've rambled, we've gone on a tangent, as we're wanting to do, and, and I don't think

00:59:55.960 there's anything wrong with that, but let's get back to Eyes Wide Shut.

00:59:59.780 Um, let's, uh, let's talk about, I, I think this is other element that we need to talk

01:00:05.920 about, and that, that is the relationship between, uh, Bill and Ellis.

01:00:12.360 And, um, particularly as this kind of, how, how do I go about, how do we get into this?

01:00:20.300 Because it's a, it's a difficult thing.

01:00:21.700 Just by mentioning that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were, uh, you know, the gossip, the

01:00:28.560 it couple as a vegetarian citizen termed it.

01:00:32.580 And it was, you know, at that time in 99, they were all over gossip magazines.

01:00:38.080 Yeah.

01:00:38.640 Yeah.

01:00:38.980 So obviously, again, there's no coincidence that, uh, Kubrick, uh, took them, uh, just to,

01:00:48.400 because it's about the failure of a couple and, you know, there's no wonder why he took

01:00:54.180 the most famous couple at the time.

01:00:56.660 And, and also, I, I think also important here is that this is a traum novella and, and

01:01:03.260 Eyes Wide Shut, or they're novels and films about the bourgeoisie and about the, their, let's

01:01:11.500 say, hidden angst, their, the masks they wear, the, their, their lack of self-understanding,

01:01:17.080 um, and, and lots of things.

01:01:19.300 But it, they're about the bourgeoisie.

01:01:20.660 But I, I think what's kind of interesting about doing Eyes Wide Shut in, in, in 1998,

01:01:26.360 in 1999, uh, and making it set in that, in that time period is, um, you know, Schnitzler's

01:01:34.040 period, uh, you know, 1920s and, and Vienna, it's, it's kind of caught in between a lot

01:01:40.980 of things.

01:01:41.400 You know, I mean, Vienna, there, there, there might be some, an element to it that we might

01:01:46.080 associate with, with Victorianism of a kind of prudish, uh, uh, highfalutin, hoity-toity

01:01:53.600 bourgeoisie.

01:01:54.500 But also, I mean, Vienna itself, it's obviously the home of Freud.

01:01:57.300 It's the home of, uh, really amazing artistic expression in the, uh, fand siekel of, uh,

01:02:04.460 Klimt, uh, uh, other, uh, Gustav Mahler, uh, it, it's just, it, it was a, um, uh, uh, uh,

01:02:12.540 amazing source of genius.

01:02:14.500 And, and, and it was also, there was also a modernist element.

01:02:18.020 There was, uh, in Vienna, there was an element of, uh, political populism that, uh, was, uh,

01:02:24.260 proto-national socialist, and, and was certainly anti-Semitic.

01:02:28.540 There was also an element of Zionism in Vienna.

01:02:30.420 It was a, uh, uh, you know, an amazing place, uh, for all these contradictory forces.

01:02:38.320 And, um, I, you know, the New York City of the late 90s is something very different.

01:02:43.300 And it's also a place that I would say where you have a kind of, in a Freudian sense, a,

01:02:50.380 a kind of illusion of not being repressed.

01:02:54.980 You know, and it's kind of interesting when the, the Sandor, the Hungarian, uh, comically

01:03:01.600 slimy Hungarian person, and he talks about making love, like, oh, women will only get

01:03:07.180 married so they can make love to the men they want.

01:03:09.760 Why don't we go to the sculpture garden?

01:03:12.120 We can go visit some of the Ziegler's Renaissance bronzes.

01:03:16.660 You appreciate the period?

01:03:17.920 You know, this kind of talk, uh, you know, have you ever read Ovid?

01:03:21.760 You know, this kind of thing that, you know, if you went to a, I mean, cause then the, the

01:03:27.220 New York City of the late 90s is not that different from the New York City of 2015.

01:03:31.480 If you went into a party in New York City and talked like that, I mean, I think you would

01:03:36.100 get laughed out of the room.

01:03:36.820 You would be laughed at, yeah.

01:03:38.140 You have to be ironic and, and, and kind of, you know, hipsterish or coy or something like

01:03:44.940 that.

01:03:45.860 And, but, but I think in a way what he's saying, when you look at like the, he talks about making

01:03:50.440 love, but Alice and Bill, what do they talk about?

01:03:53.540 They talk about fucking.

01:03:54.460 And I think it's interesting that word, because obviously fuck is a expletive.

