Possession (1981)

MIKE WHITE: Now tuned into the hard awful channel. Awfully women's social in party radio show, devil's ad. It's awful flips.

Speaker 3: Hot, hot you're receiving well beyond the realm of human desire. There is a darkness.

Speaker 2: Well, that's why I'm with you because you say I for me love opens to absolutely unknown horizons.

Speaker 3: Isabella John, the internationally acclaimed actress in her most explosive controversial role. News high and spend it two men and a woman. No man could ever possess special visual effects by Academy Award winner, Carlo Rambaldi, mortal terror, inhuman ecstasy. Soon you will know the me possession.

It wasn't in June.

Speaker 2: Oh, what?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I the darkness is forever possession. MIKE WHITE: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining me is Mr Rob ST Mary.

This night, I'll possess your podcast also with us. This week is Ot CS very own. Mr Chris. It's a pleasure to be back.

We'll see how long that lasts. Well, for those timing it, we'll see this week we are looking at Andrej Zullo Ski's possession. The 1981 film was Schloss Ski's fourth feature film and his first and only so far in English known for creating challenging visually captivating narratives, possession crosses genre lines, but foremost is the story of Mark and Anna played by Sam Neill and Isabel Ajani and their disintegrating marriage. Along the way, there are elements of intrigue and spies, faith, chance and horror.

The film is 33 years old but wasn't readily available in its complete form in the US for a while. So if you've only seen the original cut that was released in the States, I implore you to turn off this podcast. Go out and find the director's cut A K A European cut and watch it before listening to the rest of the show because we are going to be getting into spoilers big time all straight out of the gate. I'm sure.

So that said, let's go ahead and talk about our initial impressions of the film, Chris as our guest. I know that you covered this movie on Outside The Cinema. But can you share for us what you thought the first time you saw the film and what you think of it now pretty much for Outside The Cinema. I get sent stuff blind and I don't, I won't watch a trailer.

I may look up to see who directed it or who is in it. But this one, I just started it up and I'm glad I did though. This is a very different kind of film. I'm sure we're gonna say that a lot in this show, but it 's, it doesn't, it's not a slow burn.

It's, it's more of, a slow reveal for the audience because it starts nonstop and I was kind of taken aback with how quickly things just go to hell for the characters because they pretty much start there and the look of it and the acting, it was, it was one of my favorite films that we've covered. I'll just get that out of the way. That was my first impression. This is something I'll remember.

How about when you went back and looked at it this week. Well, I watched it today because I wanted it to be as fresh as possible. And I was trying to explain it to my wife and basically what I came out with was I could watch this movie every day for a week and still not get everything he's going for. So it 's very complicated.

But I love that there's so many different interpretations. Actually. Possession is a documentary based on my parents', marriage and divorce in case you didn't know this. I am Bob the child in here.

No, I'm just kidding. No. But it did remind me of how marriages fall apart and the fact that the little boy's name is Bob just added one more layer to me. That kind of creeped me out a little bit.

But I had never seen this. I didn't know anything about it and when you sent it to me and wanted to do it. You know, I looked up certain things and I was glad to see Sam Neil because I've only seen him in certain things and things that I did like with him in. I really like and also Isabel Asian because, you know, Novara to The Vampire by Werner Herzog.

She's amazing in that. And as we were talking about before we started recording all about the eyes, baby, I caught this one. I went out with a couple of friends of mine and we went back to one of the guys' house and popped this on and I really, I had only ever read about it and I knew for a long time it was one of these things that was floating around on the gray market for a long time of the European version of it. And I probably owned it for years and years and never sat down and watched it.

So I sat down with these two guys and just, I was absolutely captivated and like you said, Chris, it really starts out right out of the gate. I mean, that first interaction we have between Neil and Johnny was just so like out of left field and all of a sudden they are like starting in the middle of an argument. It feels like he 's asking her all these questions and she doesn't know the answers and it's just like, immediately we're thrown into this world. You can't just say you don't know.

That's what you said on the phone. When will, you know.

Speaker 2: I don't know. MIKE WHITE: Do you want me to spend the night somewhere else in a hotel or something? Do you want us to meet later on? We can talk more calmly.

Do you, do you need more time? What, what do you need? But what has. Happened, Bob knows that you were coming back today?

MIKE WHITE: Well, I can, I can pick him up after school and take him to the zoo or something and then it just gets crazier and crazier from there. And the way that it's shot, there's a lot of, I wouldn't say handheld, even though it is a handheld camera, it's more of a steady cam that's being used that with a lot of wide angle lenses and the camera in a lot of scenes just doesn't want to stay still at all. And I kind of love that there's a scene with Sam Neill towards the beginning where he is explaining that he's kind of explaining that he is a spy.

And there were these guys sitting there in a row and they were asking him all these questions about his replacement and all this. And the dialogue is very, very cryptic and the camera is just moving around this room like nobody's business. I can imagine the DP just running, just sprinting around the room with this going on and I'm just like, what the hell is going on? And that's how I felt almost through the entire movie.

There were very few moments where I felt like I could kind of catch a breath and I'm glad that I've gone back and watched this several times since then where I can kind of catch my breath as I watch this. And also, yes, I totally agree. I could watch this probably 100 more times and still find new things in it. I will say I'm much less confused on subsequent viewings, but I still know that I will find new things as I go back to this film.

What time did you meet him in the park? Was he willing? Yes. Did your sense or detect weariness in him?

No, a correct appraisal of the realities. Is it making him bitter? No greed. But you had his power?

You mean, did I feel fear? No, because that would have prevented me answering all your questions. How many vials did he take with him to? What procedure have you devised for contacting him again?

It's all in my report. I suggest it's more economical to fill in my successor. You don't feel there's a need for a successor. I've completed my job.

Brilliant. That's why we want to rehire you. The question. And what would be the reason for your refusing family?

Or couldn't you be of some help there? No. Wouldn't it be advisable for you to reconsider? I'm unable to do that.

Would you be unable for a long time. I hope not. Aren't you allowing feelings to prevent you from answering your own questions? Exactly why I advise you to hire my successor.

Any questions? Come on, that's our subject. Still wear Pink Socks. Yeah.

From a visual sense, it really is very unique in that way. I mean, that scene you're talking about. I called it the resignation board scene and there's this sort of 360 panning camera that circles around him and the panel as they're interviewing him. And then there's several times where there is a sort of fourth wall direct to the camera thing going on.

So I wouldn't be too surprised and I've never seen any of his other stuff that he was very much influenced by a lot of that, you know, experimental film or, you know, late sixties style filmmaking that opened up the door for that kind of experimentation because that kind of crazy pans like that and direct a camera usage that, that wouldn't fly in an American film in the least. I like those moments. There are very few moments where there's that direct a camera kind of stuff going on. And I think correct me if I'm wrong.

I want to say it's all Ajani doing that. When she does in one part, it seems like maybe it's a movie that she and her lover have made. But then there's another part when she is, she is a dance instructor which you really don't get until very late in the film, the scene of her instructing these ballerinas. So it's kind of again like out of left field kind of thing.

And in that part, she is talking to her students and then at one point she just turns right to the camera and starts addressing us and just like very disconcerting like, whoa, hey, you know, it's like she's looking back into us as we are looking into her. And I can just, like you were saying, I can get lost in those eyes because she is just so gorgeous and so crazed in this movie. I was saying before we started recording that, it's like even when she's in her moments of the most mad and I will say that Sam Neill is pretty crazy in this film as well.

Even when she is at her nuttiest, she is still so gorgeous that it's like, oh yes, I can totally see what Sam Neill has for this woman. So I guess we should talk a little bit more about the plot. We kind of talked a little bit as far as the marriage falling apart. And I guess I should have known that this film was kind of about marriage falling apart from these opening scenes.

But it still took me a while to kind of get a bead on what was going on. There are these arguments going on, but then immediately we were kind of thrust into his world of this espionage stuff and I kept waiting for that to come back and it doesn't until way later in the film. And so it just, it took me a while to even figure out what was going on. But yeah, as you were saying, Chris, as far as describing this movie to anybody else, it's a challenge when I came home after seeing it the first time and I was trying to describe it to my wife.

I was like, ok, this is a movie that you would never want to watch in a million years, but I really enjoy it. And here are the reasons why and just trying to describe that kind of intensity of the performances and I mean, because it's off the wall. I mean, it's just nuts the way that they are yelling at each other and just so intense with each other and so cutting literally and figuratively with one another. Like also in the beginning there's a scene where they are in bed together and he Samuel is looking for some comfort from his wife and she's just not giving it to him whatsoever.

You see, it's the same as me. Yeah, it seems like from the beginning she's just emotionally checked out of the whole thing because the whole movie starts in what would in a normal American movie be the second act where you get to know the characters and you see the happy times they'll do the pan past you know the wedding picture and birthdays and stuff. And this movie just says, oh the hell with that, this is the important part. The best way I think I described it on Outside The Cinema was this is a story about divorce and losing the person you care about if lovecraft told it because I can't think of a better way to describe it.

I can see that because there are these elements of the supernatural that come into it. But it's interesting how it takes such a long time for those to kind of come in. I was listening to the director 's commentary today and Schloss was saying that he kind of builds the foundation of the marriage, the foundation of the film, I should say, even though the marriage is falling apart, the foundation of the film is the marriage falling apart. And then the fable elements, the story going kind of even more off the rails is what he would consider what he built on top of this foundation.

And it takes a while before you manage to get up those stairs to that second story because it's just there is that really slow reveal just the way that we are brought into this whole other part of it. And then that the characters, even the stuff that isn't necessarily supernatural, they are being played to the hilt so much. I'm thinking specifically of a Johnny's lover, Heinrich, who is probably one of my most favorite characters in a film ever. He's an odd duck.

We don't have to be blu to each other or even impolite. Our situation is like a mountain lake. We are trying to swim in starting from different shores. I'm not astonished.

You are here. I was thinking about you just before you came. So now that you are here, let's be open to each other. MIKE WHITE: There's real heavy exaggeration that almost makes him like hyper characters because he is, I have a hard time identifying with this because my parents are still together.

I'm still married, but I have been cheated on quite a number of times by people. I used to date and Heinrich is that guy. You can hate me as much as you like, but it's you who wants to know things for me. So please make it possible.

MIKE WHITE: He's the one that like, oh, that's who you're seeing behind my back. And he embodies all of the slimy predatory suave characteristics that just make your stomach turn and your skin crawl. And the way he kind of plays himself as her guru and like her sexual Liberator and all this stuff, not a button a shirt, the way he knows, karate, the one part where he comes in and he is spinning like as he's talking, he just keeps spinning around and spinning around. It's just like, yes, you're right.

He is that guy where you're like, you're leaving me for him. And then I think he's even more surprised when Johnny's character turns around and leaves him for something else. So it's just like he's devastated so much so that he goes hysterically blind for a few minutes, maybe until it's comedy for him to be able to see again. Which is another great thing because eyes are so important in this film that I love that, that was how he was, you know, dealt with the situation.

And that, that kind of reminded me that that's what gave me the, well, aside from the obvious visuals, but that, that was the first like lovecraft thing where like you go so insane from what you've seen that you just, your body fails you because it can't cope with it. It's interesting to hear various perspectives on the relationship thing because Chris lucky man to still have your folks together and things are good with them and as for yourself to be together with your wife, things are good with you with that. I can relate to both angles.

Like I was joking in the beginning of being a documentary, just the bickering and the fighting and just sort of how people want to connect. But they can't, there's like this, this thing that keeps them from doing it or there's almost a self destruct element that they force themselves to push down on the on the landmine that they know that is there. You know, because I've seen it in both cases, I've seen it both with my folks and then also with my own marriage that fell apart. So I can totally relate to this film on several different levels.

And that idea of painting your ex in this light of just absolutely crazy. I mean, Sam Neill does not come off that great either, but Ajani is just out there and there are scenes where he is talking to her and she's like looking at her hands and moving her hands over themselves or taking a bedspread and like kind of almost like pretend ripping at this bedspread and it's just she 's insane the entire time and he can't get any sort of answers from her. I love the one conversation that he has where he's not looking at her and he's asking all these questions and she's answering him by nodding her head.

So there's no communication going on even though there is kind of the audience, we get to see the answers, but either he doesn't know or doesn't care. And I think it's probably more of the doesn't care kind of thing. And that's right around the scene where she starts slicing into herself with an electric carving knife, which then he tries out later on for good measure too. And it was another one of those moments where the film takes this turn.

And I think, OK, is this what this film is going to be because we've had these fights and everything. But then it starts to take it to this other level with this self mutilation. And I was like, oh, is that what this movie is going to be? No, not necessarily.

It keeps going in this other direction before we even get into that other stuff. I had mentioned the whole eyes and how important the eyes are, especially when it comes to identifying some of the doppelgangers that show up in this movie. And you guys know that I'm big fans of doubling and having doubles within films. The scene that really took me aback was when they go to the cafe to talk and we have this great shot of Ajani and Neil and they are not facing each other again, having a conversation where they are not facing each other, they are facing outward and the camera is pointed right at the two of them and it's on this 90 degree angle and they are sitting in front of mirrors and you don't see them reflected in the mirrors.

You don't see the camera reflected in the mirror and it's just like this absolutely wonderful and bizarre shot where it's almost like they are vampires. You don't see any sort of reflection of them whatsoever. And that was the first moment too where I really noticed this blue dress that Ajai is in, that she just wears through. I think the entire film, which is this great, just deep deep blue dress and just kind of like it's her symbol through the film.

And it was wonderful because the film plays into these primary colors so much and there's just so many color differentiations. It's like you could watch this film turn off this, the sound and just watch it for what colors are happening on screen. I remember the mirror scene the first time I watched it thinking back to it. It's, it's almost like neither of them exist in the relationship anymore.

They're just going through the motions. They're not as we find out later. Maybe I'm not still entirely sure that not even real people at this point. I got to go back a little bit too for the, for the conversation you were talking about whether you weren't facing each other.

She's grinding meat and that can't be an accident. I mean, it's, I mean, you could give her a head of lettuce. Ok? Cut that up.

But like you got the machine, she's got the meat, it's very deliberate in her actions and everything. And there's the separation. There's on the commentary, he talks about the separations between the characters and there was there were a lot of glass glassware between the two of them and this creating walls between them and the mirror itself can just be another division between what they want and what is really happening. Every time I watch it, I could, I could, I could pull a different symbolic reference out of each scene and there are those great moments where we have mirrored action in the film too and I'm not even sure what to make of some of them.

