Mandy Kaplan:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Make Me a Nerd. I’m Mandy Kaplan, a mainstream mom whose mission it is to explore the world of nerd culture that I’ve been missing out on and afraid of my whole life. If you’re new to this podcast, first of all, welcome. Thank you for tuning in. My mission here was somewhat inspired by Penny on The Big Bang Theory. She was not a nerd. She was a mainstream gal, and she always explored what they were into and found something to love about it. She didn’t judge it.

And that’s what I want to do here. I want to find these sci-fi, fantasy, gaming things that I’ve never tried, and I want to see why people love them so hard. And I’m very excited to have my guest return. You were one of my first guests in the beginning here, and you have been afraid to come back, understandably so.

Andy Nelson:
I did come back once. I came back on the dinosaur one, the Jurassic Park episode with Pete and Tommy.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay, yes.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, yes. This is TruStory FM legend, podcaster extraordinaire, Andy Nelson. Welcome back.

Andy Nelson:
Hello. Thank you. Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here, and I’m thrilled to chat about this movie. And I hope you found something in it to enjoy.

Mandy Kaplan:
I found many, many things to enjoy.

Andy Nelson:
Excellent. Okay, good.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I found many, many things that would give me nightmares.

Andy Nelson:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I said, come back on the podcast. You really took your time.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
In choosing what you wanted to nerd out about with me, or nerdicate me about. What is your history with the movie Brazil? And for some people who, like me, didn’t know what it was, can you give just a quick one-minute summation of this wack-a-doodle movie and why you love it?

Andy Nelson:
Sure.

Well, okay, there’s a lot of questions in there. Let me just start with my history of it. I was a high school theater nerd, and inevitably, certain pockets of high school theater nerds will gravitate to Monty Python. And my group, we all gravitated to Monty Python. And then it became a quest to see what else these Monty Python guys ended up doing. And that led me to Terry Gilliam, who directed Time Bandits, which I loved as a kid. And I found Brazil. And at the time, I was like, okay, that’s an interesting movie.

And I didn’t even realize it until college, a few years later. I was working at a pizza shop, and my buddy Mike was very knowledgeable about film and would tell me stories about problems that films had, production issues, or battles between executives and the director, and all these sorts of things.

Mandy Kaplan:
We call that the tea now.

Andy Nelson:
The tea, right, exactly. And so Brazil had quite a storied history, because the version I saw—

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay, good.

Andy Nelson:
—was what Terry Gilliam, I think jokingly, calls the Love Conquers All version. It was a 90-minute version of the film that the head of Universal Studios at the time forced him to make, because he wanted a movie with a happy ending. It hadn’t been testing well, even though critics were loving it. It had already been awarded Best Film of the Year by the LA Critics—

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh.

Andy Nelson:
—Circle. But the studio head was like, no, this movie is dark, and you need to have a happy ending and cut it down, because it’s just too weird.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
And so Terry Gilliam reluctantly released this 90-minute version, even though there was a different version in Europe. And anyway, over time, he ended up finally getting his version out.

The Criterion Collection helped him re-release what ended up being the fifth and now the final version of the film, which is a much darker and longer version. And when I learned all of that, I was fascinated by the story.

And I tracked it down. And I watched it, and I just totally fell in love with just how dark the story is, but how crazy and darkly funny it is. There’s so much dark humor.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, there are lots of big laughs.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And just crazy stuff going on, really weird pokes at commercialism and industry and all of these different things. It’s a film that instantly became my favorite film. I’ve seen it countless times and just absolutely adore it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, first of all, I didn’t know you were a theater nerd, and so was I.

Andy Nelson:
Excellent, excellent.

Mandy Kaplan:
But I was not a Monty Python person.

Andy Nelson:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
I was a try-to-make-out-with-all-the-gay-boys-and-try-to-make-them-straight person.

Andy Nelson:
Okay. Different groups, yeah, different groups.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, that didn’t work out well. But time well spent for both of us.

Andy Nelson:
Yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
This movie is such a takedown of basically everything: of human nature, of corporations, of greed, of plastic surgery, of vanity.

Andy Nelson:
Sure.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s just a takedown. And the fact that it has such big laughs, I wrestled with a lot, because I spent such a large portion of this movie feeling very uncomfortable, as I think we are supposed to feel.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And we’re supposed to feel, I think, bleak and disturbed. And then they hit you with a classic joke, like when the guys are trying to put the stop back in the ground, and they say, careful, and they say, oh, we never make a mistake, and then they drop it and it plunges through to the next floor.

Andy Nelson:
Uh-huh. Yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I cackled. But I was like, but I’m watching horrifying things.

Andy Nelson:
Right. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Why am I—? I think I was amazed and baffled by how many different genres this movie is. It covers every genre.

