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THREADS

A new 4x4 starts with a bang (and a lot of whimpers) as the gang begins their Season 17 coverage of hacks (i.e., directors for hire) with THREADS (1984), director Mick Jackson’s pseudo-documentary but fully anti-nuke made-for-TV movie.

Cohost Thomas’s pick of directors to launch the season of hacks, Jackson got his start in film with the BBC in the late-60s as an editor. He saw an opportunity in the early 80s to express his anti-nuclear sentiments through a wry documentary in the guise of a consumer report for the BBC’s science series Q.E.D. (1982 - 1999) on the efficacy—or inefficacy—of fallout shelters and other measures disseminated by the British government for civilian response to a nuclear attack. Jackson sought a use for excess material on the horrors of a nuclear attack, including a chance to popularize a then little-known theory of nuclear winter. When the U.S. television film The Day After (1983) screwed the pooch with its competency of officials and heroic hopefulness (in Jackson’s estimation), he recommitted to his dark vision and the meaning behind the slogan that “No one wins a nuclear war” with Threads.

Made during the highest Cold War tensions since the Cuba Missile Crisis, Jackson’s film shows the thin weave of society unraveling after the British city of Sheffield is nuked as a result of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in a battle over Iran, developments simmering in the background over radio and preparative actions by the local government during its first 45 minutes. While a range of characters will be killed immediately or die slowly, the central focus of the story is Ruth, a young woman who becomes pregnant by her boyfriend, later fiancé, whom she’ll become estranged from after the blast. Ruth, unlike most, will survive afterwards for over a decade, migrating, scavenging, subsistence farming, selling her body, and trading with the sorry survivors. Her teenage daughter Jane born into the new, post-apocalyptic world survives Ruth only to herself become pregnant and the horror of what leaves her vaginal cavity is what ends this dark tale.

This episode, the Ghost of Maggie Thatcher threatens return; Thomas seethes; Jack puts a cohost on blast (pun intended) for passing notes during recording; Ken talks sidewalk cuisine; and Ryan requests more dance numbers.

Next week, through the temporal pincer movement™️ Threads matches with 1997’s Volcano, a pairing Ken, feeling his oats, entitles “Ash-to-Ash.”

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With Episode 8, our hosts put their Gray Days behind them, wrapping the short Season 16 with THE IMMIGRANT (2013), or as it was a.k.a.’ed during its short development and prior to its delayed release “Low Life” and “The Nightingale.”

James Gray teams back up with cowriter Richard Menello to write a period drama role explicitly for Marion Cotillard whom Gray met through her then-partner director Guillaume Canet during their work together on the oft-mentioned Blood Ties also released in 2013. The story follows the hard luck of Cotillard’s titular immigrant as her likewise Polish emigre sister is confined to a medical ward on Ellis Island during immigration while Cotillard’s Ewa Cybulska is offered an opportunity to remain in the States through the kindness of Joaquin Phoenix playing a pimp and former child immigrant named Bruno Weiss in the actor’s fourth and to-date final Gray film role. Cotillard’s immigrant forms a brief love triangle with Jeremy Renner’s magician and brother-to-Bruno character Orlando The Magician until he ***SPOILER*** runs off to Iraq to defuse bombs as one of the Avengers who just shoots arrows or something. J/k. It’s a Gray film. You know someone is going to die. Maybe it’s the magician. Maybe it’s the sister. Maybe both. Stay awake to find out, or give this episode a listen.

This episode, Harvey Weinstein returns; Ken tries renaming the podcast; Ryan and Thomas are spot on in their estimation of the film; and our boys rank the eight-film oeuvre on The Gray Scale.

Next week, we’re on smoko but will return with Hacks (mild pun intended; Surgeon General’s warning: do not consume the first episode of Season 17 if you’re preggers).

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TWO LOVERS (2008)

For Season 16, Episode 7, writer-director James Gray gets geometric with TWO LOVERS (2008), his third of four collabs with Joaquin Phoenix whom he puts into a love triangle with Gray’s only film to-date starring Gwyneth Paltrow or Vinessa Shaw.

Gray leaves his crime trilogy behind with this contemporary piece focusing on the family and loves of Phoenix’s Leonard Kraditor, a manic-depressive pixie dream boy working for and living with his parents after a suicide attempt. Leonard finds himself caught between his id (depicted by Paltrow’s equally pixie Michelle Rausch) and superego (depicted by Shaw’s Sandra Cohen). Isabella Rossellini in a relatively (slight pun intended) quiet performance plays Leonard’s mother while Israeli actor Moni Moshonov reprises his father-figure role from We Own the Night to play Leonard’s father.

For those enjoying the home version this season, the following Gray Bingo squares may be covered: 1) silent opening, 2) NYC, 3) Jewish family, 4) bare breast, 5) club scene, and 6) failed plan to escape to warmer climates.

