Schindler's List (w/ Joe George)

Eli (00:01.762)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmography's I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 66 of the podcast we are getting more and more into the middle of Steven Spielberg's career kind of covering his movies of the 90s and the 2000s and Yeah, it's been really good. We've gotten through a couple and hook and Jurassic

Park and we are now hitting the second of his mega 1993 year in Schindler's List. yeah, I have a new guest on the podcast with me today. Joe George is joining me. Joe, how are you doing?

Joe George (00:49.427)
I am very well.

Eli (00:51.102)
Awesome. It's good to have Joe on. I've seen a little bit of his work. I know he's, I've heard him, there's a podcast that's like a pop culture and Christian pop culture podcast called Think Christian and they also have like a whole website with articles and I know I've heard you pop on a couple of those episodes and so I was reaching out to new people and was like

This guy will be great to have one. So, so Joe is, yeah, we'll see. Well, time will tell, I guess. but Joe, why don't you tell a little bit about who you are and what you do for the listeners.

Joe George (01:21.843)
Well, you see that now. Yeah.

Joe George (01:35.273)
Okay. Yeah, my name's Joe. write, I'm a freelance writer, so I will write for anybody who pays me, essentially, but my main outlets, or my main areas tend to fall into Christian pop, Christianity and pop culture, not Christian pop culture. I have no idea about any of that. But there's a huge difference.

Eli (01:57.888)
Yeah, that's the difference.

Joe George (02:03.245)
So it's that one. I tend to write about pop culture and relationship to politics, particularly leftist politics, which I know is weird, but it's there. And then tend, like most of my mainline writing deals with kind of like nerd culture. So my major outlets that you'll find me on kind of regularly, Den of Geek, The Progressive, Sojourners, Think Christian,

Eli (02:22.307)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:31.743)
That sort of stuff. So I'm all around there. Which sounds awful maybe to some people, but those are kind of the three things that I really care about with pop culture in the middle. I tend to focus on movies, but then also comic books, television, and when I get a chance, literature, because I do actually have a PhD in literature, but I don't, it's a lot harder to write a book review than it is to write an hour and a half movie review.

Eli (02:43.384)
Yeah.

Eli (02:56.652)
Yeah.

Eli (03:00.92)
Yeah, right.

Joe George (03:02.309)
That's my work tends to do.

Eli (03:04.768)
Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. It's, you're a, people may say you're a cultured man, because, but maybe only because you're writing about the culture all the time.

Joe George (03:12.767)
They wouldn't say that.

Joe George (03:21.313)
I am. I have written like six articles about the Joker this week at least. So depends on where you go high or low culture. I think it's all the same.

Eli (03:27.586)
man.

Yeah. Yeah. Are you a, are you a fan of the, the newer, the Todd Phillips Joker movies? Okay. I'm so glad to hear. No, I'm so glad to hear you say that because I revisited the, the original one, I saw it in theaters, had a really weird experience where my, I saw it like on opening weekend and, I don't think the audience understood what they were watching.

Joe George (03:37.181)
No, they're utter garbage. They are such utter garbage. Are you? I'm so sorry.

Eli (04:00.57)
Because people were like laughing at things that were like kind of really dark and I was like this isn't very funny. So why are people laughing so much in this movie? Yeah, and then so I revisited it and like I think I was too generous with it with when I like rated it before and I was like I don't I don't think this movie is I think this movie is like

it's trying to be just like martin scorcese but with like joker cosplay and then this new one i just didn't i liked it even worse i was i told my wife i was like i was kind of bored it was kind of boring

Joe George (04:48.639)
Yeah. It's an extremely boring movie. it makes me angry on so many levels. One that I think Joaquin Phoenix is one of our best actors working now. think he's garbage in them. I look at him in those movies and I feel like I see...

Eli (04:59.62)
yeah, and he's great in them.

Okay. That's fair.

Joe George (05:14.369)
later period Marlon Brando coming on. see, you know, later period, Johnny Depp, these, these actors who are really talented and then nobody tells them no, like the director abandons their job. And so I watch

Eli (05:17.315)
Hmm.

Eli (05:25.517)
Mm.

Joe George (05:31.317)
I just wrote an article about this, so it's right in my head. you compare, and I know this isn't fair, but I'm gonna do it anyway, you compare Joker to The Master, both of them, Joaquin Phoenix is playing like a broken, disturbed man, and I mean, Todd Phillips is not Paul Thomas Anderson, most people aren't Paul Thomas Anderson, but still.

Eli (05:41.742)
Mm.

Eli (05:48.428)
Yeah.

Eli (05:53.506)
Right.

Joe George (05:55.243)
Paul Thomas Anderson knows to say, you know, pull it back, slow it down. We can do this all by zooming in on your face and you twitch it. And Todd Phillips has none of that. He's just like, do that weird, you know, bend over weird. And that's going to be the move. It's just, he has.

Eli (06:01.773)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (06:08.856)
Yeah.

Joe George (06:13.105)
There's no imagination. It's when it's not cribbing from Scorsese, it's it's just dumping misery upon misery. And one of my huge pet peeves is people that that that that confuse misery for depth. You know, like if I can be dark and depressing and nasty and unpleasant, I'm saying something, but you're not. And especially then when you plug superhero stuff into that.

Eli (06:30.093)
Right, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

Eli (06:42.754)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (06:43.194)
And you're embarrassed of the superhero part and you're not making it. It's just, it's such a mess to me that irritates me so much.

Eli (06:48.492)
Yeah, it does feel like he's embarrassed. He's kind of embarrassed that especially the second one feels like he's embarrassed of how the first one like was so great like everyone loved it or whatever. And yeah, I've seen some headlines that were like Todd Phillips says he was not, you know, doing that, but it's like, well, then why does the movie feel like like it but

Joe George (06:55.546)
Yeah.

Joe George (07:01.808)
Yep.

Joe George (07:14.619)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Unpleasant films.

Eli (07:17.974)
Yeah, we might, we'll probably, hopefully get into a little bit of how to make a movie that is very grim, but means a whole lot today in our discussion of Schindler's List. So that'll be a good juxtaposition of that discussion of Joker. But I always like to ask people when

Joe George (07:29.423)
Yeah.

Joe George (07:33.168)
Yes.

Joe George (07:37.976)
you

Eli (07:44.406)
I have them on and I'm doing a director what their introduction was to that director. So do you remember your first Spielberg movie?

Joe George (07:53.83)
Gosh. So I was born in 78. So there was never a not Spielberg for me.

Eli (07:58.616)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (08:02.432)
Yeah. I think since Jaws, there's never not been a Spielberg for people. Yeah.

Joe George (08:08.39)
Yeah, yeah. I know I saw Jaws when I was about six. You know what? It was probably Raiders, because Raiders is what, 82? And I know that I saw it right when it came out on this. I'm not this old, but I feel like I'm going be old. I watch it on CED. Do you know what CED is?

Eli (08:17.515)
Yeah.

Eli (08:28.94)
I actually don't. I'm familiar with most of those old things, but I don't know that one.

Joe George (08:34.286)
Yeah, this is it's it's a vinyl record that had a movie on it. So it looks like a laser disc basically, except it's in a big plastic thing. But so I know that I watched it right when it came on video, which, you know, back then that was like there's like a year or so lag. So I probably saw it in 83. And I think I don't think I saw.

Eli (08:38.507)
Okay.

Eli (08:41.91)
Yeah.

Joe George (09:00.382)
I know I saw Jaws way too young because I'm still to this day scared of sharks, but I don't think I saw it before then. I might have seen Close Encounters sometime around then. But anyway, mean, Raiders is the earliest one that I can remember like running to my mom when Alfred Molina's dead body shoots out. But then from then on then, know, it's...

Eli (09:03.886)
you

Eli (09:11.042)
Yeah.

Eli (09:15.277)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (09:21.482)
Yeah.

Joe George (09:26.726)
I'm sure I watched, I was right at the right age for ET. know, was right, we just, were talking about Hook before then, it was right at the right age for Hook. And I was right at the right age for, for, for,

Eli (09:30.189)
Yeah.

Eli (09:36.354)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (09:43.182)
Jurassic Park probably too.

Joe George (09:43.92)
Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. And I was right at the right age to be a snotty idiot when AI came out, you know, and that I feel like everybody, at least my age, any any film snob has like that moment where they're like, you know, Spielberg kid stuff. He's doing a Kubrick, you know. And so I walked out of the theater for AI and was like, that I was a big Kubrick guy, but, you know, that was what you said. You know, he botched that. And and now I'm materialized.

Eli (09:57.782)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (10:08.823)
Yeah.

Joe George (10:14.005)
and old enough to know that's dumb. Not every Spielberg hits, but he's brilliant and he's the best. And anybody who doesn't say that is just being contrarian.

Eli (10:19.992)
Yeah.

Eli (10:23.424)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we'll get into it with the reception because back really Before Schindler's list all through the 80s people kind of talked about Spielberg as being Really just kind of like artistically a lightweight and in Like that's what the critics even back then were saying they you know, yeah, he makes

exciting movies and adventures and but it's kind of like artistically lightweight because he's not making movies like Francis Ford Coppola and like you know Martin Scorsese you know all of his other buddies that were making these you know deep you know cool movies or whatever yeah but and we'll definitely get into that but yeah that's really cool it's it's always fun to hear

people's first experience with, especially with a director like Spielberg who feels like he's just always been around. yeah, in fact, whenever I was doing the Christopher Nolan series last, my comparison was always that Christopher Nolan is sort of becoming the new Spielberg because he's becoming like a household name. He does the blockbuster movies.

and they make very different movies, but in the sense of how they resonate in pop culture, they feel pretty similar.

Joe George (11:59.87)
Which I think is great. mean, I know that there's people that get snotty about that, but I love the fact that even now, you know, again, I make a lot of my money off of writing about superheroes, but I too am a cinephile and I share those concerns that, you know, superheroes are gonna kill cinem- they're not. But, but it's wonderful to me that...

Eli (12:14.092)
Yeah.

Eli (12:20.974)
Ha

Joe George (12:27.166)
that we're still finding new directors who people will come out to watch their movie, you know? And I'm loving that. Recently now, we've got people that are, you know, they're gonna go see the new Yorgos Lanthimos, and that's the way that they're gonna describe it. And that's insane. But...

Eli (12:32.579)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (12:41.153)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think letterbox culture has helped a lot with that. Which is weird. It's weird that a social media forum is doing something good for the culture, but I feel like letterbox is doing that a bit. But yeah, let's start jumping into Schindler's List, because

Joe George (12:48.52)
Yeah, that's a really good observation.

Joe George (12:57.768)
Ha ha ha ha!

Joe George (13:02.858)
That's a really good observation. You're probably right. Yeah.

Eli (13:13.794)
There's a lot to talk about here. We'll kind of talk through how it got started and the production and all that. What's kind of different a little bit about this film compared to a lot of other ones I've covered is you really can't find a ton of stuff about the behind the scenes. There's not really like making of documentaries. There's not like

of... there's not really... I even was looking on YouTube, there's like not really anything on YouTube. The special features on the disc were... there was one that was like a 25 years later panel with Spielberg and some of the actors, and then it's... know, it's show a foundation stuff and the kind of documentary that has all of the

I think it's called Voices from the List. It's a bunch of the people that are in the movie sharing their stories. And it's, yeah, so you might listen to this episode and you're like, man, he didn't cover a ton of the production stuff like he normally does, and it's because it's just not out there. It's weird. There might be some in a book out there somewhere that I don't know about, but I didn't find that book, so...

Joe George (14:27.69)
you

Joe George (14:40.906)
Why do you think that is? That they didn't really push the behind the scenes as much for this one as opposed to...

Eli (14:47.788)
You know, it was a tough experience, as we'll see for Spielberg. I think that's part of it. I feel like they didn't, I feel like they weren't like doing a lot of extra like filming and taking pictures on set like they like you normally would just because of the the atmosphere and you know, it's it you just see you saw on like the the 25 years later.

Joe George (15:05.585)
Mmm, yeah.

Eli (15:16.594)
talking about how like tough it was, know, just every day was just so tough and challenging. then, know, Spielberg just felt like, you know, he didn't take a salary for this, he felt that was inappropriate, and so if you thought taking a salary was inappropriate, then he probably thought doing a Making Of documentary would be inappropriate too, so it's probably a lot of that stuff going on.

this one but you can find him like looking back on it but I think in the moment like he just he made it and he needed to like recoup after so yeah yeah but so the movie all gets started with this guy named Leopold Page or I've seen also Paul Page I guess he maybe went by Paul

which is actually his, I think his American name that he came up with, because his actual name is Poldek Fefferberg, which is a character in the movie. It's based on this guy. And he was one of the, it's the, like the, I guess the German or Polish, I guess Polish people speak German, I think. The term is Schindler Juden, which is the Schindler Jews.

So I'll probably just say Schindler Jews from here on out because that's easier. But he was one of the Schindler Jews who survived the war, survived the camps, and after the war he moved to California with his wife and they had kids. He opened up this, it's like a luggage and leather shop in California.

And apparently this guy had been like... it seems like he had the intent of moving to California so that he could get the story told. Because for years and years he had been telling people about this story. When he would run into writers or people in Hollywood, he would tell them the story. And even at one point, I think it was in the 60s, had even sold the story to MGM.

Eli (17:40.936)
even gave Schindler some of the earnings that a lot of the Schindler Jews were kind of supporting Schindler who had some failed businesses and you know wasn't doing very well financially after the war and so yeah he so he the MGM never did anything with it but yeah so it comes comes into I I didn't get the year on this but I would imagine it's like

probably late 70s, early 80s. This guy Thomas Keneally comes into his store looking for, I think something to put his socks in, which is really weird to me. Like, why do you need something specifically for your socks? I just throw it in with everything else. But yeah, is this Australian author, Keneally, he's Pfefferberg or...

Joe George (18:19.204)
Hahaha!

Joe George (18:25.53)
Yeah.

Eli (18:36.074)
guess Paige finds out that he is a writer and it's like have I got a story for you and tells him about you know the the Krakow ghetto and the camps and about Schindler and yeah so Kenneally takes it and runs with it he starts he really does listen I listened to this book on audiobook it's been it's actually been like a month

and a half or two since I listened to it, but I was like, man I need to listen to this before. yeah, so in the intro and outro he does a lot of like, kind of, I guess it would be even before the intro, like the prelude and kind of a postscript, he kind of talks a little bit about how he made the book and everything, and it's a novel. It's basically a novelization of

Joe George (19:32.666)
Okay.

Eli (19:34.518)
all of this research he did interviewing the Shin.

Joe George (19:38.114)
Is it more focalized through Paige or is it more focused on Schindler like the film is? Yeah, interesting.

Eli (19:43.361)
No.

Yeah, it is. now it, it, it's more, it covers, it's a lot wider than, than the movie. in fact, sometimes it's hard to keep up with, cause there's a lot more characters in the book. And you know, you say characters, but he's, he's basically like everything that could be historically accurate in the novel is the only things that aren't are like dialogue or things that

you you just couldn't have exact, but he felt that it needed to be a novel. I think just to make it more accessible to people was his theory. And so any dialogue is based in real conversations that he knows of, but like he obviously doesn't have recordings of these conversations. So he's kind of like basing it off of

people talked about it and how people kind of talked about how Schindler talked and how Amangot talked and so it's really interesting. It's an interesting endeavor to take all of this extensive interview research that you've done with all these tons of people and turn it into a novel, a very historically accurate novel at that.

Joe George (21:05.976)
Yeah. And how satisfying must have that have been for Paul to go all this time knowing you have this story and not only get somebody who's gonna pick it up, but then take it that seriously. I'm sure that he shared that story with so many people that it just.

Eli (21:15.874)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (21:21.148)
yeah.

Joe George (21:25.686)
it bounced right off of them or even the MGM deal that you talked about where somebody thought they were going to do something with it and it ended up dying and then you get this guy that puts that much work into it. That's remarkable.

Eli (21:27.191)
Yeah.

Eli (21:35.835)
Yeah, and it's you know, it speaks to the the persistence of Page that he you know, he's just like I'm gonna keep telling people this until until it gets gets made But yeah, yeah and Keneally publishes it in 82 Sid Scheinberg who was at the time he was kind of Spielberg's like

I guess what would you call him? biggest like cheerleader and supporter in the studio world at that? Protector is probably, protector is a good yes. Those are, those are good words. see that's why you're the writer and I'm not. and yeah, so Sid, Sid Scheinberg tells Spielberg about this book. He wants Spielberg to make this movie. and so while he's

Joe George (22:11.214)
Yeah, a protector maybe almost? Advocate?

Joe George (22:20.621)
Hahaha

Eli (22:33.71)
While ET is in the process of coming out in 82, Spielberg reads a New York Times book review. I was like, okay, I'm gonna check out this book. Reads the book. And really like Universal, soon as, so almost as soon as this book wins the Booker Prize, which was, I think it's like a UK prize, book prize.

and it wins that and Universal buys the rights to adapt and they really buy it for Spielberg. know, Sid Sheinberg is the president of MCA, which Universal is part of, and so he really buys it with Spielberg in mind. And so in 1983, Spielberg meets Paul Page and they have their

He kind of gives him the whole story and stuff too. I can just imagine this guy's got it down to a T by now. He knows all the beats of this.

Joe George (23:36.432)
sure. Yeah, he's got his elevator pitch. Yeah. That's interesting that they bought it for Spielberg in in 83. You know, we mentioned that he's he wasn't, you know, thought of as as a filmmaker like Coppola or Scorsese or anybody on that. And that's especially true in 83. You know, he's coming off big budget popcorn films. And I think even Lucas had more.

Eli (23:45.111)
Yeah.

Eli (23:52.098)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Eli (23:58.454)
Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm.