Obviously, there's the mirrored action of Sam Neill and Ajani in bed together at the beginning. And then you have Sam Neill and Bob's teacher who was also played by Isabel Ajani, which is one of the strangest things going on and that he just kind of, at first he recognizes her and it's like, is this some sort of joke? And then after that, he just seems to be ok with it that she is this complete double for his wife, different colored hair, different colored eyes going back to the eyes, but otherwise he seems to be ok with it.

But we have those two scenes that are similar, especially the way that their bodies are positioned. And then you get that one really strange part where Samuel comes home and Bob has been left on his own and he's, I think he's taken off his clothes so that he can put them in the bath or whatever. And then just like maybe two scenes later, we have the almost the exact same framing where he is taking off Isabella John's clothes as his wife or soon to be ex wife, not the Doppelganger teacher. And it's almost the exact same shot and it's just so bizarre.

And I think that might be the only time that he actually touches the other members of his family, like physically touches Bob and physically touches Isabella Johnny. I'm not sure about that, but it is, it's just this kind of weird mirroring of action too. There was a scene also where she does that. His wife does that to him as well.

Right. So that, that happens three times and then they end up naked on the floor and you think, ok, everything is good. But then the psychosis all kicks back in the idea of this sort of Doppelganger situation where it's Isabel Johnny playing the teacher and everything. What do you think that he's trying to get at with that?

Are you, do you think that it's Sam Neil's seeing his wife in other places and other people that it 's more of a symbolic use? Do you think that the universe in which they live? This is possible? The reason I bring this up and it's done in a completely different way without symbolic use really is to get ready to take a drink is in Bunuel's that obscure object of desire where he has two women play the same character.

And you would think, ok, well, you have two different characters. I mean, you have two different actresses playing one character. So I guess maybe one represents this and one represents that that's not necessarily the case with the way it's played there. So do you think that he's trying to make some sort of comment on Sam Neill's State as to why he's seeing this Doppelganger version of his wife picking up on that a little bit.

I was reminded just a touch of Lost Highway and the way that Patricia Arquette plays multiple characters in that and is she the same woman? Isn't she the same woman? And in that one, I can see it definitely being a lot more murky, especially like when we get, who is it? Balthasar Getty turning into another character when he's in jail or however that happened, it's been a long time since I've seen Lost Highway.

I don't know if that's really her or this ideal or I was really hoping that the movie eventually would show me. It was from one person 's point of view, which would then make everything a lot easier than, than it actually is. But given that there's no character's point of view, you're just observing the whole thing. I think a lot of this has to do with finding the perfect version of the person you're attracted to.

So I'm not sure if, an outside observer would have seen the school teacher look exactly the same way as Sam Neil's character did because she cares for the, so she's, she's outgoing, she's friendly, she's the exact opposite. She can share her feelings and is can be emotional in a, in a nonne way. There's a one line where Marx says that he's at war with women, which just to me is very, very telling. As far as, you know, typically you don't just come out and say that I'm at war with women, but he definitely seems to be in this I love.

Was it Margaret character, the friend of Anne and who he just openly loathes and it's not afraid to tell her that not at all. It's like that inner dialogue is just right there. I loathe you still gets her into bed though. That never works for me.

I'll tell you that. And the weird thing with her leg in the cast and stuff, it's like, what is that all about? It was an odd odd thing to put on the character just maybe make her to show that she is vulnerable. I don't know, we talked about the whole idea of making that perfect version and that maybe the teacher is that perfect version of Anna.

She is the everything that Mark's wife isn't except for the looks is very similar in the way that she looks. And then we've got his wife kind of making the perfect version of him at the same time. At least that's one interpretation of what we could see with what is going on in her life because there is a lot of stuff going on in her life that she doesn't want anybody to know about, which the way the film is presented, you have to accept it as that really happened because there's outside characters that witness this.

It's not just, it's not just Anna and Mark that are, that are privy to the oddness in the apartment. Shall we say? I was talking about the colors before and talk about a stark difference in colors. We've got the really light blue of Mark and Anna's apartment and then when it's Anna's own place and we can talk about the location, the physical location later.

But the apartment itself is as nice and neat in everything that their place is. This other place is completely run down. But then it's also, I think it's all in yellow and everything and just the color scheme is completely different when we move into her world and her sanctuary. I guess it is because really, it seems like she is the only one there and she keeps, I don't want to say she lures men in because men just keep wanting to find out what she's up to, which is just kind of bizarre.

Men are always investigating her literally in a lot of cases. But it's like they all seem to think that she owes them answers and they all come knocking at her door trying to find information either about her or about themselves. So it's just this kind of interesting way and then the way that she kind of pays them back a little bit with, oh, you want something from me? Well, here, let me show you what is really inside of me kind of again, literally with that and where they live is also very visually symbolic of their frame, their State of mind.

Helen is pretty much, you know, clutter free, organized carefree in a way Mark when he had the apartment with Anna, it was, it was just a little kid lived there. So it's a disaster all the time. But then Anna's busted up, broken down apartment that she renovates. It's I was hoping to see that she was rehabilitating herself, you know, mentally, but that was just a front.

So I was wrong. Also that opening, if you want to talk about setting up physical space and ideas, I mean, the opening of the film, it looks like we're watching a documentary either about Detroit or the Holocaust or something. We have all of this sort of vacant buildings and, you know, fencing and all of this and it just, it's just an interesting opening shot with the credits and all of that as we roll past through these vacant areas. Yeah, it was all shot in Berlin when the wall was up and just those to be able to see the guards on the other side of the wall from their apartment.

And just to have that wall there, right by where Anna's kind of secret apartment is just so visually striking and just such, it just speaks volumes as far as the divisions that we have between these people or possibly even men and women when it comes to, you know, looking at the world overall about the use of Berlin in the film and how also Berlin is used in other films. I mean, the most obvious that is used quite a bit is in Hedwig and the Angry Inch where there 's, you know, songs about Berlin Wall and this idea of identity and being split in half and sort of, I guess you get the same thing here, although it isn't as directly obvious.

I mean, it's more of a visual reference than it is someone explaining to you. Oh, the city is divided and then other uses of Berlin in film or even in music, I mean, something that would have came out a little under 10 years before this film is the Lou Reed album in those empty, empty streets that they have. It's like you barely see anyone on the street when they're out there other than, you know, I love the scene where Anna is walking to her apartment and she 's got the one private eye behind her and it's only like 10 ft behind her the whole time.

It's like you were the worst private eye ever, sir. Let me tell you that. No, he sure did. He got, he got fired by the Stasi and he had to do something.

So there you go. You know, just the world's worst secret cop and investigator other than, you know, we really don't see too many people out on the street other than the part where she has got blood pouring out of her mouth and has her hands clenched behind her and just this absolutely strange physical pose as she's walking down the street right in the middle of the street. And a car wrecker comes down the middle of the street and almost hits her with these again, primary colored vehicles on there and one of them was flying off.

I was just like, wow, you know, even this, what could be a simple scene turns into this just like gigantic set piece almost. It's like, whoa, there was some, there's a lot of stuff going on here and I almost don't feel like I'm worthy of trying to even begin to unpack this movie. But it was just so much fun that it was like, I want more people to see this than I want more people to be able to enjoy this movie the way that I did. Yeah, it's interesting, Chris that you brought up a lovecraft and if he was doing a, you know, an end of a marriage, the other thing that I got in this and I think it has a lot more to do with the way the shots are framed and it felt like an echo in a way.

Is it kind of reminded me at times of like contempt there is this sort of set the camera up over here and then we'll watch this couple kind of go at it on the other side of the room and they walk in and out of the frame and things like that because there's this whole sort of like end of the relationship that guard has in contempt and in a lot of ways I thought, you know, this kind of reminded me of that except with these other elements on top of it, I guess it could be contempt. It could almost be a little bit of weekend with the car crash.

Yeah, but the car crash doesn't go on for 10 minutes to touch on one other thing real quick that I didn't want to, I don't want to forget the electric knife scene when she goes to cut herself with it. He stops her, he bandages her up. He takes care of her and after that scene she kind of looks a little more, she, with her hair pulled back, I thought at first for a flash, I'm like, why is she dressed like a nun? Like her personality kind of changes and she stands up a little taller.

But then Sam Neil, sorry, Mark, he takes the knife and he cuts himself a bunch of times and she just walks by doesn't care and clearly he's cutting himself because he wants that same kind of attention from her. That was really sad. I really felt bad for him when it comes to her even cutting herself. If she's looking, if it 's a desperate cry for help kind of thing, or if it's one of those points in your life where you are just so numb to everything that you just want to feel something.

You know, I'm not going to get into the whole psychology of cutting and all this kind of stuff because I don't think that it's necessarily the same kind of thing, but it just felt like they were at such emotional straits that just to feel that physical pain was hopefully for them, something that was going to ground them in reality, which this movie definitely is. It lacks quite a bit. Well, I thought, I thought Mark's character the way he was going through trying because he was still trying to salvage what was left.

I thought his was, his actions were, were pretty understandable, I thought, but Anna was in a place that I couldn't comprehend. I mean, I could watch it unfold and then assign meaning to it. But I don't know if I've ever known anybody that I don't want, I don't want to disparage it and say, oh, off the rails. But, off the rails shall we say?

Yeah, the word unhinged kept coming to mind. You know, she felt like chaos. She felt like she was completely off the ground as it were and just out there somewhere, she kind of turned into her own mini force of nature. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good way to put it because she just, you never knew what she was going to do, whether she was going to laugh or cry and just the intensity that she gave off, she never restrained any of those emotions. No. No, she just, all the governors were off when it came to that.

Which makes her a fascinating character that I don't think I've ever seen before in a movie. Well, and then I guess we kind of have to talk about the scene in the subway too if you want to talk about completely unhinged. And probably one of, I don't know if I guess I would call it a really brave performance. It's a performance I've never seen in a film before and I don't know if I can think of anything that really even comes close.

I wanted to time how long this scene is, but I didn't this time around. But I did note to myself that it was about an hour and 15 minutes into the film, which is weird because it's a flashback, I think to kind of explain what's going on in her apartment, even though time isn't necessarily a linear thing in this story. It's definitely much more linear than I, you know, it really has any right to be. I mean, this really is kind of a straight ahead story most of the time as far as timeline goes.

So this seems to be this kind of strange flashback and just her having a fit in the subway tunnel. And I don't even know if that begins to describe what is going on, but that is just such raw force that's kind of going on screen. I can't even imagine the shooting of that or how you get yourself in that headspace to perform that. I mean, that was just falls out.

There's two things about that scene that I thought to myself as I was watching it, one is the counterpoint use of the music because the music is so sort of light compared to what I, what you would expect to telegraph that scene. I mean, you would put something that would be, you know, a lot more heavier edge or, you know, chaotic or something underneath it. And, he doesn't do that. He just lets her be the soundtrack in a lot of ways.

And the other aspect I thought of it is she's kind of by herself and this whole thing is going on and nobody comes down there meaning that there's no one from the public who isn't a character in this film in that scene. And I was wondering if the reality of the world meaning that if there was like a rush of people that came through or, you know, maybe a woman and her kids or an old lady or something, would she stop? Because I've seen this before where it's not so much with kids. Like, you'll see kids freak out in the store all the time and they don't care who's, who's around.

But with adults, like, someone will start crying or they'll get really upset and then when someone enters the room they'll shut up, they'll just stop, you know, 60 to 0 in, like, less than a second. They'll just because they're like, I don't want to perform in front of people. I don't want to let on that. I'm upset or there 's something going on and I was just sort of watching it going.

I wonder if, if someone came down there, would it just all end or would she just continue to sort of like, scream and have all this fit and rage as sort of the world goes by her? Then it even goes beyond the emotional into the physical where her body is affected by this and just the goo and ooze and everything and even in the American cup, which we'll talk about after the break, the American cut of this, you see eyeballs on her hands and stuff, she physically is changing as all of this stuff is going on and it's just, it's great too that she is carrying groceries and just slamming the groceries up against the wall.

So we're kind of getting telegraphed this, you know, the milk and the eggs and all this kind of stuff before we even see all the goop just pouring out of her and it's just, oh my God, just, it's one of those scenes that I don't think I'll ever be able to get out of my mind, which I kind of appreciate and, you know, nothing in this is accidental or coincidental that, that she's destroying milk and eggs and she has given birth to something, you know, it's all, I, the second time I watched this, I saw this kind of as a, as a rebirth, like, like she just everything, all the, all the stuff that she didn't want in her oozed out of her.

She freaks out, she becomes a different person and like crosses that line and she's someone different on the other side of that kind of like Sam Neill did when he found the stuff in the fridge and the camera does that spin as he's spinning and you throw up a couple of times and then you keep watching and he's got that look on his face when he walks out to the balcony. Those are the two times where the characters, either they say, all right, this is who I am now or they've made a decision. This is who I need to be. There's got to be some kind of pregnancy fertility thing with the groceries that she had, that she just smashed across the tunnel.

I maybe I might be reading too much into it, but I don't think he's the director here has done anything that was just a happy accident. He seems like the kind of guy that plans everything out and even the way that we kind of have a few different things that I was talking about. The echoes and the mirroring of everything we go from her freaking out in the subway back to her talking about this whole story of two sisters, Faith and Chance, which we got a little bit of earlier and she just is still kind of going on about it.

I won't pretend to say that I necessarily understand it 100% but it definitely seems to kind of be speaking to this idea of something dying or something being born as you were talking about because she talks about. What I miscarried, there was sister faith and what was left is this chance. So I had to take care of my faith to protect it. MIKE WHITE: And then we also get Mark telling a story that kind of doubles.

He tells one version of it earlier in the film. And then after he has his moment after he gets on his motorcycle and is tearing off kind of hiding the evidence a little bit as far as who was in the apartment. And all this, he sees a dead dog in the river and he had told this whole story about this dog dying. I think it was underneath the house.

And that's when we kind of go back into a little bit of the intrigue, the spy story stuff, which we have spent almost the entire movie after that initial scene of him quitting. We have this long stretch of time where there's nothing to do with the spy stuff. And then we have it kind of come back again because we will see this man later on in the film, that dog didn't die of old age. What about you?

