The following is a human-made transcript of Episode 304 of the podcast Modern Technology Watches, the subject of which was the film Bernie. The discussion has been lightly edited for readability without substantially altering the content; if you need a verbatim quote for reference purposes, please confirm it from the original audio if possible.
ROB:
A kid would wrap his car around a tree, and with Bernie it was…
GILA:
“And yet death slipped up on young Mr. Shotwell as gentle as a fallen mist.”
(Opening theme music)
ROB:
Hello Gila.
GILA:
Hello Rob.
ROB:
Welcome one and all to this latest episode of Modern Technology Watches. What episode is this?
GILA:
I believe this is 304.
ROB:
I’m going to look it up.
GILA:
No, it’s 304. You did one- I did one Citizen Ruth, this is 304.
ROB:
Can’t be too careful. (laughs)
GILA:
Are you questioning my memory?
ROB:
What was your name again?
GILA:
Ha-ha.
ROB:
Yes. And because it has been a while, we can refresh our memories and the listeners regarding Modern Technology Watches, which is the podcast in which I, Rob Vincent,
GILA:
And I, Gila Drazen,
ROB:
Show one another films and movies and things from our shared video collection, then we talk about them.
GILA:
And we talk about them. We are thrilled to be back… back, back, back again. Back,
ROB:
Back, back, back again.
GILA:
Back back, back again.
ROB:
It has been a moment.
GILA:
It has been a moment.
ROB:
We’ve been through some stuff here at Modern Technology Central.
GILA:
We have. Yeah, COVID hit us hard, listeners.
ROB:
It did.
GILA:
Some of us harder than others.
ROB:
We both got COVID at the same time, pretty much.
GILA:
Yes. I tested positive on the 4th of July. I declared my independence from avoiding the pandemic (laughs) on the 4th of July.
ROB:
Yes, and we were only a few days apart.
GILA:
We were, I tested positive Monday, you tested positive Thursday.
ROB:
Yes, and so we went through that, it was less than fun. Wear your masks, get your vaccinations. I think we only came through as well as we did because we were fully vaccinated.
GILA:
We were fully vaccinated, and we were very careful.
ROB:
We came through it. I think my COVID on the way out kind of trashed the place a little before it left.
GILA:
You had rockstar COVID.
ROB:
Yeah. (laughs) So I’m still dealing with some stuff, but now I think I’m up to doing this here podcast again.
GILA:
Very exciting.
ROB:
Most exciting indeed.
GILA:
And I’m not just saying that because it’s my pick. (laughs) But it’s fun to do this, and it’s been a minute, and this is going to be, I think, a less-intense episode than our last one.
ROB:
That’s something I think we can use, something a little refreshing, maybe a little palate-cleanser of an episode. (laughs)
GILA:
(creepy laugh) You have no idea what I’m about to spring on you.
ROB:
I really have no idea what you’re about to spring on me, but your facial expression right now is kind of indescribable. I’m very sorry, listeners.
GILA:
So you keep talking, I’ll go get the movie.
ROB:
I’ll keep talking. I will say that long COVID is a real thing. I am undergoing the effects of that at this very moment, but my spirits remain high for the most part. And I would not be getting through it nearly as well without the loving care of my darling wife, Ms. Gila Drazen, who happens to be my co-host on this particular program.
GILA:
That’s me.
ROB:
That is you.
GILA:
I’m back.
ROB:
You are back.
GILA:
I am back. So let me preface this before I hand you the case by saying that this is not a movie with which I have a long association.
ROB:
Okay.
GILA:
I’ve seen it once.
ROB:
All right.
GILA:
I really liked it. It’s been a minute, but I think it’ll be fun.
ROB:
All right, you haven’t seen this in a while?
GILA:
I have not.
ROB:
Okay. Well, that always ends well for us here on Modern Technology Watches.
GILA:
Right, but I wasn’t like deeply attached to it at any time. I saw it, I liked it, we own it, but I haven’t gone back to it in a while.
ROB:
Okay. Well, I look forward to checking it out. What have you got for us here?
GILA:
Here you go.
ROB:
Bernie.
GILA:
Bernie!
ROB:
Bernie. This is about Bernie Sanders and his campaigns for president?
GILA:
Yeah, and there’s a whole thing about the mittens.
ROB:
Yes. No, you have handed me a movie called Bernie. Right on the cover here, Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey.
“Bernie, a story so unbelievable it must be true.”
GILA:
Yes.
ROB:
I have not heard of this movie.
“In the tiny rural town of Carthage, Texas, assistant funeral director Bernie…”
(struggling to pronounce “Tiede”) “Teed?” “Tied?”
GILA:
“Tee-dee.”
ROB:
“Tiede was one of the town’s most beloved residents. He taught Sunday School, sang in the church choir, and was always willing to lend a helping hand. Everyone loved and appreciated Bernie, so it came as no surprise when he’d befriended Marjorie Nugent, an affluent widow who is as well known for her sour attitude as her fortune. Bernie frequently traveled with Marjorie and even managed her banking affairs. Marjorie quickly became fully dependent on Bernie and his generosity, and Bernie struggled to meet her increasing demands. Bernie continued to handle her affairs, and the townspeople went months without seeing Marjorie. The people of Carthage were shocked when it was reported that Marjorie Nugent had been dead for some time, and Bernie Tiede was being charged with the murder.”
And that’s it, that’s all the marketing copy on the back of this thing. Wow, that’s unusual.
GILA:
It is unusual.
ROB:
We’ll look at the credit block here… oh, it’s a Richard Linklater film.
GILA:
It is a Richard Linklater film.
ROB:
Okay. Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey. Okay, PG-13. And this was in 2011. A 2011 movie.
GILA:
Yes. So I saw this in the theater at the Kew Gardens Cinema. So if that tells you a little bit about what kind of release this film got. (laughs) The Kew Gardens Cinema being an artier cinema in our neighborhood. In the last couple of years they’ve begun playing bigger movies, but I think that’s just a concession to the reality of staying open right now.
ROB:
Yes. But we do like the Kew Gardens Cinema.
GILA:
We enjoy the Kew Gardens Cinema quite a bit.
ROB:
It’s a really lovely theater. It’s nice to have a place nearby that veers toward the artsy.
GILA:
And it’s independently run, and it’s a lovely place. I love to support it as much as we can.
ROB:
Even the popcorn’s better than other theaters.
GILA:
Now there’s a lot of information about the production of the movie that we’re going to talk about in the back half because it’s in Wikipedia. But I would like you to take a look at the credit block and see if you can tell me who did the cinematography for this particular gem. End of the second line.
ROB:
Hmm.. (laughs)
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
(laughing) Oh, the DP is Dick Pope!
GILA:
(laughing) Dick Pope!
ROB:
(laughing) Oh, boy.
GILA:
I told you.
ROB:
Yes. You are going to have to explain to the listeners why Dick Pope is so beloved in this household. (laughs)
GILA:
(laughing) I certainly will.
Many years ago, I don’t know, was it 2014? We’ll look it up, and we’ll confirm, but several years ago when the Oscar nominations were being announced, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the time was announcing nominees for various categories and she announced for best cinematography, and a film by Mike Leigh called Mr. Turner, she was announcing the nominees for best cinematography, and she very proudly announced “Dick Poop… Dick Pope for Mr. Turner.”
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
And this happened around the time that Vine was a thing, six-second videos, and that was the perfect length! And I thought this was the funniest thing I’d ever heard in my entire life and just sat there and watched it on a loop for hours, laughing hysterically, at my job by the way, I just had a second window open just running this Vine repeatedly. And a coworker of mine heard me laughing, and she said, “are you watching Dick Poop again?”