Joe George (24:05.422)
you know because he had THX in his back pocket. think even Lucas had more respect out of the brats of the era. That's really interesting that they had him in mind for that already.

Eli (24:07.852)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (24:16.406)
Yeah, yeah, and you know, I don't know what the thought was there other than maybe maybe Sid Sheinberg kind of already knew that Spielberg was wanting to make a more serious movie, which he spends a lot of the mid to late 80s trying to do, not, you know, most a lot of them not being like terribly like kind of middling received or not very well received and so

Yeah, yeah, so Spielberg, you know, he meets with Page It's hard for me to think, like, do I call him Page or Pfefferberg? But yeah, so yeah, and so they end their conversation and Page asks him, like, okay, when are you making this movie? And Spielberg, kind of with a grin, says, 10 years from now. And lo and behold, he was exactly spot on. So

Joe George (25:08.836)
Hahaha!

Eli (25:15.574)
Yeah, so at the time Spielberg just knew he wasn't ready. In fact, he told Sheinberg, like, I don't know how to tell this story. which is very, I don't know, very like wise of him to, to kind of say, you know, I just, can't do this. It's, it's not for me right now. and, no, go ahead.

Joe George (25:35.536)
Especially for, I'm sorry. Especially for Spielberg who is so preternaturally, visually talented. That's the thing that everybody talks about with him is that he is a pure visual storyteller. And so.

Eli (25:45.568)
Yes.

Eli (25:52.502)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (25:54.35)
That's remarkable wisdom for somebody who is such a whiz kid and so in control of his craft to know that this is not just a matter of technical skill. He has that. He doesn't know how to handle the ethical stakes, which is, in this most recent rewatching is the thing that jumped out at me the most is how.

Eli (26:07.284)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Eli (26:15.265)
Yeah.

Eli (26:19.459)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (26:20.592)
serious. It's it feels the weight of a blockbuster filmmaker dealing with an unspeakable tragedy. And it takes that very seriously, even if it doesn't quite pull off. And we see him kind of aware of that already when he's on the top of the world. You know, any other I love Scorsese. I'm not trying to to to disrespect him here, but especially around this time, you know, he would have taken a hit of coke and then said, yeah, I'm going to do it. You know, I mean,

Eli (26:28.322)
Yes.

Eli (26:34.668)
Yeah.

Eli (26:40.654)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (26:50.586)
I know it doesn't quite go like that, all of the other guys, you know, they would have, they would, you don't see that, they have so much hubris, and I'm sure Spielberg had more than enough of that, but that's so remarkable that he took that issue so seriously that he knew then.

Eli (27:03.33)
Yeah, sure.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think a lot of it was very personal too. He had always struggled with his Jewish heritage. You know, he grew up in New Jersey and then Arizona for a bit and then California and in all of those places kind of felt ostracized as a Jewish person. There were still a lot of

trauma very much alive in the 50s and 60s along those lines. you know, he has memories of, especially when they were closer to their family in New Jersey, of, you know, he saw the numbers on his grandma's wrist and didn't really know what that was. He realized later on in life and, you know, his dad would talk about, you know, family that they estimated like 15 to 20 of their family

died in camps in Ukraine and Poland. So he doesn't know what to do with that as a kid, but also all of his friends are celebrating Christmas and probably going to church on Sundays, and he's not doing any of those things, and he just feels kind of left out and ostracized. And so he really didn't like his Jewish heritage as a kid.

And I still think at this point he really like wasn't fully like in aid in the early 80s. He really wasn't Reconciled with that yet. I think that really started when he had his first kid and in the mid 80s max He really started to reconnect with his faith and it was really when Kate Capshaw his wife

Eli (29:01.632)
now in 93, when they got married in 91, she converted to Judaism before they got married. She really thought highly of their emphasis on family, just kind of the Jewish traditions and the emphasis on family and, you know, investing in your children and all that, and she was just like, I'm gonna convert because I think this is, you know,

think this is incredible and so I thought that was really cool and I think that really that even further spurred him on so that by the time 93 rolls around he's really ready to do it but it took that long for him to kind of finally reconcile with that those feelings of his childhood

Joe George (29:50.234)
Yeah. I wonder how much of it was him, you know, feeling, feeling like he needed that long to accept that he was the one that was gonna tell the story. I mean, we know that people came to him about it, but I know, I, so this is not even close to the same thing, but bear with me for a second. I have.

Eli (30:06.221)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Joe George (30:19.074)
ethnically Jewish on my father's side, which if you know anything about Judaism means that doesn't really count then and it doesn't matter anyway, for me because I was raised evangelical Christian, but The more that I find out about my background The more there's that's like even me saying that is that there's kind of a weight of well do I get to claim that you know, like

Eli (30:21.742)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (30:41.003)
Right, yeah.

Joe George (30:42.082)
You know, do do do I get to say that even though that's blood, whatever that means, but I'm sure that part of his wrestling then was also shouldn't somebody who has not been not been a shame, maybe it's too hard of a word, but ambivalent about their. Ancestry, shouldn't they be the one that is going to tell them?

Eli (31:02.104)
Yeah.

Eli (31:08.086)
Yeah.

Joe George (31:09.55)
Which is strangely kind of works into the themes of the movie of, know, if you don't do it, who else is going to do it? You know?

Eli (31:13.165)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. yeah. Yeah, that's definitely all there and and well so Along those lines he really like from the time Universal bought it until he made it He was trying to push it off on other people They they got Kennealy to write the first script. It was this 220 page long script Spielberg kind of judged it pretty harshly. He was like this isn't gonna work. There's too many secondary characters, which is

Like I said, there's a lot in the book of secondary characters. So yeah, in these 10 years while the film's on hold, it gets commissioned to this journalist, Kurt Ludke. He had just won best adapted screenplay for Out of Africa, and he spends three and a half years on this script. He's really focused on trying to make Schindler's

conversion to the Jewish cause like credible and just isn't successful in that Which as we'll talk about in the movie, it doesn't really do that That what we end up with so there's probably a reason he wasn't successful in that because it wasn't really possible But then yes, so like you said shouldn't somebody else make this well Spielberg tried to get Roman Kupulanski to make it and Yeah, and you know as as people may know

Polanski was Polish. He escaped the camps but survived the Holocaust. I think he was kind of stowed away with a Polish family, but he lost his, I know his grandma and maybe even his mother.

Joe George (33:01.524)
I both of his parents, or nevermind, I don't know for sure. I thought it was both of his parents.

Eli (33:05.314)
Yeah, it might have been both of his parents. I remember reading Grandma and Mother for sure. So yeah, he lost them to Auschwitz and so yeah, he's very close, but it kind of is the opposite end of the spectrum. Pielanski declined. The wounds were still raw, which he did go on to make the pianist later on, but at this point he just...

Joe George (33:10.53)
Okay. Okay.

Joe George (33:20.954)
Right.

Joe George (33:28.781)
Yeah.

Eli (33:33.464)
Polanski wasn't ready either because kind of the opposite reason. He felt too close to it.

Joe George (33:42.724)
That's really interesting given, you know, what he did with Macbeth right after, you know, Sharon Tate's death or not right after, but, you know, pretty close to after, which is the way that we usually talk about it is him kind of purging all of that anger and regret into.

Eli (33:48.206)
Mm.

Eli (34:02.349)
Yeah.

Joe George (34:04.784)
You know, I know Polanski's Polanski and all of that, but he's made some brilliant films and Macbeth is just such a pure purgation. I guess that's the only word I can think of, cinematic purgation. would be, it's interesting that he was able to do that once, but not again, at least at that time. And the pianist, I think, is a very unsuccessful.

Eli (34:11.416)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (34:26.582)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I guess he eventually kind of did. I haven't actually seen the pianist, so I don't know what exactly it deals with. Yeah.

Joe George (34:36.504)
good. It deals with a bad Adam Brody. What's his name? Adrian Brody. Thank you. Deals with a bad Adrian Brody performance at the center. It's too reserved. mean, and I don't know. I don't see that from the perspective of, you know, I don't judge how he had to process it. But just as a viewer of a film, it's.

Eli (34:43.135)
Adrian Brody. Yeah.

Eli (34:48.482)
Mmm.

Eli (34:59.917)
Right.

Joe George (35:05.142)
It's, it feels safe in a way that I, I feel like he fell on the wrong side of being too respectful to the point that the horror doesn't quite go through, you know.

Eli (35:16.194)
Yeah, maybe he still felt the same way, but felt like it was his duty maybe to make something along those lines. But then we also have Billy Wilder jumping in too. Billy Wilder offers to help. He lost most of his family to Auschwitz. He also talked about considering it his duty to have a film made like this.

Joe George (35:22.17)
Yeah.

Eli (35:45.278)
But ultimately in the end Spielberg tries to get Scorsese to make it and actually they Scorsese signs on Spielberg felt like he could make handle the grim atmosphere without watering it down which is probably true it would have been a very different movie I think but he would definitely wouldn't have watered it down so but as soon as

Joe George (36:08.976)
No.

Eli (36:14.162)
Marty accepted Spielberg regretted it He had started to kind of feel like he was failing his duty To make a movie like this and so what ends up happening is they they pull a switcheroo and so Scorcese was in the process of Starting to possibly make a remake of Cape Fear and so he's like hey Can we switch these movies you make Cape Fear and I'll take back on Schindler's List and so they

they do that and which I think Cape Fear is pretty good pretty good movie too so

Joe George (36:47.208)
yeah, and I can't see Spielberg making that movie, really.

Eli (36:51.764)
Yeah, it would have, they both would have been very different movies.

Joe George (36:56.932)
The one thing I would say about a Scorsese Schindler's List is Scorsese has such a religious imagination that I think we would get maybe a little bit more of that. The first thing that leaps to mind is how raw Scorsese can be. I'm thinking like the wedding scene in particular in the Finnish Schindler's List. I would have liked to seen a little bit more of that and I feel like

Eli (37:04.194)
Yes.

Eli (37:13.902)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (37:22.339)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (37:25.464)
I feel like Scorsese would have dug on, dealt a little bit more headlong into the theodicy question in a way that Spielberg is a little too secular to worry about. That's interesting.

Eli (37:30.092)
Yeah.

Eli (37:35.938)
Yeah. Yeah, I think we would have had a much more like, obviously tortured Schindler, too. Because it's very, very subtle in this, version we have with Spielberg. It's there, but subtle. And I think, you know, it's interesting to think about what Scorsese might have done with that. he have, would you have seen a little bit more of a darker end of

Joe George (37:43.03)
Yes. Yes.

Eli (38:04.95)
what Schindler was like and how much he was wrestling with this because that's what Scorsese loves is a main character wrestling with their humanity and their choices. Scorsese is one of my favorite directors but I'm glad we got the Spielberg version of this.

Joe George (38:12.165)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (38:17.854)
Yeah.

Joe George (38:22.847)
Trying to save their souls. Yeah. Me too.

Eli (38:33.698)
Yeah, Scorsese had commissioned a script from this guy, Stephen Zalien. It was 115 pages long, so Spielberg reads this script. He has a few problems. So Zalien was really wanting to make it more of a vertical view through the eyes of Schindler, and Spielberg felt like it needed to be a little bit more

horizontal. yeah, it's sort of like centers on Schindler, but we need to give some time to these other characters too. And so, you know, he knew that there couldn't be too many secondary characters, but he also knew like it can't be like so solely focused on Schindler that we don't get these other characters speaking in and giving different perspective as well.

I that was smart too, especially because the story was told by those people in the first place to Keneally. yeah, I think very smart decision. And then also he didn't like that there was only like two pages on the liquidation of the ghetto, which we see in the movie, that ends up being a

Joe George (39:40.105)
Yes. Yes.

Eli (39:59.47)
pretty long sequence. It really gives some time and sits in that, which I think is also good. Smart. And so Spielberg, I think he... I didn't read this, but I get the feeling that he did like the script overall because he sticks with Zalian. In fact, they go to Poland for a few days together, I guess to kind of like get in the mindset. And the revised script is 195 pages.

Spielberg's still hesitant and so that was in I'm guessing like in about 90, 1990 because a year later while he's making Hook he revisits that script and he tells Kate Capshaw, hey this I finally think I'm ready to make this this is gonna be my next movie which is a very wild thing to decide while you're in the middle of making

the movie Hook.

Joe George (41:00.797)
Yeah I mean I already shared hook is to my mind the worst Spielberg movie. But you know so much of hook is Am I a good dad? You know, there's so much of that legacy stuff there that even The stuff that works in hook which is not much is Is the the the father son stuff and i'm sure that a certain

Eli (41:05.666)
Ha

Eli (41:13.773)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli (41:22.094)
You

Joe George (41:29.679)
Aspect of that was kind of unlocked in his mind. I mean you'd already mentioned He kind of reconnected to Judaism At first when his son was born and that's so much of a I want to reconnect with my son I could kind of see the logic I not to psychoanalyze him from this perspective But I can at least see some logic that would link those two very disparate movies otherwise

Eli (41:48.461)
right.

Mm-hmm.

Eli (41:55.544)
Sure. Yeah, I can see that too. Yeah, I he finally, it's been 10 years almost and he's like, I'm finally ready to make this. And then, so he starts, I guess, telling Universal and pitching what he wants to do with it. I guess they've, maybe some of the executives have looked at the script and they just weren't very encouraging.

which is so strange because they bought it for him in the first place. And then when he finally comes around to wanting to make it, they're like, I don't know. And like one, I read that one studio executive offered to make a donation to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington that was going to open in 93 to kind of dissuade him, which is like, what? But at the same time,

Joe George (42:50.313)
Ha ha.

Eli (42:52.842)
makes sense. It's like, yeah, a studio exec would do that. Yeah. So, then Tom Pollock, who was the head of Universal at the time, learned that he wanted to do it in black and white with this young unknown DP, who we know now as Janusz Kaminski, and he begged him to do it in color and transfer it to black and white so that they could release it in color on TV and VHS.

Joe George (42:55.933)
That's exactly right. Yeah.

Eli (43:23.274)
Spilberg, he also criticized the very thing that Spilberg was smart to do, which is there's no like cathartic scene to mark like Schindler finally realizing what he needs to do. And Spilberg stands firm, which at this point in his career he's earned the right to do, which is another reason why it's kind of important for

guy like Spielberg or someone with enough clout to make a movie like this so that hopefully they can make the right decisions as far as that goes. yes Spielberg stands firm. They're like okay I guess we'll do it. We'll give you a reduced budget of 22 million dollars and then Sid Scheinberg also you know he signed signed off on it with the caveat that he would direct Jurassic Park first.

Joe George (44:00.148)
Yeah.

Joe George (44:19.442)
you

Eli (44:20.942)
So, which he did. Yeah. Tough on Spielberg, as we'll see, but yeah, smart, I guess, for Universal. But yeah, Spielberg, as I said, did refuse the salary. Felt like it was inappropriate. He does do something with what would be his earnings, what would have been his earnings, as we'll talk about later. But yeah, didn't take a salary for this. I mean, he's...

Joe George (44:22.185)
I mean, savvy business move, but.

Joe George (44:27.836)
Yeah.

Eli (44:50.73)
guess he's basically working for free for all intents and purposes for this movie, you know, but he wasn't... I don't think he was needing a whole lot of financially at this point anyway, so... which is cool. It's one of those things where sometimes when a director's either making a movie for free or putting their own money into it, it can kind of be like, I don't know...

Joe George (45:04.573)
Right. Right.

Eli (45:20.546)
they need that much freedom but in this case it's yeah it turned out good so yeah

Joe George (45:22.405)
Hahaha

Joe George (45:26.749)
Yeah, yeah, mean, it blows my mind to I don't know. I know you sent me this this run of show earlier and I guess I just didn't notice that that he had to fight for Kaminsky too, because.

Eli (45:40.419)
Yeah.

Joe George (45:41.435)
My goodness, just rewatching this movie. peek behind the curtain on my end. I haven't rewatched this movie in like 15 years. so rewatching it, just get ready for this. And you're just struck at, that lighting and it's so gorgeous. What?

Eli (45:49.368)
Yeah.

Eli (45:55.592)
It is beautiful. Yeah.

Yeah.

Joe George (46:00.881)
I mean, I can understand from a cynical perspective why you might be scared of doing a Holocaust movie or whatever, but, God, dang, how do you not look at what Spielberg's bringing you visually with Kaminsky and just say, well, it's gonna be gorgeous.

Eli (46:07.562)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (46:16.62)
Yeah, yeah, and even like in the the little 25 years later panel, both Caroline Goodall, who played Emily Schindler, Beth Davids, who plays Helen Hirsch, they both like went on for like two minutes each about how beautiful the movie was. And I was like, yeah, you're right, it's very beautiful. But you know, and it's probably

Joe George (46:22.068)
huh.

Joe George (46:35.738)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (46:45.582)
pretty sure Kaminski is Polish, and I think that might be a reason he really wanted this guy. He had seen his work and was like, I want to get this Polish guy to do this movie. Other crew, of course Spielberg is a producer. Branko Lustig is a producer who was a Holocaust survivor, so I think it's smart to get a guy like that.

on board to produce the movie. Gerald R. Mullen is back. I think he's done since Hook. He's been on the Spielberg producing board and I know at least he does The Lost World as well because I've already recorded that episode. But yeah, obviously based on the book by Thomas Kniele and we've talked about the screenplay by Steven Zalian.

We've talked a little bit about Janusz Kaminski as the DP. I forgot, I was going to look up how they met, because I know there's like a story of how he met Janusz Kaminski, and I just totally forgot to look that up. So I'll have to like maybe squeeze that into a later episode for people interested. But it's really the first of a very long collaboration. do, he's this DP for every movie after this.

Joe George (47:57.534)
I don't know it either.

Joe George (48:12.869)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Eli (48:14.831)
So all the way through the fablements and I don't know if he's signed on for whatever Spielberg's doing next but I hope so because that means it'll look good. Yeah he did have some ADs, some assistant directors on this one, Sergio Mimica-Gazan and Marek Brodsky. One of those will come up in a minute.