Andy Nelson:
It tackles a lot. You’re right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
And I think that there is a line in satire, in this dark sort of satire, where sometimes the only way you can really watch a story that has so much darkness going on is by making fun of it and having those laugh moments.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
So you can see the absurdity of exactly how specific and ridiculous things can get when it leads to this point where this suit comes in after Buttle has been arrested and put into the giant sack, and he’s having his wife sign forms in triplicate. Like, make sure—okay, just press a little harder.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, yep.

Andy Nelson:
I mean, it’s so dark, but it’s so funny, and you’re getting all of that. And I think, yeah, there is a darker version of that story that isn’t made for laughs, but I just don’t think that, for me, it may stick as well.

Whereas this one, with the funny, I think I end up attaching to it so much more, because you can see just the abject horror in how these situations play out, and how frighteningly funny it can also be.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. I think I’ve said many times in my life and on this podcast, laughter through tears is one of my favorite moments in life. Anytime somebody is really in deep sadness and you can get a laugh through. Steel Magnolias, to me, is the classic example.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Steel Magnolias. I was about to say that, yep, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. That’s my favorite. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so nauseous and worried and anxious and on edge, and then cackled. That’s the difference for me.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It was like, why am I laughing?

Oh God, I feel deeply disturbed. I don’t know if I’m on to something or if you’re gonna think I’m nuts, but there were so many Nazi undertones. And it starts right off with him being removed forcibly from his home by—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
—cowardly masked people.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then later, this is way at the end, I wrote, the security, or whoever they are, this force, really resembled Nazis.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, as they do the boot step down the stairs.

Mandy Kaplan:
Stormtroopers. Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Right. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Is that intentional, or am I just paranoid?

Andy Nelson:
Oh, I think that’s definitely intentional. And I think, especially the scenes at the end, there’s a lot of authoritarianism that Terry Gilliam was pulling from.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Andy Nelson:
Specifically, some of those shots in that last moment, the boot steps coming down the stairs, the woman getting shot in the eye and her cleaning vac rolling, bouncing down the stairs. Those images are all pulled directly from Battleship Potemkin, which is about Russian soldiers who are on a ship fighting the authoritarian Russian regime and rising up. And so you get an actual point of recognition pointing to some of these specific moments in film. And I think Terry Gilliam was very aware of how these systems, by the way that they continue going down these roads where things get more and more specific and required and less human, I think it’s very easy to see how it can turn into something that feels like Nazism and the propaganda machine.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. So I will try not to get emotional, but no promises, because—

Andy Nelson:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
—I’m wondering if this movie would not have disturbed me so deeply if I had seen it when Obama was president. But our country is on the precipice.

Andy Nelson:
Hmm, interesting. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And we’ve passed the fucking precipice, excuse me. People are being forcibly kidnapped and detained. So this didn’t feel like this hypothetical what-if, oh gosh, could you imagine if someday? This felt so disturbing because we’re living it on some levels. And I’ve heard people talk about a movie called Idiocracy, a Mike Judge movie that I’ve never seen.

Andy Nelson:
Sure, yeah. Oh, yeah, you should watch that one too.

Mandy Kaplan:
About how that was prescient, and oh my gosh, can you believe we’re living it now. And this hurt my heart, because we’re living so many of these things now. And someone can be ripped away from his family for having committed no crime.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Very fair and frightening connection.

And I think that’s one of these things where I think the filmmakers behind any of these dystopian sorts of films, whether it’s a comedy like Idiocracy, or a dark satirical comedy like this, or something that’s just much more purely dystopian, I think the filmmakers at the time when they’re telling these stories are painting a picture of a potential place that we could end up.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, of course.

Andy Nelson:
If we keep going down these roads, that could be where we go.

Mandy Kaplan:
Cautionary tale, of course.

Andy Nelson:
And I think, to your point, what makes it frightening when you revisit films like this is that you see that the stories of watching these films have not helped us make things better.

Mandy Kaplan:
Correct.

Andy Nelson:
And I think it’s really hard to—

Mandy Kaplan:
Correct.

Andy Nelson:
—to struggle with the fact that some of these films are hitting a point where, unfortunately, they are feeling so much more true, so much more—

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Andy Nelson:
—relevant when we watch them forty, fifty years later.

And I think that is a very difficult thing. And I wonder—I haven’t heard Terry Gilliam speak to this film and where—I haven’t heard him speak at all regarding anything with the Trump presidency and where we are today.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
But I wouldn’t be surprised if he recognized a lot of the horrors that he was depicting.

Mandy Kaplan:
How can you not? Yes.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
One of my favorite novels of all time is The Handmaid’s Tale. And I read that in the eighties when it came out.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, just read that. Great book. Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I loved it, loved it, loved it. And it gave me tingles and chills in all the right ways. And then the series came out when Trump was president, and everyone’s like, there’s finally a series, you’re gonna watch it, right?

Andy Nelson:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
No, can’t do it. Can’t do it now.

Andy Nelson:
Oh.

Mandy Kaplan:
When that felt like just some distant imaginative fiction, I could handle it, and I loved it.

Andy Nelson:
A fiction. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I’m extraordinarily sensitive.

