Prime Cut | Charles Taylor, Justin Chang

[Justin Chang] Good evening. Hello. [Charles Taylor] Hi. [Chang] Um, I don't mean to embarrass you right at the outset but, um, [Chang] might as well get it over with, you know. Film critics often have favorite critics of their own and favorite writers. [Chang] Um, it's a huge honor to be on the stage with you, Charlie. And, ah, thank you for being here and, ah, [Chang] for your wonderful book, which, um, [Taylor] Thanks. [Chang] I want to talk about, um, that and then and, "Prime Cut," as well. [Chang] And, then I'll open up to the audience if there are questions from the audience. But, um, [Chang] let me start by, you know, you, it's interesting that you, um, you know, alluded to, "The Candidate," which I believe opened, [Chang] right around, right at, a day before. [Taylor] The day after. [Chang] The day after, and remember, you know, you, you referenced Vincent Canby's review in "The New York Times," [Chang] in your, in your piece on, "Prime Cut," and, ah, how he said pretty much the exact opposite of what you said at the beginning. [Chang] Um, yeah, so you were very dismissed and I don't think people really grappled with any of the political dimension that you kind of noted in this film. [Taylor] Well, it just, yeah, Canby said, "The movie's like a piece of rotting  meat that's been left out in the sun," um, and, [Taylor] the thing that struck me about it, watching it, was, um, this is a time when big cities were dangerous. [Taylor] When there was a suspicion of them in the heartland. [Taylor] Um, when that suspicion was often fueled by movies. You think of, "Death Wish." You think of, "Dirty Harry." [Taylor] Ah, it sort of confirmed the worst that you could, could think about the cities. [Taylor] And, I think it's significant here that, um, [Taylor] Hackman goes after Chicago. [Taylor] Chicago in '68 was the place where, [Taylor] um, the police rioted and beat up demonstrators. [Taylor] To certain segments of the country, that was giving them exactly what they deserved. [Taylor] It was taking care of these people who, you know were disrespectful. And, [Taylor] so, I think Chicago is very  pointedly used. But the irony of the movie is that you have this Chicago, [Taylor] hood, who's in much worse  danger in the Heartland than anybody from the heartland would be in Chicago. [Taylor] And, you know, this is a movie where you have, [Taylor] all of these pieces of, [Taylor] iconic Americana. And they're all perverted. [Taylor] You know. Strapping farm boys. They're goons. [Taylor] Ah, amber waves of grain. They hide killers. [Taylor] The, you know, the white clap board house. It's a brothel in training. [Taylor] So, there's a real sense of, of not just rot, but rapaciousness. You know, Mary Ann eats guts. [Taylor] You know, like Saturn devouring his sons. And this is, this is, [Taylor] at a time when America was devouring it's sons, in Vietnam. You know, in this movie, it's devouring it's daughters too. [Chang] When you, I believe your piece, you know, was written in Twenty Fifteen, or so.  And you, you preface it with, [Chang] an excerpt from Nixon's silent majority speech. [Taylor] Mm, hmm. [Chang] And you, parallel that with, what, um, [Chang] the speech that, ah, that Mary Ann gives, [Chang] in which he likens Chicago to, you know, um, ah, one sick sow. Sick sow. [Taylor] Grunting for cream, yeah. [Chang] And, and dismisses Chicago. I mean, it's this, um, [Chang] I was just reading your piece again. It feels extraordinarily prescient now, because given, ah, it was before the Trump campaign, of course, but this movie just has, ah, [Chang] even more currency. It would seem.  [Taylor] You know, I can't take any credit for that. But, it's, you know, I mean, but, Mary Ann is, you know, Mary Ann is like, [Taylor] a nightmare version of Nixon. [Taylor] Um, you know. But, now we have a president who has no sense of political reality or, or mores and, you know, he's as vulgar as they come. [Taylor] So, you know, but that's, that's just dumb luck. [Chang] Yeah, you know, and yet I think we know what you would, what, [Chang] what's interesting about the movie and I think what you admire about it is, [Chang] um, it is this sequence that, you analyze it in great detail in, in, and it's the, ah, it's the fair, [Chang] the fair scene. [Taylor] I love that scene. [Chang] I love it too. And where you note that despite all this, there's no, [Chang] it's not a corrupt kind of America that we see. And there's actually, it's not nostalgic but it's not, [Chang] super critical either. There's a very clear-eyed, almost documentary quality. [Taylor] Yeah, it's, it's not, ah, it's not dead. I mean it looks like a nice day out. There are people there. [Taylor] They're engaged in what they're doing. They're enjoying themselves. They're not presented as zombies. [Taylor] And yet, it's a world that looks completely removed from everything else going on around it. [Taylor] It's not like time is frozen, but it's more like it's a bubble. And, um, [Taylor] And it's very hard to know what to do with that, that sequence. Because it would be so easy, [Taylor] to look down on them. Which is what a bad filmmaker would have done. [Taylor] You know, it would be so easy just to look down on them. [Taylor] And yet, Richie doesn't. That feels, that feels very even-handed to me. [Taylor] And at the same time, [Taylor] you just look at it and think what are you thinking. [Taylor] you know, what, has has any of the last, [Taylor] twelve years touched you. Or touched this place at all. [Chang] And they are, of course, unaware of, [Chang] Nick, the Chicago mob enforcer, is moving among them. [Taylor] Yeah. [Chang] And then, you know, Mary Ann is as well. Yeah. There's, [Chang] this certain, um, [Chang] It's, I think what you, I'm trying to pinpoint what you say so well in your essay. Which is the, um, [Chang] the sense of, I don't know if it's restraint, or nuance, but there's this, you know, and in those, [Chang] that when you said that you, when you first saw the film, [Chang] you'd expected something much more graphic and based on what was being written about it at the time. [Chang] But there's restraint, even in that opening, where you know the, the, you see someone being ground into meat but it's, [Chang] not showing you the worst of the worst. It's like, is there, there's a sense of, I don't know, [Taylor] Well, to me that's, you know, that is it's mechanized slaughter. And it's, it's slaughter without blood. [Taylor] It's slaughter without pain. And, I tried to get at, you know, obliquely, I tried to get at that sense and the sense of, [Taylor] Nixon's rhetoric. Of, you know, honor in Vietnam. [Taylor] And, and all of this stuff which was completely, [Taylor] devoid of, you know, I mean, I don't know if anyone's seen, "Dunkirk." I'm not giving anything away. [Taylor] But towards the end of the movie, someone reads Churchill's famous address, [Taylor] to Parliament, you know, which, "We shall fight them on the beaches.  