ROB:
(laughing)
GILA:
So, yes, “Dick Poop… Dick Pope,” I think we can link it in the show notes because everybody should see this at least once.
ROB:
Yes, it’s still on, I think, YouTube, Twitter, it’s out there somewhere.
GILA:
It’s around. You can definitely find it. Yes. Dick Pope is a wonderful cinematographer. I think this is our first Dick Pope movie together, so very excited.
ROB:
He’s a wonderful cinematographer I’m sure, but I don’t know if that overshadows how wonderful that moment is with his name and the unfortunate slip up of, what’s-her-bucket.
GILA:
And her also having to carry on with a certain amount of dignity after having said Dick Poop.
ROB & GILA
(laughing)
GILA:
So with that… (laughs)
ROB:
So with that…
GILA:
With that, let us let Dick Poop take us to a different land. Well, Texas, I suppose.
ROB:
We will do that right after we let our pal Torley take us to a nice musical interlude.
GILA:
Let Torley play some music for the people.
ROB:
Then we’ll get back to you after we have watched 2011’s Bernie.
GILA:
2011’s Bernie.
(Interstitial music)
GILA:
Riggs.
ROB:
Gila.
GILA:
Are we back?
ROB:
We are back. (laughs) And we have just watched this movie.
GILA:
We’ve just watched Bernie, yeah.
ROB:
2011’s Bernie.
GILA:
2011’s Bernie. So 2011 was the film-festival premiere, it was released in April of 2012 in theaters. This is an issue we have when we deal with a film festival movie.
ROB:
Well, that counts. I mean, on Wiki it’s under the article for Bernie (2011 film), and it’s dated 2011 on its DVD case.
GILA:
All of these things are true, but if you look on the right under release dates, says June 16th, 2011 L.A.F.F., April 27th, 2012 United States. So, yes and yes.
ROB:
L.A.F.F. Now, does that festival only do comedies, or..?
GILA:
I believe so, yeah. Because this movie’s just a laugh riot really.
ROB:
It really is.
GILA:
(laughs)
ROB:
No, this was an interesting picture.
GILA:
So like I said, it’d been a minute since I’d seen it, and I wasn’t sure how well it was going to hold up, but I was very pleased to note that it was not an utter disaster. I’m glad that this was not The Tao of Steve. (laughs)
ROB:
It was certainly not The Tao of Steve. I am not sorry I watched this. I had a reasonably interested audience member experience. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to rewatch this anytime soon, but I’m glad I saw it. Given this is a Richard Linklater picture, I think that’s the response I have to most of the things of his that I’ve seen.
GILA:
Okay, because when I showed you the box and you said, “oh, a Richard Linklater film,” you seemed a little skeptical. Is Richard Linklater’s ouevre not your favorite?
ROB:
No, not skeptical as such. I wasn’t aware that this film existed, and I have enjoyed one or two things by Linklater, I’ve not enjoyed one or two things by Linklater, I was not sure on which side this was going to fall, but I hadn’t heard of this movie. I like Jack Black, I like Shirley MacLaine, I like Matthew McConaughey. It was good, and I think they did well, and I’m glad to have seen this. I’ve noticed the word Bernie now and then while walking past our shared DVD shelf. What came to mind for me was the Senator with floofy hair who does such a good job at running for president and such a bad job getting elected president.
GILA:
(laughs) Yeah, this movie flew so emphatically under the radar in so many ways. I’m still kind of surprised that I saw it, now I don’t remember what the sequence of events leading up to seeing it was. But definitely saw it, definitely saw it in the theater, definitely saw it in the theater with my parents.
ROB:
Right, and this was when you were all living here?
GILA:
Yes, yes, it’s about 10 years ago. And somehow came into possession of the DVD. Now I don’t know how that happened either, I honestly don’t remember. Because sometimes you’d walk by like the $5 bin in the Walmart or the Blockbuster Video, but those stopped being a thing.
ROB:
More or less.
GILA:
I honestly don’t remember when the Blockbuster Video in our neighborhood closed. We did have one.
ROB:
Oh, everyone had one for a bit.
GILA:
There was one on the block between Queens Boulevard and Austin Street.
ROB:
Yeah, right in the middle of everything.
GILA:
Yeah, I think it’s a tax preparation place now, but it used to be a Blockbuster Video. And honestly, I do not remember when or where I bought this. Obviously I bought it.
ROB:
At some point you did, and I don’t think this is an ex-Blockbuster copy, it doesn’t have any of the telltale stickers or anything like that.
GILA:
No, that is very true.
ROB:
It just seems like a standard DVD that you would buy. It’s neat. There was a whole bunch of stuff in the special features that I might come back to someday, because you know I like my extended features and special features and deleted scenes and things. Sometimes you pull up the menus on one of these and, deleted scenes, they’ve got maybe three things and they’re fun little things to watch. But this brought up a whole page full of stuff, and I was just like, “I don’t have that kind of time this afternoon.”
GILA:
And they were in alphabetical order which I thought was fascinating. There’s no context to where they belong in the movie.
ROB:
Yeah, and I clicked on something else and Linklater started talking and I was like, “maybe later.”
GILA:
It also wasn’t captioned which wasn’t helping.
ROB:
Yeah. But the film was, which was nice, although they kept getting things just a little bit wrong.
GILA:
Yeah, and that’s always entertaining.
ROB:
Yeah, people are saying things in Texas accents and their captioner just wasn’t getting it, which can be fun.
GILA:
It can be fun, but if you have a movie with a script, how does somebody not take the minute to sit down with the script and check the captions? Is that a job that exists? Because maybe it should be!
ROB:
(laughs) Yeah. I mean, sometimes the services that transcribe these things and get them captioned, they don’t work for the studio, they’re outside contractors, things like that, and this sort of stuff happens. On that subject, I want to give a shout out to Betty, who is doing a lot of transcribing for us on the site modern.technology, where this podcast lives. We have been adding text transcripts of our work, which is a long job, it takes a lot of time and dedication. And so we found someone with a good amount of time and dedication and who is a professional transcriber.
GILA:
It’s a lot of skill.
ROB:
Yes. And she does excellent work, and she’s been doing a lot of it for us. So thank you, Betty. If you need a transcriptionist, check out Betty on Twitter @Betty_Bett_ or you can find her link on her transcripts on our site at modern.technology. What’s weird is she’s going to be transcribing this episode for us and listening to us thank her and then writing down us thanking her, and… hi, Betty! We appreciate you.
GILA:
We appreciate you Betty, thank you so much. (laughs) It’s a little spirally, though to think about it that way.
ROB:
Yeah, but how did we get on that? Oh yeah, we were talking about the captions on the…
GILA:
We were talking about the captions on the DVD, which do leave a little bit to be desired.
ROB:
Yeah. They need Betty, is what they need.
GILA:
They do.
ROB:
So, this movie, so you saw it with your parents?
GILA:
Yes, and this was a much less bizarre experience than seeing other films with my parents like The Aristocrats. I saw The Aristocrats with my parents.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Now listeners, if you are not familiar with The Aristocrats, it is a documentary about a joke, which on its face sounds like really nice, right? No, “the Aristocrats” is a joke that comedians would tell each other at the end of the night, and they would try to one-up each other and it became just this way that they would just gross each other out.
ROB:
Yeah, it’s a long running gag in the comedy scene to try and construct the filthiest, most offensive joke possible. I think we both recommend this movie highly.
