Latest / Cinema Yūgen / "Inside the Mind of Bill Oberst Jr.: From Stage to Screen"
Transcript
- 0:00G'day. That's right, it's that time again. Time for Cinema Yugen.
- 0:17Yes, welcome back. Cinema Yugen, new episode.
- 0:20Bill Oberst Jr., the American stage, film and television actor of German descent,
- 0:25Then known for his work in horror and cult films, his career includes projects
- 0:28for film, television, one-man show, theatre performances.
- 0:31He first received recognition for his portrayal of
- 0:34icon and humorist Louis Grizzard as he performed in theatrical tours across
- 0:41the southern United States and played the Facebook stalker in the 2011 online
- 0:47interactive video film and Facebook app Take This Lollipop and its 2020 sequel.
- 0:53Sequel we are proud to welcome the excellent most
- 0:57excellent and Emmy award-winning talent at home on his balcony with the sun
- 1:03setting the American flag flying in the breeze Bill on his rocking chair it
- 1:08couldn't be any more Norman Rockwell please welcome the Emmy award-winning legend himself.
- 1:16William, or Bill, Oberst, Jr., Will.
- 1:20Bill, welcome to Cinema Yugen.
- 1:24Thank you very much. So we're outdoors on my end. I'm going to try this.
- 1:30Every time I've tried it before, it's been like Leap Flour City.
- 1:33Right. But it's quiet now. It's in the afternoon here. Yeah.
- 1:38Let's see. Sounds we might hear. the lady
- 1:42across the street has a wonderful new baby and sometimes
- 1:44she'll come out with her and coo to her on the board which is
- 1:47nice the kid next door plays t-ball
- 1:50and sometime you'll hear that but you know those are summertime sounds
- 1:53and yeah they're good sounds to me sometimes i just can't i can't be indoors
- 1:58anymore you know i just need to be outside no like hey that's fine wherever
- 2:02you're comfortable we're happy to have you as comfortable as possible it looks
- 2:06very idyllic there with the American flag and the rocking chair and the golden light of afternoon.
- 2:13Well, that's the golden illusion of America, isn't it? It's very Norman Rockwell.
- 2:20I'll take Rockwell whenever I can get him at this point.
- 2:24Bill, I just noticed in looking through all of your stuff prior to the interview,
- 2:28we have a lot of crossover, mainly some former guests and collaborators.
- 2:32You worked on a film recently, Killcraft, with my former guests,
- 2:38Mark Savage, Jeff Miller, producer, and also a collaborator of mine,
- 2:43Michael Paré, who I've done a couple of films with.
- 2:45You see the poster up behind me there, Righteous Blood, a Western,
- 2:50and a vampire movie with Michael.
- 2:52So yeah i am
- 2:55a huge huge mark savage fan i have
- 2:58to tell you i would make he says this to me i think he means it i know i mean
- 3:05it if i could do nothing but make movies with mark savage i would do it but
- 3:09all the films we make can they'd be weird just artsy culty freaky films,
- 3:16and most people don't want to finance those kind of movies but that's what mark
- 3:20and i both love so Anytime I get a chance to work with them, I love it.
- 3:23He's a good bloke, Mark. He's a top bloke. He's an Aussie. He's a top Aussie bloke.
- 3:30But yeah, so I just noticed that and I thought, yeah, I've had Jeff on.
- 3:34I've had Mark on. I've had Michael on.
- 3:36Worked with Michael on a couple of films. So that was a nice bit of crossover.
- 3:40And going back into some of your own. Who's that?
- 3:42Michael Perret, do you mean? Yeah, Michael Perret. I just did another film with
- 3:48Michael Perret called Water's Edge.
- 3:53In fact, they gave me this lovely- Oh, there you go. Water's Edge.
- 3:57Yeah, see, it takes something away from every movie.
- 3:59Right. And I'll tell you, Michael Perret sells a punch or a gunshot better than
- 4:06anybody I've ever seen. He's good, isn't he? A-list, B-list.