Fuck our man won't confide or deal with your successor. He wants you. In fact, Mark, there is no successor. We can take care of drowning dogs, but please help us take care of the drowning world.

Don't you think it's uneconomical to waste yourself on dogs? Even dogs you love. It's interesting that both times we have death involved with these tail they keep bringing up and it definitely seems like not only is something dying inside of them but it might mirror the dying of the marriage. Well, I know that there are a lot of folks from this film that are still out there.

I know the director is still out there. I know Sam Neill is still out there. I know Isabella John is out there. So, I mean, it is a 33 year old film or so, but these people are still kicking around.

So Mike in your research, who did you try to reach out to and what was some of the reactions on this? Well, tried to talk to Johnny. I didn't get anywhere with that. I tried to talk to Sulkowski and apparently he is sick of talking about Possession, which is kind of sad.

So maybe we can get him on again if we do another one of his films. He is definitely one of those directors that I want to explore more of his stuff. And hopefully we can actually do another one of his movies. One of these days, the funniest one though had to be Sam Neil who I tweeted at and he got back to me within minutes, which I found to be very interesting.

I asked him if he would want to be on the show and he did make the point that a lot of the people that were involved with the film are still alive and he would rather not talk about it at this time. So I think he might have some interesting stories to tell maybe after a few people involved have passed away. So let this be a time capsule to our younger listeners to investigate with Mr Neal after a few more years have gone by. It 's interesting that he wasn't a total.

No, no. And I said, notice that I didn't ask you to explain the events of San Diego. Does anyone have a question that does not relate to Jurassic Park or the incident in San Diego which I did not witness? I just remember him when I was a kid.

I think it was maybe when I was in high school, he did this, I think it was either a series or it was like a short sort of special. But he was Merlin. I remember Merlin TV, show that he did. So I remember that.

So he has been in so many things that I absolutely love Hunt for Red October and Dead Calm. Just so many great things. I remember when, when we reviewed this, in order to give a proper context to the listeners for Outside The Cinema of how Sam Neil is in this. I said, OK, imagine you're John Carpenter and you have Sam Neill and you've cast him in the mouth of madness and you want to tell him how you want him to portray the crazy, the psychosis the character is going to go through.

I imagine Carpenter said, all right, dude, you remember possession? I need a third of what you did there in my movie because I've never seen him like this before. That scene of him in the rocking chair after watching it the first time. It just made me so sad that nobody's heard of this.

Like I said, I had known about it, had read about it a little bit. It wasn't until I read Kayla Janice's Book House of Psychotic Women where she dedicated quite a few pages to the film and just kind of, she does some really interesting examinations of stuff and just kind of relates films back to her life and vice versa and her describing the madness of these characters and everything. Really, you know, that was, that was the moment where I was just like, I have to see this now and then it was lucky because right around that time is when it came out on Blu Ray in the UK.

And you know, a friend of mine had it and it was just like, ok, great. Let's check it out. We're going to take a break and play an interview with the co writer of the film Frederic Tuten. After these important messages, everyone wants to spice things up in the bedroom.

Here's an offer you won't want to miss for a limited time. You'll get 50% off just about any one item at Adam And Eve.Com. Yes. Get 50% off when you use the coupon code booth at checkout as in John Wilkes Powers or the projection booth.

But that's not all. You'll also receive three free adult dvds and free shipping on your entire order too. Good to be true. It's not check out Adam And Eve.Com today for this special offer.

Once again, that coupon code is B double oth at Adam And Eve.Com.

Speaker 4: It's the Daily Grindhouse Podcast.

Speaker 2: I got your boy hanging you. No business bond insecure junkyard mother.

Speaker 4: I'm staring Dr freaks. Am I the only one who is concerned about the naked woman tied to a bed. Johnny a bomb. I put out the trash Joe Cosby.

Soft core picture. You just said soft core picture. Warhawk Tanzania as Warhawk Tanzania, you do not come to my t talking about busting ass. When it comes to cinema, we talk the cream of the crop while scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Find us on Stitcher, itunes, Facebook and of course on Daily Grindhouse.Com, the Daily Grindhouse Podcast because you deserve it. Hey, fans, this is Reverend Scott. Just want to tell you about Outside The Cinema. Great company.

They review cult films, any cult film, every cult film and it's something you should tune into. So if you get a chance go to the website, look these guys up Outside The Cinema and find out what the hot cult films are today. What's going on? These guys are right on the cutting edge of reviewing cult movies.

If you're a cult member or you want to be a cult member, you're thinking about being a cult member. Your mom's a cult member, your dad's a cult member. Your damn mother in law is a cult member. Tune in the Outside The Cinema, baby.

You know, find out what's going on. Reverend Scott and that's out. MIKE WHITE: I read that you had written a lot about Brazilian cinema back in the day.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I wrote I was very proud, I'm still very proud to say to people that especially the Brazilians that I was the first North American that I know of who actually wrote about cinema novel. I wrote about it for The New York Times and I wrote about it for Vogue Magazine and I was a very, I loved it and I was a very big champion of it. And I had very good friends in the, in those, in that group. I was very, very close to for a while to Nelson PD Os Santos who did Vida Se.

It's a film I adore. One of the, I think it's one of the great, great realist films, really great in any country, any language, any place. And I knew Barosa quite well, not quite well but well enough to be good friends and to see each other in Paris when he was there. So it was a wonderful moment that was in 68 and 69 and I love the films.

I love them. I love Brazil. So it was very powerful for me and I wanted to make everything I wanted to make them better known as much as I could ever have the power to do. So I was very fortunate because the editor at the times, let me do it piece on them.

And then Vogue Magazine of all places, let me do a piece on them. So I'm very, I'm very proud of that. MIKE WHITE: Yeah, that's 11 area of cinema that I just haven't found time to get into yet, but I definitely want to. I've got a few of Roche's films.

They're so interesting. They're just, they're really fascinating, I think visually beautiful. And well, you'll see, you'll see, you're, I think you're gonna be interested. Look at, look at whatever you do, please look at Ro at Per and Per D Santos film called Vida Sectors.

Barren Lives. The Dry Lives. It's from a novel adapted from a novel but it's, it's, it 's really, it's totally beautiful. And strong and powerful and moving and sad.

So people get. MIKE WHITE: So worked up about like the French New Wave and all that, but they never seem to look at too many other places. Maybe Italy, maybe Germany. But, you know, looking south of the Border, nobody ever seems to do that.

It's the same thing. I mean, I don't know what it is. I guess we're in a way somehow stupidly ignorantly. Eurocentric.

I mean, yeah, there 's been a great neglect for Latin and South American work. I mean, there was a moment when everyone got excited when you Garcia Marquez and those group of those people were writing wonderful new novels. But apart from that, I mean, I don't think we know much about Latin South American painting or art or anything. Certainly cinema, you know, but the Brazilians made great films.

There was a moment, I think someone just told me recently that they're doing wonderful things still. I don't know what they're about. But I'm going to find out if I can. My situation is that I was, I, who should be so lucky when I was in graduate school, getting my doctorate at NYU.

I was doing it very slowly. One of the reasons was that I wanted to do everything else but get the doctorate. I didn't want, I didn't want to take those classes. I didn't want to be in the, I didn't like it.

I didn't like it at all. I love some of the classes. I had some of the seminars I had with wonderful people. But by and large it was a grinding enterprise so that I would just try to escape and I would write art reviews.

I used to write for the times. I was a sort of stringer for the times to write art, art reviews. And actually I went to Sao Paulo and that's when I, when I think I was in 69 when I went back again to see the Brazilian friends of mine. So I went to Sao Paulo being an Ali, I mean, I went to Venice and I did a lot of major stuff for a guy who had no art education and I don't know how it happened because other people would have killed to do what I was doing.

And I was writing for Vogue occasionally on film. There were a couple of us who were doing it, not, we were not on staff. We just, there was Arthur Slesinger Junior. There was, I'm trying to remember the, some, some people, interesting people were writing for Vogue and I thought it was the, I guess they cast me as the sort of the intellectual cinema guide.

So I did piece on the Land, Renee, I did a piece on Milas Forman. But a piece of, I mean, I'm in a retrospective at the, at the Museum Of Modern Art and I later met him and became very good friends with him and we're still very close. He's in his nineties, mid nineties now and he's working on making films. So I had that experience of being fortunate enough to write about films and, for major places, you know, and be paid really reasonably and more than reasonably, it helped me pay for graduate school in those days.

It was very different. It 's not like what it is now. Of course, it's not that expensive. So it was really for me, a kind of amateur, love and, I can't say hobby.

It wasn't a hobby that I was, I was involved in. But I was, I was, I was a sort of, I mean, in a certain moment, and I thought to myself, why am I getting my doctorate? I could write about films. I could become a film critic and I was like, no, that's not nourishing enough and it's too it's too, frightening a prospect to be a freelance, a free write anywhere.

You have to get an to like to work and you have to pitch the work, then you have to get the work written, then you have to get the payment and then if that editor goes away or dies or whatever, they're faced with the new editor who wants his or her own crew, they don't want to take the Thank you. So I thought this is not stable and I kept working on the phd until I finished it and eventually got my professorship at City College CCNY. That was my career. And then there was a moment when I mean, I was a, I was, I was so I still saw a lot of the people from Brazil when they come to New York and would stay with me.

I even sleep on the couch. We weren't very, we weren't very elegant about it. No one had no one had money. So I had a couch, Nelson would come and stay with me.

And then one day I got to know, I knew some people in the film world in Paris. One was Danielle Thompson on whose films you might know, she 's started as a, as a screenwriter working with her father Gerard. Ay, he made all those wonderful comic French films and that's his daughter. Do Thompson was the married name.

And she began to write with him. And then eventually she directed films that are very popular like Lebo Laboe one, Labo Two. I remember the star of it, Sophie myself. She continued her cinema writing and doing and now she's running with big property in France.

And one day she phoned me and she said, listen, there's a director, a Polish director who wants to make a film and he wants to make it in English. And so I don't know what to make of it. And he has a story, he has a sort of a story, a treatment, I suppose. And he has, and he has a producer, I think the producer then was Pierre Caro.

I just can't remember that was who it was the first producer, second producer was Mary Laura Reyre. And I said, well, she will send it to you and tell me what you think. So I did, I read it and I really loved it. I loved, I loved the outline of it.

I mean, that's all I knew. And then he called me, he and his producer called me and said that would be up for having a visit by Zoki. And I said, sure I'd love to meet him anyway. And he came on a rainy day in Manhattan and was staying at the hotel Gramercy Park Hotel, which was then a very wonderful dump.

It was a wonderful, elegant dump. And it was elegant because it was in a, right on the Gramercy Park park and it was floppy and wonderful and reasonable and very, I can't say cheap but reasonable. Now, they've turned it into a shi place. You can't believe it.

I mean, it's like, you know, $1000 a drink, but it was different then. It was really, it had a kind of quiet, old fashioned elegance, a dustiness to it, but not filthy, wonderful. And Andre was there. I went to see him on this rainy day and we talked, I told him how much I like the thing.

And he said, well, can we come to an arrangement about working together and blah, blah, blah. And I think that I forgot what year it was that spring. I went to France to Saint Tropez to work with him. And we, that's how we did it for a couple of years.

We, I, we had project, we start, we started working with one producer and he sort of disappeared. Poor devil. He tried hard, but he didn't have the money and he, I think he overextended himself for all. I know he's somewhere hiding out.

He used to say that he say I'm Interpol is looking for me. It's very hilarious. Yeah. It was touching.

He was a touching man. He was a kind of miso maniac and kind of a dreamer. I don't know how he got funded. I mean, this mysterious stuff about the film world and when you're involved in it, you see how I'm not speaking about America.

I don't know what goes on here, but how everything is, it's mythomaniac world. And it's fascinating how many incredibly crazy people with facades of complete sanity or in the, in the, in the profession, so to speak or the business, you know, I guess you have to have hope that something will happen. So you have to invent things, you know, like this actor is going to be in the film or that actor is going to be in the film, that actress is definitely going to be in the film. I haven't even spoken to the person yet or the agent yet.

They're making it all up. I think that's, it's really true. It's what happened. I mean, I remember when Car Ro said to, he said to us, I'm making this up a little bit.

He said, be Bet Lancaster, I know Burt Lancaster is interested in this film and I said, really, I'm Bert, Bert. Yes, we have blocked money, whatever it's called. There was always some kind of money deal portion of it went to making films from foreign sources, American mostly. Yes, we have my and who else is interested.

I mean, he could have made up any name and we said, but Pierre, have you spoken to Mr Lancaster? Oh, no, no. What about his agent. Oh, no, I haven't been able to reach him.

So, what do you think? Oh. But I know they'll love this film so I'm sure they'll do it. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about.

You know, it's so crazy. I mean, it's almost fun and if you're not dependent on the source for income, I mean, some people write, some people never make a film, they write treatments and they write, they doctor up scripts and they make a good living as they say. But I mean, if you're a screenwriter or something like that and taking your chances and doing things on spec, it's very complicated one day make a parenthesis. There was a Italian producer who was rather respectable trying to remember the films he made, I can't remember his name.

Respectable guy. He came to me in Zurowski and he said that they saw after, after possession, people began to think that we could be a team that we could write and make films together, which I thought was great. I love the idea. In fact, we had other people interested and we worked with on scripts for them.

But he's a siren, of course, that he said we want you to do a film and said, listen, I'll let you, I'll let Frederick do the, let him make the, let him like the treatment, whatever he wants to do. And I like it, we'll work on it. So we agreed, on a, for me on a sum of money for the treatment. And I said, I'm going to Rome.

But here's my bank in Paris. And so just please, wire the money, let's say, let's say the money was 3000. I'm making it up and I said, wire 1500 then I'll give the other 1500 on completion when I give it to you. Fine.

Oh, no problem. Everything. So a week or two ago by, and I'm in Rome and he calls me at the hotel and says, how's the treatment going? And I say, well, it's interesting that you should ask me this because I've been checking in with my bank and there's no deposit, there's no money for no money in my account from you.

There's a more, I promise Mike, this is, it was hilarious. A dramatically long pause. And he said with Ron and dignity and chagrin quote, you mean you mean you on you? Right?

