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November 26, 2013

Episode 142: Eating Raoul (1982)

Special Guests: Mary Woronov, Dick Blackburn, Susan Saiger, Jed Feuer

Just in time for Thanksgiving, it's a story of Reagan-era morality and economics gone wild, Eating Raoul (1982) put "cult filmmaker" Paul Bartel on the map with a surprise mainstream hit about Paul and Mary Bland, two Puritanical folks who kill swingers for cash to fulfill their "American Dream."

We speak to screenwriter , actresses Mary Woronov and Susan Saiger as well as the musician behind the Eating Raoul musical, Jed Feuer.

Get ready to dig in as guest co-host: Adam Spiegelman of the Proudly Resents podcast joins us once again to dig into this "Bland Enchilada" paired with Château Lafite Rothschild.

Download Episode Now:

Links:
Visit the official Proudly Resents website
Buy Eating Raoul on DVD
Visit the Criterion Collection page for Eating Raoul
Buy the Eating Raoul soundtrack on vinyl
Buy the musical Eating Raoul soundtrack
Learn more about Eating Raoul - The Musical
Buy Eating Raoul - The Comic Book
Visit the official Mary Woronov website
Buy Mary Woronov's "Swimming Underground: My time at Andy Warhol's Factory"
Learn more about Confessions of a Cult Queen the Mary Woronov documentary
Contribute to the making of Confessions of a Cult Queen
Visit the official Susan Saiger website
Visit the official Jed Feuer website
Contribute to the Humane Society
Listen to our episode on "Death Race 2000"

Watch:



5 comments:

  1. The Foreign ViewerJun 26, 2016, 2:49:00 PM

    Great show. Was Beltran not available for an interview or did he refuse? Anyway, here's a cool retrospective of each of Bartel's feature length movies - even those impossible to find like Shelf Life (1993) or Nancy Allen's screwball vehicle Not for Publication (1984).
    http://zacksfilmthoughts.blogspot.rs/2012_05_01_archive.html

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  2. He never responded to our requests.

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  3. The Foreign ViewerJun 27, 2016, 5:54:00 PM

    I see. Unfortunately, I can't say I'm surprised to hear that. If you see some of his recent interviews like this one from 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyYGhlzI2vs he seems to have become somewhat of a cynical recluse (except for the annual Star Trek: Voyager conventions). Too bad. Thanks for clearing this up.

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  4. The Foreign ViewerJun 29, 2016, 10:22:00 AM

    One final note. Just saw Bartel's short Secret Cinema (1968) and the Amazing Stories remake. Incomparable. One is almost a horror, the other quite fluffy and lighthearted. See the original as well as Bartel's comical short take on kink porn - Naughty Nurse (1969).

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  5. I love this movie. Thank you so much for featuring it. For me, the trick to a successful black comedy is to present topics that shouldn't be laughed at in such a way that they come off as ridiculous, and thus easy to laugh at. Cannibalism, murder, and sexual assault are not topics that should be laughed at with casual company, but because Bartel sticks them into a world that teeters on the ridiculous, it's easy to elicit genuine belly laughs out of such situations. The beginning scene itself is a perfect example: armed robberies of liquor stores and death resulting from such violent crime isn't funny at all, but if you make the liquor store owner pull out a gigantic gun and blow the perp away without a second thought, and then go right back to yelling at Bland like nothing happened, suddenly I'm laughing like an idiot. Compared to someone like Tod Solondz, whose idea of "comedy" is to make the audience so uncomfortable they have to laugh so they don't start crying (don't get me wrong, I actually really enjoyed "Happiness", but don't you dare tell me it's a comedy), Bartel allows us to step inside the Bland's world and take vicarious delight in their debauchery, laughing with the characters rather than at them. I could go on and on about how much I love this film, but think I'll stop now,. Just know it's easily my all-time favorite black comedy, if not in my top 10 all-time favorite movies, period. Have you considered doing Lust in the Dust and/or Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills? Those would make interesting episodes.

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