- 4:10That guy can sell it. i've killed
- 4:13him and he's killed me and when he kills
- 4:16me it don't look as good as when i kill him because
- 4:19you would swear that a bullet's hitting that man he
- 4:22is so freaking good so good he's got
- 4:25he's got such a great intensity in his action and also in his silence when he
- 4:29just sort of stares back at you there's you know it's like they talk about those
- 4:34actors where you can even they're not saying anything like like robert de niro
- 4:38is probably a an often thrown out example where he just has those scenes where
- 4:42he's just staring at someone and you can see the wheels like.
- 4:46Turning like what he's thinking you know like the scene in goodfellas
- 4:49when he knows he's gonna whack morty and he's
- 4:52just staring at him and he's smoking that cigarette and it's all in the eyes
- 4:55you know and and not many directors mark does it and indie directors do it but
- 5:02not many directors big big money directors anymore will let a camera just linger
- 5:07on eyes like that anymore like you know,
- 5:11Scorsese and all these people did in the seventies and even into the eighties,
- 5:17everything's got to move now, you know, but sometime the most interesting thing
- 5:20to watch is another human being thinking.
- 5:23Yes, I agree. I agree. And, and, and you, you can allude to anything else or
- 5:29it's one of those great spots where the audience can sort of fill in.
- 5:32You know, I like movies that, that, that don't sort of cross all the T's and dot all the I's.
- 5:37And there's moments where you're, you're required to go, Oh, what is he thinking?
- 5:41Maybe he's not thinking about it. Me too. I'm okay with walking out of a movie
- 5:45thinking, what just happened?
- 5:49I'm really okay with that. I don't need everything explained.
- 5:55I did a movie once, an indie film, where I was a killer, and the director decided
- 6:01that for no reason at all, I should always have apples.
- 6:03I was either eating the apple or shining the apple.
- 6:06In the inside of my car, I killed people with a fireman's axe.
- 6:10In the inside of my it was just a lot of fun in the inside of my car I had like
- 6:14boxes of apples it was just for no reason free right right but then when it
- 6:20came time to edit damn that they didn't add in a voiceover that explained what
- 6:25the apples oh really I was like no.
- 6:28It should be just weird,
- 6:31Yeah, yeah, just a tick almost. Like, you know, he's always got an apple.
- 6:37I hate when they do that. They feel the need to stick up a title card or a voiceover
- 6:41explaining, like, this is what you're about to see, sort of.
- 6:44It completely ruins it. I know that great film, Alex Proyas,
- 6:47who's also been my guest, in talking about the film he made,
- 6:51a great film he made back in the 90s, a seminal film, Really Dark City.
- 6:55And the theatrical release was completely, like, they gave the game away with an opening.
- 7:00They made keitha sutherland do an opening uh
- 7:03monologue which basically gave away
- 7:06the plot no it's just like well i i did
- 7:09a film two years ago called great land
- 7:12very artsy dystopian film and
- 7:16i was a philanthropist somehow connected
- 7:19with the end of the world but i was in a bathtub and in
- 7:22front of me was a lotus flower with live cockroaches
- 7:26on it and my guy was really into
- 7:29watching the cockroaches on a lotus flower never explained ken
- 7:32nobody said what no and nobody else
- 7:35in the scene questioned why i was in
- 7:38the bathtub with the cockroaches on lotus flower it's just that was that world
- 7:43that reality that's what i like but man you you don't get it often as an actor
- 7:49yeah no no well like that scene in um vernal herzog did it had a go at bad lieutenant
- 7:55and And there's that scene where they're waiting at that stakeout and,
- 7:58and there's a, the iguana on the, uh.
- 8:01On the chair, and he's more focused on the iguana than Nicolas Cage,
- 8:06and Nicolas Cage standing in the background looking at the iguana,
- 8:09and, yeah, it's completely nothing to do with the story, but it was like a weird
- 8:13improvised, seemed like a weird improvised moment.
- 8:16Like, that's what life is, right? It's not the plot.
- 8:20Ray Bradbury, one of my favorite writers, said in a novel, it's never the plot,
- 8:24it's all about the asides.
