Movies Adapted from Banned Books | Episode 7

Banned Books Week

Adam: So Lolita is often considered the unfilmable novel. Why would he up until the, up until the point where Stanley Kubrick did it because of its 

Charlotte: subject matter? Well, it came out in the mid fifties, so it wasn't too long before somebody made a movie out of it. 

Adam: He did it as a direct result for having his hands tied during Sparta kiss.

Adam: He didn't really care for that. He came on late into production, into asparagus Stanley Krick. Yeah. And so, he didn't have a lot of control over the script or, locations, anything like that. all been written already by the time he got there and a lot of the sets had already been built. So Lolito was actually the first novel or the first film that he had complete control, like Cub bricky and control over mm-hmm , which was kind of cool.

Charlotte: So. 

Charlotte: There's a ton of films that you could mention that were based on band books, but we just picked a couple of our favorites. And the first one we're gonna talk about is L Litta both versions. There are two different movies that were made off of this book, correct?

Adam: Actually, there are two versions of the cubic version of it. The UK version is slightly longer. Is it by like a second or something? It has a couple frames. Different. 

Charlotte: We should probably start with the first one, right? Yeah, I 

Adam: think so. And then we, we can get into the other one. 

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Charlotte: Lolita from 1962, directed by Stanley Krick T R T two hours and 33 minutes.

Charlotte: Woo. 

Adam: That's a long one. Yep. Getting into that cubic time. Mm-hmm 

Charlotte: cubic time. I like that. . The synopsis for this one, a middle aged college professor becomes infatuated with a 14 year old Nim that short to the point to the point, the infamous tagline. How did they ever make a movie about Lolita?

Charlotte: That's on the poster yeah. So how did they make a movie about Lolita? Well, they didn't include a lot of the sexy stuff. 

Adam: they basically, yeah, they basically neutered it and only kind of made reference and very, oblique ways. 

Adam: Something else 

Charlotte: big that they changed, which is in the synopsis. They changed Lolita from a 12 year old to a 14 year old. 

Adam: Yeah. Cuz that's so much better. 

Charlotte: Movie stars. James Mason, 

Adam: James Mason.

Adam: Okay. No, that's terrible. We'll have to cut that too. No, we're keeping 

Charlotte: that Shelly winters is in this. She is so good. As the annoying Charlotte, the annoying mom Sue lion is in this. She plays LTA. And . Then Peter Sellers as Quilty, 

Adam: Claire Quilty. 

Charlotte: Quilty 

Adam: shows up in a number of guys dis yeah. A bunch of disguises throughout the film. Mm-hmm 

Charlotte: yeah. So we should probably talk about the novel really quick too. Or we should put that before we talk about the film.

Charlotte: So the novel Lolita came out in 1955 written by Vladimir Nava 

Adam: Lolita is often criticized for its subject matter, but is. Always included in like the top 100 novels of all time. Mm-hmm because it's absolutely beautiful.

Adam: The novel. Yes. The, the pros. Yes. 

Charlotte: Well, that's what Vladimir Nava is known for is his pros mm-hmm , which was one of the reasons why people said, oh, that can't translate and be a movie, but movies are a visual medium. So it's really the essence of the story that you're taking. It's not the pros. Right. 

Adam: And they actually use some of the pros in the film they do through voiceover.

Adam: There's some voiceover at the beginning. And then oddly it disappears for a very long time and then comes back somewhere in the middle again. 

Charlotte: Right. Well, that's because in the novel, , he is telling the story from jail, and these are sort of his memoirs of the story leading up until he's in jail at the end. So that's how the book is structured. . There is voiceover in both of them.

Adam: There's a lot of voiceover in the Adrian line version. Yeah. From the very beginning, the cubic one starts out with the Claire Quilty scene at the very beginning and no voiceover mm-hmm so you just kind of enter this. You have no clue who these characters are or what they're doing.

Adam: It's very anti-climatic. ,

Charlotte: when I was younger. I adored this movie. 

Adam: But on this viewing, that we just had the other day, I, I found myself really not as impressed with the film. The performances are fantastic.

Adam: Well they've done it twice. Yeah, they have. So the other one is Lolita 1997, directed by Adrian line, the director of nine and a half weeks. Mm-hmm . And a plethora of erotic thrillers. Jacob's letter flash dance, 

Charlotte: fatal attraction and decent proposal. Yeah. He's Mr. Erotic. Thriller. Yeah. 

Adam: Everybody pat erotic thrillers after his yeah. His were the big budget versions 

Charlotte: of those. Absolutely. The perfect choice.