Only for the money? Oh, and I said, well, you know, I don't write only for the money, but I write when I have the money, right? It was hilarious. And then, you know, and I it was hilarious and I remember one of the people when you're in that world, people tell you a lot of stories and there are all these great stories I think 11 of my French friends said to me, you know, Frederick East, she said, she said it wasn't Daniel.

Some of his own friends in this business, you don't write when you get the check, you write when the check clears the bank. So anyway, to go back to possession, I met Zoki. We worked one summer at, with Dominique Schneider's house. It 's a whole story, a wonderful woman and a wonderful woman and also became a later, later on, became a novelist.

We, she had a house in San, how much more elegant and charming and lovely. A house in Saint Tropez. We all had all different rooms. She had guests come and go.

It was, it was fun and we had to cook everything and then NJ would work all morning and then have a break for lunch and then we work in the afternoon and then at night we would just hang out, play cards, sometimes play Ping Pong, get up in the morning and work again. Yeah, there were wonderful times and it was wonderful to work with him. He was he and I said this, I think on that DVD. I don't know if you have that, but there's a DVD where I'm interviewed.

It was wonderful to work with him. That's all I can say. It was a pleasure, a great pleasure. He's, he's, he's brilliant.

He's brilliant. He's, he's, first of all, he speaks in English almost. You can't say better than I, but certainly on that level, I mean, high level of English grammar. Everything perfect when he speaks English.

It's beautiful when he speaks French. People in French don't know. He's French. They don't know, he's French.

They're kind of, they're kind of amazed. And they, oh, no. Yeah. Oh, then they had, he said to me once and they have to make up something and they have to say, oh, yeah, I detected a slight accent.

He said they have to say that because the French can't believe that anyone can speak as French as well as they do. So they have to have a cushion for that. But it was great to work with him. We worked hard.

We laughed, we had fun and we moved along and it was then the first producer Dis disappeared. As I said, he literally disappeared. And I had been in Paris and he put us up, he put up up with Sam Waterson. He thought that Sam Waterson was might be the might just play the Sam Neil part.

And Sam Waterson and I were put up in a wonderful hotel, I think Plaza tonight, one of exclusive expensive first rate five star, whatever, 1000 star hotel. And when we came back to America, a week later, the hotel had written to us saying that Mr Carro or whoever it was sorry to use his name, but Mr whoever it is, Mr X had not paid the Bill and could we kindly reimburse the hotel? I didn't have, I didn't have the money. I simply didn't have the money, but I think Sam honorably did I would have done it.

Had, I had the money, I was just, you know, still in graduate school. So I had nothing. I was living on nothing. But these are, these are, there 's always and around the making of any film, there are wonderful stories.

I mean, obviously apocalypse now and in the film about making Apocalypse now of these films about making the films very varying interest. But the stories are always interesting because there's too many personalities involved and so many mishaps and so many hopes. And so it's really just making the film and my own experience in making the physically, I mean, I've worked on other scripts but the on the on hands, hands on presence of it being involved in it, looking at the choosing within the actors and actresses. When we were in Berlin, we went to, we did the interviews together.

I mean, he put me in a position where I was very, very involved in like with him in choosing people, looking at people looking for. That was, that was a rare thing, Mike, I mean, no American, I think write film, film writers have that have that power, not, it wasn't the power, it was the pleasure of it that was done to me. So it was. So I was in Berlin one day we were shooting, it was shooting, I was in Paris and he called me, I would come to Berlin right away.

Excuse me. He had to come to Berlin right away, right away, right away because we had to write the character out of the film. They had some conflict. I don't know what it was, but he didn't want to work with this actor.

He wanted, he didn't want any and he wanted to just get the whole thing. So we had this was, I mean, at the time it's you just doing it when you look back at it, you think what a wonderful opportunity. I had been to Berlin once before with him when we were looking for locations with him with the first and the first producer. But now I came back again and I stayed in a hotel, the same hotel where I think we were the Kinski together and it was adorable.

It was just, and he was working hard on shooting. So we had to sit there, watch before, you know, before and even at night at night, we rewrite this whole thing and that was an adventure. And I watch, I was on the set when we, when we, when we were shooting about on the set. So I saw that beautiful that there's a moment, a great moment when Isabella Johnny is coming up the staircase and the camera takes her up the staircase.

It's just a fantastic way that when I think about it, his Polish director of photography was actually holding the camera by hand. It was, it was, it was totally a wonderful experience. It was, it was one of the major experiences of my life. And I've written to and j to say that I've written to him, I wish we could work together again because for me, it was one of the most signal and marvelous times I've ever had in any regard, especially with work.

So I find him brilliant and endearing and I would, I would love to work with him again and I actually wrote him that and he's in Poland now and I don't know what he's up to, but we write to each other on the occasion, funny little things we say to each other. You know, and so I said to and J let's try to make a film, let's make a film again before we die. And he wrote back in our, in our dreams. He said, but that's how we could write in our dreams.

I mean, to come up with that expression in English for another person, another language. So, yes, it was. So as I say, I was on the set with Isabella Johnny and I was so I knew, you know, that the director of photography was her former husband and had a child with him was, you know what I mean? You look at the Bruno Neigh who went on to make his own films.

He made films. Yeah, they had been together and she had a child with him and now he was the, he was the director of photography. Was he, what was he? Director?

Photography. Yeah, he was the director of photography for the film. I'm pretty sure that Bruno Neigh. So in all, I mean, I look now it 's what, what's very interesting to me is this when the film came out, it had maybe one, I maybe I exaggerate but maybe, maybe just maybe one good review in the French Press.

And it was the first page of Le Monde which is pretty prestigious and the, and the, and the reviewer wrote basically, like this is the, this is it, this is the most amazing film ever made. It brings down the house on cinema and recreates it everything, you know, it was very exaggerate, hyperbolic. But and I'm not sure convincing, but anyway, it didn't do well otherwise, in terms of the press, I'm not sure what happened when he went to Cannes Festival except that Isabella Johnny won the Sear for that film that year, which was remarkable because she had never won a Sear before ever.

And she had worked with Truffaut, she had worked with Truffaut and Adele as DH and all those other films that's nothing. And here she is with Zurowski and she gets the Czar. So that brought up his credit with certainly the acting world. But the film was badly reviewed.

I mean, it was reviewed negatively and that a variety had very bit of little, little things at it that would mean spiteful, little things I thought. So. That's it. And then it came to America.

I got a note from some from whatever long and short of it is. I had to sign a paper that I would agree to edits for the American viewing. And my producer who, Marie Loreal, who had been always wonderful to me and fair to me and very fair and very honorable, behaved honorably because she didn't have to continue paying me after the work was done with Pierre Caro, but she made up with the money, he didn't pay me. And then we started working again on a new new round of script writing and provision and she paid me for that too.

Not the great sums. Believe me, they were negligible sums. But you know, the experience was worth it for me. I mean, and also even those days, $1000 was a fortune for me.

So she wrote to me, she called me. She said, look, would you please sign these papers releasing us to make these cuts? Because I didn't realize that once you're working on a script, you have the what they call the moral, the moral, right? So you just, they just can't cut or do anything without the permission of the director in the run of the writer.

And I said, yes, not, no. And she said, please do it. It's important to us. Another siren.

Please do it. It 's important to us because we want the film to be seen in America. Little that I know little that I know that they cut almost 40 minutes from the film. They just cut out the heart of the film and they wanted to make a horror film.

They just wanted to make it a horror film of is about Johnny and this monster and they opened it here, I think on Halloween, I mean, it tells you everything small of you making a horror film for Halloween. So, that was it. And then I didn't hear anything more about it. It sort of vanished and slowly, but the reason last year, for example, in the last year, people have been young people in New York especially.

And so I've been asked to speak in film for them with the screen and possession. I'm sort of like, it makes me amazed. It amazes me how many people know about the film when I ever say I'm associated with it or they know about it. I'm like a hero.

I can't believe it. No one I've read written five novels, a book of short stories. I get some fan mail on the occasion but nothing like this full of possession. And it's, and I, and I wrote to, and by the way, I wrote to Andre and I said to him, this man Mike White wants to do an interview with me a podcast.

Are you OK about that? He said, yeah, I should do it. He said, but I'm sick, sick of doing interviews about possession. He said, I'm sick of being a legend.

Very funny. But it's amazing how it's been rediscovered by another generation, by a very young, interesting generation. It's fascinating and they love this film. They totally love it.

So that's extraordinary. I met someone at Kim the place that says DVD S here, you know, in New York City, but Tim in New York City, he's one of those young clerks who was a cinema, cinema fan. I mean, he's like, he, you know, he like when people used to know about baseball who won, who was on the first base in the, in the World Series in 1935 they know all these things. So one day I came in to ask if they had possession and he said, we only have, I think the blue and blue, I don't know what, what they're talking about.

It's too bad. I thought I could see it again. He said, oh, you see that? And I said, yeah, I actually worked on the film and all of a sudden it was like a blaze of fire.

Oh my God, it's you, did you do that? Really? And he told his coworkers and they came to meet me. It was, I have to say I've never been so celebrated.

That's what I've been working on for working on that film. It was very sweet and I'm very happy. I'm happy, I'm happy in a lot of ways for my, for the film FJ. It's, it's, it's terrific that he got to the recognition.

It's getting that great recognition now, I think, and look, you're interested in it, for example. So, that's, I don't know, that 's, I'm long winded about this. I thought so. I don't know if I went over the bounds of what you wanted to know or not know.

MIKE WHITE: No, no, that was wonderful.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much.

Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I wish that he could come to America and show that I have a real retrospective at the Moma. That would be lovely. I think he doesn't want to travel. He said there's too much bureaucracy involved and too much stuff and just visas and things, you know, he's in sort of a quiet mode living outside of Warsaw, I think, with his brother in the same house, with his brother, I think.

I'm not sure entirely it could change in a time. But he's a reflective man and unlike most people I know, including professors, writers, painters, et cetera, especially for writers. He's a, he's a totally, he's a reader. He reads everything in different languages.

He reads everything. I mean, he just reads, he's a reader and that moves me a lot and he reads reflectively intelligently. We talk about books sometimes in the old days and it was a miracle, even his ideas about contemporary art. But striking, even I didn't agree with him all the time.

He had, he had ideas that were, that were thoughtful. They weren't just, you know, prejudices, reflection of prejudices. I don't like this. I like that.

No yet. So I have, I must say I totally admire him and I wish I could see more of a, I was, I wrote them. In fact, I just occurred to me, I wrote to him a few months ago saying, how would you feel if I came to Warsaw in the spring to see you? He said I would love that if you could do it if you come?

He's not. I said I'm not traveling, I'm not going anywhere. So I might do that now that we're talking about it. I knew it was something I wanted to do in the may be what it was I was thinking about.

Yeah. So tell me, Mike, what else do you want to ask me anything or what? I was very curious. MIKE WHITE: Had you worked on films before I knew you had written about films.

Have you ever worked on a film before? It was totally, it was, it was just totally that Danielle said he could be a good person to do it and I'll tell you what, I miss the side. It was very, very funny is that when I got to know and j a little bit better, he said to me and I hope I want to write about this someday. He said to me, you know, when I, when I was waiting to find out, you know, waiting to meet you and wondering who you would be.

He said, when you came in the door on that rainy day and you were wearing glasses, glasses, a long rain coat, a rain hat and it had a big umbrella and I saw you in the doorway. I said, this is my man. I said, why? He said I didn't want to work with some slick Slick Hollywood, some some Slick Hollywood screenwriter who knew all the ways to write to all the right ways to make a film and not the way I think a film should be made.

So no, that was it. So I had no, no film writing experience. No script writing experience. None.

Just the reviewing for those magazines. Oh, I did some other stuff. Maybe for take one. I forget I did some more reviews.

I did something on mustache's film, The Mother and the Whore. I did interviews with Betta, I did interview BBBB Bet Lucci one who did China is near Gina. Gina's Regina. So I was in that circle, I was in that writing about arts painting painting as well by the way.

But in that film, writing film World Circle, you know what I mean? The Cine Circle in New York, but I never actually had written the script. So we sat down, it was, it was wonderful. And you know, we just, I can't explain it.

It was just like a magical time. We worked very hard, we fool around and then, you know, we, and when he was w I would write a little scene with him and he'd say to me, he didn't say like this is shit and just say, I don't know if this works and then he would buy another thing he'd say, oh, if you can write this, you can write anything. You know, it was very wonderful. The dialogue and the how can I put it, the desire to make a great film?

Not a great film. Yes. And they let that take that back the desire to make the film he, and eventually I envisioned and I think that was the, that was the key uncompromising. He's uncompromising and it probably has hurt his career, you know, you know, it's probably really has hurt his career and he just won't, he won't, he won't, he won't bow, he just won't, he'll do the films he wants to do.

That's it, period. And, so anyway, that's, that's the thing to say about him really? And exciting intellectually. MIKE WHITE: So, what was your reaction when you first saw Possession?

And when did you finally see the full movie? The Russians? I mean, we saw the full, I think I saw the first Full thing at Bianco. I forget.

Where is it? It's that little place outside of Paris where they have screening rooms and editing rooms and everything. And I was shocked actually, I was shocked because I never remembered ever, ever in my whole life working with him. Ever, ever thought there actually was to be a physical monster.

I never thought that when we did the script, I kept thinking, well, if she sees something behind a bathroom curtain, an eye or she sees it, I never thought in my life there was actually going to be this monster until I was in Berlin working with him. And when we were doing the shooting, in fact, and my producer said, do you want to come to the airport with me? The monster has arrived? I said what monster?

She, you know, I said Grimaldi, I don't know which guy did it. Some of those guys did. Yeah, the monsters have arrived. Well, the monster cost much more than, I mean, the monster was like 1000 times more than I ever got for working on more than 1000 times, 5000 times more than I ever got for working all those two years on the film.

And I was shocked iii, I, so when I saw the film, I was, I was kind of amazed that this thing exactly was physically. I thought it was something that you would never know that it was ambiguous that you weren't sure even if it was true. But then of course, because even in the scene when she's in the tunnel and she's giving birth to it, you don't see, I don't remember seeing a monster come out of her womb. But it's, it's all, it's all somehow I thought could be surmised to be imagined by the viewer.

