Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark – Details, episodes & analysis

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Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

David Jansen

Tv & Film

Frequency: 1 episode/17d. Total Eps: 74

Why, in a world crowded with opinions on films, do we need another podcast? I want to go through films that transcend, for me, what you're seeing on the screen and make you feel. Or make you think. Or both. That bring you alive, whether in a movie seat, on a couch, or propped up holding your phone. Every two weeks (or so) I'll be dropping a podcast of my thoughts on those movies, directors and actors which hit me hard emotionally.

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Repo Man

Tuesday, December 17, 2024 • Duration 45:46

Well, Noirvember may be over, but our journey into my made-up sub-genre, atomic noir, is not. It’s a cheery continuation for the holiday season. At least the next film has some humor in it, as opposed to the sadism in November’s Kiss Me Deadly… Thanks for those memories Mickey Spillane! This month: released in 1984 by Universal, it’s Repo Man, directed by Alex Cox on a shoestring budget of $1.5M, resulting in lasting indy fame and approbation. If you look it up on Wikipedia, they label it as science fiction black comedy. Oh, but it’s so much more! So, I’m slapping on my own label of atomic/punk/noir. But, yeah, there is a science fiction twist, and it does have some stealthy humor.

Why continue in this vein? Well, last month, we looked at the horror of mid-50s America, with its hide-under-the-bed fear of commies and pinkos, plus it’s palpable fear of the A-bomb. That whole scene blew open with the rise of white guy rock n’ roll, Kennedy kicking Nixon’s ass (well, by a slim margin), the rise of the counterculture, and the narrow atomic war escape of the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the clock ticking toward Armageddon nearly struck midnight. Whew! People woke up, man! But then, that was blown away by Johnson’s failure in Vietnam, the US actually losing a war, resulting in Nixon slithering into the White House for two terms (but now, the guy looks like an amateur), ending with the national nightmare of Watergate. Backlash to the Democrats and Jimmy Carter. But public trust had evaporated. Justice and higher ideals went out the window. People were tired --- they didn’t believe in much at the dawn of the 80s. Except maybe in going to B-school, working on Wall Street, and having a home in the Hamptons, with a pool and jet ski. Who rode in on a white horse to burnish this turn towards Mammon? Why, Ronald Reagan. Or, as Doc Brown memorably put it in Back To The Future --- “The actor?”

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Kiss Me Deadly

Season 2 · Episode 5

Tuesday, November 19, 2024 • Duration 42:37

It would still prove to be the American Century, but now it was overshadowed by the threat of the atom’s power. Air raid shelters were built in public buildings. Families dug and poured concrete in their backyards to construct personal bomb shelters. Food was stocked, with water, batteries, Bibles, bunk beds and lawn chairs. The US government produced films on how to survive an atomic war, and what our duties as citizens were in that event. Don’t believe me? Find the documentary The Atomic Café and decide what the government and military were trying to sell us. I was one of the millions of kids who learned to survive (perhaps?) an atomic blast by ducking and covering under my desk at school. At least survive the initial blast. The radiation was a different story. It was all responsible for an underlying uneasiness at all times, a subtle terror.

This coupled perfectly with the feelings of unseen threat and malaise that film noir captured. The style or genre was at the end of its first and classic cycle in the US by the mid 50s and the height of anti-Communist and atomic fear. But it had a final entry that pulled it all together with a director and cast that was little equaled, then or now --- Robert Aldrich’s 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, a classic film noir and fundamental influence on the French New Wave and auteurs such as Godard and Truffaut, as well as extending into the modern era, as we shall see next month. Distributed by United Artists, it had a winding path to excellence, but it’s now widely acknowledged as a mainstay of noir, stuffed with talent.