01:04:00.920 It's, it has a dirty quality or it has also a very man, masculine quality.

01:04:06.880 Yeah.

01:04:07.420 Especially in the mouth of women.

01:04:09.620 I know.

01:04:09.880 It sounds weird.

01:04:10.800 It's the last word of the movie.

01:04:13.000 The last word of the movie is.

01:04:15.280 The last word is Kubrick's move.

01:04:17.200 Yes.

01:04:17.860 Fuck.

01:04:18.080 Yeah.

01:04:18.640 Fuck.

01:04:19.040 And, uh, it has always amazed me, uh, you know, that especially American women say something

01:04:28.460 like, I fuck men, which obviously feminists don't like that, but, uh, or making, yeah,

01:04:39.280 but guilty.

01:04:40.520 Yeah.

01:04:40.840 Um, it's men fucking women.

01:04:42.860 It's not the other way around for obvious mechanical reasons.

01:04:47.020 And that women can say that they fuck men is, you know, there's something twisted about

01:04:54.320 it and, uh, that Nicole Kidman says it so many times without Tom Cruise saying it anytime

01:05:02.160 is, um, is telling.

01:05:04.840 Yeah.

01:05:05.220 That is interesting.

01:05:06.160 Tom Cruise doesn't say, but you, and you can see this when you meet modern girls that

01:05:10.580 they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll use language that we would associate with like

01:05:14.360 a man, a men's locker room, you know, like I want to fuck him or something.

01:05:18.380 It's like, what?

01:05:19.560 Clean out your mouth with soap.

01:05:20.840 But, you know, if you, if a man said that, it wouldn't, I wouldn't bat an eye.

01:05:25.580 It means, you know, it, it fuck means what it means.

01:05:28.040 But I think it's also, also in this, this, this, uh, in this film, I think what Kubrick's

01:05:33.240 saying is that, you know, like they, they don't even use euphemisms anymore.

01:05:38.120 Like, uh, like making love.

01:05:40.380 They just say fucking, which is, again, it's expletive, it's dirty, it's masculine, it's

01:05:45.800 juvenile, all of this kind of stuff.

01:05:48.000 But they're just as naive and repressed as, you know, someone who would, in the Victorian

01:05:55.800 age would use some, you know, highfalutin euphemism like he knew her or misslept with

01:06:03.000 her.

01:06:03.580 You know, some of these things that we like to say, they're, they're just as repressed.

01:06:07.440 Like, they're, they're this post-liberated society that is just as unaware of themselves

01:06:12.860 as, uh, Victorians, uh, you know, I, I think that, that's, you know, one aspect that Kubrick's

01:06:19.840 saying.

01:06:22.120 But, um, do you, let's, let's talk about, um, the, these, this kind of, this relationship.

01:06:29.260 And I, and maybe about sexuality in general, because there's a couple.

01:06:34.680 And then, of course, there are other characters, which are, um, kind of, as you, the term you

01:06:42.680 used, uh, is right, doppelgangers of Alice.

01:06:45.920 So you have Domino, uh, the hooker on the street.

01:06:48.940 You have Mandy, the high-class, uh, call girl.

01:06:52.900 And, of course, you have Helena, the daughter, who is important because, um, the very first

01:07:01.560 scene we see her, uh, you know, grooming just like her mother, it's kind of, uh, uh, Russian

01:07:08.780 puppets, you have a big one and small one.

01:07:11.360 Um, and she's doing just like her mother.

01:07:14.040 She's red-haired, just like her mother, but also, uh, like Mandy.

01:07:19.220 And, um, Domino is blonde, but, uh, auburned kind of blonde, so to speak.

01:07:26.460 And, um, Helena, uh, is being sexualized just like the other women.

01:07:32.480 Or her name's Helen, as well.

01:07:35.480 Her name's Helen, Helen of Troy.

01:07:38.400 I mean, she's a prize.

01:07:39.240 Is it Helena or Helena?

01:07:41.840 Well, it's Helena.

01:07:42.700 I'm just saying that.

01:07:43.800 Helena, yeah.

01:07:44.520 But it's Helena.

01:07:44.720 The connotation, Bill is all about money.

01:07:47.180 Alice is going through the looking glass.

01:07:49.180 She's Alice.

01:07:49.600 And, uh, Helena is a prize.

01:07:52.680 I had promised I wouldn't bring conspiracy stuff again, and I won't.