But that's what's shocking to me. And I should not have been also shocked that the camera work was, the camera was so moved so quickly that the cuts were so quick that the scenes were so dramatic. I was used to some other kind of things. So when you see it, this is for anyone to know any writer to know what you see on the page is not what you see on the screen and for the alphabet, you know, it's very different.

It's really different. And since he's the director, it's his, it 's his creation on the, on the, on the screen. You're just writing it. So that was it.

I mean, it's, it 's fascinating how generational it is because I think that there are people who are a little bit younger than myself. I'm not so young anymore, but they, some younger people in the fifties or sixties, they're not responsive to the film. We're talking about 2020 year olds and 25 year olds that Gaga for it. Gaga.

There's nothing like it in film and no one, no one's ever made a film like this before. It's so I'm very pleased with that. I'm very pleased with that and looking back at the film now, I see how really more beautiful it was than I had some reservations. I liked it.

But now I see something now even I see after all this time, like those kids see things in it. I didn't know little, little touches, little moments, little wonderful magical. It really is unlike anything else. You just, it's unlike a certain fact, anything in America or anything the French would produce, maybe only it can only be done because it's a kind of expression of cinema that is really made anymore.

So it's a whole different ethos different if you look back at his earlier films. I mean, they're really extraordinary, you know, the third part of the night, which is really about his father who during an occupation was giving blood to make having what was it called? Lice or something. Lice is sucking his blood so they can make you a anti Typhus Typhoid back serum for the Russian Front.

That was a fascinating and beautifully short film, beautiful. And Leonin said, De Me, which is Roy Schneider's film. Amazing. He was a boy when he made that film.

So, yeah, his film history, his film gray is extraordinary. MIKE WHITE: All right, we are back and we're talking about possession. So I want to ask you guys, why do you think the film is called possession? What do you think, Chris before I answer that, I have to say this is the first movie I've taken notes on in like 4.5 years.

Yeah, because I wanted to make sure that my answers made sense and I don't sound like a dummy. So I came up with a couple of reasons here. The one that, that made the most sense was the last one that I thought of. And I think it's the feeling of ownership like she's Mark's possession and he wants to hold on to her.

It doesn't necessarily have to be supernatural, but their personalities make them seem like they're possessed. So really, I have no clear cut answer just like this movie. I definitely don't see it as exorcist type possession in that way. It's more of an emotional possession be it as Chris said about you're with someone, they're your wife or husband or whatever.

But also I think the idea of possession in terms of an emotional State being possessed with a thought and idea and how that can be a motivator or a driver to make you do things that maybe you don't necessarily normally do, like, cut yourself with an electric knife. Yeah, I guess I can see where you guys are coming from as far as the whole idea of owning someone because really so much of the film at first anyway, feels like it's this kind of struggle for ownership of Anna between Mark and Heinrich. And at one point, I guess there was another character that was in the film, which was Anna's ex husband.

So there would have been yet another person out there that had at one time possessed her. So it would have been interesting to kind of see how that would have played out. But yes, it definitely feels like I was saying earlier. It feels like people think that Anna owes them something and are trying to get there because there's really, there's not that much religion stuff going on.

I mentioned the whole sister, faith and sister chance thing. And then we get the one scene of her in a church staring imploring up to this Christ figure and then she's doing the Harvey Keitel Moan, which I was very happy about anytime you put the words Harvey Keitel and moan together. It is not a good time. Unfortunately, she was wearing clothes while she was doing it.

Maybe we need to change the name of the Keitel Moan to the Johnny Moan because I think she did it before Keitel. Well, that sounds way more exotic and acceptable and something I would like to see again. She's been in so many interesting films and this definitely is one of them, but I can't say that I've ever seen her in anything as challenging as this one other than ishtar one of the cool things that's floating around out there and I kind of put cool in quotation marks is the US version of the film. Did either of you guys get a chance to try and suffer through the American cut of this?

Yes, I did. I unfortunately did not. I kind of felt that it might be better for me to never watch it. I think he might be right because then I just have the what he intended instead of you know, the Brazil happy ending cut, which I'm sure is kind of what went on with that, but I'm very curious to hear about it.

I think they definitely took a different look at the word possession because I think they were definitely playing up more into that exorcist field when it came to the title and what they thought the film was, well, it would have been more palatable for an American audience. I think that Possession the European cut is more of a, an art film that happens to have supernatural and, or horror elements. It's kind of like, like I was, I brought up guard already and stuff like that. I mean, I think it really kind of fits into that.

Maybe even Bergman to some extent, you know, like scenes from a marriage. Yeah, exactly. So, it has that kind of thing going on. But obviously if you're going to give horror elements to a distributor in the early eighties, they're going to want to play that up because that will do better than Bergman at the box office.

And the US cut there is a lot of post effects that are in here that relate to trying to bring that stuff out. One of the worst is at the very end where he's going up the stairs and there's all that stuff that's just horrible. There's sort of this, I don't even know what they would even call it nowadays. I want to say it's like a solar effect.

Totally solarization. Yeah. Yeah. Where it goes from being in color to getting into these like weird psychedelic colors and everything and it just, it doesn't work.

It just looks horrible. And also that whole thing, like I talked about in the front with all the blight, you know, the abandon the gates and fencing and all that stuff, that stuff's cut down and it kind of flies by really fast with the titles. They basically cut that in half and try to make it less contemplative like he actually wants you to look at this stuff. He wants you to realize what you're looking at in some way.

And in the US cut, it's like, ok, there you go. There's a broken window and keep going. So it's like, you know, we got to get on to this kids. We don't have time for you to sit here and, you know, gaze into your navel.

We've got popcorn to sell and another show to show to sell. So let's move on. I did hear the commentary interview that he did for the, for the disc and what I loved about it was that he just does not care who doesn't like it. He didn't make this for mainstream American audiences.

He made it for smart people and he pretty much says that I made it for sophisticated filmgoers and that just ratcheted my respect up. And that's probably the main reason why I chose not to watch that cut because it would feel kind of like, like I have a lot of respect for him in this film and it would kind of feel like, like, you know, I'm with the squid thing. Well, the thing that's interesting to me and you brought up Brazil is that I love Brazil. It's a amazing films, masterpiece.

I've read the book, I have the box set, I've watched everything that I can about it and much like Brazil and much like another film that we've covered on the show. Deep Red, which is fascinating to watch the Blue Underground DVD of Deep Red because you can see where the edits were made based on when the language flips and you're ending, you're working with subtitles and certain scenes are in the middle of scenes. It's always fascinating to me to sort of stack various cuts of films against each other. Not that I want to give this guy who edited the film down to 80 minutes any money.

But I'm just fascinated to try to figure out what the hell they were thinking. When in the case of Brazil, they thought they could cut that thing down and put a happy ending on it. It just, it's just always amazing in my mind to sort of go OK, what were the considerations? What were you trying to do by tearing apart this masterpiece and then pasting it back together?

The only thing I can guess is that they bought the film and then saw it in that order and went, oh crap. We gotta, we gotta market this something. We have to make people know, oh, get the splicer that, that has to have been the meeting after they watch the film and those effects are horrible. Like going back to what I said is just, I understand what they were trying to achieve with the effects to try and bring out some sort of visual element that really isn't in the original film, but it's so poorly done.

It's, it's laughable but anything added to the end scenes would take away the impact of it, doesn't it? Yeah, there are so many things that take away from the impact and they're trying to shift the focus. You know, you were talking to Rob about the whole idea of these different cuts and I always enjoy watching a Spaghetti Western where they have gone in and removed all the political stuff. And so all of the political things are subtitled and dubbed in Italian.

And all of the gunplay is dubbed in English. There's no, nothing has changed from that. They'll just leave in the gunplay and in this one, it's, we'll just leave in the spooky parts and the creature and all this kind of stuff. But as we know, and as we've talked about on the show, the creature doesn't show up until way into the story.

I mean, we are probably an hour in before we get really an inkling of what's going on with that. Well, they change that up right up front and it's like they start moving stuff all over the place. I mean, the stuff with the ballet school is right towards the beginning. There's just so many things where they just move shit around and you're like, why are you doing this?

And it just makes it feel, I mean, like I was saying before the movie really moves in a very linear fashion. And one of the most, I think it would be 100 times more challenging if it suddenly became this fractured time narrative. And that's what they do in this US cut of it is they just have no regard for where things should fit in the pacing of stuff. And just we go off the rails, even the scene I was talking about before when he is leaving his job, they cut that thing down to nothing and there is no mention of the man in the Pink Socks.

And it's like, so when that shows up later on, it 's like, ok, what's going on? You know, it's just all gone. It 's just bizarre. I could not stomach what was going on in this thing.

It goes so far, Chris that even when it comes to the title card, they changed the title card from that kind of nondescript like siff texts that they have in Schults Key's movie kind of beat up the typefaces a little bit. They changed that to this almost hand drawn, almost like drippy blood kind of thing that says possession and that's misleading. Oh God. In the music, they add all this like crappy music with these choral voices all through it.

Like the even simple stuff of like Anna getting on the subway before the guy eats her banana. So, yeah, because that's what the audience expectation would be that like I said, once again, going back to it. This film is much more like a supernatural, a supernatural Bergman film. It is, you know, a straight horror film and like you were saying, they probably bought it sight unseen and said, ok, what are we going to do with this?

And I think that if this was to push the film back, say this was made in the fifties, they would have went even further, they would have put a voice over into this thing. They would have, they would have, they would have chopped it to bits and then used voice over to like stitch it all back together and they would have forced it from a, from a character's point of view. So that, that it all made sense instead of being open ended and let the audience decide what it means personally to them. Yeah, you can't do that though.

I mean, that's, that's always been one of my big complaints about mainstream American film and is that it always, you can't have that kind of open ended stuff. You could only really do it for about 12 years from the late sixties and the early eighties. And that was it. So it just, and I mean, and that 's why independent film was always so good.

And that's why when European film, you would get that, it was always so good was because it allowed you, as you were saying, you could watch this every day for a week and still not either bore of it or feel that you've all right. I got everything already. No, there's, there's a lot of stuff in here. It's, it's, it's much more of a, and it's not because it's created in that way, but it's much more like what people would expect from a book, you know, where a novel you can go in and you can find different things and infer different things and I think that that's one of the real strong points of the film and why this US cut is just a abysmal.

I keep trying to think of what the voiceover would be for and I keep thinking of invasion of the body snatchers lines where it's like, I never knew terror until I kissed Anna's lips, you know. Exactly. It would be something like that or it would be, it had been a beautiful relationship, their child, Bob and all this, you know, and we would, like, bring us in the voice of God. Yeah.

It would, it would totally be voice of God. What would be funny if they would have done it, you know, if they would have gave it to Waldo s and a bar and as we talked about, I blast of silence and then they wrote it all from you. You're possessed. Use the knife and cut yourself.

Oh, yeah. Go see Heinrich. Yeah. He's hot, isn't he?

That's pain, that pain and pain. You cut yourself just to make sure it still hurts. All right. So let's take another break and play an interview with the film scholar Daniel by the director of the other side of the wall, the making of possession, who is pretty much the guy who you go to when you want to talk about possession.

So let's go ahead and play that one back.

Speaker 5: My name is Daniel by and I'm based in Warsaw Poland and I'm a writer and I make documentary films primarily. MIKE WHITE: How did you get into the documentary business? When I was an undergraduate, I started writing for a fanzine or one of those very slithy produced fanzines, a great magazine called Eyeball, which was edited by Stephen Thrower. He's a great musician and he was part of Coyle and he has his own kind of group now called Cyclo and wrote a great book on Lucia FCI.

But he edited this magazine called Eyeball, which in case you don't know, brought together kind of the extremes of cinema, so extremely exploitative films, primarily from Europe and also extremely artistic films. And I think Steve sort of perceived a kind of point of convergence between those two fields. You know, the ideal Eyeball director was someone like Khodorovsky or Argento or David Cronenberg and Owski Andrews, the Polish director at possession. At that point, Steve was one of the few English language writers who expressed some sort of enthusiasm for Sy's films in particular possession.

So I got in touch with Steve. I started writing for Eyeball mainly about Eastern European filmmakers, Eastern European emigres, particularly Poles working in France. And that's how it all started. A bit later, I started working in a crime bookstore in London called Murder One, which no longer exists, but it was a great bookstore specializing in just in crime fiction.

True Crime was in charge of the true crime section and the Sherlock Holmes section, which was quite an interesting experience. And one day a guy came into the shop asking the staff if they'd been interested in writing books about various writers, musicians and filmmakers. And it was proposed that I wrote a book on Polanski, which I happily accepted. So I kind of wrote this book on Downtime whilst working in the shop that was in 2001.

And that coincided with the chance for me to go to Poland on a Polish postgraduate kind of scholarship. So I went to Poland and then I got contacted by Bill Lustig's company who was producing extras for the early films of Polanski knife in the Water Repulsion and cul-de-sac. So the book kind of stood me in good stead to working on those documentaries with David Gregory, who is the director and that kind of, you know, opened up a door in a possibility. And I think also actually being based in then Eastern Europe, first in Poland and later in Czech Republic kind of gave me a good base with which to contact and sometimes work with Eastern European filmmakers.

So that's how I got into it. MIKE WHITE: I don't want to say it's not natural for somebody to get interested in Eastern European films. But I want to say you don't necessarily sound like you're Eastern European. So how did you get interested in those films in the first place before you even started writing for Eyeball?

It wasn't a conscious thing. And I think this is a, personally, I think it's a really important thing. I mean, we live in a time like now in an interview situation when you have to justify what you do, why you do, why you like something, why something is important, why something's not important and kind of work on a very kind of got instinct and then think of a reason later. And I think my attraction primarily to Borok to Polanski, Tossy to Skolimowski, to the Vera Halo, to Yakub Biko.

And not to mention, you know, a lot of the Russian directors as well. It was purely on a good level. I didn't consciously think that I'm interested in Europe, Eastern European cinema. It just seemed that that type of cinema, particularly of those Polish emigres working in France.

It just struck me as very vibrant, very, very exciting, it's very simple. It's you watch films. Well, I certainly watch films to keep myself interested and you don't go out of your way to watch boring films. And I think you can accuse Polanski.

Zs and Borok of many things. But you can't often accuse them of being boring. That's how it's kind of started. But there was never any kind of conscious plan.