Charlotte: Yes. To direct 

Adam: Lolita, his movie is considerably shorter, actually. It's 137 minutes. So two hours, 17. 

Charlotte: Oh, about 20 minutes. 

Adam: Shorter. Yeah. That's a little considerable in, in movie form. Yeah. And this one's tagline is a forbidden love and unthinkable attraction. The ultimate price, which is pretty good.

Adam: I like that one. And then , this is almost the exact same, but a little bit different. Herba professor Humbert, Humbert marries a new England widow to be near her Nim Fe daughter, which really only describes the first, third, the first act of the film. Mm-hmm and not the rest 

Charlotte: of it. Well, let's be honest.

Charlotte: Everybody knows what Lolita is about. Lolita has become. 

Adam: Well, the word L Lena now is synonymous with a young, sexually promiscuous girl or right. Someone who's actually sexually advanced for her age. Right.

Charlotte: So I liked the Stanley Huber version so much when I was younger. I refused to watch the remake, 

Adam: I think if you were to actually consider the two films, the Adrian line version is much closer to the book than the original mm-hmm . And that's for a, a bunch of different reasons. The time period it was made, of course, was. , Stanley Kubrick said if he had known that it was gonna be so hard to make Lolita, he never would've made it.

Adam: If he had known that the sensors would be so hard on it, he never would've made it. How could he 

Charlotte: not have known that? I 

Adam: don't know. That's he's, he's a brilliant guy. There's no way he didn't know that. Yeah. He just thought he could slip it by them or something, 

Charlotte: I guess. This was the first time I watched the Adrian line version and I have to say, I think I like it better than the Stanley cubic one. The main, well, there's a couple reasons. One is that the Stanley Kubrick version starts with the showdown between him and Quilty. Yeah. Humber and Humber and Quilty. Yeah. 

Adam: And at that point they haven't set up who these characters are, you know, who you 

Charlotte: don't, they are care. You have no background. Right. But maybe back then everybody had read the novel. So they, the book was so fresh.

Charlotte: It was so fresh that probably you knew who they were going in. That's very likely, I bet you're right on that for sure. , 

Adam: I don't think that you should ever in a film trust that someone has read the book.

Adam: Or rely on the fact that someone's read a book to understand your film. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Well, that's the problem with making anything that's based on current events or recent things in history. They're great now, but 

Charlotte: it's sort of that thing where you have to step back and think what is a person that knows nothing about this. How are they gonna view this? What information are we all assuming the person knows, right. That someone coming in completely blind is not 

Adam: gonna know. Yeah. I mean, you gotta think too that something that is a big moment in time now how that moment in time is gonna age.

Adam: Is that something that's always gonna be a big moment in time? Is it gonna be like the Beatles when they arrived? 

Charlotte: Or 

Adam: think of Silkwood, right? Oh yeah. We just ran into this recently with Silkwood. That's that's a perfect example. 

Charlotte: Silkwood, , that movie really relies on you knowing that 

Adam: story.

Adam: It's one of those ripped from the headlines movies. 

Charlotte: Yeah. In fact, the tagline completely ruins? 

Adam: Yeah. No, I, the movie, I think it was the, the tagline was like, you know, Karen, what happened to Karen Silkwood right now? 

Charlotte: Watch her story or something? No, no. It says something about, she left to meet with the New York times author and she never made it or something.

Charlotte: So right at the beginning, they're saying, oh, Hey, she's dead. Yeah. yeah, that, that sucks too. So if you don't know the story of Silkwood, because that happened what, 50 years ago. Yeah. And you go into watch the movie. You're like, oh great. She's she gonna. 

Adam: Right. You're just waiting for it 

Charlotte: the whole time. yeah.

Charlotte: Yeah. So, but that's kind of what happens in the, in Lolita. So we see somebody in the 62 

Adam: version, they were fortunate that Lolita still has the impact today that it did back then. I mean, I think it, it still considered one of the a hundred best novels of all time. And will probably always be that because it's such an incredibly written 

Charlotte: novel.

Charlotte: Do you think that movie could be remade again today? 

Adam: Absolutely not. Not in, not, not right now. Not 

Charlotte: with cancel 

Adam: culture and all of that. No way. Yeah. Would 

Charlotte: never happen. Especially if it was even more 

Adam: faithful to the book that kind of brings me to the story of the second one. In 1997, they made that movie and they spent 65 million making that film, thinking that it was gonna be a major Adrian line erotic, thriller release , and no distributor would touch it. No major would touch it at all. They had to let it go for fractions, I think it was like a million dollars to Showtime. Wow. And so it premiered on Showtime, a $65 million film.

