Frederick Wiseman

So that movie blew me away.

A movie called Titty Cut Follies by Frederick Wiseman.

was like an early, just real mind-blowing experience.

But there's so many great, there's two movies out in theaters now that I thought were terrific.

You know, and in the words of Nicole Kidman for AMC, we need that, all of us.

I like to think now of John Wilson as the Frederick Wiseman who actually provides goofy narration over the documentary and talks about himself a lot.

He's a very charming weirdo.

He is a charming weirdo.

Pull up a chair and let's see the world more clearly together.

So there's this legendary filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman.

For over 50 years, his work was the absolute opposite of everything we think of as reality today.

He pointed his camera at the hidden gears of our world, you know, hospitals, high schools, welfare offices.

Why does any of this, his 50-year-old method, matter right now in the world we live in today? You know, maybe the perfect way to understand Wiseman's relevance comes from, of all people, the guy who created MTV's The Real World, the show that basically kicked off the whole modern reality TV genre.

He defined his own show by what it wasn't.

It wasn't Frederick Wiseman.

He saw that long, sometimes incoherent style as the enemy of entertainment.

And we've been following him for a few years, so that's the one we're editing now.

I love that you just referenced Frederick Wiseman.

I saw those in film school.

Yeah, incredible.

Today they'd be Gerard Butler movies, but yeah.

[laughs] Exact- well, not so mu- 'cause what they really were were, like, um, Frederick Wiseman films-

Yes

...

Who was, who, you know.

So it was literally every single layer of something.

So you were, you were, it was a bit of a, like I said, Frederick Wiseman Wikipedia page where you learned about an industry, and while you learned about an industry, you were also, you know, getting trashy scenes where the pilot was, was, yeah, cheating with the stewardess, you know.

So, uh-

Oh.

"Cleopatra," the Frederick Wiseman filmography.

I think you're also taking, you're taking a sample size that, you know, is, is...

I-- There's plenty of 90-minute movies that I've loved on this show, okay?

Yeah.

I don't know if you guys are familiar with Frederick Wiseman at all.

He has a film called Monrovia, Indiana, that really goes to the small town in Indiana and shows the rituals of this place in 2016 after the election.

Now, his films can be up to like four hours long and he'll make you sit there and watch something for like 20 minutes unchanging.

I over lunch were just exchanging our favorite, let's call them review guys.

Oh, hey, can I- actually tell you what i think it was yeah it was um uh a film that i'd never seen before but after the death of the great um documentary filmmaker uh uh the great documentary filmmaker frederick wiseman i'd only seen a couple of frederick wiseman's films his last film was menu plus years uh which is a four-hour documentary about a french restaurant But he made these all-encompassing things, usually about institutions.

And I just watched Hospital from 1970, which is...

Saw your review.

So...

And always something in documentary will draw me back.

And so now I'm on a path of rediscovery of Frederick Wiseman.

It started with high school.