Guest Andi joins to betray her Southern roots by speaking when she has nothing polite to say as she ranks the half of Gray’s filmography she’s watched. Host Ken this episode does extra credit, having not only watched two prior film adaptations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story “White Nights” but also researches cowriter Richard Menello and charts multiple love triangles in this film and throughout the films TGTPTU has covered. Cohost Ryan reveals his odd sense of humor. And cohost Thomas provides a list of terms defining people and what they love.

These four on mic this week are split in half for their enjoyment of the film.

Next ep, the stunning conclusion to Going Gray (working title) and the genre reveal of Season 17.

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THE LOST CITY OF Z

Before James Gray hung Brad Pitt on wires and took him to space, he first brought a different blonde to the Amazon (the rainforest) to encounter snakes, torrential rains, and an insect extracted from his ear during the shooting of he writer-director’s first Amazon (the company) Studios distributed film THE LOST CITY OF Z (2016).

Charlie Hunnam is that blonde, the -e is intentional as that’s the more common British spelling and despite an American accent convincing enough to fool Gray, a man of many impersonations, Charlie’s a bloke. His Percy Fawcett protagonist is joined by fellow Brit and future Batman Robert Pattinson as the pair of British explorers (and WWI soldiers) map out the Bolivia-Brazil border in an adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller of the same name (although the Americans, per its author, say the final word-letter as “zee” instead of “zed”). Also cast and a contemporaneous Spiderman is Tom Holland as Fawcett’s son Jack Fawcett, who will take the place of Pattinson’s composite character Henry Costin in Percy’s final voyage back into the jungle to seek the titular lost city.

For this sixth of eight Gray episodes, guest Shannon returns, host Ken stays ill, co-host Ryan gushes, and the lone Gen Zedder Thomas has read the book. Opinions are mixed this week, with guest Shannon believing the proper title of the film should be The Lost City of Zzz (snooze sound) while Ryan’s been Zed-pilled into believing it an amazing film.

Next episode, potentially a very special guest who might have watched that week’s film.

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We Own the Night

For Season 16 Episode 5, TGTPTU dives deep into what writer-director James Gray considers the conclusion of his NYC crime trilogy WE OWN THE NIGHT (2007) while also starting the first of two planned sizzurp episodes with host Ken sick and sipping on some strong cold medicine. And joining this top to the third temporal pincer™️ pairing is special guest and inveterate bookworm Shannon.

For his third film, and second time being booed at Cannes (Harvey Scissorhands’ cut of The Yards being the occasion for his first), Gray after seven years in development had his first financial success with his unique, untrademarked combination of family drama, crime, and Greek tragedy. Together again but reversing roles from The Yards, Mark Wahlberg plays supporting as Cpt Joe Grusinsky while Joaquin Phoenix takes the lead as night club manager Bobby Green/Grusinsky. That slash becomes important as Bobby has adopted his dead mother’s surname prior to the start of the movie to distance himself from his brother Joe and their Deputy Chief cop daddy Burt Grusinsky, played by Robert Duvall. When Brother Captain Joe’s pursuit of a drug smuggler leads to his family being targeted by the Russian Mob who are also owners of Bobby’s club and his surrogate family, Bobby’s different last name comes in handy as he goes undercover for the po-po.

Oh, and it’s a period piece occurring in the late-80s set in NYC, so cover those squares on your Gray bingo card.

This ep, guest Shannon bumps on overwritten cop dialogue culled from Gray’s NYPD ride-alongs; former co-host Jack weighs in off-mic on Gray’s best use of CGI for rain during the car chase scene; Ryan suggests this is the last Phoenix role before he became too fussy, and Ken suggests it's the last of Wahlberg actually being interesting while effectively suppressing a cough; Ryan questions the merits of the temporal pincer movement being applied to Gray’s filmography; and Thomas considers it his favorite Gray film of the five he’s watched.

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As if the fourth in a horror film series, this week TGTPTU goes to space! In Season 16, Ep 4 of Gray Matter (working title), Ken, Thomas, and Ryan discuss writer-director James Gray’s AD ASTRA (2019) as their unpatented pincer movement continues along the auteur’s eight-movie filmography.

Cowritten with a television writer of meager IMDB credits, Gray’s highest budget film to date sends astronaut and resting heart rate champion Roy Richard McBride (Brad Pitt) to the furthest reaches of the explored solar system in order to present him jump scares and (un)excusable homicides on his journey in a near future to retrieve his father played by Tommy Lee Jones who apparently can’t get enough being in outer space (see Season 2, Ep 8 for our Space Cowboys coverage). Because this is a Gray joint, you know daddy and son are gonna have some emotional reckoning. What you might not be expecting are a moon car chase, falling from near orbit to Earth, or kickflipping a shuttle’s flotsam while grinding a wicked rail of an asteroid belt (at least one of these happens, no further spoilers).

