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MM21: Sables From Heaven: Written by Dennis Potter feat. Jools Duane
🕑 Added 2024-05-22 11:00:14 +0000 UTCThis week we spotlight our first screenwriter with two films written by Dennis Potter: 1983’s Gorky Park (d. Michael Apted) and 1981’s Pennies from Heaven (d. Herbert Ross). Gorky Park is a police investigation thriller set in Soviet Russia concerning a gruesome murder involving a sable smuggling ring, and Pennies from Heaven features Steve Martin in one of his few dramatic roles as a depression era sheet music salesmen who escapes his dreary life through elaborate musical fantasies and a love affair with Bernadette Peters as an innocent schoolteacher. While wildly different in subject and tone, they illustrate Potter’s range and depth as a writer over his prolific career.
Comments
Equality State Of Mind
The Brits kinda out-furred the frogs with the Hudson Bay Company, cuz of all their goddamn boats. GODDAMN BRITISH BOATS!
Equality State Of Mind
Anyone else read the bum as more Lenny from Of Mice And Men than wandering psycho?
Equality State Of Mind
Lookism Defined: Steve Martin is evil. Picks up a black hitchhiker in 1934, feeds him, gives him money, even though he's short himself. Worst thing he actually does is cheat on his awful wife. Linda Fiorentino is the hero of the movie. Lies, cheats, steals, performs not one act of kindness, betrays not one ounce of human sympathy, murders two people, frames the only half-decent person in the movie. Chef's kiss!
wailing ken jennings
if you start louie louie by the kingsmen right at the ending montage of gorky park it lines up perfectly. coincidence?
Last Years Man
It's certainly not a masterpiece, but there's a lot about it that I liked. I especially like the way Arkady isn't a super detective. He's smart, sure, but he has to work to make progress on the case and he gets a lot of things wrong. It's one of the few movies that actually functions as a procedural in that you really have to go through all the steps to get to the conclusion, rather than have it obvious from the beginning and the steps being a contrivance.
Brad Plumb
Holy fuck, I'm 30 minutes through Pennies in Heaven and it's absolutely demented! Great choice!
Ned Walrus
I'm just a small town country rube and don't at all comprehend the difficulties involved with adapting a screenplay, but everything Will and Hesse say that is clever about the writing for Gorky Park is like directly from the book (which is a great book). The tete-a-tete between Renko and Osborne, the self-delusion of Irina, the back and forth sable hat part, the creepiness of the skull reconstructor guy and his lines, and many of the lines they quoted ("everything I've told you is either an elaborate lie or the very simple truth") and all directly from the book. All of the baffling things in the movie are the things that were changed, e.g., the KGB major (Pribluda) who is suspected from the very beginning of the story is actually uninvolved with the Osborne conspiracy in the book and is an interesting character. They have some rat faced guy play him and he is exactly what Renko thinks he is, but if you read the book the correct choice would 100% have been Jon Polito. Ending the story in Sweden instead of New York also takes away a lot of the impact. It's a great story and I thought the movie sucked as an adaptation.
Scott Grabel
Until Will said otherwise, I thought they meant smuggling the fish sable, like damn that must be some good whitefish
Broadway Joe
I dug Pennies from Heaven, but Gorky Park is probably the worst MM entry so far.
Kevin Spicer
Wanna watch these
James Helps
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmRu2axUu2LFVlpd8eabc2Zn9NKoUTs9H ... the full Dennis Potter collection and I'm an avid fan of this writer. Time and time again I return to him. Even the really early Nigel Barton play about party politics or his last two television works were amazing. There's not been a bad piece of writing from Potter. And love the fact that the Chapo are keeping his memory alive has made be really happy!
Thankyou For Reading Out My Name In This Accent
Sucks whatever a candytwink sucks.
Thankyou For Reading Out My Name In This Accent
Hessah And Jessah!
Mark Rainey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu3McjajsNE
William Rice
I thought it was me
Peaceward Project
being the first and only person to ever pronounce it palpa-tein is a DECISION and proves that will must be stopped at any cost
Daniel Capshaw
Hello, I am the listener familiar with Only Fools and Horses.
drizzly_november
"I am a human being! I am a MAN!" gets memed a lot, but when I finally saw it and heard Hurt's delivery, it's so deeply moving.
