Munich (w/ Dave Lester)

Eli (00:02.395)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives and two directors and their filmography I am your host Eli price and we are here on episode 90 of the podcast Yeah, we're kind of getting to the end of the the 2000s run the odds if you will I don't like really saying odds it sounds weird but Yeah, the end of his 2000s runs coming up

Yeah, I think next movie is this last one in that run. So But yeah, this Movie we'll be covering today is Munich It is a lot there's a lot to talk about with this one. So I'm excited to have Dave Lester back on He's been a guest a few times now on the show, but Dave it's great to have you back on. How are you?

Dave Lester (00:57.154)
Hello, Eli. Hello to all your audience. Thanks for having me again. Always excited to talk. Steven Spielberg, I think I talked about last time. I think of him as a third grandfather and apologies to you and your audience last time. My audio was horrible for Duel, which is a very, very fun made for TV movie. I think we got it fixed this time, hopefully.

Eli (01:09.032)
Yeah.

Eli (01:18.961)
Yeah, yes. yeah, just, you know, it's part of the podcasting. There's always a technical error sometimes in there, at least, you know, you are audible. Like you could hear you and understand you. So that's most important, I guess.

Dave Lester (01:35.022)
If it's it sounded like I was on the phone and somebody was maybe like overhearing me on the phone talking to somebody else. That's what it sounded like

Eli (01:41.523)
Yeah, well it's it's fine we're we're back rolling we're back Yeah back in action if you will But yeah, Dave has a couple of podcasts that he's part of his himself so He has one that he is a co-host of called veterans of culture war and then a podcast that he does they host

You have guests on there pretty often. Most of your episodes now I think are have guests, but it is called, Does the Bible Say That? And it is a kind of walk step by step through the Bible, kind of examining it. So really interesting. Both of those. Do you want to kind of give, give your, your pitch or kind of where you are with both of those podcasts, what you have coming up?

Dave Lester (02:36.352)
Yes, absolutely. So Veterans of Culture Wars, we were on a little bit of a hiatus over Christmas break. The final episode we did was on immigration and a lot of, there's a lot of different factors into that. People can go back and listen to the episode, but we had two great guests on. They have this podcast called, yeah, listen to that, but listen to especially their podcast called Sanctuary on the Border Between Church and State.

Eli (02:46.707)
Mmm.

Eli (02:53.543)
need to go listen to that.

Dave Lester (03:02.664)
I don't have anything to do with that podcast, but it is so good. It is so informative on the immigration issue. And I think no matter where you're at politically, will challenge you and cause you to think about things in a different way. It's really excellent. And we just released our first episode this year with Tori Douglas, Tori Williams Douglas. And yeah, she has White Homework Podcast and

Eli (03:06.707)
Hmm.

Dave Lester (03:30.656)
And she was a great guest. talked about diversity, equity, inclusion, and kind of a lot of different things that are going on in our world. Veterans Culture Wars is more of a, you know, it's, talk about evangelical Christianity, politics and things like that. If, people are into that, does the Bible say that, like you mentioned, Eli is going sort of, you know, just step by step through the Bible asking what it says and what it means. My view obviously is not necessarily definitive or anything, but it's trying to

Eli (03:34.675)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Eli (03:58.13)
Right.

Dave Lester (03:59.256)
dig into the text and ask like, what would the original audience have heard and why were these things written down in the original context? And one of my missions for doing that was to take it kind of out of our American context and kind of take it out of even the culture wars, so to speak, and just kind of look at the Bible, which as a Christian, I believe is the word of God, look at it in that context that we believe it was inspired in, and then going from there and seeing.

Eli (04:07.763)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (04:26.048)
what we find. it's been I love doing that podcast. It's been I've learned a ton myself and had some great guests on so would love for people to check it out.

Eli (04:32.765)
Yeah.

Eli (04:36.103)
Yeah, yeah, and we, we did, I did a came on for an episode talking about, the flood, I believe. And then we also, if, if you want kind of like a entry point into the podcast, there was a kind of bonus sort of episode where we talked about the, Aaron off skis Noah. yeah. So if that, that might be a good entry point for people to go from movie podcast to.

Dave Lester (04:45.677)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (04:57.494)
Yes.

Eli (05:04.42)
movie slash Bible podcast episode at least.

Dave Lester (05:07.052)
Yeah, we are two of the few people on planet Earth who really like the movie Noah. And it's not just average, it's like, I really like it as a movie.

Eli (05:12.923)
I so.

Yeah, yeah, no, I I'm there with yeah, we we defended that movie on that episode So if you want to you want to hear what we said go go check that out yeah, I might I might link I'll link to the podcast, but maybe that's episodes specifically too in the show notes, but yeah Yeah, so, you know, you've got What's what's funny to me not funny, but I guess just ironic to me is

Dave Lester (05:22.529)
Yeah.

Eli (05:44.723)
the last two on veterans of culture war have been about immigration and Dei and here we are about to talk about a movie dealing with Israeli-Palestinian conflict and yeah a movie that came out in 2005 about a conflict that you know a situation that happened in 1972 and it's still incredibly relevant I think this movie so

Yeah, Dave in the duel episode shared kind of his background in Spielberg. So you can go back and listen to that intro of that if you wanted to hear Dave's story about growing up with Spielberg. But yeah, let's jump into Munich because there's a lot to talk about here. It's really, really... I was really taken back by this movie.

Dave Lester (06:34.063)
yes.

Eli (06:42.183)
I was surprised by it. It's been one of the big surprises. It was a blind spot for me. I'd never seen it before. One of the fun things about these series is you get to fill in all the director blind spots that you have. yeah, I was very, I would say it's one of the biggest surprises, if not the biggest surprise so far of the Spielberg filmography, just cause you never really hear about it.

Dave Lester (07:11.254)
It is so underrated. This one and Empire of the Sun. I don't think it's even really debatable that those two in his entire filmography are just severely underrated and hardly ever talked about anymore. Well, Munich, think as well as we'll get into, I think it's talked about in some movie critics circles, I think for sure, but not necessarily by just normal everyday people.

Eli (07:13.276)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli (07:25.907)
Yeah.

Eli (07:32.018)
Yep.

Right. Right. And it's crazy because like, if you go look on Letterbox, like they both are rated 3.8, which is a really good rating on Letterboxd. you know, cause it's, it's a crowdsourced rating system. mean, there's, you know, tens of thousands of ratings that go into that. to, to be at a 3.8 star out of five is, is really good. So, you know, people that have watched it know, but just like not a ton of people have.

watch this movie, I don't think. At least not now. But yeah, let's go back to the beginning because it all started really back in 1972. Spielberg in one of the behind the scenes said, quote, I don't think I ever heard the word terrorism before September of 72, unquote. So this was a really big moment in

Kind of world history. I think, a moment that like, wasn't terribly familiar with, you know, I was, I was born in the early nineties. And so maybe it's just kind of like the, the, the kind of news and buzz around this had maybe fizzled out a little bit by then, by, I mean, by the time I was really would have been aware, it would have been the two thousands. So, you know, so this just, I didn't really know.

anything about this going in. I kind of did a little bit of like looking into it before I watched the movie just so I would understand the context. But yeah, September 5th of 1972, you know, you have eight fadain which is just it's a Arabic word that kind of means someone like willing to die for their cause from what I understand.

Eli (09:33.243)
Honestly, like I'm not sure if that's a term that they claim or if that's a turn given to them so maybe I shouldn't even say that since I don't know if it's like derogatory or not, but I mean, I guess they were Like taking peaceful hostage and killing them. So maybe you can be a bit derogatory About that. I don't know But yeah tread lightly I guess that they infiltrated the Munich Olympic Games

and they took, I guess they really only took nine Israeli hostages because two of them were killed kind of in the initial part of them, you know, invading their space. they, yeah, they take them hostage. Golda Mir, who was the prime minister of Israel, is it, am I right in that? She was the prime minister, correct? Do you know?

Dave Lester (10:30.595)
I am not an expert on Israeli history, but I think that sounds right.

Eli (10:35.589)
Yeah, but she really like stuck to the do not negotiate with terrorists policy that Israel has. So they did not negotiate. It ended with 17 people dead, including all 11 Israeli athletes, one German police officer, and five of the hostage takers. The other three hostage takers were apprehended. And then I believe later, like

kind of traded, really kind of one of those like international, you know, prisoner trade trade-offs. cause that happens in the movie, I believe, they, kind of see that happened. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. but yeah, no, I think, I think like there's a TV thing where they're seeing like, they, they let those guys go that they apprehended.

Dave Lester (11:18.326)
At the end, in a flashback sequence, yes.

Eli (11:34.355)
I think like one of those times where they're sitting around in a hotel room or something. anyways, yeah, this happened only 27 years after World War II, which is crazy to think about because again, you have Jewish people being killed in Germany. So it's just very like full of meaning and trauma and just horrible.

Very, very, I don't know, not even words for it, I guess. I can't even come up with the right word to describe that feeling that must have been held by especially Jewish people, know, witnessing it over the television. But yeah.

Dave Lester (12:20.034)
Yeah, it's not only the murder of the citizens of their country, it's something that happens on the world stage. Like you said, after the horror of the Holocaust. And so I do think there's compounding trauma. And I think there's trauma going, obviously, in a lot of ways in the story, as we'll get into. especially for that, it happened eight years before I was born. And like you, I didn't really...

Eli (12:26.279)
Right.

Eli (12:30.45)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Eli (12:40.605)
yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (12:47.928)
grow up hearing a lot about it. don't know when I first knew about this terrorist incident. yeah, just a horrible, horrible thing to have happen just to athletes who just wanted to compete and represent their country.

Eli (13:03.059)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it kind of spirals the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a new, like, era of violence, unfortunately. yeah, so 1984, this is kind of where the movie, like this movie that we're going to talk about kind of starts with this 1984 book called Vengeance by a Canadian journalist named George Jonas.

It is kind of about the aftermath of this Munich terrorist event. It talks about a group of five men sent across Europe to kill 11 Palestinian leaders presumed responsible for Munich. And so his main source, Jonas the author, is this the protagonist of the book who goes under the pseudonym Avner.

And yeah, this is a guy who eventually quit the Israeli secret service. So this is his main source. It's the pro, you know, as I'm sure people know, because I'm sure they've watched the movie, it's the protagonist of the movie played by Eric Bana or ban. Is it Banna? I don't know. It's it's it's an Australian accent. I know that. But.

Dave Lester (14:22.942)
I, yeah, sounds good. The first one.

Eli (14:30.227)
This book was initially called A Tissue of Lies by Israel, but some former Mossad agents officially acknowledged the mission in 1993. So not necessarily like the details that are in the book, but just that there was a mission like this in some sort of way.

Dave Lester (14:49.4)
They basically said, okay, something happened. That's all we got.

Eli (14:52.083)
Right, right. And those documents are still classified as far as I know. At least they were at the time of the movie being made because I haven't looked if they've been declassified since then. But yeah, at the time of the movie, it definitely was still classified. So we still don't really know the true details of that. This book was turned into a TV movie in 1986 called Sword of Gideon.

I have not seen that, but and and yet it actually not this story, but the story of kind of the people covering the Munich Olympic Hostage situation is a recent movie, September 5. I haven't seen it. Have you have you got been able to catch up with that? Yeah, I've heard pretty good things about it.

Dave Lester (15:45.239)
It's on the list, but I have not seen it yet.

Eli (15:51.667)
It you know, it was nominated by the time this comes out people will know who won for adapted screenplay But it was nominated for Adapted screenplay, I think I think it was adapted. I don't think it was original But yeah, I've heard it does it is a well-written movie. So I Do want to check that one out. But but alas it it's not about the same thing. This movie is about this movie is about the aftermath

And so Barry Mendel, who's a producer, reads the book. He shares it with Kathleen Kennedy, who as we all know is Spielberg's producing buddy, and she shares it with Spielberg. So in a chain of events, they all kind of like come together and they're like, we're going to make this movie. Spielberg commissions a script pretty quickly. And there's basically like three work, three years of

him trying to work with different writers on an adaptation of this book. So the first people are David and Janet Peoples who wrote the movie 12 Monkeys. Never seen that. Yeah, I've heard good things, just never seen it. Charles Rudolph was the next one who wrote The Interpreter. Haven't seen that either. Yeah. And then the last guy to take a...