GILA:
It’s a great documentary. However, it is a little sad now because so many of the people who are in it have died. I will say this though about The Aristocrats.
Number one, I spent the entire movie literally bent in half. I was laughing so hard for so long my knees were, like, at my shoulders. Oh my God, I’m glad I didn’t go alone and I didn’t have to drive home because I could not walk after it was done because I’d been in hysterics the entire time. So that’s thing number one about The Aristocrats.
Thing number two about The Aristocrats is, oh my God, don’t see it with your parents because it is so filthy. (laughs) Look, it’s funny, there’s no other word, it’s incredibly funny. However, the places it goes are very, very dark and very scatological and very profane, and it’s weird to see it with your parents.
The third thing I will say about The Aristocrats, and then we can actually talk about Bernie which is why we’re here, I laughed at a Carrot Top joke because of The Aristocrats.
ROB:
(laughs) Achievement unlocked.
GILA:
Yeah. I laughed hard at a Carrot Top joke.
ROB:
That’s not the easiest achievement to get.
GILA:
Because the conceit, dear listeners, of “the Aristocrats” is that you have a family walks into a talent agent’s office and they ask to describe the act, and that’s where the comedian improvises and can take it to very dark places.
ROB:
Yes.
GILA:
But Carrot Top said, “a man walks into a talent agent’s office and says, ‘have I got an act for you!’ And the agent says, ‘ugh, it’s not a fucking prop act, is it?'” And that is Carrot Top’s entire rendition of “the Aristocrats.” And I lost my mind.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Also, do you remember Paul Provenza?
ROB:
Mm-hm.
GILA:
Paul Provenza and Penn Jillette made that documentary together. And Paul Provenza hosted a game show on Nickelodeon.
ROB:
What did he host?
GILA:
I believe it was called Make the Grade.
ROB:
Oh, okay, this is vaguely on the tip of my brain. I may have seen it like once.
GILA:
It was a trivia… it was like Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? but it was for kids, and they were like kindergarten to like eighth grade levels of difficulty for questions. Paul Provenza. And then also I think he was the judge on Kids’ Court. Nickelodeon worked hand-in-glove with a lot of edgy standups to make them do not-edgy things.
ROB:
Or, you know, edgy in the context of kids’ entertainment.
GILA:
But even when they were not doing kids’ entertainment. When you think about as a today example, Nicole Byer, right? Nicole Byer is a proudly-raunchy standup, but she also hosts Nailed It!
ROB:
Yes, which is, like, the most wholesome thing you can imagine being made into a game show.
GILA:
So she’s got this whole new fan base of children, and they want to come to her standup shows, and they can’t. Because they shouldn’t. The venues won’t let them in. And I think that’s a good thing.
ROB:
I remember this happening to Howie Mandel when he, back in the day, made the cartoon Bobby’s World, which was based on, he would do this “Bobby” character in his act which was a little boy, and he eventually ended up doing a cartoon version of that and becoming known for that among kids. And I remember him in some interview on Fox Kids or something, I think he was being interviewed by children. He’s talking about doing Bobby’s World and how much he enjoys it and stuff, and they ask him about what other stuff he’s doing. And he’s like, “oh yeah, well, I just did this standup special,” and then he catches himself and he’s like, “which you shouldn’t really see, but your parents might like it.” (laughs). And it’s having to adapt to, you’re a raunchy standup, but then all of a sudden you’re a wholesome child entertainer as well.
GILA:
It’s a little bit of everything. I suppose in the same way of, like, seeing people we know when we were visiting family a couple weeks ago, and a bunch of people at the synagogue came up to us and said, “oh my God, I love your podcast.” And I was like, “We swear a lot on that podcast.” (laughs)
ROB:
(laughing) Yes, yes.
GILA:
Hi Sarah, hi Ozzie, we love you.
ROB:
Anyway, Bernie.
GILA:
Bernie! We’ve gone so far afield here.
ROB:
Yes, we haven’t even started on Bernie properly yet. But yes, I enjoyed it. What did you think rewatching it?
GILA:
I thought it held up very well. There were cringey bits, but that had more to do with the fact that we were talking about Texas in the late nineties, early aughts. And people were going to say things like “a little light in the loafers.”
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
The cringey bits had less to do with the movie than they had to do with the story.
ROB:
This was based on a true story. This involved talking to real people, not actors, in sort of a documentary fashion. And so, by virtue of just the story it was telling, this was not, at all times, a choice of somebody writing a movie and making choices, it was just recording people being themselves.
GILA:
A little bit of both, yeah. So the movie itself was co-written by Richard Linklater and a man named Skip Hollandsworth.
ROB:
Skip Hollandsworth.
GILA:
Skip Hollandsworth, a local journalist who wrote an article about this story for Texas Monthly. And the article was called “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas,” as opposed to “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Right?
ROB:
(laughs) I see what they did there.
GILA:
Yeah. The article came out in 1998, the murder took place in 1996. So yes, we are going to be talking about a movie that is 10 years old that talks about events that happened 26 years ago. So as we always say, here be spoilers, please keep that in mind.
ROB:
Yeah, but like with Cheaters, it’s harder to take spoilers seriously when you’re talking about real life and things that happened. (laughs)
GILA:
Very true, very, very true. So it’s interesting that this article became cinematized in the writing of the screenplay. But Richard Linklater has said, and I think he’s actually saying this in the section, the special feature that we started watching and then stopped, that part of the screenplay, the talking heads, some of whom are actors, some of whom are not, and the way that they credit them at the end, it’s hard to tell who is and who isn’t, and I’m confident that that was intentional. But people saw the screenplay and were like, “well, this looks boring as hell.” And Richard Linklater was like, “it’s going to be funny and it’s going to be interesting. It doesn’t look like it on the page, but when you hear these people talk, the story will come to life,” and it did.
ROB:
It did. I mean, East Texas is a character.
GILA:
(laughs) And no, just the way that they set it up so it was kind of an interesting combination of narrative film with documentary conceits mixed into it, the talking heads of it, and then there were parts where it was just like, “okay, now here’s the story.” So it was like Unsolved Mysteries.
ROB:
Yeah, where they would do reenactments of the…
GILA:
Yeah, because to an extent that was what they were doing.
ROB:
And their reenactments were always, like, so bad by, like, the worst acting hopefuls.
GILA:
And these were not, which was good, but like you’d have these talking heads and all of a sudden there’s Matthew McConaughey as his character, who is gross. I’m sorry, Danny Buck is gross. But with that said about the townspeople and about who was participating, if you take a look at the cast list here on the Wikipedia page…
ROB:
Yes, for Bernie (2011 film).
GILA:
For Bernie (2011 film), they have 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13 people are listed and four of them have Wikipedia pages. So this is going to be a rough go, but I think we can do it. One person that they didn’t mention in this cast list was somebody who played a townsperson, who was an actor cast to play a townsperson, was Kay McConaughey.
ROB:
Kay McConaughey.
GILA:
Kay McConaughey, Matthew’s mother. Which is why I grabbed your arm and said, “hey.”
ROB:
I thought, “How many McConaugheys can be in one movie?”
GILA:
So true, so so true. So basically we can really just talk about the big three, I think, it’s probably the fairest to go. And some of them did look… there were a lot of That Guys, which I appreciated. We got the sheriff, the owner of the funeral home, the defense attorney, the stock broker… none of them.
Okay, so Matthew McConaughey is Danny Buck Davidson.
ROB:
“All right, all right, all right.”
GILA:
“All right, all right, all right.”
ROB:
Had to do it. But yeah, he was really good in this. And it took me a while to recognize him.