Adam: So to answer your question, absolutely not. that was 1997 when erotic thrillers were all the rage. Yeah. And this today not 

Charlotte: happening. Yeah. So which one is your favorite? 

Adam: I'm with you on this. Like I think that the Adrian line version is much closer to the book. And I think that it's structurally way more sound than the cubic one mm-hmm I think the cubic was way too fascinated with the clear Quilty character and made too 

Charlotte: much of it.

Charlotte: Well, I think. He actually, said that the film should have been named Quilty, or maybe people have said that about the film. I can't remember. Okay. Quote me on that. But that's often been said because it's very true, right? He's very 

Adam: interested. He keeps popping up and different guys. And I understand he was a very, very popular actor at the time.

Adam: So he really wanted to use them. And, and I guess they became really, close friends during the shooting of the film. And because he saw how versatile he was as an actor, he wanted him to keep coming back in as different characters. But by, killing him off in the first scene, , you take away the big punch at the end 

Charlotte: of the film.

Charlotte: And Quilty shows up several times within the movie at. Parts in the story. And when you're watching the Krick version, you know, oh, this is that guy that he kills 

at 

Adam: the end. We do. But for some reason, hum hum doesn't right. Which I think is so strange, cuz it's obvious that it's the same person to us.

Adam: Mm-hmm we all see, he looks almost exactly. He's talking with a funny accent. That's all the differences. 

Charlotte: Well, in that case, you're talking about whenever he pretends to be a counselor at the school and he comes and he's pretending to be German. Right. And he's got a mustache and glasses at that point, he'd only met him once at a dance and he didn't even really meet him.

Charlotte: He might've seen him so I can understand why he wouldn't remember. And this was right at least a year or so before. Well he 

Adam: hears his voice several times on the phone and you know, I it's. Yeah does. So it's a, it's a real stretch by the end of the film for him still. After three years, not to know that it was Quilty that took her away.

Adam: Yeah. When he asks her outright and, and she's like, you really don't know, like everybody else knows the audience knows. Sue lion knows he's the only one James Mason is the only one that doesn't 

Charlotte: know. Yeah. But that character is sort of a child in a way, like he's obsessive about Lolita. He's manipulated by her.

Charlotte: He's really, really immature developmentally in this. So it's hard for me to think of him other than age, as an adult, because really he doesn't act like one at all, which is of course what's well disgusting about his 

Adam: character. That's his excuse is that he doesn't feel like anything other than a child.

Charlotte: Well, no. His thing in the book is that this is acceptable. In other cultures, you have 80 year olds, with eight year olds. And why isn't this acceptable here? You know, very 

Adam: touchy subject. It is, it's a very, very tough, Hey, I'm just quoting the I'm book. I'm not touching that one 

Charlotte: with a 10 foot point.

Charlotte: No, I'm quoting the book. That's, that's sort of part of his 

Adam: rationale. Well, he's trying to rationalize to himself. He knows what the answer is gonna be. Yeah. But he's trying to make it okay. In his head, he knows better. Yeah. At no point, does he not know that he's doing 

Charlotte: wrong?

Charlotte: Oh, absolutely. Cuz he does it in secret and he's very secretive about it. I think Jeremy irons in the newer version, they do a much better job at showing how obsessed he is. With Lolita. I think they do a much better job with their relationship. I agree. 

Adam: I think that Jeremy irons is a much better.

Adam: Hum hum. 

Charlotte: I do too. As much as I love James Mason, 

Adam: I, and I know this is SAC. I also think that the way they handle Claire Quilty in the Adrian line version is much more effective than the way they handle him in the Kerick 

Charlotte: version. Although the Kerick version at times it's fun and playful. Yeah. Which the book is too.

Charlotte: Mm-hmm the book very playful 

Adam: in that way. And that's, that's one of the drawbacks to the Adrian line version is that it doesn't have a lot of that fun. Not at all playfulness or that funny. What is word play in the book, verbal jokes or visual jokes. There's a lot of that in the cubic 

Charlotte: one.

Charlotte: Yeah. There's that weird scene when they're first staying at a hotel together, Lolita and Humbert. 

Charlotte: . And there's that whole scene with him trying to set up this cot with one of the hotel workers and it's just a, you know, site gag.

Adam: I absolutely loathe that when we watched it this time, it really pulled me out of the movie. It feels really outta place. It's super slap sticky. And the rest of the film is not like that. Yeah. Yeah. It yeah, I was, I was just kind of appalled. That was even in it, not that it's bad in, but it just didn't belong in the movie that we were watching.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: I have to say, I feel like a total trader, just not adoring, cuz I love 

Adam: Kerick. Well, I'll tell you one way that that movie is far superior. I know what you're gonna say. Say it. 