Dave Lester (17:03.768)
Ooh, that was good.

Dave Lester (17:14.445)
Yes.

Eli (17:20.443)
at it before we get to our our main writer was Eric Roth who wrote Forrest Gump. Definitely have seen that. among those he's written other things too, but that was probably the most popular of the things he's written. But yeah, Eric Roth, he doesn't still end up with with writing credit on the movie. I think because they kind of kept his general structure

So they kind of had to give him writing credits on the movie, it's not really the his his screenplay isn't like Really what they went with it was just kind of like the general structure of it that they kind of took and ran with and developed So during this process Spielberg really only met with the the student the guy under the pseudonym Abner

who in real life, his name is Yuval Aviv. so he's the only guy connected to the story that he talks to. he didn't really talk to any like Mossad agents or anything like any other people connected potentially to the story. but he also was getting Intel from like Bill Clinton, Dennis Ross, who was an ex diplomat and even his rabbi. So.

He's really trying to like dig into all the different angles around kind of the the conflict and the situation and the politics and you know, I guess like the the spiritual aspects of it too, talking to his rabbi. And so, yeah, and then Barry Mendel also consulted with the director of a documentary called One Day in September, which won the Oscar for Best Doc in 2000.

That that guy was Kevin McDonald. So I haven't seen that either, but it won best documentary. So probably pretty good But yeah, so after all this Spielberg is still very hesitant apprehensive about the subject matter as You could imagine And this is something that will will kind of talk about as a thread I think through this whole

Eli (19:41.959)
conversation because, know, he's apprehensive about it because this is his people, know, this is, you know, especially like in the aftermath of Schindler's List, you know, he really did a lot for raising awareness about, you know, his people and the things they've been through. And then, you know, along with

many other people groups of the world that have that have gone through similar things so Struggling with like them being attacked and what they did in response. was really he struggled with that.

Dave Lester (20:27.358)
It is thematically a high wire act. And I think that is why I have so much appreciation for this movie. And I would consider it one of his masterpieces because I think he really does pull this off. And I think when you watch it, it's obviously something where you could almost feel that struggle, that tension, just thinking through how to put a story like this on screen.

Eli (20:31.442)
Yeah.

Eli (20:40.723)
Mm.

Eli (20:51.475)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (20:55.438)
It is his darkest movie. I think for I don't know if this takes us too far afield from what we're talking about, but I might as well get this in here now, too, that all these people who say Spielberg is just a sentimental filmmaker, he's not a sentimental filmmaker at all. You know, you can go back. mean, you already covered always on your podcast. That's a cheesy, sentimental movie. OK, like, you know, it's one of his worst movies. But

Eli (21:15.283)
Yeah.

Eli (21:20.403)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (21:26.05)
By and large, over his filmography, he is not sentimental at all. This is definitely not a sentimental film. It is a very dark film.

Eli (21:34.331)
Yeah Yeah, it's What I think what you see when you take in the whole of his filmography is that like he kind of goes back and forth so And then like a lot of them are Even the like the sent quote-unquote sentimental ones are kind of like bittersweet Like I mean even you think about ET like

probably what most people would think of as like peak sentimental Spielberg is kind of bittersweet like the alien leaves and then you're left with like them having this awesome experience but then they have to like go back to their life like and and figure out where to go now you know

Dave Lester (22:14.262)
Yeah. Well, he famously said that movie was about his parents' divorce and how he was dealing with the pain of that, which comes up again in the Fablemen's later on.

Eli (22:23.112)
Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, and then too, like you think about like AI, which is really like the reality is it's a very dark movie. People, think a lot of people misread the ending of that movie as like some cheesy sentimental ending when really like it's a very sad, dark ending. that's shot in a kind of ironically in a sentimental way. I think

Dave Lester (22:37.112)
Yeah.

Eli (22:58.355)
which is very... you know Kubrick is obviously all over that movie so I think that's why it has that like kind of ironic sentimental but not really kind of ending

Dave Lester (23:12.538)
I think I read, don't know if this is true and maybe you know, I think that ending was actually Kubrick's idea. Yeah, so it wasn't even, even if you want to take it as sentimental, that wasn't even Steven Spielberg's original thought. It was his collaboration with Kubrick.

Eli (23:18.757)
It was,

Eli (23:29.255)
Yeah, and in this too, like I think one of the big things like Kathleen Kennedy talked about 9-eleven really shifting his kind of I guess the the impetus of his filmmaking I guess purpose, you know it really like he He like didn't want at first he like didn't want to be seen as like capitalizing on a tragic event like

this tragic event just happened and now Spielberg's trying to like capitalize on that with this big movie about some terrorists. so, but then like seeing kind of like the aftermath of what happened and the US's response and all that, he was like, okay, I need to make this movie. This is important. And that really shifted his worldview, I think, in a lot of ways because he really like,

He's made, you know, dark and movies dealing with deep things, but this movie is very political. And I think that's a new, a new like kind of direction for him, because as we'll see with this movie and then some of the movies he makes in the 2010s, he's much more willing to really like dive into, you know, political thrillers, political dramas. And so

Yeah, so this really like shifted for him and it I think it really started with finding Tony Kushner He you know, he he kind of I don't I don't remember like he must have like seen one of his plays or something or Maybe someone just connected them. I didn't really like see exactly how they got connected

Dave Lester (25:19.394)
Maybe it was Angels in America. I think that was on HBO, was that early 2000s or late 90s? And that was such a, I think it was a Tony award-winning play and then they turned it into a mini-series. It was a huge cultural thing.

Eli (25:21.776)
Right.

Eli (25:30.353)
It was a, he won the, yeah, yeah, he won the Polar Surprise for that. And so I've never seen that or there's a, I know there's a, like a adaptation of it, like a film adaptation with, had a great cast. I was like, man, I need to see this. It's very long. But,

Dave Lester (25:51.5)
Yeah, it was like a mini-series on HBO or like a two or three-part or something like that. It's been a long time for me, but yeah.

Eli (25:54.087)
Okay.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I need to, I need to check that out for sure. but yeah, he won the Pulitzer prize for it. Kushner is a Jewish American playwright. that's what he's known for mostly is being a playwright. and, it was a risky choice choosing Kushner for Spielberg because Kushner was,

kind of a well-known, outspoken, left-wing critic of the Israeli government. He had always questioned the Israeli-Palestine conflict. He had a series of essays in 2003 called Wrestling with Zion. And he considered the creation of Israel a mistake. So very risky for Spielberg to take this guy on as his writer, I think. Because Spielberg and

Kushner and Spielberg talk about like they didn't agree on that. know, Spielberg didn't consider the creation of Israel a mistake and Kushner did. And I love this, I love to this little quote that I pulled. Kushner said, Stephen and I had different views on counter-terrorism. Through the film, we found a common ground that our disagreements nourished. The script gained depth and complexity.

And so I really appreciate that Spielberg, you know, found someone with a totally different viewpoint from him and then like worked through the story together. And I think that really comes out when you watch the film, that kind of wrestling with kind of different viewpoints.

Dave Lester (27:40.622)
It helps the high wire act, definitely, as far as the tension with the themes. Maybe we'll have more to say on that later as we come to kind of the politics of it. But yeah, I definitely have some thoughts of the people who are going after Spielberg for this movie. I think it's just unfounded, but we'll continue.

Eli (27:47.56)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (27:55.539)
for sure.

Eli (28:06.331)
Yeah, yeah, well, we'll definitely get into that because I do have in the in the kind of like response to the movie section I kind of have a lot of like pull quotes from from articles at the time that will kind of jump into Yeah, so, you know really for this story At the time the only quote-unquote reliable, I guess you could say source was this book by George Jonas vengeance

But Spielberg says three facts were indisputable. He says this in one of the behind the scenes things. He says, one, the athletes were massacred. No, no disputing that. Two, Golda Mir made a decision to go after those responsible. I think that's kind of been, that was confirmed by those Mossad agents that yes, there was a mission of some sort. And then three, that a significant number of those responsible

or at least considered responsible were killed. These were public, like these were bombs going off, these were killings done in public a lot of the time, and so we know that a lot of those people that were considered connected to it were killed. so Spielberg's like, these three things are indisputable. And then they kind of go from there knowing, okay, now we have to take

The things that are in the book that we can work with and then do a lot of fictionalizing around it too. You know, they compress the time from one year, from five years to one year for the movie. You know, they're doing a lot more of like confronting the characters and their scruples and their kind of their wrestling in the movie than in the book. You know, you have Spielbergian figures like there's a girl in red in this movie, which is kind of a callback to

Schindler's List, a girl being in the in kind of like the line of fire in a way that's dressed in red. And then the whole like safe house sequence that we'll definitely get into was purely fictional. That was something they completely added in that wasn't in the book. But you did have at the time Aaron J. Klein, who was an Israeli reporter, really like came after him as far as like

Eli (30:32.487)
the inaccuracies and stuff. He kind of was saying like, there was a team with approved targets, but the targets weren't necessarily connected to Munich. wasn't like this revenge thing, I guess, is kind of what he was saying. This guy interviewed a ton of Mossad agents, I think 50, and he was like, none of them had doubts or wavering consciences like this Avner character.

They were all very committed to their cause, which to me is like, okay, but there could have been one guy that was doubting, you know? He said their goal was deterrence, and he did actually write a book that released the same month that this movie released called Striking Back, I guess kind of as a response to the Vengeance book and also to this movie. So that would probably be an interesting read.

But yeah, Spielberg, he knows like he's fictionalizing a lot of things, but he also knows that like you kind of have to to explore these themes. You can't just like make a movie that states facts. You have to make a movie where interesting things happen and so that you're able to explore like the questions and the dilemmas that surround the situation. Right. Right.

Dave Lester (31:52.928)
It's not a documentary, it's a scripted drama. It's not hiding what it is.

Eli (31:58.565)
Exactly. Yeah. And so to make the movie, he brings on a team of, as we, as we go through these for people that have been listening along in the series, these are going to be a lot of familiar faces. I hardly recognize, like there was only a few people where I was like, this is a new name.

You have Kathleen Kennedy, Barry Mendel, and Spielberg, of course, coming together to produce it. The screenplay credits were Tony Kushner and then Eric Roth, which we talked about. The director of photography is Janusz Kaminski, his really only DP from Schindler's List On. Michael Kahn is the editor, of course, and John Williams does the music, of course.

Dave Lester (32:51.768)
John who?

Eli (32:52.943)
John John Billiams, think. Is that what I said? John Gilliams. it's a really bad kind of dad joke. the the sound was done by Richard Hems, who is a regular player, and then Ben Burt, who he brought back. I don't think Ben Burt had worked with him since Raiders. so it's fun to see Ben Burt. Ben Burt is like pretty

Dave Lester (32:57.166)
I'm

Eli (33:22.831)
iconic from Star Wars mostly I think and so Yeah, a couple of really good sound guys there Production design Rick Carter. That's like during this area, especially just just every movie is Rick Carter With art direction from Rod McLean Special effects done by Josh Williams, which is a name I did not recognize So that that's kind of a new new guy. We'll see

I don't know if his name is going pop up again, but I guess we'll see. Stunts by Paul Jennings, another new name. Vic Armstrong was there for the last one, so sad to not see Vic Armstrong back, but he's pretty old at this point, so probably needed a younger guy, this guy, Paul Jennings. The hair was...I wanted to make sure to say the hair names, because you have Jeremy Woodhead,

Dave Lester (34:10.702)
You

Eli (34:19.699)
Elaine Lucy and then I don't think this is the running back for your Seattle Seahawks Kenneth Walker, but it is someone named Kenneth Walker. but yeah, he was. Yeah. Yeah. When I saw that, I was like, they will appreciate a little shout out to this, the Seahawks there, but makeup, Paul.

Dave Lester (34:27.118)
He's multi-talented and he's what is he like 20 years old so he was doing this as a toddler. Yeah.

Dave Lester (34:42.878)
yes.