Joe George (48:26.055)
Yeah, exactly.

Eli (48:41.046)
bit. I don't know which one it is because Liam Neeson didn't mention it, but you'll know what I mean in a minute. Michael Kahn and John Williams, his tried-and-true editor and composer, of course. A few sound guys on this one. The only one that is, I think, for sure returning from other movies is Ron Judkins. But Andy Nelson, Steve Peterson, Scott Millen,

Joe George (48:49.609)
Okay.

Eli (49:10.902)
Charles L Campbell all do a lot of sound work production design by Alan Starsky he a lot of these people really don't have like huge Filmography's that they've worked on because I was looking at them and I was surprised I was wondering like okay. How did he pull this team together because he has some returning guys, but a lot of these people aren't like super like big or

like didn't do a ton of stuff. The set decorator was the same thing. It was bronze.

Joe George (49:48.009)
That's interesting because it is a fantastic looking production. And it was quite the undertaking. So you wouldn't think you'd be grabbing newbies, especially given all the serious. I mean, just if you even took that seriousness aside and you were just doing any sort of period piece, it's quite the undertaking. And so that's interesting. They have to have some sort of history that would have.

Eli (49:53.772)
Yeah, it really is.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli (50:08.578)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (50:15.927)
Yeah.

Joe George (50:17.065)
made them the right people to this and they pulled it off. It's an amazing looking film.

Eli (50:19.958)
Yeah, and I wonder if a few of them might have been just over there. were maybe he found because Ewer Braun and Alan Starsky both sound like they could be over there in Poland. Judy Alexander Corey, who did the hair, maybe not so much. And then there's Christine Smith and Matthew Mangle for the makeup. Definitely wanted to hit those because they do get a nomination.

Joe George (50:30.793)
Sure. Sure.

Eli (50:48.758)
As we'll see, costume design, Anna B. Sheppard, she is Polish, I know for sure, and she's won a few Oscars. So she's pretty, she's one of the ones that I was like, okay, she has a big filmography, a big span of work. She actually won an Oscar for the pianist as well, which we talked about, and then also for Maleficent, which is very extremely different from those two.

Joe George (51:17.469)
Hey, great costumes though.

Eli (51:18.796)
Yeah. VFX were done by Gail Curry and Steve Price. And then finally the special effects by Bruce Minkus. And yeah, I don't know a ton of what those guys were doing other than making smoke. you know, there's not a ton of like big in your face effects like there usually is in a Spielberg movie, in this movie.

Joe George (51:46.184)
Yeah.

Eli (51:48.302)
you know i think for a movie like this it's kind of like if you don't notice it notice like it it's probably because they're doing their job well yeah i guess i don't know it's i was just gonna say it's it's just a lot of like you know obviously this is in the war but there's not like we're not in the war we're in the camp and so it's a lot of like

Joe George (52:00.829)
Yeah, I mean...

there's... go ahead, I'm sorry.

Eli (52:19.032)
getting this machinery to function in the right way probably, and getting this smoke to billow just right, and it's probably a lot of that sort of stuff going on that they're working on.

Joe George (52:35.251)
Yeah, I would, I think though part of it, it goes back to that tension, the fact that this is a blockbuster film about an unspeakable horror, and you have to have just the right alchemy, and I'm thinking of the sequence when it's a tracking shot about two thirds of the way through the film where we're following upscale.

Eli (52:42.519)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (53:02.431)
women and it seems like it's snowing you know and then you you walk in shindler walks out and you he he he he he realized it's ash from bodies that's i think that's that that

Eli (53:05.037)
Yes.

Eli (53:13.334)
Right.

Joe George (53:19.965)
that sequence has to be just right because it needs to shift from that sort of beauty and wonder that Spielberg does so naturally to then the humanist horror that needs to happen. And it needs to have the right VFX team and sound effects team because you have to believe they're walking through snow and it's a wonder. It's one of those gorgeous, you know, the subtle Spielberg wonders that takes you from beauty to horror all in one time.

Eli (53:21.879)
Right. Yeah.

Eli (53:29.272)
The horror, yeah.

Eli (53:33.687)
Yes.

Eli (53:37.965)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli (53:47.214)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (53:47.851)
so you're right. It's not a flashy effects movie. Yeah, and it's it's got to be precise in order to pull off the magic trick of the movie.

Eli (53:52.344)
But it's that subtle, that, yeah, that subtlety.

Eli (54:00.022)
Yes, yeah that's a really really good example for sure. Yeah, yeah really really incredible stuff as far as that goes. Yeah and they were filming this in winter there in Poland, so I wonder if any of the snow ended up being real. Could be, but I didn't really see any of that in my research, so I know it was cold because the actors would talk about being like really cold on set.

Joe George (54:21.147)
Okay. Yeah.

Eli (54:28.364)
Yeah, the cast, Spielberg, Spielberg had said in one thing that I saw that this is a very performance-driven film, and that's very true. The movie doesn't work without the performances, which is true of any movie, but I think if everything else were right and the performances were a little off in this, it just wouldn't work the same. Yeah.

Joe George (54:55.695)
Absolutely, especially I think that big three of Neese and Kingsley and Fiennes, know, those all have to be so tuned. It's not just, you know, Schindler, his gamemanship and then his moral shift. It's also...

Eli (55:02.295)
Yes.

Eli (55:15.756)
Yeah.

Joe George (55:19.739)
Spielberg is he's he he shoots Nissan like he's a old school matinee star and You have to those profile shots. He's got it he's got such a great face and Kaminsky and Spielberg know how to shoot that when anytime he's in profile and the smoke is in the light is dancing, you know, that's

Eli (55:27.298)
Yeah.

Eli (55:35.075)
Yeah.

Joe George (55:44.543)
That could be something Cary Grant would do. should be something Valentino should do. he doesn't shy away from those, especially in the first third of the film, from doing that. mean, and he knows that he needs Schindler to look good. He needs to look good in order for the film to be honest in a strange way. But then you've got Kingsley, who is the moral focus who cannot speak.

Eli (55:48.151)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (55:52.866)
Yeah.

Eli (56:06.893)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (56:13.44)
Yes.

Joe George (56:13.893)
Right? He can't really say his suffering. And so it's all there in his face and his eyes. And those three are doing such a balancing act that that.

Eli (56:18.7)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (56:22.942)
his mannerisms too. I think of the the scene where like Kingsley runs up to the fence and like at first he's like really like urgently like waving Schindler over and then like realizes like I can't be so I need to be like calm it down a little bit and it's all like within a second but it's all there and that takes like that takes some really really great acting to pull that off. Yeah.

Joe George (56:32.99)
Yes.

Joe George (56:40.935)
Yes.

Joe George (56:47.123)
Yes.

Eli (56:50.104)
But he so he actually so Spielberg focused on Stern from the beginning. He really, really wanted to get that casting right. And largely because when they were writing it, it was a very difficult character to write. He's kind of an amalgamation of different people in the book. And so which usually happens in a movie usually.

Joe George (57:16.703)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (57:17.338)
You kind of like mush some characters together from the book that can kind of be a little have a little more breadth to it but so it's yeah, you know, they modify the history a little bit, but It's it's all still there But yeah, they really wanted to get this right. It was actually offered first to Dustin Hoffman He declined that would have been Yeah

Joe George (57:43.263)
I don't think that would be bad. I don't hate that idea.

Eli (57:45.728)
It would have been interesting. He has a little nervousness to him that could work, I think. I haven't seen like... I'm not like terribly familiar with Hoffman. I've seen him in a few things, but it's definitely... I can see that.

Joe George (57:53.631)
Uh-huh.

Joe George (57:59.613)
Okay.

Joe George (58:04.227)
He's got a nerviness and he's got, mean, Kingsley can certainly have an edge and a grumpy, by all accounts, he's like that in real life. But I can see Hoffman being, playing the resentment, you know, a little bit more than Kingsley's, he plays Stern as savvy, you know, he rarely lets Schindler see his resentment for.

Eli (58:22.871)
Yeah.

Eli (58:28.439)
Yes.

Eli (58:32.802)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (58:33.89)
what he is the position that he's in that's that's interesting i don't hate that casting but i'm glad we got what we got

Eli (58:35.639)
Yeah.

Yeah, second choice was Kingsley. So he had won Best Actor for Gandhi in 83. Obviously had been working since then, but that was his last like really, really huge performance. And they actually met during Jurassic Park filming. So yeah, so I guess he met him, you know, when you're shooting a blockbuster like that.

Joe George (59:07.65)
You

Eli (59:07.938)
people will just kind of swing by the studio that kind of have clout and can do that. Yeah, I read about that in Hook too. People kept, it talked about like people just kept swinging by and seeing what was going on, you know? And so it might've been one of those things. Kingsley was like, let me see about these dinosaurs and you know, ended up getting casted in this. you know, yeah.

Joe George (59:11.968)
Okay.

Joe George (59:15.694)
It's good to be the king, I guess.

Joe George (59:25.511)
Okay.

Joe George (59:29.788)
I mean I would. Wow bit off more than he was intended. He want to see dinosaurs and then you have to have this incredibly difficult part.

Eli (59:37.752)
Ha

Eli (59:42.9)
Yes, yeah absolutely. But I thought this was really cool and probably speaks to why Kingsley is so good in this. He at one point early on he had asked Spielberg like, hey what do you think the dramatic function of Stern is? And he had Spielberg write down his answer on a piece of paper and he wrote down his and so Spielberg's answer was witness. They both wrote down one word things. So witness was Spielberg's and

Kingsley wrote down conscience and so the whole time they were shooting Kingsley kept those two pieces of paper in his pocket just kind of as a reminder of these are my dramatic functions to be a witness and to be a conscience in the film and

Joe George (01:00:34.516)
Interesting. For whom, I wonder?

Eli (01:00:37.838)
It seems, I would think, for Schindler, you know, because you can see it as you watch through the film. He gets, as the movie goes on, he gets more more willing to kind of speak his mind to Schindler. It starts off very subtle with like nudges, and then by the end, you know, he's saying, no, this is the right thing to do. He's like telling him outright, you're doing the right thing. You know, and

Joe George (01:00:53.086)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:01:01.261)
Yeah.

Eli (01:01:07.046)
even like when they're making the list but then even reassuring him you know in the end you know as as his conscience in a way like no you know what you did is is a good thing you know you did more than most you know and so and then witness does make sense i guess he's kind of in a way you kind of see both

Joe George (01:01:12.458)
Mm-hmm

Joe George (01:01:24.13)
Yeah.

Eli (01:01:36.75)
Schindler and Goat from Stern's eyes in a way, because he's kind of the right-hand man to both of them, and so yeah a lot of stuff kind of runs through him. I don't know, it's interesting. I thought that was very... probably speaks towards something in his performance, that he was kind of carrying those around in his pocket.

Joe George (01:02:01.304)
Definitely. We'll talk more about it later, I think. the reason I ask that is because I think Stern plays such an interesting role in relating. This is such a Gentile-centered movie. The people who are primarily suffering aren't.

Eli (01:02:21.908)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:02:28.652)
their suffering isn't centered. It's refracted through, it's refracted through Schindler and Geert and it's almost, I would almost call Stern a translator of trying to translate the humanity to that. But then, you know, then you also think of that in relationship to the audience who,

Eli (01:02:37.294)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:02:44.451)
Hmm.

Joe George (01:02:51.935)
certainly is going to have a Jewish audience, but Universal and Spielberg are not making this movie for just a Jewish audience. want all the Gentiles to be in there too. so it is is Stern also, I'm wondering, witnessing

and this gets, we'll argue about this later, I'm sure, is he witnessing, so to speak, the actual suffering to then present that dramatically to an audience, all these levels of refraction, and can we actually do that, should we actually do that with such an unspeakable suffering? And then is he also the audience's conscience in a certain way, that warning us not to be seduced by

Eli (01:03:35.672)
Hmm.

Eli (01:03:40.206)
Sure.

Joe George (01:03:40.268)
the inherently spectacle nature of cinema that, you know, Gert is, Gert, the man was a horrible monster. Ralph Fiennes is a incredibly handsome, charming, charismatic movie star. And Spielberg cannot help but make him look.

Eli (01:03:50.222)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:03:55.608)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:04:00.106)
Amazing. so we need that kind of, know, we'll talk about that. But I think that there's another aspect that happens on the audience and film relation as kind of like a barrier between the actual suffering that cannot be said, where he's playing in that as well. So anyway.

Eli (01:04:17.356)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, and I almost wonder, like, you could also use witness in the less, like, the observational way and more like the action of witnessing, because there is a sense in which all through the movie Stern's kind of whispering in Schindler's ear, to, like, pull these people in, pull these people in, and then it finally gets to the point where they're making a list of names together, you know?

So he's almost acting as a witness to like, hey, this family needs some help. Hey, can you help out these guys? I've heard about these people. know, Schindler's like ambivalent toward it for a lot of the movie. But eventually, you know, he eventually he comes to come up with the idea himself. He doesn't need Stern to like tell him, let's save these people anymore.

Joe George (01:05:05.409)
you

Eli (01:05:19.446)
he's telling Stern, hey, here's what we're going to do. And you know, you can even, you can see on Kingsley's face, like he's finally got it. You know, I don't have to like nudge him anymore. so I don't know. You could think of it. I don't know if that's what Spielberg meant when he said witness, but, that could be an aspect. for sure. Yeah. And I like what you said about, fines. so he, so

Joe George (01:05:22.446)
We're going to make it longer. Yeah.

Joe George (01:05:42.124)
Definitely.

Eli (01:05:49.306)
And I think there's a lot of intentionality, you know, because so I have this this quote from Spielberg about casting Ralph Fiennes and he had seen him in a TV movie about Lawrence of Arabia, got some audition tapes from him. And he said, this is what Spielberg said, Rafe did three takes. I still to this day haven't seen take two or three. He was absolutely brilliant. He after seeing take one, I knew he was a mom.

In his eyes I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety. There were these moments of kindness that would move across his eyes then instantly run cold." And when I read that quote I was like, that is like to a T what you see in those close-ups of Amon through the movie. Like these moments of like, he looks gentle and then like instantly like you're, that's why like he's, you're

He's constantly catching you off guard with how just purely evil he is, because in his eyes and in his face you're almost like, like you said, seduced. Like he looks kind of gentle, he looks kind of, you know, he's well manicured. And you know, even to the point where, you know, Helen Hirsch is like doing his nails at one point. Literally being manicured. But yeah, it's...

Joe George (01:07:04.824)
Yes.

Eli (01:07:17.524)
It really is incredible. Ray Fiennes is so good in this movie. And I was happy to hear other cast members talk about how on set he was pretty reserved. He wasn't like, you know how some actors can really like let the character overtake them. And so he was, he was subdued on set. Didn't really do much talking, I think.

Joe George (01:07:36.716)
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Eli (01:07:45.454)
because he didn't want to be like some actors that can be brash when they're playing a brash character. But then Offset apparently he was able to kind of switch off the normal kind. So I was like, well, you know, good on Ray Fines for that. That takes a... because I know it's hard, you know, I know it's probably really hard when you're playing a character like that to turn that on and off. yeah.

Joe George (01:07:50.358)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:07:57.752)
Good, yeah.

Joe George (01:08:08.652)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:08:12.812)
Yeah, to be that. I mean, sexual evil is such a good dis in his eyes, you see that that's such a spot on description for that character. He is. He's a shark, he's a predator and in the in the body of this very good looking man and. And so that requires on his part to to to to shift.

Eli (01:08:20.63)
Yes.

Eli (01:08:24.385)
Yes.

Joe George (01:08:42.85)
to make even things that should be good and lovely and kind. There's always the air of menace. know, the, the, the, the, the moments, one of the bigger moments that jumped out at me at this watch, there's the sequence where the Schindler's people are in the train and Schindler's encouraging, like has to do it as a joke, but it's also like spray down the train.

And Gert and everybody, all the other Nazis are laughing at him. And there's this moment where it finds place, perfectly where Gert looks at him and his laughter subsides for a minute. And you can just see it in his eyes that Schindler's serious about this. you see him go from Schindler's a good time, my buddy, to he is my enemy.

Eli (01:09:15.566)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:09:28.543)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Eli (01:09:39.713)
Yes.

Joe George (01:09:41.294)
in one single shot. He transforms it and it's all in the eyes, it's all in the posture. And so to be able to be in that sort of mindset where you can have both of those, yeah, that's gotta be a lot of probing places you don't want, most of us don't want to go to. And it required him to do that. So can see that definitely.

Eli (01:09:59.757)
Yes.

Eli (01:10:03.726)
Yeah, yeah, and that's a great example. The one I was thinking about along those lines is when he's, know, Schindler's convinced him to that pardoning people is power, and he's pardoned the boy once with the saddle, and then he tries to pardon him again from the tub, not getting the tub clean, and he's like doing the

Joe George (01:10:17.143)
Yep.

Eli (01:10:29.632)
I pardon you in the mirror and you can see he's like really trying but then it just in an instant it switches off and he goes you know and grabs the rifle and yeah just in an instant he realizes no I don't want to pardon people and it just cold

Joe George (01:10:31.063)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:10:46.098)
or himself. mean, yeah, yeah, total affectless, know, just there's nothing he's a he's a psychopath. I mean, that's not the right word, but there's just he loses all humanity and.

Eli (01:10:55.544)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:11:02.88)
It's a showy moment, you know, that was, I watched this movie when it first came out. It was one of those that was, you know, it was an important movie. And so even as a dumb teenager, it was impressed upon me, this is important. And that was one of the sequences that stuck with me as a kid, you know, and so kind of.

Eli (01:11:21.102)
Mmm.