GILA:
Because of the hair?
ROB:
Because of the hair, but also he does a good job portraying the character, and he’s not, like… in some of his movies, it’s “a Matthew McConaughey part,” and this isn’t so much, it’s just he’s playing this sort of scummy, self-righteous dude. The part is well played by him, he was good casting.
GILA:
And I just want to check something here, because I think we’re looking at Matthew McConaughey at the height of his powers, so to speak. Yeah, okay, this was…
ROB:
I mean, this was well after Speed 2: Cruise Control, right?
GILA:
(laughs) This was part of his major shift because he went from the rom-coms and stuff and, in the space of 2011 to 2012, he was in this, Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club was the next year, so he was already filming that by the time this came out. And then True Detective happened, when you went from Matthew McConaughey: shirtless bongo player, to Matthew McConaughey: serious actor, we were kind of in the middle of that shift when this movie happened.
ROB:
Yeah, he was breaking the bounds of the shtick that he was known for.
GILA:
Yeah, so the fact that he was willing to be this douchey district attorney who was a publicity hound and had matted stringy hair, and the thing when he had the “Wheel of Misfortune,” what was that about?
ROB:
But it was really interesting too, because this is one of those stories where the hero of the piece, the main character, is the bad guy in simple terms. The main character murders another character, and that was actually spoiled on the back of the DVD case, it’s the whole point of the thing. And Matthew McConaughey is the DA, he’s technically in the right, he has a guilty murderer that he wants to put away for murder. But he’s an asshole. (laughs)
GILA:
He’s a huge asshole, number one. Number two, though, do you think that charging Bernie with first-degree murder was an overshoot? Because I think there’s an argument to be made for that. We’ll get there.
ROB:
We will get there.
GILA:
Matthew McConaughey’s willingness at this point in his career to be this huge asshole. And yes, part of it was, was he probably doing a solid for his buddy? Sure. He and Richard Linklater, you can’t think about the history of Matthew McConaughey as an actor without Richard Linklater in the picture. No pun intended. Like literally, you can’t, because Richard Linklater made Dazed and Confused. And say what you will about Dazed and Confused, and God knows there’s plenty to be said.
ROB:
I didn’t like it.
GILA:
I didn’t either. And I know I’m supposed to, and I don’t. But Matthew McConaughey’s production company is called JKL Pictures…
ROB:
JKL?
GILA:
“Just Keep Livin’,” right, and that’s a line from Dazed and Confused. So without Richard Linklater, what career does Matthew McConaughey have? It’s a good question. Without Matthew McConaughey, what is this movie? It’s a hagiography.
ROB:
Yes! Yes, yes, it is.
GILA:
Right. He’s not the murderer, he is the bad guy in this.
ROB:
Because he’s trying to do the right thing, but also get his own while he is doing it.
GILA:
But also I think he’s going about it the wrong way, and we can talk about that when we get to the plot.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
Matthew McConaughey, excellent choice. It blows my mind that more people don’t know that this movie exists.
ROB:
Yeah, it blows my mind that I didn’t. (laughs)
GILA:
That’s why we do this little experiment of ours. (laughs)
All right. Up next, Shirley MacLaine as Marjorie “Margie” Nugent.
ROB:
I like Shirley MacLaine, always have. I like her acting, I’ve liked her performances in things. I like her, sort of, persona from interviews and whatnot. I like that she was open about being into new-age shit before it was popular. I’ve always found her really charming, which is fun because in this movie she’s playing a total jerk, a horrible person.
GILA:
A horrible human being.
ROB:
A grouchy old lady who treats everyone around her like crap and ends up driving her companion to murder her over it.
GILA:
Yeah, but she does it so well.
ROB:
She does it so well. She was so good at playing the grouchy, grumpy old lady, which is a part I think unlike anything else I’ve ever seen her play.
GILA:
Au contraire, mon ami.
ROB:
Oh, yes?
GILA:
Yeah, have you not seen Steel Magnolias?
ROB:
I have not seen Steel Magnolias. I’ve seen, like, a couple of minutes of it while flipping channels and thinking, “oh, that’s Steel Magnolias, and I better find something else to watch.”
GILA:
(exaggeratedly emotional) I’m going to need a minute…
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
…Whew. Okay, in Steel Magnolias – movie, obviously – Shirley MacLaine plays a character named Ouiser Boudreaux.
ROB:
Okay.
GILA:
Who is sharp-tongued and can be mean. I mean, ultimately is a good person, which I don’t think Marjorie is.
ROB:
No.
GILA:
But no, uh-uh, this is…
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
There is a point in the movie where she sees someone that she knew from high school, he’s played by Uncle Wally, and he says, “hello Louisa.” And she says, “Hell, Owen Jenkins. Have you shrunk?”
ROB:
(laughs) Okay.
GILA:
Which I say to people when like they’ve taken off their high heels. Ouiser is not a bad person, but she’s not nice. Oh my God, I’m going to have to show you Steel Magnolias at some point, aren’t I?
ROB:
(laughs) I suppose so.
GILA:
And I will show you the 1989 Steel Magnolias, not the lifetime remake with Queen Latifah in the–
ROB:
Oh my, okay, well.
GILA:
You look like you’re looking something up.
ROB:
No, I’m just breezing through Shirley MacLaine’s article because I’ve been wondering about the prominent things I’ve seen her in. And yeah, Madame Sousatzka, Postcards from the Edge, Terms of Endearment, The Trouble with Harry, of course, which was a Hitchcock picture.
GILA:
Defending Your Life.
ROB:
Defending Your Life, yes.
GILA:
As herself.
ROB:
(laughs) As Shirley MacLaine. But yes, she was excellent in this, and she made you hate her, and it was great.
GILA:
Mm-hmm, and just, there was a turn, you saw it.
ROB:
Yeah, there was definitely a turn. And the character reminded me of people I’ve dealt with in real life and somehow managed not to murder. (laughs)
GILA:
I mean, we’ve all got those people. I’m grateful you haven’t murdered them.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Because then you’d be in prison and not here. And I’d be talking to myself and it would be weird.
ROB:
Yeah, that would be a strange podcast.
GILA:
(laughing) Shirley MacLaine.
ROB:
Shirley MacLaine.
GILA:
Shirrrley MacLaine, it’s hard to say.
ROB:
Shirley MacLaine.
GILA:
Shirley MacLaine. I keep getting the R and the L kind of tied up in my mouth. Also – and this has nothing to do with anything – her brother is Warren Beatty, and that’s never not weird to me.
ROB:
Yeah.
GILA:
That’s all.
ROB:
Yeah, I think she got the talent, and…
GILA:
(laughs) Wow.
The last person on the cast list that we’re going to talk about, because we know who they are, is Jack Black as Bernie Tiede.
ROB:
Jack Black.
GILA:
Jack Black.
ROB:
I like Jack Black.
GILA:
I like Jack Black.
ROB:
Who the heck doesn’t? I hated Jack Black in the first thing in which I saw him, which was Shallow Hal.
GILA:
Shallow Hal. Oh, honey.
ROB:
Shallow Hal was my intro to Jack Black, and he was the guy that played the jerkass in that jerkass of a movie.
GILA:
Well, I mean, Shallow Hal has its own bucket of stuff to talk about in a completely different…
ROB:
But then later on, Jack Black started breaking out further than that, and I started seeing him in properly Jack Black things. At first was like, “Oh, that’s the jerkass from that stupid movie.” But then it was, “Oh, Jack Black, okay. Yes, I can dig it.”