Charlotte: Shelly winters, Shelly winters so much better as the 

Adam: mom. Yeah. She is amazing as Charlotte Hayes.

Adam: Her desperation is so palpable. And you could see why Humbert Humbert would be turned off by hers because her, yeah, she's so desperate. She is so desperate. She's throwing herself at him. It's so gross. 

Charlotte: And the other thing too, you really feel like this is where Lolita learned it directly from her mom.

Charlotte: Oh, absolutely. But her mom was probably exactly like her when she was 

Adam: younger. 100%

Charlotte: And that's something. I hate to say that Melanie Griffith is too pretty for that role, but you look at her and you think, well, what's wrong with her? She's your age? And she's 

Adam: hot. Yeah. She's good looking there's there's absolutely.

Adam: She's not, she was totally completely miscast. Her voice is somewhat annoying. And I think she really amped up to kind of try to make it annoy. I know, but that was it. But , there was something wrong with Humbert, honestly. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lot wrong. There's a lot 

Charlotte: wrong with Humber.

Charlotte: There's a lot wrong with him. yeah. So dream cast would be Shelly winters in the Adrian line version. Absolutely. 

Adam: And then like maybe some more of the comedy cuz in the cubic version, there's a lot of really cool psych gigs. Like the camp that he goes to to pick her up is camp climax and her best friend's name is Mona.

Adam: Yeah. You know, they're just little fun, little word 

Charlotte: play. It's as if Stanley cuber was doing everything he could to. , rub things in the sensors face that they didn't catch that he was doing 

Adam: well. Don't you think it's his way of doing the the clever word play that NACO does? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like we said, it's a visual medium, so a lot of these jokes are gonna be visual, but it's kind of cool that he can do it through the names of locations and things like that.

Adam: Mm-hmm , that was his ingenious way to do it, but he always layered things in that way.

Charlotte: Yeah. I don't wanna sound like I don't 

Adam: like it. Yeah. , I just prefer the other one because it's closer to the book. That's 

Charlotte: all. That's not even why I prefer it.

Charlotte: I just think narratively it's a more interesting story. 

Adam: Oh, let's talk about Quilty the way they handle Quilty 

Charlotte: in this one. Yeah. So that's one of the main things. So you kind of see this stranger, you don't actually see his face for a while, but you recognize his voice cuz it's freaking Frank and J yeah.

Adam: And, he's always like a cigarette, right? Smoke is veiling his face or he is in the sh yeah, like you said, a shadow or he's sitting in the dark, just, just outta reach. He can never get the details of his face. And if he had done that and then appeared like Quilty did in the cubic version, then you would understand why he doesn't ever recognize this guy.

Adam: Mm-hmm because he never actually sees him. Mm-hmm

Adam: but their showdown at the end is just so much more impactful. In the Adrian line, in the Adrian line version, 

Charlotte: or is it just Franklin J running around in an open 

Adam: robe? Hey, he committed to that role. Didn't he? He did well, I think physically it's a much more impressive site too, just because this guy looks like he's a little past his prime.

Adam: He's a little pudgy. He's a little puffy. He's lived life a little too much, a little too hard. Whereas in the cubic version, he's just too cool. And he's still trying to be cool the whole time. Yeah. Even though he is supposed to be so drunk that he can barely function, he just tries to be so cool. Yeah.

Charlotte: Let's talk about Lolita. Dominique Swain, Dominic Swain. I think she just looks so much younger and more innocent. I mean, she's got the retainer that she wears and she just looks like a little girl cuz in the book she's supposed to not even be five feet tall, but Sue lion on the other hand, she looks like she could be 17.

Adam: Yeah. She looks like a little adult. Yeah. The entire time her hair is too well done. Everything about it is too well manicured. 

Charlotte: And that was by warning of the sensors. They wanted the person to be cast as Lolita, to look a little bit older and be a little bit, be more physically developed. So that's part of the reason why Sue lion was actually chosen for the role 

Adam: oh, that's right. I read something about that, that one of the producers saw her in a beauty pageant or 

Charlotte: something.

Charlotte: I didn't read that. 

Adam: And yeah, she was in a bikini and she had bigger boobs and the rest of the girls, and that was the reason that they cast her. Mm.

Adam: Yeah. So when her mom introduces her, she says here, this is my 14 year old daughter in the yes. Adrian line. And she calls her low. Yeah. That's the other thing, Lolita. Is the term of endearment that only hum hum calls her in no one else in the calls. Her Lolita. Yes. In the book. In Crick's film.

