[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.84 Jala Hello world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her) and today I am joined by Alex (he/him) and Doug (he/him). We are hanging out in the darkest recesses of the basement, under the basement, under the basement, a few levels down next to a dark lake. Nothing sketch here. And we are discussing the 1925 silent film, The Phantom of the Opera, along with its 1929 re-release and whatever it was that I watched, which was somewhere in between those two. 00:00:26.23 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. Hmm. 00:00:32.20 Jala So, Alex, since your last appearance, it has been two years. You were here on ah episode six for PG Wodehouse talking about Jeeves. 00:00:43.08 Jala It was wonderful. And then again, on episode 14, talking about the original Phantom of the Opera novel and the Susan Kay history of Eric titled Phantom. 00:00:44.33 Alex _ picklefactory Yep. 00:00:53.24 Jala And wow, I didn't realize it had been that long. I think I was like, oh yeah, I don't know. It's been a while since you were on, but you know for me, I'm still like, oh, it was last summer sometime. I don't know. 00:01:02.25 Alex _ picklefactory Well, I can understand why the second Phantom of the Opera episode did not make it to the top of the list before now, but, you know, anytime you ask, I'm happy to come on and and talk literature and stuff for our movies. 00:01:14.16 Alex _ picklefactory Love it. 00:01:14.36 Jala And we still have to, I still have to go and look at that Jeeves Broadway production thing. So I still have to take a look at that and see 00:01:23.53 Alex _ picklefactory You know, I would love to. I have been reading a lot of P.G. Woodhouse, like this year. 00:01:26.37 Jala I know, I know. 00:01:27.24 Alex _ picklefactory I have been no formatting some of his books for the standard e-books project. 00:01:31.65 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:01:32.37 Alex _ picklefactory And that has just kind of led to me reading more widely. And it's remarkable how all of his writing kind of changed after he started writing for the stage. 00:01:42.30 Jala Yeah. 00:01:42.38 Alex _ picklefactory It's really more apparent when you read more of his earlier stuff. But it would be an interesting comparison to make. 00:01:46.02 Jala That's cool, that's cool. 00:01:48.98 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:01:49.58 Jala Oh, yeah, yeah. And um yeah, i i have I have the link. It's it's somewhere in my list. and The problem is that stuff keeps getting added to the list, you know, and then it gets buried. 00:01:56.99 Alex _ picklefactory in. Yep. 00:02:00.20 Jala But we'll we'll get there eventually. So hopefully, fingers crossed, 2025, another Jeeves thing, another Alex episode. 00:02:05.37 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. Hooray. 00:02:07.71 Jala But yay, also, Doug, this is your very first time on my show, even though I have been on your show so many times to talk about different stuff, Rainbow, really, about things that I love that are and nostalgia oriented. So yeah, welcome to my show. How are you doing today, sir? 00:02:26.66 Doug Lief I'm doing lovely. Thank you so much for having me. I'm i'm really excited to be on your show and i and return the favor and to be part of our sort of unofficial podcast exchange program here. 00:02:37.66 Jala I know this is the first time I've done something like this, but for all of the listeners, it's kind of required that you go and check out Doug's show because before this episode drops, Doug has this fantastic episode that is about Phantom of the Opera going more beat by beat in the story, if I'm not mistaken, right, Doug? 00:02:55.79 Doug Lief Right. So, uh, we, we do get into some of the production issues like we'll be talking about today, but the bulk of that episode is, yeah, going kind of scene by scene through the movie or one of the various cuts of this movie. 00:03:08.22 Doug Lief We'll, we'll get into that. Uh, the one I done seen, uh, I, I recapped. 00:03:11.53 Jala Yeah. 00:03:13.35 Doug Lief And, uh, so yeah, that if you want a more in-depth look at the specific story beat to that movie, that's what, uh, our episode last week was about. 