And the world-building of this movie is so complete, and good, and bleak, and scary, that it just hit so close to home, as opposed to something like Star Wars. The world-building is very good in Star Wars, don’t get me wrong.

Andy Nelson:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
But it doesn’t feel attainable. It doesn’t feel like I could walk out my front door and this is what my city could look like tomorrow.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It reminded me of past episode Blade Runner, which also left its mark on me, because I had never seen that.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I don’t deal well with this dystopian, bleak thing. I loved the series The Penguin.

Andy Nelson:
Oh yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Which I did on Make Me a Nerd. Those are two episodes that very much came back for me in watching Brazil, that city-on-fire feel.

Andy Nelson:
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I gotta tell you, I’m childlike about it. I’m like, it’s too scary.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Well, and it’s fascinating, because you see a character like Jack, one of Sam’s friends who he works with, who works at the Ministry of—

Mandy Kaplan:
Is that Michael Palin?

Andy Nelson:
Michael Palin, right, his character. They have an initial conversation, but when he comes into the office and he doesn’t know that that is where he works, and he sees Jack take off his suit and everything—

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
It’s so disturbing, because Jack is a family guy. He’s got his wife, he’s got twins, maybe now it’s triplets. Some of the funniest bits revolve around that. Like, ah, time flies. But when he walks into Jack’s office, Jack is wearing a lab coat, and it’s got blood all over it, and then he takes it off and he’s just got his business suit on underneath.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, yes, yep.

Andy Nelson:
And I can’t help but think, as you’re describing the state of the world and everything, that fits so much with how people are seeing this.

It’s just a day job, going in and dealing with this sort of stuff.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
And it makes it that much more disturbing.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, that you can separate and compartmentalize in that way.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I wanna talk about how this movie perhaps predicted the downfall of humanity and the overtaking of AI. And we’re going to talk about that right after this.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Welcome back to this cheery discussion of the end of the world. Before we continue, I want to let everybody know that Make Me a Nerd is a production of TruStory FM, engineering by the peerless Pete Wright, and production by Andy Nelson as well, who’s the partner of TruStory FM. My theme song is “Wonderstruck” by Jane and the Boy. You can get me on Instagram at Mandy underscore Kaplan underscore Klavens, both with K’s, or on TikTok at Mandy Miscast. You can please, please, please leave a review for my show on Apple.

I’ll give you a shout-out, and it helps more people find the show. And if you’re feeling extra supportive, please go to makemeanerd.com/join, hit that button, and you’ll get your episodes ad-free and early, and my eternal gratitude.

So one of the conceits of Brazil that I thought was very cool until I thought about it was that everything is done by machines. Seemingly every human function. There’s a secretary who has little mechanical hands on her hands to type. And everything is done by machines.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. It’s a Jetsons world.

Mandy Kaplan:
I can imagine.

Andy Nelson:
Like his kitchen.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Andy Nelson:
Where everything goes wrong, but he’s got the alarm that’s supposed to go off, the coffee that’s supposed to pour right, the toast that’s supposed to pop without getting burned, all of those sorts of things.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. So I can imagine 40 years ago that was cool and futuristic. And ooh, could you imagine if we had a machine doing all of those things for us? But nowadays, with driverless cars and AI literally destroying my job and the jobs of millions of people, it feels too close. It feels like a gut punch. And I can’t imagine—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
—what it was like to have seen this movie before it was like, no, that’s real. We’re past the point of no return with all of this.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, we’re living it. Right. It’s not a dystopian future anymore. It’s just now.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s now, and it’s in a lot of ways worse than the movie depicts, and in a lot of ways not, but—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, that’s fascinating. I think that there’s a really interesting element to the way that machines have supplanted a lot of what people do and have left people doing, I mean, inane work. What is it that Sam is actually doing? They’re just looking through this paperwork over and over again, and it’s just nonsensical, and everything is so bureaucratic. Oh, that’s Information Retrieval. This is Information Disbursement. And you’re going to the wrong desks and everything.

Mandy Kaplan:
Uh-huh.

Andy Nelson:
And the way all of that is defined at a level where, in some way, like you’re describing, it’s likely the system has continued designing itself to this place where these people are living now.

And they are dictated, essentially, how they have to handle everything. Oh, we can’t do anything until we get the right form.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
All of this sort of stuff is nonsense. But that’s how these people have designed their future in which they live. And it’s a disturbing place, because essentially, like you’re saying, everything is controlled by the machines. And what’s funny about the film is they don’t even realize it, but the machines are breaking all the time. They have these ducts that they feel are so important, running everywhere, filling every possible space.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
And these ducts are always malfunctioning and blowing up and destroying buildings and stuff. What do people blame it on? They say it’s terrorists.

There are terrorists out here who are actually destroying things. They assume it’s humans, when in reality, it’s this machine world that they have created that is actually constantly malfunctioning that is the real problem.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s another storyline. This movie is complex as hell. And I appreciate that you thought Mandy can understand this movie. There was so much that I thought was going over my head. But I will say that the movie starts with an explosion very quickly, right off the bat. And then the news is saying another terrorist attack today, another explosion, another explosion. Before I realized it wasn’t a terrorist attack.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Which might have been just now, when you said it.