We shall..." [Taylor] And it's about blood. And sacrifice. It's a, it's a leader talking to people. [Taylor] And he's, you know, convinced to the rightness of his cause. And in that case, he was right. But he's saying this is what it's going to take. [Taylor] And, in the case of Vietnam you had an absolutely wrong cause. [Taylor] Being sold in these shining terms. Which didn't, didn't speak of sacrifice. [Taylor] So there was something in my mind that linked up that rhetoric, [Taylor] with the idea of mechanized slaughter. And bloodless slaughter. And painless slaughter. [Taylor] All with that anesthetized music that Lalo Schifrin composed for that scene. [Taylor] Um, and, of course, you know that the, the irony is, [Taylor] this is the point about which America wasn't having it. Because, [Taylor] kids from those times we're the ones who started to be killed. [Taylor] And, you know, the, that, [Taylor] rhetoric wasn't holding up. Why did he die? Why did this happen? [Taylor] So, it's oblique but I think there's a sort of weird, um, [Taylor] a weird sense of, ah, let's be honest about what we're saying. You know, let's be honest about what's going on. Let's talk about this, in, in terms of killing. [Chang] This is maybe, you know, maybe pull back and look at, um, "Opening Wednesday," your book as a whole. This is the first, [Chang] ah, film that you lead with in the book, you know, that, is there, I'm just curious, is there, I have two guesses maybe, but, is there a reason why you decided to, [Chang] start with this one? [Taylor] I don't know. I mean, um, [Taylor] it's one of the earliest. I think, I mean, they're some that are earlier. But it's one of the earliest and [Taylor] I thought if I'm going to write a book, where I'm going to try and talk about the social and political import of some of these movies, I might as well start with, you know, this one. [Taylor] I had, you know, a couple of people saying, "No don't start with that." No but I just, I was, you know. [Taylor] You can't tell me anything. [Laughter] [Chang] So, the subtitle of the book is, "Shadow Cinema of the Seventies." It's such an evocative phrasing, I think. Is that, [Chang] your invention? Is it, and what and I guess they're, you know, just, [Taylor] As far as I know, it's my invention. [Taylor] Um, it's, uh, the title came from, the subtitle came from the fact that, [Taylor] um, you know, I think this is the last great period of American movies. [Tayloer] I don't mean great things haven't been made since. But the last great sustained period of American movie making. [Taylor] And if you were a critic, [Taylor] at that time. I wasn't. I was too young. But if you were a critic, at that time. [Taylor] If you look at the release schedules. You were dealing with week after week after week. Things that needed to be responded to. [Taylor] They didn't all, they weren't always good. But they needed to be  responded to. I mean, you really, [Taylor] worked. You know, and, [Taylor] you had these directors who had grown up watching classic American genre films and they loved those but they wanted to do something with them. [Taylor] They wanted to bring the sort of new realism to them. [Taylor] That you couldn't do before. You know, in, "The Searchers," in the 1950s, you have John Wayne, [Taylor] looking for his niece, who's been kidnapped by the Indians. [Taylor] And in 1975, you have that same story. [Taylor] But, it's, Robert De Niro is a psychotic, a psychopathic, I should say, taxi driver, [Taylor] looking to rescue a twelve year old prostitute. [Taylor] So, there was a sense of taking this stuff from the past. [Taylor] Bringing it in new tragic terms. [Taylor] Next to that. A crime thriller. You know, this, the tagline for this was, "Hackman, Marvin. Together they're murder."  [Laughter] [Taylor] You know, who's gonna go see that? [Taylor] Um, but you know a movie like that, or car chase movies. [Taylor] They just seem very ordinary. And at the time, they were. Compared to the, the A-list stuff. [Taylor] But now, forty years later you, you look at this stuff. [Taylor] And it's not only, not ordinary. Not only, can you not imagine a studio making anything like it today. [Taylor] You can barely imagine a time when studios talked to audiences as if they were adults. [Taylor] Which they mostly  no longer do. [Chang] There's so much texture even in it. And, and, [Chang] and I think it's, one of your points is that um, [Chang] you know, things that we're seeing as disposable product, at that time, have more texture, more realism and more, [Chang] more tenderness is a word that comes to me, for you know, in, in, then I think, [Chang] mainstream films today. [Taylor] Well, it, this movie looks at what's in front of the camera. [Taylor] I mean, when they're driving into Kansas City, and there's a stockyard, you know, and it's just gray and ugly. [Taylor] And when they're, you know, when they're in that field of sunflowers or in that, that field of grain. [Taylor] It really, it takes a moment to look at it. [Taylor] To just see what's in front of the camera. And it's not, you know, yeah, it's realistic, I mean, that's not my, [Taylor] highest attribute, you know. Because you have to remember, you know, that great question that [Taylor] that Peter O'Toole asks all through, "The Stunt Man." "How tall is King Kong?" [Taylor] And the answer is, "Eighteen inches." [Taylor] It's a rubber and fur model. So you have to remember the movies are artificial but, um, the reality and the realism for me is, emotional realism. [Chang] That's a great segue to, you know, another sequence that you analyze at length, is and I love that scene, seeing it here tonight. Um. [Chang] Like, as you point out, it's complicated too, is when Nick and Poppy are in the restaurant. Um, and, [Chang] and they're looking, you know, it's all just told with facial, with just no words and facial expressions and, you know, [Chang] the kind of, the boorish judgmental eyes. But then, you know, and he's trying to protect her. But then, yeah can, [Chang] you just talk a little bit. I feel like there's so much going on in that scene and yet as you point out, [Taylor] there's this kind of, you know, [Chang]  leering exploitative quality to the, to it too. [Taylor] Yeah, that scene is, but what part of the reason that scene is in the movie is to get Cissy Spacek's breasts in the movie. [Taylor] Let's be honest. But, [Taylor] it's still an amazing sequence to me. Because, if you know, [Taylor] this is what was, in some way, respectable adult life.  