GILA:
Jack Black, who also had kind of a break out in a Richard Linklater film.
ROB:
Which one?
GILA:
School of Rock.
ROB:
Oh, I didn’t know School of Rock was Linklater.
GILA:
“From the director of School of Rock and Dazed and Confused,” it’s right there.
ROB:
Oh, yeah, so it’s right there under “includes free digital copy” on the DVD sleeve.
GILA:
(laughs) Yeah, yeah, true.
ROB:
So I guess I kind of skipped over that. But I like Jack Black so much, he just seems like a cool dude and doing cool movies. And he’s really good in this, and he’s good at all the weird little nuances of Bernie. And you see a picture of him at the end when they’re rolling credits and they show pictures of the real Bernie and Marjorie, and then they’re showing footage of the real Bernie talking to Jack Black, who’s just rapt at attention in the way that you are if you’re an actor hanging out with the person that you’re supposed to be playing. That was really good casting. We know he can sing, he has a band and everything. He is good at being right on that line of, “here’s a bunch of hugely likable things about this person, here’s a bunch of things that sort of set your teeth on edge about this person.” And you could see, we’ve all known those sorts of very unassertive people who let themselves be walked all over until it’s finally too much and they snap and it explodes. And yeah, he was good at all of that.
GILA:
Johnny Hildo.
ROB:
Johnny Hildo. (laughs)
GILA:
(laughs) But no, I think about it, I cannot imagine anyone else in this part.
ROB:
Yeah, no.
GILA:
He can do it all. And I think the fact that, yeah, all you hear is how great Bernie is, and yeah, you can’t help but want to root for the guy.
ROB:
Yeah. I mean, in the hands of a lesser actor, this would’ve been a movie that told you how great this person is and then you don’t believe it, but the way Jack Black plays the character, you can believe it. You can believe that this is that guy in town that everyone loves who’s always doing nice things for people and remembers your kids are in college and remembers what schools they’re at and asks you how they are.
GILA:
And comes by to check on you after he’s buried your husband. And just even at the very beginning, the way this movie opens, is Bernie back at his alma mater giving a guest lecture to the funeral directors in training on cosmetologizing… cosmetizing?
ROB:
Cosmetizing?
GILA:
Cosmetololo…
ROB:
Cos.. cosmonaut…
GILA:
Putting makeup on a dead body.
ROB:
Yes. (laughs)
GILA:
And now, I will admit, coming from a culture that does not do open-casket funerals, that’s still very alien to me. But watching him taking this kind of care, watching him saying, “more color doesn’t make them less dead,” watching him do the things that are going to bring comfort to the family and to the mourners and do honor to the person who has died.
ROB:
Yeah, that’s exactly the sort of person you would want in that job. He sells it, it’s great casting all around.
GILA:
It was really, really well done. And again, did it have to do with the fact that Richard Linklater wanted to make this movie and he called in his buddies? Probably. But you know what, that’s a hell of a thing.
ROB:
Yeah, and he called the right buddies.
GILA:
He definitely called the right buddies. Okay, do you want to talk plot?
ROB:
Let’s hit the plot. It’s a bit of a short one here, which I think suits the story.
GILA:
It suits the story, and also because so much of the story was told through the talking heads.
ROB:
Yes. The way this movie was constructed, it was, you were mostly watching the dramatized parts, but they were intercut with these talking heads, which as you said, some of them were genuinely people talking about their experience of the real events and some of them were actors pretending to be such. It was really interesting, it was an interesting way to tell this story, and I think a very good one.
GILA:
Yeah, I mean, this movie is snappy. It’s a snappy 99 minutes.
ROB:
That it is.
GILA:
Snappy.
ROB:
Snappy.
GILA:
We didn’t even have to stop it once.
ROB:
No.
GILA:
Nobody had to pee, nothing. (laughs)
ROB:
(laughing) We didn’t even finish the bag of chips.
GILA:
We didn’t.
GILA:
All right.
“In small town, Carthage, Texas, in 1996, local assistant mortician, Bernie Tiede…” (pronounced “tee-deh”)
Which we did call “tee-dee” in the beginning but again, I think we hear it both ways.
ROB:
Yeah. We hear it both ways in the movie. It’s T-I-E-D-E.
GILA:
The second, apparently.
“… a beloved member of the community becomes the only friend of the wealthy, recently widowed Marjorie Nugent.”
Now it’s not even that. Okay, look. The town folks consider her cold and unpleasant. We’re going to give this a little more background though. Okay. She has sisters, she has a brother and sisters. At least one of her sisters lives in Carthage, which is not a big place. They haven’t spoken to each other in 10 years. Now, in a small town, to not speak to someone for 10 years, you have to make an effort.
ROB:
(laughing) Yeah. I think it must be.
GILA:
So this is who we’re dealing with. She was sued by her son and her grandchildren. No friends. Her husband owned a bank. He died, she took it over. Someone said she used to turn down loan applications for fun. No one liked her.
ROB:
And there’s great montages of her just being horrible to people. She sees someone doing their job at the bank, and the client walks away and she just takes the paperwork that guy was working on and throws it right in the bin and walks away.
GILA:
She’s unpleasant and no one likes her. But Bernie, after having buried her husband, went to check up on her and they became friendly.
ROB:
There’s a great moment in the film where she’s on the phone with Bernie and she ends that call and she’s got her stockbroker in the room with her, and she’s just musing after the phone call. “So sweet. He’s so sweet to me. That’s probably the nicest anyone’s been to me in 50 years.” And then she turns to the stockbroker and starts being crappy to him again. (laughs)
GILA:
Yeah. She’s like, “You’ve got two minutes to explain this to me or I’m going to find a new stockbroker.”
ROB:
Yes. (laughs)
GILA:
And then we get the inverse of that later, but we’ll get to that.
“Tiede in his late 30s and the elderly Nugent quickly become inseparable, frequently traveling and lunching together. Tiede’s social life suffers because of Nugent’s constant demands for his attention.”
The way this is presented in the movie is that they start hanging out, they have lunch. More and more, she’s making demands on his time. They begin traveling together. She realized she had all this traveling she wanted to do, but didn’t have anybody to do it with but, all of a sudden, she’s got this nice guy by her side.
ROB:
Right. In the meantime, the movie’s been building him up. Not only does he do the funeral director stuff, but he’s very active at his church, coaches kids, and he’s involved in the local theater directing shows. You see him over the course of the movie doing The Music Man. He’s got his fingers in all these things around town, just doing nice things for people.
GILA:
He’s really a part of the community.
ROB:
He’s a part of the community and everyone loves him because of all the stuff that he’s constantly doing. He’s helping people with their tax returns.
GILA:
He’s helping people with their taxes. But also, one of the things that keeps coming up in the talking heads was, “he made us all look good.” “He made us all look good.” No matter how you died, he made you look good.
ROB:
Yeah. At the local radio station, giving obituaries and talking about people. The radio host saying, he also made you sound good. Here’s this crappy person who got into bar fights, and you hear him giving an obituary of him like “he’s known for his communication skills.” (laughs) He would find ways to say nice things about you and one of those people who just believes the best in everyone and tries to do the best he can for everyone.
GILA:
So this goes on for two years. They travel a lot together and part of the talking heads portion of it is town gossip. Were they having an intimate relationship? Was Bernie gay? What do we know about- “well, they shared a hotel room and I know they saw each other in their underwear!” (laughs) That was Matthew McConaughey’s mom, by the way, who did that part. But it’s also a really interesting portrait of small town life. What you know about people, what you don’t know about people, what you assume about people. But Marjorie’s relationship to Bernie begins to change. She becomes more demanding of his time. He goes to part-time at the mortuary so he can work full-time for her. She fired basically her entire household staff. He’s in charge.