01:07:57.520 But there's the same stuffed tiger in Domino's room and in the toy store where Helena is

01:08:04.840 looking for a Christmas present.

01:08:06.840 And, uh, again, it's not, it's not just because Kubrick was out of, you know, uh, decors and

01:08:16.280 just said, let's bring these tigers.

01:08:18.740 It's Christmas.

01:08:20.060 Uh, it's, you know, it's saying something, especially since, uh, Domino is quite young.

01:08:26.920 She's maybe 20, while Mandy, uh, the higher, you know, it's a higher class of, uh, prostitute.

01:08:35.780 She's a 30, she dies at 30.

01:08:38.600 So, uh, Domino is still a girl, and the scene with, uh, Bill Hartford is, you know, it's like

01:08:47.460 teenagers on their first date.

01:08:49.820 Uh, they're speaking very naively, and, uh, she's, uh, so she's lying on her bed, but there's

01:08:57.860 a stuffed tiger just behind her.

01:09:00.340 So she's not really a woman, but she's still like a teenager.

01:09:04.740 And so the same stuffed tiger at the toy store, and, uh, the girl, there's a daughter, it seems

01:09:10.520 to be interesting in it.

01:09:11.780 So, uh, it's, um, if I were a Christian, I would say that it's a denunciation of the

01:09:19.900 sexual revolution, but obviously it's more than that.

01:09:23.100 But it's also that.

01:09:25.660 Yeah.

01:09:26.020 What do you think?

01:09:27.100 Well, I, I think I'll, I have, I have a lot to say on this, but I, I'm going to pass it

01:09:31.300 to John first, but I, I would just say, maybe to get John going, um, what's interesting about

01:09:36.620 this film is that, you know, when you, when you think about it, it, it, for an erotic film,

01:09:43.280 you think this is a guy's stuff, you know, it's about guys and our lust for women and sensuality

01:09:49.040 and so on and so forth.

01:09:49.660 And what, what sets the whole plot off is the, not even, is female sexuality, but it's

01:09:58.460 not even expressed female sexuality.

01:10:01.300 It's like the notion of female sexuality.

01:10:03.920 I mean, what sets the whole plot off is basically, uh, um, Bill and Alice's pot infused discussion

01:10:11.960 where Bill, Bill, Alice basically reveals to Bill that she has passionate, uh, erotic,

01:10:22.260 sexual desires.

01:10:24.400 I wouldn't even say erotic, just sexual desires that she has, she had a desire for a sailor

01:10:29.940 that was so strong that she would have given up her life and her child and her marriage

01:10:35.740 for one night with this person.

01:10:38.280 It's this unbridled, unrestrained female sexuality.

01:10:42.900 I mean, that is the trauma for Bill and that sets him off on his nocturnal journeys.

01:10:49.420 Uh, so maybe just talk about, I mean, what, what is, what do you think about female sexuality

01:10:54.960 and, and, and, and that element to this, to this film?

01:10:59.380 Yeah.

01:10:59.860 I mean, I, I, you could see that, uh, you know, both from the female and the male perspective.

01:11:04.680 I mean, I think in large measure, you could, you could see the film as, uh, you know, male

01:11:11.260 discovering female sexuality.

01:11:13.340 Uh, I mean, the, I, I mentioned this before we started recording that something that's always

01:11:20.600 struck me about the film is that there is still something kind of anachronistically 1920s Vienna

01:11:26.940 about it in some ways, like, well, the naval officer being, you know, the object of Nicole

01:11:33.500 Kidman's, I mean, that's such a trope of, of European literature from that time.

01:11:38.200 It's almost comical that, you know, in the late 1990s, that would be, uh, Nicole Kidman's

01:11:44.400 obsession.

01:11:44.880 Uh, but, but beyond that, I, I have to admit, I, I find it somewhat difficult to believe that

01:11:52.840 there would be somebody of Tom Cruise's age.

01:11:56.560 Uh, you know, I mean, you assume he's like at his late thirties or early forties, who's,

01:12:00.300 who's that naive about sexuality and so forth.

01:12:03.420 But, uh, you know, he, he really, uh, comes across as being a quite clueless.

01:12:08.020 And like you said, I mean, that this one revelation is enough to set him off on this sort of,

01:12:13.500 you know, odyssey where he has to prove, well, he's obviously trying to prove his manhood

01:12:18.840 many times throughout the, I mean, he, he tries to have sex with, with, yeah, he tries

01:12:23.760 to have sex with like just about every woman he meets and it never succeeds, uh, even when

01:12:31.180 he's, uh, paying them, which is interesting.

