Ninotchka

Um, yeah, I mean, capitalism, pretty awful fucking system, I have to say.

I mean, have you ever seen, um, the Ernst Lubitsch movie Ninotchka with Bela Lugosi and, um-

I don't think I have.

I think we've talked about it

"... stay here? This rules."

Yeah.

And so they have to send out the most stern inquisitor, uh, from Russia, from Mother Russia to, like, whip them into shape and get them in line, and that's Greta Garbo as Ninotchka.

And she's super stern and whips them into shape, but then starts to fall for Melvyn Douglas, Ilyna Douglas's grandfather.

Or, um, is it unfair to just give her one film?

I, well, I think I, I can say that Ninotchka is the most accessible to today's audiences.

It's a comedy.

The jokes, um, carry over rather well despite the time.

The Wuthering Heights that co-starred Orson Welles, which I watched in the past couple of years, it was pretty good.

Ninochka, which is an Ernst Lubitsch film.

I don't know if we've talked about Lubitsch.

He's this other kind of guy who had this distinct way of making movies that he's remembered better than some of the other directors of the time.

And then they won Academy Awards for The Lost Weekend.

They were nominated for Ninochka.

And they were the most highly paid and celebrated team of screenwriters in Hollywood.

And yet they didn't really like each other.

He hated Norma Shearer.

He really wanted to do Ninotchka.

So when Cukor was fired from Gone With the Wind, and they had to, his next movie was gonna be Ninotchka.

And so he, Ernst Lubitsch, they put Cukor on The Women, and Ernst Lubitsch was like, "Great, I get to do Ninotchka." So there's all sorts of, you're gonna read, like, about-

Moving parts

... all, uh, yeah, that, the, all these things, you know, ended up, how they ended up the way they did and why, again, the movie was, you know, so important.

Along with Gone With the Wind, there was The Wizard of Oz.

Stagecoach, Ninotchka, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, The Women- And I'll tell you what- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ... wild horses aren't gonna drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say And episodic serials too, like Dick Tracy's G-Men and Buck Rogers.

[upbeat music] Stanley spent Saturdays in the neighborhood movie houses, going to matinees for 25 cents.

When he was a teenager, he skipped school as often as twice a week so he could see a double bill.