ROB:
Yeah. But also he needs to be at her beck and call. He’s off doing his own thing and she gets madder and madder when he doesn’t pick up his phone. She gets him a pager and clips it on him and tells him he is going to keep it on 24/7 and being more and more of a usurper of his time and energies.
GILA:
His time, his energies, his self, for lack of a better word. And you hear it from his lawyer, that she was taking away his financial agency, she was taking away his time, his everything. But she kept buying him stuff and giving him stuff, and they were going on trips and he was a signatory on all her bank accounts. All these things. And in that sequence, there’s a part where he’s on the phone with her stockbroker saying, “well, we’d like to do X, Y, Z,” and the stockbroker says, “Who’s ‘we?'” And then the stockbroker hangs up. Bernie says, “He hung up on me.” Marjorie calls him back and said, “you don’t do that or I’m going to get a new stockbroker.” So the tables had turned in that previous conversation with the stockbroker. And she is belittling to him. And at one point it’s quite literally Chekhov’s gun.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
It is so emphatically Chekhov’s gun. She’s trying to get him to shoot an armadillo. Bernie is not a gun person.
ROB:
No.
GILA:
Not a gun person. Which is interesting in east Texas. (laughs) But he tries to shoot the armadillo and she said, “well, I’m going to hold you responsible for everything that gets dug up in my garden.” And then the gun goes away. It’s in the garage.
Side note though, about armadillos, there’s a bit in Steel Magnolias, there’s a wedding at the very beginning of Steel Magnolias and the groom’s cake is in the shape of an armadillo. And Shirley MacLaine cuts a piece of it for the bride’s father, and she just cuts off the tail and hands it to him. We’re going to have to show you Steel Magnolias.
ROB:
(laughing) All right then.
GILA:
(laughing) Sorry. It’s a funny part though. So she’s making more and more demands on his time, on his endeavors, on everything. She needs to know where he is 24/7. And at one point he just snaps. She chews all her food 25 times. (laughs)
ROB:
Yes. Including the refried beans, which he asks about the necessity of.
GILA:
They’re in a restaurant where they’re going back for lunch and he says, “Marjorie, some food makes sense to chew 25 times, like chicken-fried steak. (laughs) refried beans. That’s just extra work for your jaw. Think about your TMJ muscle.”
ROB:
Yes. And she just stares him down and keeps chewing and he’s like, “oh, that’s nails on a chalkboard for me,” and very obviously stressing but then he is like, “okay, keep chewing. Just keep chewing like that.”
GILA:
So they’re getting ready to leave for lunch, they’re walking out to the car and they’re going to lunch and he sees a vision of her chewing the refried beans and there’s the gun. And then he shoots her, four times, in the back. And then he’s like, “oh my God, what did I do? Jesus, tell me what to do. I’ll do anything if you just tell me what to do.” Fade to black.
ROB:
Yeah. And the portrayal of that moment was, I think, really well done in this movie. It couldn’t have been easy to stay on the reasonable side of that line where it’s like somebody killed somebody and then they’re crying to Jesus. And that could have just been farcical and it wasn’t. There’s dark comedy throughout the movie, but they didn’t make it a comic beat. It felt genuine.
GILA:
Okay. It’s dark comedy that keeps its respect for the participants.
ROB:
Yeah. It’s not taking the piss at all.
GILA:
It’s completely different from Citizen Ruth.
ROB:
Citizen Ruth, it was like all about punching down on these ridiculous people and making everybody look stupid. And this movie was just chronicling the things and here’s what happened and here’s who it happened to, and this movie never felt like it was making fun of the people or the community, any of it. And that would’ve been so easy to do. I’ve got to give Linklater points for it. Somebody else could totally have made this movie and made it like, “haha, these rednecks in Texas, haha, these crazy church people, haha, this weird funeral director guy.” It stayed on the right side of all of that.
GILA:
It’s very impressive. I think it’s very well done.
“Tiede Murdered Nugent after growing weary of the emotional toll of her possessiveness and persistent nagging.”
I think, there’s a lot missing between those two paragraphs, but we gave the background.
“For nine months Tiede excuses her absence in the community with few questions while using her money to support local businesses and neighbors.”
So yeah, it’s easy because the thing is, everyone in this community knows how unpleasant this woman is. And like, “oh, she’s not feeling well. Oh, she can’t come to the phone. Oh, she had me do this. Oh, whatever.” And he’s able to cover for a while and you can see it start to crack him a little bit.
ROB:
And this is more of a comment on the actual events than it is on the film. You see earlier in the movie that she was updating her will and was like, “my children, my grandchildren they don’t want anything to do with me and my son’s a physician and provides for his own family so they don’t need my help, so I’m leaving everything to Bernie.” So realizing that somebody in that position could have bumped her off and made it look like she just died and then inherited everything and gone about their life, but he was trying to make it look like she was still alive. He was still using her money and stuff, but he was still living in his own house.
GILA:
Driving his old shitty car.
ROB:
Driving his old shitty car while at the same time buying cars cash for other people who happen to need them.
GILA:
Buying cars. Buying businesses.
ROB:
Yeah, buying businesses, houses, a playhouse for that one guy’s twin daughters.
GILA:
Funding the prayer wing for the church.
ROB:
Right. And so still trying to do the right things, but he never took full ownership. He never did any hiding-the-body stuff. He could have burned the house down, he could have done any number of things to get away with the crime, but instead he just stashed her in the freezer and, sort of like, “I’m not going to think about that.”
GILA:
We don’t actually know that yet. We don’t know where she wound up.
ROB:
We don’t know that yet.
GILA:
But we do know that, okay, this is a funeral director. This is a trained mortician. He knows what to do to get rid of a body, and he didn’t do any of it. It’s interesting, there’s a sequence earlier in the movie where you hear the funeral director who’s his boss, talking about how he worked with families and talking about all the bells and whistles on these caskets and it’s like he wasn’t trying to up-sell them. He really believed in this stuff. He believed that a memory drawer in the casket was important. I mean, there is one where he is trying to get a family not to buy the economy casket. It’s like, “okay, well you know, this one doesn’t have a warranty.” And they’re like, “warranty?” “Yeah. We can’t guarantee that you’re not going to get eaten by animals. And how tall are you? We may have to make some leg adjustments.”
ROB:
(laughs) Yeah. And horrifying them into it.
GILA:
But yeah, he keeps basically living the same life and then the stockbroker is like, “wait a second.” And there’s been animosity between Bernie and the stockbroker the whole time anyway.
“Finally, Nugent’s stockbroker uses Tiede’s neglect of previously agreed-upon payments to enlist the help of her estranged family. This results in an authorized police search of her house, which concludes with the discovery of Nugent’s corpse in a freezer chest.”
And you see them in the garage looking in the car, looking in the trunk, looking in the closets and then the camera falls on the chest freezer.
ROB:
Yes. Which is for some reason taped closed.
GILA:
Yes. And the cop says, “who tapes closed their freezer chest?” And you said, “for Passover.”
ROB & GILA:
(laughing)
GILA:
So they find the body.
ROB:
Yes. Underneath frozen corn and steaks and things.
GILA:
Underneath the food baskets.
“The local district attorney, Danny Buck Davidson,”
And sometimes they call him Danny, sometimes they call him Danny Buck. At one point the captioning said “Buck, colon.” Well no, his last name is Davidson. His middle name is Buck, Danny Buck.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Like Bobby Joe, Danny Buck.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
“The local district attorney, Danny Buck Davidson charges Tiede with first degree (premeditated) murder.”