- 8:26The plot is just, so, like, the plot of life, And I believe all of our lives
- 8:31do have a plot, the things we do every day and the things society expects us to do.
- 8:35We do them so that we can have the moments to do what we're doing now or what
- 8:41you do with your wife or your husband or your kid or the stranger you meet. It's the asides, man.
- 8:46I truly believe that's the point of life. Yeah. No, I love Bradbury.
- 8:51I read quite often. I love that
- 8:54the illustrated man, both the book and the film, but more so the book.
- 8:57Some of those stories in there i think just standalone
- 9:00are fantastic i know i often think of
- 9:03that one that's in there where the the space travelers land on
- 9:06this planet and they find out that maybe it's
- 9:09jesus or god or the supreme being has been there and one guy takes off chasing
- 9:15him and they tell the guys that stay there don't worry about following he'll
- 9:20chase him for five years and get within five minutes and they're chasing for
- 9:24another 10 years and he'll get within a few minutes but he'll never actually catch up with it.
- 9:29You know that one? Yeah, and that's the perfect metaphor for trying to find
- 9:33the divine. You're never going to do it.
- 9:37But it's the quest. That's what matters. Oh, yeah. The journey.
- 9:43As Alan Watts once said, when you dance, it's never about where you end up.
- 9:47It's just about the dance.
- 9:49That is so true. I'm rereading Lord of the Rings at the moment,
- 9:53and it's only about the journey. Mm.
- 9:57You know? Yeah. I mean, the beginning and the end are the beginning and the
- 10:01end, but what you do in the middle is up to you. It's good to talk to you.
- 10:05You're unusual because you're willing to go down all these little side eddies.
- 10:09Thank you. Oh, you're welcome, mate.
- 10:12I've had a lot of practice, but, you know, I can't take any credit for it.
- 10:20I'm a chemical concoction created by my parents, so I'm just playing the cards.
- 10:27I'm dealt with you, Bill.
- 10:29I think that if I wrote my autobiography, it would be called,
- 10:33But I Digress. But I Digress.
- 10:39But anyway, moving on, I listened to an old interview, 11 years ago,
- 10:44interview that you did for a site called Film Courage.
- 10:48And there was a rather interesting, something you said that Matt,
- 10:52our mutual friend, Matt Chasen, said to you, where you got it from him,
- 10:55that was, perception is reality.
- 10:59In this business, perception is reality because this business is nothing but perception.
- 11:11And sometimes, not all the times, but sometimes my name will end up on a list
- 11:15that a distributor has that says, this guy will help you get distribution if
- 11:20you have all these people.
- 11:21And Eric Roberts. If you have Eric Roberts plus one of the other people,
- 11:25you get distribution. And that's perception.
- 11:29There's no way to know if these things are true. But by the people with the
- 11:36power saying that they are true, they become true. because people act on what
- 11:42the people with the power say.
- 11:44So it's just perception. When I was nothing, I mean, I had only done,
- 11:50I don't know, one or two things in horror and none of them were good.
- 11:55And Matt Chasen was my new manager and we would go to an event and he would
- 12:01say, I want you to meet Bill O'Brice Jr., the hottest name in indie horror.
- 12:05And so afterwards I said, Matt, that's not true.
- 12:10And he said, it is now. And so because he introduced me that way,
- 12:14I got work. You supply the headlines. I'll supply them.
- 12:18And the work, right, the work multiplied until it kind of became true at points.
- 12:23Right, yeah. Yeah, until, as they say in the writing game, they say,
- 12:27until your skills catch up with your ambition.
- 12:30Or maybe in the old vinyl days, until you catch up with your own liner notes.
- 12:33Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you finally become the legend that you are inside your own mind.
- 12:40And then and then if you ever realize that
- 12:43you are your own blurbs or liner
- 12:46notes you should quit right then right everything after
- 12:49that's gonna be while you're on top because it's only gonna get worse yeah
- 12:56yeah yeah then you're gonna start to say do you know who i am that's the end
- 13:02yeah yeah once yeah once you have to introduce yourself that's uh that's that's
- 13:07death isn't it I think the progression in my business is,
- 13:12Who the hell is Bill Obers Jr. Get me Bill Obers Jr.
