John Schlesinger

Thank you very much for that.

I guess coming back to something you said earlier, Gabriel, about the sound of fire, it reminded me there's a moment in the old John Schlesinger film, Far From the Madding Crowd, where the camera goes in close on a fire, burning in a fireplace.

I think somebody just screwed up a letter and thrown it on the fire.

And as we look at that fire and hear the fire, the sound crossfades into a running stream, which is not a completely dissimilar sound.

Okay.

Uh, the next film that I'm picking is one, uh, directed by John Schlesinger and it, who directed Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and John Voight.

And, um, uh, I, I've been falling down a lot.

I, you know, you, I'm scared.

After all that.

No.

But John Schlesinger.

Oh, I was supposed to pick a movie? Yes.

Or the English system.

And I did several with John Schlesinger.

Oh, wow.

He and I were just buddies.

Um, this movie, it's, it was made in the '60s.

It's from John Schlesinger, who I think went on to make, like, Marathon Man and-

Mm-hmm

...

Maybe he does come out, but.

I don't really think that's where Bob's character is leading, you know? So according to Wikipedia, as we know, which is unimpeachable, John Schlesinger was initially attached to direct this film.

And one of the things he disagreed with Jane Fonda about was the original ending, which I didn't know anything about.

And I'm sure... historians who are listening to this will fact check me but apparently the original ending was that Bob has a kind of more grandiose psychotic break and gets a machine gun and goes on the freeway and starts shooting at cars and that's the end of the movie which is a much more bombastic and violent ending and I can understand why that didn't feel true to the rest of the movie and would feel like a big sort of tonal jump cut at the end of it.

Because Midnight Cowboy around about this time.

That's also a thing like you don't want to discount Midnight Cowboy because John Schlesinger, the director, I mean, he was an outspoken gay man who kept himself closeted for more than a decade.

Um, and then made, you know, Midnight Cowboy, which even at that time, I mean, that's, again, that's a radical piece of filmmaking, but like they're not the drifter and Midnight Cowboy, they're not comparable in the same way.

I think they, they capture a slice, like a slice of the, of the alternative culture that, um, You know, they're important in their own right.

Yeah, but Midnight Cowboy for Schlesinger is kind of like his... his awakening, basically.

Right.

But John Schlesinger is John Schlesinger.

So it's obviously...

Um, he's done things like this since, but at the time, this was a real shock.

And John Schlesinger is the, uh, director.

He directed Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man.

He's kinda slumming it in this film, but you get the feeling he just wanted to do a Hitchcock film, and it feels a little bit like a lost B movie Hitchcock film in, in all the best ways.