There used to be restaurants like that. [Taylor] You know, I mean, that restaurant looks like, it just looks dead. You've got that band playing, "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair." [Taylor] And, you have the, the blue velvet seats. [Taylor] And, um, you know, and the line of waiters and waitresses at the back. It's just, it's a kind of formal, [Taylor] American dining that doesn't exist anymore. [Taylor] I look at that scene and I hear a sick old sow grunting for fresh cream because it looks, [Taylor] dead. It looks to me, that way of life looks dead. [Taylor] Genuinely dead. In a way that the stuff at the fair doesn't. [Taylor] and she comes in, and, [Taylor] she seems like, you know, she and Marvin are the only alive things in that whole scene. [Taylor] And as much at the time, as Middle America, conventional Middle America disapproved of, [Taylor] you know, rebellious youth. [Taylor] There was also this, [Taylor] sexual attraction, to them. [Taylor] You know, I mean, this is around the time, you know, Playboy Bunny started having headbands and body paint or, you know, flashing the peace sign. [Taylor] Um, or you would have scenes in movies where, you know, middle-aged men would be leering at nubile young hippie girls. [Taylor] and, yes it's gross. [Taylor] But at the same time, if you're encased in the world that, that scene shows us, of course you're going to respond to that. [Taylor] Of course you're going to respond to that. And of course, you know, and basically you've got to be dead not to respond to the young Cissy Spacek. [Chang] It's, what, what I think makes, um, [Chang] your book so fascinating as criticism, is because, you're, you point out you're not with the exception of, um, [Chang] "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia," that you don't think these are necessarily masterpieces, neglected masterpieces. [Chang] And I think it's really, you know, [Chang] as a critic certainly it's hard to, [Chang] write about something, you know, in, in the right, in that context [Chang] without necessarily falling back on superlatives but just saying this is really worth looking at closely and seriously. [Taylor] Yeah, it's, I think, you do that really well whatever it, you know, with every film you would write about but, it's, it's um, [Chang] without challenging, I guess that goes to the question of, [Chang] choosing, you know, choosing these fifteen, [Taylor] Well, choosing the fifteen was just a case of, you know, I've seen things say, oh yeah, let's do that, or let's do that. [Taylor] And some things I wanted to write about, but didn't make it. I did, I did a piece on, "White Line Fever." This trucker vigilante movie. [Taylor] And I couldn't make it live beyond, I couldn't make the movie live beyond the politics. [Taylor] Um, I couldn't make the essay live beyond the politics. And I just didn't want to do that, so I cut it. [Taylor] Um, I, I, [Taylor] guess the more I've done this this, is gonna sound like a weird thing for a critic to say, but the more I've done this, [Taylor] the question of whether this is good or whether this is bad has become less interesting to me than the question of what is it. [Taylor] um, you know, of, of trying to evoke the thing. [Taylor] Trying to replicate the experience of watching on the page. Trying to think where does this lead me. [Taylor] What does it suggest. And that, that, [Taylor] I think when you do that at least when I do it for me I think the value judgments take care of themselves. [Taylor] and also I don't want to have to fall back on the falsity, [Taylor] of claiming that everything I like is a work of art. [Taylor] Um, you know, because that  would just be, that would just be completely, [Taylor] contrary to the experience of going to the movies. And at the same time, I don't want to fall back on the  thing of thinking that everything that you can say, [Taylor] yeah, this is a work of art is something I like. You know, I mean, [Taylor] I can live to be a hundred  and, "Potemkin," will always bore the living piss out of me. [Laughter] You know, it's, it's it's a great, [Taylor] piece of film making. It's a brilliant demonstration of technique and, you know, [snoring noise, laughter] [Taylor] it's like, I get it. Okay, you  know, it's like, up the workers, okay. [Chang] Yeah, although the idea removed by things that are not art and, um, an art can kind of, [Chang] close down a conversation too, because how then are you supposed to approach something, um, [Chang] on the, you know, if it's given to them in this kind of very forbidding, kind of a pedestal. [Taylor] You know, I don't, I've argued for years that these teachers who go to go to, [Taylor] students and talk about the poetry of Shakespeare, [Taylor] you know, are closing it down. [Taylor] because, you know, when something is presented in that term, [Taylor] in those terms often I'm you know I'm saying you shouldn't say things are great and you should make that case but you have to give, you can't just say, [Taylor] "This is great. You have to like it." [Taylor] At the same time, you know, what I mean, I heard about a student, [Taylor] you know, who said, "Well, why should I care about Ulysses?" [Taylor] You know, I mean, that question the answer to that is, "Why should Ullyses care about you?" [Taylor] Um, but, I, you know, art is used to often to sort of, [Taylor] and there are people who still, you know, if you say, I don't like a certain director. [Taylor] Or, I don't, you know, appreciate these films but, how can you, it doesn't work for me. [Chang] The Internet, of course, has exacerbated this to the nth degree. [Taylor] Yeah, it has. But, it also in a way, it's also, [Taylor] you know, opened up people being able to talk about movies like this and, you know, I mean, I, I, [Taylor] think of the Internet as a curse. I mean, in a lot of ways. But opened up, [Taylor] people saying, "Oh, I remember that," or this had something. And this, [Taylor] you know, this moved me. Or I've carried this in my head for a long time. [Chang] Ah, I think you've been asked this before but, I'm gonna ask you again, because I think the answer is usually pretty entertaining. [Chang] Um, you know, you touch on "Star Wars," you know, the other Seventies phenomenon in your book. [Chang] And it's hard to write a book about Seventies cinema without, you know, at least mentioning Star Wars, and, [Chang] you know, you've said that George Lucas destroyed American movies. [Unintelligible comments from audience] [Taylor] Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I'll stand by that. [Taylor] Yeah, I mean that, you know, I said the two filmmakers that destroyed American movies were George Lucas and Ronald Reagan.  [Laughter] [Taylor] You know, I talked earlier about those, those directors who took classic genre films and wanted to bring, [Taylor] you know, a new sort of realism to them. [Taylor] Lucas just wanted to replicate these old cliches with a shitload of money behind him. And that's what he did. [Taylor] I mean, there's one great movie, I think, in that cycle which is, "The Empire Strikes Back," directed by Irvin Kershner. [Taylor] Which is something like Science Fiction Noir. [Taylor] Um, but, [Taylor] you know, he did that and all of a sudden, and by the time, "Star Wars," came out, [Taylor] the audience that there was for these moves, in the Seventies, had already started falling away a little bit. [Taylor] Not taking chances. Not going to things.  So you had this and it makes a ton of money. [Taylor] And the Studios start to say, "Oh, okay, we can do this." [Taylor] And then three years later, you elect, you know, the country elects Ronald Reagan. [Taylor] And Reagan basically brings back every, [Taylor] cliche into American life. [Taylor] You know, suddenly that white picket fence and, you know, small-town America, which he helped to destroy economically. [Taylor] All of that stuff is, these are where the values are now. [Taylor] Have these things and you start to see that. I talked about this a little in the book, but you start to see that in the movies. [Taylor] You know, ah, you  have, [Taylor] "Terms of Endearment," where, you know, the, the mother sacrifices and stays in a loveless marriage for the sake of the kids. And finally, you know, the nieder of it to me, is, "Field of Dreams," [Taylor] where you have those sixties rebels saying, "Oh boy, we sure did bad things and we were disrespectful and baseball will make America clean again." [Taylor] And it just, it, you know, you sat through watching that, you could feel the National IQ, sort of dropping while you were sitting there. [Taylor] So, yeah, I think that there is a, [Taylor] there's a sense of, um, [Taylor] a retreat that has never really gone away. [Chang] In this kind of cinematic  paradigm that we're in right now, you know, [Chang] are you, I'm curious, I know you probably wouldn't know the answer to this unless you were writing maybe, [Chang] several years from now. But, even in the past, you know, I guess the Two Thousands on, [Chang] do you see, have there been hopeful examples, do you see kind of a shadow cinema of the Two Thousands, I mean, what would be, [Chang] I guess, just some under the radar films that you feel have that kind of, of texture and, and, [Taylor] Well, I talked about, you know, a few of them at the end of the book and occasionally these things come out and they never last long. Um. [Taylor] "In Time." Was that the name of that? [Chang] Yes. The Andrew Niccol film. [Taylor] Yeah. Did anybody see that? "In Time." [Taylor] It's, ah, yeah, it's this movie with, ah, [Taylor] Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake and it's set in the future where time literally is money. [Taylor] You are born with a clock in you. [Taylor] And at twenty five it starts to tick down and you work to earn time. [Taylor] So it's like, you want to buy a cup of coffee in the morning? That's three minutes off your life. [Taylor] So, it becomes this literal metaphor for money and work taking time and of course the rich don't have to worry about this. [Taylor] That came out in the middle of Occupy Wall Street and, you know, I can remember the shock at the critics screening. 'Cause they kept saying, "Did we just see a Marxist movie?"  It's like, yeah, you kind of did. [Taylor] Um, so, that. And another one is, God, now I'm spacing. What's the movie with Keri Russell. The UFO movie.  Um. [Chang] Oh. [Audience member] "Dark Skies." [Chang] "Dark Skies." Yeah, thank you. [Taylor] Yeah, this, this UFO visitation movie called, "Dark Skies." [Taylor] Which is really, really unsettling. Um. [Taylor] I went to see that 'cause a friend, a fellow critic said, you know, you might take a look at this. And I didn't shake that thing for days. [Taylor] Um, you know, it's about this middle class family and they've started being visited by these alien visitors. [Taylor] And the thing about it that  makes it so unsettling, is that life looks just the same as it does, [Taylor] always does to them. And yet something is wrong. And so it becomes a sort of sense of people, [Taylor] living their lives and trying to get ahead but they can't get anywhere. Something is different than the way it's supposed to be. [Taylor] So, but, you know, you see these things and I don't know, I mean, it's, [Taylor] you know, even the big hits are in the theater so, comparatively so briefly. [Taylor] Now. It's a little hard for something like this, um, you know. So, [Taylor] they may be out there, but it's, I think they're coming from somewhere other than the mainstream right now. And it's sort of hard, you know, I mean, I, it's something you wrote. [Taylor] It's a little hard to talk to, to people about something like, [Taylor] "The Shallows." The, the movie that was out, the Blake Lively movie, where she's, you know, fighting a shark for ninety minutes. [Taylor] Which is this brilliant piece of genre film making. I mean, it is just it's beautifully conceived and beautifully sustained for ninety minutes. [Taylor] And it's, you know, and it's clean. It's cleanly made.  And you have people now spending a quarter of a billion dollars on movie, [Taylor] a movie and you can't tell what the hell is happening in it. [Taylor] I mean, you really can't tell, [Taylor] you know, one of the reasons people are, were so excited about John Wick and I think, although I have a lot of reservations about it, "Atomic Blondie." [Taylor] You can actually tell what's happening in those movies. [Taylor] You can actually tell where people are in physical relation to one  another. [Taylor] And, you know, most big-budget action film as you know, it's as if, [Taylor] someone turned in a novel and, you know, couldn't grammatically put a sentence together. [Chang] Yeah, I had very much that reaction to "Atomic Blondie," where I could, [Chang] you know, take or leave the material. But just the craft of it was, just so enduring, partly because it's just so rare. [Taylor] Yeah, I mean, I could watch her drink Stoli and smoke for, you know, hours. [Laughter] [Taylor] I didn't even care what happened. I just, just get her another drink and I'll sit here for two hours. [Chang] Um, I want to open up to the audience soon, but, ah, just one more question I guess.  