01:12:33.260 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:12:33.940 No, I think he's trying to prove his manhood, but I think also kind of just because you fucked

01:12:38.440 doesn't mean you really understand the world, you know, I mean, I, I, and I think that that's

01:12:44.740 what it will give him, but yeah, yeah, no, but there is this, but I, and I think there's

01:12:49.200 all this element to it.

01:12:50.060 I mean, one of the elements is that he, he's emasculated.

01:12:53.460 I mean, when he passes by this frat boys, uh, it, when his first nocturnal journey, they

01:13:00.160 knock him over and go back to San Francisco and all these kinds of funny things.

01:13:04.440 Uh, you, you can see that, you know, again, I think that would, that was also kind of telling

01:13:08.740 of this, you know, ostensibly powerful bourgeois man, uh, almost seeing himself as, as powerless,

01:13:15.920 as lacking a cock, you know?

01:13:18.400 And, um, and I, I, I, you know, and, and I, and that goes with all these other themes.

01:13:24.040 The way that I would talk about female sexuality is that, and this is hard to get into because

01:13:32.060 it's such a, in a way it's such a profound topic.

01:13:36.360 I guess the way, the best way to get into it is through this scene.

01:13:39.220 And when they're, when they're, when they're, they're smoking pot and it's, I guess it's

01:13:44.040 the, is it the day after their, their Ziegler's party?

01:13:47.220 And, um, cause immediately after the Ziegler's party, they do the bad, bad thing and they,

01:13:54.180 you know, look at themselves in the mirror and so on.

01:13:56.100 This is the day after they're smoking pot.

01:13:57.480 I always have to cringe a little bit at that scene.

01:14:00.040 It's so, it's so un-Kubrickian.

01:14:02.260 It's like, he just wanted to get, you know, a hot song in there or something.

01:14:06.160 Oh, but I think you have to look at it as ironic.

01:14:08.360 Yeah, no, I mean, and then it, it's, there's this hard cut to the day.

01:14:12.700 Like you, you wake up and the music changes to that.

01:14:15.780 Um, I think it's a Shostakovich waltz.

01:14:17.620 Like, yeah, it's very jarring.

01:14:24.080 It's actually his jazz, jazz music.

01:14:26.140 Yeah, yeah, Shostakovich's jazz.

01:14:28.140 But anyway, to go back to that scene, um, it's, you know, they're, they're smoking pot

01:14:32.860 and, um, he, you know, she, she talks to him about Sandor's attempted seduction.

01:14:39.920 And, you know, Bill in this kind of, you know, pillow talk like voice is like, yeah, he wanted

01:14:45.620 to fuck my wife.

01:14:46.700 And then she, and then Alice gets very annoyed.

01:14:51.020 And at the very beginning, I think her annoyance struck me as like the kind of thing, almost

01:14:59.160 dorm room feminism.

01:15:00.520 Like it's this just annoying bullshit of like, you think that the only reason he wanted to

01:15:07.140 talk to me is because he wanted to have sex with me.

01:15:09.540 And in a way, Bill slash Tom Cruise is justifiably annoyed.

01:15:15.920 But then Alice really gets at something deeper.

01:15:19.640 And I think she gets at both a personal confession.

01:15:21.980 And I think she gets at something much deeper about reality and civilization.

01:15:26.400 And the personal confession is that she, she experienced this kind of desire that was

01:15:33.300 so powerful.

01:15:34.140 It, in a way, smashed the bourgeoisie, you know, it's, it's almost like it wasn't the

01:15:39.420 proletarian.

01:15:40.380 It was, it was her, her lust of, I'm going to give it all up.

01:15:45.180 You know, I mean, what she's saying is I'm going to leave my class.

01:15:48.020 I'm going to leave you.

01:15:48.840 I'm going to leave even my child.

01:15:50.000 I'm going to give it all up and not adhere to the bourgeois norms, but just become a slut.

01:15:56.580 And even in her.

01:15:57.120 Well, yeah, the implicate, it's not even that she wants to leave Tom Cruise for one man, but

01:16:02.020 you know, she emphasizes a couple of times that, you know, in her dream, she doesn't

01:16:05.900 even know how many men she had sex with.

01:16:08.320 Yeah.