Eli (34:47.865)
England Florence Romeo Ramieu and Carl Fullerton so And then costumes Joanna Johnston. She's been his go-to costume lady for the past few movies and Casting was done by Gina J and then this casting duo out of Austria named Lucky Englander I'm glad I remember that because it's a typo in my notes Lucky Englander and Fritz

Let's see if I can get this. Flashhacker. That's probably wrong, don't get mad at me too much. I did my best. But they helped a lot with the international cast, that team. So pretty important. All those people are important. I like to give shout outs to even the makeup people and whatnot, because how often do their names get said out in the world?

Dave Lester (35:27.202)
A for effort.

Dave Lester (35:46.976)
You

Eli (35:47.251)
Even if we don't ever talk about them again, you know, just acknowledging they were there they helped make the movie so But yeah, let's get into the cast a little bit Because obviously when you're making a movie you have to you have to cast people to play the parts I did think Before we like start running through these guys I did think it was a bit strange that like all of the major players in the movie are not Jewish really

Dave Lester (36:03.522)
you

Dave Lester (36:15.054)
That's a little weird.

Eli (36:17.691)
It was the only thing that I was like, I don't know if that's like the best. There's definitely like Jewish people in the movie, but like all the main people as far as I could in my research saw are not Jewish. you know, it is what it is. It's a movie. you know, and I've, I've heard like critics that are Jewish that have said like, you know,

doesn't really bother them, it is what it is sort of thing. you know, that's probably not a, that's, they don't speak for everybody obviously, but it probably would have been good to get at least, you know, one or two in the, in the, you know, the main five guys maybe to be Jewish. But alas, this is where we are. He, he was trying to get like a very diverse, like kind of group of guys that would be like different.

like Jews from different regions that are kind of coming together, and so I think that's part of why we ended up with what we ended up with, but alas, you have Eric Bana in the role of Avner. Spielberg actually saw him first in Ang Lee's Hulk with his kids.

Dave Lester (37:34.51)
Okay, so Spielberg is watching Ang Lee's Hulk and is like, I want this guy to be the lead in my next movie. This actually happened.

Eli (37:41.243)
Yep, with his kids.

Eli (37:47.571)
It's on record. I watched the Blu-ray special features and it came out of Spielberg's own mouth. He said he noticed something about him like in his eyes and in the way like he carried himself playing the Hulk that he was like, this guy is really good at humanizing characters and I want him to play Avner to be able to humanize this character.

Dave Lester (37:57.166)
hahahaha

Dave Lester (38:15.362)
He is going to be a Jewish assassin, yes. man.

Eli (38:17.715)
So I got a kick out of that too So yeah, he called Eric Mana Eric Mana who is an Australian actor by the way Called him up while he's finishing the movie Troy Eric bought it was kind of it's one of those like that's kind of cute, you know actors talking about Yeah, I got a call from Steven Spielberg. I didn't I was like is this real, you know

which I can imagine is pretty incredible to get a call from a personal call from Steven Spielberg.

Dave Lester (38:57.09)
quite a trajectory to be. Troy was a fairly big film. Brad Pitt was in that. So to go from Ang Lee's Hulk, which Ang Lee at that time was a fairly established director, to then go to Troy, a big budget sword and sandals type thing. And then Spielberg calls you, that's the rocket to the top.

Eli (39:02.642)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (39:07.025)
Yeah.

Eli (39:12.371)
Which was kind of a flop. Yeah. Yeah. If I remember right, Troy was a bit of a flop. Like it wasn't like, yeah, it didn't get like big recognition or anything. It was kind of like, Oh yeah, that movie happened. Um, yeah. Yeah. Um, but next on the list is Daniel, which I'm going to say his name correctly, as far as I know, Craig.

Dave Lester (39:29.484)
made some money and people moved on I think yeah.

Eli (39:41.373)
is how you're supposed to say it. We Americans say Daniel Craig most of the time, but I think you're supposed to say Daniel Craig, which is more fun to say in my opinion. I think we should, yeah. So he plays Steve, you know, great name. He's just Steve, which I love. Love that his name is just Steve. He's got blonde hair in this movie, just like full of energy.

Dave Lester (39:52.438)
Agreed.

Eli (40:10.757)
Love seeing it. and he's cast just before he's announced as the next bond. cause I mean, casino Royale came out, what a couple of years later. yeah. so he, he was, they cast him and then like, I, I don't know if it was like during production or maybe like before sometime around, like the release he was announced as the next bond. So that's pretty big.

Dave Lester (40:22.062)
Two years later, yeah.

Eli (40:39.549)
get to be in a Spielberg movie and then you get to be James Bond. Pretty cool. Yeah. So we've got an Australian, now we've got a Brit, and now we're going to get to our Irishman. And Kieran, is it Kieran? Is that how pronounce that? Kieran Hines? I know that, so there's a way to spell Kieran that's not like this. Like Kieran Culkin is spelled a different way than this.

Dave Lester (40:59.148)
I'm not sure, maybe?

Dave Lester (41:07.682)
differently. Yep.

Eli (41:09.075)
But I think that's still how you pronounce this. He plays Carl in the movie. Heinz is kind of one of those guys that seems, it feels like he's a pretty good character actor. He kind of pops up in movies and just kind of does a really good character. Matthew Kasowitz plays Robert. So now we've got a Frenchman coming in.

in this guy, Matthew Kasevitz, which it would make more sense that he's French when you see how his first name is spelled. Not like we spell it with the EW, but with the IEU. So we've got, so yeah, Australian, Brit, Irishman, Frenchman, and of course we've got rounding it out are German in Hans Zichler. Yeah, yeah, I mean, they did, they accomplished the goal of getting

guys like with different personas from different places. So, and I, yeah.

Dave Lester (42:14.382)
Yeah, that's actually super interesting about the cast. Kind of just people from all over the world, really.

Eli (42:18.171)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it really is and And so we'll we'll get into that a little bit more I think I have some notes on kind of their different personas Once we start talking about like the themes and the characters But yeah, let's let's talk a little bit more about the other guy other people. So a let's zero Plays Daphna the wife of offner. She is a Jewish actress

So there's your first Jewish actress in the cast. Jeffrey Rush plays Ephraim. Ben Kingsley was set to play this role, but then as you might remember from the last episode, War of the Worlds came in, Cruise and War of the Worlds came in and pushed the production of this movie back. So when that production was postponed, Ben Kingsley had to drop out.

I guess he had some conflicts. yeah, they went with Jeffrey Rush, which I could see Bing Kingsley kind of I don't know if he would make it better than Jeffrey Rush did, but I could see him stepping in and it would be just as good, you know, because I think Jeffrey Yeah, I think Jeffrey Rush plays that character really well But Bing Kingsley is an incredible actor so I you know

Dave Lester (43:32.411)
They would both solid. Yeah.

Eli (43:44.319)
I don't know that that character is in the movie enough for a different actor to make that much of a difference, but yeah, Kingsley would have been really good too. You got another French Matthew and Matthew Amauric playing Louis, which I pulled this quote from Amauric. said, quote, Spielberg was very amused by the fact that he had cast Kacowicz, Attal, and me.

He told us it's so nice to shoot with actor-directors. So I'm not really familiar with anything those three guys have directed, but apparently those guys are actor-directors. yeah. Michael Lonsdale plays Papa, who I think is just really good at this movie. He was one of my favorite. He's not in the movie a whole lot, but when he's in it, he's in it.

Dave Lester (44:25.176)
Me neither.

Eli (44:41.573)
a presence on screen.

Dave Lester (44:43.906)
No small parts, only small actors.

Eli (44:47.515)
Yeah, so man, I I guess we might get into it a little bit later, but I did you like this character because I loved it It made me yeah, it made me want like a a spillberg like mafia movie like we don't really have that and the way like he those scenes with

Dave Lester (44:58.486)
Yeah, absolutely. The cast are great.

Eli (45:13.671)
with Lonsdale as Papa on the kind of like French compound that he has. I was like, man, I feel like Spielberg could pull it off. Like this is really good. Yeah. But I didn't really think about that until this moment of like, I guess we don't really have a Spielberg like mafia movie, which is kind of surprising. It feels like that would be in his wheelhouse, but I guess he left them all to his buddy Scorsese.

Dave Lester (45:25.218)
Totally.

Dave Lester (45:42.83)
He needs to get on it. He's done a bunch of different genres. He did a musical recently.

Eli (45:46.267)
I know, yeah. Right, right. So, yeah. So Spielberg, if you're listening out there, we really would like a mafia movie from you. Lynn Cohen, who is an American actress, plays Golda Mir, the prime minister of Israel at the time. It was cool. She got like, they got a lot of footage of Golda Mir.

Dave Lester (45:54.986)
And he is, he listens all the time.

Eli (46:15.319)
that she watched and it was cool to see in the behind the scenes like they would play like footage of the real Golda and then show like how she played her and she like really nailed like a lot of like the mannerisms and like the way she held herself so that was cool to see Omar Matwaly plays Ali I thought it was was important to point out him as well

He's the Palestinian character that has the conversation with Avner at the safe house. So, and I thought this was a cool little fun fact too. This is just something he decided as an actor, a choice he made. He knew that like a lot of Palestinians had keepsakes that they had kept from their home. And a lot of times it would just be something as simple as like a key.

to their home. so if you see in the movie, he has a little necklace on with a key on it. And so that was a choice he made as a shout out to something that they really do, as they'll keep a key as a keepsake from their home as their refugees wherever they are. So I thought that was really cool and sweet that he was like.

Thinking that like that in depth about this character Yeah, there's a ton of more parts obviously in this movie it's long movie it's very widespread Spielberg said that this is the most speaking parts he's ever done in a movie there were Though he the other the one closest would be catch me if you can I think he said there was like a hundred and fifty

that movie and in this movie there's 155. So a lot of speaking parts. I don't know what the average is. I should have looked that up because that would be interesting to know like the average amount of speaking parts in a movie. I would probably guess less than a hundred in a typical like movie in your average movie. I don't know.

Dave Lester (48:37.698)
Yeah, I never thought about it. Until now.

Eli (48:39.997)
Yeah, I haven't either. There's a ton of movies where, I mean, you have maybe 10 speaking parts though. you know, yeah, so he was working even to make like those small characters memorable. Like he talked about sometimes he was choosing between 10 to 20 actors for just a two line role. So I just, I can't write my mind around that. I would have like,

I have told someone else to find those people. But that's, guess that's why I'm not Spielberg. yeah, a few other shout out to a few other people. mentioned, a tile of Yvonne et al plays a guy named Tony in the movie. Gila Al Magor plays after his mom. Murray Becker plays, Yvonne who's, a woman early in the movie, Valerie, Valeria Bruni.

Tedeschi plays Sylvie, another woman that pops up, and then Marie Josie Crows plays Jeanette, who is the Dutch assassin that we see in the movie. So yeah, so they got the cast. Production starts on June 29th, 2005. And so they have a 71-day shooting schedule, but they finished in 68. you know, big props to them for that. Finished in September.

late September 2005 with the shooting, which is significant if you know when this was released, which was December of that year. very quick turnover with this movie, which I will probably talk about. yeah, so Spielberg wanted to shoot on actual locations in the movie. Not really realistic. Half because there's a lot of locations and half because

The locations didn't weren't really like Rick Carter the production designer basically said those locations wouldn't have really been good for filming and so They really shoot mostly in two places. So they shoot kind of the Mediterranean locales in Malta So Malta kind of stands in in the movie for Cyprus for Athens for parts of Rome for Tel Aviv and for Beirut

Eli (51:07.527)
So all of those kind of Mediterranean locales, shoot in Malta, in various locations in Malta. And then the old Europe locales are all filmed in Budapest. So you have some of Rome, some of Paris, and then the London scenes are all shot in Budapest, which is pretty cool. They talked about how you could kind of like walk.

Dave Lester (51:31.81)
Yeah.

Eli (51:34.673)
You could be in a place where it's like, this looks so much like Rome and then like walk a few blocks down the road and it's like, this looks like London now. Just, guess a very like international, internationally influenced city, I guess in Budapest, but yeah, really cool. They also used this old ice skating rink that was out of commission, a big building that they used to build a bunch of sets in. So.