00:03:20.10 Jala Right. And not only that, but your guests for that was also on for what Jaws and that was fantastic. So. 00:03:27.28 Doug Lief Yeah, he's ah he's one of these guys like a childhood friend who is just a hyper detailed and like when he gets obsessed with something, he goes all the way as far down as you can go. And this was one of his obsessions growing up Phantom of the Opera. So he was a perfect guest to have on that. So ah yeah. ah So yeah. Podcast exchange program, everybody. 00:03:48.44 Jala Mm hmm. And so there's that. And then you also am I allowed to talk about the other thing related to this? 00:03:55.47 Doug Lief Sure. 00:03:55.68 Jala Can I can I mention? 00:03:55.87 Alex _ picklefactory Yes, naturally. 00:03:56.38 Jala OK, yeah, yeah. So also you're going to be releasing or you have released. I'm not sure when you're dropping it. But a bonus episode with a reading of The Mask of the Red Death, which is very related to a certain scene in this movie. 00:04:10.69 Doug Lief Correct. Yeah, I decided to do that as well. I did a Halloween reading last year. um I did The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which is probably like five times as long, at least, as The Mask of the Red Dead. 00:04:18.46 Jala Mm hmm. 00:04:19.93 Doug Lief So it's much shorter. um But I thought, oh, this will be, you know, I kind of wanted to do it as a bonus thing. And and and I was kind of itching to do an Edgar Allen Poe story. And I was like, well, this is synergy. 00:04:29.24 Jala Mm hmm. 00:04:29.53 Doug Lief And and who who doesn't love synergy? 00:04:31.88 Jala Mm hmm. 00:04:32.11 Doug Lief So it's happening. 00:04:34.16 Jala Yeah, absolutely. And yeah and so um what we're going to be talking about on this episode as a result of the fact that Doug has already done all the work of going beat by beat through the story is we do not have a spoiler section for this. 00:04:35.42 Alex _ picklefactory This is amazing. 00:04:48.62 Jala ah that We're just going to talk out and out about it more on the production side of different stuff about film preservation and different ways to analyze and look at this, what its impact is. 00:04:59.85 Jala and everything, um all different kinds of things like that. So ah this is getting it more into that nitty gritty stuff since the big heavy lifting of going through all of the scenes of the movie beat by beat and discussing them has already been done elsewhere ah probably better. 00:05:16.28 Jala So yeah. 00:05:17.89 Alex _ picklefactory Mm. 00:05:18.84 Doug Lief We shall see. 00:05:21.87 Jala or here rather. 00:05:23.01 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:05:23.10 Jala So yeah, ah this movie is a 1925 American silent film adaptation of Gaston LaRose, 1910 novel by the same name. And I will put in the show notes the link to the episode that Alex was on, where we were talking about that original novel as well. 00:05:38.84 Jala So ah you have a lot of homework for this one. There are a lot of additional resources, I suppose is the better way to say it. um It was produced by Universal Studios. It was directed by Rupert Julian. ah Uncredited also were Lon Chaney himself, Ernst Lamel, and Edward Sedgwick, all of whom had a hand in that direction. ah The screenplay was not credited, but included about 10 different people that worked on it. 00:06:03.63 Jala um and The screenplay actually had been handed over a couple of times and rewritten and things as happens very often, so um they just didn't ever credit anybody on that. um the Later on, when there was music added for the 1929 version, it was by Gustav Henrich's, the budget was $632,357 and it boxed at $2 million for the original 1925 version. which is a lot of money for back then, and and um one million for the 1929 re-release. So um pretty massive you know film for back in that era. 00:06:45.71 Jala So ah the main cast of course you have Lon Chaney as the Phantom, you have Mary Philbin for Christine, and Norman Carey for Raoul. The original length of the film was 107 minutes. The 1929 sound re-release is 94 minutes. 00:07:02.94 Jala There's an Eastman houseprint at 20 FPS with color tinting, which is 92 minutes. There's the Eastman houseprint at 24 frames per second, totally black and white, which is 78 minutes. 00:07:14.19 Jala um You can actually watch both of the Eastman house versions for free on Wikipedia. Again, there's a link in the show notes for that. um I don't know what I watched because might the it was it was like 87 minutes or something, which doesn't line up to anything, any of these. 