01:16:08.880 Uh, which is, you know, kind of relates to this, you know, this, I, I'm not sure it was

01:16:12.900 out in the nineties yet, but in recent years, there's been these theories about sexuality

01:16:16.680 that, you know, monogamy was a development of, you know, later, uh, you know, class relations

01:16:22.000 and, uh, uh, religious prescription and so on is actually unnatural.

01:16:26.540 And you may get that dream kind of suggests, you know, the undermining of the bourgeois.

01:16:32.560 Yeah, no, I, I think there's a lot to that.

01:16:35.080 I mean, you know, it's in her dream.

01:16:36.920 I mean, she is involved in the orgy and also there's this very strong ambiguity because when

01:16:41.420 he comes in, this is after his nocturnal journeys where he's been, he's failed how Tom

01:16:48.260 Cruise fails to have sex with women.

01:16:50.160 That, that's quite an accomplishment.

01:16:52.380 Um, but anyway, he, he goes back and she's laughing, she's giggling, she's like, and

01:16:58.400 then she wakes up and her face turns into a horror, one of horror.

01:17:02.280 And it's this Freudian element that what you desire is what you fear.

01:17:06.960 You know, your nightmare is also your fantasy.

01:17:10.740 And that, I mean, that you see that at Freud's first major.

01:17:14.080 It's a wet nightmare.

01:17:15.400 Exactly.

01:17:16.020 The interpretation of dreams.

01:17:17.320 I mean, that's kind of what it is.

01:17:18.560 I mean, you, you're filled with horror at these things that you desire.

01:17:22.300 And anyway, so there's this ambiguity where she's laughing, but it's, it's horrifying

01:17:27.920 and it's a nightmare and it's a fantasy all at the same time.

01:17:31.060 And, you know, and then, you know, so again, just to go back to the, the earlier scene where

01:17:34.580 she's confessing to him.

01:17:35.540 So she confesses that she has this lust, she has sexuality.

01:17:40.380 And then she says, you men think that, you know, oh, it's evolution.

01:17:45.420 Men want to stick it in every hole so that we can have as many babies as possible, but

01:17:50.160 females have to care for the children.

01:17:51.780 So they want safety and security and continuity and blah, blah, blah.

01:17:56.120 And I agree that there's a lot of truth to that.

01:17:59.160 I agree with Bill that yes, that's oversimplified, but it's true, but there's a whole other level

01:18:04.080 to it.

01:18:04.600 And I think kind of getting at what you're, you're saying before, I mean, if you think

01:18:09.580 about like pre-civilization, um, not just pre-bourgeoisie, but pre-civilization, I mean,

01:18:16.240 these, these, these are almost, these are matriarchal societies.

01:18:20.040 I mean, these are societies where you need women and their reproductive capacity is the

01:18:25.800 most important thing in the world.

01:18:27.420 It's a central thing.

01:18:28.560 You, female sexuality has to be it.

01:18:32.040 It has to be the center of the universe and existence.

01:18:34.580 You can kind of see this in primal prehistoric sculptures of these fat, pregnant, big boobed

01:18:43.120 women.

01:18:44.900 That's kind of like the first vision of art.

01:18:47.460 Well, maybe not exactly.

01:18:48.760 You see hunting and cave paintings, but it's, it's this female sexuality, female fertility.

01:18:53.780 And that, the ritual at the beginning of the orgy is very suggestive of that, where it's,

01:19:00.060 you know, it starts with the women are sort of being blessed.

01:19:03.560 And I love that that scene is so, I, it always affects me on a very visceral level.

01:19:10.080 Like it's so primordial, but you know, he, he performs this ritual and he's sort of like

01:19:14.620 blesses or maybe like gives a power to each of the women.

01:19:18.320 But it's sterile sex.

01:19:20.640 Say again?

01:19:21.040 What's that?

01:19:21.960 You know, it's twisted.

01:19:23.160 It's sterile sex.

01:19:25.140 It doesn't lead to any offspring.

01:19:28.420 And you know, because many, many words are twisted in the movie.

01:19:32.140 Like, for example, Fidelio, which of course is an opera by B. Sovint, which means faithfulness.

01:19:40.520 Right.

01:19:40.920 Fidelity.

01:19:41.320 And the password for, or fidelity, yeah, the password for a thing that is mainly about

01:19:48.840 infidelity and about cheating on their wives is called Fidelio, which, and you have these

01:19:58.400 high priests blessing these women, which are, I had never thought about it, but now that you

01:20:06.500 that you say it, they look like, uh, fertility goddesses, you know, their masks, the way they

01:20:14.440 stand, it's, uh, really like, uh, these fertility statues that, that were found in, uh, in Europe.