- 13:15Give me a younger Bill Obers Jr. And that's the end.
- 13:19Right, right. Yeah, yeah. When they want someone like you, but not actually you.
- 13:25Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Get me someone that's like him.
- 13:30Or in the writing game, they say, can you make it more like Spider-Man?
- 13:36Can you make it more like Spider-Man? Yeah, like you send them a script for,
- 13:40I don't know, something in action or a Western.
- 13:42And then they go, that's a great script. Love it. Fantastic.
- 13:45Don't want to change a word. But if you can make it a little bit more like Spider-Man.
- 13:52And how do you respond to that?
- 13:55I just go, well, I said, do you mean with the fluidity and action or do you
- 14:00mean you want Spider-Man in the movie?
- 14:03And they go, no, but exciting and a hero and against evil and it's exciting
- 14:09and he's got maybe a secret power.
- 14:12Like a secret identity like Spider-Man and I go, yeah, but you don't want Spider-Man.
- 14:19They know, but like you said, I want someone like Spider-Man.
- 14:23I don't, I don't want, I don't want the Spider-Man. I want a Spider-Man,
- 14:28you know, just like Bill Murray in, in Groundhog Day.
- 14:33You know, I'm a God. I'm not, I'm a God, not the God, you know.
- 14:40It's, it's correct. Look, I have no answers for some, I'm sure you as an actor,
- 14:45so you have no answer for some diabolically stupid notes.
- 14:51You know, like, why does the car have to be green?
- 14:55I don't care. It's a car, like a green, black, whatever you can get, really.
- 15:00You know, it's like that producer that thought Singapore was a made-up place.
- 15:04Have you heard that story?
- 15:05No. There's a famous producer that worked with, I think it was,
- 15:10I forget what director it was, and they were making a film which Glenn Close was in.
- 15:14It was called Paradise Road, and it's the story of the women in the Japanese
- 15:18prison camps back in the 1940s.
- 15:22And he was reading the script and he says yeah it's it's good
- 15:25but we need to change the name of this place singapore it
- 15:29sounds made up and they said you don't know singapore and he goes oh it's a
- 15:35real place and yeah it's it's the capital of malaysia ah right okay well i guess
- 15:40it can stay then oh that's great but uh yeah crazy crazy stuff but uh listen
- 15:47you don't just two movies,
- 15:49I love one-man theatrical productions and seeing actors on the stage.
- 15:53I think that actors accelerate when they're on the stage.
- 15:56I remember seeing a great one-man show with Stephen Berkhoff many,
- 16:00many years ago doing Shakespeare's Villains.
- 16:02You can still see clips of it online in places, on YouTube. You can find anything on YouTube.
- 16:08But you did a one-man show, Adversary, which is a show about the devils.
- 16:13Yeah. I've done several one-man shows in my life.
- 16:17I played Ray Bradbury on stage in a show called Ray Bradbury Lived Forever off-Broadway.
- 16:22I've done an adaptation of Ray's story, Pillar of Fire, which is one of the
- 16:28earliest things he ever wrote about The Last Corpse. Okay, you know, it's a great story.
- 16:34She's got permission to do it as a one-man piece and did it in Europe and America.
- 16:39And then currently, I'm touring with a thing I created, which is called Adversary,
- 16:44and it's about the way, I call it Adversary, a show about Satan.
- 16:48It's about the way people have seen the figure of Satan in all kinds of traditions,
- 16:54scripture and short stories.
- 16:55I've got a Dostoevsky short story, Robert Louis Stevenson, a
- 16:58little bit of Mark Twain in there john milton paradise lost
- 17:02it's all the different ways to look at the devil and because
- 17:05i'm really interested in evil and how we
- 17:08think about evil so yeah touring with that it's just a little solo show i'm
- 17:13glad to hear you say that you like solo shows because you know they're they're
- 17:17tough to get people to come to because they're like oh you know how exciting
- 17:21could it be it's just you know it's one man or it's just one woman yeah but
- 17:24it's it's a very intimate thing isn't it Oh, wonderful.