00:07:24.09 Alex _ picklefactory The one that I was watching yeah no one that i'm watching is um one hour 46. 00:07:30.18 Jala So I have no idea what I watched. 00:07:35.58 Jala Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 00:07:36.57 Alex _ picklefactory So I don't know, what does that line up to? Let's see, 90, 60. Well, yeah, not exactly. I got it off of ah archive dot.org. 00:07:45.92 Jala Yeah, I have no idea. 00:07:46.36 Alex _ picklefactory and so 00:07:48.05 Doug Lief And I watched, yeah, i would say I watched one on YouTube, which I believe is the Eastman House a color tinting one. 00:07:48.43 Jala But Doug, yeah... 00:07:52.68 Jala Uh-huh. 00:07:56.74 Doug Lief I and I'm pretty sure the one that I watched growing growing up. 00:07:59.69 Alex _ picklefactory that that is on you That is on archive dot.org too. 00:08:02.02 Jala Uh-huh. 00:08:02.14 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:08:02.88 Alex _ picklefactory I've seen, yep. 00:08:03.68 Doug Lief And I think the one I watched growing up was that exact same cut, but all in black and white, it it seemed pretty familiar, but it had a different score, I remember. um So I've seen this a few different ways, but yeah, most recently that color Eastman one, which I have 00:08:15.67 Jala Right. 00:08:17.90 Doug Lief wholeheartedly recommend. 00:08:19.05 Alex _ picklefactory Yep. 00:08:19.38 Jala right So ah before we get any further, I wanted to ask everyone what your particular history with this movie and is. So Doug, since you were just talking about the ways you've watched it before, what's your history with Phantom of the Opera? 00:08:35.27 Doug Lief ah So my history with Phantom of the Opera starts with seeing the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical yeah in 1988. My parents took me to see it. I was eight years old and one of the most formative memories of my life. i Absolutely. ah that That was where the drama bug bit me. I i just, ah yes, I in retrospect, so much of my ah personality and and my interest go back to that one event. 00:09:00.33 Doug Lief um So I saw that, I definitely got real into Phantom. So at some point I read the book and I know I saw around that time the 1943 version with Claude Rains and i'm and around there I would have seen ah this as well. So I really liked it. um i There's so many versions of Phantom of the Opera, but really this and the Weber musical and ah with a few other minor things in there, but most of the them take the approach that um The Phantom is like burned and disfigured and becomes this kind of avenging angel ah Whereas these versions stick to the LaRue story of him being disfigured from birth and I think that For me, it's the more compelling version of the story. 00:09:31.79 Alex _ picklefactory and 00:09:42.50 Doug Lief It's more interesting And so they're the ones I always gravitated towards but yeah, the Phantom is something I've just been Just really into since age eight 00:09:49.51 Alex _ picklefactory that It has a more gothic horror quality to do it that way, I feel. Yeah. 00:09:55.74 Jala Absolutely. So Alex, how about you? What is your history with this movie? 00:10:00.72 Alex _ picklefactory Well, I recall seeing it off Broadway in Toronto in, I'd say 1995, I'm gonna say. i'm I'm not totally sure of the year on that. 00:10:12.73 Alex _ picklefactory And I remember enjoying it a great deal. Like I was a in high school, I was in the theater club. So we would, you know, stage plays and stuff like that. I was not in any musicals because I cannot sing, but I i enjoyed all the rest of that kind of thing. 00:10:28.05 Alex _ picklefactory and 00:10:28.72 Doug Lief You just need the right teacher. 00:10:30.27 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah, ah presumably here, here waiting at 45 for the right teacher, but perhaps one day he'll speak to me through the wall. 00:10:31.75 Jala more ah Right. 00:10:38.73 Alex _ picklefactory Uh, yeah. Um, I enjoyed it, but that it wasn't, it did not bite me in the way that it dug at all. It was just kind of, uh, part of my education in that area of culture. 