Which again, I think is a bit of a reach.
ROB:
Based on how it was presented in the movie, yeah.
GILA:
Yeah. I don’t think you could say it was premeditated. We’ll get to this in a bit though.
“Tiede is arrested and he soon confesses that he killed Nugent while claiming her emotional abuse as a mitigating circumstance.”
Now, early in the movie, when they’re first establishing the relationship between Bernie and Marjorie, he says, “and I hope that someday in the far, far future, I will get to give you a beautiful funeral.” And he meant it. He believed that serving as a funeral director was his act of service in the world. And he gave the speech at the beginning, he was explaining to her that he had wanted to be an evangelist, but then he realized that that wasn’t where he was meant to serve. And that being of service to the deceased, to the grieving families, to the community, that was where he wanted to be. And being able to provide this service for people he really saw as his ministry. He would sing hymns at graveside and he would jump in at funerals and speak if nobody else wanted to. And he added an extra service where you could release a dove at the graveside as they were lowering the casket.
ROB:
(laughs) But not because he wanted to up-sell people, but because he genuinely believed that they deserved the further honor.
GILA:
Exactly. So someone said, “Why did you put her body in the freezer?” And he said, “Well, I needed time to figure it out, but I wanted to give her a decent funeral. I just needed some time.” And that’s why they put her in the deep freeze. Again, that element of waiting nine months, is that where the premeditation came from? I don’t know. Maybe.
“Despite the confession, many citizens of Carthage still rally to Tiede’s defense with some asserting that Nugent deserved to die.”
ROB:
And that was funny. Of course, I didn’t know anything about the real events before seeing this movie but given how it’s presented here, and you could see people hearing such-and-such killed so-and-so and being like, “oh, that’s terrible, what a horrible person they turned out to be,” but no, they’re still on his side. They’re like, “well, I still don’t believe he killed her.” And the DA is telling her, “I have a confession in my pocket.” And people saying, “well, if I’m on that jury, I’m voting to acquit.”
GILA:
“I’m voting to acquit.” Everyone in town. They’re people are coming up to him and they’re like, “why are you doing this?” So Danny Buck decides they need to change the venue and there’s actually a really funny, entertaining speech from – his name isn’t Scrappy… yes, it is Scrappy. I was about to say Scooby – from Bernie’s attorney, “I have never in my entire life as an attorney seen a venue need to be changed because the defendant was too well-liked.”
ROB:
Yeah. He talks about how attorneys will try and get the trial moved to a different area if everyone is so horrified by the crimes that they’re going to convict him no matter what, but he had never seen it go in the other direction.
GILA:
(laughs) But it happens.
“Davidson Successfully requests a change of venue to the town of San Augustine 50 miles away to avoid selecting a biased jury.”
Now hearing the town’s folk of Carthage talk about the people of San Augustine and how dumb they are. It’s also that thing of like, wherever you live, there’s going to be something about.
ROB:
Yeah. There’s the Springfield versus Shelbyville sort of thing.
GILA:
Exactly.
ROB:
You have your enemy town.
GILA:
Yeah, or your enemy high school, or whatever it is. Some fun bits about that. The trial goes on and Danny Buck is talking about how Bernie very clearly did this to get his hands on Marjorie’s money because of the lifestyle he’d begun to enjoy.
ROB:
Yeah. He’s citing things like, “oh, you went to New York with her and you flew first class, didn’t you?” And Bernie’s like, “well, yeah. She wanted to fly first class and I was going with her and normally I wouldn’t.” but he’s like, “what kind of wine goes with fish?” And because Bernie knows, he’s like, “oh, you’re living that fancy life now,” and just playing that angle of it.
GILA:
And at one point you see the sheriffs seizing everything that had been paid for with the money after Marjorie died. Seizing businesses and cars.
ROB:
And the playhouse.
GILA:
And the playhouse and stopping construction on the church. And you hear one of the towns people say, “they were going to put her name on it. I don’t know why they couldn’t just leave some money for the church. Pfft!” I mean, I like the townsfolk. They were funny.
ROB:
Yeah. (laughs)
GILA:
“Ultimately Bernie is convicted. Despite the absence of evidence of premeditation, Tiede is found guilty as charged and imprisoned for life.”
ROB:
Yeah. And that’s where the plot ends on Wikipedia, but a little more happens in the movie.
GILA:
A little more happens in the movie. And wherever Bernie lands, he’s teaching classes, he’s teaching Bible studies, he took over the kitchen in the prison he was in at the beginning.
ROB:
He’s cooking for the staff.
GILA:
Why was he in a maximum security prison?
ROB:
Well, there it is. But the lady from the town came and visited him and was like, “I wrote a letter to the warden, so they’ll let you out here for my funeral just so you can sing at my funeral like you promised you would.” And he’s like, “oh, that’s lovely, but I wouldn’t count on it. They’re not letting me out of here for anything.” And she’s like, “oh, they should.” They still love him.
GILA:
So are you ready for the kicker? Okay. He was found guilty, sentenced to life.
ROB:
Yes. You’re now looking at the Wikipedia article for Bernie Tiede himself, the actual guy.
GILA:
“The film attracted attention to Tiede’s case, and new evidence was discovered. He was temporarily released on bail in 2014, pending a resentencing hearing. Despite the new evidence, Tiede was sentenced to 99 years or life.”
ROB:
Interesting.
GILA:
It’s very interesting. And part of it is, is this movie so firmly on Bernie’s side that there’s stuff we don’t know? Possibly. Is it because maybe he’s gay and we are in Texas? Maybe,
ROB:
Which was also raised as a point by the DA character in the movie where he is like, “I know for a fact he’s homosexual and I know that he’d had relations with two people who were heterosexual… were!” Giving the look to camera like, “ehh? You know?”
GILA:
Okay.
“In May 2014, Davidson and a visiting judge, Diane DeVasto of Tyler allowed Tiede to be released from prison that month on $10,000 bail after his attorney, Jodi Cole, had learned that Tiede had been sexually abused as a child for multiple years by an uncle.”
ROB:
Again, we’re firmly on the real-life Bernie Tiede article now, this is nothing in the film.
GILA:
“Cole theorized that Tiede shot Nugent while in a brief dissociative episode brought on by her abusive treatment of him, a theory backed by forensic psychiatrist Richard Pesikoff.”
Quote from forensic psychiatrist Richard Pesikoff:
“Mr. Tiede’s ability to repress and compartmentalize the abusive events from childhood and adolescence was ultimately overwhelmed by the repeated and extensive psychological abuse he suffered from Mrs. Nugent. The end result, his loss of control over his emotions and behavior, is evidenced in his final actions toward Mrs. Nugent.”
ROB:
Hmm.
GILA:
Okay, now…
“Between the time of his release in 2014 and his resentencing hearing in April 2016, Tiede resided in Austin, Texas, at the garage apartment of filmmaker Richard Linklater, who had offered to assist him; this was a condition of his release.”
Oh, interesting, there’s another article. Okay…
“As of 2021, Tiede was incarcerated at the John B. Connally Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Kennedy, Texas for several years. He currently resides at the Estelle Unit. He is not eligible for parole until August 3rd, 2029, which is the day after his 71st birthday.”
So that’s Bernie.
ROB:
That’s Bernie. These are interesting real-life events I wasn’t aware of. This is an interesting movie that I wasn’t aware of.
GILA:
I want to read the articles now.