Adam: Everybody called her Lolita. 

Charlotte: Yeah. No, in the book. There's that thing about she's DOE at school she's low here. She's Dolores there. Right? But to me she's no she's low, right? There's that big emphasis about the three syllables and the way your tongue hits your teeth. Let me finish my freaking statement, dude.

Charlotte: Sorry, go ahead. And the way, when you say low Litta that your tongue hits your teeth. He's very descriptive about that in it tactile. 

Adam: Yes. Yes, also now I don't remember what my thought was. It's no big deal. Yeah. 

Charlotte: So back to band books week. Do you know why Lolita was banned or are there specific reasons that were called out or locations where it was- banned outright?

Adam: It was banned first in France and then in England, then

Adam: oh, wow. Here's your quote too low lead a light of my life. Fire of my loin, my sin, my soul lowly to the tip of the tongue, taking a trip of three steps down the pallet to tap at three on the teeth lowly to told you. Okay. So yeah, Lolito was. Originally published in 1956 in France and immediately there was an uproar and it was banned there from 1956, all the way to 1959. In England. It was banned from 1956 to 59. It was banned in Argentina in 1959 in New Zealand in 1960. And it was removed from all libraries in New York in 1958 that's when it was actually published in America for the first time, 1958.

Adam: Wow.

Adam: It says Mr. NABA cob is particularly lucky because his book was not censored in the United States, but in France of all places, no longer band AKA's tale of twisted love remains a point of contention in literature, curricular across the United States challenge as recently as 2006 in Marion county, Florida for its themes of pedophilia and incest.

Charlotte: There you go. 

Adam: All right. So what are we gonna talk about next? What's our next band 

Charlotte: book. So the other band book we wanted to talk about is one flu over the cuckoos nest by Ken 

Adam: do you want me to read why it was banned?

Adam: Yeah. So tell us why this book was banned. This one was banned because it glorifies criminal activity. Has a tendency to corrupt juveniles and contains descriptions of beastiality bizarre violence and torture, dismemberment, death, and human elimination. 

Charlotte: Okay. So how often do you see degenerate kids, troubled teens, sitting down reading a book?

Charlotte: In movies it never happens. 

Adam: Yeah. No, it's always comic books. They always read comic books in the movies. Yeah. 

Adam: Hey, you know what I would like to do as a trope, the night Watchman reading, the comic book it's always like a comic book or something.

Adam: Or like 

Charlotte: A bad magazine. Yeah. Like 

Adam: a, yeah, something like, like a sexy magazine or maybe a sexy magazine. Yes. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Okay. I don't know how you really do that, but sure. Have fun with that. Adam's movie troops. Oh, oh,

Adam: all right. You're gonna read the thing about it. 

Charlotte: So one flew over the Kookies nest, the film from 19 75, 2 hours and 13 minutes long.

Charlotte: So we're recommending some long films. Everything's ever two hours, but this is the shortest film that we've talked about. The synopsis in the fall of 1963, a Korean war veteran and criminal pleads insanity, and is admitted to a mental institution where he rallies up the scared patients against the tyrannical nurse.

Charlotte: This film has so many great actors in it. Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher playing nurse ratchet, Michael Berryman, SCA man Caruthers, Danny DeVito. Oh, he's so good. He's so good in this Christopher Lloyd, Christopher freaking Lloyd is in this. 

Adam: Oh. And how about your favorite? 

Charlotte: Brad Duff? Yeah. Oh my God.

Charlotte: Baby phase, Brad Duff with the fluffiest hair too. Which looking at his IMDB, this may be his first film. He's uncredited in some Burt Reynolds film. Yeah. That's the word 

Charlotte: Brad DF. So great. 25 in this. I gotta look it up. Yeah. That's such a baby fan. 

Adam: His stutter's so natural though in it. Yeah. 

Charlotte: So good and directed by the incredible Milo foreman who worked.

Charlotte: With Brad Duff a few years later on the film rack time, he loved him so much in this he's like, I gotta cast that guy again as younger brother as younger brother, six years 

Adam: later. Yeah. So do you know this book is still being challenged to this day, 

Charlotte: commonly? Well, I was gonna say rack time available on Blueray looks amazing.

Charlotte: if you haven't seen it just saying looks awesome. 

Adam: Yeah, it's got that whole the work print on it too. For the first 

Charlotte: time, for the first time ever people can see the whole director's cut and a slew of outtakes that weren't even in that director's cut. Just saying great, great way to fill a whole day rag time.