- 17:28Wonderful. I have a friend who saw him live. I never got the chance,
- 17:31but I would love to have seen Spaulding Gray doing his monologues.
- 17:35You didn't ever see Spaulding Gray doing his thing while he was alive? No.
- 17:42You know, Val Kilmer, God rest him, did a wonderful Mark Twain, and I got to see that.
- 17:47Yes, I actually read his book, oddly enough, not long before he passed.
- 17:51He was a great, great kick-ass Mark Twain show. way.
- 17:57Yeah. Yeah. I actually interviewed, uh, Jeffrey Coombs reanimator when he was
- 18:03doing his, uh, Edgar, Edgar Allen Poe show.
- 18:07I don't know if you saw caught that or saw that, but, uh, he was fantastic in that. Jeffrey really.
- 18:13I think the theatre elevates what you have sometimes. Like I was saying about
- 18:19Stephen Berkhoff, people know him from being the bad guy in Bond films and one of the Rambo films.
- 18:27And he's kind of the cookie-cutter, bad, evil Russian guy.
- 18:32And you don't really get to see how good an actor he is until you see him on
- 18:37stage for two hours with no props or nothing, just doing Shakespeare.
- 18:41And he is marvellous. he's 10 times better than he is in the films people who
- 18:47have never been to a theatrical show before i would encourage them to try a
- 18:51one-man show to start out with because it's it's so intimate it's a conversation
- 18:57and if you go see a one-man show people who have never been,
- 19:01know that the person who's on stage is really
- 19:05trying to feel you yes we
- 19:08it's not the same as doing a performance that's the
- 19:11same every night like when i'm doing it i'm
- 19:14really i want to feel you and where
- 19:17you are and where i need to be and i know people say oh
- 19:20you know it's the same words but it's it's different man every
- 19:24audience is different it's really a
- 19:27seduction it's like oh you like that yeah and then like you know i like humans
- 19:33like the show that i see you do will be different to the show that you'll do
- 19:37for the next absolutely the next night each audience is a single person I think
- 19:43of them as, and they'll never exist again.
- 19:46And even as a performer, like.
- 19:49The state of mind that you're in at that exact moment in your life,
- 19:52that won't happen again.
- 19:54So it helps if you're doing three shows a day, it helps to think I've never
- 19:59met this audience before and I've never been who I'm going to be in five minutes
- 20:04and I'll never be, we'll never be together again.
- 20:06This is a once in a lifetime day that helps to make it fresh.
- 20:11Oh, sure, sure. And it makes it all the more impactful as a memory,
- 20:16knowing that really it's kind of like you're giving that performance for that
- 20:20audience alone, even though you're doing multiple shows in multiple venues or whatever.
- 20:26That one show, the moments that they remember are just almost for them because you won't do it.
- 20:33I mean, you will do the same text, but you
- 20:36won't do it exactly the same the next night or
- 20:39matinee or whatever the case a laugh is
- 20:42weird in a show a cup i've done
- 20:45i toured as a southern comedian named
- 20:49lewis grisari he was a huge author and
- 20:52newspaper columnist in the south in
- 20:55the 80s and the 90s so his family contracted with
- 20:58me and i toured for 15 years as him so it's my
- 21:01first experience doing stand-up because the first act was nothing but the
- 21:04stand-up comedy he used to do and i learned that unless
- 21:07you're isolated in a spotlight you don't get the
- 21:09laughs right the more spill the
- 21:13less laughs and if there's any can lights
- 21:16overhead like some theaters will insist on leaving on you
- 21:19know the cans on like 10 or something no laughs
- 21:22if people can see each other less laughs
- 21:26right like it's best if it's completely dark
- 21:29and they're not aware of anything but what's in the
- 21:32little spotlight there right right and i
- 21:35found that really interesting because then
- 21:38the audience can cohere together but they don't realize they're cohering together
- 21:44it's kind of like the old days of being in a movie theory you know yeah yeah
- 21:48yeah it's i think that i think that sometimes the the audience out there in
- 21:54the dark if they know that it's dark enough.