They hired a bunch of locals in Budapest and built a lot of the sets there. really, they didn't shoot. The only thing they shot in the States was the New York City scenes there for the end. So even the scenes that are on a set, they used this ice skating rink to build those things in Budapest.

So yeah, they do shoot a few days in Paris. Spielberg was like, I wanted some real shots in Paris so that I could trick people to think I was really going to all these places to shoot. Because I mean, when you put the Eiffel Tower in the background, you're like, he's really in Paris. But it's really like, they shot like one scene there. They were there for like two or three days. And then I think they shot the

Dave Lester (52:52.59)
You

Eli (52:59.495)
the compound, the Papa's little, you know, compound thing. I think that was shot outside of Paris as well, in the countryside of France. But then they also talked about like, you can't really shoot New York anywhere other than New York. And so they did go to Brooklyn to shoot those New York scenes there at the end.

Which makes sense. You know, that's such a, that's such an iconic look that's unique to New York, you know. It would, yeah. But yeah, the sets were placed under strict surveillance, close to the media. I think they were just like worried about just the subject matter being, getting them in trouble in some way, I guess. Which makes sense.

Dave Lester (53:35.182)
Absolutely.

Eli (53:56.211)
And then yeah, they were careful with the script too, which is typical of Spielberg. Spielberg's not like willy-nilly with his scripts. They have like confidentiality contracts and stuff and they get their scripts in pieces and whatnot. yeah, they were really careful with this one. then yeah, Kushner was like, he talked about he was always evolving the script based on like discussions with the cast and on set.

You know, you have, they, they talked about how like the Arab and Israeli actors were kind of like acting as emissaries for their own people on set, which was, which was really cool. and then I thought this was interesting. You have this Palestinian actress, Hiam Abbas, who was hired for a small role. but then Spielberg promoted her to an acting coaching consultant. so she did a lot of work.

with the actors on set, helping them kind of like figure out how to deal with the tough like scenes that they were shooting, kind of coaching them through it and that sort of thing. Me and a consultant for Spielberg on how he should like deal with it. Because you know, Spielberg too talked about he was constantly trying to just like keep everyone together just because of the hard subject matter.

Yeah, and so I pulled this quote from her. She said, we filmed the hostage crisis, the actors had a lot of trouble facing each other violently. They lived in the same hotel. They went out together. They were friends. Stephen shot dialogue scenes between them, knowing he wouldn't use them just to get the mood right. So, you know, he's shooting scenes in between to kind of calm things down that he's not even gonna use. It's just kind of like, I need to get these...

get like the mood back, you know, calmed down, get their nerves calmed down. And so, yeah, you don't really think about that a lot of times when you watch movies like this, but when you're shooting this sort of movie, it's hard. it's, because actors and, you know, directors and people in the crew, they're getting in this mind space of these characters and this,

Eli (56:21.981)
place, in this setting, in these themes that's constantly on their minds. And that can be very difficult to work through and to live with. And I don't think people think about that a lot, but yeah, it's tough sometimes to make movies like this and not come out on the other side with problems.

emotional issues, you know, so, you know, props to Spielberg for, for making sure to get someone to help them with that. you know, having, having to like the wherewithal to see, this woman that I hired for this small role, like really has a lot to offer. Like I'm gonna, I'm gonna promote her and get her to help. she has, she has something that I don't have, so I need to let her do her thing, you know.

Yeah, so No storyboarding or preconceived outline with this one Spielberg talks about how like he he really truly believes that Most of the time his first intuition is the correct one So he likes to some for movies like this. He really likes to just show up on location You know

I say no preconceived outline, but I mean, they have this, the screenplay. but as far as like, what am I going to do exactly with the camera? Where, where like, how are we going to shoot this? That sort of thing. Like he really tries to let it, he talks about like letting the space speak to him. and Spielberg is like a very intuition. Filmmaker like, so he's just showing up. Janusz Kaminski said,

that it was a very intuitional movie for Spielberg. One example that I pulled was, so there's the scene of the first killing, so they're kind of going through the streets, you know, following this guy that they're about to assassinate, and there's a part where it's, the camera is showing this band playing, you know, through a window in this shop or whatever. I don't know if you remember that, but.

Eli (58:48.529)
Yeah, it shows the band playing and then it like pans over to the guy going into his building or something like that. And so that was just something that was happening on that street. Like that, that wasn't placed there by them. They, that band was really playing in there apparently. And, yeah. Are you muted by the way? think you might.

Eli (59:16.083)
There you go. yeah, you're back on. No worries. but yeah, that, that band was really playing in there. and Spielberg saw it and he thought like, I guess to me it's like kind of showing there's just normal stuff happening on the street and, but we know that there's about to be this man killed. and so just letting like,

Dave Lester (59:18.05)
Backload? Sorry about that.

Eli (59:42.821)
letting the space and the location speak to him and say, okay, there's this visual way that I can get that across. So we're going to start on the band and then pan over, you know, that sort of thing. Very intuitional. But yeah, man was, let's talk about like a little bit about the cinematography and the camera work. There's this

This is a masterclass as far as to me, this is like one of Spielberg's most well shot movies. as far as like the way it looks, the way he uses the camera, what were, do you have like a standout moment where you're just like blown away by what do you, how he captured something?

Dave Lester (01:00:22.892)
I agree, it's, Definitely.

Dave Lester (01:00:36.91)
Yeah, we'll probably talk about this a little bit later. The scene with the flashback at the end where Eric Bana is in the bedroom with his wife and how that is, I guess it's not cinematography how it's edited. Of course, the camera work is there too. Yeah, just, I mean, the shots with the band, the high wire tension scene where they plant a bomb, it was in the apartment and the girl,

Eli (01:00:40.141)
huh.

Hmm.

Eli (01:00:47.495)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:00:52.252)
Right.

Eli (01:01:05.371)
Yeah, the fallen bomb. Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:01:06.542)
the child was in danger with what was going on and just how that is. guess, I mean, the cinematography is good. think I feel like right now I'm talking more about the editing as well. But all of that was super top notch.

Eli (01:01:18.664)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, so, you know, it's funny you mentioned that because Michael Kahn was on set, like editing daily. So he was, he had like a viewing machine and editing, was editing in his hotel room, very similar to how they did it for 30 years ago for, at this point for Close Encounters. When...

Khan worked on Close Encounters with Spielberg, he was just there, they had like a house that they rented and they were editing like constantly. And so like, really like this is another way that like Spielberg was able to like have a evolving vision for things as they go because when you're editing day, like when you're going back from shooting that day and

Dave Lester (01:01:56.002)
Huh.

Eli (01:02:14.771)
immediately starting to like work through the edit, you can see like, Oh, we need to get, we need to capture this. need tomorrow. You know, this is going to be really good if we can get this shot tomorrow. And so a lot of the, like, a lot of times, you know, you'll hear of directors and, know, people having to do reshoots of things. And most of the time that's because

They start editing after production ends and then they realize we needed to get this. So they have to go back and reshoot that. Well, they're doing that daily. And so not only are they able to get those things that they would normally have to reshoot. they're also like, it's, it's helping guide the storytelling process too, of getting new ideas for things, getting new ideas of things to like add that are going to add to.

what they're trying to do with that sequence or that scene. yeah, the editing is super important in this movie. And I think it's, like I have my little film studies notebook where it lets you like give a rating for each movie, like out of 10, you know, for editing, music, for composition, all that stuff. And I gave this one a 10 for editing.

10 out of 10, it's incredibly well edited, like top master class, I think. Yeah, some of the camera stuff, like, you know, I thought it was cool because I did notice that he was doing some zoom lenses, which is very atypical for Spielberg. Usually he doesn't use zoom lenses when he like,

Dave Lester (01:03:37.326)
Makes sense.

Eli (01:04:03.943)
Moving in on a character. It's usually a push-in which is you know actually pushing the camera towards Towards the actor he doesn't really do really anything with zoom lenses hardly ever But he did it in this movie because he was trying to capture some like Aesthetics from those 60s and 70s movies those kind of like political thrillers and espionage movies they used a lot of zoom lenses and so You know

One of the things that I can remember is they're kind of I think it is that first guy that they kill you have Daniel Craig in the car kind of Spying on him while he's reading excerpt from something and the camera is in the car and then it like you have like, you know Daniel Craig in the foreground and it zooms in on the guy that they're that he's spying on and I was like,

wait, Spielberg's using a zoom, like he never does that. So that, I did notice that. So when I was doing my research afterwards, I was like, okay, that makes sense. It did kind of give that feel of those sixties and seventies movies. So I thought that was cool. Another thing I thought was cool was Janusz Kaminski talked about, he played a lot with like the colorization. And so he tried to give each country

they were supposed to be in a different sort of feel in the color. And I don't know that that's something I would have necessarily noticed while watching, but like in hindsight when I heard him say that I was like, okay, I could see that because you do always have a sense of like when you're in a different place it feels different. I don't know if you felt that at all Dave, but

Dave Lester (01:06:01.846)
Yeah, I guess, I mean, now that you mention it, I think I can see it. I don't know if I was necessarily thinking about that the last time I watched it. But yeah.

Eli (01:06:05.978)
Yeah.

Eli (01:06:11.569)
Yeah, I wasn't either honestly, but, in hindsight, like I was like, okay. Like it's kind of one of those like subliminal things that you don't really think about unless someone brings it up. but, but yeah, I also like, it's probably means that it was done really well if you're not like noticing it like while watching.

Dave Lester (01:06:35.36)
Right. Yeah, certainly not distracting. It didn't. It doesn't take you out of the the narrative itself.

Eli (01:06:43.163)
Yeah, I think one of the ones that would be more obvious is like any time you're back in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, it's like a very bright, know, that sort of like desert-y, bright, you know, a lot of yellow, orange kind of feel. And I think that's probably like the most obvious color difference.

But yeah, there is kind of like a different feel for each country they're supposed to be in, which I thought was cool. And then, yeah, it was shot on film, which is cool because in 2005, there was a lot of movement towards digital. And so it was cool that, you know, for multiple reasons, I think it was good that this was shot on film because, you know, it's supposed to be in the seventies. So.

you know, they were shooting on film in the 70s, so let's shoot on film. And then too, like the way that he was able to do the colorization for that is like, just looks better when you do it on film than it does when you do it digital, I think. So.

Um, but yeah, other than that, like I think. Spoolbar, I noticed a few times, like, Oh, he'll he's having a lot of fun with the camera here. Like one of the things I remember is there's this shot of, um, it's someone like walking up. Um, and it's then you realize it's a reflection, but then you realize it's like this upside down reflection in the car that he's walking up to and the camera like pans up and it's like.

It was I was like he's having a lot of fun with with the his reflections and stuff in this one. Yeah I didn't have a lot of like there wasn't a lot in my research on like the production design or the special effects I guess just because like it was a lot It was mostly just they watched a lot of archive like newsreel footage of the time

Dave Lester (01:08:37.868)
some tricksy tricks going on.

Eli (01:08:58.911)
they're having to like, basically like there's 14 different locations really throughout the movie and you're trying to capture this area era in the seventies and 14 different places. And so they're really just like watching newsreel footage and then trying to like recreate that in the costuming. and like, kind of like, I guess the props that they use on set. and a lot of it really comes through.

more in like the sounds. So you have the costumes and the props, but a lot of it comes through in the sounds. Ben Burt was talking about, you know, really trying to find sounds and from like objects and guns and vehicles from that era so that it would sound like, you know, 1972, 1973. And then to like, not just like,

era specific sounds, but also like making sure he worked hard on even just getting the explosions to sound different. you know, this foam bomb explosion is going to sound different than the hotel explosion. and in the hotel explosion, he's like really trying to put you POV. And so he does like, he adds like this kind of ear ringing sound, and for that scene where the ho like the

all those three rooms kind of explode from the bed bomb, you know. So he's really like just really good, incredible detail on the sound. I keep going back to this for that first assassination, but a really good example of that detail is like you have like kind of the chaos of the sound of the streets. You have the bands that I talked about playing.

you have all that going on and it kind of, but then it narrows down as you enter into the building, into the lobby, into this like quiet echoey lobby. and so it, this you in the chaos of the streets, it's like your, your heart's pumping, you know, you're, you're after this guy. You're like, yeah, let's go get them. But then you get into this quiet space that's like echoey and then you're like, wait, what am I doing?