Joe George (01:11:23.934)
In memory, getting away from it, I kind of was like, poo-pooing that scene. It's like, it's a little too cinematic. It's a little too showy for, you know.

Eli (01:11:32.769)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe George (01:11:35.946)
And it is, but it's also so perfectly executed. He's doing a full Hitchcock thing where, you know, finds his looking in the mirror and therefore he is refusing to pardoning himself while he's pretending to pardon the kid and, you know, condemns himself as he condemns the kid. But then the way that he so coolly turns around to grab the gun and walk towards the it's just.

Eli (01:11:39.948)
Yes.

Eli (01:11:52.161)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:12:02.52)
Yeah.

It's like he's getting back into his routine. Yeah. Yeah, he's he's Schindler knocked him off of his routine for a bit and he's like, no, I'm going to go back to my normal everyday habits. And because that first scene you see of him where he is shooting off the balcony, it's so casual. It's like he's got a shirt off. He's kicked back. Yeah. And so it's like.

Joe George (01:12:07.946)
Exactly. that's such a perfect way of putting it. Yeah, this is

Joe George (01:12:30.444)
Yep. It's a morning exercise.

Eli (01:12:33.942)
Yeah, he's reverting back to that in a way. And you know, it's easy to condemn that in this very evil character, but we do, know, a lot of times we end up doing the same thing, maybe not killing people, but we'll do really well at getting rid of a bad habit for a while, and then in an instant you can revert back to it. yeah, so good.

Joe George (01:12:36.418)
Yeah, that's a great, great word to describe it.

Joe George (01:12:55.893)
yeah.

Joe George (01:13:01.442)
And I think they give, they go so hard into Amin's routine because of his responsibilities. It's a cliche to talk about how the Nazis had the trains run on time and I do appreciate how often this movie highlights Nazi inefficiency in a way that's kind of fun. But that was, it plays with that trope.

Eli (01:13:12.311)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:13:22.636)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:13:30.582)
really well and I think so that's why I think routine is such a good word there because that is part of the reason that the the Jewish Holocaust was so horrifying even more so than the many many many other Holocaust that we humans do is was its mechanistic efficiency you know and

Eli (01:13:48.352)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Joe George (01:13:50.33)
the machine overtakes the human and that's a good, that's how that happens, is it becomes his routine and therefore he doesn't have to think about it and doesn't have to look in the eyes and that sort of impotentia power that Schindler's trying to impart upon him, that doesn't make the trains run on time and that's what he needs. That's such a good word.

Eli (01:13:55.022)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:14:12.908)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it for sure is. from what I can tell from both the book and hearing interviews is that Goat was even worse in real life. was, yeah, he was, you know, we see some of the arbitrary killing in the movie, but yeah, he was just, just apparently just way worse in real life. This is, this is like the light version.

Goatlite, I guess, in Schindler's List, which is... Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, man. Yeah, hard to move on from that, but the cast, the rest of the cast, have, we mentioned Caroline Goodall as Emily Schindler, smaller part, Mbeth Davids as Helen Hirsch. A lot of these are...

Joe George (01:14:57.123)
Yeah.

Eli (01:15:11.354)
kind of secondary characters, and they're important but not big parts, I would say. They have a few scenes each that are very important and very well acted, but they're not like... it really is those main three that we spend the most time with. Jonathan Seagal plays Poldek Vepferberg, who as we know is

Paul Page, the man that told the story, and you know, these are things that really happened to this guy. And I think for reference, I'm pretty sure he is the guy when Schindler goes into the church and is asking the guy like, where'd you get that shirt? I'm pretty sure that's him. That's Pfefferberg.

Joe George (01:16:00.45)
Boy, I don't remember that scene right off.

Eli (01:16:04.46)
Yes, it's when they're like, they're in the church, all the other guys leave, they're like telling, they see his swastika pin and they're like, we're just here to pray and Schindler, he's the one guy that stays and finally like caves and like, okay, this is how much the shirt is, know, Schindler's like,

Joe George (01:16:14.592)
Yeah, yeah.

Joe George (01:16:21.473)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:16:25.984)
I'm totally brain farting on that scene right now. So I can't tell you if he's, mean, he's, he's, I tracked him in other scenes. He's we've he's woven through the narrative in a really, you know, I didn't notice until afterwards that that that's that's Pfefferberg. It's his he's the one that brought the story. And so I thought that was really savvy how they.

Eli (01:16:29.31)
man.

Eli (01:16:37.344)
huh.

He is.

Eli (01:16:48.216)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Joe George (01:16:51.786)
working through is as witness without actually being the main character but cash i can't totally blanking on the scene right now

Eli (01:16:53.879)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:16:59.288)
Yeah, yeah, well those are really like the three main like secondary characters I think there's a ton of German and Polish actors that like when you read through the cast list and like the characters they played it's kind of hard to like Okay Maybe you recognize a few of the names you remember them being said but you would never in a million years be able to say this is that character this is that character but again, it's like

They all, when you're watching the movie, you don't feel like that. You feel like they're very personal and individualized, which says a lot.

Joe George (01:17:39.022)
Well, it's it's Spielberg's.

he knows, he knows where to get a good face and he knows how to give tiny arcs to each of them. Like I can't tell you the name of the guy, but the literature professor who becomes, becomes a shop worker. You know, we, he's got a distinctive face and we get, you know, the, big arc is when he, he, he's deemed useless. And then Stern comes along and says, no, no, no, you dropped your papers and you know,

Eli (01:17:43.982)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:17:47.661)
Yes.

Eli (01:18:06.189)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Joe George (01:18:11.339)
And he keeps reoccurring throughout the movie. Never again a big arc, you're like, that's literature guy or the woman who's... Yep, exactly. Couldn't tell you her name, but every time she pops back, she's got a great face, distinctive, and every time she pops back up. And so it's that economy of story telling. Exactly.

Eli (01:18:15.69)
Mm-hmm. Yep. The woman and her daughter. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:18:28.94)
and you kind of have a feel for the kind of person she was even, which is weird because I couldn't vocalize it now, but when I was watching, was like, yeah, it's this lady, know, her daughter's friends with the little boy that, you know, told her to hide under the stairs. It's like, you can remember all these things about these people, but they're not, they don't have very much screen time each. Very, very impressive. It is.

Joe George (01:18:37.948)
Yes.

Joe George (01:18:53.672)
I mean, that's the economy of storytelling that you can do in movies that Spielberg is so good at that makes him the right guy for this, because if it was if it was the earlier versions of the draft, they had way too many characters that would lose the audience. The the individuals would get lost in the sort of mass. But if it was the first script that was just about Schindler, then it would totally be about the Gentiles and

Eli (01:19:00.781)
Yes.

Eli (01:19:09.645)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:19:15.053)
Yes.

Eli (01:19:23.171)
Yes.

Joe George (01:19:23.666)
It would be entirely the people who are suffering, the oppressed get lost. He he splits it just perfectly. And most filmmakers, I don't think, would be able to do that to make you understand that these are real people or to stop the entire movie and just have them declare their names, you know, that there's meaning in that that that tells us that this is not actually Schindler's story. He's the one that we're following because he's

Eli (01:19:28.045)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:19:41.677)
Yes.

Eli (01:19:45.826)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:19:50.945)
right.

Joe George (01:19:53.536)
William Neeson and we, this is how Americans at least, digest stories now, a narrative, but it's bigger than what it's representing.

Eli (01:19:57.282)
Yeah. Yeah.

And even further than that, all goes back to the Schindler Jews. When the Schindler Jews, when they were interviewed, they all talk about Schindler. So the movie centers around Schindler, yes, because that's the way they remember their experience. It's all connected. All of their experience connect back to Schindler.

Here's what Schindler did for me. Here's my experience, and then here's what Schindler did for me. And then, you know, the next one. Here's my experience, this was what Schindler did for me, and what he means to me. He's like the top of the connection pyramid. You know, everyone says, you know, however many degrees of separation from any other person, you know, Schindler... usually it's because there's like one person that you can trace

lot of stuff back too, and it's like Schindler's that for them. And so yeah, it centers around him, but that's because that's the story, the way the story was told by the people that he saved. They told their stories with him at the center. And I think that when we get into like some of the criticisms of the movie, I think that's something that the people that were

Joe George (01:21:02.172)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (01:21:27.426)
down on this movie, forget. Is that, yes, he centers Oscar Schindler, but you have to remember that it's because the literal Jewish people that were saved by Oscar Schindler centered Oscar Schindler when they told their story. It all centered, all of their stories centered around him, and so there's not, there's no other way to tell the story because that's

the witnesses that experienced it told the story. And so it's kind of unfair to be like, you centered this Gentile man when it's like, yeah so did the people that told me the story.

Joe George (01:22:05.128)
Ha ha.

Joe George (01:22:09.02)
Yeah. There'd be a weird sort of appropriation that by twisting their words to meet. That's really interesting. I didn't think about that.

Eli (01:22:12.439)
Yeah.

Eli (01:22:18.061)
Yeah. And speaking of Oskar Sennler, he's the one cast member who I saved him for last, Liam Neeson. it's Shin, very, Spielberg is usually pretty good. Every once in a while you get a bad casting, but usually he's really good at casting. And this is an example of just great casting.

because he wanted a really solid actor that wasn't that well known for Schindler because he didn't want the fame of the actor to interfere with the character. He didn't want people to have preconceived notions of the types of people this person played in their heads while they were watching the movie. so, Neeson at this time was that. He had worked with Spielberg

briefly, he was actually hired during Empire of the Sun to read across from actors auditioning for Jim Graham. ultimately, Neeson wasn't cast in the movie. And so Neeson actually talks about this being like a really like he was struggling at this time. He had tried to get into movies. He wasn't in a ton of movies. He had like some small parts in.

Excalibur in 81 and The Mission in 86 but really like didn't have much to speak for as far as movies and he had a stint in Broadway during this time so he yeah he just had a lot going on so he ends up going to play in the Broadway show Anna Christie which I know nothing about

Joe George (01:24:07.55)
I don't know that at all either.

Eli (01:24:09.422)
But apparently he was really good in it. Spielberg had gone with his wife and mother-in-law to see it in 1992. They went backstage afterwards and his mother-in-law was like praising Liam Neeson and telling him how great he was in the show. Liam, it said, they talked about how Liam gave his mother-in-law a just this long hug.

Joe George (01:24:12.316)
I believe that.

Joe George (01:24:38.406)
Hahaha!

Eli (01:24:38.57)
as she praised him for his performance. And they were leaving and Kate Capshaw says to Spielberg that how Liam acted was exactly how Schindler would have acted in that same circumstance. And Spielberg was like, I think you're right. I think we need to get him in and see if he's our man. So yeah, and he fit the profile. Spielberg was like kind of modeling the casting around his friend Steve Ross.

who was his friend, was the head of WB. Mostly not from personality so much as like physical presence, he was a really big guy and Liam Neeson's a really big guy. So it all kind of like fit together. He acts like Schindler, he's big like Schindler, like I want Schindler to be. And so yeah, he gets the job and takes the first plane to Krakow as soon as he finishes his last performance on Anna Christie.

So yeah, it's interesting. And Liam Neeson is, I get the feeling that he's a really like kind guy. When you watch interviews with him, he just has this kind of, a lot of it is in like his accent and the way he speaks maybe, but he just has this very kind way of speaking and it sounds very proper but like

Joe George (01:25:51.174)
He has that, yeah.

Joe George (01:26:01.35)
Yes.

Eli (01:26:07.57)
like, this guy would take care of me. You know, that cadence of like, can trust this guy. And apparently he was like that. He actually is kind of like that. Him and Kingsley talked about how after particularly hard days, they would take all the Jewish, they would buy drinks for all the Jewish cast members and kind of to take care of them. And yeah, it's

Joe George (01:26:10.052)
the

Joe George (01:26:14.544)
Yeah.

Eli (01:26:35.938)
Yeah, seems like he actually is that kind of that way, so which is good.

Joe George (01:26:41.014)
Yeah, and he just he has that presence of you know, I don't

I have I really hate the most recent line, the witch and the wardrobe adaptation, except for its casting. And it's like, yeah, that's that's exactly what I pictured Aslan to be like, you know, the both powerful. It's the he's not safe. He's good. Yeah. Yeah. Until this went and is the white witch. I'm like, it's got great casting. just a dumb movie that doesn't know how to handle the actual climax in which.

Eli (01:26:51.469)
Ha

Eli (01:26:58.179)
Yeah.

I totally forgot he voiced that.

Eli (01:27:06.136)
Ha ha ha.

Joe George (01:27:13.64)
God sacrifices God's self instead of kicking the bad guys butt.

It's such a bad movie, but it's well cast. And that's the energy Neeson has or in the non-musical Les Miserables where he plays Jean-Valjean. It's the same sort of thing where he's huge and powerful, but he's got so much sadness in his eyes. And it's so interesting to mention that Spielberg wanted an unknown and now Neeson's almost overly known. We look at him as he's the guy with a certain set of skills.

Eli (01:27:24.674)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:27:44.631)
Yeah.

Eli (01:27:48.172)
Yeah, he's Qui-Gon Jinn for me. We talked about the prequels, he's Qui-Gon Jinn for me. The best prequel character that they kill it off to soon.

Joe George (01:27:49.116)
He's the old man. What's that?

my goodness, I forgot about that.

Joe George (01:27:59.046)
I mean, yeah, that's he's he's got that soulfulness. And it's interesting when I was going back to rewatch this to see, though, I mean, all of that aspect is there. The power, the physical presence is there. The kindness, the vulnerability in the eyes is all there. But he's such a glad hander in this movie in a way that I don't really associate with him.

Eli (01:28:02.69)
Yeah.

Eli (01:28:18.701)
Yeah.

Yeah, he's very confident and he does the, like he has all of that stuff that we've been talking about, but he also somehow pulls off where you look at this guy and you're like, he's a swindler, which Oscar Schindler was. He knew how to work the crowd and get people to do what he wanted. Yeah, it's weird.

Joe George (01:28:35.591)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:28:44.253)
Yeah.

Eli (01:28:49.804)
I don't know how you do that as an actor, how you pull off like, I'm gonna be both like kind and vulnerable, but also like in control of the room and in control of every conversation I have.

Joe George (01:29:03.098)
It's remarkable. I do, I think part of it is the narrative helps him and the direction helps him in that, I mean, he's shot like a matinee idol, you know, all of the, and styled like one. His hair is slicked back. They know just how to light that face and...

Eli (01:29:12.75)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:29:18.392)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:29:28.134)
The eye lighting that just, you know, just highlights so much. He's given that, but he's also given, he's...

The movie, I think, is canny in how it suggests that maybe Schindler isn't quite as good a businessman as he thinks he is, you know? part of the reason that he's pulling this off is he's playing the Nazis. He's speaking their language, I guess, in a way that I don't know is always as savvy as...

Eli (01:29:48.728)
Sure. Yeah.

Joe George (01:30:05.82)
I think a lesser movie would have made him know he is he's he's Tony Stark he's gonna walk in he's gonna charm everybody he's gonna walk away and the movie I don't think is doing that it's it's he he's kind of also right guy at the right place at the right time who just so happened to have the witness in the conscience next to him that was able to direct him to do something great but there's no inherent greatness in him.

Eli (01:30:11.085)
Yeah.

Eli (01:30:16.93)
Yeah.

Eli (01:30:24.429)
Yeah.

Eli (01:30:28.618)
Mm-hmm Yeah, Yeah, and I had this way later on in the notes But I think it's a good place to probably talk just to mention hit so in the book It it talks about all of this kind of stuff and you get a little bit of it in the movie but Goat and Schindler were very similar people They they were they had this aspect of

vulnerability about them, but also like when they needed to take command, they took command and really like that aspect of them for both of them is kind of like an act. Like they have to put that on. they're both, I think when you see them alone or when you see them where the camera's looking at them, but nobody else really is, is when you actually see what they're like. But then when they have to interact with someone, they're

it's all like this put on, and they want, they want to be, I think the drive that you can boil it down to for both Goat and for Schindler is they want to be respected. And I don't remember what Goat's past is, but Schindler, you know, very much along in line with what you've been saying. He showed up to Poland with nothing.

and he was on a mission to prove to his father-in-law that he could be something. His father-in-law looked down on him, and so he resorted to the black market and war profiteering so that he could make something of himself to be respected by his father-in-law and, you know, obviously other people too. And that's what Goat ultimately

his drive too. He wants to be respected. His method is different and it's evil and inhuman whereas Schindler is Schindler never is able to let go of his humanity. Thank God right? It's not a thin line between the two. It's a pretty wide line between the two but the drive

Joe George (01:32:53.542)
Hahaha!

Eli (01:32:55.762)
both of them is very similar. And you know, and then also there's like kind of personality quirks, like they both really love a good drink, they both really love women. The book talks a lot about that, how they both really loved women and they both really loved drinking. And yeah, and so I think that's why Schindler was able to do what he did, because Goat

Joe George (01:33:05.318)
Yep. Yep.

Eli (01:33:25.078)
saw himself in Schindler and in a way that that allowed Schindler to kind of like gain his trust in a way that other people might not have. He always had that he always had those character flaws where you couldn't fully say like this guy's just trying to do the right thing it's like but he's also like sleeping around and drinking too much at the party and so Goat's like well he he can't be that good he's

Joe George (01:33:45.589)
yeah.

yeah.

Eli (01:33:53.57)
He's drinking with us and sleeping around, so... Other people wouldn't have been able to do what Schindler did. It's almost like you needed that guy that wasn't all that great of a guy, maybe necessarily, to be able to pull that off.

Joe George (01:34:10.086)
Yeah. I don't know. I'm really I'm really wrestling with how thick the line is between them, because part of me wonders and I'm just making this up as I'm talking right now. So this might be completely unfounded. part of me wonders if the difference is really stern and and.

Eli (01:34:17.283)
Yeah.