Alex Green
Candytwink, Candytwink, Candytwink, Candytwink, Candytwink
Thad
https://youtu.be/-NALBFLlTUQ?si=DUnr0Ob8cpk1CXFU
Jenn
Me 2
Peen Israel
I’m fuckibg gay
David Wright
Potter's "Brimstone and Treacle" is a truly sick little movie.
The Children of Jack Acid
Do a lot of U.S. military vehicles appear in this movie? Maybe the filmmakers had to remove any overtly bad references to corrupt U.S. state institutions in order to get cooperation from the people who rent out tanks and helicopters and boats and stuff. (Or people--maybe there are a lot of uniformed U.S. soldiers or sailors afoot?) I guess I could do a 10 second search on Google, or just watch the movie, but I prefer to pester strangers on the internet with questions.
The Children of Jack Acid
No fuckin' shit, dude. This HUGE omission has entirely made me rethink my hero worship of these clearly culturally illiterate man-childs.
The Children of Jack Acid
My favorite 70s groupie is Sable Starr.
The Children of Jack Acid
Don't forget that Alexei Sayle was a principal cast member on The Young Ones!
Nicholas Bell
Ou
Jennifer Vaughn
William Hurt’s English accent in Elephant Man is also great
THEKILLERWHALE
Rich Evans go on Movie Madness!
Clean Beans
Good ep!
Yeah but in my defense
All power to Hesse. Chapo Has Fallen!
The Children of Jack Acid
I guess William Hurt r***d Marlee Martin, who he started dating when she was 19 and he was 35? Though he hadn't done it yet by the time of this film.
The Children of Jack Acid
RIP Brian Dennehy!
Caleb
Yall are insane if you think William Hurt's accent was at all ok.
Jason Nuclear
Gorky Park is a great movie, but I like the novel more. One big change the movie made from the novel is completely dropping the part where the character played by Lee Marvin is backed by the FBI in his efforts to steal sables from Russia and a couple FBI agents serve as secondary antagonists in the finale (which takes place in upstate New York in the novel, not Sweden). In fact the movie swaps the FBI agents out with corrupt KGB agents during that final showdown
JLV90
Pennies From Heaven movie poster is so cool
Gert
Jessica Harper is a very ... unusual screen presence. Seems normal enough in interviews.
Greg
He couldn’t watch them on 123movies.ru
Michael S. Judge
Dunno about timelines of influence here, but "the gap between what people say and what they do" is nearly the exact definition of Peter Dale Scott's original Deep State thesis, or his predecessor Ernst Fraenkl – there's the outward or "normative" state, which is literally what we say, the "rules" we announce and then make a show of obeying, and then there's the deep or "prerogative" state that does anything it wants to, entirely in its own ruthless self-interest, and never talks about it. "The gap between things said and things done" is a pretty tidy summary
Michael S. Judge
Michael Elphick is a There's That Guy MVP. His lead performance in the first and best von Trier movie, THE ELEMENT OF CRIME, is incredible
josh williams
How did you not have Felix in a sable ep?
Tim U.
Nobody on the episode knew Alexei Sayle from The Young Ones? I thought Chris would jump in at least.
Adam Skorupskas
Pennies from heaven is a pile of shit!
Malaparte_Animal
Calm down
Karl
Did they forget to introduce the guest or did I just miss it?
——
I want to like hesse, she seems nice, but honestly she sucks, in all of these episodes she’s said like maybe 3 interesting things about the movies
Marc Silverstein
I love smoked sable on a bagel
Doug Cartel
Modern capitalism is all high finance and whatever but from the early colonial period up until the early-mid 20th century the European empires competed for control over cotton production. Fur trapping was France's big bet on North America but obviously it didnt help them beat the brits; wonder if theres any deeper meaning in that with this furrier character. Probably not, but the fun thing about art is being able to ram square pegs into round holes and all that
Ian
I really thought Felix would be on this one.
Luna Zeidner
Both these movies have been my favorites in the series so I'm very excited to listen
Zach H.
Well chosen. Gorky Park has one of Lee Marvin’s most menacing performances and Pennies from Heaven deserves a reevaluation for just what they trying to shoot for with the subject matter in a Hollywood musical.
Blank
Movie madness! 💗