Eli (01:11:21.745)
you know, there's not the chaos of sound distracting you and you see that in the characters too. Yeah, and so I think the sound does a whole lot in this movie of playing, going along with what the characters are going through in the scene. Not just like, a bomb explodes, so I'm gonna make your ears ring like the characters does, but also in a scene like this where

Dave Lester (01:11:22.766)
Yes.

Dave Lester (01:11:27.672)
It's a stark contrast making a point. Yeah.

Eli (01:11:49.765)
You're in the in the mind space of the characters based on the sound from the chaos to the quiet where you have to deal with what you're about to do Really cool, I think Really yeah, really good detail John Williams The man the myth the legend John Williams 2005 was a big year for John Williams he

Dave Lester (01:12:16.536)
Looks like it. Lots of scores.

Eli (01:12:19.173)
Yeah, four scores in one year is not typical. Composers don't do that unless you're John Williams in 2005. Then you do Star Wars Episode III, you do War of the Worlds, you do Memoirs of a Geisha, and then you do Munich. He was a busy man in 2005.

Dave Lester (01:12:45.474)
Big pay year, I'm sure.

Eli (01:12:47.539)
Man, he might still be living off of 2005. He probably, he might have could have retired after that year, you know, who knows, but I'm glad he didn't.

Dave Lester (01:12:51.0)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:12:58.606)
Actually, are, yeah, you are probably right. I mean, he's at the peak of his powers. He's had so many famous scores so far, so he can command quite a salary. So commanding a salary for each of those four movies that he did in 2005 was probably fairly significant.

Eli (01:13:06.539)
man.

Eli (01:13:15.111)
Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, I would imagine so. man, he did, this was a good score. I think, it was very reminiscent in, in spots of the Schindler's list score to me. which I think is appropriate. you know, I think, I think probably he was just like back in the head space of, you know, people being killed, that, you know,

It's very like devastating and sad that these killings are happening. and so like just being back in that mind space, back in the mind space of like, I want to like infuse this score with Jewish influences as well. I guess that's probably why it's so reminiscent of that Schindler's List score for me and not, not everywhere, but there's certain like sections of movements of the score, guess, themes that

reminiscent of it. He does add the... oh man I'm gonna pronounce this wrong and I apologize in advance... the Hatikva. It's the Jewish... the Israel national anthem. So he adds that a little bit into the score. There's actually like at the beginning when they're going through all like the newsreel footage of

of the hostage situation, there's a part where I think it's just before we're introduced to Avner, that national anthem starts playing on the TV and then it like moves into the score from the TV. I thought that was really cool. Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:15:01.494)
Interesting. Yeah, I forget about that part, but wow.

Eli (01:15:05.339)
Yeah But then ovner's theme was called prayer for peace, which I think is appropriate You first hear that when the team is meeting for the first time over dinner. thought that was cool and then there's this kind of catalina that of a woman this woman singing, a catalina that he worked into the score in spots and spillberg and john williams are talking about she's not actually singing

real words. She kind of like made up these words. She was just kind of like feeling it. Whatever she was feeling, she was like vocalizing. So that was interesting, I guess. But yeah, they finished shooting this movie, post-production marathon. They have nine weeks to turn this thing around. Spielberg's really trying to get it before Oscar voters, before December 8th. And then he's also like trying to avoid

any rumors and controversies. So I guess his thought process was the longer I sit on this, the more people are going to start talking and wondering what's wrong with it, you know? And so, yeah, he, he did have some of that. This guy, Abu Daud, who was the only surviving hostage taker from the Munich Olympics at the time, he complained that he had not been consulted. And

I'm kind of like, why would you consult him? Like you don't deserve to be consulted, I guess, in my view. yeah. But this was an interesting thing for the movie. The marketing strategy was to let this film speak for itself. So there wasn't really press conferences or hype from his marketing team.

Dave Lester (01:16:41.038)
Yeah, that's a little out there.

Eli (01:17:02.055)
There was just a bunch of screenings organized by this guy, Alan Mayer, was a, he said they called it a media crisis specialist.

Dave Lester (01:17:13.756)
it's almost like a celebrity's in trouble. You call this guy. Like there's some kind of bad breakup or some bad story gets out there about you. You call this guy to be your spin doctor or something.

Eli (01:17:18.257)
think so.

Eli (01:17:23.292)
Yeah.

I think so. so it wasn't like, obviously there wasn't like anything wrong with the movie, but they wanted a guy that had experience in that sort of thing to kind of like get ahead of it. And so it's actually really smart. What basically all his role was was he was finding and inviting political and intellectual luminaries to these screenings so that, you know, as people start to talk about it and

they're hearing from these different political and intellectual people, like well-known people, they're hearing informed opinions from all different sides of, you know, of opinions around this situation. And so basically, that's what his role was. He's finding people from different sides of the opinion aisle, I guess you would say.

around these issues with of terrorism of the Israeli Palestinian conflict And Yeah, it's just making sure that they see the movie and so they can express their opinions on it and so I Thought that was really smart You know very a very different approach I think I don't know I guess

I'm kind of like logging that away in the future. Like if I have something I'm releasing and I'm not sure what people would think, just get people from all different sides to interact with it.

Dave Lester (01:19:04.108)
Yeah, definitely inclusive of everybody's opinions and views from a very contentious issue and history and all of that.

Eli (01:19:12.288)
yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So it released on December 23rd, 2005, um, six months after war of the worlds and it had five times fewer viewers. Uh, that's just part and parcel of blockbuster versus. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it had a worldwide box office of $131 million. Pretty good for a movie like this, think, um, uh, $70 million budget. So.

Dave Lester (01:19:27.158)
It is hard for the courts. Yeah, exactly.

Eli (01:19:43.955)
You're not quite doubling your budget, so I think that's probably like not ideal from like a studio and producing standpoint. You want to make a little more than that, but... But it only made $47 million domestic, so that's pretty low for a Spoolgrove movie.

Dave Lester (01:20:03.288)
Wow, 131 worldwide.

Eli (01:20:06.139)
Worldwide, yeah.

Dave Lester (01:20:08.594)
But yeah, didn't. mean, no press conferences, no media. You wonder how much. I mean, I'm not a marketing consultant at all, but you wonder how much that factored into the word just wasn't getting out as much. They're probably more relying on. know, quite frankly, a lot of the actors weren't famous yet. mean, Eric Bana maybe kind of, but Daniel Craig was not Daniel Craig yet. He wasn't James Bond. So.

Eli (01:20:11.826)
Yeah.

Eli (01:20:16.081)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:20:23.196)
Yeah.

Eli (01:20:28.816)
Right.

Eli (01:20:33.147)
Not yet, yeah.

Dave Lester (01:20:35.83)
I mean, you just got Spielberg pretty much. He's the big name. And this is like a serious drama and it's released two days before Christmas.

Eli (01:20:38.045)
Yeah, and I think.

Eli (01:20:44.603)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think from what I from what I gather the talk around it was at the time was like This is Spielberg's next important quote-unquote movie And it's like it's another his next like Oscar push kind of movie and so I don't know it might just be one of those things where like people are like, I don't know. Maybe I'll just go see

go catch War of the Worlds. If I want a Spielberg movie this year, I'll go rent that from Blockbuster. I think Blockbuster was still around in 2005. I don't remember when that ship sunk.

Dave Lester (01:21:28.672)
It was. It was. It was probably getting it was it was getting there. Netflix was in. Gosh, we're.

Eli (01:21:36.637)
They had started at that point, huh, Netflix?

Dave Lester (01:21:39.394)
Maybe, I don't know if they had started streaming yet. They were definitely mailing disks, yeah.

Eli (01:21:42.491)
Not streaming, but they were, yeah, the mailing service, I think, had started.

Dave Lester (01:21:47.286)
Yep, you can get that in here. I think Walmart had one and Blockbuster actually tried to launch one as well. So there was multiple companies trying to do that around that time.

Eli (01:21:54.131)
Hmm.

Eli (01:21:57.981)
Yeah Yeah, but I you know, so the number one movie that weekend so this Before I say that this movie opened to only ten million dollars. They did this like semi-limited release. It was on like 530 theaters And so it made like ten million only that first weekend The number one that weekend was King Kong so

I know if you remember that movie. I remember seeing that in the theater. yeah, But shout out to my grandma. I remember, I have a distinct memory of seeing that movie in theaters with my grandma. King Kong, not Munich. So I don't think I would have really appreciated Munich at the time for what it is.

Dave Lester (01:22:26.491)
yeah.

Dave Lester (01:22:30.478)
Yeah, Peter Jackson, follow up to Lord of the Rings. Yeah.

Eli (01:22:54.427)
So King Kong was probably the right choice for 2005 Eli. But yeah, we're gonna get into the weeds a little bit with the reception of this movie. I kind of broke it into like the political reception and the critical reception. So let's jump into the political reception. And this is...

Dave Lester (01:23:00.654)
You

Dave Lester (01:23:15.342)
So here we go.

Eli (01:23:20.773)
This is just based off of like, have my main source as this, all the films book, which if you're watching, you can see right here above my head. so a lot of this is coming from that. I did a little bit, research. I did a little bit of others seeing what, you know, people were saying at the time. but yeah, so this is not like extensive. This is just kind of pulling a few people's view.

But on the Arab side, this guy, Seewar Bandar, who was the spokesman for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, at the time appreciated that Spielberg was showing both sides in kind of their worst light. So that was kind of, that was one of the major opinions from the Arab side. And I don't really have, yeah, I think so too.

Dave Lester (01:24:12.876)
Yeah, I think that's what I think that's a legitimate take. Yeah.

Eli (01:24:19.155)
And I agree, I appreciate that as well. And I didn't really have a whole lot on that side, but on the Jewish side, there were virulent criticisms. After Schindler's List, he had kind of become the darling of Israel, but this movie pretty much stripped some of that status. People were not happy.

Dave Lester (01:24:29.496)
Yeah.

Eli (01:24:48.605)
from the Jewish side about this movie, which on one hand is understandable, know? You have this guy that like you love and you trust, and then you feel kind of like you watch this movie and you feel like he's, I don't know, maybe backstabbing you a little bit. But I'm trying to get in the mind of why they were so upset.

Dave Lester (01:25:19.405)
Yes.

Eli (01:25:19.891)
It's tough and we'll get into it a little bit. But David Kimchie, who was one of the heads of Mossad at the time of Munich, talked about how it was a shame that someone with the stature of Spielberg would make a film based on this book of falsehoods. Ravai, Marvin, I said was typo.

Dave Lester (01:25:24.726)
Yeah, yeah.

Dave Lester (01:25:40.974)
I think I remember that.

Dave Lester (01:25:45.452)
Yeah, let me pick up on that thread. The thing with that, this is like completely political, like a statement like that. And I can't really fault David Kim Chi for saying it because the big issue here is it involves classified information. So we can't really tell what is true and what is false. So it's really easy for someone just to go out and say,

Eli (01:25:49.062)
Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Eli (01:25:55.259)
It is. Yeah.

Eli (01:26:11.142)
Right.

Dave Lester (01:26:14.7)
This is based on a bunch of falsehoods, know, according to David Kim Chi, which, OK, he's ahead of the Mossad. But then there's this other guy who claims he's done journalistic work or he's met with various Mossad agents who and, you know, they don't say that it's all true, but they do say there is some truth to it. And so we as the audience, you know, as far as with this issue, we're just left with like, what's true, what's not? We have to say we don't know. But.

Eli (01:26:27.571)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:26:44.138)
Again, and we'll probably get into this a little bit later, for me it's more the spirit and the thematic elements that Spielberg is going to that make this more interesting.

Eli (01:26:53.555)
Yeah, absolutely. And Spielberg would say the same thing. I don't think Spielberg was under any delusion that this was what happened. He's not an idiot. He's obviously a very smart guy. But he's a storyteller. He's not...