00:10:51.85 Alex _ picklefactory Um, and then, uh, when we kind of got to discussing it a couple of years ago, I went and read the book, uh, because, you know, I'm an English guy and, uh, any excuse to read some, you know, literature that's in the public domain, you know, I've, I've reading, uh, 00:11:09.36 Alex _ picklefactory 17th and 18th century literature quite a bit lately just because I enjoy it. um I was reading Gil Blass last week. 00:11:17.25 Jala Mhm. 00:11:18.34 Alex _ picklefactory And, the you know, Pick a Resque novels and um yeah, so it was a it was kind of enjoyable to go and like revisit a proper gothic horror novel. 00:11:28.99 Alex _ picklefactory Right? Written kind of late, you know? 00:11:30.64 Jala Yeah, absolutely. 00:11:31.22 Alex _ picklefactory Like it's it's written in the 20th century, but, you know, it's set in the 19th century. 00:11:34.81 Jala Mhm. 00:11:35.92 Alex _ picklefactory Like quite deliberately, you know, we're we're going to put this in the bellapac era and and make it as grand as possible. So it's a lot of fun. 00:11:42.12 Jala yeah 00:11:43.15 Alex _ picklefactory I enjoyed it. It's such a melodrama. I love it. 00:11:45.27 Jala Oh, yes, it is it is very, very melodramatic. 00:11:45.82 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:11:49.03 Jala And yeah, it's so funny, because like, you know, you you kind of came to it late. And it wasn't like this thing that infected you, because I'm about to talk about that in my own backstory. 00:11:57.53 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:11:58.14 Jala But then like, you ended up just being like the Phantom guy. That's for me. 00:12:02.34 Alex _ picklefactory ah ah hey 00:12:03.47 Jala So 00:12:05.16 Alex _ picklefactory Well, yeah, and then, ah you know, I watched the, ah you know, as I said, the 1929 cut back then at that time, just because I was like, this is obviously most, you know, the closest adaptation to this novel. 00:12:16.59 Jala Yes. ah 00:12:17.59 Alex _ picklefactory And so it was just a ah joy to revisit it for a moment, you know. 00:12:21.29 Jala Yeah, yeah. So as for me, I did not get to see the Broadway production and I also unfortunately watched the sequel. ah Sequel, Love Never Dies. 00:12:31.80 Jala Also, ah yeah, but I did get to see productions of both of those two things, but only like way, way, way later. 00:12:31.76 Doug Lief Wamp, wamp. 00:12:39.24 Jala And I'm talking like, I don't know, at this point, maybe seven years ago or so is when I got to watch um The Phantom of the Opera for the first time on stage. And then The Love Never Dies was like a year or two after that. 00:12:52.24 Jala So um fairly recent that I actually got to see that. So my first introduction to the musical was when I saw the movie version from 2004, which I'm sure I will cover on the show at some point. 00:13:05.79 Jala um because I have to cover all the Phantom stuff, at least all the ones that are you know um very important to me. 00:13:08.99 Alex _ picklefactory It's required somehow. 00:13:13.91 Jala so yeah yeah but The first exposure to Phantom that I had was this movie. and i watched it i don't know how old i was i was a little kid and um it was during that time where you had stuff like the munsters and the old adams family and stuff on tv all the time so ah watching stuff in black and white was not news to me ah that was a thing that i did and you know like i watched it 00:13:25.68 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:13:35.18 Alex _ picklefactory yeah 00:13:38.23 Jala And it's really kind of wild because I have always felt empathy for Eric, even though in this movie very specifically, they make him out to be like they underline how many times that he is a bad man. 00:13:52.60 Jala But I still felt very bad for him. 00:13:53.71 Alex _ picklefactory More monsters than in the book even, certainly. 00:13:55.87 Jala um Yes, he's more monstrous than in the book. He's more monstrous than in pretty much every other version unless maybe you're talking about the Robert England one where he he's a serial killer type guy. 00:14:06.59 Alex _ picklefactory Sure. 00:14:07.73 Jala um But yeah, like, ah for some reason, I still was just and I think it's just like, ah you know, ah yeah I could empathize with this feeling of being like, I'm really talented, but also, um you know, like, people just have some some superficial reason why they they can't see me for who I am as a person. And so like I ended up reading into it really deeply from like a very early age and like relating to it very, very deeply. um It's only like way later that I started to say, OK, maybe I can understand Christine a little bit when I watch the 2004 movie. But I have never liked Raoul. I'm just going to throw that out there. 