EPISODE 506: IN NAME ONLY
In this episode, Tyler and David talk about movies named after secondary characters, after talking politics for forty minutes. Sorry about that.
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After listening I’ve come to realize that I would LOVE a political podcast from David and Tyler. The Good rapport and different viewpoints are great to listen to. Please make this happen 🙂
Personally I think Tyler nailed it about Trump in this one. The fundamental problem isn’t what he shares with a Klan member, or Nazi, but what he shares with a pagan (in the traditional sense of the word.) He doesn’t understand non-zero-sum games and it hinders his understanding of how international markets work. He says he never asked God for forgiveness, showing his religion is only important to him in terms of what it gains him. He has no use for the weak, no use for grace or mercy. He has no use for a peace or truce that has stopped being useful to him. He lacks even a young adult’s ability to resist lashing out at every slight against him. He has no use for anyone disloyal even once to his family group/tribal structure (see: what happened to Chris Christie.) He wonders what sorts of torture might be used against our enemies in war. Whether or not you are a Christian, he has an acute lack of shared moral tradition and understanding that we’ve built all Western civilization upon. He is only a few centuries removed from a howling barbarian chieftain painted with woad.
And he’s not a reader, I’m guessing, of anything but yacht brochures.
As a pretty solid liberal/atheist, Tyler’s political/religious views have never bothered me nor detracted from the show for me, mostly because I view his opinions as being pretty open-minded and well thought out, even if I may disagree.
One additional thing: David mentioned Trump’s “quote” about how he’d run as a Republican because they’re all idiots that listen to Fox News and how great he’d do. That quote is fake, which was quite a surprise to me a few weeks ago when John Oliver mentioned that it was fake on his show. That was one of those quotes I thought for sure was real (and infuriating), but if you look it up online it’s pretty clear that he never said it. I won’t hold it against you for repeating it on the podcast because I was sure it was real up until recently too.
Hello guys. Good show.
David. I have something to say tangentially related to the subject of the show, but I didn’t want to start another comment fight so I sent it to your BP email. It is titled “Auteurs of Video Games”. Hope you like it.
The one title which I would add to the “In Name Only” list is Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sancho The Balif. Sancho is the bad guy, and doesn’t appear onscreen until twenty minutes into the film.
The dreadlock guy was just grabbed and jerked around by the bully at SFSU (the boyfriend stayed out of it), not technically beat up. I hope the media can stop gorging on Richard Spencer’s gesture malfunction long enough to look deeper into the beliefs of the wider alt-right movement, which are a hell of a lot more anti-Semitic than the crumbs he was offering up. Maybe CNN has mentioned Culture of Critique at some point but I haven’t heard it.
Also (and I realize I can be an annoying poster, sorry), there were at least three campus hijab-yanking incidents, but none have been proven. Louisiana, which as Tyler says was a lie. San Diego State, which actually looks like a carjacking where they harassed the woman then stole her keys. And San Jose State, which hasn’t been disproven but she says the guy was in a hoodie and she’s been unable to provide much of a description. There’s also a student in Michigan who says a drunk white guy threatened to set her hijab on fire if she didn’t take it off.
Rebecca, the other movie where “I” is the lead, was on my mind for the duration of the show, and probably is the most salient example of this. I was really glad to hear you cite it.
Following the example of The Thin Man, I offer The Third Man as the title that most uses this phenomenon to the benefit of the film. If you only watch the first 2/3 of this movie, you would probably wonder at the title. It’s one of the mysteries being pursued, but even at that, not so potent that other things wouldn’t come to mind first as better titles, “Post-War Vienna” or “An Author Abroad,” for example. On the other hand, if you see all of it, the titular figure will likely be the first, if not only, thing you think about, pushing all other elements aside.
Mad Max is a supporting character in other people’s stories in all the sequels. But Fury Road fully leans into that by letting Furiosa be the focus of attention, which makes it better than Road Warrior (which it is almost a remake of).
TV Tropes has a list of movies named after the antagonist here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntagonistTitle
Horror movies, even if they aren’t named after the villain, do tend to have villain based franchises:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainBasedFranchise
It always felt to me like Max was very much the protagonist in BEYOND THUNDERDOME. Although, honestly, I almost never remember anything after Max goes into the Thunderdome with Master Blaster. Perhaps after that he falls back into observer mode.
I too was thinking of Rebecca throughout. See! She even haunts podcasts from beyond the grave! Also, the eponymous Charlie of Angels fame was John Forsythe who was in The Trouble With Harry, another one for your name game, directed by Sir Alfred H.
Also, as a U.K. listener I have no problem listening to Tyler and David talking politics (in a variety of stylish styles and colourful colours). Fascinating. But I do wish Tyler didn’t feel like he had to say ‘Don’t get me wrong!’ so often. It sounds so defensive. Perhaps as a Christian conservative with a devotion to the arts a defensive posture is the safest of all available crouches. BP and its great hosts and guests is permanently in my top three podcasts. I love you and the Bounty bars are on their way.
The Third Man.
The French Connection (Fernando Rey has very little actual screen time and is pretty late in the movie when you meet him)
The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag. That gun takes forever to pop up.
The Pink Panther (same as the Thin Man).
I think with Birdman – the voice you hear narrating at the beginning is the Birdman/conscience/temptation voice. But he’s certainly not the main character (and perhaps why there’s an alternate/subtitle?).