- 21:57So if there's something that may be considered any appropriate that they either
- 22:02laugh at or want to applaud to and not be so self-conscious,
- 22:07because as you say, the house lights are not all the way down.
- 22:11And they teach each other too, because you'll have people who catch certain
- 22:16references and they'll laugh or they'll gasp or whatever their reaction is.
- 22:20And other people who may not even have caught the reaction, they
- 22:24catch the emotion and they're pulled into
- 22:27it too it's that way with tears i've drawn tears on stage and you can feel the
- 22:34first person just a little you can hear in a silent theater and then you can
- 22:39hear it spreading like we're able to as human beings to.
- 22:45We're contagious that's what i'm trying to
- 22:48say oh sure so why the hell
- 22:51don't we spread good diseases right yes
- 22:55instead of lousy deadly to
- 22:58say why are we always spreading these poison between
- 23:01us because we're highly contagious no sure and enthusiasm and passion is some
- 23:08of the most contagious diseases and i think that it helps theatrical productions
- 23:13i don't think also i think it helps films although some might argue that the
- 23:18films that have had the most tempestuous,
- 23:22gestations are the ones that seem to last forever but i
- 23:25don't always think so i think sometimes the films or the
- 23:28or the or the theatrical uh plays where everyone has such a great time and it's
- 23:35sad for them when it's over i can also have that same resonance because the
- 23:40enthusiasm and the passion involved in the project spills over into the audience
- 23:45don't you think yes absolutely.
- 23:49But on the subject of the entertainment business i was reading a lot of,
- 23:54news this morning and there's a lot of uh i know
- 23:57that you used to be out in la and uh the
- 24:00news is is extraordinarily grim like there
- 24:03was an article not that long ago about how la is becoming the
- 24:06new detroit as far as because all the all of the
- 24:09production is is moving out of town how do
- 24:12you feel about the the state of the business yeah
- 24:16it's very sad it's it's
- 24:19really all i can say is it's very sad and who's
- 24:23to blame i don't know man i i often think it's a lack of imagination in one
- 24:29way yeah because we've we've trained a whole generation of audiences now to
- 24:34expect only one type of movie and that's the only Spider-Man it's the only type of movie exactly,
- 24:42Mike and Moll like Spider-Man that makes money,
- 24:46and pays for these extravagant budgets and we've forgotten,
- 24:51Hollywood hasn't forgotten how to make small good movies, I see them,
- 24:56sometimes I get to be in them but we, audiences I think that we as a society,
- 25:03as viewers, have forgotten how to watch them.
- 25:07Yes. Yeah. No, I'm in totally agreeance with you as someone who reviews independent
- 25:14films as well as interviewing people who work in them.
- 25:19There is there i mean i can i can
- 25:22tell that most people wouldn't go a regular
- 25:25cinematic or multiplex audience wouldn't go
- 25:28and see some of the films that i review documentary
- 25:32shorts all that kind of thing simply because they
- 25:35they would pick it apart within five minutes because as you
- 25:38said they've been conditioned over the past decade
- 25:41or so uh yeah that we're we're
- 25:45self-referential too we can't lose ourself in
- 25:48any reality that someone presents to
- 25:52us because we're so aware of
- 25:55the mechanics yes that
- 25:59we can't lose ourself in the organic material that that
- 26:02doesn't sound too weird like we're all about
- 26:04we know now everybody knows about the composition
- 26:07of the shot and even what a dolly is and
- 26:11everybody thinks that they're the best critic of
- 26:14actors and directors and so we're just programmed
- 26:17to look at the mechanics instead of losing ourself
- 26:20in the world well i mean i
- 26:23i don't think i've ever especially in the last 10 years heard more talk about
- 26:27film that's primarily related to how much it cost and how much it made as opposed
- 26:33to how good or bad the film is yeah mostly they talk about oh this film cost
- 26:40blah blah blah 100 million.
- 26:42And they spent blah, blah, blah, 100 million and they made blah,
- 26:46blah, blah, blah, 100 million and that means it's good.