00:14:49.32 Alex _ picklefactory He's so much more of a boy in the in the book. 00:14:51.60 Jala Yes, yes, for sure. 00:14:52.46 Alex _ picklefactory he's He's a sailor boy that faded, the the the little boy that ran into the ocean to get my scarf. 00:14:53.96 Jala Yeah. 00:14:58.37 Alex _ picklefactory and all'll you know it's it's so you know He's much more of a ah commanding presence, I guess. 00:14:58.72 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:15:05.72 Jala Yeah. 00:15:05.84 Alex _ picklefactory At least he's very he's very you know dapper, right? 00:15:08.96 Jala Yeah. 00:15:09.39 Alex _ picklefactory he I don't know. It just doesn't, die yeah, certainly. He's completely characterized almost completely differently in the movie, I'd say. 00:15:18.21 Jala Yeah. And that's the kind of fun thing about Raoul is that, you know, anytime he shows up, he is kind of portrayed differently. Like, again, we're going back to the 2004 movie. I think that's like the kindest portrayal of Raoul I have ever seen ah from Broadway or from anywhere else. 00:15:28.71 Alex _ picklefactory Mm hmm. 00:15:33.33 Jala You know, like that is the kindest I've ever seen anyone be to Raoul, where he is actually kind of an empathetic character as well. But 00:15:39.14 Doug Lief Yeah, he's he's tricky to get right because of the the the I think the book oddly enough kind of gets him a little wrong I mean the correct the answer is like he's just an okay dude like he's just trying to all he wants is just to get together with this woman who he loves and who loves him back and that is being interfered with by the sewer ghoul that is eric and like You know if you need him to be like he shouldn't be the Baxter right he shouldn't be the guy like oh we want him out of the way so she can be with Eric like no he he I think the Patrick Wilson portrayal is correct which is just like he's trying to do right ah he's he's not a bad guy he hasn't done anything wrong and he's just as much a victim of Eric's machinations as anyone else. 00:15:54.79 Jala Right. 00:16:13.77 Jala Yeah. 00:16:21.25 Jala ah Right. 00:16:21.27 Alex _ picklefactory he's He's kind of a jealous idiot in the book at times, but I was reviewing my highlights and stuff, and I noticed that he, I highlighted a big paragraph where he gets it exactly right. Like, yeah he ri right he kind of like says, I think someone is, after he says, I think someone is ah playing games with you, Christine, but he yes he says, just he weighs it out. 00:16:32.04 Jala Oh, uh-huh. 00:16:42.99 Alex _ picklefactory Someone has put themselves in the place of the angel of music, and they have malevolent designs for you, and 00:16:46.48 Jala Mhm. 00:16:49.50 Alex _ picklefactory you know I was like, oh, wow, he gets it. And then all this other stuff has to happen too, because you know the melodramas must continue. 00:16:56.51 Jala Right, right. And it's so funny, too, because I think in um popular, you know, headcanon, right, ah popular headcanon, especially it always seems to pit Christine with Eric in the end, or like, even if they don't work out together, and it's like this bittersweet ending or something, but like, ah the Susan K. Phantom book, and ah the Weber musical, ah like the the sequel very up clearly is making it where it's like, no, 00:17:26.41 Jala ah eric Eric and Christine have a child and that child is raised then by Christine and Raoul and you know like whatever happens after that happens. But like you know like that's how those end up working out. 00:17:39.66 Jala And you know in popular popular you know illustration and stuff too, it's always Eric and Christine. It's never Raoul. Nobody likes Raoul. 00:17:47.18 Doug Lief Yeah, yeah, I bristle against that I because I think that's even like that shows like Andrew Lloyd Webber almost misreading his own thing. 00:17:47.53 Jala But um yeah. 00:17:55.83 Doug Lief Like when you um I remember going to Las Vegas when they had Phantom at the Venetian and you'd see um advertising for it around the city and it would be on the side of buses and it would be the Eric holding Christine and you know, capes swirling and it says something like, be seduced. 