You know, you, you, [Chang] I wanted to ask you about Pauline Kael, who I think is, [Chang] very important to you and to, and to the book as well. I mean, references throughout. She was obviously writing about movies at that time. [Chang] And in your acknowledgments, you say that, I get the impression that she might have sort of, [Chang] lovingly disapproved of some of your ideas. But, at the same time, I feel like the spirit of the book is very much kind of in, in a her mode of, [Chang] you know, looking at things that people would dismiss and, you know, and, and find respecting and taking pleasure seriously, I mean. [Chang] What do, yeah, what do you think, could you just talk more about what you think she'd make of the book. [Taylor] Um, I don't know what  she'd make of the book. Um. [Taylor] Okay, since you brought it up, I'll answer this. Um. [Taylor] This is, ah, not a subject I talk about publicly. [Taylor] Because, um in the conversation about Kael. [Taylor] The public conversation about Pauline Kael. In my opinion, um,the idiots have won. [Taylor] And there is such an ingrained false idea of who she was and what she was. [Taylor] That it becomes very hard to, [Taylor] say something about it without being accused of just being a brainless follower. Which I have been accused of, on many times. [Taylor] She was a very close friend. [Taylor] Before she was a close friend she was, [Taylor] the writer who taught me that I could bring everything, [Taylor] I had to bear on a subject. I could say what I really thought about something. [Taylor] I could bring my feelings. I could bring my experience. [Taylor] I could trust my instincts. They had to be educated instincts. [Taylor] But, I could trust my instincts. And that was very challenging and very liberating and it's a damn hard way to write. [Taylor] And I was lucky enough to know her and to be, a friend. [Taylor] And, we all know the sort of, image and, and the idea that has, [Taylor] that has come to light. Which is this idea of this controlling  person who demanded, [Taylor] ah, loyalty and demanded that everyone fall in line and have the same opinions on her. [Taylor] And those, that is the line that we get in various hatchet pieces and memoirs that have been written. [Taylor] Some by our colleagues. And, um, whenever I read those I'm struck by two things. [Taylor] There's these people. And they're always men saying, "Well, you had, you couldn't disagree with her. And, and she would cut you off if you disagreed with her." And I always think two things. [Taylor] You know, one, you're saying it's her fault, [Taylor] that you didn't have the guts to stand up to say what you think. [Taylor] And two, you're saying it's her fault that you couldn't come up with a better argument than hers. [Taylor] And she and I disagreed a lot. [Taylor] We're always friends at the end of it. [Taylor] And as far as I know, and I will continue to think this. [Taylor] This idea, this image of, [Taylor] her, popular in film critic circle, circles, as this controlling, evil, [Taylor] person, who tried to control people's opinions, is one of the most rankly sexist things I've ever come  across. [Taylor] It is a reaction against a strong woman. [Taylor] There are, on the Internet today, groups of young male critics who share sensibilities. [Taylor] You can tell what movies they're going to like in advance.  Not because they're dishonest. [Taylor] But, because they've expressed preference for these type of films and in some cases these directors. [Taylor] And they're very serious about it and they share these opinions and they share this approach. [Taylor] I don't think they're insincere. I don't think they're lying. But nobody  accuses them of this. [Taylor] But, that, it's a woman saying it, [Taylor] She has gotten this and, ah, I am fucking sick of it. [Taylor] And I don't speak about it because, it's as I say, it's personal and you tend to, and there's always some, [Taylor] somebody around to disagree with what you're saying. [Taylor] But, um, you know, I married a female film critic. Ah, and I see what happens to female film critics. [Taylor] You know, no one is going to tell you or me that we must be having our periods if we didn't like the latest piece-of-shit Marvel movie. [Taylor] No one's going to threaten to rape us for not liking, "The Dark Knight." [Taylor] Which happened to my ex-wife. [Taylor] So, um, you don't have to care for Kael as a critic, and a lot of people don't. [Taylor] But this idea that she was,  you know, controlling is like the worst old sexist chivalry. [Taylor] Ah, and I think that's about all I'm going to say on that. [Chang] I'm both sorry and very glad that I asked you that. [Taylor] Um, I am too. [Chang] And ah, [Chang] yeah, are there questions from the audience? Do we have microphones? I think we do. [Chang] Sure, okay. [Audience member] "Prime Cut," is an astounding, astoundingly relevant example of, [Audience member] the cultural media in America. And the way it tries to, [Audience member] tries to, tell us what's wrong with us by pointing a finger at the middle of America, [Audience member] and, you know, kind of pontificating about how crazy and stupid it is. But, I think that, [Audience member] when Hollywood and the media talk down to Americans, [Audience member] and, ah, and then they turn around and they're astounded that Americans turn around and hate them. [Audience member] You know, because of their kind of a stupid elitism. And they're, the kind of smug sensibilities. [Audience member] They try to pretend that the peep, the people in Kansas are crazy and stupid. [Audience member] But, in fact, they've made a movie that's crazy and stupid. [Audience member] And that seems to be what, "Prime Cut," was to me. Who do you think was responsible? Was, ah, directly, ah, [Taylor] Are you saying you think the film is saying those people are crazy and stupid? [Audience member] Yeah, they're, the, the filmmakers, [Audience member] are, are sort of trying to press on the craziness and stupidity of the American heartland. [Taylor] Oh, I, I think that, well I don't, I mean, I don't think if you, [Taylor] as I said, I don't think you'd have that fair sequence if they, if that was, um, if that was entirely the case. [Taylor] I mean, I understand the condescension you're talking about, but it's, at some point, [Taylor] I mean, if we're going to extrapolate this in today, it's a little hard to say, um, [Taylor] you know, we don't want to be condescending but at the same time are we going to hold people responsible for their actions. [Taylor] Um, and, you know, um, I mean, this is, it goes, [Taylor] further than, "Prime Cut," but we are in the most dangerous position in the country now that I have ever lived through. [Taylor] And it is, you know, and if we're going to say that well we can't, ah, say people have acted irresponsibly. [Taylor] I mean, I, I don't know what the answer is. I certainly know that there's a certain thing of smugness and I don't like it. But, at the same time, I think that, um, [Taylor] you really have to hold people accountable for, for what they've done.  