Charlotte: So back to one flew over the Cuckoo's nest. This one won five Oscars, 

Adam: it's one of the only three films to win all of the picture 

Charlotte: the top. Yeah. Leading actor. Leading actress writing. Yeah. It's 

Adam: directing picture writing. Best actor and actress.

Adam: Yep. 

Charlotte: Cool. So one float of the cookies nest. What do we say about this one? 

Adam: I don't know. I forgot how good this film was. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I hadn't seen it in so long. In fact, the copied it we had to watch was the original snapper DVD case , 

Adam: shout out to old Warner brothers.

Charlotte: , are you a snapper lover or a snapper hater? let me know. I love the snappers. I mean, there were some that broke and then you were kind of screwed. These are the little DVDs. They were cardboard. Yeah. Cardboard. And they had a little plastic snapper on the right side.

Charlotte: You would snap it up. I mean, I feel like I should go get the, it's kind 

Adam: of like a trapper keeper, if you like, I'm gonna go get it and snap it. Yeah. If you, if you imagine a Trapp keeper, the way a Trapp keeper closed and folded over on itself, that is kind of like how the snapper actually worked. Charlotte is about to demonstrate the snapping action.

Charlotte: Okay. I had to run and go get this because it's such a controversy in this house I'm not a fan of the snack collector friends. I love them. I think it's sort of satisfying when you go to watch something and you open it and it goes. Yeah, it's that sound. And when you're done, you know, you gotta snap it, cuz there's a little snap on the top and the bottom.

Charlotte: So you open it. It's so satisfying. Hey, and I'm done with that movie. I love it. I don't know. They always had nice artwork and stuff and sometimes they flip out like this one, it has a whole double page and everything. It's just, it's more 

Adam: like an album. 

Charlotte: Hold on. Wait. The only unfortunate thing is that the transfer looks like crap.

Charlotte: yeah. So we found it streaming on home box. 

Adam: Yeah. It was four by three pillar boxed. 

Charlotte: Pillar boxed. Yeah. Wide screen. Yeah, that was Nope. Looked good back then. I'm a little TV on your old four, four 

Adam: by three 

Charlotte: television. Yeah, my SD and those 480 lines of resolution.

Charlotte: It was looking pretty sweet. That's right. So if you haven't seen this one, 

Adam: well, what do you think they thought was dangerous about this film? 

Charlotte: That's a really good question because it's just about a mental health ward. I mean, it's not like you see any kind of acts that got them put in there.

Charlotte: Right? You never see anything like that. No, . They 

Adam: talk about him in therapy group session. Yeah. 

Charlotte: But you don't see 

Adam: anything. And most of them are not violent offenders. That's not what they're in there for. Yeah. Your lead McCrady though, McRae.

Charlotte: It's not McCrady. I'm sorry. I was gonna say, you're talking about the thing it's 

Adam: MC McMurdy MC MC Murphy MC Murphy. 

Charlotte: Yes. MACRA's the thing, dude. Yeah. 

Adam: Some Kurt Russell MC Murphy is in there because he was accused of statutory rape though, and he's pretty proud of himself for it. I think the reason that people thought it was dangerous though, was because of the idea behind it, the idea that you don't have to go with the flow that that you don't need to conform to society that.

Adam: in some ways by nonconformance you are a much more exciting and brighter light in the world. I think that's one of the reasons they think that teenagers were susceptible to it. Mm-hmm but I, I think there's a lot more going on than just that, because you ultimately learn that a lot of the patients in there are in there because they check themselves in.

Adam: They're not locked in there. Macur is one of the few people that's actually locked in there. And isn't able to get out. Everybody else could walk out that front door anytime they wanted to, but they're keeping themselves in prison basically because of some sort of mental disorder, something that they need to work past.

Adam: And that's ultimately the downfall of Billy's character. The The Brad do of Kara 

Charlotte: character.

Charlotte: Well, I read that the author of the book was not happy about the way that they were butchering everything from plot to characters in the film version, which let's be honest.

Charlotte: That's something that every author or screenwriter says about. So every 

Adam: adaptation, here's the thing. When you give it to Milosh, you just trust that guy's gonna do good job. What Milosh do, what he wants. Milosh can do anything. He knows what he's doing. I've never read this book though. 

Charlotte: I never read the book either.

Charlotte: Yeah. Maybe we should read it for band book week, but can we talk about Milo foreman for a second Absolut? 

Adam: What's your favorite Milosh foreman film? I think I know. Can I guess sure. What your favorite Milosh foreman film is? Sure. ADE. Dang it. You 

Charlotte: got it. Yeah. I really love rag time too.