Like last week’s ep, Gray did not have final cut (i.e., the film rights; he might have had the professional, high-performance video editing software designed by Apple for macOS and iPadOS, although there is a strong possibility he had neither), which allowed for surprise research revelations by Ken, Tom, and Ryan and a wish for a hard media release of the Director’s Cut audio track.

Chris Nolan’s late-career cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (listen back to Season 12 for more on the lenser so nice they named him twice) shoots this beautiful film. Ad Astra garnered Gray’s first and to date only Academy nomination for Best Sound Mixing, which host Ken is in real time appalled by what films received Academy noms for Best Special Effects to the exclusion of this film’s many practical VFX. Also, Ken struggles to name Robert McKee to really land a movie reference despite covering Adaptation in both the pod’s Nicolas Cage (Season 3) and Meryl Streep (Season 8) coverage; Ryan has galaxy brain generational conflict ideas about the movie’s themes; and Tom tries placing the flick among the good space movies of the past decade.

Factoid: The film was released in France under the tile “Ad Astra,” which means “to the stars” in Latin and in Finland as “Ad Astra,” which also means “to the stars” in Latin.

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The Yards

A family crime drama set in New York City with a sick mother, ambivalently abusive father figure, and nudity along with a role for Domenick Lombardozzi (The Wire’s Herc)? Get out your James Gray bingo cards, because Season 16 Gray Poop On (working title) persists with TGTPTU continuing in Episode 3 its temporal pincer movement covering the auteur’s second film THE YARDS (2000).

Filmed on film in the spring and summer of 1998 but due to studio delays and reshoots not released until the fall of 2000, The Yards stars the still up-and-coming Mark Walburg as Leo Handler just out of jail and being led back into a life of crime by Joaquin Phoenix as Willie Gutierrez, the guy dating and soon betrothed to Leo’s cousin and possible love interest Erica Soltz played by a pre-Monster Charlize Theron. This trio of rising stars is supported by a trio of 70s hall of famers (James Caan, Ellen Burstyn, and Faye Dunaway) in a story about NYC train maintenance, government corruption, family loyalties, and the need for proper bannisters.

Cowritten with Matt Reeves (opinions vary) and shot with multiple POV characters, Gray would find the story in the editing room (and subsequent reshoots) by winnowing it down to Walburg’s singular perspective only to have that story mollified (or straight-up mauled from Gray’s perspective) by a studio-noted happier ending.

This ep, you won’t be getting Ken’s half-hour discussion with Ryan about Theron’s surprising nude scene, but Thomas will provide context for international and homeschool listeners in the U.S., Myanmar, and Liberia.

Thank you for choo-choo-choosing to listen.

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Armageddon Time

This week in Season 16’s Going Gray (working title), Episode 2 will cover the writer-director’s 2022 autobiographical film about his Jewish American assimilative upbringing and formative childhood events slightly beyond his ken that will have the potential to lead him to become the legendary director we know today, that same director whose film we are—

Wait, no, you’ve not heard TGTPTU cover this one. Seriously, no, sorry to contradict, but you’re wrong. TGTPTU is not redux-ing the previously covered The Fabelmans (that was Season 14’s gimmick). This is Season 16, if you’ll let your no-so-humble scribe finish, which covers the directorial work of Gen X filmmaker James Gray, including his deeply personal film that was a stupendous box office failure ARMAGEDDON TIME (2022).

Gray’s most recent film is somehow even more personal than his first (just covered in the season’s inaugural episode as part of TGTPU’s temporal pincer movement), with Armageddon Time set historically in 1980 in time for the election of Ronald Reagan to the U.S. presidency, which may or may not factor more largely into the narrative. With a few noted exceptions by the pod’s purist contingent, Gray’s focus remains with his POV character Paul. Played by child actor Banks Repeta who, along with Jaylin Webb as his friend Johnny, brings an amazing performance alongside heavyweights Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins as Paul’s mother, father, and grandfather respectively and who each will, in their own ways, help the sixth-grade Paul’s insights into social inequity and struggles.

Note: Despite its MPAA R rating and the many similarities in plot as raised during the podcast, Gray’s most recent film is not a Requiem for a Dream retelling and there is zero ass-to-ass.

This week, Ken has all the feels and appears, despite his graphic novel’s striking similarity to Gray’s film, to not be pursuing the Harlan Ellison legal route for residuals; Tom’s lukewarm; and Ryan’s meh. Discussion of these disparate reactions leads to comparison with and exploration of The Fabelmans (2022), Mid90s (2018), and other nostalgic, coming-of-age films by writer-directors in recent years.

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