Breakfast All Day Podcast 3/20/20
Podcasting in the time of coronavirus is a challenge, but we’re insistent on sticking together and making it work on Breakfast All Day. Alonso, Matt and I begin — as I suspect we will for weeks to come — with an update on how the pandemic is impacting the entertainment industry, including the many ways celebrities are using their talents for good from afar. We also review movies you can watch from home through streaming services: the chilling and meticulously crafted thriller “Swallow,” and the quirky genre mashup “Blow the Man Down.” Both are available through Amazon Prime. And over at our Patreon, we discuss the extremely appropriate movie our subscribers chose for us to review — Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion” — and we recap the first episodes of “The Plot Against America” and the new season of “Westworld,” both on HBO. Apologies in advance for the spotty audio quality — we recorded this on Skype, and we’re still trying to figure it out. Stay safe, and thanks for staying with us.
Re: Patreon Movie Reviews
Great to hear that the team got around to doing that review for the subscribers. I certainly watched ‘Contagion’ (2011) as a film in a different way, on my second viewing compared to when I saw it first several years ago. I was much more impressed by it on the second viewing than I was on the first one. Matt Damon acted in the 2011 movie too, and in one that was reviewed by the team here back in November 2019 also.
Recently I sat down to watch the ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ (which is called Le Mans 66 here). And an interesting point about that change of title is that 1966 has a peculiar kind of significance in British and Irish movies too. In that it was the year in London at Wembley stadium that England beat Germany in the World Cup tournament. And believe me, do not imagine for a second that each time a World Cup comes around each four years in England, that the English media don’t talk about the present English soccer team of the day, and compare them against the team of ’66. So the Soccer World World Cup was a big deal from a team sports achievement point of view and a national celebration too. Le Mans in 1966 is somewhat different. It was an individual achievement, where an English man who was a war veteran and had moved to the United States was again taking on one of the former ‘Axis’ powers (Germany, Austria, German speaking Czechoslovakia and Italy). Except this time it was in an individual capacity as opposed to in a team effort. And what made that even more severe (if you compare it to the Second World War, where Montgomery and Patton were competing against one another there), is that Ken Miles was being muscled out of the ‘invasion’ of Europe this time too by Ford, by the other Ford sponsored racing teams. There is a development of that story line in this movie about Le Mans ’66 where it is the little English man who is gradually being marginalized by the Americans. Indeed, culminating in that final and last insult of where they took away the achievement that he had made in being the first to cross the finishing line at Le Mans in 1966.
He is the argument that I would like to make to the professional movie reviewers at ‘All Day Breakfast’. It’s something having listened to the reviews by Matt who obviously is expert in ‘two’ aspects of this. Both in the motor racing and motor industry history side of it. And on the movie industry and review side. What I would underline is there is a genre (or maybe it is a sub-genre of a sub-genre), which ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ fits into in my view. It is the story about war, that is told from a perspective of an individual after an amount of time has elapsed after the event. That is a huge genre of films. This is a sub-genre of ‘war films’ as an overall category. And within that sub-genre, which has been explored through the lens of many different wars throughout history (for example, take the character played by Kiefer Sutherland in ‘Forsaken’ (2016) of John Henry Clayton who remembers the battle of Shiloh fought in April 1862). There is a quite accomplished selection of movie making in the sub-genre to do with the aftermath of the Second World War. One of those memorable characters was once acted by Woody Harrelson as ‘Big Boy Matson’ in ‘Hi-Lo County’ (1998), opposite Billy Crudup as ‘Pete Calder’. It was a story that follows the story of the returning Second World War veteran too. That movie directed by Stephen Frears, is really about the creation of the modern place that is California that we know today. This place that we hear about in the news even in Ireland, with it’s gigantic population and the world’s fifth largest economic hub. That had come of age so to speak when it absorbed a huge influx of inward migration from the Second World War on. In fact, the character of Lee Iacocca played by Jon Bernthal in this movie is given a scene in the ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ in which he paints a picture for the audience about that generation who came home to California State following World War Two. The common link I think between the Stephen Frears movie and this one by James Mangold, is that in neither case does it describe an easy time of integration back into mainstream society for either the characters of ‘Pete Calder’ or the one of ‘Ken Miles’. And that is what interested me about the movie about Ford v. Ferrari.
