Personal Problems (1980)

Gang in Blue (1996)

It’s that time again, a new season is here. Lend us your shitty little ears for the premiere of Season 8: Mario Van Melvin. This exploration of Mario and Melvin Van Peebles will once again find your hosts discussing a range of genres and exploring the myriad sins and shortcomings of Hollywood gatekeeping.

Episode 1 focuses on the lone co-directorial effort from one of cinema’s few father-son directing pairs: Gang in Blue. It’s an ultra-timely story of police brutality and systemic racism, featuring white supremacist antics that look all too familiar in 2020. The boys welcome Danny Benson of the Not So Macho Fans podcast who offers an overview of the elder Van Peebles’ career as well as his thoughts on this intermittently thrilling made-for-tv drama.

Reel Rap Recommends

A.) a film from the same year as the film discussed on mic

B.) a film featuring one of the same actors as the film discussed on mic

C.) a film that’s connected to the film discussed on mic in some other way

A.) Scream (1996, dir. Wes Craven)

It might be my favorite horror movie. You don’t like it? Well I guess you don’t like thrills, spills, and chills. All of the sequels are good too.

B.) Nixon (1995, dir. Oliver Stone) ft. J.T. Walsh

Folks, it’s a goddamned shame that we’re being subjected to Adam McKay’s bullshit while Oliver Stone is still with us. Nixon is one of those three-hour-plus movies that I could watch every day.

C.) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, dir. Martin Scorsese) ft. a reference to Grenada

One of the lawyers prosecuting Jordan Belfort refers to him as “a Grenada.” He means that Belfort doesn’t stand a chance in court. The same actor shows up in The Irishman and The Trial of the Chicago 7. Besides maybe the guy from Burn Notice, I don’t think there’s ever been someone with a more insufferable face. In WoWS, it’s nearly (but not quite) enough to make you root for Belfort.

Annotations and Apologies

* Eternal apologies to Danny for getting the name of his podcast wrong.

* Bennett used the term “neck-bearded” to describe the roving bands of white trash who “defended” Fishtown back in June. This was not only inaccurate, but completely insulting to all of the fine neck-bearded people in Philadelphia and across this country.

Meanwhile . . .

On the latest Patreon-exclusive episode, the boys discuss Kelly Reichardt’s 2013 masterpiece Night Moves.

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Re-Introducing Re-el Rap

A Brief History of Reel Rap

Shane and Bennett started Reel Rap in the summer of 2017. Bennett became a professional podcaster and a “Chicken Guy” at the local supermarket on the same day. In Boston, Shane was growing mushrooms in his apartment and was oft mistaken for a mentally ill escapee of the local hospital, moonlighting as a barback at an upscale hotel bar.

Reel Rap has its origins in the middlebrow fare that most filmgoers have forgotten. Bennett and Shane have shared formative film experiences, but they haven’t centered on blockbusters and big hits. On the big screen (the Silver), the boys have paid to see slop like The Descendants and nodded politely side by side. On the small screen (the silver), they’ve idly yipped and hollered through all manner of would-be Oscar bait and mid-budget action movies.

The first season found the boys working in familiar middlebrow territory. A fascination with How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) led to their snout-to-tail look at the career of Ron Howard and stretched over more than a year. After focusing on Hollywood’s nicest guy, they pivoted with a season on one of its absolute worst. Mel Gibson provided the perfect opportunity to settle on a theme. After all, he represents the actor-turned-director at their most grandiose.

Actors-turned-directors (more on them below) have provided Reel Rap with opportunities to discuss some of Hollywood’s biggest Ls as well as their own personal shortcomings. They’ve also discussed some of the great works of American independent cinema, some foreign gems, and even the rare transcendent Hollywood effort.