Eli (01:34:29.442)
Hmm.

Joe George (01:34:32.466)
You know, there's that scene relatively late in the movie where where Schindler tells Stern, you ran my company, you made my fortune. And that is I think the movie bears that out. And so, you know, Stern does is an assistant to get at times, but he doesn't.

Eli (01:34:40.557)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:34:52.43)
his end with Garrett is different than his end with Schindler. And so what I'm getting at is I wonder if Garrett and Schindler really are kind of the same type of dude, but because of the Schindler's goal of making as much money as possible, Stern was able to inculcate himself and do this work.

Eli (01:35:02.083)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:35:19.242)
At least to the point that that until Schindler thought and gained some humanity because it's not a put on at the start where he's like, this is this is my workforce. These are materials for me to make money. You know, that scene.

Eli (01:35:33.293)
Right.

Mm-hmm. They're cheaper.

Joe George (01:35:38.93)
They're cheap. Exactly. Exactly. And even mentions that. And the scene that jumps out is when the the one arm man comes to tell him thank you. And, you know, part of the the darkness of that or the power of that scene is that he's beginning to feel the prick of consciousness. And that's why he's pushing back so hard. I. He would not have gotten there. I don't believe that he would have gotten there without Stern. And I believe that's

Eli (01:35:57.388)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Eli (01:36:06.701)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:36:09.646)
The only difference between him and Garrett at that time is when Garrett had his prick of consciousness, there was nobody in the bathroom next to him to look at. It was just himself in the mirror, and so he was able to shrug it off, go back to his routine, and shoot the kid. Had they been reversed, I think they could have done it. And I think that's born out visually, but I'll shut up for a second.

Eli (01:36:33.836)
Yeah, yeah, I can definitely see that. I think reading the book and I think it's a little bit, I think it might be a little bit distorted in just the way that history is made. I don't think it's something we'll ever really know. I mean, obviously we won't ever really know because

Joe George (01:37:01.894)
you

Eli (01:37:02.422)
it happened one way and that's the way we know it. But I mean more in the way of like when these, you know, all of these interviews are not from Schindler, they're from people that he saved. And so they'll talk about his flaws, they'll talk about how he loved women, but you always get the sense that they...

there might be a little bit of distortion because this is the guy that saved us. Like you can't speak too badly about him because you know he was our salvation. He was you know he's why we have grandchildren now you know otherwise we wouldn't be around and neither would our kids or their kids and so there's a sense in which like we'll never know because that's just not

Joe George (01:37:32.819)
Sure.

Sure.

Eli (01:37:58.142)
you're gonna talk about. You're not gonna get someone that has had their life saved by this guy that's gonna just like trash him, you know? But yeah, you know, I do wonder... it is interesting to wonder about that and probably like that's a really great, I guess, mental exercise to take away from a movie like this is what is that line?

Joe George (01:38:06.442)
yeah of course

Eli (01:38:27.638)
And you know, think movies are entertainment, but movies are also something that we can digest and learn things about ourselves, obviously. And so something to chew on, like where's that line? Where do I lie? know, what are the things who, you know, who can I put around me as a conscience that'll keep me from going the goat side instead of the Schindler side? But yeah, it's

It's super.

It's really interesting also how history gives us these quote-unquote characters that allow for such like mental exercises of juxtaposing these two people who are very similar in nature but ended up on opposite sides of history. Like what's the difference there? And it's not just a story that someone's made up to like force us to think that it's

Joe George (01:39:28.876)
Ha ha.

Eli (01:39:29.612)
It's a story that's like based in reality and so it's all the more interesting because of that.

Joe George (01:39:32.426)
Yeah.

Yeah. Which helps kind of earn some of the more obviously artificial artistic moments, you know, I would I would like to go back and rewatch the movie, but I can't. There are a lot of I would dare say almost entirely two shots when Gar and Schindler are together.

Eli (01:40:00.482)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:40:01.002)
You know, it's not it's not the the like a Jonathan Demme, Silence of the Lambs things where it's shot reverse shot. We're watching people fight over the scene. They are together and there are so many compositions that are the two of them facing one another. You know, we get the one about a third of the way through when they're when they're. Butting up a kind of wheel or dealing where.

Eli (01:40:17.197)
Yes.

Eli (01:40:21.229)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:40:30.95)
Schindler's in the foreground in in profile gets in the background and profile and the because of the perspective they seem to be facing one another as they have this conversation or the conversation about power where Schindler's a little bit higher up and or the you know, we get the one conversation that shot from through a barn door and each person is in the frame, you know

Eli (01:40:47.628)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:40:57.61)
The movie is constantly telling us that these two are reflecting one another. They're not facing off against one another. They're reflecting. They're equal to each other's piece. so that's a flourish. That's artifice. That's a visual flourish. But because, like you said, because it's there in the reality, Spielberg has some license to also make it beautiful.

Eli (01:41:09.55)
Yeah.

Eli (01:41:23.443)
Yes, yeah for sure. And I think it also emphasizes too, you know, the fact that it's strange because you wonder like why did Goat like let Spielberg do, I mean let not Spielberg, let Schindler do what he did in the end. Why did he sell him all of these? And I mean they're

The easy answer is like for the money. obviously like that's, that's probably the reality, but I don't know. There there's, you have enough to go off of from this guy where you could say like, he might not take the money. He might just say, let's kill all of them. you know, he's, he's done enough arbitrary killing, that you could go there with that, that guy. could say, he might just say no.

Joe George (01:41:53.194)
Yeah.

Eli (01:42:19.032)
forget that we're just gonna let them all die but yeah that I think there's a bit of you've you've gained enough from these compositions in the way that these two characters are are juxtaposed where it's almost like Schindler has realized how similar they are more than Gotaz and so and he's starting to manipulate that and he's he's manipulating

Joe George (01:42:45.002)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:42:49.204)
goat's trust of him to get what he wants and gets the net because goat i mean when they're having that conversation through the it's like through a window or in a door i think it kind of tracks back and forth between a door and a window goat goes through like none of this makes sense there's no reason we should do this but i guess we'll do it whatever you know

Joe George (01:43:01.407)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:43:10.474)
Yep. He's even like, you're probably probably cheating me, you know, like he knows it.

Eli (01:43:17.77)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's very interesting.

Joe George (01:43:27.123)
Because he say if you're going to make 200, if I'm going to make 200, I know you're making 300, probably closer to four. But I but he admires that about him, I think, to a certain way, too.

Eli (01:43:33.762)
You're right. huh. Yes, exactly. He does. He does. so, know, it's Schindler always does just enough to, you know, it goes back to that, that train moment where he realizes like, he's serious. He's actually trying to help these people. but Schindler continuously does just enough to stay ahead of that where

Joe George (01:43:52.651)
Yes.

Eli (01:44:03.586)
he can still work with goats where goat isn't completely like no you're just wanting to help these people I'm not gonna help you he keeps that business savviness going just enough yeah for sure I guess more a little bit more in the production stuff I'm glad we talked I'm glad we went ahead and talked about the characters because

that probably ended up being way better than if we would have like come back to them later. yeah, so the production, they started March 1st of 1993. It was very important to Spielberg that he filmed this during the winter. And so he didn't wait for Jurassic Park to be done. Jurassic Park was still in post-production during this time. And so I think they finished

Joe George (01:44:39.323)
Okay,

Eli (01:45:02.606)
Jurassic Park in December and so Spielberg they start shooting in beginning of March in 93s but Spielberg's certainly already over there getting ready so yeah they it's all shot in Poland on location Krakow Auschwitz you know a few other places I think there ends up being

I think it's somewhere in my notes 35 locations in total I think and so yeah the only thing that's not in Poland is the the ending shots which are in Israel obviously and so that's doesn't do that until it goes back to color and so yeah it's this I think that is interesting for Spielberg because

Because he's such a blockbuster filmmaker it was not the thing to do at this time to do everything on location You get your location shots, and then you do the rest in studio Because you have more control All of that and that's what Spielberg usually did he would get his location shots the same thing with Jurassic Park and You know with hook was all in a studio But yeah, he he typically went the

typical Hollywood route. And so I think that is interesting. And I think it probably plays alongside his and Kaminsky's decision of how they were going to shoot the movie. They both kind of agreed on a documentary-like style. So you use mostly natural lighting, you do handheld cams, you deliberately don't use cranes and dollies.

which all of that is very not Spielberg. And then the black and white, you know, he wanted that newsreel immediacy of a black and white. We associate history with black and white. And so they, yeah, they made all of these decisions. And I think probably the shooting on location is, I didn't read this directly, but it makes sense logically that that's just another

Eli (01:47:28.78)
hey, let's make this as real as we can, documentary style, we're gonna shoot it all in Poland. It doesn't feel documentary like a documentary, but they were, all of the like shooting decisions they made were, let's do this like you would if you were shooting a documentary. the way, so it's.

Joe George (01:47:35.414)
Does it feel documentary style to you? OK.

Eli (01:47:55.692)
It is like that. So like the handheld camera. there's really like any time the camera is moving, it's not so smooth like you usually get in a Spielberg movie. you get one, you get some here and there obviously. but yeah, you do get that handheld camera feel whenever like there's a crowd moving and you're, know, you're getting a wide shot of the crowd, but then you're going into the crowd and you're, know, you can see the

Joe George (01:48:10.922)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (01:48:24.728)
whoever's shooting it is like walking backwards in the crowd on this person's face. So I think it looks, it's kind of almost like how a documentary might look if it was shot really beautifully.

Joe George (01:48:40.298)
mean, that's what I'm wondering. this just what, Steven Spielberg just sees things so cinematically that...

Eli (01:48:44.142)
But that's maybe because that's how they talk about it. you when Spielberg and other people talk about the decisions made, they talked about we wanted to do documentary style. It's interesting. It's very interesting.

Joe George (01:48:57.837)
I just can't. It's just what struck me upon this rewatch was how cinematic it was. Even the lighting and the black and white. It felt like I was watching a glossy film from the 40s or 50s, you know, like a like a classy MGM movie. It feels. So artificial to me. In a way that doesn't.

Eli (01:49:05.378)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:49:14.104)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:49:25.099)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:49:26.016)
doesn't strike me as guerrilla and I'm just trying to put that in.

Eli (01:49:29.55)
Yeah, and I don't know, I wonder though, like, so, we think, when we think of documentary, we think like, gritty, like, in the moment and all that. But on the other hand, I have seen some very beautiful documentaries before. Very beautifully shot, very artistic in the way it's edited together. And so,

Joe George (01:49:48.044)
Sure, of course.

Eli (01:49:57.56)
I almost wonder if it's just kind of like a connotation thing. Like if Spielberg were to shoot a full-on documentary, might it look like Schindler's List? Maybe, you know? And so it might just be like this is what happens when Spielberg shoots a documentary, you know? It just looks like this.

Joe George (01:50:02.368)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:50:10.806)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:50:16.841)
You

Joe George (01:50:21.324)
I keep thinking about...

And this might be just a leap, but I keep thinking about, you know, George Lucas intended to make Apocalypse Now before he gave it to Coppola. And the way that he talked about it was very gritty on the ground. We're going to go to Vietnam. We're going to take a small crew. We're going to make it. Veris de Militude is going to be the thing, you know, and it Coppola's not, you know, the exact opposite of that. But given how closely Lucas and Spielberg are working at the time, I got to imagine

Eli (01:50:30.563)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (01:50:53.87)
that part of that, know, George would have been talking about that to Spielberg about this is how I would if I were to have done this period piece, this is how would have done it. And so I can't help but translate that to if Spielberg's thinking documentary, he's probably thinking about it in.

Eli (01:51:00.173)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:51:19.372)
Lucas mode or you know you think of the other documentarians from the 70 you know you know Panabaker or somebody like that who's going to do it in that verite style and it's just it does not even the the shaky handheld scenes feel feel so cinematic they just they feel so artificial and I don't mean that as a criticism I I think that's how we got this point across anyway

Eli (01:51:28.415)
Mm Yeah.

Eli (01:51:44.726)
Right. Yeah. I, like I said, I think it's, I think it's just like, this is just what we would get if we got ever got like a Spielberg directed documentary. Like if he had a vision to do this, tell this grand story and as a documentary, you know, real interviews, real like,

Joe George (01:52:03.168)
Yeah.

Eli (01:52:13.262)
Because I mean at the end of the day, this is the novel and then You know by transitive property the book the movie is kind of like a Really actually good version of what you usually get in like those kind of murder TV shows like Where you know, they're playing out the actual story with actors

Joe George (01:52:37.472)
Ha ha ha!

Joe George (01:52:41.476)
yeah. Yeah. But what if it was Spielberg's unit?

Eli (01:52:42.734)
Because that's ultimately what this is. It's like, well, let's act this out. These stories that we've gotten about, all these facts, let's turn these facts into an acted out story. And that is ultimately like when you boil it down what this is, but done actually like really well.

Joe George (01:52:51.254)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:52:59.008)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:53:04.044)
Yeah?

you it's funny. I keep thinking about you know, Fableman's tells us this is the way that Spielberg looks at things because you know, you get that the bit where his stand in Sammy is shooting home videos and people are like, why did you make your mom look so hot? What's the matter with you? You know, so yeah, apparently that is the way he looks at the world.

Eli (01:53:13.933)
Yes.

Eli (01:53:20.056)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (01:53:23.508)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I think I think so. I think this is just like if You know if we ever were to get a spillberg documentary about I don't know. I don't know who he would make a documentary about Nothing comes to mind Yeah It would be it would just I guess it would look like schindler's list since this is what he thinks This is what he thinks talking. Maybe he just had never seen a documentary before

Joe George (01:53:43.54)
He shoots March of the Penguins 2.

Joe George (01:53:50.517)
It would be amazing.

Eli (01:53:57.39)
I doubt that but yeah he couldn't help make it look incredible but you know it's funny because he would have been actually talking to George Lucas a lot because Lucas was like doing all the finalization work for Jurassic Park for him and so Spielberg was having to approve everything he was working on it a few nights a week but

Joe George (01:53:59.675)
He just can't help himself.

Joe George (01:54:05.139)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:54:18.514)
OK.

Eli (01:54:25.804)
Lucas was doing like the he was kind of like overseeing the finalization and post which kind of makes sense because it's you know all the CGI is being done at ILM and so that's that's Lucas's company so it kind of makes sense but they're also friends so it makes sense in that way too but so yeah maybe Lucas was whispering you should do like documentary style and and this is what we got look look what I did

Joe George (01:54:41.972)
Yep.

Joe George (01:54:48.97)
Yeah, I did George, check this out!

Eli (01:54:54.924)
documentary style and George is like, man. But yeah, it's yeah, so it's all on location. In fact, they the first one of the first things they shoot, Liam Neeson flies out. As I said, right after being on Broadway, he flies out, he has two days of fittings, and then he arrives in Auschwitz right next to the camp. It's the first thing he's shooting.

And the producer that I mentioned earlier, Lustig, comes up to Nisen and is talking to him and he points over at some of the barracks and he says that's where I was imprisoned, right in that one. Yeah, and so Nisen talks about how he just like, it just all of sudden like hit him like a ton of bricks as soon as he said that. This is different than, this is a different thing.

This is different than anything I've ever done before. This is a very serious, you know, and so it was the scene. What they shot was the scene where he, you know, they're pulling the little girls out of the line, go into the trains and he runs over and it's like, what are y'all doing? You know, and he comes up with the, yeah, you know, I need these little girls fingers, you know, you know, to clean the inside of the bullets, which was a total

Joe George (01:56:11.766)
That's the first scene he shot? my goodness.

Eli (01:56:22.68)
fabrication. He came up with that on the spot. That's the way it's told in the book is like he kind of like he was all the time doing stuff like that like coming up with some reason why on the spot why he needed you know these people and yeah that's the first and he's he stumbled over the lines they had to do a bunch of takes because he he said his knees were shaking because I mean you just had this

your producer come over and say, know, I was there, you know, when it was happening. And then you have to shoot your scene. And he couldn't remember the lines and yeah. Yeah.

Joe George (01:57:04.83)
It's an intense scene. That makes total sense. What a way to throw them in.

Eli (01:57:08.278)
Yeah, they threw him right in. I guess Auschwitz was just the first place they were shooting and they did. Yeah, they had to. mean, there's not. There's very few like good scenes to shoot, I guess. So I guess might as well might as well throw him in. But yeah, they they filmed this really quickly. I want to say it was like a.

Joe George (01:57:24.749)
I guess.

Eli (01:57:35.074)
Let's see, they ended shooting in May 11th, so March, April, and half of May, really. So yeah, really quick turnaround. I read that sometimes they were doing like 40 shots in a day, which is a lot. have, in fact, in a couple of weeks when we do The Lost World, I had a friend on who has worked on some film.

Joe George (01:57:42.166)
Wow.

Eli (01:58:02.722)
Sets and he he was like, I mean ten shots in a day is is pretty good, you know On some sets, you know, it's ten you get ten shots in a day That's a good day, but 40 shots in a day is a lot Yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, so they're really moving and Spielberg's man he's he struggles through this

Joe George (01:58:09.386)
Yeah.

Joe George (01:58:18.523)
40 on location in the winter.

Eli (01:58:31.468)
He thought he was prepared. He had visited during pre-production and he talked about he didn't cry. He just felt really angry. But then when he's there and he's shooting it, you're basically playing out these horrible things that really happened. It's just awful. And on evenings, he talked about he would go home and just break down crying.

with his wife and kids. His wife and kids moved to Krakow with him during this. is just... and that Kate Capshaw really loves him to do that.

Joe George (01:59:10.447)
I gotta tell you, yeah, this is, I still think of her as Billy, you know, so I don't love her in that movie and this is turning me around on her big time. Like savvy, smart and supportive. Remarkable.

Eli (01:59:14.614)
Right. Yeah.

No.