ROB:
Yeah. I want to read the new articles and learn more about this case now. And if you, the listeners, want to learn more about Bernie Tiede, visit your local library or go on Wikipedia.
GILA:
(singing) “The more you know!”
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Where’s your firefly?
ROB:
I think my firefly is up. Like I said, I don’t think I’ll be rushing to re-watch this. I don’t think this is one of those movies I’m hugely…
GILA:
Hooked on?
ROB:
Hooked on, nuts about, whatever, but I didn’t dislike it. I thought it was a good watch.
GILA:
Well, all right. See, again, that’s the most we can hope for from this little project here.
ROB:
(laughing) It is.
GILA:
“I didn’t hate it,” is really the baseline, so I think it’s a good beginning.
ROB:
I wonder if there’s any fanfiction on AO3 about it.
GILA:
Wait, are you saying, is there AO3 fanfiction about our podcast?
ROB:
No, about this movie.
GILA:
Oh, okay. I was like, “interesting.”
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Because I feel like people writing fanfiction about a married couple…
ROB:
I mean, our ship is canon.
GILA:
Our ship is canon, definitely, but I don’t know that I want… no, that’s weird.
ROB:
No.
GILA:
But anyway.
ROB:
But yeah, this was an interesting movie. Thank you for showing this to me.
GILA:
Thank you for taking the journey with me, hon. I think it was a good time.
ROB:
It was a good time, and thank you out there listening. We have often made mention of the fact that we love getting feedback-
GILA:
We sure do.
ROB:
Here at Modern Technology. And we would love to hear from you. We have heard from so many people, and this is funny because it would be very easy for us to just say this even if it didn’t happen, but because so many people who listen to this are people we know in real life, we have heard from them how much they enjoy this podcast but, of course, that’s not in a preservable listener mail bag compatible format. So if you would like to let us know your thoughts on this program we’re doing or this movie we’ve watched or any of the movies we’ve watched in the past on this program. You can get in touch with us in so many ways. One of the ways is you can email us at watches at modern.technology, you could tweet at us @MTPodcastNet.
GILA:
You can visit our website which is at modern.technology. And if you go to modern.technology/contact, you’ll find all of our contact information, including our phone number. You guys, we have a phone number.
ROB:
We do, we have a phone number that’s connected to a voicemail box that gets nothing but calls about our cars extended warranty. We’re not interested in that, but we are interested in hearing from you. So if you would like to leave a note on this program that could get played on a future episode audio style, you can call us at United States phone number +1 929-399-8414 or go to modern.technology/contact and you can click the phone number there or click the email thingy there or go over to our Twitter from there.
We did hear from our pal Leo who was listening to our Sneakers episode and Leo mentions a number of things about Sneakers because he was writing as he was listening. And he wrote that Donal Logue is also in Track Down or Takedown. That was the bad movie that was made about the Kevin Mitnick case, which was the subject of the movie Freedom Downtime that our friend and colleague Emmanuel Goldstein made.
GILA:
The big difference there being that Freedom Downtime is a documentary and Takedown is not.
ROB:
No, Takedown was a really poorly fictionalized version of events that took a stance that everything Kevin Mitnick had done was terrible and that he deserved all the punishment he was getting and that in fact he had already been sentenced for his crimes. And at the time of this movie being made and released, Kevin Mitnick was not found guilty of anything, he had been held in prison for four or five years without trial.
GILA:
Was it underwritten by the FBI by any chance?
ROB:
(laughs) I don’t know. But he talks about Cosmo’s backstory in Sneakers. We were talking about how Cosmo’s backstory was never really satisfactorily explained, like what he had been doing since he had disappeared as a kid and gotten hauled off to jail.
GILA:
True. And apart from developing an accent.
ROB:
Apart from developing an accent and growing that little old-guy ponytail.
GILA:
Best not spoken about.
ROB:
Yeah, Leo says,
“Cosmo’s backstory is revealed that he ran into the mob in prison and they faked his death to get him out of prison so he could basically do text stuff for the mob. When Bishop says, ‘I don’t believe you.’ He’s saying, ‘I don’t believe you, that you’re working for them just because they offered you a job.’ And that’s when Cosmo acknowledges that that’s just a scam he’s pulling on the mob and he’s doing his own thing under their noses.”
So that’s Leo’s theory about Cosmo from Sneakers as played by Sir Ben Kingsley.
GILA:
Interesting.
ROB:
Now tell me that that totally rescues the movie for you. Right?
GILA:
I didn’t dislike it.
ROB:
(laughing) No, you didn’t.
GILA:
I liked it a lot.
ROB:
No, but you didn’t much like Cosmo.
GILA:
No, Cosmo was really annoying. And I think his… no.
ROB:
This does not rehabilitate the character in your eyes?
GILA:
Not even a little bit. But again, what a murderers’ row of talent do you have when Sir Ben Kingsley is the weak link?
ROB:
(laughs) Absolutely. Leo also notes,
“The stress analyzer in the voice is a real thing, but it’s based on pseudoscience.”
And he sends along the Wikipedia article for voice stress analysis, which yes, it’s one of those things like a lie-detector test, like the polygraph test, which a lot of people know from pop-culture and stuff and might be intimidated to be tested with because they’re worried that it works, but it doesn’t actually work and it’s all pseudoscience and it’s all just bullying people into revealing more about themselves than they want to or whatever. But yes, thank you Leo for that note. And if any of you out there would like to be as cool as Leo and get in touch with us, go to modern.technology/contact or email us at watches at modern.technology.
GILA:
Yes. Or call us at +1 929-399-8414 if you want to hear your voice alongside our voices.
ROB:
Absolutely. Speaking of getting in deep on this program and then having people come back and talk about it, our previous episode about Citizen Ruth which we did so long ago, now that was one in which we laid things out pretty rough and raw and, I think, went deeper into our feelings than we normally go on these things about real life.
GILA:
I feel like that’s been two of three episodes this season that has been the case because that was also the case definitely on keeping the faith. No much on Sneakers, but definitely keeping the faith and especially Citizen Ruth.
ROB:
Yeah. About Citizen Ruth, we weren’t sure how that would be received and we have had just a really heartening encouraging response to it. And that’s something we appreciate very much too.
GILA:
We definitely appreciate it and we love hearing from you. We love it because as much as it’s us sitting here talking to each other in our apartment, we know that other people are hearing it. And we like hearing from the other people who are hearing it, so I’m also going to very selfishly ask you to rate and review us on your pod-catching software of choice. Let people know about us, let us know. We like reviews. We have one review.
ROB:
(laughs)
GILA:
Thanks, Jen, we appreciate you. With that, we thank you for joining us for episode 304 of Modern Technology Watches.
ROB:
Yes. So for Modern Technology Watches, this is been Rob Vincent.
GILA:
And Gila Drazen.
ROB:
And we will catch you on the flip side.
GILA:
We will, in fact, see you at the movies.
(Ending theme music fades in)
GILA:
You’ve been listening to episode 304 of Modern Technology Watches with Gila Drazen and Rob Vincent. Go to modern.technology on the web for more on this show, our other work, and our social media freezer. Our music is “The Promise” by Torley Wong, released Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Find more from Torley at torley.com. Thank you, Torley!
Content from wikipedia.org is used under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0. This podcast is released under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0, and is a production of Joyful Firefly, LLC.
Email us at watches at modern.technology. And if you like us, rate and review and tell a friend!
(Ending theme music concludes)
ROB:
We got something.
GILA:
Yay! (singing) We did a podcast!
ROB:
We did.