01:20:22.380 But it's, but they're infertile, as you say, like these, these are, these women are girls

01:20:27.100 that are like on the pill and they've got all sorts of STDs and they're just, they're just

01:20:32.400 blow up dolls, basically.

01:20:34.100 Well, it's a fake ritual.

01:20:35.400 It's that, it's not genuine, it's not genuinely sacred.

01:20:38.720 It's an imitation.

01:20:40.080 It's what Abel would call counter traditional.

01:20:41.900 Yeah, like, it assumes the form.

01:20:43.920 Yeah, yeah.

01:20:45.340 But still, I have to admit, I find it somewhat beautiful.

01:20:48.360 Oh, of course.

01:20:49.000 It's wildly erotic.

01:20:50.520 Yeah, there's no way, there's no two ways about it.

01:20:52.920 I actually don't find that whole scene erotic at all.

01:20:56.580 I have to say, I mean, for, for a film about sex, I don't, I don't personally find it

01:21:01.600 very erotic.

01:21:02.280 Well, it's kind of, kind of, kind of clinical in a way, but I think Kubrick intended that.

01:21:09.360 It's, it's all of those things.

01:21:10.680 They're, yeah.

01:21:11.760 I mean, it's, it's a very, very, well, we won't go into it, but let me get back to what

01:21:16.880 I said before.

01:21:17.420 So I, I think, so female sexuality is at the center of existence.

01:21:24.200 I mean, it, it's, it is, we, we won't, you can't exist without it.

01:21:29.380 It's the, it's the fact that you need the sun to grow crops and to live, you need female

01:21:35.260 sexuality.

01:21:35.780 It's this big thing.

01:21:36.940 But civilization as a patriarchal institution, in a way has to be about controlling and

01:21:44.860 channeling and limiting female sexuality.

01:21:47.980 It's something we really can't take.

01:21:50.500 I mean, I'm, I might, I'm, I'm, I'm probably weirdly sounding like a leftist feminist here,

01:21:54.920 but stick with me.

01:21:56.540 Cause I, I think in a way they're, those people are getting at something like we should

01:22:01.000 never dismiss anything because of its origin or label.

01:22:05.300 No, I agree.

01:22:05.860 And I, you know, we, as men almost have to tell us ourselves, these lies that we are the

01:22:13.100 only ones who want sex.

01:22:14.660 You know, you know, we, it's almost, you know, it's almost like civilization had to be built

01:22:20.620 by controlling female sexuality of saying that, no, you're not the most powerful.

01:22:25.780 We have these other institutions.

01:22:27.640 It's not just, we're, we're, civilization is not a fertility cult.

01:22:30.940 Civilization has, you know, all elements.

01:22:33.100 It has classes, it has priestly elements, it has military elements, political elements,

01:22:39.080 so on and so forth, economic elements.

01:22:42.040 But, you know, it, it can't just be that fertility.

01:22:44.420 So we, in a way, have to repress female sexuality.

01:22:48.260 And one of the ways we do this in the modern age is to lie, men like us lie to ourselves

01:22:53.740 that, oh, you know, oh, we're locker room talking, oh, I want to go fuck her, oh, yeah,

01:22:58.980 you know, oh, you know, and, and when you think about it also, like courtship is very,

01:23:02.980 it's a masculine art form, and it's a, it's about men being positive and females being negative.

01:23:08.880 You know, when you court a woman, whether it's in the Victorian age or in postmodern

01:23:14.160 America, you know, it's still the man doing it.

01:23:17.220 The man, maybe this is changing now, but, you know, for centuries at least, the man goes

01:23:22.520 out, he says things, he tries to coax and persuade the woman to do things, the woman

01:23:27.640 is resisting, she's negative, and then maybe at the very end she'll give in, but probably

01:23:32.020 not.

01:23:32.920 And so these are these kind of civilizational forms, like courtship, like male sexuality.

01:23:37.980 And in a way, we, we can't, we, we can't handle the truth.

01:23:42.760 We can't handle the real, which is the fact that, that all of existence really is based

01:23:49.440 on that female fertility, female sexuality.

01:23:53.080 And yeah, that, anyway, I'll let you guys, that's kind of my, that was the way I viewed

01:23:57.700 this film this last week when I, when I rewatched it.

01:24:01.060 Yeah, absolutely.