I don't have any Polish family as simple as that, but it was just like a kind of acting on a feeling rather than a conscious decision. MIKE WHITE: There was a time there where a lot of those films were Polanski notwithstanding, but a lot of the other filmmakers where their stuff wasn't that easy to find. What was your kind of entree into that? And what was your path going through these kind of wild and wooly filmmakers?

I think it. Was a very two distinct things. The first was in the case of Owski, I'd read about possession and I'd seen the poster by Basha Baranowsky, the Polish poster designer who did a lot of posters for Paramount releases in France during the 19 seventies. So I was aware of those things and I kind of decided I like possession, possession based on the poster.

I thought how can the film not be good when a poster like that? Also, the film was at that time, it wasn't banned, but it had been on this video nasty list. And I think, you know, when you're, when you're a young teen, any anything forbidden, it 's automatically attractive to you. So, you know, any kind of list of 50 films which either have been banned or have or are kind of unavailable.

Now, you sort of go out of your way to see them and possession was on that list. And to be honest, a lot of those films are kind of fun and there are one or two great films in my opinion, Tenere or Inferno by Argento. But, you know, possession just really kind of not me sideways. And I kind of felt that I had to kind of see the rest of this filmmaker's work.

I wasn't specifically interested in genre films. So it didn't bother me the fact that he worked across genre. And I think that's an interesting aspect of both Polanski's career and Owski career. And also Butik in a way that they are kind of a with kind of art house credentials, but they never shied away from genre.

More importantly, they played with genre. They didn't just kind of approach genre as a formula. They kind of played with the conventions in a way which is very different to what Tarantino does and what a lot of people do now. But they nevertheless kind of Owski always talks about the mask, he talks about possession as a kind of a masked film and the way that it's got the kind of scaffolding of a horror film that's not to say it's not a horror film, horror, it is its subject, it's just very, I think disturbing and disorientating for people.

The fact that it starts as a kind of Bergman e story about marital breakdown and then goes into this very, almost love crafty and realm of monsters and very frustrating non resolution. MIKE WHITE: That's a good term for it. I only recently saw Possession just a few months ago and it's one of these films that I just cannot stop thinking about. And that's why we're, we're doing the episode on it was your initial reaction the same or similar.

At that time, the only way, the only way you could see it was on pretty poor quality video cassettes. I mean, I was, I was watching a bootleg and the quality was not great to put it mildly. But my initial feeling was I'd never heard dialogue like that before. I didn't understand it.

And that was both exciting and also profoundly intimidating because I couldn't get a handle on it. Usually when you watch a film, the dialogue has a kind of a functional quality. It's used as a tool to kind of relate to story or it's a kind of texture or a word play or, you know, something like an, you know, and it's, it's really fun to listen to and it tells you something, it gives actors something to work with. But the dialogue and possession, my kind of initial feeling was God, this is pretentious, but at the same time, I was thinking, well, pretentious means you claim to do something and you fail to achieve it.

So the bigger the gap between what you set out to do and what you actually do, the more pretentious the film. And I didn't really get that feeling like I just didn't understand something. It felt that the director had a very clear idea what he was doing and where he was going. It's just that I didn't have a handle on it and I think that at that point you either kind of back off or disengage or you kind of scrabble and fight to kind of get a handle on something.

And I think that's certainly my attitude towards films. And I've always been interested in those type of films. I like the color of pomegranates, which I made a documentary on, it was a film which had fascinated me, but I had no idea what all those symbols and ideas and references meant. And the whole reason for making a documentary was to actually find out from people what those things meant.

And the most interesting thing about that is that when you actually do research, do archival research or travel to Armenia, Georgia or Russia or Ukraine and then you speak to people. It's like a an Orson Welles movie, you get all these different perspectives on the same subject, but they very rarely meet and you often get a lot of conflicting information. And I think what happens a lot, particularly in my work is that the deeper you go into a subject, whether it be a film or a filmmaker, it should become clearer, but quite often the picture becomes more murky and mysterious.

And I think that's very true of somebody like Owski. And I think that's also very true of a film like possession. I think the more I've watched the film, the more I've kind of spoken to people about it in terms of casts and crew and colleagues and in some respects, I've got a greater handle on it. But in many others, you know, it 's, it's like the looking at the Solaris and the Tarkovsky film, you know, those kind of, you know, see of kind of Murks.

It 's, it kind of draws you in, it 's, it's still a film which I haven't got a handle on and it 's, and I think for that reason, that's, that's why I still watch it because I can't kind of master it. I can't crack it and I probably never will. And I think that that's actually a good thing. I think that's a Hallmark of all great books.

As soon as you con them, as soon as you kind of master them, then you don't need them, they don't interfere with your consciousness, you forget about them. It's in no way to be little kind of like the Stig Larsen trilogy. They are functional good thrillers, but there's a closure to those stories and when, when, when you reach the end of either the films or the books, it's closed, it's new. It doesn't interfere with your thought processes.

And that's it. Whereas a film like possession when it isn't compartmentalized, it sticks with you. It's kind of like a, it's got its claws into you and it won't let go. And, yeah, I think for some people that's a problem and I think other people it's, it's a source of, it's a reason to go into a film or a culture in deeper terms.

And I think that's very rewarding if you do. So, you know, it's like Khodorovsky used to say, if you're a great person, El Topo is great. If you know, if you're a shallow person, El Topo is a shallow film. And I think if you invest a lot in a film and a lot of time and a lot of thought you'll get a lot out of it.

And I think that's very much the case with possession. MIKE WHITE: So you started doing documentary for Polanski's work, which films did you do work on? I can't remember my exact credit. I was more like, I think it was like associate producer or something.

I was more like a location fixer in a way that the director David Gregory, just all these amazing and incredibly prolific documentaries. It was just the fact that I was in Poland at the time and given the fact that I had written this book, I was actually in touch with a lot of people who had worked on the film. So it was a case of contacting them providing questions. And in the case of many of the Polish interviews, setting up of the interviews and in one or two cases conducting them, that's practically what that involved.

And it was a very interesting time because that was over 10 years ago now. And I think the budgets for those kind of supplementary features was a lot more than it is now. I've never actually worked on a crew with a crew before like that, there were kind of lighting people and sound people and it was like having the best thing at the very beginning. And I think now we've got through the budget to get smaller.

You pretty much have to do everything on your own and scrabbling around with kind of like whatever lights you can find. But that's not necessarily a bad thing because I think that because the technology is better, you can be a lot more agile and it means you can travel more. It also, I think has a psychological effect. If you, if you turn up to someone's house with a big crew, I think it puts people on edge if you're on your own and you just got, you know, one camera, 11 light and one sound recording.

It's, it's a lot more intimate and I think that can manifest itself in the actual interview you conduct and at the end of the day. That's what it's about. I think first and foremost, it's about building a rapport with your subject and it's about what they say and that I think always takes precedence. If you, if you look at, say Chris Marcus documentaries like the one he made on Medved in the last Bolshevik, I think, Mark really?

He didn't give a shit about the actual quality of the interviews. I mean, a lot of the time they shot on these grubby high eight cameras in the dark and you can barely see or hear people. On the other hand, he interviewed all of these key people while they were still alive in the 19 eighties and it's a gold mine of information and they're all dead now. So there's no way of nitpicking about the technical quality about this.

You are constructing a story out of people's anecdotes. And I think that's, it's much more important to have good questions. Build up a rapport because ultimately, that's the real material. The image is important.

The quality of the sound is important. Don't get me wrong, but it's not more important than the kind of the content of the delivery. MIKE WHITE: I have a dumb question for you. Do you speak Polish?

Yes, badly I would say I speak Pge in Polish. No, I can, you know, you've got no choice in Poland. I think in Warsaw, a lot of young people speak English and particularly more in the last 10 years because of course, with Poland joining the European Union, a lot of people have gone to work in the UK and travel between the two countries. But as soon as you go out of the city and if you go into the small villages or, you know, day to day shops, you have to, and it's my Polish, I would say is functional.

It's good for shops for doing interviews and with people who don't speak English, but I certainly wouldn't put myself on a pedestal and say I speak fluent Polish. I probably speak like Borat speaks English. So how did you. MIKE WHITE: Go from the work on the Polanski stuff to branching out and doing your own documentaries?

I've never really stayed still in Poland. I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean, I've always been jumping between countries in the way that after the Polanski documentary, I mean, that was 2003, I think. So.

It's just over 10 years ago. I mean, after that, you know, I taught English for a year in Warsaw after my kind of study period ended, I wanted to stay in Poland. I traveled to the Caucasus to do some research on the color of pomegranates. But I mean, for no specific reason, I mean, at that time, my plan was to write a monograph on this particular film.

But the publishing series of which that was to be part of was canceled. But at the end of the day, that doesn't go to waste all that information, those interviews. And that actually formed the basis of the documentary. I did a few years after that.

And then after that, I got contacted by the Slovak filmmaker Ya Jacobus. I'd written about Jacob Buso in Eyeball. I interviewed him and organized a retrospective of his films in London 10 years ago. And he was about to do a film called Bay, which was a Eastern European euro pudding.

It was the biggest ever Eastern European kind of goulash film production of Hungarian Czech Slovak and English money. And it had one major problem and that's Jacob Biko didn't speak a word of English. The script was in English and a lot of the actors had to be drawn from these countries. So there were some Slovak actors, some Hungarian actors and some Czech actors, some of which spoke English, many of them didn't.

On top of that Jacobus go's reputation throughout the 19 sixties and 19 seventies. As I'd written in those articles in Eyeball, he was a great improviser. So he was kind of improvising scenes and we were having to come up with kind of, you know, English dialogue, which then had to be kind of dialogue coach. Now there was a professional dialogue coach on the production, but sometimes he wasn't there for whatever reason and it just meant between me and an assistant just to kind of get through the days we would string together this kind of dialogue and teach the actors.

But my official role in that production was filming a documentary for Czech TV. So it was a very interesting year working on this film, officially making a documentary, unofficially working on the script and working with the actors. But it was fascinating and it was my first kind of practical experience of feature filmmaking and it was really a baptism of fire because it was a very chaotic production. And that's actually kind of interesting to work on because as I'm sure, you know, many people say that actually making films is actually quite boring.

You're waiting around a lot, but you were never bored on this production. MIKE WHITE: Jacob Biko is another filmmaker that to me is just completely, I don't want to say underrated because I just think he's kind of under here in the States. People aren't really aware of his work too much. So it's nice to hear that you were working with him as well.

I first saw a still of one of his films, The Desert and the Nomads. It was in a book by Peter Hames called The Czechs about New Wave. And at that time, you know, it was impossible to see the film. But, you know, the stills were so kind of interesting and great, you know, I kind of did my best to kind of look for that film at the time.

The BF I had an archival copy, but the problem with the archival copy is that their job is to preserve the film. So they don't like screening it. Then by complete coincidence, II, I was on a day trip to Paris and had a retrospective of Czechoslovak Cinema at the Bog The Pompidou Centre. And on the same day, they had a screening of Desserter and the Nomads.

So I literally dropped everything and just ran into the cinema. Yeah, it was one of those kind of rare occasions when the film lived up to your expectations. I thought it was absolutely spectacular. That's I mean, as you say, I mean, the big problem with filmmakers like Jacob Busco is that they've not really been exposed, they didn't fall into the normal distribution patterns.

I think the big tragedy do with Jakob Burka was that at the time Czech films had a very high profile in the 19 sixties abroad, but it was a particular type of Czech films and specifically comedies, the comedies of Jim Manzo, Milos Forman. And that became the kind of talking point these Czech comedies which are really poking fun at the kind of the Communist regime. Jacobus GSS films really didn't come to the attention of distributors until a little bit later. And on top of that, they were very, very different to what Foreman was doing and what Yazi Manzo was doing.

They were very baroque, they were in many ways, a bit like Pooja's early films, like the shadows of forgotten ancestors a bit like what Yuriko was doing in Ukraine at the same time, they were very similar to what Khodorovsky was doing films like a Topo and also strange, like Robert Downey, the director, what he was doing in the States at that time too. So it didn't really fit into kind of what people expected of Czech films. And I think he kind of got ignored. Interestingly, the desertion of the Nomads was acquired by Colombia in the UK for distribution because at that time, a lot of the Hollywood studios which had dis distribution arms in the Europe suddenly realized that there was a market for these Czech films and I think that title was bored, but it didn't do very well, certainly in the UK.

But in an interesting quirk of fate, the negative of the Deserter and the Nomads actually ended up in Los Angeles because it had been sent to London to make the UK print. And then for some reason when the offices kind of closed down all the materials, all the negatives went to Los Angeles. So when I first met Jacob Bi, I asked him about the dessert and the Nomads and he said that was his favorite film. And it was just ironic that it was the one film when he couldn't find the negative.

And then by complete chance, when we were preparing the retrospective, we found it in California. So for his birthday, at the time, we managed to make a brand new print of that film. And it's a real pity that films not on DVD or not widely known because I think in many ways he was a big influence on her name. Em Karita.

And on top of that, it's very interesting that Karita actually studied in Prague at famu where Jacob Buso was a teacher. So I think in some respects, as much as I like Costa Rica's films, I think he kind of stole a bit of Jacob Eco's Thunder Deserted. And Nomads is still one of my favorite films. It's still a film which I'd strongly recommend to anyone interested in any type of cinema.

MIKE WHITE: So you touch a little bit about when you first saw Possession and what it did to you. How did you go from that all those years ago to actually working with cows and working on these documentaries on his dvds. I went to Paris and interviewed him for Eyeball with Steve Thrower. That was in 97.

A year later, I organized a mini kind of retrospective of his films in London. After that, he was preparing La Fidel what to date is his last film. Interestingly, he actually wrote the script in London because his partner at the time, Sophie Marceau was the villain in the James Bond film. So he was kind of based in London for much of 1999.

So I got to see a lot of him during that time and when he came to actually shooting the film, I asked if I could actually visit the set and, you know, he said sure. So for about, yeah, it was about a week or so. I actually visited the set of that film and got to see him at work. And obviously when I was in Poland and they started to distribute the films on DVD, primarily second run in the UK.

