“You can’t entirely dislike a man who’s tried to kill you.” Old Hollywood’s gift for complicating rugged individualism is on vibrant display in this late-period work from Vincente Minnelli, about a cracked-up actor getting a second chance at fame by rescuing a troubled film shoot in Rome.

Edward G. Robinson plays the tyrannical old director Maurice Kruger, who by the end of the second act has taken ill and is in need of the kind of legacy-rescuing only a suffering former protege can provide. Kirk Douglas is Jack Andrus, fresh from the sanitarium, who tempers his pride, his cleft chin, and his raspy snarl into instruments of firm compassion, calmly slicing through clouds of empty glamor and toxic ambition as he takes Kruger’s place and wrestles the volatile production back on schedule.

Dave and Jeremy marvel at the fraught path to redemption the movie lays out, rife with spite and malice even as forgiveness and acceptance prevail. When that path puts our hero behind the wheel of a top-down Maserati for a raving one-car death race through nighttime Roman streets–by which our hero hopes to affirm that he is NOT suicidal–the subtext is clear: reckless emotional intensity is the solution to–and the cause of–all of life’s problems.

Pack your bags (and your Oscar™ statuette, if you’re as hungry for past glory as Jack Andrus) and join Dave and Jeremy for TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN.

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Music by Jeremy Donald.

Find Dave here:

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David Lynch’s unsettling tale of Tinseltown ambitions gone sour first gives us Betty and Rita, the plucky outsider aiding the star in crisis, then takes us through a magic portal to an alternate vision of the same bodies, now living different lives as Diane and Camilla (but are they different lives?). Dave parses the often non-linear timeline and discusses the film’s origins as a shelved television project, while Jeremy proposes clues in hopes of reconciling the several not-quite-compatible narratives. “David Lynch is totally unironic,” it’s been said, and there is real emotion in this object lesson in artifice, fate, jealousy, and betrayal. Join Dave and Jeremy as they gush over the intensity of some scenes and the comedy of others, all while treading lightly through the anticipation and terror that give MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) its dazzling highs and devastating lows.

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We’ll be back next month with Jeremy’s reply.

Music by Jeremy Donald.

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Dave and Jeremy encounter the sublime, the ridiculous, and the achingly mundane as they unravel the interwoven passions of Millie, Pinky, and Willie, whose destinies tangle in Robert Altman’s 3 WOMEN, a curious and beguiling exploration of shifting identities and wayside desperation.

Will Altman pull off a K-Mart-coded mashup of Ingmar Bergman and Sam Shepard? Did Olive Oyl and Stephen King’s Carrie once room together in an alternate timeline? Can a director really shoot half of a mid-career art film through a Lava Wave Motion Machine™ and then go on to make GOSFORD PARK?

Join Dave and Jeremy as they wade through the shallows and plunge into the deep end with the titular trio of Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule. Listen as they pluck at loose ends, trace the development of motifs, and pick out core influences in the Cool Whip fever dream that is 3 WOMEN.

Thank you for listening! Please subscribe, leave a rating or review, and share this show with your friends.

We’ll be back next month with Dave’s reply.

Music by Jeremy Donald.

Find Dave here:

https://linktr.ee/davedwelling