00:18:11.32 Doug Lief And it's like, that's not what's happening. 00:18:13.14 Alex _ picklefactory No! 00:18:13.46 Doug Lief He's not seducing her. He's gaslighting her and murdering people when he doesn't get his way. 00:18:15.35 Jala Yeah. 00:18:18.54 Doug Lief He's not a good person. 00:18:20.18 Jala Right. 00:18:20.20 Doug Lief So like the whole crux of the ending of that is that she is capable of showing him, you know, the one ounce of the you know human kindness that he has never known. 00:18:31.88 Doug Lief And it like helps him like he's willing to let them go. He finally kind of gets it, right? That's not the same as her actually falling in love with him. It's an act of, again, like selfless empathy for him, not a like recognition of like, oh, these are twin souls torn in twain. 00:18:48.24 Doug Lief Like, no, they're not. They are not. 00:18:50.46 Jala Right. Well, in and that's too, um like in the book especially, I bounced off the book and I talked about this on that episode. I bounced off the original LaRue novel a few times because I didn't like any of the characters at all. 00:19:02.68 Jala I couldn't stand any of them. 00:19:03.69 Alex _ picklefactory Christine, i you know what I was thinking this time? She is such a daddy's girl. 00:19:07.35 Jala Yeah, she is. 00:19:07.49 Alex _ picklefactory and And she is set up to be that way the whole time. 00:19:08.33 Jala he Yeah. 00:19:10.65 Alex _ picklefactory It's, you know, yeah. 00:19:11.15 Jala And she's, she's 20, but, uh, you know, the, in the novel, they say she has like the innocence of a 15 year old because she's just kind of like so optimistic and kind of so self diluted. 00:19:19.64 Alex _ picklefactory Sure. She spent all of her youth following her dad around Europe singing songs like an angel being a musical prodigy. 00:19:26.78 Jala Yeah, yeah, so so like I can't relate to any of the characters in the novel and like Eric especially, um he really is prone in the novel version to having a super emotional major tantrums and those tantrums exist in other versions, but they don't tend to be displayed in the kind of like three year old toddler way that that they really should be because that's what it is because he doesn't have any emotional maturity 00:19:30.56 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:19:54.08 Alex _ picklefactory Ranting and raving for minutes on end, yes. 00:19:56.51 Jala Yeah, he is essentially a very angry, very deadly toddler. He's a man-baby, is what it is. and He's a man-baby, but like you know people still feel empathy and feel bad for him because of the superficial reason that people you know people are terrified of his face. and That is why you know he is stuck in this stunted state and living in a sewer and being a sewer ghoul. 00:20:20.57 Jala and um all of this mess. 00:20:20.62 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:20:21.97 Jala And it twisted his soul and so on and so forth. um And Raoul is also a baby and a nonsense child. And then Christine is also a baby. And and nu that they're all just silly babies. 00:20:32.86 Jala And that's so it's real hard for me to to relate to them in the book. So um you know like i it's still a rough read, even though i'm like it inspired all of these things. And I like all these different spin-off versions. 00:20:44.32 Jala And you know as much, Doug, as you say, like You really don't like, ah you know, like this, how how commonly it is portrayed as like Eric and Christine as this this love love story together. I like seeing different iterations and seeing how the different portrayals, you know, ah Deviate from but also pull from the source material and that's always fun for me because I like seeing these alternate universe versions. So um as for this movie the launch anyone to circle it right back around ah to the topic. 