01:24:03.560 I mean, I, I, I mean, Kubrick is always getting at this idea that, you know, civilization is

01:24:09.400 kind of a veneer over these very primordial, you know, kind of instinctual things.

01:24:14.440 I mean, that, that's sort of running through all of it.

01:24:16.380 But I also, I think that I, I, when I watched it this time, what struck me is that in the

01:24:20.940 orgy scene, it's these, these women prostitutes who go in, they select who they're going to

01:24:27.220 have sex with.

01:24:28.000 It's not the usual thing where, you know, the guy goes up and says, oh, you know, you

01:24:31.760 look pretty hot.

01:24:32.540 You know, let's, you know, it's kind of reversed, which is.

01:24:35.840 He's buried on the mask, actually.

01:24:38.660 Yeah.

01:24:39.420 But, but, uh, just, uh, a side note.

01:24:43.100 I wonder how Mandy recognizes, uh, uh, Bill Hartford because he's out of place, but it's

01:24:51.060 impossible to recognize him just because he has a cheap mask.

01:24:55.020 You know, it's, and he instantly knows who he is.

01:24:59.520 And I don't know why.

01:25:00.520 A mask shows more than a face.

01:25:02.560 Uh, actually, the message is that these creepy venetian masks are the real face of the elite.

01:25:09.460 Yeah.

01:25:09.660 But also of, uh, Bill Hartford, you know, he looks like kind of a sea angel, which is, you

01:25:18.260 know, kind of a, a better white knight as they would put it in the manosphere.

01:25:23.340 And it's exactly what he is.

01:25:26.340 And, and he's, this movie is also about what Matrix and then the manosphere calls the taking

01:25:34.900 or swallowing the red pill.

01:25:37.340 But eventually, and I think we should talk about that maybe, uh, as a conclusion, but we,

01:25:45.500 we are not there yet.

01:25:47.340 But he's back to the blue pill because his powerlessness, uh, just leaves him with, you

01:25:54.900 know, a feeling of impotence, not only sexual, but also, you know, social, political.

01:26:01.080 And he just has to surrender to his wife's urges to fuck.

01:26:07.620 And, and, and it's the same with Nick Nightingale, which is a telling name again, you know, the

01:26:13.900 bird that sings at night or the piano player who only plays at night in jazz clubs or orgies

01:26:20.180 and, um, who is punished for removing his blindfold and, and the hooker who is, uh, killed by drug

01:26:28.900 abuse, whether it's an accident, a suicide or a murder doesn't really matter.

01:26:33.960 And, uh, of course, the drugged out prostitutes at, uh, the opening party.

01:26:39.780 So, you know, everyone is discovering, discovering or uncovering a part of truth, but so unbearable

01:26:50.560 that they have to go back to the illusions that built around their lives.

01:26:55.660 And, uh, of course it's to cover sexuality, but the real nature of sexuality that, uh, of

01:27:04.320 course it, uh, concerns other, you know, uh, areas of life, like politics or the economic

01:27:12.760 structure or like, uh, the real importance of a medical doctor in today's world.

01:27:18.060 So, yeah, yeah, no, I, I think we're all kind of saying the same thing from different perspectives

01:27:25.580 on, on this, uh, on this, but John, what were you, you might want to go back to what you

01:27:29.660 were talking about, um, before in terms of female sexuality.

01:27:36.160 Well, I, I just, I, I, I, this occurred to me while you were saying what you were saying,

01:27:41.780 Richard, about, about your female sexuality, about this idea that maybe, you know, in, in

01:27:47.040 tandem with, with his wife's dream, uh, you know, Dr. Bill's, uh, the, the orgy scene,

01:27:54.320 uh, it, there's something very primordial about it.

01:27:57.780 Maybe, you know, even though on one level, yes, it is a, a, a, a false sort of sacredness

01:28:03.300 on another, on another hand, maybe it is, you know, Kubrick is suggesting like a return

01:28:07.980 to this sort of primordial sexuality where, you know, it's more matriarchal and, uh, uh,

01:28:14.720 the, you know, the, the sexuality is uncontrolled.

01:28:17.880 Uh, it also, I, you, you can notice it's not all men in the masks.

01:28:21.340 I mean, there's quite clearly women as well.

01:28:24.140 Uh, you know, I, I don't, I don't want to read too much into that, but it, you know, it's

01:28:28.660 not exclusively a boys club.