Dave Lester (01:27:07.138)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

He made a film. It's very clear that scenes of the film are completely made up and he would say so. He's making a story. Yeah.

Eli (01:27:17.479)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, you know, when there's a movie like this that's very political, Spielberg is absolutely making a political statement with this movie. You know, there's no denying that, even if he tried to deny it. Like, you can't make a movie like this and there not be a political statement of some sort.

Dave Lester (01:27:33.324)
Yes.

Eli (01:27:45.049)
It might not be the political statement you're being accused of, but there's a political statement in some form or fashion because it's inevitable. You can't not when you're making it on this subject matter. But yeah, so you have David Kimchie's response. Rabbi, I have a typo in my notes, so I don't have his last name, but Rabbi Marvin...

Dave Lester (01:28:00.3)
Right.

Eli (01:28:13.243)
something if I notice it says shirt. So thanks a lot, auto correct for changing that, but it's not shirt. It's not Marvin's shirt. yeah. So Rabbi Marvin, who was a consultant on Schindler's list, thought Spielberg was just wrong for making this movie. he, he did not, go along with it.

Dave Lester (01:28:22.168)
Sometimes that's negative for me, autocorrect, especially while texting.

Eli (01:28:41.561)
Israel's consul in Los Angeles Ehud Danak called it presumptuous pretentious and shallow Which I don't know how he I don't know how he thinks it shallow If you want to say per tum if you want to say presumptuous and pretentious, that's that's fine. That's your opinion, but shallow Shallow, I don't think so. I don't know how you could come up with that And this was one of those times where Spielberg so Spielberg

Dave Lester (01:28:50.178)
He's dead wrong.

Dave Lester (01:28:59.436)
Yeah, I think he's wrong. Totally.

Eli (01:29:11.059)
At a certain point in his career really stopped doing a whole lot of interviews like he did not do a whole lot of like press conference of Even even this movie aside, which he didn't do press conferences for he really wasn't doing a lot of those anyway He wasn't doing a lot of interviews, but for this one. He really felt like he needed to calm the debate a bit And so he gave some rare interviews for this one. One of them was to the The Times

which he described the film as, quote, a prayer for peace, end quote, which I get. And we'll unpack that a little bit more in a second.

Dave Lester (01:29:49.74)
Yep, I think that's right what he was going for.

Eli (01:29:53.745)
Yeah. Critically, we'll lighten it up a bit with the critics. I think a lot of the critics kind of understood what was going on. More so, I guess, than the political figureheads. But there was some negative criticism, but not all of it. One of them that I have a quote from, Rachel

Abramowitz in the LA Times said, quote, politically, the film is a Rorschach test, almost impossible to view except through the lens of each individual audience member brings to the theater, end quote. And so I think that's a good quote because it shows us why he's getting such widely different responses to this. Because it's like a Rorschach test. You're gonna see what you want to see in this movie. If you can't...

If you can't step back and like really try your best to take away your biases and take away like Be more open-minded then you're gonna read into this movie what you want to read And that's why like some people are criticizing him for his bias The bias that they see that he has in this movie and then on the other hand people are criticizing him for not choosing sides

And so like, which is it?

Dave Lester (01:31:19.028)
Yeah, I think, I my challenge to that quote, and I mean, I understand why the critic was saying that, because I think if somebody watches the film, this is really interesting, actually, how people approach art. If a Palestinian watches Munich, what is their, how do they experience it? What is their thoughts on it? If someone who is Israeli,

Eli (01:31:26.931)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:31:37.576)
Yeah.

Eli (01:31:44.327)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:31:47.53)
citizen watches it, what do they think about it? And actually, mean, those opinions, as we kind of already hinted at, can vary widely. mean, Steven Spielberg is very, you know, he's very into his heritage and his ethnicity, and that's wonderful. But I also think, you know, Spielberg's comment of it being a prayer for peace, and I hope I'm not getting ahead of things here, I think the film...

Eli (01:31:50.534)
huh.

Eli (01:32:02.867)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:32:13.834)
wants us to step outside, kind of like what you were saying, Eli, of being open-minded and step outside of the us against them. Because I think that's what this comes down to is we have our group here, our group was attacked, and now we're going to go get the them. And this is just going to be a cycle that continues over and over and over again, all this violence, all these innocent people dying. And I think that literally is Spielberg's prayer for peace.

Eli (01:32:23.123)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:32:35.474)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:32:43.618)
He's trying to show how it is. He's not saying anything negative about, you know, should Israel be a state or not. I think that's outside the scope of what he was doing. I think it's right. And maybe you could go like deep in the weeds. don't, you the podcast is going to this, what is, you know, pursuing justice for a very evil wrongdoing versus what is going for revenge and causing even more damage?

Eli (01:32:52.369)
Yeah. And I don't think he believed that either.

Eli (01:33:05.127)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:33:13.137)
Yeah, yeah, and I have some other quotes, but just to wrap up the kind of critical quotes, I really like this in this French publication, Technicart. They talked about it being a dialectical experience, and they said it was unrolling, quote, the thread of Masad's targeted assassinations in thriller mode, but also as an ethical and spiritual journey, unquote.

And so I really think that like nails, like what you're talking about, like, yes, it's talking about these events that may or may not have happened exactly like as they're portrayed and it's thrilling, but really like at the end of the day, it's kind of an ethical and spiritual journey that Spielberg's trying to take you on. and let's, I want to keep that going. did, it, unfortunately in my notes, I did want to hit on before we move.

further into that. This did get five Oscar nominations, no wins. So it was nominated for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Music, and didn't get any wins, which, you know, I didn't really, wouldn't really expect it. The thing that I think it's most deserving of would be probably be editing, honestly. But yeah.

Dave Lester (01:34:38.126)
What was that year? Was it Crash? my goodness. that was, Brokenback Mountain was there.

Eli (01:34:41.863)
I think so, yeah. Crash. Yeah, Brokeback Mountain was the other big contender. I think it ended up being like coming down to Crash and Brokeback Mountain, which I haven't seen either of those, so I can't really speak to if they're better or worse than this. That's what I've heard, yeah.

Dave Lester (01:34:56.365)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:35:01.71)
Brokeback Mountain is a good film and that probably, I think I've seen all the ones from that year and I think that should have won. I probably like Munich more, but I think where we were at culturally at that time and where things have gone, think Brokeback Mountain is an important kind of cultural milestone, if you will.

Eli (01:35:16.243)
Yeah.

Eli (01:35:20.115)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:35:26.141)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But yeah, let's jump right back in. That was a nice little break. Now let's jump right back in to this political controversy. Spielberg here is getting blamed for being both anti-Israel and for being anti-Palestine. And whenever someone's being accused of being anti-

of opposite things, the opposite, like it's like, okay, the, you know, maybe this guy's onto something. He's pushing buttons on both sides. And so like, let's if maybe he's still wrong, you know, I'm not saying Spielberg's wrong here. I'm just saying like, it's not just because you're putting pushing buttons on both sides doesn't mean make you right. But it definitely means like you're, you're

pushing buttons that are worth exploring. There's politicians that we are experiencing in this moment that definitely know how to push buttons on both sides, doesn't make them right. But the buttons they are pushing are worth exploring and talking about and discussing. And I think that's what we see here with this movie for sure.

Dave Lester (01:36:27.307)
Yes.

Dave Lester (01:36:42.53)
Yes.

Dave Lester (01:36:49.806)
Yeah, we talked about it being his darkest film. It's also his most controversial. I think that is absolutely no contest. Nothing was as controversial as this movie. And at this stage in Spielberg's career, he's made some of the greatest movies of all time. Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park. He didn't have to make this movie.

Eli (01:36:57.555)
Yeah.

Eli (01:37:11.879)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:37:17.186)
this movie being as controversial it was, this took guts to do. This is someone who is a real artist, Spielberg, stretching and reaching, trying to do something different, trying to maybe take some of the, I think, misguided criticisms of him being sentimental or whatever, and really say, make a movie that wasn't that, to try and go in a different direction. And I think, as we've been talking about, really succeeds on

Eli (01:37:17.255)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:37:21.543)
dead.

Eli (01:37:30.269)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:37:46.902)
almost every front in this movie in communicating the story. And I think that, you know, he's being accused of being anti-Israel, anti-Palestine. I do think that's audience members, perhaps. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to go into shaming people on how they experience art or whatever. We all watch movies and take different things away. But I think in a way they're kind of proving his point because it's people staying in their binaries, us against them.

Eli (01:38:05.629)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:38:12.775)
Right, yeah.

Hmm.

Dave Lester (01:38:16.426)
It's not people seeing the larger picture, which Spielberg communicated in the interview. The larger picture is the prayer for peace.

Eli (01:38:24.679)
Yes. Yeah. And he talks about like, I'm not trying to give answers. He's honestly, he says, I'm not trying to give answers to these questions. I'm trying to like just morally and spiritually wrestle with them with the, along with the characters. and he, he talks about how like in his eyes, the point, is to look at why a country thinks it's best defense against violence is counter violence.

He uses empathy with different sides on the issue to try to explore that question. And he even insists, like in some of the bonus footage that I watched, was insisting it's not a message of non-action. He's not saying, they shouldn't have done anything, because he doesn't believe that. And I don't think anybody would say, you don't do anything in response.

at all.

Dave Lester (01:39:23.382)
Yeah, to be fair, any country that had something like that happen would respond to the people who did it. That's the justice portion. And that's the same thing with what's going on in our world now, October 7th, the horrible day for Israel. I remember progressive Jewish podcaster, New York Times guy, Ezra Klein.

Eli (01:39:30.088)
Yeah.

Eli (01:39:41.853)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:39:49.102)
would say, any country on earth that had something like that happen on October 7th, whoever that country was would track down those people to the ends of the earth who did that to their people. And I think that part of it is true now. But again, we're still challenged with that violent question, violence in response. And even, you know, were all of these people killed where they actually involved or what happens when they're

Eli (01:39:49.181)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:39:59.591)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:40:10.897)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Dave Lester (01:40:19.4)
little girl, their daughter, is going to walk near the phone where the bomb is and innocent people get caught up in the, you know, those are the sticky questions that Spielberg is playing with.

Eli (01:40:21.469)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Eli (01:40:29.511)
Yeah. Yeah. And this is, you know, building off of all of that. This is what I really think he nails is, he says like, it's not a, he talks about, it's not a message of non-action, but it's trying to make sure that the results that are produced from what we decide to do are the ones we intend. and I think that is, that's like the crux of all of this. Like,

Is our retaliation, whatever it is, is it going to produce the actual results that we really want? And so, I think part of the political statement that Spielberg's making here is when you respond to violence with violence, you do not get the results that you want, which is you want peace. That's what everyone intends, right?

But when you respond to violence with violence, do we actually get those intended results? Do we actually get the peace that we want? And I think that's what he's questioning here. And yeah, in doing so, you step on a lot of toes, I guess. When you suggest that responding to violence with violence does not produce peace, you step on a lot of toes, which, you know...

Dave Lester (01:41:48.792)
Yeah.

Eli (01:41:58.899)
It's just very unfortunate. I was honestly like the movie finished that last scene that it wraps up with in that conversation and it ended and the credits are rolling and I was just blown away by how relevant the movies felt to today.

a movie made in 2005 and here we are 20 years later. I was like, this is the same thing right now. This movie speaks exactly the same today as it did 20 years ago. that's just, it kind of made me sad a little bit, to be honest.

Dave Lester (01:42:49.676)
Yeah, it's all still going on. I sent you the New York Times article by Lisa Swartzbaum who, I'll just read the

Eli (01:42:57.927)
Yeah, can you speak on that? I wasn't able to read it before we got started.

Dave Lester (01:43:01.796)
yeah, I was just going to just read the headline of it. She used to write for Entertainment Weekly and she's with New York Times. The headline is the best movie about Israel and Gaza now came out 18 years ago. She wrote it in 2023. And yeah, she's talking about and that movie is Munich about about the conflict and the the nature of the cycles of violence and revenge.

Eli (01:43:08.573)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:43:15.773)
Hmm.