Or I don’t know. I’m just speaking hypothetically. It’s another disturbing element. The world is at war in so many places. And yet people go to restaurants, people go to work, people live their lives, and they try to forget, and then a bomb goes off in their neighborhood.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And that is the reality of the world we live in. And it was the reality of this world they created for this movie.

And again, I just wonder, through my sensitive today eyes, was that too much for me to just go on a journey? Because it hurt my soul.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Well, and I think it opens your eyes to how different groups in the world handle things and see things. What happens when that bomb goes off in the restaurant, the earlier bomb in the restaurant, when Sam is with his mom and her friend and her daughter? The bomb goes off. What do the maître d’ and the other waiters do? They bring over a screen to separate them from the actual destruction so that they can continue their meal.

Mandy Kaplan:
The carnage, mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
It’s so disturbing. None of those people care. It’s just shocking.

And I think, to your point, we’re seeing that today, and it does make it that much harder to watch. And all I can do is say, thank God I can laugh when I watch this movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
And I think that’s what keeps me sane watching a story like this, because it is such a dark future, which is now our dark today.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right. And the movie itself is so trippy. There are so many things that I thought, how high was Terry Gilliam when he wrote this? So I actually looked it up, and he was not.

Andy Nelson:
Okay, good.

Mandy Kaplan:
He does not smoke pot.

Andy Nelson:
I’m glad you checked.

Mandy Kaplan:
There was no drug use. But some of this stuff—just about the point when I was like, oh, this is causing me anxiety, and there are so many deep thoughts running through my mind that are upsetting, then they had hunchback baby faces.

And I was basically like, fuck you, Andy. Because I was already gonna have to take a Xanax.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, the—

Mandy Kaplan:
But now when I fall asleep, I’m gonna have hunchback baby faces attacking me. And what was with those creatures?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
They took me out for a second, because they were not in line with everything else. Everything else had this sense of this could happen. If we’re not careful, society could come to this.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
But the hunchback baby faces, was that in a dream sequence?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. That was a dream sequence.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, okay.

Andy Nelson:
So to be fair, it isn’t the real world. That’s part of his nightmare, or his dreams-slash-nightmares, that Sam is regularly having to try escaping his mundane reality.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
He has these amazing dreams. He can fly. He has this beautiful woman that happens to look like Jill, his dream girl. And then there are these things that keep happening.

He’s got this crazy neon samurai warrior that he has to fight. His boss comes out of the ground as this rock monster to keep him from going anywhere. There are a lot of these different things. And those hunchback baby faces, they kind of represent the horror of the people that are wanting something from him, or the ones that leave marks on him.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. The demands and the—yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Can we start a band called Hunchback Baby Faces?

Andy Nelson:
It’s horrifying. I think we should rock out to that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Because writing it, it felt normal, and then hearing you say it, I was like, yeah, hunchback baby faces. Is this a movie stoners enjoy? And may I ask if you have enjoyed it stoned?

Andy Nelson:
I don’t smoke pot, and I have not.

Mandy Kaplan:
Or is it too intense?

Andy Nelson:
So to that end, I don’t know if people enjoy it stoned or not. But I will say it very much fits in with the way that Terry Gilliam ends up portraying the world in a lot of his films. Not necessarily always hunchback baby faces, but he does have very gritty, very strange realities that he puts on film. My wife hates watching most of his movies with me. This is one of her least favorite movies because of all of that. She says it just makes me feel too gross watching it. And I think that all of that is just something that he—he’s always liked the gritty grossness of how the world can be.

Like he says, one of the things that most people found so disturbing in this film is the fact that when we first meet Jill and she’s in the bathtub, watching her TV through all the little mirrors in her apartment, her bath w—

Mandy Kaplan:
She’s smoking in the bathtub.

Andy Nelson:
Well, her bath water is brown. It’s brown, gross bath water.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
And he said that’s the thing that most people complain about. It’s just weird, gross things like that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. What else has he directed? I’m wholly unfamiliar, as I’m not a Monty Python fan, which has always been on my list for somebody to make me a nerd about.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Like a classic Monty Python comedy.

Andy Nelson:
Well, I’m happy to come in and talk about Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Life of Brian or any of them. They’re just so much fun. The Meaning of Life. I mean, he co-directed those films.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Andy Nelson:
He directed Time Bandits, which I said in the beginning. And he has what he calls a trilogy of imagination, with Time Bandits, this film, and then The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, which was late eighties.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, I’ve heard of that, yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Another notorious box office flop. And then he kind of switched gears into, I need to make something for the studio that will make money so that they’ll keep hiring me.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wait, can I guess? Didn’t he make 12 Monkeys or The Fisher King?

Andy Nelson:
That’s the one. Both of those, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Both of those.