To recap, here’s where the boys have tracked their mud-soaked galoshes:

* Season 1: Screwball Right Down the Middle of the Plate: The Films of Ron Howard

* Season 2: God’s Angry, Racist Man: Mel Gibson the Director

* Season 3: Cassavetes v. Cassavetes

* Season 4: A Chip on His Shoulder and a Song in His Heart: Jon Favreau’s Hollywood

* Season 5: A Rich Diet: Sofia Coppola’s Substantive Style

* Season 6: Nichols & May & Reel & Rap

* Season 7: Pardon My French! It’s the Complete Works of Jacques Tati!

That’s not including one-offs, holiday specials, and other miscellaneous episodes.

Today, Shane rarely watches movies and Bennett only watches movies. It’s a match made in hog heaven. They’ve covered good movies (Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, A Star is Born, the works of John Cassavetes and Sofia Coppola), they’ve covered bad movies (The Grinch, The Dilemma, the works of Nick Cassavetes), but mostly they’ve covered anonymous movies. Some of the best episodes of Reel Rap episodes focus on movies that no one has thought about — let alone discussed at length — in years or decades. Subscribing to Reel Rap is an opportunity to hear the definitive conversations on films like Ransom, Charlie Wilson’s War, and The Man Without a Face.

Hit the button above to hear the latest episode of Reel Rap. This time around, the boys provide a quick overview of their shared history and reflect on the show’s past, present, and future.

A Poem for Reel Heads

By Shane

Grand theft and the heat’s on, mayors

And Everyone showing their ass

Tom Cruise too. Washed up before he’s in the wash tub

No weeping for Willow, and Gung Ho to those

Who narrowly adored Howard’s ransom, over our hearts

There is no evidence of survivors, drafts of backdraft hopelessly hopefully

Burned. His studio imagines and breathes moneyed breaths in its chrysalis

Parenthood is anything but easy, splashes of mermaid’s wake on our Cocoon. 

EDtv, woah, who me? Im not a cinderella man, I’m a cinderella, man. 

 brave old heart, fuck you. I have no mind not beautiful unwise. 

Mel Gibson freedom, The missing. Missing out and strike anywhere matches on the lip

Of poor Glenn Close's Paper.

 No code but Da Vinci’s for the man without a face

Who steals his passion from Christ. We never knew what happened on hack ridge

Probably where they make mince meat out of a guy who looks like Jesus.

Angels and Aliens re-addressed their longstanding beef with cowboys and demons.

Who’s frankenstein? OUR FRANKENSTEIN! Call me Ishtar’s monster, 

Five cent mike with none of the early sense that made him a primary color

Who’s afraid of a woman under the influence? Tom hanks, if I hazard a guess.

Yellow does not run in this parade. Willow still weeps thought the water diviner creeps

Somewhere I’m sure. A missing ransom that got lost in translation in a Chinese bookie’s car factory, here lies a far and away dream of licking a star. 

You were supposed to die at the bookie’s house, but you didn’t. You are amazing. Zathura’s birdcage shakes. Its your big day. And shadows of my uncle as he curled threats like husbands at our faces. 

Playtime, he called it. We knew he would be on holiday, and maybe for good. 

We’d commit to a sisterly suicide for our little christ and this pitiful alter serves less as a notebook and more as an Apollo, built with twigs and bound to guidance by brotherly voices. 

You are my man of iron, twice. On new leaves this elf found never

Found that nostalgic green in the heart of the sea, or in another woman. Queen Marie 

Would be without her beguiled chef who, wolflike, careened through a hospital lobby, looking for a new heart to break in traffic. Past interviews, beyond the satellite of blood beverages and apologies. The vampire doctor will see you now. Rescheduled for sinai. The test audience hates it, and here it is in two stoned tablets the Irish warrior finally shouted along with the country:

Symbolic psychos like Mr. Sophistication rode the last taxi out into plasmatic sanguine sunset

And just before the credits became shadows and special thanks and all curtains,

A skywriter in debt on borrowed time cashed in amidst the cosmos to sing one last time to no one in particular

“That’s a Reel Rap!”

What’s a Reel Head?