I think they put out the third part of the night, they asked if I could film some kind of interviews to go on the desk, which, you know, of course, it was a pleasure and I was in Poland, so it was no problem. And as that kind of progressed and as the relationship progressed, you know, it was a case of just being a little bit more ambitious and instead of just doing single interview features, actually eventually doing whole documentaries was the case with possession, which kind of coincided with the anniversary, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So it kind of made sense to do that for the German DVD release. And I think most importantly, when the French language films were being distributed in America, Owski had a very specific idea about the subtitles and about how they should be translated from French and Polish into English. And he was very unhappy with what had been provided by the distributor. So he insisted that we sit down and rework the subtitles from scratch, which again was a pleasure to actually work with someone because it gave you an insight into their working method.

And also it was a way of clarifying certain mysteries about the script and the dialogue. So in the case of like the Silver Globe, I didn't realize at the time, but most of that film bears very little resemblance to the novel upon which it's based, not in terms of plot, but in terms of dialogue, much of the dialogue from that film is in fact a kind of collage of quotations. And when we were working on the subtitles, Kowski would say, well, this is Master icard, this is, this is Norman Mailer, this is Border or whatever.

And often that would be my cue to find, you know, the original translation and find out something if it was available either in public domain or we kind of invent something which is non copyright infringing. MIKE WHITE: What stuff did you find out while you were doing your document and possession? What kind of blew your pink sacks off? It was very interesting because I mean, I interviewed a number of people Frederic Tuten, who is the writer who kind of worked on the dialogue.

I mean, it's been very interesting speaking to Frederick because apart from being a great writer, very interesting person, we ended up doing very similar jobs, which was kind of ironing out Sy's English. And I think we, our experiences were very similar in terms of, we kind of had a very specific way of going about it and he has a very strict routine. He's very punctual and, you know, it's a cliche to talk about people being so professional. But I think in his case, it's quite funny when you look at the films being so baroque and often chaotic.

But the actual work process, whether it's writing or shooting, it is kind of meticulously disciplined and controlled. So it was interesting to contrast my experience with Rosa Frederick. It was very interesting to speak to Andrei Yaros who was Sy's regular camera operator and later cinematographer and also the producer of the film Marie Lorea, who later produced Owski Chopin film. But I think the most interesting thing was the day before I went to be to cologne to actually edit the documentary.

I spoke to Owski on the phone and he said, just, just remember it is above all else, a political film. And I think that's something which you feel while watching the film because there are all these cutaways and shots to the Berlin Wall and this, this whole thing going on. But that's not the subject of the film. The subject of the film is the breakdown of a marriage that suddenly became a lot clearer while speaking to people.

And in particular, the interview with Shawki. And I think that's, that's certainly it was a satisfying thing, actually creating a, you know, an hour long film which kind of casts a different light on the film. And it gives you a handle on these different perspectives, political, cultural, historical, which I think actually enriched the experience. And I think that's the only point for making these films is if they kind of, you know, make the film, make you look at the film in a different way or give you a different angle a different way in if a documentary doesn't do that, I don't know what the point is.

And I think in possession, that 's very much the case. It is fundamentally a political film. And it's very interesting given the fact that Poland at the time, it had this group of filmmakers associated with this label, the cinema of moral anxiety. And the idea was this was a bunch of people as communism was imploding, questioning what's really right and what's really wrong in the society when it's all gone gray and confused.

And he was a filmmaker outside of Poland in the West. But at the same time, he makes the film right on the Border of the Eastern Bloc in many ways, shooting the film in an apartment facing the Berlin Wall. So it is incredibly kind of, you know, why make the film in the West, but you make it literally feet away from the East and you start to question this idea. I mean, it's something, there's so many things which I never understood and I don't think are meant to be understood.

Like the all of this thing about Pink Socks and the color green, why the, why the eyes green of the kind of the Helen character, the bulk of Isabel Ajani and the Sam Neill at the end of the film. And I think during the course of the interviews with Owski and he told an anecdote about how Bulgarian kind of spies would go to the West. And, you know, at the end of the day, they're not, they're not just getting information to use against the West. They're also kind of like attracted to all other fashions and trends.

So this idea that these people, these spies are kind of been attracted to Pink Socks and these power braces and these shades, which they are then kind of bringing back into the Eastern showing of how cosmopolitan they are. That was his little joke on that subject. And which of course, actually sheds light on Mark's job because the character played by Sam Neill. It's not spelled out what exactly he does.

It's something to do with espionage. We don't know exactly. It's not important to the plot. I think the interesting thing is that the character played by Sam Neill is in one way or another, an adventurer.

And I think that in many ways, a filmmaker like Owski is an adventurer in the way that they're going abroad for long periods of time and this kind of thing puts pressures on family life, which is really the bedrock of the film. That's what it's about. It's about a guy who's been away, who's come back and when he comes back, he finds his wife gone. I think it's hardly known.

In fact, I think that, I mean, he's talked about it a lot about the film was really inspired by the situation of coming back to Poland to find that his kind of family life had kind of imploded. And I think his initial response was to throw himself into work and that that project with the Silver Globe. In fact, later when the Silver Globe was shut down, and he found himself effectively blacklisted later, a film producer, a French film producer who he'd known from the 19 sixties called Christian ferry, made it possible for him to go to New York.

Christian ferry at the time, was working as a kind of advisor to Charlie Bluedorn, who, you know, was the kind of the, you know, the effectively of Gulf and Western. And Owski was like, effectively there to write a film project for consideration by Paramount. And yeah, I think that, that, you know, with a bit of distance, he started to kind of contemplate what had happened personally, but at the same time, approach, it not in a realistic fashion. I mean, Ingmar Bergman had done scenes from a marriage.

I mean, it's a great success, both as a film as a television series. I mean, there was really no point to do the same thing again. And I think the attraction was to take this material, which was sensibly, you know, the stuff of soap operas and kind of push it up one or two notches, you know, almost to a metaphysical level, which is what the film does. It kind of starts as a very domestic thing and ends in this kind of cosmic love, crafty and kind of space of non resolution.

MIKE WHITE: Yeah. At the end of it just, I always wonder what's going to happen 10 seconds after we go to black. It's very interesting in the way that originally, I mean, I recorded an audio commentary with Schwabsky for possession in 2000 so quite some time ago and he told me that in the commentary that the idea was that the Sam Neil do, the one that the monster turns into, climbs up out of the skylight, runs across the buildings and jumps over the wall back into the East and in the script, the ending is very slightly different.

But what's really interesting about the script is there's actually very little, there's no real major changes between what's on screen and what was in the script. The only major omission was a character called Abe who was cut out completely. But pretty much everything else. With the exception of just one or two scenes, which are kind of really footnotes, everything else is the same.

But the bottom line, I think the whole idea of the character kind of jumping back to the East. It is this question of evil. The idea of two political systems, one which is based on kind of a Communist society which is kind of imploding. And on the other hand, a kind of a Western society and this strange kind of situation which I think not just Owski, but also a number of other emigres like Jezi Skolimowski or Duchenne Mave have found themselves, which is, you go to the West and then you find the intelligentsia is mostly orientated towards the left.

So it's this very strange situation, having your films shut down, banned, you know, and things like this and then coming to, I don't know, Paris or Rome or Berlin and finding the intelligence here, sort of incredibly enthusiastic about the possibilities of left wing politics. Some idea, something relating to that is lurking underneath possession the idea of do the seeds for all this chaos of totalitarianism from Gulags, you know, where does it come from? What is the source of this evil, this horror? And it's a theme very much in one of Dostoevsky's book, The Possessed or The Demons or whatever way you want to translate it.

This idea of, you know, the dissemination of ideas, revolutionary ideas and how they manifest themselves in terrorist acts. And of course, this is the theme of Sy's next film, Leme Que. But for Owski, it's a very moral film and not in the sense of telling you what's right and what's wrong, which is the Hollywood thing to do. It's about ethics and it's got this, this kind of political awareness too.

It's a very demanding film. You've got to think and if you think, if you give a lot of thought to it, you'll get a lot out of it. You can't watch it passively. It's not like a, it's not like a Spielberg film which ends with, you know, the bad guy being dead or punished or being redeemed or, and the good guy, you know, kind of vindicated, either, you know, in life or in the next life.

I mean, that, that's all very, that's fine, but it's all very closed. It's, it's a very kind of black and white kind of moral conception of things like in Star Wars. You know, the bad guy has got a black hat and, you know, the good guys wear white. This is the antithesis, you know, it's not saying that one is better than the other.

It's just a very different way of looking at things, you know, at the end of the day possession, the good guy murders someone, you know. So you have the first, the setup of the film is kind of about how, how he's been wronged about how this, this, this kind of idiot who is fascinated with Buddhism and Marxism is going to run off with his wife and then he kills him. So it's, it's not, nothing's clear cut and the characters aren't kind of, you know, victims or heroes or likable or unlikable. I mean, the Ajani character is incredibly dark, yet she's incredibly sympathetic.

So, you know, I think all of these, these, these, these stories, these characters, I think that they are very problematic when you try to shoehorn them into the schemers of kind of usual Hollywood storytelling ideas of character arcs, character development. You know, I defy anyone to kind of make an accurate synopsis of possession. You know, I don't think, I think most importantly, I don't think I Saby can. It's very interesting in the way that in the summer I was in Montreal Schwabsky at a film market.

It's part of the Fantasia Festival and he was there with the script for one of his current projects, Dark Matter and the brochure demanded a synopsis and he was expected to pitch it and he very politely refused to pitch it saying that look, if you can say what your film is about in 10 minutes, don't bother making it, you know, really just say it in 10 minutes and do something else. But film is primarily a visual medium, you know, Antonio used to say this, you know, you express a thought and feelings through images. If you can sum it up and explain everything.

If you can sell it to either an investor or an audience, there's really no point in making the film because basically everything else, the 90 minutes extra is just padding. It's superfluous. It's a waste of time, the content of the film. And I think that's very interesting when approaching these films is reacting on them primarily in an emotional level.

But at the same time, you know, something intellectual is playing that too. I mean, it's a very, it is very interesting this idea that things are either emotional and appeal to emotions or they are very intellectual. I mean, I think it's very difficult for a lot of people to kind of accommodate that you can be, you can respond to something emotionally and intellectually at the same time, which is the normal mode of being. I mean, that's what we do day in, day out.

So why can't we do that when watching films or making films? MIKE WHITE: Was there anybody that you wanted to get in the other side of the wall that you were unable to. It would have been great to have spoken to a journey because of course, that's really the centerpiece of that film. It 's such a remarkable performance.

It's, you know, it 's so out there and so out of control. I mean, it really a lot of the time when you're looking at that film and that performance you think, is she acting, or is she really insane? She, or like the scene in the subway, there's a moment when she very clearly smashes her head against the wall and you're thinking, did she hurt herself? So, I think it's really one of those landmark performances, which is really kind of really unhinging.

I mean, you're kind of euphoric at the same time, you're terrified and really disturbed, you're attracted and you're really repulsed. It's really exhilarating and it 's really annoying and it's really frightening and it would have been interesting to have actually spoken to a Johnny about that experience of, you know, where she got that from or what she remembers of it and her take on the whole situation. And she said something incredibly interesting about the film when a French journalist asked her about it, she described it as kind of emotional pornography, which I think is a great description for that performance.

And the idea of us as the spectator looking at emotional distress. Why do we do it? Is it out of voyeurism, SARD and Freud or do we get some perverse pleasure from these kind of displays of extreme emotional States? That's very interesting for me and it's something which is also very uncomfortable.

What are the limits of performance? When is too much, too much? When does the actor stop acting? And when do they start doing something else doing something real.

What is real? Is it right for the director to ask something real, you know, the amount of films now in which you, which are sold on the back when they are really fucking, you know, is that, is that, is that not only is that acceptable, but is that a moral abuse on behalf of the director, should the director have the right to ask an actor to stop acting and to fog for real and things like that? I mean, I think all those things are interesting, moral ethical without sounding too pretentious. There are philosophical questions, I mean, what is real when you watch a film, it's not real, but something happens to you and you accept it and you respond in a way, you know, you shake and your heart beats faster.

So it's very bizarre all this. And I think that that's what, that's what's great about those films. They affect you at a gut level. You're shaking, you're exhilarating, you're laughing, you're terrified, you're excited.

And I think that's, you know, whether it's Hitchcock or Truffaut or 2001. I mean, that's what it's really about. And I think that that's why I think Zow cinema is worth exploring and worth persisting with, despite all of the idiosyncrasies associated with it's very rich in terms of emotions and ideas which frankly, I think we were living in a barren wasteland of kind of so many films which are made for reasons which I just cannot fathom. I mean, it's really hard work to make any film, whether it's a little modest documentary with one or two people or a big film like B and on the one hand, when you look at a film, from my perspective, I kind of admire anyone who has made a film because I know the work involved at the same time, that feeling is tempered by the idea that why the hell invest so much energy and time and life into something, which says nothing.

That's a reason to watch these films because they say something, they say something about a time in which they were made, they say something about a regime and they say interesting things. They are not lecturing you, they make you think and I think that 's, that's a real interesting tool. I mean, you don't want to be told what to think you want, you want some sort of stimulus that makes you think. And I think that's why films stick with you and other films don't, if you're told something, then there's no reason to think about the film anymore.

You just accept it and go on to the next thing. But if you're presented with something which is disturbing or kind of disorientating, if you never resolve that, you will always remember it. Von Trier, a great expression. He says you should always make films like a pebble in your shoe.

And I think that Barok films are like that. Polanski's films are like that. I'll never forget the tenant. The tenant is one of the most disturbing films and funny films, but mainly disturbing films I've ever seen in my life.

One of those films, which is the closest to a State of feeling genuinely disturbed. It's a, it 's a film you don't forget and it's a film you can't tame. MIKE WHITE: We're back, we're talking about possession. And I wanted to talk a bit about the end of the film and we discussed this difference between the European cut or the director's cut and the American one and the really bad visual effects and discuss the idea of doppelgangers, Mark and Anna and where we kind of left that and there were copies of the main characters along with Bob and also the man in the Pink Socks.

So what exactly do you think is going on here guys? I don't think that we said this earlier that the ideal mate, let 's say, and I don't know if this is the answer to the film or not, but we've got Anna with this kind of creature that apparently came out of her and she has been keeping it in the apartment and I don't know if you would say feeding men to it, but it seems that it's growing and getting larger and it's taking different form. Every time we see it's in a slightly different form. And I love the, one of the last times that we see it is when Mark comes in and it's having sex with her and she is there and she is kind of chanting almost almost.