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Nosferatu The Vampyre

Season 2 · Episode 4

Tuesday, October 29, 2024 • Duration 01:00:24

Nosferatu 1922’s reputation grew down the years, especially among film lovers. One of these was German master director Werner Herzog. As the 70s ended, Herzog determined that he wanted to remake the film --- an homage to what he felt was the greatest film ever to come from Germany. In Season 1 of the pod, we’ve looked at the scope of Herzog’s work, and up close at one of his most moving films, Fitzcarraldo. Herzog is well-known for his capture of humans surviving under trying conditions, accomplishing tasks that are seemingly impossible, or unlikely. Further, he himself filmed in locations that would challenge even the best-equipped film companies --- in mountains, volcanoes, deserts, along the Amazon, amid the Siberian taiga, across the frozen Midwest. His work on Fitzcarraldo had led his backers to dub him “The Conquistador of the Useless,” as he struggled for years to film a steamship pulled by humans over a mountain. But he’s characterized himself as someone who captures the dreams of others, even dreams that turn out to be impossible to realize.

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Dracula

Season 2 · Episode 3

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 • Duration 58:33

For Scary Season 2024, we’re harkening back to a founding film in the genre of horror. In this era of the 21st Century, fans of horror are rich in the types of film they view to give themselves the creeps --- body horror, slasher films, psychological fear, the supernatural. But a film had to be the forerunner for Hollywood and the rest of the world to understand that the public wanted to be scared for their 25 cents (in 1931, probably now more like $25 --- Junior Mints included). Horror would put people in the seats and pay off. There’d been a few forerunners in the silent era --- German Expressionist films such as The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu (more on that to come). But the genre took off when Universal brought out the first in their classic series of monster films, with Dracula in 1931. In this lies a tale of, not just horror, but real-world crosscurrents in legend, in literature, symbolism, star power, typecasting, and longevity. And Universal taking horror to the bank until 1948.

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Mephisto

Season 2 · Episode 2

Tuesday, September 17, 2024 • Duration 39:23

Doesn’t seem like much of a bargain. An uber-being shows and coincidentally knows what you want --- merely sign away your post-existence --- usually in blood, that might be a clue! But repeatedly, people actually sign away their souls --- in the form of their pride, their morality, their sense of worth, friendships, family. Come on --- it’s an allegory! But what a tale! Why does it occur in the stories and representations of numerous cultures, religions, and nations? Perhaps because it explains away the failings of humans who make that irrational choice --- that opt to choose the power, the riches, the adoration and give away what really matters in return. That is --- a deal with the devil, whether you believe in the devil or not. Humans make that fatal choice, even if not confronted with a signpost such as a devilish Lucifer with a dripping bloody pen to incite you to sign. How does this fit with the German industrialists of The Damned from last month and their deals with the fascistic Nazis of the 1930s? As we saw, the trail of murder, betrayal, madness, and a lack of morality was well-rewarded, in the end, for the industrial family based on the Krupps of Germany. Machine guns for untold riches and power beyond reason? Why not? But to continue to use the fascism of Nazi Germany in the 30s as our background --- why did less powerful people sign on? Why did those in line to make a lesser fortune, or attain modest power, or simply to be left alone, go down the road hand-in-hand with the Nazis?

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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The Damned

Season 2 · Episode 1

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 • Duration 35:59

The middle and lower classes, so-called, ultimately flocked to the message of fascism, not just in Germany but even earlier, in Italy in the ‘20s under Mussolini. For a class of people who had little or less than in the past, who felt powerless, the allure of fascism was intense and compelling. But what of the intellectual class, of the already powerful capitalist members of society, what of the artists for whom fascism might lead to straited circumstances and censorship? How did they respond to a government that conceivably promised less control for them, in legislation, in industry, in the arts? Why not lead the call to remain a republic, to turn away from fascism, to educate the country on the dangers that might lie ahead? The takeover of Germany by the Nazis was relatively bloodless, mostly accomplished through the manipulation of democratic norms. Why was a beaten nation post-WWI in 1918 lulled into a world-wide conflagration a mere twenty years later? How had the leaders of Germany, in industry, in government, in the arts, failed so badly to rally the people to remain rational and democratic, leading to another decimation of Germany as a people and a nation?