Andy Nelson:
The Fisher King, yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes. Thank you.

Andy Nelson:
Good job. I know. Two for two.

Mandy Kaplan:
Never seen any of these movies, but I associated him with those movies.

Andy Nelson:
Fantastic movies. Yeah. They’re great movies.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Andy Nelson:
Both of them worth watching. And then he’s done another trippy thing with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

He did another one for Hollywood that was—oh, what is it—The Brothers Grimm, with Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. Okay.

Andy Nelson:
And then from there he’s gone into doing a lot more of the stranger sorts of films, like The Zero Theorem, and—

I can’t remember some of the others, but yeah, he did The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and stuff. And so, wide variety.

Mandy Kaplan:
So Hunchback Baby Faces: The Musical has not happened yet.

Andy Nelson:
Not yet.

Mandy Kaplan:
So those rights are still floating out there, is what I’m hearing.

Andy Nelson:
Not yet.

I cannot wait to start working on that with you.

Mandy Kaplan:
I would love that. It’s interesting to hear your wife can’t handle it, because on the one hand, it was so thought-provoking and extraordinarily shot and made, and no one could say other than that. It’s a very cinematically successful film. But on the other hand, I was so disturbed, and there were many points when I thought, oh, this is too much for me.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I went back and forth. Do you know where they shot this? Was it a soundstage they built, or?

Andy Nelson:
A lot of it was on a stage in the UK. Terry Gilliam gave up on the US, essentially, a long time ago and moved to the UK, where he’s been living since, and that’s how he became part of Monty Python. No, he has made some of his films over here, but this was largely shot on soundstages, and then some location work over in the UK.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm. Because it was epic, and it was so complete. And I think I said that before, but every inch of the screen—the set design, the art direction—they were all just spot on.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, yeah.

And smartly, sometimes it’s miniatures. They’ll use miniatures for a lot of things. There’s a shot of the truck driving down a highway, and you just see the entire highway lined with billboards advertising all this stuff, and the camera cranes up and over, and you see on the other side of the billboards, it’s just a wasteland.

Mandy Kaplan:
Uh.

Andy Nelson:
Smoke coming out of the ground and destroyed buildings and stuff.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Those sorts of things, they did a lot of stuff with miniatures. And I think that’s the sort of stuff that I love about this. It ends up feeling so visceral and real.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes, and no CGI, which always just doesn’t feel right to me.

Andy Nelson:
No, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
So there is a subplot with tremendous social commentary. Katherine Helmond, the late, great, beautiful, hilarious Katherine Helmond. When we meet her, she is completely covered in some kind of plastic surgeon contraption. Jim Broadbent—this was before he was a thing, right?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right, yep, yep.

Mandy Kaplan:
Ugh, playing her wacky plastic surgeon. And she’s obviously gone for some procedure that seems so far-fetched and disturbing. And then she meets her friends, and they’re all in some form of recovery from plastic surgery. And I have to tell you, Andy, as a mainstream expert, this has played out on the Real Housewives so many times, where they’re meeting for lunch and one of them has bandages over here, and the other one is bruising under her eyes from her nose job, and one of them is—

Andy Nelson:
Really?

Mandy Kaplan:
—recovering from a facelift, and they’re all comparing notes.

Andy Nelson:
Wow. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s not the distant future anymore. That is very real and very accepted now.

Andy Nelson:
Interesting.

Mandy Kaplan:
I mean, I live in LA too, so I see women out and about post-surgery.

Andy Nelson:
Right, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And it’s just like, yeah, I just had a facelift. So what? I’m at the grocery store.

Andy Nelson:
Right, right. Yeah. Wow. That’s fascinating. I guess it doesn’t surprise me. I mean, are any of them doing acid treatments like her friend? I wonder if that was a thing, or it was talked about as a thing in the eighties, and since then they’ve decided, no, it’s a bad idea. I don’t know.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, no, I mean, they’re called chemical peels, and it—

Andy Nelson:
Oh, is that—okay, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
—destroys your first layer of skin, so you’re technically not supposed to go out in the sun or go anywhere after. But hey, women on the Housewives have to lunch. They need their martinis.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. They gotta go out anyway, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
So they go out anyway with splotchy red burned faces. It’s really disturbing.

Andy Nelson:
Wow.

Mandy Kaplan:
Come visit me in LA.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Ugh, it’s a different way of life here, I assume.

Andy Nelson:
See the sights. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s not that way everywhere.

Andy Nelson:
It probably is over here. I don’t venture over to the Scottsdale side too often, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a lot of that over on the Scottsdale side of things.

Mandy Kaplan:
Probably. And if there’s not a Real Housewives franchise, I’m gonna go start one.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Yeah, there you go.

Mandy Kaplan:
Because I wouldn’t mind a nipping and a tuck. I want to talk Robert De Niro right when we come back.

Welcome back. Andy, before we move on to Robert De Niro—you, the Robert De Niro of podcasting—can you tell everybody where they can hear you and what kind of stuff you do? Because you’re such a filmophile. That’s not a word.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Cinephile.