Eli (01:59:22.412)
Yeah, as-

Eli (01:59:26.466)
support like yeah she's a great human being they have I mean they have five kids at this point at least one of which is an adopted kid I can't I think it's yeah I think it just one adopted kid at this point yeah so I mean he he had her his parents and rabbi would visit him regularly and then everyone always talks about he would

get these weekly phone calls from Robin Williams, would basically just do a stand up. Spielberg talks about it as he would just do a stand up routine for me on the phone and have me, you know, howling with laughter. And he even talked about Robin Williams would do this thing where like whenever he would get the biggest laugh out of you while you were in the middle of that laugh, he would hang up. Like he never said bye. He would just like once you get the biggest laugh, he just hangs up. That's the end of the conversation.

Joe George (02:00:18.949)
Eli (02:00:24.824)
Which is really fun. It sounds about right for Robin Williams. So, so he talks about that and he would get SNL tapes, sent to him, to watch with some people. those are some of the things that like helped him like not totally break down. but yeah. And then like I said, three nights a week, he would isolate himself to work on Jurassic park post stuff. you know, he had to

Joe George (02:00:26.415)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (02:00:53.76)
approve lot of and he had a lot of resentment because of that.

Joe George (02:00:57.816)
really? Resentment towards Jurassic Park?

Eli (02:01:01.006)
Yeah, I don't know if it was like, it wasn't specific. It wasn't specific to where like you could read it as he resented himself for allowing himself to like be put in that situation. He maybe resented the studios for putting him in that situation or maybe just in general just feelings of resentment for having to like...

take time away from this very serious movie to work on dinosaurs. know? But yeah, I mean, it makes sense, you

Joe George (02:01:39.488)
yeah, it just... He goes to Lost World is next one after this, right?

Eli (02:01:45.036)
Yeah, but it's a few years. So he...

Joe George (02:01:49.295)
But that movie is so mean-spirited that I could kind of see him sort of, if he does feel resentment while doing, he just offloads it to the next time, because none of that's in, right, it absolutely is.

Eli (02:01:52.886)
It is.

Eli (02:01:58.721)
Yeah, maybe so, yeah.

Eli (02:02:03.17)
kind of like the Temple of Doom of the Jurassic Park franchise. lot of... built out of lot of darkness and resentment maybe. But I would like to think he's in a better place when the Lost World comes around just because, you know, he did a lot of good coming out of this movie and I think he felt good about it. But maybe he still was dealing with it because I mean it was a crazy year.

Joe George (02:02:11.355)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe George (02:02:24.447)
yeah.

Eli (02:02:33.11)
I you know, he felt an enormous weight. was the technical weight of just making the movie. like I said earlier, there were 35 locations. You're in mid winter and in Poland. you have 126 speaking roles, 30,000 extras that you're working with. the, those 35 locations had 148 sets between them. so that's a lot and he's at Spielberg. He's.

he's in the middle of all of that, you know. And then there's this psychological weight. They talk about how they would show up in a town and there would be freshly painted swastikas on some walls. Neeson and Kingsley told this story about they were in a bar one night and this guy, this...

Polish guy walks up to Michael Schneider, one of that Jewish actors, and asks him if he was a Jew. And he says, yeah. He's like, yeah. And the guy mimes hanging his neck by a noose. And Kingsley stood up. When they talked about it on the 25 years later panel, it almost sounded like they never exactly said what Kingsley did. They made it sound like he clocked the guy.

Joe George (02:03:56.648)
Really?

Eli (02:03:58.338)
So that's what I thought at first, but then I read somewhere else that he stood up and read him the riot act out loud, which sounds a bit more like Kingsley to me, so.

Joe George (02:04:03.876)
Okay.

Joe George (02:04:08.197)
About to say, that seems very much, I hear he does that quite often to people for all sorts of offenses,

Eli (02:04:13.46)
Yeah, so yeah, so and then there's also this story that Ralph Fiennes tells of, you know, he's in his Nazi uniform and they're on location, so there's, you know, there's people maybe living in some of the buildings and there's this lady calls down from him to him from a window and she's telling him, I love your uniform, and she says something to the effect of, know, I wish

y'all were still around to protect us like you were back then and it's just like man the ghosts of the past are like all around them so they're you know they're dealing with that you know it's emotion and all of the sets are emotionally charged you know Spielberg talks about these two Israeli girls who after the the shower scene

had to take a few days off, they were just like so torn up. There's, you know, Spielberg, he talked also about the selection scene where they're stripped and they're having them run through the mud. And he said he had to look away. The vision of these bodies running through mud while SS men were like casually laughing and, you know, he just couldn't bear looking at it.

So yeah, I mean just all of this and Spielberg talks about is the most traumatic part of his career is doing this. And man, it's.

I don't know, there's a degree to which you wonder, like, is it all worth it? And I'm sure he was asking himself that question as he was making it. Like, is it worth putting myself and all these people through this? But yeah, I don't know if there's like maybe a cut and dry answer. I guess it depends person to person what their experience is. I can't speak for each person, but...

Joe George (02:06:16.507)
I mean, that's the problem. What's the rubric? Yeah. How do you judge Worth in this way? I mean, it's a handsome film, but he's obviously going for more than that. Is it enough that we remember in this particular way, flaws and all? Is it enough that, or did that create more damage? Is it enough that...

Eli (02:06:20.087)
Yeah.

Eli (02:06:24.428)
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard. It's.

Eli (02:06:30.488)
Right.

Joe George (02:06:48.168)
We represent and play out this thing or did that somehow? Profane what happened? mean, that's that's always the question around Holocaust art after the Holocaust

Eli (02:06:55.171)
Yeah.

Eli (02:07:00.236)
Right, I did really love this. was, Spielberg talked about kind of a turning point. He talked about the German actors would like come up to him and want to talk about Jaws or ET and he just couldn't do it. He said he just couldn't hold a conversation with the German actors for a long time. And there's this one point where it was Passover.

They had some people come in to perform a seder and they did it. The German actors came and joined the Jewish actors. And so they read the seder in both Hebrew and German, the Haggadah that they were reading. And he said after that moment and seeing that, it was just kind of a turning point for him. He felt like...

He felt like, I guess it was almost like that was a moment for him where he could see, this is important because you can get stuff like this, you know, this beautiful moment of these German actors coming together with all of these Jewish Israeli actors and, you know, this, and we're in Poland and the Germans are sitting side by side with Jewish actors and listening to a Haggadah being spoken, like

It was probably a beautiful moment to experience, I'm sure. Very powerful. he said after that, I'll talk to them about whatever they wanted. ET or JAWS or...

Joe George (02:08:43.677)
That restored the humanity for him.

Eli (02:08:45.206)
Yeah, it did. It really did. And then also all through the shooting, Spielberg has these extras coming up and telling him their story. And that ultimately inspires him to start the Shoah Foundation, which we'll talk about later. yeah, it's really incredible. Crazy. Just hard to fathom what it was like.

Yeah, and then in one big thing that Spielberg was like he was losing sleep over was Exactly what we kind of talked about earlier. He he didn't he wasn't making these kinds of movies He was making adventure movies and blockbuster movies and what he was worried about was well people Watch this movie and see my name attached to it and will they believe it? Will they think it's real? Will they find it credible?

And you know, I kind of have a lot of respect for him that that's what he was losing sleep over. He was self-aware enough to know that this is important what I'm making to a degree and I want people to take it seriously and is my name going to harm that? And that's what inspired him to do the last sequence where people

you you transition back to color, you're seeing the real people with the actors, they're placing the stones on the grave. Like that was, you know, he said himself it was kind of this desperate cry for credibility. yeah, which was interesting to hear someone's, you know, most filmmakers wouldn't want to say they made a decision out of desperation, but he was just being honest that that's what that was.

Joe George (02:10:40.281)
Yeah. it totally works.

Eli (02:10:41.967)
And I think it does work. It totally brings you back to, this was real, you know? Yeah.

Joe George (02:10:51.225)
This is real. Yeah. And I would almost if you were to take that that line in isolation, that could feel very self-serving, this idea of wanting credibility, you know, that I want to be taken seriously as a big boy director like my buddies, Marty and Francis and, you know, all those. But.

I don't think within the context that we've been talking about, and especially in relationship to that scene, I don't think that's what the credibility that's worrying him. It's the truth of the event. And he doesn't, he seems aware that he doesn't want the glitz and the glamour and his filmmaking instincts because.

Like even when he's showing something horrible, mean, just to the nature of film and especially the nature of filmmaker like him, even when he's something horrible, it's still exciting. The sequence that we were just talking about, the shower sequence, isn't that far removed from the Jurassic Park fence sequence. They're both...

working to build tension and he in both cases it's it's what's gonna happen and then there's a payoff and there's and you know but the stakes of the fence sequence are the little boy's gonna have a big adventure and now we're gonna get chased by velociraptors and I know I love Jurassic Park I'm not trying to diminish it but that's a total

Eli (02:12:10.509)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:12:24.302)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:12:29.014)
Yeah, and none of it's real and you know it. Yeah.

Joe George (02:12:32.875)
Exactly as opposed to the actual psychological torture that somebody went to where just a getting water from a shower is an unbelievable relief and how can you I don't think it's within

any filmmakers power, maybe that's a bit too broad, but it's certainly not within his power to tell the reality of that within that scene. And so he was telling it as truthful as possible, which is why he needed to cut to just the plain spoken reality of these are the survivors. This is this is their story. And that's a totally different credibility. That's not a respect me as an artist. That's just a. This this happened and we cannot forget.

Eli (02:13:17.164)
Yeah. Yeah. And what's crazy to me is working through his filmography, you know, he has these movies where, you know, he thinks he's thinking like, I can get best director for this movie. And like, he's excited by that prospect. and like, I think the biggest one is ET, you know, he has, he has people basically telling you, telling him he's a shoe in.

Joe George (02:13:35.067)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli (02:13:46.03)
to get best director and then he doesn't and then there's films where he should have been nominated and wasn't even nominated like Jaws. He wants that. He doesn't really shy away from talking about being disappointed that he didn't win stuff. But he puts this off for 10 years after he...

Joe George (02:13:54.755)
Mm-hmm. Yup.

Joe George (02:14:00.101)
Thank you.

Eli (02:14:14.866)
years after ET and by the time he gets to this point he's just matured so by the time he actually wins Best Director it's very somber. You can go watch his acceptance speech and it's very somber. very like, you know, there's a bit of feeling unworthy at that point.

Because if he would have won for Jurassic Park it would have been You know without this movie on the table. It would have been very different. He probably would have been excited It would have been like very celebratory But with this movie it's It's just interesting that this is what he wins best director for it's this movie where he He's refused the salary, you know, he's

had a traumatic experience on making and then like this is what he's celebrated for finally and it's like well now it's like

Yeah, I guess he's probably feels... He talks about feeling pride, but he doesn't, you know, in interviews, but he doesn't talk about feeling pride in making, you know, having won awards for the movie and stuff. The pride he talks about is really like he feels proud to be Jewish after making this movie. And it's so it's not like the movie that he's proud of. It's he's

he's proud of his heritage. That's what he gets out of making this, which is a totally different thing. It's just all, it's very interesting for, and probably like very good for him, just personally that this is the way things played out instead of you winning in 80, you know, in 83 for ET. So,

Joe George (02:16:20.025)
Yeah. Yeah.

Though he deserved for ET and for Jaws. mean...

Eli (02:16:25.676)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, as far as other production stuff, I should mention I had set up earlier the second AD, the second assistant director. I don't know which one of those names it was from earlier, but there was, 25 years later, Neeson talked about how how pissed off he was at Spielberg because

had gotten like his hands manicured and stuff and then he used the hands of the second AD for all those close-up shots when he was when you're introduced to Nissan Nissan was like it wasn't even my hands I had you know what was so wrong with my hands which that whole sequence feels like I think I heard someone else say it almost felt like a cologne commercial yeah it's

Joe George (02:17:01.689)
Hahaha

Joe George (02:17:09.639)
He's got some big old mitts too. That's funny.

Joe George (02:17:22.457)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli (02:17:25.698)
Very, yeah, I really, I was kind of taken aback by that, because it's a very interesting way to introduce you to someone.

Joe George (02:17:36.171)
It is. mean, and what jumped out at me in that same sequence is there's like a song and dance number going on. And I'm thinking, yeah, he sure Spielberg sure loved to do musicals before he did West Side Story. And then it's like, wait a minute, I'm watching Schindler's List. I shouldn't be thinking about, you know, Temple of Doom or West Side Story or any of these sorts of things. But it's there and it works.

Eli (02:17:48.865)
Yeah.

Eli (02:17:55.262)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, by the time he gets the post, know, obviously he works really well and efficiently with with Michael Kahn. They're like. I don't know, they they do some great edits for this movies. Yeah, he's and then, you know, the score he he missed out on the scoring session for Jurassic Park.

Because he had to move over to Krakow and start working on the movie So that was the first movie he had ever made where he wasn't there for the scoring session So this score which ultimately wins for best score at the Oscars John Williams, of course does it but Spielberg He talks about how he really wasn't

thinking about the score like he normally does. He didn't really have any ideas necessarily. He was just so focused on getting through the shoot. He just wasn't thinking of it. So they edited this at like a farmhouse. He said a real like rundown farmhouse in Long Island is the way he described it. yeah, he had John Williams come out to that farmhouse and watch the movie. you know, he...

Joe George (02:19:12.648)
Hmm.

Eli (02:19:24.066)
He reached out to John Williams, had like violin. He talks about like, I had violin on the mind for this movie as the main voice. And I'm trying to remember the violinist's name that he called. Yes, it's like Pearlman does the violin for the movie. Pearlman says basically he just kind of was like, yeah, I'll do it. And then.

Joe George (02:19:39.651)
It's like permanent?

Eli (02:19:52.354)
John Williams did his John Williams thing and he just kind of like played what John Williams wrote.

Joe George (02:19:59.683)
It's gorgeous. It's. The it's really savvy how. The score drops out for so long in the movie, and then when it starts to come back in, it is that that violin piece after the liquidation. It's.

Eli (02:20:09.603)
Yes.

Joe George (02:20:17.732)
It's it's it's perfect. It's winsome and these little notes of melancholy that hit you like you almost feel that sort of Williams heroic strain start to come up and then it just it falls right back down again.

Eli (02:20:31.118)
Yeah, but it's yeah, it's really well done. What I've noticed about John Williams through this series is that like sometimes he's really hitting on all cylinders and then sometimes you get a score that almost feels like he's just kind of phoning it in. it just kind of every once in a while you'll get a score where it's kind of like this feels like just John Williams

Joe George (02:20:51.441)
really?

Eli (02:21:00.818)
kind of like doing John Williams. It doesn't feel inventive or like it doesn't feel it just feels like it's yeah it feels like you even kind of start to hear like this kind of sounds like he just kind of like took this other score and twisted it a little bit to come up with this theme or whatever and yeah they they do and

Joe George (02:21:03.687)
OK.

Joe George (02:21:09.479)
I see. I see.

Joe George (02:21:22.578)
Okay. I guess those fall out in my mind, so that's probably why I'm not thinking of them.

Eli (02:21:27.244)
And they're not the thing is the reason like he's so great is because even those are still really good. So, but that's just the sense I get. Cause I've been watching like Spielberg movies back to back to back and succession and,

Joe George (02:21:33.064)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:21:39.23)
Sure. Sure. You're knowing his moves now. Yeah.

Eli (02:21:45.314)
Yeah, and so like, like the the score for always is like, it has like, it has like those emotional beats that you can expect from John Williams, but it just kind of feels, it almost feels like recycled in that movie for some reason. And you know, music is a very subjective thing. So it might just be like that particular theme just like didn't move me in the way that other ones did like.

Joe George (02:22:01.374)
Okay.

Okay.

Joe George (02:22:07.901)
Of course.

Eli (02:22:14.99)
ET one.

Joe George (02:22:16.746)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Heaven forbid you don't match the E.T.'s score each time, you know.

Eli (02:22:22.026)
Yeah, which influenced the edit of the climactic sequence. know, how often does a score influence the final edit? But yeah, so, you know, the score is great. They finish up post and yeah, this movie released in December of 1993. really actually, I was looking into it, it actually only had like a limited release in December, which I didn't realize.

Joe George (02:22:27.902)
Yeah.

Eli (02:22:50.726)
actually fully released in February like a big expansive release which I kind of it kind of like follows the lines of how a studio would release even now like a this is a movie going for the Oscar movie

Joe George (02:23:07.294)
Yep, you get it in time for awards and then give it to everybody else.

Eli (02:23:10.294)
Yeah, which always makes me mad. I'm like, I want to see all the oscar movies. Why don't y'all release them where I can see them? Yeah, but

Joe George (02:23:20.124)
Yeah. If you've got to vote on awards movies like I do, it becomes annoying in another way because that means like you have to crush all of the best movies of the year in one week that's also like Christmas. And it sucks. Yeah, it's not good.

Eli (02:23:34.453)
Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. I don't do that, but I still, I kind of almost forced myself to be like that even though I have no stakes just because like, yeah, I, well, you know, I do, I will do some like best of episodes every once in while for the podcast, but.

Joe George (02:23:51.54)
really?

Joe George (02:23:57.46)
Sure.

Eli (02:24:00.142)
But don't have like real, I get to decide when those come out. I'm not submitting it to a critics association. So, but I still, force the pressure on myself as a cinephile and, and podcaster. but yeah, you know, this movie, it got $96 million in North America and 30, 322 million worldwide, which really like,

Joe George (02:24:03.486)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:24:11.54)
Put yourself within it. Yeah. Okay. I get it.