Charlotte: Just cuz I worked on it. Yeah. Cuz you worked on it, saw it half a billion times, 

Adam: I don't think everybody else shares that with 

Charlotte: you. No, no, no. 

Adam: But ADE, I remember when you saw that film for the first time and it, it blew yeah. You some way, 

Charlotte: Everybody has those movies that they've been meaning to watch, especially really long films and Amada is almost three hours long.

Adam: Everybody 

Charlotte: has gaps in their full knowledge. Yeah. It's impossible to see everything. So we never shame anybody.

Charlotte: We're not seeing films unless it's like a back to the future, something like that. And then like, dude, yeah. Or star wars or star wars, come on, come on. 

Charlotte: All right. We digress. My mind was blown. I wanted to watch it again immediately after I watched it the first time 

Adam: I think I thought we did watch it again. Cause we watched the directors cut again. Oh, I think we did 

Charlotte: watch it again. Yeah, man. F Murray Abraham 

Adam: is so, so good. CATA won, 

Charlotte: win Sary and Tom S oh my God.

Charlotte: CATA 

Adam: won winner. . Yeah. Milosh won a lot of academy awards though. His movies won a lot of academy awards. He did. Yeah, I can name another one. You were really a fan of too. What? The people versus Larry Flint. Yeah. That is also a really good one. That was another one you didn't catch on its initial outing.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: Don't know why. I mean, he didn't make that many films in his career. Unfortunately. 

Adam: I haven't seen any of his Hungarian films. 

Charlotte: He's from CVA. Let me 

Adam: take that back. I haven't seen any of his check films.

Charlotte: Yeah. I'm not sure that I have 

Adam: either. 

Charlotte: Anyways, back to one flew over the cuckoos 

Adam: nest. So we need to talk about nurse ratchet.

Charlotte: Yes. It's funny because that's another one that like Lolita 

Adam: her name is now synonymous with evil, evil nurse.

Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I know. What's funny is you actually watch the film and I don't think she's evil. No, she's somewhat misunderstood. I really sympathized with her character a lot more this time watching it than I had in the 

Charlotte: past. You kind of do because Jack Nicholson MC Murphy, he's trying to run the show and she's just not having it.

Adam: , and MC Murphy, isn't trying to do anything other than disrupt, right? He's a disruptor. Mm-hmm he isn't trying to build anything. No, she's trying to help people. Ultimately she means, well, and she thinks that the way that she's helping these people is what they need when the reality is actually somewhere in between.

Adam: They need some of what she's doing for them. And they need some of that kind of spark of life that MC Murphy's giving them mm-hmm yeah, I kind of felt for her though, because she had things set up and she ran it cleanly and then he came in and just wanted to jam his finger in her eye for no reason.

Adam: Yeah. and she wouldn't do what he wanted. Like, I 

Charlotte: wanna watch the world series. Right. If he wanted to just watch the world series, he would've just said that, but no, he said let's switch 

Charlotte: so we work at night instead of in the day, so we can watch this. 

Adam: It was a power play. Exactly. He wanted to show her that he had more sway than she did. Yeah. And he learned that he didn't, but cuz she kept changing the rules. 

Adam: Yeah. I think as a teenager, when I first saw this film, when I saw Jack Nicholson in it, I thought he was like the coolest guy ever. And now as an adult, I don't think he's as cool anymore. I think he's kind of a Dick. And I think that just comes with age, you know, mm-hmm because as a teenager, you just wanna watch the world burn, basically.

Adam: You're not constructive. You're destructive. Mm-hmm . 

Charlotte: We were, when we were talking about our favorite movies, as kids back to the beach, I used to love the younger boy's character. He was always being a smart ass to his parents constantly mouthing off and I just thought, hell yeah, that's me.

Charlotte: And it probably was me now as an adult, I find that kid annoying. 

Adam: me too. 

Charlotte: So kind of a cool little side note, when Louis Fletcher. accepted her academy award, she finished her speech with sign language. 

Charlotte: Both of her parents are deaf, so she finished her speech with sign language, which I think was the first time that had ever been done. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. 

Adam: Kind of cool. 

Adam: Well, we can't talk about this movie unless we talk about chief too. He's such a major character in the film. And in the book, I guess the major difference between the book and the film is that the entire book is told through chief's perspective, right?

Adam: It's in his voice. Whereas the film is, , third person, but you're mainly seeing it through MC Murphy.

Charlotte: So about the book, Kirk Douglas bought the rights to this book because he wanted to star in it, but it took so long for it to get up and going that by the time they got around and making the film, he was too old for it.