00:21:21.62 Jala that this one, again, makes Eric more, like probably the worst you know worst version of Eric that you can find. ah Not only is he scarier looking than pretty much every other version that I've ever seen of the Phantom, but he also is a worse person. In this version, he is an ex-convict who had been disfigured, I guess, in jail and has escaped and gone under the, 00:21:49.25 Jala opera house to go live in these torture chambers that are underneath there. um And so he's down there and then he's just kind of terrorizing the opera house and then just latches on to Christine in this like, you know, super vampiric way and just fixating on her. So, um you know, like, he's not Good. you know they They upscale Raoul and make Raoul in here ah in the movie. ah More mature, older. you know Seems like he's a little bit older than Christine, at least looks like that anyway. And um you know like he's trying you know he's he's a little bit more action-oriented, but not quite as empathetic. He's more he's he's there, but he's not like on the screen as much. like ah Norman Carey did not get enough time to really breathe this Raoul, I don't feel, in this movie version. 00:22:41.37 Jala um but And that's something that was like, again, kind of ameliorated later on when, way later on when um Patrick Wilson, is it Wilson? Did I just say the name wrong? Is that right? 00:22:53.03 Doug Lief That's right. 00:22:53.65 Jala Okay. I always get it wrong. I i get names wrong all the time. Uh, so Patrick Wilson, when he is playing Raoul, he has a lot of screen time and gets to, um, you know, really work Raoul through. So, um, but yeah, like insofar as this version, I think it gets Christine, right. Um, but really like the main focus is more on what Eric is up to at any given time, because it was written as a vehicle specifically for Lon Chaney. 00:23:26.30 Jala So um do we want to kind of go through the summary of like the nourished narrative of this movie, just like a quick summary of it, ah just so that way we can just lay out what's different about this versus the novel and such? 00:23:40.27 Doug Lief Sure. 00:23:40.97 Jala OK. So ah does somebody else want to read some of the the narrative stuff or give a paraphrase of of what it is like? um Doug, you it's been a minute since you talked. 00:23:50.24 Doug Lief All right. 00:23:50.98 Jala Yeah. 00:23:51.24 Doug Lief ah So I think you've laid it out here pretty well. But yes, Christine is a ah young up and coming opera singer at this at the Paris Opera House, which we are told is built on top of hideous torture chambers and, you know, secrets long forgotten, that kind of thing. 00:24:06.54 Doug Lief And so the opera house is sold to new owners because the old ones know what's up with the phantom and they want ah they want this thing gone. ah They, they exchanged the opera house, the new owner said about kind of investigating. ah We get hints of what everyone who's there, you know, people have seen the Phantom they people have differing interpretations of what it is, they've seen. 00:24:30.15 Doug Lief um But obviously, we as the audience know that he is about and kind of just mischievously working things to his own advantage. ah One of the things he is working over is Christine herself, ah who he has taken a shine to. So he speaks to her through the walls of her dressing room in the guise of the angel of music who's teaching her to sing and is working things to her benefit, which includes getting her competition Carlotta out of the way so she can sing and and perform to the best of her ability. 00:25:01.40 Doug Lief um But when Karawata insists on, you know, not just giving up and quitting her job, he decides to take things a little, he escalates things by dropping the chandelier of the Opera House onto its house. 00:25:16.26 Doug Lief onto the audience and in the pandemonium that ensues, he finally guides Christine down to his lair, five cellars beneath the opera house at the other end of a mysterious lake, ah where he reveals ah you know himself in physical form. 00:25:21.71 Jala Mm hmm. 00:25:32.04 Doug Lief She realizes that he is, of course, the Phantom and faints the next morning. She comes to decides to see what's what he has left her a note saying you can do anything you want. 00:25:43.36 Doug Lief Just don't take off the mask. She ignores that immediately and takes takes off the mask, ah leading to one of the greatest jump scares in cinema history, as we see Lon Chaney's hideously disfigured face for the first time. 00:25:47.26 Jala uh 00:25:51.38 Alex _ picklefactory Incredible. 00:25:59.20 Doug Lief Um, we, he reveals a little bit about himself, but she pleads to be able to go back to the surface and he says, fine, you can go back and continue singing for me, but I own you. 00:26:09.53 Doug Lief Uh, you cannot leave ever. Uh, the masquerade balls, Christine. 