And, ah, [Taylor] in this case it's, it's very  hard to, [Taylor] it's very hard for me at least to have respect for people who are ignoring facts and, um, [Audience member, interrupting] hard to believe, hard to believe that Hollywood of all people can tell us about facts. [Audience member] Kind of, [Taylor] There's no reason Hollywood can't tell us about facts. [Audience member] Hollywood doesn't know everything. [Taylor] Well, you and I are going to have to disagree on that. [Chang] Oh, yes. Back there then. [Chang coughs] [Chang coughs] [Audience member] Hi there. How are you doing? [Taylor] Hi! [Audience member] My name is Anthony Booth. [Audience member] This is my first time seeing this movie. [Taylor] Okay. [Audience member] I think it's beautiful. But, for both of you being film critics, [Audience member] if I may ask, what is a characteristic you believe today's filmmaker should carry? [Taylor] Should, that they should have? [Audience member] Yeah. [Chang] Oh. Um, I hope the word that I don't even know if I can expound on for the word that came to mind my mind immediately was humility.  Um. [Chang] And yeah, and that can look like, you know, it doesn't mean that a filmmaker, or film necessarily has to be, [Chang] you know, mealy-mouthed, unsure of itself. I think humility can take, you know, [Chang] many forms. But I don't  know that was just the thing that kind of, [Chang] came to mind for me. Um, I like, [Chang] something that kind of, you know, [Chang] approaches me, sometimes, rather than, you know, demand that you come to it. But, then there's exceptions. I mean, this is very, it's not, I think, it's, it's, [Chang] it's, I don't expect the same thing from from every film or every filmmaker, but, [Chang] and I'm just kind of rambling off top of my head. That's just the word that comes to mind. [Taylor] I'd say craft. [Taylor] I would like to, I would like to see, [Taylor] even if I don't like the film, I would like to see a Hollywood or mainstream moviemaking, [Taylor] where, um, people understand how to coherently put a film together. [Chang] That too. [Laughter] [Taylor] We'll get to in a minute. Go ahead. [Taylor] No, go ahead. You know go ahead and we'll get to someone. [Audience member] Well, I'll echo Justin's comments earlier, and just thank you for being here. And to say I'm also a longtime fan of your work. [Taylor] Thanks. [Audience member] And I just wanted to ask, to ask you, you touched on this a little bit already. "Prime Cut," is a great example for this. [Audience member] The challenge of writing about movies that are, [Audience member] pretty good. That have things in them that are worth talking about, but also things in them that maybe are offensive or difficult or kind of, [Audience member] thorny and icky. And how did you kind of deal with that. Was it a challenge in writing the book to not feel like, [Audience member] you were sort of over selling any of the movies that you were writing about. [Taylor] Well, you, you want to be, you know, honest of that, honest about that overselling. I guess, [Taylor] offensive or icky you just have to acknowledge it, and, [Taylor] if you think something's been, you know, has been falsely accused of being offensive you have to sort of say why. [Taylor] If you think it's offensive I think you have to say why. Especially if you still like the movie. [Taylor] I mean, I'm, you know, and I think that's important now when, [Taylor] Um. [Taylor] another, um, [Taylor] ahh, film writer Kim Morgan is going to be here tomorrow night. [Taylor] Said to me recently. I don't think she'd mind my saying this. She feels like a lot of time she reads criticism now and they're Op Eds. [Taylor] It's, ah, you know, it's a checklist, of, um, did I have this correct attitude. And, [Taylor] you know, you, movies aren't, [Taylor] tools for social justice. [Taylor] Art isn't. And you have to, sort of, sometimes say, [Taylor] you know, you have to acknowledge, yeah, these things are here. And, but, um, [Taylor] you need something other than a culture that's primed to feel offense. Which is, I think, what we have now. [Taylor] There's a gentleman right there. [Paul Malcolm in audience] Well, ah. There's been a great conversation, um, but I, so, I want to go back to this question of craft because one of the things I think that's so interesting about, [Malcolm] the relationship between these films, which are, [Malcolm] as you say, they're not undiscovered masterpieces and, um, "Prime Cut." [Malcolm] One of the things that's so amazing about the movie is you, it's really well crafted. But, you also don't really notice the craft happening until one sequence. [Malcolm] Which for me at least, was the thresher sequence.  [Taylor] Yeah. [Malcolm] And see it on the big screen for the first time, and you realize he's really announcing this is a big sequence. And then it becomes some kind of Hitchcock homage. So, you know. [Taylor] It also looks like a  movie. [Malcolm] Yeah. That's true. [Taylor] You know, I mean, I mean that thing about the scene, it's like, you know, flickering, flame, frame-by-frame. Which I'd never picked up, [Taylor] until I saw it on the big screen. [Malcolm] But, it also culminates in the most, I think to me, visually expressive, ah, [Malcolm] moment in the film about, the idea you talk about, this voraciousness. Literally the thresher is just destroying the city car but, this consciousness of the craft, [Malcolm] that appears in a lot of these films, I mean, like, vanish, ah, "Two-Lane Blacktop," ends in probably the most conscious act of craft from a film but, [Taylor] Yeah. [Malcolm] for which you're not expecting for. [Malcolm] When you were writing about the film's how did you, you know, what do you feel about that kind of relationship between craft and consciousness or awareness. [Taylor] Well, it's like you said, you know, people always, I mean, [Taylor] you know, one of the great  Hollywood directors, William Wyler, they always talked about invisible direction. [Taylor] I mean, you can look in those movies and see his choices and see these things there.  