- 26:49And then you go and see the film and it's not very good at all.
- 26:53Yeah, yeah.
- 26:55And we're celebrity horrors too, and that doesn't help because we're all caught
- 27:00up in a name that we recognize.
- 27:04Who's in it? I don't know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I never heard of them.
- 27:07And that's the kiss of death. That's the end of it. It doesn't matter if it's a good film.
- 27:11It doesn't matter that there are an infinite number of things we've never heard of. I love to read.
- 27:16I got two books out here. I was reading, waiting for the interview.
- 27:19Right, yeah. And there's an infinite number of books that I never heard of that are wonderful.
- 27:25And I find them. I read a New York Review of books, a book I've never heard
- 27:29of. I'm going to take a chance on this.
- 27:32But we don't seem to do that as much anymore with our visual entertainment.
- 27:37We want the known and the familiar.
- 27:40And then we wonder why we're not satisfied.
- 27:43Yes, very true. Very true. I mean, if only the general public could see a lot
- 27:49of the films and documentaries that I see, they would be absolutely floored
- 27:54because in the independent sphere,
- 27:56they're still making films that aren't based on books, comic books,
- 28:06pre-existing IPs.
- 28:08It's old school filmmaking. Someone had an idea and got a bunch of films together
- 28:12and decided to share a dream, tell a story.
- 28:16I mean, it's magic. In my own genre.
- 28:19Heyday well i mean there's been several heydays of horror but a lot
- 28:22of directors i worked with the 80s was their heyday for
- 28:25horror the original freddy krueger it
- 28:29was born of an experience that the director knew of involving a friend of his
- 28:35who'd come back from the war in korea it was an original idea and so you're
- 28:41not gonna get you can't go back to that idea again and say well we're going
- 28:47to have Jackie Earl Haley playing this time.
- 28:49Right. Right. It's, it's no longer a fresh idea, but we don't want to leave
- 28:53any ideas behind because we're leaving money on the table. Yeah. Yeah.
- 28:58And she's, I, you know, I don't know if maybe there's an, there is an audience
- 29:03for these kinds of films we're talking about and they just never get them.
- 29:06Yeah. Or, or maybe, maybe there isn't an audience anymore.
- 29:11Maybe people think they would, but if they actually had to sit through an indie
- 29:16film, and they'd go, oh my gosh, you know, what is this?
- 29:19And you go, well, it's character development. You've got to live with this woman
- 29:22for a while and then you've got to learn about her life.
- 29:24You go, oh, geez. I don't know.
- 29:27Yeah, they're too used to the hero showing up in the first five minutes or the
- 29:32monster appearing in the first five minutes to keep people wired in and interested
- 29:37because the character, you know.
- 29:39It's sad that you watch some of these big films and when all the characters
- 29:43are dying, I don't really care because I haven't really got to know them.
- 29:46Because their story is secondary to the monster fighting or the superhero fighting.
- 29:53I'm an old Star Trek guy, and I really love the original Wrath of Khan.
- 29:59It moved me. It made me cry. Oh, wonderful film, yes. Spock died,
- 30:02and it was about something.
- 30:04So when the new one came out, I was really excited, and I went to see it,
- 30:08big theater in L.A., premiere.
- 30:11And while I was watching it, I was like, yeah, this is great.
- 30:15But when I walked out, I couldn't remember a damn thing that happened because
- 30:19so much happened and none of it mattered.
- 30:21And I didn't feel anything.
- 30:25Yes. There's the key word right there. I feel that the best,
- 30:30whether it be books, films, plays, you leave with something,
- 30:34not something physical.
- 30:36You leave with something that you remember, something it was an experience.
- 30:42And maybe something that will mean something to you different times in your life.
- 30:48Casablanca is a movie like that depending on where you are in your romantic
- 30:52life and the original Wrath of Khan was like that when I saw it I was you know
- 30:57Spock died and this was the big deal but now that I'm older,
- 31:00I realized that Kirk was asked for the first time in his life to take responsibility
- 31:06for something he'd done.