Andy Nelson:
There you go.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s the word.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, Pete and I run TruStory FM.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay, yeah.

Andy Nelson:
We produce a whole variety of podcasts over there. But specifically, in the world of film, Pete and I have been co-hosting The Next Reel. We’re in our sixteenth season right now. We’ve been running that thing since 2011.

Mandy Kaplan:
Wow.

Andy Nelson:
So, having a lot of fun talking about movies over on that podcast. We have a few other shows that we do, which are kind of on hiatus right now, like Movies We Like, where we bring somebody in from the industry to talk about one of their favorite films. Mandy has been on that show.

Mandy Kaplan:
I did What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, right?

Andy Nelson:
It’s a wonderful episode. Yeah, wonderful movie.

Mandy Kaplan:
Uh—

Andy Nelson:
Yep. Yeah. It’s an excellent movie. And CinemaScope is another show that I do, where I talk about a particular genre, subgenre, movement, or mode, and bring on a guest who’s an expert in that, and just have very lengthy conversations about all of that. So yeah, there’s a lot of fun shows over there that you can find over at trustory.fm. That’s T-R-U-S-T-O-R-Y dot FM. You’re my girl.

Mandy Kaplan:
So if you ever want to do a Real Housewives genre or subgenre, you know who your expert is.

Andy Nelson:
That’s right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Robert De Niro.

Andy Nelson:
Were you expecting him to pop up in this?

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, he’s in the cast. I mean, I saw him, but yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Okay, yeah. You saw him in the list, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I felt baited and switched.

Andy Nelson:
Really?

Mandy Kaplan:
He is barely in this movie.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right?

Andy Nelson:
But he loved being in it. He had a great time in it, and was very much happy to promote it when it came out.

Mandy Kaplan:
Do you think it was like, if we can get De Niro—I mean, was he friends with them, or a fan of Monty Python, and he thought, yeah, sign me up? Because he’s very different in this movie. I liked his performance very much.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I’m not gonna sit back and say I don’t like him. I do. But he was a little lighter and goofier, and it’s a different side of him.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
But he literally flies in and flies out. And then he flies back in and flies back out.

Andy Nelson:
Pretty much.

Mandy Kaplan:
And it’s more of a cameo.

Andy Nelson:
And then he gets destroyed by paperwork. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Andy Nelson:
Which is a great little metaphor for somebody like him, who’s just completely eaten up by paperwork. Yeah, he’s Harry Tuttle. He is our actual engineer, who has realized the only way he can actually properly fix people’s broken HVAC units, essentially, and all of their ductwork, is by doing it illegally. And he goes in and he fixes people’s problems, and monitors the phone calls and everything. And I think that’s so much fun.

He was originally—I think he was hoping to get cast as Jack, who ended up being Michael Palin.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, really?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. But Terry had already—he and Michael Palin went back to the Monty Python days, and he’d already cast Michael Palin in that role. And so he offered Robert De Niro, he said, do you want to play Tuttle? And De Niro was like, yeah, I’d love to do that. So it wasn’t so much that they said, it’s a really small part, but will you take it? He’s just like, hey, I want to be in it. I’ll even do that role.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
And he clearly is having fun with it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, clearly. And you brought up Michael Palin, who I recognize is a part of Monty Python. But do you know why none of the other Monty Python gang was in it?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Was there beef between them, or—

Andy Nelson:
No, there’s not beef. I just think it’s one of those things. Well, I think by this point, Graham Chapman, I think he had died by this point, so he obviously wouldn’t have been in it. And then the other ones, they pop in and out of each other’s films when the opportunity presents itself. So I don’t think there was any particular reason where he said, sorry guys, I don’t like you anymore.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
I’m not going to put you in my movie. I just think it was probably like, I just don’t know if it fits exactly.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sure. Yeah, and I only know Michael Palin from A Fish Called Wanda. I truly have never seen Monty Python. But I recognized him because he was so funny in that movie.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
But now I think we’re not supposed to accept that portrayal of a stutterer, right?

Andy Nelson:
Well, and you’re not going to be able to do that. Oh, well, that’s—yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And now that’s not acceptable anymore, but it was funny.

Andy Nelson:
Right. It is very funny. It is very funny. And John Cleese was in that too, another Monty Python boy.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh yes, he was.

Andy Nelson:
So you know who the Monty Python team are, like Eric Idle, all of them.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Terry Jones.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Andy Nelson:
I don’t know if Terry Jones might be less familiar to you.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I’ve never heard the name Graham Chapman until now. But John Cleese was in Will and Grace, so of course I know John Cleese.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I know the musical Spamalot. So I’m aware of Eric Idle, and, you know, I do live on planet Earth.

Andy Nelson:
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I know some of their names and what they’re famous for.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I just think—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It was all part and parcel. I’ve talked about it before. My sister is a super nerd, and she was a theater nerd who loved Monty Python. And my sister and I were always just different. So I thought, well then, that’s not for me. She was older. So I was like, well, I’m out.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
So I missed out on a lot of good stuff just from my desire to separate myself.