But, they don't, [Taylor] announce. I don't mind if something announces itself. That can be fun. [Taylor] You know, but, I don't know it's just like even bad movies used to be expected to make sense. [Taylor] You, they, you know, you used to be expected to figure out what goes on in them. [Taylor] To be able to figure out what goes on in them. That was as, you know, just the same way that, [Taylor] you know, the guy writing the ball scores for the newspaper was expected to be able to put a sentence together. If you were making the worst b-movie programmer, [Taylor] you had to make it coherent. [Taylor] And that's just, you know, and now movies are spectacle. [Taylor] You know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and, ah, [Taylor] And that's just not expected anymore, so, [Taylor] you know, I, if it stood, I feel a little like craft the way Elmore Leonard said about writing. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. [Taylor] Um, you know, and if it's  a little too obvious. You want something that serves the material. That serves the emotion. [Taylor] That's not really much of an answer for your question, but, you know. [Audience member] I think what you just said is very, [Audience member] um, indicative of your approach in the book which I thought was, [Audience member] it, one of the things that I, um, enjoyed most about it, [Audience member] and about reading the book, that is, is that it made me want to see each movie, immediately. [Audience member] when I, and when I finished it. I thought how could you have possibly, [Audience member] you know, gotten it down to just so few. How many movies did you consider? [Taylor] Not, not many more than this. [Audience member] Really. [Taylor] Yeah, I mean, [Taylor] um, you know, I'm basically  lazy. [Laughter] You know, I mean, they, I, like I said, you know, "Vanishing Point," was cut and at one point my, ah, [Taylor] you know, somebody said to me, ah, you need a couple more. [Taylor] Um, and, you know, now of course, I think I'd like to, I wish I put this in. I wish I'd put that in.  But, um. [Taylor] You know, I didn't want, I don't want to write on anything exhaustively. [Taylor] I, you know, you want, you want to be able to, to let people have a way in. [Audience member] Right. Well, I think one of the great things about the book is that it does give you a really strong sense of what the movie is. [Audience member] And what it feels like to watch it. [Audience member] Without, as you say, proclaiming it, you know. [Audience member] To greater things for it, true to the experience of the movie. [Taylor] Thank you. I, you know, I think that, that's what tells people most, whether it's for them or not. [Taylor] The woman down here had a question, I think. [Audience member] So, Gene Hackman is great in this movie. [Audience member] And I just wanted to talk about what you thought about his performance in this and, "Cisco Pike," where he can make such a vivid antagonist with very little screen time. [Taylor] It's odd, don't you think. [Taylor] I mean, you know, Hackman is such an unshowy actor. [Taylor] You know, speaking of Kael, the great line she had about Hackman, Hackman was, like, you know, [Taylor] he's so terrific in this. He's so believable, he's in danger of being, of having people say he's good. [Taylor] You know, it's like he's extraordinary. He's always good. Yeah, it's, you know, invisible technique. There you have it. But he's so showy in this. [Taylor] And in, in, "Cisco Pike," which is at the end of the month, which if you haven't seen it, it's on a double bill with, "Aloha Bobby and Rose," believe me that's a night. [Taylor] Um, I, I don't know. I don't know that there's anything else quite, [Taylor] like these performances, [Taylor] and yet they're not, you know, they're not over-the-top. They're not scenery-chewing. But they're really  odd ball performances. [Taylor] Um, I've tried to wonder. I said in the book, why he's named Mary Ann. [Taylor] You know. And the only thing I can think of is that John Wayne's real name was Marion. [Taylor] John Wayne's real name is Marion Morrison. [Taylor] You know. But, then why is Angel Tompkins named Clarabelle, you know, was the clown on Howdy Doody.  [Laughter] [Taylor] Really. [Taylor] And she was, she was dating Henry Kissinger, by the way, around the time this was made. [Laughter] [Taylor] It's like, no wonder he looks so bad today. [Laughter] You know, I mean. [Taylor] But, ah, yeah. [Unintelligible] [Audience member] We all know when people ban books, everyone agrees that it's a problem. But, how do you deal with people that, [Audience member] don't allow themselves to watch a film for another era. [Audience member] and because we're supposedly in this enlightened period right now so we can't watch Charlie Chan movies.  We can't appreciate, [Audience member] "Triumph of the Will." We can't appreciate, "Birth of a Nation." [Audience member] We can't watch, um, "Breakfast at Tiffany's," because there's a scene with Mickey Rooney that's not appropriate. [Audience member] How can we explain to people 'cause I don't consider the era that we're in, to be particularly enlightened, particularly politically. [Audience member] So, why can't people watch a film in the context in which it was made. [Audience member] Because, I'm sure fifty years from now, people are going to look at films we're making now, and they're not gonna want to show them because they offend somebody's sensibility. [Taylor] I don't know. I don't think you can exempt yourself from what's, what you're seeing on the screen. [Taylor] I mean, one of my problems, you know, they're, I don't believe in like, the inevitable theory of history. Oh, if this didn't happen, this would have. [Taylor] I don't think that there would be movies if we didn't have, "Birth of a Nation." [Taylor] But the problem with that is, that people for years have said, [Taylor] "Okay, I saw, "Birth of a Nation," in my college film class. [Taylor] And the most honest reaction I have ever heard to that movie, was a young woman, young liberal woman, [Taylor] who said after the movie to me, "I was really rootin' for the Klan." [Taylor] Like, of course you were. [Taylor] It doesn't make her a racist or a fool. She was responding to what she was seeing in front of her on the screen. [Taylor] The problem when people talk about something that, is they say, "Well, you know, it's a great movie but it's a racist movie." No, it's a great, racist movie. [Taylor] You have to be able to hold those two things in your head at the same time. That you can have a work of art with something absolutely reprehensible in it. [Taylor] Um, and you also