Eli (02:24:30.514)
is a huge return on a movie like this at this time. You know, I can't help but make the recent parallel of like Oppenheimer and how incredible Oppenheimer did because it know there are movies of a similar vein. Obviously this is a much more... I don't know, I guess this one feels more grim than the content for Oppenheimer but

Still, mean, the stakes of Oppenheimer are really high as far as like tragedy as well. So I don't know, it just feels like a interesting parallel of this movie winning, finally winning Spielberg his Oscar, doing really well in the box office for being such a grim story. And then Oppenheimer being the same thing for Nolan, finally getting him his Oscar with

this serious, incredibly well acted, black and white sequences even, makes a lot of money. Yeah, just an interesting parallel that I was thinking about.

Joe George (02:25:33.278)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe George (02:25:41.85)
I think that's totally fair and it's I Mean both of them kind of have Historical juice, you know, I don't feel like people

I was young when Schindler's List came out. was in my teens. And I remember, again, that sort of moral imperative to see Schindler's List. And there was a moral imperative to see Saving Private Ryan in a way that I don't feel like Oppenheimer had quite the same thing. But I do feel like Oppenheimer had like a

Eli (02:25:56.898)
Mm.

Eli (02:26:11.841)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:26:16.618)
like a almost an artistic imperative, if that makes any sense at all, that it was such a well-made movie that everybody, even people that aren't that.

Eli (02:26:21.943)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:26:33.796)
don't like to watch movies on that level are still like I want to see this in you know, I I knew plenty of people that wouldn't have done this that were like where's the 70 millimeter IMAX playing at because I want to go watch it like that. and so there is impairment. Of course, of course. Yeah.

Eli (02:26:38.67)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:26:46.454)
Yeah, and part of that is just like the internet age that we live in, you know, you get that sort of hype You know, and if this movie would have come out now it honestly probably would be a similar thing like let's You know, it's probably partly that letterbox culture, you know And you know you have the film bros

Joe George (02:27:01.128)
Maybe, yeah.

Eli (02:27:15.035)
I wonder if the film bros would have been Spielberg guys like they are Nolan guys. I don't know.

Joe George (02:27:21.586)
I don't think so. I betcha the film bros would have been all hardcore new Hollywood guys, you know? Like they would have been, yeah, Scorsese, Coppola, would have been resentful of Spielberg for blowing that.

Eli (02:27:28.084)
Scorcese. Yeah.

Eli (02:27:35.51)
Yeah. What's funny is those all those guys were like buddies. Lucas. Yeah.

Joe George (02:27:40.554)
Yeah, and they all worked on each other's movies. It's just insane. It's just I just I love that. yeah. Well, the palm was the one that did the scroll. He tells George, you know, it tells Lucas you this is the dumbest thing. Let me just write the scroll. Yeah, exactly. You know, or and Coppola is the one that tells Lucas to go do Star Wars and and Lucas is the one that tells Coppola to go do Godfather.

Eli (02:27:46.412)
The Palma even was in that group.

Eli (02:27:56.184)
Star Wars? Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (02:28:08.494)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:28:08.782)
You know, because it's like they got it. They they're they're doing zoetrope together and they're like we need money. So, yeah, all of those fights are totally made up by us dummies. Except for the ones with Paul Schrader, everybody actually didn't like Paul Schrader because he was nuts, but that's something different.

Eli (02:28:16.77)
Yeah, right, they are.

Eli (02:28:24.748)
Yeah, Schrader, it was Close Encounters. Schrader, him and Spielberg could not get on the same page. He was supposed to Close Encounters and yeah, that would have...

Joe George (02:28:36.531)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:28:39.934)
Well, not getting on the same page with Schrader is usually a good thing. I mean, I love his movies, but I would do not want to hang out with that dude.

Eli (02:28:44.492)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, his, if his movies, if the content of his movies tell you anything about him, that makes sense. Very conflicted people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This, this movie Schindler's List had mostly rave reception.

Joe George (02:28:58.152)
Yeah, well.

Joe George (02:29:02.746)
Yeah, but hey, good movies.

Eli (02:29:13.598)
Todd McCarthy in variety said this is the film to win over Spielberg skeptics And I you know, I think that's probably true You know, obviously he finally gets recognized by the Academy which had mostly like kind of ignored him to this point I mean he had He had won his movies had won technical awards, but never anything like this

The public reception, obviously making a lot of money, exceeded all expectations. I'm sure the universal guys were all eating their words. And yeah, it was even endorsed by political leaders. Bill Clinton was encouraging Americans to see the movie, which I think is a good thing. think it's probably a good thing when there's a movie like this that comes out for someone to encourage people to go see it.

Joe George (02:30:11.25)
Yes, yeah, I wish more people would look at engagement with cinema as a public good.

Eli (02:30:17.346)
Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And of course the movie had its critics. It's people that didn't like it. You know, we've talked a lot about how cinematic this movie is. Well, a lot of people didn't like how cinematic it was. thought, I guess they felt that it was inappropriate for the context. You know, the girl, all the things that we've talked about, the shower scene, the girl in the red coat.

Even that final moment at the grave People just felt like it was bad taste I guess a lot of critics did But I think for the most part really like this kind of broken, know I had mentioned earlier a lot of people saw him as an artistic lightweight and this is probably the major film that really break allows him to at least makes critics reconsider that

Joe George (02:31:06.271)
Yeah.

Eli (02:31:17.026)
that title that they had given him, I guess.

Joe George (02:31:20.724)
For sure. mean, and there's always, you know, you always think of the Theodore Darno quote, there can be no poetry after Osvitch. you know, what that actually means is that the Holocaust broke reality, Western reality at least, in such a way that art

can't deal with it anymore in the same way. so, no, it's gonna be, the Holocaust is profane, period. And there is no way of getting around it clean or approaching it, but you have to approach it. And it's never going to fit in such a way that...

Eli (02:31:50.466)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:32:13.19)
that any sort of artistic object is going to be able to make us make sense of it or feel like we've processed it. There's always going to be a remainder and it has to have that ethical remainder. But you gotta, again, the point that Adorno's trying to make there is you gotta keep looking and you gotta keep making sense of it even with that remainder. It's funny that you mentioned Oppenheimer, because it's the same thing there, that people were like, well,

Eli (02:32:17.358)
Mm.

Eli (02:32:25.155)
Yes.

Eli (02:32:34.702)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:32:42.856)
He's not really focused on the Japanese and, and no, you're right. And you get to say that. Right. Well, even if I did, what could I, what movie, what art, what work, what word can I say that can match that tragedy? You can. And so you're right to say it and we need to keep saying it, but we also got to keep making these, telling these stories and making these movies. And so.

Eli (02:32:48.152)
But he's not Japanese.

Eli (02:33:00.472)
Yeah.

Eli (02:33:06.626)
Yes.

Joe George (02:33:09.244)
I hear what they're saying, but you can't end with that critique either. It's gotta be part of this.

Eli (02:33:13.388)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my whole thing is like, you know, I was thinking about this. I was telling my wife earlier, I was telling her what some of the, these critiques were and of the movie, which she's never seen it. you know, she knows obviously about it, but, I was telling her, you know, what's odd to me about these critiques is for all of human history, we've

We've told stories, a lot of them based in reality or kind of trying to make sense of reality. That's how we process things. And so I just don't understand why this is like, it's so hard for some people to see like, this is, he's telling a story, he's trying to make sense of it. He has no like,

He has no, he doesn't have the vanity to think that he's solving something with this movie, but it's something that is important to process and to think through. And that's what the movie's doing. It's trying to think through why did this happen? What, what do we do with it? It's what you walk away with as someone who has viewed it. How could this have happened? What do we do with this now that we've seen this?

Joe George (02:34:39.561)
Right.

Eli (02:34:39.85)
And that's what stories are supposed to do And that's you know, that's that's what we've always done as humans we tell stories to try to process things and The big critic the big criticism the most like vehement one came from people who? Kind of followed the full of that philosophy that you you do not put images on the Holocaust So, you know, it's

One of the big people that came out against the movie was Claude Lansman, who was a journalist. He was a member of the French resistance during World War II and made the landmark documentary Shoah, which was a nine hour movie. It took him 12 years to make it. It has no archival footage, no footage of the Holocaust. It's all interviews with people about their experiences, which I've never watched this.

i don't it's it's one of those things where it's like i might should watch it but also i don't i don't know if i can tackle it it's nine hours and but yeah he he writes this article in the the french it's a french publication called le monde and really like says that

Joe George (02:35:49.534)
Tough ass, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (02:36:08.802)
This Schindler's List is a kitsch melodrama that has trivialized the Holocaust is the gist of kind of what he says. And this is a quote from Landsman. He's following that idea that you should not put images on the Holocaust. He says, what I criticize Spielberg for fundamentally is showing the Holocaust through a German.

Even if he saved Jews, it completely changes the approach to history. It is the world upside down. I have a sense that he made an illustrated Shoah. He put images where there are none in the Shoah, and images kill the imagination. I thought that after the Shoah, a certain number of things could no longer be done, but Spielberg did it." And that's, it's one of those things where people that hold that philosophy,

totally get it. These are things that happened, we should not show them. It's kind of my understanding of it. shouldn't... because the minute you put any sort of image on it, you deplete its potency, I guess, to them. I really get it. I really understand it, even though I disagree with it.

And yeah, I thought Camille, Camille Nevers at the time posted, had a response in another publication. I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this, but, Cahier, Cahier du Cinema. It's a French, another French publication. Yeah. I'm in Lafayette, Louisiana. So that helps. You have to pronounce all the roads are in French. Yeah.

Joe George (02:37:54.696)
Your French is better than mine.

Joe George (02:37:59.11)
Okay.

Eli (02:38:03.692)
I'm not from here, I'm from Georgia originally, so it was tough, it was a tough transition. But this is a quote from her, she said,

Joe George (02:38:06.352)
Okay.

Eli (02:38:29.57)
Schindler's List has much more to do with the parable or the tale, a biblical parable in many ways identical to that of Noah's Ark. Rather than images of the apocalypse, Spielberg gives us the story of a Genesis. the way she sees it is he's telling a, it's kind of like what I've been saying, he's telling a story that is based on things that happened. He's not trying to like,

images on the Holocaust to demean it or to diminish it. And I guess, you know, it's interesting. It's that question of how that we've been talking all around is how to tell stories that cannot be told but must be told. And you know, at the end of the day, the way I feel that I feel like this Camille Nevers is trying to

hint at is that there is room for more accessible tellings of stories. You don't have to require people to watch a nine-hour documentary to really get the gist of it. You can have this very cinematic movie and walk out of it and think, did we as a human race let this happen? How did they get there?

how did this happen? How can we stop it from happening again? You can get that walking out of Soon There's List just as much as you can get it after watching Landsman's Showa, I feel like.

Joe George (02:40:10.795)
I don't know. Keep going now. I'll push back on it a little bit.

Eli (02:40:13.388)
Yeah, no, that's no, no, that's good. That's how I feel. Now, I do think...

And this is something, so I've been listening to a book, biography basically of Spielberg along with reading through some other stuff, but the author of that was basically saying that at the end of the day viewers have to decide for themselves if the freedoms taken in the depiction is artistically valid. I really thought that was very

wise way to think about it. Each viewer has to decide for themselves. And really, like, I think at the end of the day, while I disagree with Lonsman's for myself, I can't really say for everyone if that's true. Like, for him, it is true that it demeans it. And, you know, that's how he sees it. It's...

a certain point once you put your art out there it's kind of up to the viewer of what to do with it and if if you say it demeans this thing that happened then you know that's true there you know there's some things that can be you know ultimately true but some things are like interpreting art can't be really ultimately true there's there is subjectivity in the truth that's

that's depicted and it has to be... it is up to the viewer, you know, what to do with it to a certain degree. But there is also a responsibility on the artist of how they put it out there. You know, it's not like I'm gonna do what I want and if you hate it, you hate it. You know, with something like this, it can't be that...

Eli (02:42:20.264)
the on the part of the artist actually making it. And like we said, we don't, it seems like neither of us really think Spielberg was in that mindset. yeah, what's your, what are your thoughts on all this?

Joe George (02:42:36.779)
I mean, so I think I'm a little, I'm mostly sympathetic with what you're arguing and certainly Lansman. I feel like you need to, you have to retain some of the unresolvability of the.

Eli (02:42:44.781)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:42:55.917)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:42:59.703)
the Jewish Holocaust being such, I mean all Holocausts are this, and specifically in this relationship, the Jewish Holocaust is the event of such enormity and such unspeakable profanity. it's, we can't put into words death on that level. And.

Eli (02:43:12.846)
Mm.

Yes.

Joe George (02:43:27.141)
It becomes something like the risk of sending to religious Like the name of God as soon as you have a name or representation of God, then you've already limited God I love the the the the Paul Tillich description of God constantly fading from Whatever representation of God that you've put forward or constantly escaping and it's the same thing with something as horrible as this and so

Eli (02:43:47.971)
Yep.

Joe George (02:43:57.426)
representation is always fraught and I fear that a lot of the way that we talk about art, especially I think recently in the last 20 years, maybe a downside of that letter box thing, or I would argue more of a downside of sort of a.

sports sort of awards focus you know this kind of competition that's put on the art

Eli (02:44:21.846)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Joe George (02:44:26.833)
seeks a resolvable interpretation. This is what it is. And the Holocaust is so huge that it can never be encompassed by representation, which means that whenever you're approaching the Holocaust, you need to approach it a scance with the understanding that that you are you are getting a glimpse of it. You know, I'm pulling a lot from Emmanuel Levinas, you

Eli (02:44:39.256)
Right.

Joe George (02:44:56.587)
him the Jewish philosopher I love him and he would does not would not have I mean he was weird about literature and cinema and together so I know I'm perverting him a little bit but that's

Eli (02:44:57.293)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:45:10.201)
It's that, that what he talks about is the relationship between the sane and the sad, right? As soon as the words come out, the words are already the person who spoke those words has already faded from history. And so you're just grasping a representation that's actually representing infinity and so much more. All of that's a long way of saying that, that, that when we represent the Holocaust or any sort of mass

Eli (02:45:27.886)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:45:39.465)
evil like that. cannot, we need to be seeking not, okay, I get it. We need to be seeking, there's so much more and I'm just working with this. The problem that makes the movies, I agree with you, humanity always telling stories.

Eli (02:45:47.18)
Yeah.

Eli (02:45:51.149)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:46:01.015)
I think though that you need to continue, that we also need to keep in mind the specific medium of cinema in relationship to the Jewish Holocaust. The cinema is both spectacular and mechanistic by its very nature in a way that.

Eli (02:46:13.443)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:46:17.573)
no other storytelling. Maybe there's some internet stuff that's that's more of this, but the mechanics and the spectacle are just inherent in this art form. You know, this is why the old line, you can never make an anti-war movie because war always looks cool. Or that problem that we run into when, you know, we're telling a true story and you see a picture of the dude and it's a schlubby dork like me.

Eli (02:46:30.349)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:46:37.326)
Sure.

Joe George (02:46:47.547)
played by, you know, some incredibly handsome or incredibly beautiful actor. Cinema is spectacular and it's beautiful and the Nazis knew this. Mechanism and cinema were parts of how fascism operated and how the Holocaust happened. And so...

Eli (02:47:00.001)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:47:11.211)
We also need to be aware of that. And I don't think I haven't seen Shoah. But I can, I feel confident in telling you, even if I sat there and watched all nine hours of Shoah, it would be profane for me to think that I have understood the Holocaust, you know? And so I look at Schindler's List and I am all for the populist aspect.

Eli (02:47:28.992)
Absolutely,

Joe George (02:47:37.513)
Of it. I think I find it incredibly moving. but I, I, I fear, I worry, that people can walk away from it and say, okay, I got it because especially now when we live in the United States where fascism is in vogue again. so how does this happen? Part of the way that it happens is that,

Eli (02:47:46.403)
Mm.

Eli (02:47:52.11)
Hmm.

Eli (02:47:58.572)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:48:05.207)
humans when we sure we tell stories make sense of things but just because we receive a story doesn't mean that we understand the ethical comp you know and cinema is uniquely

Eli (02:48:09.634)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:48:13.259)
Right.

Joe George (02:48:20.761)
uniquely suited to allow people to watch something and feel something and separate that from their day to day lives. You know, this the it's it's the reason that Elon Musk can watch Parasite and say, what a great movie when she's like, dude, that movie is about you. You are the bad guy. Or the reason that Amazon can put out like a TV show like The Boys, which is all about how Amazon makes evil Nazi superheroes.

Eli (02:48:32.073)
Yeah.

Eli (02:48:42.722)
Yeah.

Eli (02:48:49.698)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (02:48:50.896)
And Amazon's not scared of the critique because most people are going to watch it and it's going to bounce right off of them. And so all of that being true means that I can't I can't read these critiques and say, you know, I need it. I need that. Even though I don't entirely agree with I find Schindler's List to be a wonderful, ethical, powerful movie. We need those other things to say.

Eli (02:48:52.821)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli (02:49:19.074)
to push back on that, yeah. Yes.

Joe George (02:49:19.489)
Be careful. Yeah. And Spielberg clearly felt that, I think. And I think that's part of what makes this movie so special, is that he wrestled with that. And it's on screen.

Eli (02:49:25.934)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you can feel it when you see him talk about it, that he was wrestling with it. you know, I should say, I agree with everything you said. I guess my big thing is something like this is...

is something that should you should walk away with with not answers but more questions and i think that's the big thing and i think that's what lansman would want with joa i don't think he would want you to walk away with feeling like you have the answers i think he would want you to walk away with more questions than you walked in with and i think that's what the best

cinema along these lines does. Obviously not all cinema is interested in that. Some of it's just for fun and that's great too. You've talked about you've done a lot of superhero work and a lot of that's just fun and yeah that's great too. But movies like this, really absolutely should not walk away

Joe George (02:50:34.689)
Yeah. Yep.

Eli (02:50:49.912)
feeling like you understand. I think you can walk away with more empathy, but that's not the same as like understanding necessarily, because there is a degree to which like I don't know if anyone ever will understand how or why exactly this happened.

