The Swimmer

Yeah.

The other film this reminded me of, the other thing I kept thinking about as I watched this, was The Swimmer.

Okay.

It's not in the Criterion Collection, but we watched it for a bonus

It is called the Bullshot, and it is a Bloody Mary, but instead of tomato juice, you use beef soup.

Which I immediately tried to encourage you to try to serve it at the restaurant you work at.

Since watching The Swimmer, I have attempted to get onto every cocktail list at every restaurant I have.

Absolutely.

After that day, I took the train up to New York City where my brother was a movie director.

And he did a movie called David and Lisa, The Swimmer, some of these movies.

And on the way in the train, the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to me right in front of me in long white robes.

And he said, you know, I was going in between Washington, D.C., which was the power broker of the world at that time.

... get getting to some of those.

Some, your Sunset Boulevards, your "The Swimmer," et cetera.

What do we think?

I didn't know that he wrote-- I didn't realize that he wrote "Fantastic Four."

I'm sure you've seen the film.

The Swimmer by John Cheever, also a good story, a B story.

1964, that was made into a Burt Lancaster.

A lot of Burt Lancaster films here, but that's a really good story as well.

It's my favorite decade.

And To Catch a Thief is one of the dumbest movies he ever made.

With one of the shoddiest scripts he ever worked from of his better films.

But it's also the most beautiful film he ever made.

And Grace Kelly and Cary Grant are so hot and you just don't care that it's really quite anodyne in content.

But the reason I bring it up...

So I think I've told you I'm reading an Alfred Hitchcock biography and I've been rewatching his movies at every chapter as he moves on to another production in the book, which is why it's taken me two and a half years to read

one book.

It sounds like you did, yeah.

I did, but I mean, like, how did the, why did this take the world on fire, set the world on fire like that? I don't know, I've seen The Swimmer.

Like, that's a better... different more like connecticut suburban malaise destroying families well familiar territory well trotting i feel i feel um now that said all the performance is really great i think the ensemble is really fun uh i think this with kevin klein paired with the big chill is like an interesting like two ends of this uh spectrum right Similar.

I mean, that's, you know, this is set in the seventies.

You know, it's sort of that belays like whatever.

I don't know.

I feel like the swimmer was a much, for some reason, much more impactful type of this story.

Um, okay.

And they were opening for Pere Ubu, and I was just completely knocked out by him.

And then when I started working and writing at, at New York Rocker and found out about, that he had a band called The Necessaries, um, I was like, "Oh, I wanna write about them, the, you know, that's Ed Tomney's band." Great guitar player, and he went on to just do all kinds of interesting musical stuff over the years and, uh, a lot of film work and Discover Channel's science shows and just all, all kinds of really cool stuff.

Also, he's a painter.

But I'm glad he finally got...

He's in a John Cassavetes movie.

he goes he's in a child is waiting which is this like john cassavetes for hire gig with judy garland about a it's about a hospital for or like a school for children with intellectual disabilities it's a very very sad and a depressing movie but it's he's kind of the hardened headmaster who's lost all his empathy and just does it by the book and judy garland shows up and she's like sobbing and crying and it's very very melodramatic it's interesting as a this is how john cassavetes makes a movie when he's not yeah the main authorial voice but it's fun that him and burt lancaster did work together and then he's obviously in the leopard which is this incredible italian classic yep visconti movie and then the swimmer was shown to me very very young because it's one of my parents favorite films and i think a lot of people of their generation are obsessed with the swimmer as this like i

saw it on tv when i was young it's like a

fluke that a film this um mature was made in this system at this time um It was made by Frank Perry, not to be confused with the great Irish director, Frank Berry.

Most of that film is Burt Lancaster in his swimming togs, going from pool to pool in back gardens, hopping over fences and hedges and having these incredibly meaningful existential conversations with his neighbors.

You would never get a film like The Swimmer made by a Hollywood studio today.

It is insane how rich a text that is.

And he's really great in it.