have to be, you know, [Taylor] You have to be willing to allow for the time. Not to say, "Oh, it's okay." [Taylor] But just to do a context. [Taylor] You know, the trouble now is that people want to impose this time on that. I mean, you know, [Taylor] I'm, you know, I, I, forgive me if I doubt the progressive values of someone who can look at a story about the triumph, [Taylor] you know, a major victory against fascism, [Taylor] "Dunkirk," [Taylor] and say, "Well, this is offensive because there's no women or people of color in the leading roles." Well, you know there weren't that many. I'm sorry. [Taylor] You know, this is, this is just how it was. [Taylor] Um, it doesn't mean, I don't think, you know, we can't be, [Taylor] representative or we can't be inclusive. I mean, you want that, you  want that in, [Taylor] [coughs] you want that in casting you want that in the stories are told. [Taylor] But we're losing a lot of things. I mean, if you look at those Charlie Chan movies. [Taylor] I don't know if anyone's seen them. But, I'm talking about the good ones. The Warner Oland movies. [Taylor] He's basically a Chinese Columbo. [Taylor] He's a guy who is, [Taylor] you know, playing along with this idea people have of him as a nice harmless guy. But he's sharp. And he's getting everything. [Taylor] He's getting everything and he's processing it. [Taylor] And, you know, so you're watching someone, as Peter Falk did in Columbo, who's sort of playing  along. And the, [Taylor] one of the things I love in it is, Keye Luke, who plays his son, who keeps coming in. [Taylor] And is really sort of this wonderful image of the, you know, the assimilated American kid. [Taylor] You know, every movie there's a point, you know, where, [Taylor] you know, Keye Luke, turns and says, "Hi Pop!" You know, and he's just, he's so thrilled to be there and you know it's, [Taylor] so, I don't know. I, you know, I mean, there are things that I genuinely don't want to see in movies and things that genuinely make me cringe. [Taylor] But, you know, I have people in my family who make me cringe and I don't hate them. [Laughter] [Chang] Can I share a quick Charlie Chan story of my own. [Taylor] Sure. [Chang] Um, because you brought it up.  Um. [Chang] My dad, who loved, was a huge Columbo fan and followed Columbo. Well, you know, and, um. [Chang] An early review assignment I had was to review a box set of "Charlie Chan," DVDs. [Chang] And, "Mr. Moto," DVDs also with Peter Lore as Mr. Moto. [Chang] And I watched some of these with my dad. I thought this will be fun, you know. And it was kind of my first exposure to it. [Chang] And my dad, whose name was Charles Chang, ah, by the way, just neither here nor there, but it's an interesting coincidence. [Chang] Just loved them. You know, and I didn't, you know, I had my, oooh, cringe, but you know at the same time, [Chang] he had this attitude and my dad who loved old movies and loved old Hollywood, you know, [Chang] really appreciated even that at this point in time, [Chang] some effort had been made, some imperfect but useful effort to, [Chang] get a Chinese person on the screen. So that was just, even if he was a Swedish guy. Even though it was Warner Oland.  [Laughter] [Chang] But it was so, and so that was, and you know, that was a, just a fond memory that I have. and it's just something I kind of, whatever, you know. [Taylor] You know, there's a line that Warner Oland keeps using in those movies, is, "Thank you, so much." [Taylor] And it's just, you keep scenes and you just hear the layers of irony, [Taylor] beneath it, um. [Chang] My dad was quoting the dialogue for days after that. [Taylor] Yeah? [Chang] In his own kind of quick, [Taylor] He doesn't. Watch "Charlie Chan at the Olympics," [Taylor] I mean, you know, really it's like, oh, I'll throw down for those movies any day. [Chang] Maybe one last question, [Taylor] Up here. [Chang] To the gentleman up here. [Audience member] I'm glad to hear you refer to the Seventies as the last great golden era. I agree with that. And, and, [Audience member] I get wistful for golden eras and then, [Audience member] and I try to think back. Okay, why did these exist. And why don't they anymore. And I think, [Audience member] part of it is that major studios made these movies. And then you think, [Audience member] how weird in the 1970's that these, you know, very kind of downbeat movies, [Audience member] that were very quirky, yet made by major studios. So, I guess my question is, how did that happen? [Audience member] And we know, "Star Wars," kind of ended it. I agree with that. But before that. [Audience member] Um, was it the aftermath of, "Easy Rider," and people saying, [Taylor] Part of it. [Audience member] people can [Taylor] Part of it. But even before, "Easy Rider," came along, the studio system was falling apart. [Taylor] You had, [Taylor] three or four movies that were in the minds of the old studio bosses, [Taylor] the type of thing that would be gangbusters. And they all flopped. "Dr. Dolittle." [Taylor] "Star!" exclamation point, with Julie Andrews. "Hello Dolly," [Taylor] and "Paint Your Wagon." [Taylor] These things were colossal flops. [Taylor] And, suddenly you know the studio's realized, well, we don't know so much what audiences want anymore. [Taylor] And they didn't really understand, because it was a new younger audience. [Taylor] You know, and there were things like, "The Graduate," was a big hit. "Easy Rider," was a big hit. [Taylor] So, it was studios who didn't know, you know, who were no longer as certain what would make money. [Taylor] Willing to take a chance. it was, [Taylor] young audiences who were eager to see something of the reality of their own lives, [Taylor] on screen. And, the directors who, as I said, had grown up with these Hollywood films and wanted to make their versions of them. [Taylor] And that's the confluence I think that that came together and it wasn't all great, I mean, I thought there was a lot of, [Taylor] cynicism and a lot of, [Taylor] you know, I mean, you can laugh at the orphans running free at the end of, "Prime Cut," but the movie believes that, you know, it's possible to make a decent choice. [Taylor] So, it was just one of those  times, where it was one of those instances, where things, [Taylor] cohered, where, um, directors found an audience. [Taylor] And not every film found an audience. You know, and, there are some things that, that didn't in that time. But, you know, [Chang] I think we're out of time but we're grateful to you for bringing these films to us. [Taylor] Uh, thank you. [Chang] Thank you to the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Thank you.