For the Reel Head, cinema is a buffet (pronounced boo-fay) that can only give you diarrhea of the mouth. Reel heads gorge themselves at this buffet like a pig at the trough. It’s all slops, in a good way. If you miss getting pretzel nuggets before a 10:00AM matinee, you might be a Reel Head. If you’ve got Criterion discs behind lock and key, you might be a Reel Head. If your neckbeard has a neckbeard, you might be a Reel Head.

Reel Head Viewing List

What are a Reel Head’s favorite flicks? Buddy, I’m glad you asked. Excluding the films they’ve covered on-mic, here are just a few that the boys would recommend to any would-be Reel Head:

* Archipelago (Joanna Hogg, 2010)

* Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

* Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

* Monterey Pop (D.A. Pennebaker, 1968)

* Ordet (Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1955)

* Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)

* Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1985)

* Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich, 1990)

* Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)

* Maidstone (Norman Mailer, 1970)

Why Actors-Turned-Directors?

No character in Hollywood is more interesting than the actor who decides to direct. For some, the career change comes when roles dry up. For many others, however, it’s not a retreat but a bold, even hubristic, step in a new direction.

If you’ll forgive me, I think Reel Rap’s own co-host Bennett said it best:

The beret and jodhpurs confer entry into a new, higher sphere, the Pantheon of Keaton and Chaplin. The role of director validates the actor’s every pretension and, for many, provides an opportunity to affirm (or, more often, reaffirm) for the entire world just how hot and multi-talented they are.

Did Bradley Cooper have to lower his voice, learn an instrument, and write his own songs to make A Star is Born? Of course he did, for the same reason he had to open a scene with a shot of his own bare ass. He’s an actor-turned-director and that’s what they do.

3 Reasons to Subscribe to Reel Rap

* The hosts have a genuine rapport: Bennett and Shane met in a high school gym class. Their relationship was incubated in a world of towel slinging and ass slaps. It began in earnest years later, feeding on new insecurities and giving birth to bit after bit. Listening to Reel Rap is like watching a blind-drunk Jackson Pollock at work, or like living inside the moment where Rip Torn swung a hammer at Norman Mailer for an hour or so every week.

* Shane and Bennett meld the high and low: Reel Rap Season 3 juxtaposed the transcendent films of John Cassavetes with the work of his beefy son Nick. John’s work practically invented American independent cinema as we know it, Nick’s is a strange blend of the maudlin and the hyper-masculine. The episodes covering both directors provide a picture of Reel Rap in microcosm, it’s a mix of high and low, a show with its nose pointed toward the trough and its eyes pointed toward the stars. Reel Rap’s hosts are a lot like Shrek. They wear crappy little vests and they’ve got layers.

* You’ll get into heaven: Shane promised indulgences duringReel Rap’s episode on The Da Vinci Code. That wasn’t some empty cash grab. Subscribing to Reel Rap’s Patreon at the $10/month level will earn you an indulgence and a spot behind those Pearly-ass Gates.

Meet the Hosts

Shane is an actor and writer living in Austin, Texas. He does 99.9% of Ree

Personal Problems (1980)

Described as a "meta-soap opera," PERSONAL PROBLEMS(1980) conceived by Ishmael Reed and directed by Bill Gunn is a singular viewing and listening experience. Shot by world renowned Italian photographer Robert Polidori, scored by the excellent Carman Moore, with music by the inimitable Sam Waymon, this movie is a recently restored treat to behold. Bill Gunn is a stage actor turned director and his skill and ingenuity is undeniable. The fact that he got all of these artists in one place for the duration of the shoot is a testament to his skill as a human and artist. Check out the film on the Criterion Channel or at Kino Lorber.

Buy the soundtrack for the movie here: https://readinggroupcompany.bandcamp.com/album/personal-problems

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reelrap.substack.com

Hello again..

Reel Rap is back in the business of making sense of the film landscape. We might not mention a single movie in this episode, which is a big relief to some of you, I know. The voicemail line is always open and we are standing by!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reelrap.substack.com

Ishtar

Telling the truth can be dangerous business? You're telling me!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit reelrap.substack.com