Dave Lester (01:43:28.482)
She pulls out a, let me grab this from the article. So this was in, when Avederner's team find themselves in a safe house with their Palestinian enemies. And there's a man named Ali there. And so I pick it up where Swartzbaum starts writing, quote, in the quiet of a night's ceasefire, the two men share an exchange that feels chillingly relevant today. Aveder.

Eli (01:43:41.299)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:43:57.27)
You people have nothing to bargain with. You'll never get the land back. You'll all die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine. Ali, we have a lot of children. They'll have children so we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews. Avner, you killed Jews and the world feels bad for them and thinks you're animals. Ali, yes, but then the world will see how they've made us into animals. And that's the...

the quote that she pulls out. So he doesn't pull punches as far as acknowledging the really deep issues. I disagree that he takes a side. I don't think he's necessarily taking a side, or you can even argue, mean, most of the story he's following Israeli Mossad agents. And I think he's portraying them as being

Eli (01:44:28.487)
Yeah.

Eli (01:44:43.815)
Yeah, I don't think so either.

Eli (01:44:51.197)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:44:56.069)
In a decent, in a pretty good light, you know. Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:44:57.664)
Yeah, being vengeful, but not necessarily in a bad light the whole time, but being vengeful and asking the question of, to what extent is this destroying their souls? Think of, I think the bomber's name was Robert, right? Really haunting line. We were Jews. We were supposed to be righteous. And yeah, before he dies, and it is so...

Eli (01:45:02.109)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:45:13.543)
Yeah, Robert.

Eli (01:45:19.421)
Yeah, we were supposed to be righteous. I wrote that down too. Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:45:26.146)
heartbreaking because I think for people of faith, I think what he's getting at, whether we're Christians or whether people of Jewish faith or somebody of another faith, to really think that you have betrayed God in a sense because of how you've acted, that he's killed people, that he's blown people up. And I was supposed to be righteous and he feels like a part of his soul has died, a part of his humanity is gone.

Eli (01:45:27.539)
Hmm.

Dave Lester (01:45:53.996)
because he's done these things and he can't take them back. And it's such a heartbreaking scene to see what becomes of these characters that really over the course of the film we learn to love or enjoy as characters in the film.

Eli (01:46:09.373)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I 100 % agree and it's I think Kushner was a big part of this having Tony Kushner writing He like I feel like those those scenes in the handling of those questions I think is just Comes out so much in in that writing, you know that dialogue that you just read is just it packs such an incredible punch

And I pulled this quote from Kushner talking about, you know, wrestling with those questions about violence, and he said,

And that's just such a I think that's just such a profound and meaningful way to look at this is You know, it's it's actually to not reflect on or the right choices made is actually disrespectful to the people that died To tap to not reflect on you know what actions we decided to go with and whether that truly like

respected those that died or, you know, truly like made up for it or brought real justice, you know, it's just trying to, and I love that he says, an understanding does not mean approval or forgiveness, but just like wrestling with it and trying to understand where both sides are coming from. Just because you're trying to understand

Eli (01:48:11.441)
you know, in Spielberg's case, he's a Jewish man. So from, from his like POV, it's like, just cause Spielberg is trying to understand where this Palestinian mindset comes from doesn't mean he's approving it or forgiving it, but there's a lot to be gained from trying to understand. and I think that's, I think, honestly, I think

There's a whole lot of people in our society that could do with a little bit of just trying to understand. Whatever the end result is, I think there's a lot to be gained from that. People might not approve after understanding, but at least they've tried to understand. And I don't think there's a whole lot of that going on with a lot of people in our society.

Dave Lester (01:49:04.342)
Yeah, lot more listening and loving neighbor in that sense, trying to understand where somebody else is coming from, even if you disagree.

Eli (01:49:14.065)
Yeah, yeah. Another big theme in this that's kind of like a parallel theme is, you know, the search for a home. You kind of see this progression of... I don't know, you kind of see it from both sides, but obviously like we're following Avner. Like we're kind of following him around, and it's this progression of like

Starting off with your home his his home really about to begin right his wife is pregnant He's he's about to you know be a father and a husband and live with his family, you know and and have a home But he feels compelled to to do this mission and what you see like throughout the film is that like when he finally ends up

Being with his wife and his daughter in a place of residence, he no longer is able to really have a home. He's paranoid, he's haunted, he's apprehensive, he has trouble, you can tell, relating to just people in everyday life.

Dave Lester (01:50:24.888)
Yes.

Eli (01:50:43.037)
Like he's now unable to really have a home.

Dave Lester (01:50:47.756)
Yeah, even with his own wife, the person that he loves. That scene that you're referencing, is incredibly haunting and disturbing when he is making love to his wife and he's on top and it's the look of anguish on his face, like the camera's kind of focused on just him. And they do the flashback to the murder of these Israeli athletes.

Eli (01:50:54.173)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:51:10.739)
You

Eli (01:51:17.831)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:51:18.526)
And the whole thing that is being communicated, I think you're right about home, but also this this intimate act that he's doing with somebody that he loves. He can't enjoy it. He can't appreciate the sacredness of it because of what he has done. He feels like he is so consumed with this revenge, with this mission, with the violence that he's done, that intimacy with his wife and people that he loved, it's it's.

Eli (01:51:36.435)
Mm-hmm.

Dave Lester (01:51:48.64)
affected forever. Like maybe it's not going to be totally gone, but there's always going to be something there. It's like what I said before, it's maybe in some ways this film is about the things that we can do that cause us to lose our soul or our humanity, perhaps in different pieces. Or you could just say that the Christian concept of sin, what sin creates these barriers of relationship.

because of things that we've done, why they're in guilt or shame or haunted by them. And it keeps us from the joys of life, the joys that we can experience.

Eli (01:52:16.659)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:52:25.489)
Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure and I on that like that whole sex scene like for For one like it's contrasted with the first sex scene, which the he's having sex with his pregnant wife You know, and it's a very like loving and intimate moment it's it's a very like relatable moment if you you know, if you have a If if you've ever had a wife that's pregnant, you know

It's a very relatable moment of like, you know, it's your life is about to change your, you know, you're having this very intimate moment with your loved one. And, you know, it, I was like, I was touched by that, you know, that scene and then contrast it with, you know, the sex scene later in the movie, which, you know, two sex scenes in a Spielberg movie is revolutionary already.

But and now that I'm thinking about it, I don't even know if he's actually had a sex scene in a movie before You know, he's he's I Don't think he has you know, there may have been like some implied stuff before but I think this is this might be the first like on-screen

Dave Lester (01:53:33.824)
It's definitely not often.

Dave Lester (01:53:42.519)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:53:46.39)
In Jaws, there's a skinny dipping like at the very beginning, but yeah, it's not really.

Eli (01:53:49.189)
Yeah, and you have you have some in Schindler's List with with yeah with the German character's wife, I guess. But yeah, yeah, Ralph Fiennes wife. But yeah, so but but here, you know, it's it's that contrast of that loving intimate moment with this moment where he can no longer relate to her on that level.

Dave Lester (01:53:53.954)
That's right. Yeah.

Dave Lester (01:54:01.068)
Ray finds.

Eli (01:54:18.331)
his like, Kushner talked about how he told Spielberg he was going to, yeah, cause he says one day I called Steven and said, I'm writing your first sex scene. where after makes love to his pregnant wife and Spielberg actually like called him shortly after that and said, Hey, I want another scene where when he's back from his mission,

He's remembering the massacre of the athletes while he sleeps with his wife. And I can't imagine how he got there, but he did. It's choice. It's a bold choice. And Kushner says, quote, at first I was puzzled by his request. In the end, I thought it was a very strong moment. Throughout the film, there's an unpleasant intimacy with the violence. Through.

Dave Lester (01:54:59.8)
Yeah.

Eli (01:55:12.913)
Through this scene, Stephen wanted to make the killing even more disturbing. I talked about it a lot with the widows of the athletes who died in Munich. Some of them thought it was a good illustration of the idea of life beyond death." Which I don't really understand that last part. I don't really know how they got there. But I thought the idea of this unpleasant intimacy with violence was very like

meaningful because a lot of the there's this like recurring thing throughout the movie where He kind of like has moments where he's talking with someone he Shortly after kills, you know, even like that first guy they assassinate he's like, you know, are you this guy and He's like hesitating because the guy's talking to him Then you have the scene on the balcony, you know, he's talking to this guy like he's a normal guy

knowing that he's planted a bomb in his bed, you You have, you know, the scene that you quoted from him and Ali, and then later they, he has to kill Ali when some plans go awry during an assassination. There's all these like moments of like human-to-human

intimacy and not the same intimacy as sex necessarily, but like a I'm a human, you're a human, we're talking to each other, and then the violence is like directly related to that. And so in her biography of Steven Spielberg through, it's more like a biography through his films, Molly Haskell says it's almost as if like

any sort of like strong stimulus at this point for Avner is going to like recall these things. And so like the strong stimulus of intimacy with his wife like is just going to recall these things. It's like PTSD sort of with any time he has strong emotions, which you do when you're you know most

Dave Lester (01:57:27.872)
Absolutely.

Eli (01:57:35.323)
Most people do when they're having sex. You have strong emotions. It's part of our physiology to have that. But anytime he has that, any sort of strong emotion, this PTSD comes up of what he's experienced. Yeah, it's a very, like, at the time it was very controversial, that scene. And I think a lot of people kind of latched onto it because they weren't sure what to do with the movie.

So they just kind of latched onto that weird sex scene and kind of like, I don't know, I could easily see how it could become like a, yeah, that's that movie with the weird sex scene, you know, sort of thing. I think thinking on it, it is.

Dave Lester (01:58:16.78)
Yeah, it's so aggressive and it just is very unsettling. But it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be both of those things. Yeah.

Eli (01:58:24.111)
It is. Right. Right. And I kind of felt the same way during it. I was like, I don't know what to do with this. But in reflecting on it, I do think it's a very like interesting, compelling choice that he made there. But yeah. Yeah, the other quote that I thought was like really like compelling was

that during that last conversation that offner has with that frame, he says there's no peace at the end of this, no matter what you believe. And yeah, I just, thought that was just such a compelling way to end the, and then like for him to like ask him to break bread with him and him say no and reject that, that kind of offering of

grace even though this is the guy that made me do all these awful things.

Dave Lester (01:59:24.526)
Right. Well, it's also, yeah, it also ties in, yeah, grace, it ties into religious tradition. It ties into, I mean, just again, like you were saying, the intimacy of friendship or someone sitting across from you eating a meal. And yeah, the last scene, including the last shot, is just...

Eli (01:59:33.67)
Right, yeah.

Eli (01:59:42.888)
down.

Dave Lester (01:59:50.732)
gut wrenching, I think to me with where this story has gone and what it shows us. Because the cycle of revenge is kind of what I get from the last scene. And this is the ultimate culmination of it is Spielberg says, okay. We have our tribe, you have your tribe, do something to us, we do something back to you. And that just keeps going and going and going all this violence. And now here are the World Trade Center towers.

Eli (01:59:51.91)
It is.

Eli (02:00:03.613)
Yeah.

Dave Lester (02:00:20.909)
and thousands of more innocent people who are across an ocean from where this conflict is taking place are going to die. And it just shows the expansiveness of this darkness of just pursuing revenge and retribution and how it becomes destructive.

Eli (02:00:21.683)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:00:34.963)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:00:42.035)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a vicious and horrible cycle, for sure. Man, again, I just was blown away by how relevant this was. I was not expecting it, even just that end shot of the Twin Towers, which at the time of that event in...

The early 70s would have just been not long ago constructed. were still pretty new then, if I'm not mistaken.

Dave Lester (02:01:18.53)
Yeah, when were those constructed? Yeah, you just don't, you don't really expect it to go there, but then he does. I mean, I remember when I first watched it, I saw that it's like, wow, he is like, Spielberg is packing a punch and he has some things to say here.

Eli (02:01:21.264)
Eli (02:01:25.351)
Yeah. Well, it's very purposeful.

Yeah.

Eli (02:01:36.081)
Yeah. Yeah. And he really, like he even talks about, how he really, he was trying to link those two days in September, by that ending image and, and how both had questionable responses to, the events that took place on those days in September. And so it was, it was very purposeful, that shot for sure.