Charlotte: So his son, Michael Douglas actually came on as a producer. 

Adam: But Kirk Douglas did. Perform as MC Murphy on stage, right? The stage version for one year. Right? 

Charlotte: So at 

Adam: least you got to play it with William Daniels. Did 

Charlotte: we mention that this is the film debut for Christopher Lloyd also did 

Adam: not. 

Charlotte: Yeah. It's the credited debut for Brad Duff and the debut of Christopher Lloyd.

Adam: So what do you think chief being native American says, what is Ken Casey trying to say by making him a native American? Is it about the untamed spirit of, you know, native American gives you some sort of untamed spirit. That's something that can't be tamped down by society.

Adam: It's 

Charlotte: like he they've caged him, but even his spirit hasn't been 

Adam: broken., he's the only one by the end of the movie that is able to escape. 

Adam: Right. He's the only one mm-hmm even eventually MC Murphy. They lobotomize him. So mm-hmm, they take that spirit away from him. Yeah. And then the rest of them just kind of choose to stay in there cuz because their spirit is already broken

Adam: too much. Huh? Too heavy. 

Charlotte: Yeah, 

Charlotte: All right.

Charlotte: So thanks for joining us here on perf damage all about band book week. Hope that you find a band book to read this week or any book. Really books are good. 

Adam: it's amazing to me in this day and age that they are still challenging novels the way they are.

Charlotte: Yeah. Well, most of them are kids 

Adam: books. Most of them are kids. Books goes back to our old saying all about the kids. It's all about those 

Charlotte: kids. So Adam, are you reading any good books while we're talking about books? 

Adam: So yes, the Canon film guide volume two by Austin. Truk is the book I'm reading. It's a 1000 plus page Magnum Opus. That is a big book. Yes. Can you Karen it around? It's awesome. It's very heavy. It's in hardcover subject matter wise. No, no. It's about the downfall of cannon.

Adam: So it's actually very entertaining. And what is cannon 

Charlotte: for anybody that doesn't know? 

Adam: Ken films was an independent film producer that did like the missing in action films, the American ninja films kind of that early 80 shocky action and horror that that I love so much. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Their logo kind of looks like the OCP logo from Robocop.

Charlotte: It does every time I see it. I think about, think about that. 

Adam: That's that's what I'm reading right now. Charlotte, what are you reading? 

Charlotte: I have several going, but the film one that I'm reading is called the man who invented motion pictures. It's by Paul Fisher. And this is a page turning history about the invention of the motion picture and the mysterious man behind it detailing his life work disappearance and legacy it's about this guy that invented motion pictures before Thomas Edison. And he disappeared right after inventing it. And there's a conspiracy that maybe Thomas Edison had something to do with it. Oh, it is a very, very good read.

Charlotte: Very well written. And if you like. Motion picture history. I highly recommend it. I haven't finished it yet. So I don't know if they nail the ending, but so far, it's pretty good. Who wrote it again? Paul Fisher. Paul 

Adam: Fisher. Yeah,

Adam: that sounds very cool.

Adam: Yeah. All right. Well, let us know what you guys are reading. Yeah. If you got any good book recommendations, even if it's not banned. 

Charlotte: Yeah. We read all books here. Banned, not banned. trash, not trash. You kinda read a trashy book. It's your trash of the week pick 

Adam: is a book is a book. Yeah, it's a good book though.

Charlotte: All right. Well, thanks for joining us this week on perf damage. If you'd like to get in contact with us, you can shoot us an email perf damage podcast at Gmail, or you can send us a note on Twitter at perf damage. Join us again next week. For more fun filled talks, . Really excited 

Adam: about October guys. Yeah. Adam 

Charlotte: lives, October 

Adam: group. It's my favorite moment. I can't wait to actually have horror subject matter as our subject every 

Charlotte: week. I know you can't as our dogs fighting in the background, they obviously love horror too.

Charlotte: Yeah, they can't wait either. They're they're playing it right now. and before they kill each other, we should probably wrap this one up. So thanks for joining us. 

Charlotte: Thanks for listening to us, ramble about a couple movies and we will see you soon. Yeah. 

Adam: Thanks for joining us again. We'll see you next week here on, on damage. 

Adam: That's a throwback to H is horrific. If no one's listened to it. HS horrific. Nope. That's a throwback to the HS horrific. Is that not right? No. What is it? H four horrific. There you go. yeah, guys, 

Charlotte: he still can now pronounce you know, this is going on though.

Charlotte: That I'll take real.