Andy Nelson:
Sure, sure, sure.

Mandy Kaplan:
Sorry, Allie. I love you.

Andy Nelson:
Well, I’m glad this starts leading you down that road. And I’m happy to tackle some Monty Python with you, because, man, I tell you, I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I can probably quote most of that film. It’s just so much fun.

Mandy Kaplan:
Well, that really pervaded mainstream culture. I can quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Andy Nelson:
Okay. Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Having never seen it, but I can quote it.

Andy Nelson:
Okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
I think that really crossed over into everyone knowing what that was.

Andy Nelson:
Right. Sure.

Mandy Kaplan:
This movie I literally had never heard of. Was it successful? I saw on Rotten Tomatoes 98% from critics, 90% from audiences. It was beloved. Do you know how much it cost?

It looked so expensive.

Andy Nelson:
Well, the thing is—

It cost quite a bit of money. I think it was, at the time, $15 million.

I don’t know what that would translate to in today’s dollars. But it did well in Europe, but again, because it was a different cut that the Europeans had seen.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
And the longer version is also what all the critics were getting. They were seeing these longer versions of the film before the head of Universal said, nope, cut it down. And then they released this 92-minute version of the film. And that’s the film that the public went to, and people were like, this sucks. And so it ended up flopping at the box office.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, okay.

Andy Nelson:
I mean, it still made money. It made nine, almost ten million at the box office. And so—

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Andy Nelson:
It did okay, but I think there was a break in how people were thinking about it. It’s like, why do the critics love this so much? And the critics were like, well, this isn’t even the version that I had talked about or had seen when I wrote about it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
And so, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s such a mind fuck. And I actually love a dark ending. Of course, certain things I like a happy ending, but I like it staying true to itself.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And this ends with the girl dying—spoiler alert for a 40-year-old movie—and him being held captive and tortured, essentially, right?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, and broken to a point where he’s trapped within his own mind. They say, oh, we’ve lost him, and that’s it. All he’s doing is just, in his head, living in this fantasy world, but his body is just sitting here in the torture chamber.

Mandy Kaplan:
And this is Jonathan Pryce, whom I only know from musical theater, so—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
It was interesting to see him young and a male lead. I’ve just never seen that side of him.

Andy Nelson:
You had to have watched Jumpin’ Jack Flash in your youth.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, sure.

Andy Nelson:
Whoopi Goldberg. He was the guy that she falls for at the end of that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Okay. Oh, that I don’t remember. Because that was pre-Miss Saigon.

Andy Nelson:
Okay, well. Okay, okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
So why would I care about Jonathan Pryce?

Andy Nelson:
Evita. You know Evita, then.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, he was—oh, in the movie.

Andy Nelson:
He’s in the movie version of Evita.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, but that’s all after I already knew who he was.

Andy Nelson:
Okay, okay.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. What was this happy ending?

How did it end? Do you remember it?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, it ended—

Mandy Kaplan:
Or is that a bootleg thing now, that people are like, I have the original happy ending?

Andy Nelson:
No, Criterion actually released it on their set of it. You can watch the original cut, and then you can watch this final cut of the film.

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
Just as a comparison. Terry Gilliam wanted people to see what changed and how different it is. It literally ends with them escaping. I think they cut the gunshots when the security team come in and capture them in the bed. And he runs through everything. He hops into the back of the truck, and the two of them end up in the idyllic green landscape, and that’s where it ends.

Mandy Kaplan:
Blade Runner. That’s the exact same ending as Blade Runner, to a T, if I’m remembering correctly.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
That’s weird.

Andy Nelson:
Just no voiceover.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, that’s weird.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And we didn’t get to my favorite line, but you reminded me of it. Care for a little necrophilia?

Andy Nelson:
Right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And then he jumps into bed. But where does that start? He says, I’ve killed you.

You’re dead as far as the government is concerned.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Right, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
And she goes, ooh, care for a little necrophilia?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
I loved that moment. And then they took it away with the horrifying end.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, right.

Mandy Kaplan:
Because that was just back to back.

Andy Nelson:
It just—yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Oh, that’s charming and romantic and hilarious, and then—

Andy Nelson:
Right. And then it’s pretty much the end. They are captured, she’s killed, and he’s taken into—from there it enters the world of torture, and then all of the craziness going on in his mind, imagining an escape.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. It’s a fucked-up movie. It is very well made. It has a lot of big laughs. And I just wish I had seen it—I wish I could take away my anxiety of the world we live in today and experience it 40 years ago, when maybe I would have—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
—gone on the ride, and it wouldn’t have made me so anxious.