- 31:08Yeah. And he could, and he damn couldn't do it. He could not.
- 31:13And it was done. It was done with such beautiful economy. And that one shot,
- 31:18when he turns to where Spock usually sits behind him and Spock's not in the chair.
- 31:23And that says everything.
- 31:27That's everything. Yeah. So, okay. So I recently watched Peter Pan,
- 31:33the Disney, which I'd never seen. Silly, but I never saw it.
- 31:37So as I watched it, I realized being older, Peter Pan is not really,
- 31:42it's not good to be Peter Pan because Peter was very irresponsible and he caused people's death.
- 31:49He caused people's dismemberment. Right.
- 31:52I mean, he was so, he was just, you couldn't depend on Peter Pan for anything.
- 31:57Yes. But what he did have was spontaneity.
- 32:01And so at the end of the film, the father, I think he's Mr. Darling, maybe.
- 32:08He remembers when he was a boy that he also, you know, saw Peter Pan's ship in the moon.
- 32:14Well, he's an adult with responsibility, but he had lost spontaneity.
- 32:17But at the end, he has the two together.
- 32:20So I thought back, Wrath of Khan, Kirk was Peter Pan.
- 32:26He skipped out on everybody and everything, and he did it with such cavalierness
- 32:31that they were like, oh, you know, Captain Kirk.
- 32:33But now, at the end, when, and he makes the reference to Peter Pan with first
- 32:39start of the ride, second start of the ride, straight on until morning,
- 32:42and McCoy says, McCoy says, how do you feel, Jim?
- 32:46And he says, young. I feel young.
- 32:49Because now he's earned the right to have the youthful spontaneity because he's
- 32:55taken on the responsibility.
- 32:57And that's decades after I saw the original film, connecting it to another piece
- 33:03of art. That's what a good movie should do.
- 33:05Stay with you through your life. That's true.
- 33:08It's true. Sorry, I didn't mean for that to be such a rant. No, that's marvelous.
- 33:13As it has been marvelous to talk to our guest this morning, Bill Oberst Jr.
- 33:18Bill has a YouTube channel.
- 33:20We'll put all the links in the description to all of Bill's stuff.
- 33:23Bill, is there anything else you'd like to plug for our audience?
- 33:26Anything you've got coming up
- 33:27that you'd like to alert people to that's coming soon? Oh, my God. Yeah.
- 33:33I did four last year, and I've done two so far this year.
- 33:39I did a film called Hurricane, which is a great title.
- 33:44It's about the worst hurricane ever, and it happens in this demon-haunted house,
- 33:50which is going to be really good.
- 33:51That's the Denise Gossick. and slash watch.
- 33:54The ultimate killer Bigfoot movie, that's the tagline, and it is.
- 33:59It's the best Bigfoot movie. I've been killed by Bigfoot.
- 34:03I was hung upside down and gutted by Bigfoot in one movie. Bigfoot ripped off
- 34:07my arm and used it as a club to beat another guy to death in another Bigfoot movie.
- 34:12This one is the best Bigfoot movie I've ever done, and it's called Slashquatch,
- 34:16and people are going to love it. It's a lot of fun.
- 34:18So, yeah, that's a couple that come right to mind. Sounds like it's part of
- 34:22my complete breakfast, Bill.
- 34:24Thank you for being on cinema you can check all the
- 34:26links in the description bill you're a
- 34:29gentleman and a scholar and that's a very beautiful idyllic
- 34:33setting that we have you in this afternoon thank you
- 34:36for being on cinema you can thank you for letting me
- 34:39talk about absolutely nothing with such passion and
- 34:42listening yes bill o burst junior what
- 34:45a bloke what a talent what a guy check out
- 34:49everything that bill has coming and you can
- 34:51do that by checking the links in the
- 34:55description so go there now check the links in
- 34:57the description bill oberst jr check him out now and as always my little yugenites
- 35:05thank you for listening to us on spotify or wherever you choose to listen to
- 35:10your favorite podcasts i'm ken hill and until next time you've been listening to Cinema,
- 35:16Zero Game.
- 35:19Music.