And it's like, I don't think that she is about that. She's almost there, but it seems like the creature is almost ready because the next time we see the creature, he is now fully formed and he is yet another Doppelganger. And this time it's this dark eyed version of Mark. So now we've got the blue eyed Mark, the blue eyed Anna and then the kind of green eyed, I guess you would say Helen character, the teacher and then this dark-eyed Mark Doppelganger who just seems to be, I would think kind of pure evil.

That's the way that I'm struck with him. But I'm not sure. What, what do you guys think of this guy of the, of the copy, the Doppelganger? I'm gonna go out on a limb and be non-committal.

And I'm going to say you could, you could actually say that Mark, he's become the evil version of himself or he's the most noble because he's trying to protect her. I went with evil when I watched this. I mean, he's, he's covered in blood. He's, if, if you want to take the religious symbolism, that's kind of hinted at as the movie goes along and use the staircase as hell at the bottom limbo in the middle and heaven through the glass window at the top.

He's trying to get up there, but he only, he only makes it like, like, like so the whole all of all of Berlin could be purgatory and they're either going to fall or rise up above all of it. And the clean innocent dough eyed version Doppelganger is the one that finally makes it out. That's why I saw him as the innocent one because he has no real life experience as opposed to Mark who has done great things. He's raised his son and he's tried to save the relationship, I think.

But he's also done some horrible, horrible things in restrooms and apartments across the, across the city. So I want to say the Doppelganger is the good version that Anna wants. No, I think it's really all kind of open. I mean, my thing was is that maybe the doppelgangers exist in the real world or they're just projections, meaning that, you know, it's just a version of them that just happens to be, you know, what, what side of your face you're looking at in the mirror any given day.

So, I mean, you can kind of see that as a possibility as well, just sort of how these emotions or whatever it is that they're dealing with kind of manifest themselves within each other. And then that whole thing with the, with the creature, I don't know why I felt this way, with the creature but it felt kind of like, it's kind of like hellraiser or something, you know, like the guy who lives up in the, in the attic and he's all covered in blood and everything. He's on a mattress and it's got a lot of the same elements.

I guess the reason why I figured that the Doppelganger was evil was really from Bob's reaction. Bob who really just is kind of on the fringes of a lot of the story though. It's interesting that almost every time that we see him, he's, he's playing and he's doing this like cyber noise throughout almost all the film. It's just this kind of, and then the end of the film, the film ends with sirens, different types of sirens.

You know, it's more of an air raid siren, more of the world is going to end, kind of siren and there's knocking at the door. I mean, it feels like you could write a paper just on the last 10 minutes of this film, you know, and just examine every single thing that's going on with this thing because there is just so much stuff happening all at once, you know. So we've got the knocking at the door of the Doppelganger trying to get in and we've got the Doppelganger, Anna Helen inside and she's listening to the sirens are now going off and we've got these lights going out on her face and Bob is just yelling as the Doppelganger is knocking on the door and eventually just dives into the bath where we've seen him before he can hold his breath for infinitely long time according to his father, which is kind of a nice scene.

This movie kind of reminds me of like Kramer versus Kramer. If it, if it was mixed with Battle Royale or something, you know, it's just like, and I think Kramer versus Kramer came out like two years prior. This is like all the hatred and meanness that they probably wanted to have in that movie was kind of saved up and put into this one and just, you know, and then add supernatural elements to it. But so yeah, I guess that's why I figured that he was evil just because of Bob's reaction and the way that we see his silhouette on the door behind Helen.

And it's almost like he's kind of caressing the door. He's this creature outside waiting to get in. He is The Boogeyman at that point and also the excitement that he had just prior to that, there's this random woman on the top of the stairs that he gives his gun to and is telling her to shoot anybody that comes up the stairs and his excitement about that and then the woman's excitement about that too is just this kind of really creepy scene that was actually, I'm thinking back to that now and I am deciding that my interpretation of him being the innocent one is wrong.

Because yeah, the whole thing at the door like the his foreshadowing in the mouth of madness, like craziness at the door where his arms are still kind of almost like tentacles and everything. Bob really does end up being the reason that this is happening in a way because I feel like if they didn't have a child together, they would have just gone their separate ways and none of this would have happened. Bob's like a buffer. He's, he gives them a reason, plot wise to be in the same apartment in the same room and to interact with each other, not that he's responsible for anything going on.

But if it wasn't for him, Mark probably never would have come home from whatever secret mission he was on. If that is in fact what he does, because I'm not even sure about that. I need to watch this whole movie again then just to pay attention to the beginning and end with the dude with the Pink Socks who is amazing. I love that guy.

It 's like, I kind of wish that there was a movie out there. That was the man in the Pink Socks and Heinrich just kind of hanging out you know? 00, there'd be, there'd be massage oil and uncomfortableness everywhere. Yeah.

Yeah. Heinrich feels like, I think he's into free love. Yeah. And being oiled up at all times, maybe add Udo Kier into that mix somehow.

And I'm not sure how that would even work. Disturbingly. That's how that would work. Yeah.

It's the feel good buddy film of the year. Somebody would feel good. Not the audience. There would be definitely a lot of massages.

It would be one of those. Like you need a massage and it'd be 352 minutes long. Be the seven samurai of weirdo buddy film. What do you guys think about the sirens and everything going off?

Why do you think that the world is ending? Why do you think that that's going on? Do you have any explanation for that at all? I mean, it's one hell of a way to end a movie.

It certainly is the only thing I can aside from the fact that we're operating in some alternate history and World War Three happened. My guess is that it was, it was symbolic of Bob's world coming to an end. I like that. That's nice.

That's good. I got one good one. All show. All right.

I think there's a reason we brought him on two minutes of talking. All right. Now we'll just cut all the other stuff out. Just this voice that shows up at the end.

We're like we're going to take another break and play a preview for next week's show. In 1634 Louis 13th, King of France wrote to Jean De Martin, Baron Le Valde concerning the walls of the provincial city of Ludan. Its walls were among the last left standing in the country whose feudal lords were being systematically divested of their powers and independence. I asked you once again, where is his Majesty's Proclamation authorizing this demolition?

What a common priest? You act uncommonly like a governor father. Where is your authority here? Should one more stone be torn from our city walls?

You will be dead before it touches the ground. And so the king and his ministers discovered resistance in lo down in the quite remarkable urbane grandier. A man to be described variously as martyr and lover, politician and priest and finally sorcerer and agent of the devil, Nola Sapote. Just to her, my cousin tells me his daughter is pregnant.

You have your halls. Why do you have to meddle with her? They therefore sought the means most easily to emasculate this resistance and found a curious psychological phenomenon in progress. A community of religious women in this very town were reported in the grip of a most inflammatory mass hysteria.

At what form does this incubus take? Oh grandier secluded women, they give themselves to God but something remains which cries out to be given to man. Now this is sin. My beloved sister in Jesus seems to have set her mind on me.

There's no reason, but of course, I can prove nothing. This mother superior may be a little more than a hysterical nun. But if it is a genuine case of possession by devils, and if grandier himself was proved to be involved, then yes, I think it bears investigation. Gentlemen, this phenomenon has intrigued some of the most renowned scholars and literary men, contemporary interest resulted in a rich documentation of undoubtable authenticity.

The great French historian Jules Michelle, the distinguished Jeanjoseph Sin as well as such specialist and psychological aberrations. As Dr Gabrielle, Le Guay wrote volumes on the subject of the possession by devils at Ludin. You are going to be tortured. Have you thought of to come?

You have one consolation. Hell will hold no surprises for. And now one of the great artists of the day filmmaker Ken Russell, who has won international acclaim for the perception and visual sensuality of his women in love has brought his camera to the subject and reveals a spectacle of unrivaled brilliance and thunderous drama. That's right.

We'll be back next week to talk about Ken Russell's the Devil's another light and Frothy film where we'll be joined in the discussion by our special guest, co-host Mr Vincenzo Natali. Before we go, we want to thank this week's special guests Frederic Tuten and Daniel by, along with this week's guest co-host Mr Chris from Outside The Cinema and the ru series podcast. So Mr Chris, what is going on with OTC? What kind of fun stuff do you have for the Outside The Cinema nation?

Well, we just recorded a commentary episode of the classic rock horror movie, Black Roses, which we'll be covering in a few weeks. I did not know that. I, that's, that's gonna be an interesting one to listen to that movie is a different kind of insane than the one we're talking about right now. But that was a lot of fun.

We're gonna be doing a couple some more commentaries from our, our Kickstarter in the future, but we're just plugging along doing two movies on the list every week. No big plans. Just continue doing the awesome job we do. I wanted to ask you, sir.

There's been some discussion as a listener to the show and a backer of the Kickstarter that there was an issue with the archives and I was wondering if you could explain what happened to the old shows. Oh, yeah, Mio decided to get rid of all their podcasts and they gave Bill like four days notice. So all of our archives kind of disappeared. So we have them through links.

And we are offering them up for sale to help our because we weren't paying hosting fees to any, any site to host the show. But now we have to. So we will give you I believe it's, 50 shows for $5 what a bargain, they range from 2 to 3 hours. And that's, we've only been doing this for a short amount of time and it seems to be going pretty well.

That's all I know because I'm just the co-host but it's from, it's from episode one through, I think 250 is what we're offering and we're, we're well into the mid three hundreds at this point. So there's a lot of shows out there. Yeah, you are definitely way ahead in terms of how many shows? I mean, you guys have been doing it.

What, 67 years now? See you started it. I wanna say February 2008. Wow.

So yeah, and you know, Bill will get a show out every week. You know, once you get through a year of, hey, we put out 52 shows, you kind of have to stick hell or high water to that schedule. And so far we've managed it one way or another, which is very interesting despite kids being born and he said two back surgeries, those were fun because you do all the shows ahead of time. So it was like I got a vacation.

So that was kind of cool. That's, that's takes more strength than, than I'll ever have. So there you go. You know, no matter how many episodes we do, Rob, they'll always be ahead of us.

You know, quality quantity, you know, I think, I think, I think it works out a little more even on your guys' side. We don't, we don't interview people. So you have that over. Well, what about that epic interview that you guys did with Tom Servini?

Oh, you mean the episode where we talk about him all the time? Never talk to us. I don't want to disparage anybody on a show where they might actually be listening. But he left the convention and made eye contact with us for 15 seconds as he walked out knowing full well, he said he would do an interview with us, but that's ok.

You know, I only looked up to him growing up. That's fine. Wasn't he heard to say si wouldn't wanna be a as he left the, he said a lot more rude things than that, that I don't want to repeat what I like is that people will tell you. No, I don't want to do the interview.

At least they're upfront about it. Yeah. Yeah, they have no problems with that. Yeah.

Well, ask Servini for an interview. You'll get a run around for six months. We considered it, but after we heard of your lovely experience, we decided against it. So in a show solidarity, some people have great experiences, great interviews, you know, talking to him at convention.

Some people have a really good time with them. I guess you just got to catch them at the right time. I don't think California people do well in Massachusetts in October, but he's not from there. He's from Pennsylvania.

Right. Yeah. But I have family that moved from, upstate New York to California and they're cold in June over here. So your body gets used to it really quick.

Well, as I think, a fellow Michigander said in his autobiography several years ago, Mr Bruce Campbell, who's a lovely gentleman. He said that when people move to L A, the spores take over this, that's the most reasonable explanation because nothing else makes sense. So what is up with this other show that you have, sir? I haven't heard too much about this.

I mean, I am very familiar with OTC, but what is the other one you got? Oh, the podcast. Are you serious that I've been doing since September of 2008? Well, I'm not, I'm not entirely sure the release date of this, but I can tell you that when we're recording today, tomorrow, we're going to record our 3/100 episode and I follow the Bill come hell or High water.

We're gonna record an episode. It started off originally as like a movie review show back when Frank my cohos and I worked in theaters and then, then it got really kind of political and more going with the title. We're just gonna talk about every little thing that bothers us and complain about stuff going on between election cycles. We kind of revert back to movies.

So we have a good, I don't know, six months before we can start talking about the political stuff again. So, and for our 3/100 episode, the special thing we're gonna do is do the show exactly the same way. We always do it because I can't be bothered to prep for it. I'm lucky if I make breaks for it before we do the show, I'll just edit it all together.

The next day, I can't believe you've been doing it that long and I didn't know about it. I feel like if nobody knows about it, don't feel bad in the dark. I wanted to call it why so serious, son because, I don't know why I just kind of had a brain fart there. I think, I think it was the 2/100 episode.

We were reminiscing, you know, about complaining into microphones to strangers on the internet. And, I said, you know, this is the cheapest therapy I've ever had. You just talk about anything and people will write in and they'll share their experiences and it's fun. But sometimes it gets a little dark, like just a real quick.

When the Boston bombings happened, I had always considered myself to be from Philadelphia. I was born in Philadelphia. I lived there for a while. We moved up here.

This is like my adoptive home, but I'm from Philadelphia. And then that happened. And, we talked on the show about how I didn't realize how invested I was in the area until some dickhead shows up and says, guess what I'm gonna do. So that 's the fun stuff we have on the show.

But then we'll complain about Star Wars casting and Spiderman movies. And I actually did like the Spiderman movie, even though it was terrible. That's ok to say, right? If something's terrible, you can still like it.

Remember we did a show on Free Jack. Oh, that was so much fun in the theater. I love that movie. I know it's terrible but I love it.

Mick Jagger was so over the top looking like Michael Dukakis in that tank thing for long. II, I, as long as you can, can look at a movie and say, yeah, I guess that's kind of terrible. I don't see, I don't see what the problem with liking it is. I watch Fifth Element fairly often.

Oh, me and my kids, we watched it the other night. I hated Ruby Rot first time around. Oh, yeah. A lot of people still do, but I'm right there, man.

He totally grew on me every time and his reaction when David yells at the end where he goes. Whoa. And he just, he just freaks out about what is there another bomb. I swear that's one of my favorite parts of the whole movie cause I don't think he expected it in real life.

Well, thanks again Mr Chris for coming on the show and thanks to everyone for listening and if you want to thank us, it's real simple. You just go over to itunes and you leave a review, preferably five stars because we think we're worth it. And the more reviews we get, the closer we come to possessing the world these are from. Right.

And the night is, I can't believe we just recorded an entire podcast about possession and I didn't say the line, I've seen enough HN T to know where this is going. No, but we were all thinking it when we were watching the movie.