We know a lot of reasons and we, you know, we can wrestle with all that, but yeah, it's.

I can say the number six million Jews killed, but that's just a number. It doesn't really represent the actuality at all, even though it's a fact. That number six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust is a fact, but it's not a truth. The truth is something that's a bit unattainable, a bit unfathomable.

for something like that. And you know, it's... it is... it very much relates to things you, you know, like you're parallel with the name of God, you know. There might be things where, you know, if you're religious, if you believe in a God, then you might know the fact, like, you might think it's a fact. God created everything, and you're like, that's a fact. But there's a

That's not the truth. The truth is something beyond that. And it's a bit unfathomable, a bit ungraspable. our language tries to reach for that and help us to think about it, but it doesn't nail it down. And I think that is an important thing to remember.

Eli (02:52:56.914)
with a movie like this is nothing is nailed down here, but it gives us something to work with, I guess. Another tool to work with to try to grasp something, to learn something, to be changed in some way. And yeah, yeah. Yeah, I really, really love that.

I feel like I'm learning and growing through our conversation.

Joe George (02:53:30.101)
Yeah, me too. I it's I I I love the way that you said that because I mean ultimately

A movie like Schindler's List has a twofold purpose, right? One is remembering what happened. And I don't mean to diminish that, but that part's going to have that level of imperfection. The other one is kind of what you just touched on there is then how do we prevent this from happening again? And it becomes, it does threaten to turn the story of the Holocaust into an analogy, you know, or like a lesson.

Eli (02:54:10.712)
Yeah.

Joe George (02:54:12.759)
But also, we need that lesson and a nail. mean, we are constantly on threat of doing this all over again. And we're staring it down right now in the United States. mean, it was never that far. Hitler got a lot of his ideas from the way that we treated, that white people treated black people in the United States. So we were never far from that in the first place. But anyway, that.

Eli (02:54:17.005)
Right.

Eli (02:54:35.52)
Right, right.

Joe George (02:54:42.209)
Like you just said, there's something that we can grasp. There's something that we can take from that. And gosh, if you take just enough, if you just come out of that saying, I can love somebody else or at least have empathy with somebody else, even just the smidge, then that's pretty darn good. I think I think that the movie's kind of justified its entire existence.

If we just move that needle just a little bit, that doesn't resolve all the other questions. But I think that idea of grasping and taking something from it is just as important as everything else.

Eli (02:55:11.298)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (02:55:18.796)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm trying to, I mean.

There's a lot of other stuff we could talk about in this movie. We've hit on a lot of stuff. I did want to go back to, before we kind of share some final thoughts, the names. Because the movie is bookended by names. You start with people arriving and it's... You start with people arriving and it's like this contrast that you get.

Joe George (02:55:32.992)
you

Eli (02:56:00.242)
the beginning of the movie their names are being it's like their names are being taken like give me your name come on come on there's this like say your name move on there's a lot of wide shots you get some shots of you get you get some like closer in shots but it's it's this like almost like give me your name move along we're trying to efficiently get through this and that's at the beginning and then at the end when you get them saying their names

that they can, you know, be put on the trains to go to brinlitz, it's like it slows down. It's their name, and it's like where their names were being taken before, now they are giving their names. And it's this contrast of names being taken and then names being given. And it's like, I mean that in two ways. In one sense, it's like Schindler has given them back their name, so

it's given to them, but in another sense, the way that it's shot is that they are giving their names. It takes time to let you hear them say their name. It's not fast and, you know, mechanical like it is at the beginning. It doesn't even really show, except for, you know, blurred in the foreground, the people like writing stuff down and checking people off.

Joe George (02:57:18.136)
Yes.

Eli (02:57:27.062)
you don't really hear anything from them. And I just I thought that was a really really beautiful contrast that I noticed. And I have this quote by, it's from this book, The Drowned and the Saved, by Levi, Primo Levi, I think is his name, and he said, people lose their individuality as soon as they become oppressed, defined as a group. And I think

That's what's happening all throughout the movie. What I love is one of the major thing, the major like quote unquote cinematic thing that I noticed that Spielberg did through the whole movie was he would do these wide shots of these crowds, but he never did a wide shot without several at least closeups of individual faces.

And it might not be faces that are like characters. It's a lot of it's just extras, but he's like, he's like, yes, here's the crowd. Here's all the awfulness going on, but look, here's a face. This is a person. Here's a face. This is a person. and so all those things put together, I just feel like the, there's this theme of giving, giving people back their names, giving them back their individuality.

in a sense, them all along somehow in the midst of it holding on to it so that they can take it back when they can again. And I just loved that. I thought that was so well done and beautiful in the movie. You know, at the end when they're giving their names, I was able to like smile a little bit after all of that because it's this beautiful moment.

Joe George (02:59:18.354)
Yes.

Eli (02:59:22.03)
and the power has shifted, you know, in a sense. Not completely yet, but it's the beginning of it. It's the genesis of the power shift, having their... being able to take back their names. So, I don't know, did you have any thoughts on that?

Joe George (02:59:42.414)
I mean, that's, didn't put it together the way that you just did that. That's brilliant. One thing that does pop to my head though, what we're, what we're talking about this is I wonder if that helps us kind of make sense a little bit of the centering of Schindler in this way that the way that you've talked about, you know, Schindler is the center of all of their stories. and that's, that's theirs. Even if we.

would feel better if it worked a little bit different, that's theirs. And so in a way, then they're also giving Schindler his name to a certain degree. Because if it wasn't for them, he would have just been a schmoozing German businessman. One of many from the time that...

Eli (03:00:10.926)
Sure.

Eli (03:00:18.222)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (03:00:32.518)
You know, he I'm sure he's not the only war prophet. I we saw that in that movie. He's not the only war profiteer. wasn't the only guy. And because of because of these these people that sort of called him into responsibility, he's somebody that we talk about here in twenty, twenty four. We'll still remember him. And I think that there's an echo of that.

Eli (03:00:49.112)
Mm-hmm.

Joe George (03:00:59.296)
in the scene in Israel with the stones is that it's not just, it's them reclaiming their names and then using their names to honor Schindler and to make him into a worthy person, a person who had a worthy life. That's interesting.

Eli (03:01:16.782)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:01:22.575)
Yeah, it's interesting for sure. And, you know, without them too, we wouldn't know who he was because he was for all intents and purposes a failure after this. He moved to Argentina, he had a failed business there, he moved back to Germany or Poland one and had a couple of failed businesses there.

Joe George (03:01:30.65)
Exactly, exactly.

Eli (03:01:48.326)
The his these Schindler Jews were supporting him. They were sending him money and he was having to live off of that for links he he felt in his marriage he tried to Stay married, but Emily Schindler ended up staying in Argentina and he moved back and You know he He has he has his moments, you know, they're the he was honored and was able to plant a tree

on the what is it called the Avenue of the righteous or something like that I can't remember it's it's it says it in the in one of the little title cards at the end and it talks about it in the book too but basically he was he was declared a righteous man by Israel and and the rabbis or whatever that kind of do that ceremony and was able to plant a tree

People that are declared righteous are able to plant a tree on this certain road really cool So he's he's honored in that way, but for all and other than stuff like that. He's essentially a Failure after this, you know, and he has no name after this it's like this exchange this is and The the crazy part is it's by this guy for from what we can tell

wasn't even like that great of a guy. and obviously like, I don't, you know, he was probably very changed by this whole experience. so I would, I would like to think as far as I can tell, he was a bit of a different man after this. but I don't know that, you know, he, yeah, it's just interesting. Like they, they have,

you know, Paul Page, Pfefferberg is the one who was persistent to get this story told, and without him nobody would know who Oscar Schindler is. So there is a really real sense that they gave him a name too. And you know, one of the cool things that I can't remember if it's

Joe George (03:03:59.719)
Yeah.

Joe George (03:04:06.311)
Yep.

Eli (03:04:13.746)
something I read or something that was an actual title card at the end was that there's, I want to say at the time of the movie maybe, there's like only 4,000 Jews still alive in Poland, but there were 6,000 descendants of Schindler Jews alive. Just, you know, that's incredible. And it's all just because this war profiteer made one good choice.

Joe George (03:04:31.762)
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Joe George (03:04:42.118)
Yeah.

Eli (03:04:43.714)
He, yeah, he, and it, he was urged by these people who.

Eli (03:04:52.622)
who I think were able to hold on to their hand. They had some sort of hope that they held onto. You don't really see, you can see a little bit of it in the movie if you're really looking for it. It's not exactly that movie. It's not exactly the movie of how these people held on to hope. But obviously they had something. You know, I think it was,

Joe George (03:05:14.886)
Right, no.

Eli (03:05:22.99)
Man's Search for a Meeting, the author's name is escaping me. I was hoping you would save me. Victor Frankl, yeah, my bad. Victor Frankl talked about that in Man's Search for a Meeting. He talked about how the people that survive are the people who are able to somehow

Joe George (03:05:34.312)
I'm so sorry. It's like 1230 here. My time. So my brain is not running like it used to. Should. yes.

Eli (03:05:51.15)
hope. As soon as you lost all hope, you died. And yeah, it's really just incredible that these people

we're able to do that in such just atrocity.

And yeah, I think the name, the whole names thing is just kind of a picture of that. They, their names are taken to, taken from them. and I say that, but I think now that we're, we're getting further into this discussion, I think it was, I think it was, a delusion by the Nazis to think that they could take their names away from them.

And I think this story is just one little testament to that, that they were deluded to think that they could actually take these people's personhood away when it was never theirs to take in the first place.

Joe George (03:07:03.56)
Exactly right. That's what I mean, that's the oppressor playbook though. That's what you do. You take their identity, take their culture, take their name. And it never works. But people are gonna keep trying.

Eli (03:07:07.126)
Right. Right.

Eli (03:07:15.712)
Mm-hmm Yeah, I just to wrap things up, you know, I think I think this is a really cool moment for Spielberg, know, we are we we've got to bring it back to Spielberg because at the end of the day this is a series on Spielberg and I think my I just as a final thought kind of my takeaway was just how your work and a lot of

A lot of times can impact you just as much as your work impacts the world around you. know, a lot of times when we think about our work, we think about, how am I going to impact the world around me? Whether it's, you know, in your business or, know, for you, you're writing, what do I have to say that will hopefully inspire others or make others think? but a lot of times we forget that the process of making our work changes us too. And

I that's a big thing that happened for Spielberg and the Shoah Foundation is the kind of like tangible thing we can see from that. I wrote down this quote from Spielberg that I loved. He said, I was so ashamed of being a Jew and now I'm filled with pride. This film has kind of come along with me on this journey from shame to honor.

My mother said to me one day, I really want people to see a movie that you make someday that's about us and about who we are, not as a people, but as people. So this is it. This is for her. and I just thought that was really beautiful. You know, him just realizing how much he changed through this process. and you know, honoring his heritage and becoming an

you know, in tune with it. and I thought that was wonderful. He, you know, his shares of Schindler's List was about 6 million and that was the seed that started the Shoett Foundation. he got contributions from Lou Wasserman Foundation, Universal, Time Warner, NBC. So he, was a big endeavor. They, in the first few years, they were in over 50 countries.

Eli (03:09:38.798)
and got over 52,000 survivors recorded in over 30 languages, so it was a huge, huge endeavor. And they were able to, with USC, University of Southern California, to get a better... they kind of shifted it into the university so that they could get better digital preservation. And in 2012, this website, Eyewitness, with

and I, the letter I, witness launched, and it's just it's like this educational thing. Students and teachers can access this website and watch all of these, you know, accounts, these eyewitness accounts of what they went through and watch these people tell their stories, and it's like this legacy that Spielberg has. It's funny because

know, Lonsman berated Spielberg for doing it this way instead of letting, you know, the people tell the stories, but really like this sparked the more important thing, which was exactly what Lonsman was wanting, which is he invested tons of money and effort into recording all these stories to the degree that now they actually are doing other genocides. They're

They have tons of accounts from Rwandans and Armenians and Cambodians and they're expanding the scope of it. it's really an incredible endeavor. I think it's really, really cool to see that that's what came out of this movie.

And probably honestly the most important thing about this movie was that it inspired Spielberg to do to do that

Joe George (03:11:43.174)
Yeah, it's hard to disagree with that.

Eli (03:11:46.03)
Yeah. yeah, all that to just, I don't know, it was just a thought that I had of like, your work changes you. and yeah, embrace that like Spielberg did. but yeah, that's, that's all I have. Did you have any, any final thoughts as we wrap things up?

Joe George (03:12:10.608)
I don't think so. I'm sure I'll think of them as soon as we stop recording, but...

Eli (03:12:12.364)
It's, yeah. Like I said, I mean, there's honestly a ton more we could talk about. Really, like, every little sequence you could probably break down and examine. we didn't even really talk much about the girl in the red coat who's on the movie cover right here behind me, you know?

Joe George (03:12:20.593)
Yeah.

Joe George (03:12:33.904)
Yeah. Can we just say it's good? It's a good choice. People that. Yes.

Eli (03:12:38.198)
It is, it's a cinematic choice and he was criticized for that, it's this, It is, yeah.

Joe George (03:12:47.184)
It's a potent image. does its job. I don't think it's overly sentimental. I don't.

Eli (03:12:54.028)
Yeah, it's definitely not sentimental when you end with the girl scared under a bed alone. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess that counts as a final thought. Wrapping up with the girl in the red coat. Obviously to me, I mean, this is one of so far about as good as it gets with Spielberg, a Spielberg movie.

Joe George (03:12:56.632)
Yeah.

Joe George (03:13:02.407)
Yeah.

Joe George (03:13:07.184)
Okay, good. We settled that debate.

Eli (03:13:24.75)
I mean, it's...

I know, it feels like you shouldn't rate this movie. I rate all the movies I watch. It helps me to organize things. It was hard for me not to rate this a five star, 10 out of 10. Because it's it's an incredible work to me. And I'm not Claude Lansman's, who probably would have given it a zero out of 10.

Joe George (03:13:54.48)
You

That's okay, people are allowed to give zeros out of ten. That's... yeah.

Eli (03:13:58.326)
That's great, he's allowed to, right. I always say ratings are arbitrary. They don't mean anything.

Joe George (03:14:07.474)
They are 100 % arbitrary, but that doesn't keep you from getting yelled at in line for ratings that you put on things. I agree with you, though. I would also give it five out of five. I can't think of on what grounds it does something poorly. It's impeccably made. It's morally complex. It's beautiful. mean, there's just. It's.

Eli (03:14:09.484)
yet.

Yes.

Eli (03:14:20.781)
Yeah.

Eli (03:14:25.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:14:30.22)
Yep. But I don't really have any quibbles with the movie. And most movies I have at least one little quibble with, but I just really don't for this one.

Joe George (03:14:40.552)
I do have one small one. Okay. Ray Fiennes puts on weight. He does a lot of belly acting in certain scenes where he's really, yeah, he's a man with a belly. Come on, dude. You don't need to push it too. Yeah. He doesn't do it throughout the entire movie, but there's definitely scenes where he's like, what are you doing, man? Pull it back some.

Eli (03:14:42.188)
Ooh, good. That's good.

Eli (03:14:50.891)
He's really pushing it out there.

Eli (03:14:57.23)
Yeah, I think I think already he put on like 30 pounds or something like that, you

Eli (03:15:05.548)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe George (03:15:10.214)
But minor quibble, five out of five movie.

Eli (03:15:12.206)
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's, it's one of the we've, we've talked about it ad nauseum at this point that, you people like Claude Lansman are, are 100 % entitled to think it's not good on ethical grounds. I think you can say, I think you can watch a movie and say, this is a, probably a 10 out of 10 cinematically, but because of

what I think the movie's doing. It's a terrible movie. We talked about the first Joker at the beginning, and I think it looks pretty good. It's very cinematic, you could say, but I just don't like what it's doing at all. Maybe I shouldn't have brought it back around to that.

Joe George (03:15:56.104)
I

Joe George (03:16:03.878)
I mean, gosh.

Joe George (03:16:10.128)
Yeah, you're going to get me fired up again. No, no, I'll let it pass. Just a bad, bad movie. Don't watch that.

Eli (03:16:11.43)
It's too late. I already did it. We can pick it back up when we talk on the next episode. Or maybe we shouldn't. But yeah, that's all we have for this week. If you have any thoughts on Schindler's List, feel free to... it's always great to send...

Joe George (03:16:23.356)
That's true. I do write about Joker in my book, so...

Eli (03:16:40.44)
thoughts in, establishing shotpod.com you can find all the ways to contact me. There's lots of ways, all the the online ways you can contact me. But really that's it for this week. Joe is going to be joining me again next week for just going to interview him a little bit about some of his work. He's written a book about

superhero movies through kind of a theological lens. So we'll hear a little bit from him about that and then yeah that's that's we'll pick back up with The Lost World the week after that. So that's what we've got coming up. More dinosaurs. It is really strange to kind of put dinosaur parentheticals around Schindler's List, but

This is the predicament I've put myself in with this series. So Yeah, I Yes, it's spill. I'll blame it on Spielberg But Joe, why don't you tell people where the best places to follow you are?

Joe George (03:17:40.021)
Well Spielberg put you in it.

Joe George (03:17:50.54)
I am JoeWritesWords on all of the socials. It's basically the same information on all of them. I just copy and paste until one of them wins, but JoeWritesWords on all of them or joewriteswords.com.

Eli (03:17:55.374)
Great.

Eli (03:17:58.957)
Mm-hmm.

Eli (03:18:02.445)
All right.

Eli (03:18:06.478)
Cool. Alright, and I'll make sure to put that in the episode description in a link so people can just click on that. But yeah, thanks for coming on. That is all we have for this week. I've been Eli Price for Joe George. You've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.