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Sunset Boulevard

Season 1 · Episode 51

Tuesday, April 30, 2024 • Duration 38:33

It’s the end of season one, or cycle one, or Earth one, whatever you want to call it, for the pod… We wanted to end the season on something special and this film is just so --- a veritable treasure chest of recognizable and quotable lines for film fans. Tight as a drum, unfolding an incredibly well-written story in less than two hours, with a cast of three memorable headliners and fantastic support. It’s definitely noir, though some reviewers characterize it as black comedy as well, but justifiably one of the career pinnacles for writer and director Billy Wilder --- 1950’s Sunset Boulevard, from Paramount Pictures. Not just another noir pretty face, but widely acclaimed as one of the greatest films of all time. For all you wonderful people out there in the dark…

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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That Guy, Over There!

Season 1 · Episode 50

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 • Duration 37:06

You may have seen Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and if so, you know the moment in the film when Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton sees himself in a role on TV and points at the screen excitedly --- it’s a meme now. I do it all the time watching film, at least in my mind. I mentally point at the screen, and shout to myself --- “Yeah, there’s that guy! He’s great!” But who is that guy? Sometimes, I’ve seen the actor so many times I have his name committed to memory, but I’ll often have to ashamedly drag myself off to Wikipedia and look him up. They too serve who no one knows. So, this is my pod salute to those actors who are repeatedly great in their roles, never the headliner, never the second lead, but always driving the story forward and so enjoyable to watch. BTW, these are all men, but I have plans in season two of the pod to do a salute to women actors in similar circumstances --- probably femmes fatale. Because all of these male actors have primarily made their reputations as bad guys.

Who are they? They’re memorable actors, good actors, who made their mark in several roles and, for some, hundreds of roles over a long career. As what might be termed character actors, they have idiosyncrasies or tics that plant them in your mind and have producers phoning them up repeatedly, regardless of the genre of film being cast. The kind of actor you point at.

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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The Maltese Falcon

Season 1 · Episode 49

Tuesday, April 2, 2024 • Duration 39:08

My top noirs are Double Indemnity and Out Of The Past, in that order, but Falcon is special. Right out of the hard-boiled school of writing, the character of the unstoppable but human private detective as a noir mainstay, one of the more fatale of the femmes in the genre, the moody lighting and framing, the inevitability of the conclusion of a twisted scheme. Hey, all it lacks is a voice-over and flashbacks! Oh well. Falcon launched from one-time Pinkerton agent Dash Hammett’s typewriter in 1930. Run as a serial in the classic Black Mask pulp magazine, it was later published as a detective novel by Knopf. Hammett was often a denizen of San Francisco, setting the novel there and taking his given first name, Sam, for the name of his protagonist, Sam Spade. Hammett is often contrasted with a hard-boiled, slightly later contemporary, Raymond Chandler, whose own detective Phillip Marlowe was set irrevocably in LA. Chandler was more of a florid descriptor of the LA scene, while Hammett’s prose was exceedingly spare, with little of the setting of San Fran or deep details of the background of the story revealed. However, this made Hammett’s work perfect for a screenplay.

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Fargo

Season 1 · Episode 48

Tuesday, March 19, 2024 • Duration 01:02:23

We’ve gone through quite a few pods on film, especially film noir and police procedurals, but this might be the first that has a female protagonist as the main character! More’s the pity! But what a protagonist! Perhaps to make up for the previous imbalance, we’re going to encounter one of the fiercest, most insightful, and action-oriented characters yet, regardless of gender. She has high EQ, high IQ, empathy, but she’s also tough as nails, and wise. Nicely enough, she was the character that introduced me deeply, as she did for so many people, to the wonder of the Coen Brothers and their cinematic universe. Now, this is one cinematic universe I can get into…

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

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Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark – Details, episodes & analysis

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Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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