The character of Ken Miles could easily have been reduced to the ‘one dimensional’ representative as a racing driver only in this. And there are additional brush strokes given to this character which make him seem a lot more complex. The actor Christian Bale and all of the other others in the movie seem to have understood that aspect of the script too, and have acted it accordingly. The writer of Ford v. Ferrari, who are Butterworth, Butterworth and Keller do not open the book to the subject of post traumatic stress disorder and that is probably a wise decision. However, having watched the movie one is left to ponder these questions also in one’s mind, and that only adds to the value of how Ken Miles as a character is revealed to us in the story about motor racing. It was the same by the way in ‘Hi-Lo County’ (1998), a very successful story too in how the subject of basic cattle ranching in an old rural landscape is used as a plot line along which to describe the journey of Pete Calder as he eventually leaves and goes to California. Leaving the wide open spaces behind him. And he ends up in the same place as Ken Miles as they both struggle to put down roots in that place and fit some way to fit into society. In the case of Ken Miles we are treated to several examples of how that is not easy for him. And we notice too the effect that this struggle has on both his wife and on their only son. That is even hinted at too, in how their only son seems to deal with the reality that his father has died. The son as a character is shown to ‘get over’ this reality perhaps just a little bit too well. Hinting at the fact, that the subject of the Second World War and it’s aftermath is not one that is going to stop at Ken Miles life time. It’s going to be with his wife and his son too for longer than that. The film is about motor racing. But it is also about all of that. You get a sense that as large as the events shown in the movie about ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ are shown to be. Where the child at home is watching his father lead a high speed motor race somewhere on mainland Europe. You get the impression that for that little nuclear family at home in California that actually the Second World War and it’s impact on their lives, is still much larger than the motor racing events. In fact, there is a sense in which the motor racing only provides a distraction to Miles and gives him something to focus his life on. But he still has a lot of baggage left to deal with, and part of the success of the movie. Is that in the final lap at Le Mans in 1966, we get to witness the Ken Miles character as he just succeeds in letting go in one of his major demons. That was the actual victory for Miles.
That is acknowledged also of course, in the minimal gesture between Enzo Ferrari and Miles as they beckon to each other at the race’s finish line. What makes the movie really top class for me, is that there are actually several movies all happening in one here. And it’s a huge and worthy contribution to that particular sub-genre of movies that I explained.
Re: California State
Christy,
There is a reason why I think that this story is relevant also. Both these movies, the one about Ken Miles and that about Pete Calder that is told from a different perspective. Here in countries such as Ireland, we are looking at stories about ‘eight hundred’ souls die in one single day in northern Italy. And from the other side of the globe we read a story about California, the fifth largest economic region in the world has gone into lock down abruptly. We hear stories about the ‘twenty five million’ souls in California who will become infected by this virus. And then we turn around and we look at one another over hear (from a safe enough distance of course), and you find yourself getting a really sinking feeling in your gut.
And then.
Someone mentions the worse thing to happen since the Second World War in the middle of this, in the same breath as California and twenty five million inhabitants. One’s mind can’t help but think about these ‘book end’ events of early 1940’s decade on the one hand and that. And on the other hand, March in 2020. And everything that has happened in between these two book ends in time that had to happen to create a place such as California, where the ‘Breakfast all Day’ (at safe isolation distances from each other), podcast is getting broadcast in the middle of all of that. Ironically, reviewing movies for a Patreon content page, that is all about the a ‘Contagion’ movie of all things. I hate to use a Quentin Tarantino cliche at this point. This world looks uncomfortably ‘meta’ to me at least. The other part about this. The part that I think joins together the stories of Pete Calder on the 1940’s post WWII cattle farm. And the story of Ken Miles the ex. British military armored tank captain in the same war. The story which kind of links those stories together in my mind is represented in ‘Bugsy’ (1991) about the character played by Warren Beatty of ‘Bugsy Siegel’ the ex. New York gangster who moves out west to California (and this is what I mean about all of this ‘meta’ type of stuff). This is the breeding ground from which the story tellers of the large format motion picture come from. Those individuals such as Quentin Tarantino.