01:28:31.380 I, another, I, I can't remember the verse now, but another thing that's kind of been forgotten,

01:28:36.500 maybe you remember this from the time, Richard, but when the film first came out in the orgy

01:28:42.300 scene, they were singing, uh, uh, hit some, uh, verses from the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit

01:28:49.840 and some, some Hindu groups objected and, uh, it was replaced with, I forget what's there

01:28:58.560 now.

01:28:58.920 I think like an Orthodox piece or something.

01:29:02.060 It's a Romanian Orthodox mass, which is played backwards, but yeah, but that's why it's

01:29:08.820 But originally, yeah, originally it was Sanskrit, but the, yeah, the Hindu groups objected.

01:29:15.520 So, you know, that also, I mean, you know, Hinduism much more than Christianity has this

01:29:19.760 matriarchal element to it.

01:29:21.720 Uh, I mean, you know, you have the goddess Kali and so forth.

01:29:24.620 Uh, uh, so yeah, I mean, I just think, you know, this suggests to me that Kubrick was trying

01:29:31.260 to, uh, suggest something very primordial about sexuality there that, you know, it's something

01:29:37.080 that we repress, but, you know, it sort of reemerges.

01:29:40.960 Yeah, I would say sexual, I mean, primordial sexuality is matriarchal and civilization is

01:29:50.840 a patriarchal institution and maybe a patriarchal delusion.

01:29:55.640 And, and civilization certainly includes the, includes the bourgeoisie, which kind of has

01:30:00.760 to, you know, you, you can't fully go there.

01:30:03.860 You, you can't fully go all the way into female sexuality.

01:30:07.820 You've got to pull back and put on a mask and, you know, live out a certain, play a certain

01:30:14.440 role.

01:30:15.520 And, um, you know, and I, I think that, I think that's what Kubrick is saying.

01:30:20.140 And he's not saying that from what, what would be a kind of left wing standpoint or a certain

01:30:26.940 left wing standpoint of like, oh, let's just give, let's just, uh, redistribute wealth

01:30:32.740 and get rid of these social classes and then we'll all be natural and free and peaceful

01:30:36.480 and wonderful.

01:30:37.780 No.

01:30:38.220 Yes.

01:30:39.240 No, that's not what he's getting at.

01:30:41.380 Matriarchal sexuality is in a way horrifying.

01:30:44.700 Oh, I, yeah.

01:30:45.700 I mean, it's like you said before about the duality.

01:30:48.040 I mean, Kubrick is showing, uh, the problems inherent in civilization, but at the same time,

01:30:54.860 you know, like with war, I think he's trying to, well, it's necessary.

01:30:57.640 Yeah.

01:30:58.200 Even, you know, we just, we just have to recognize it for what it is.

01:31:01.040 And even ennobling, you know, uh, I, I think what he's saying at eyes and, and, and, and

01:31:08.320 full metal jacket, but at the same time, at the same time, the, the Vietnam war is crazy

01:31:13.440 and all these Americans who want to turn gooks into Americans or whatever are, are idiots.

01:31:19.100 But at the same time, there's something deeply human and deeply masculine and deeply noble

01:31:25.060 about even the Vietnam war.

01:31:27.240 And I, I think that's this, you know, great irony that if you go into that film thinking

01:31:32.560 it's platoon or a left wing, you know, kind of thing, you'll miss it.

01:31:36.620 If you go into it thinking it, oh, this is a right wing pro war movie, um, you know, like,

01:31:42.760 uh, GI Joe rise of Cobra, you'll, you'll, you'll also miss it, believe it or not.

01:31:49.820 Um, but, uh, anyway, okay.

01:31:54.540 Wow.

01:31:55.240 Should we put a bookmark in it or, uh, is there some other lingering thing?

01:31:59.180 I feel like we want to return to all these movies because I, I feel like even after speaking

01:32:03.440 for two some hours, we've just like, there's so many other elements to it.

01:32:09.100 Um, absolutely.

01:32:10.560 But I mean, we could probably go on for 10 hours, but, uh, maybe returning at another

01:32:17.640 time is, is better.

01:32:19.100 Yeah.

01:32:19.480 Let's do that.

01:32:20.840 Well, um, thank you.

01:32:22.940 I, I definitely enjoy this.

01:32:24.320 I really enjoyed getting to know this movie and thinking about it on a, on a deeper level.

01:32:30.280 And, um, uh, so anyway, what's next?

RadixJournal - February 17, 2015

Under the Rainbow

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