Andy Nelson:
No, and that’s a really interesting point. I think there are going to be projects like this that, for some people, are just going to be hard to watch, because it does hit too close to home in whatever is happening in our present world. And I think—

Mandy Kaplan:
Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
I think that makes it unfortunate, because I think there’s so much great stuff going on in here. And I think it’s saying so many interesting things about bureaucracy and about commercialism, and all of these different points that Gilliam and his team are trying to express. And the fact that so much of it has turned into a reality these days—

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
I think it can make it hard for some people to take on, because they no longer just see the satire in it. They see that, wow, I’m just watching something that’s saying it like it is.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah, and I find it interesting. Some of the things I said, you seemed to feel like, oh gosh, I guess you’re right, because this entered your world so long ago. And I am curious about Idiocracy, but I worry about the same thing happening.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Even though it’s a comedy, I worry that I’ll just feel like, now we’re living it, I can’t do this.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, that might be a good point. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve seen Idiocracy, so I can’t remember all of the specifics, but I do know there are a lot of points that just feel very also prescient for where we are. Yeah, yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Woo! Where does this rank for you in terms of your all-time favorite films?

Andy Nelson:
This is it.

Mandy Kaplan:
Is this—

Andy Nelson:
This is my number one.

Mandy Kaplan:
This is your number one, and you shared it with me.

Andy Nelson:
It has been. I did share it with you. Yeah. I was nervous to share it with you.

Mandy Kaplan:
I get it.

Andy Nelson:
I was like, I don’t know if this is something that Mandy is gonna want to watch at all. Because I think about my wife, and I know how some people really react to the grittiness and the darkness that Gilliam puts into his stories. But yeah, it’s a film that in college I started, when I tapped into the British, or the European, cut, and then I finally saw the final cut.

It’s just a film that I’ve been falling more and more in love with over the years. And then just re-watching it for our conversation here, I’m laughing just hysterically through the whole thing. I think that it’s so smartly put together and crafted and dark. And it’s fascinating now, and horrifying, how it is tapping into so many truths.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah.

Yes. I equate it, weirdly—I recorded with Jonny Lee Jr., and The Breakfast Club and John Hughes movies came up. He is a dear friend, and he’s a little younger than you and I are, and he was like, do you know I’ve never seen a John Hughes movie? And I was like, well, I’m gonna make you a nerd about The Breakfast Club.

Andy Nelson:
Wow.

Mandy Kaplan:
But I know, through our lenses today, there are moments of that film that are no longer funny. I’m well aware. I watched it with Casey, and I had to say, let’s talk about this dialogue right here.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And The Breakfast Club is one of the least rapey ones.

I mean, John Hughes movies are—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
—upsetting in many ways, but there’s so much to love.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
So that’s my lens, or that’s how I can relate. And I can appreciate Brazil for its genius and its intelligence and its depth and its filmmaking. I don’t know that I liked it, but I can appreciate it so deeply. Does that make sense?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
And I’m sorry if that offends.

Andy Nelson:
It does. No, it makes me very happy that that’s where you landed with this.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay.

Andy Nelson:
I think that’s a very fair place to land with this film, because it is a challenging film. It’s a dark, dark satire. And I’m thrilled that the comedy hit so strongly for you.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yes.

Andy Nelson:
In such a dark story, I think that speaks to how well they crafted the story, because you are still able to laugh, even though it left you in a place where you’re like, I just can’t with this.

Mandy Kaplan:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that—

Andy Nelson:
That’s the one.

Mandy Kaplan:
That distinction of appreciating something and admiring something versus liking it or loving it is one of the things that I’ve learned about on Make Me a Nerd. I really appreciate it. And I could see why it has a cult following, or—

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
—a following of billions of people. But it might just not be my cup of tea, but I can really appreciate it.

Andy Nelson:
Sure.

Mandy Kaplan:
There have only been a handful—I won’t say it, Pete. I promise I won’t say it.

There have been only two or three things that I’ve said, like, a bridge too far, can’t do it, never want to see this again. I could say it.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Mandy Kaplan:
Showgirls is one of them. There, I said it. Come at me, Jessica Jimenez. If you want to hear me really not being able to tolerate a movie, it’s Showgirls.

Andy Nelson:
Showgirls, gotcha.

Mandy Kaplan:
Okay. All right. We are done here. Thank you so, so much.

I thought this conversation was really fascinating.

Andy Nelson:
I am thrilled to have introduced this to you.

Mandy Kaplan:
So—

Andy Nelson:
I’m glad that you didn’t walk away going, that was horrible. I’m glad it’s not on your list, the Showgirls list. So I count that as a win.

Mandy Kaplan:
No—

Andy Nelson:
I count that as a win.

Mandy Kaplan:
Very, very different. I will, in the middle of the night, call you incessantly when I dream of hunchback baby faces. You’ve done that to me, and you cannot reverse that.

Andy Nelson:
That’s right. It’s a thing now, yes.

Mandy Kaplan:
It’s a thing.

Andy Nelson:
Sorry about that.

Mandy Kaplan:
Thank you so much, Andy Nelson. Everybody listen to him on all his podcasts on TruStory FM. And thank you all for listening to me until next time.