Dave Lester (02:02:02.446)
Oh yeah, so construction of the World Trade Center, says it began in 1966, August 5th, 1966 and ended in 1973.

Eli (02:02:07.634)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:02:11.931)
Yeah, so they were just finished at the time of the setting of this movie. yeah, incredible. Bold, very bold. Yeah.

Dave Lester (02:02:24.994)
Yeah, it shows that he has has guts. He's not just a, you know, it's not just a nice fairy tale type guy. There's a boldness to Spielberg. There's a courage. I think all of those things came out with him choosing to make this film with with Kushner and with everybody else that he did. Yeah, it's a great, great movie.

Eli (02:02:29.469)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:02:39.955)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:02:50.119)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And even like there's, there's some imagery that we haven't even like touched on that like really speaks to a lot of this, like, just like the juxtaposition of like life and death that, you know, we've been kind of like talking about and you think about, you know, you're talking about like ritual meals and, know, they're having a meal together when they're, you know, they're planning assassinations around.

meals together, these like ritual meals together that they were having that are supposed to be centered on life and yet they're planning death at these meals. And then like imagery wise, like you think about when they kill that first man that they kill, you have like the milk spilling out and then like the blood comes into it. So there's this imagery there of like milk which is, which gives life, you know. And then here comes like the blood.

Dave Lester (02:03:46.478)
Yeah.

Eli (02:03:48.347)
Representing the death and they're like mixed together Yeah

Dave Lester (02:03:51.502)
Great observation. Yeah, the land of milk and honey from the Bible from Canaan. The promise of yeah.

Eli (02:03:56.687)
Mm-hmm Yeah, so just the imagery just to and this and that's just like one example, it's it's all over the movie just yeah I did want to hit before like we we we can wrap up in a second We've we talked about We've gotten through most of the heavy stuff I figured it would be

The only other, the moment that made me cry in the movie a little bit, tear up, I don't know about cry, but I definitely like was very misty eyed was when he calls his wife at one point and his daughter says, dad, dad, over the phone. And he just like breaks down crying and I was like, God, it got him to me. So yeah, definitely some Spielberg pulling, giving some heavy emotional.

Dave Lester (02:04:48.459)
Yes.

Eli (02:04:55.677)
punches in this movie, were there any, we talked a little bit about some like sequences that like were really impactful. I wrote down the one that you already mentioned, which was the foam bob sequence is like, it's like a masterclass of both like tension building and like the sense of geography and space.

Dave Lester (02:05:12.525)
Yes.

Eli (02:05:25.103)
in a movie. Just the way he positions and frames everything, you know exactly where everyone is. But the daughter getting in and out of the car, and the way you see that go down at the phone, and then looking up the window, the way the camera pans up to the window, you know which window it is.

You know where the car is, you know where the guy at the phone booth is. And that's hard to do. That's so hard to like have the audience see all that and understand the space and the geography of all that. And Spielberg's just like, I honestly think in this, he's always been like so good at that. But this movie, it feels like

Dave Lester (02:05:58.979)
Yeah.

Eli (02:06:18.841)
He's at like the height of his powers as far as that goes because there's a bunch of scenes where you could easily get lost In these like unknown streets that you're on but spillberg like holds your hand with the way that he like frames everything and the the shots that he gives you where you never feel lost and you never Feel like I don't know where people are or what's going on

Dave Lester (02:06:22.712)
Yeah.

Eli (02:06:47.411)
It's it's incredible hit it's yeah, really incredible Yeah

Dave Lester (02:06:52.652)
Yeah, well made. He knows what he's doing, this Spielberg fellow.

Eli (02:06:56.947)
Yeah, he's pretty good. I would say pretty good. I also liked Molly Haskell that I mentioned a minute ago. She's talking about how he combines the commercial and the serious In this movie, she says quote. It's a fast-paced finely tuned balance of action and debate zeal and reflection And yeah, I just feel like there's so few directors that can do that

the degree that it's done in this movie of mixing because it is there's parts of this movie that are like an action movie but it but even those parts have an underlying like i guess air of reflection on them that feels like it would be hard to pull off but he does somehow i think

Dave Lester (02:07:52.27)
That's a solid quote, think, like generally describing the movie.

Eli (02:07:55.247)
Yeah, yeah Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think one of the like moments that probably Shows that is the moment in where they get revenge on the assassin that killed Heinz's character The woman that he meets at the bar at the hotel Ends up killing Kieran Heinz's character whose name I'm blanking Carl. I think is his name

And so eventually they go, they find her, she's a Dutch assassin and they find her in her home somewhere and kill her. And I think in a lot of action movies, that would be like an exciting scene. Like, yeah, they're getting revenge. They're, they're, they're finally, they're getting this lady back for what she did to their friend. But in this movie, it's very disturbing. You know,

Even like Hans makes the choice to like leave her robe open, which is just very disturbing. And then even he like, he's even reflecting on that later of wishing he hadn't done that. and I just, just feel like even the moments that feel like they should be like, this is like awesome getting revenge or even like the way Spielberg pulls it off in this movie is weighty and disturbing.

Dave Lester (02:09:26.904)
Yeah, he was walking a wire with a lot of that stuff. It's never, while there is a thriller aspect to it where you're like white knuckle, like grabbing the theater seat and your eyes are glued to the screen, you never feel like it's, it's not an action movie in the sense of James Bond or like an old Arnold Schwarzenegger movie that I grew up watching, like Predator or something where you're kind of just rooting on the action. You're like, yeah, that's so cool. I mean, it is never like that.

Eli (02:09:34.695)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:09:55.443)
Uh-huh.

Dave Lester (02:09:56.6)
There's always a humanity to it. There's almost always a voice, like a voice of conscience saying, it doesn't have to be this way, like all throughout this movie. I mean, again, we're back to that's the prayer for peace.

Eli (02:10:07.633)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's unavoidable to talk about because it's, I think a really good, another just like very striking image that plays that plays into that too. It doesn't, why does it have to be this way is when Hans it's down to the three of them. It's they're down to Avner and, Steve and Hans and Hans goes out for a bit and he doesn't come back and they find him.

dead on the bench and then there's that image of them sitting down beside him and they're silhouetted against you know the water and the bridge and it's a beautiful image but it's sad because you can tell they're just so defeated you know they're they're like do we really have to keep doing this at that point yeah yeah just it's so good

Dave Lester (02:10:52.747)
Absolutely.

Eli (02:11:07.923)
But yeah to wrap this up, I wanted to point out that this is really like the culmination of a phase for Spielberg. know, it's 9-11 was kind of the determining factor for this phase of his career from 2001 through this movie. It's six movies, six features in four years that he's made.

Uh, so from AI, which he made in 2001 through this movie, uh, that's four years, but six movies. It's, it's a lot. Um, and you know, it starts with kind of taking the baton from Kubrick on AI. Um, and even like he's coming off of having a cancerous lesion on his kidney removed to the year before that in 2000. And so there's a lot going on. He's, he's having this like.

serious surgery, he's taking the baton from a legend that he looked up to, and then 9-11 happens, and it kind of changes everything in the US and in the world, and it changes his mindset, really. And he really starts the century off like time is running out. There's just this frenzy of

really like iconic movies that he's pumping out that are different and they're interesting and they have political awareness to them. And yeah, it kind of all culminates in this film, which is really the most risky film of his whole career. Even today, like this is, there's not, he hasn't made anything riskier than this one.

Dave Lester (02:12:58.232)
Yeah.

There's nothing that comes close.

Eli (02:13:02.659)
Mm-hmm Yeah, I just really like like you said I just really appreciated that and this is You know in hindsight like thinking back, you know you I mean you're going you're going AI minority report Catch me if you can The terminal War of the worlds and then this movie

And really, like, all of those movies have, like, kind of 9-11, like, reflection on 9-11 in their DNA. And they're all different ways, but it's there in all of them. And yeah, it's just a very interesting phase of his career, I think. And yeah, it...

I'll be interested to see where it goes from here because next we have Andeanna Jones in the kingdom of the crystal skull, which I think is kind of an anomaly it's kind of like breaking him out of this cycle of of 9-eleven films that he's in I guess and Yeah, so yeah, it'll be interesting to see where we go from here Yeah

So this, are, I think we know where we both stand on this. I was telling you before we started recording that I had this rated as like a kind of a four star, eight out of 10, but then I was like organizing all my notes and just thinking about the movie and I was like, I've got to move this up. So I ended up bumping it up to a nine out of 10, four and a half star movie for me. And

Dave Lester (02:14:52.91)
Top 10 Spielberg, okay.

Eli (02:14:55.013)
And yeah, I think I have it at number six overall in his filmography. Yeah, I just.

Dave Lester (02:15:02.218)
Okay. I have it at number six as well. Yeah, behind. I have Schillinger's List, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Munich. And

Eli (02:15:08.359)
Yeah.

Eli (02:15:14.843)
Okay, yeah, mine's a little bit different. Mine is, I'm just trying to remember, Jaws, Schindler's List, ET, Jurassic Park, and I actually, my favorite is Last Crusade of the Raiders, and I have that at five.

Dave Lester (02:15:33.334)
It's, yeah, it's very good. Raiders of Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies of all time, so that gets the...

Eli (02:15:37.445)
Yeah, I I get that I think people that I think people that grew up with Raiders It's their favorite but I think People like in my generation that like it wasn't that grew up with Jurassic Park instead of Raiders I think I think a lot of us like Last Crusade more but I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe it's just me

Dave Lester (02:16:01.974)
is good. mean, know, Raiders for me is probably five stars, Last Crusade is four and a half. So I mean, you know.

Eli (02:16:07.633)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's, I mean, I was blown away by this movie. I hope a lot of people see it, a lot more people see this movie. I think it's still, like I said, incredibly relevant and is a really good movie for people to see and wrestle through. yeah, yeah, I think that's it. I mean, there's probably a lot more to say about this subject matter.

Um, but, uh, I don't think me and Dave have all the answers. So I've kind of, I've kind of exhaust. I've kind of exhausted my thoughts on it. Um, we.

Dave Lester (02:16:42.594)
Definitely not. Definitely not.

Dave Lester (02:16:47.776)
Yeah, no, it's a it's a deep film. You can go in all kinds of different directions.

Eli (02:16:52.177)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. But yeah, next week, I believe Dave is going to be coming on. We're actually about to record it in just a second. But he's coming back on next week for a draft of hostages and kidnapping movies. So this movie is about the aftermath of a hostage situation. But we're going to be drafting movies that deal with

hostages and kidnappings. I thought it would be a interesting, fun exercise to see what all kinds of movies fall into that category and do a movie draft. So, okay. We'll see, we'll see. I actually tied the last one that came out at the time of this recording was the Tom Cruise performances movie draft. And it was a tie. It was a

Dave Lester (02:17:32.024)
Tune in, I'm gonna beat Eli. I'm gonna beat Eli finally. Tune in.

Dave Lester (02:17:46.561)
Ooh, that's a good one.

Eli (02:17:50.683)
It was, I think it was the first ever complete tie across all the, you know, the votes across all platforms. So, so yeah, maybe, maybe you'll pull one out. I haven't, I can't remember the last one I lost. I did lose one not too long ago, but, but yeah, but we'll see. But that's coming up next week. And then like I said, we'll be covering Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull, the last Spielberg directed.

Indiana Jones movie. So that'll be fun. I kind of soft stand for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I don't think it's a bad movie. I think it's a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. I don't think it's by far not Spielberg's best, but I still liked it. But yeah, Dave, I am going to for sure...

Put in the episode description some links to where people can find you But if you want to give people maybe like where you're most active So that they can follow you there Maybe y'all where are you at these days? Are you on? Are you a blue sky guy a threads guy? Okay

Dave Lester (02:19:05.26)
Yeah, I'm off of Twitter. I'm a blue sky. I'm a blue sky guy. I'm not on threads. So yeah, come come follow me on blue sky. You can listen to my podcast veterans of culture wars and also does the Bible say that

Eli (02:19:19.057)
Yeah, yeah, and you can search those on pretty much anything, but I'll also link to them in the description. So yeah, that's all we have for this week. For Dave Lester, I've been Eli Price and you've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.