This is why a movie such as ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019) fits into this narrative of mine in some weird way too. The most recent work by Tarantino is a work that shares some times in common with ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ in that it looks at that time period. It looks at that changing of the generations as it were, between that of Cliff Booth stunt man acted by Brad Pitt, Rick Dalton played by DiCaprio and Sharon Tate’s character from a young age group that is acted by Margot Robbie. That transition in the ‘passenger’ vehicle motor industry as described by James Mangold in his story about Ken Miles, is not unlike the story described by Tarantino. Except that in Tarantino’s case he is trying to tell it via the story of the changes that occurred in the motion picture industry, and in ‘high society’ that existed around that at the same time. Where we see the young Steve McQueen’s, the young Bruce Lee’s and many of these individuals appear and end up in this fist fights with individuals such as Brad Pitt’s character. Where the real actual battle is going on over the direction that culture is going in. What we see in ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ (2019) and in ‘Bugsy’ (1991), in both the Lee Iacocca characters and in the one of Bugsy Siegel. Are entrepreneurs who anticipate how the culture is shifting very early. In the case of Siegel he wants to actually create a destination that isn’t Hollywood or isn’t California. He invents this brand new place in the middle of a desert named Las Vegas. And like the initial attempts of Miles and Shelby, it too becomes a shambles.
In common with the character of Miles in the James Mangold movie, the character of Siegel also ends up giving his life in the end. Neither of these character actually make it to the other side of a difficult and early birthing process of new industries and new places. That is what these stories are really all about. In both cases they succeeded. One day, a generation that was born after the veterans had returned after the war in Europe or in the Pacific, drove these American muscle cars to places such as Las Vegas. The two things engineered and envisioned in a way by both Siegel and Miles. This world that we came to know in the later 20th century was a world that had to be invented. Then it needed to be built up ‘brick by brick, or by nut and bolt out of nothing. Now in March of 2020 we are looking at this other ‘book end’ event. At the opposite end of a spectrum of seventy to eighty years duration. Three quarters of a century. We can only speculate what will happen. We can look at some of these stories in motion pictures about the aftermath of the last event. We can speculate on how the event of the Second World War was actually responsible for making California and Las Vegas how it is today. And we can look at these old stories, that are only fragments of the ‘bigger picture. And maybe we can learn something from those tiny glimpses. Those fragments of a story. I don’t know.
Re: Films which demonstrate the social aspect of lock down in them ?
Christy,
There is a film around that gained a lot of critical success and awards a number of years ago, not that long ago. Gary Oldman received a lot of awards and public phrase at the time. Darkest Hour (2017), is an example of one these films that when it was released at the time, it told a story that may have seemed removed. It may have seemed like it came from a distant time and place. And not everything in it, operates in parallel to what we see happening now. For example, at the time of the ‘Blitz’ crisis in London when it was bombed, the people had gone underground there in order to gain safety in the tube stations. While the munitions were falling everywhere above. Nowadays, the underground system has been shut down for safety reasons. A lot of things are back to front. Instead of watching scenes of crowds of public representatives packed together in the parliamentary chamber at Westminster. Instead, we are watching those politic assemblies go on breaks and extended leave.
None all of it is the same. However, it’s the overall sense of foreboding. It is the overall sense of dread. That seems to resonate now on watching the film, than we one looked at it upon it’s release at the time. There is one scene in the film, where they drive through the streets. One politician remarks to another politician, it hardly seems like a war is going on at all. And they reflect upon all of the ordinary tasks, that they have never had to do. Such as traveling on bus transport. Back in 2017, on the film’s release. There were aspects of the story such as that, that we accepted as an audience had to be present. But our connection to what that meant, wasn’t at all as strong as it might be. Upon watching the same film today. I just wonder, how many films are there like that? In the same way as ‘Contagion’ (2011) I mean. Movies that were a different movie before March 2020. But since March 2020, they will never be seen as the same kind of movie again? Does it apply only to movies released in the last several years? Or could this apply to movies that are much older. I have not got a huge library or catalogue of films between my own two ears, to reference to. In terms of examination of this theory. I was wondering though, what your best take at this is at ‘Breakfast All Day’?