00:26:12.24 Jala -huh 00:26:15.16 Doug Lief calls upon her Paramore Raoul once again and says, you know, meet me here. I'll kind of tell you what's what. They go up to the rooftop to plan an escape, which the Phantom unfortunately overhears. ah This leads to him abducting her. 00:26:30.81 Doug Lief at the following night's performance of Faust, where they were supposed to escape. Afterwards, ah Raoul and the mysterious Persian, who has been investigating Eric the entire time, actually in this version, he is replaced by a character named Ledoux, who is still basically the Persian. 00:26:45.44 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:26:45.83 Alex _ picklefactory Yes. 00:26:47.80 Doug Lief ah Yeah. 00:26:47.95 Jala I love that it's... 00:26:48.84 Alex _ picklefactory Down to the Fez. 00:26:49.91 Jala ah Yes, ah the unaccounted for Fez. Why is he wearing a Fez if he is Inspector LeDoux? But I know. 00:26:55.92 Alex _ picklefactory He's in the secret police, so he must disguise himself, I guess. 00:26:58.20 Jala Yeah. 00:27:00.20 Doug Lief Yeah, Inspector Abdul Ladue with his yeah his fez. 00:27:02.80 Jala There you go. 00:27:03.51 Alex _ picklefactory mean 00:27:05.33 Doug Lief um yeah Anyway, he he guides Raoul down into the depths of the Opera House, where they face various obstacles on their way down. ah They end up in a one of the aforementioned torture chambers, which happens to be Phantom Lair adjacent. 00:27:21.33 Doug Lief And ah they are going to be roasted to death in there. but um They escape to the room below only to be found yeah trapped in there with several barrels of gunpowder and the Phantom gives Christina choice. You can come with me and save their lives or you can just blow us all sky high. 00:27:40.23 Jala And that choice is hilariously presented in, here are two emblems. This is like such, you know, Resident Evil bullshit, where it's like you can turn the scorpion or the whatever and, and you know, whatever whichever one you turn will decide whether I blow everybody up or if I let them go and you stay with me. 00:27:45.85 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:27:52.50 Alex _ picklefactory it was 00:27:58.34 Alex _ picklefactory He says they it hops the grasshopper hops jolly high in the book, in the translation I read, which is a crazy thing to say. 00:28:03.93 Jala Yeah. 00:28:06.90 Alex _ picklefactory but i Yeah, certainly. and and you know i know i was i couldn't the The expression on his face when she reaches for the grasshopper is incredible. 00:28:17.71 Jala Mmhmm. 00:28:18.01 Alex _ picklefactory like I could not help but like really take notice of it this time. 00:28:20.85 Jala Mmhmm. 00:28:21.42 Alex _ picklefactory you know Like when he's unmasked, it's like the other the other time in the movie where I felt like you just to get a glimpse of a very up close look at you know his his acting. 00:28:29.69 Jala Mmhmm. 00:28:33.54 Alex _ picklefactory right Even though the print is not so great, you can you can see all those emotions running across his face in a moment, you know. 00:28:40.09 Jala Yeah, and that's under all those layers of of contorting makeup with like the wires going through his nose and all that other mess, which we'll get into. 00:28:40.72 Doug Lief Hi. 00:28:48.85 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:28:49.35 Doug Lief But yeah, the look on his face of like, oh, she is going to kill us all. Holy shit. Yeah, it is. 00:28:52.97 Jala Yeah. 00:28:53.26 Doug Lief It's pretty great. ah But she backs off, of course, and does not kill herself and everyone in the opera house. She decides to spare Raul and and Ladue and they are rescued from their watery prison. 00:29:08.76 Doug Lief ah And the Phantom is ah deprived of his chance to do his next move because an angry mob has assembled and is working their way down into the belly of the Opera House. So ah with no time remaining, the Phantom just grabs Christine, takes her out through a secret passage, and absconds with her in a carriage. 00:29:26.98 Doug Lief And 00:29:27.23 Jala Mm hmm. 00:29:28.34 Doug Lief ah in the ensuing chase, Christine escapes. And in so doing, I guess, ah really messes up the carriage's center of gravity because it just topples right over. 00:29:36.31 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:29:37.58 Doug Lief And he wants to kidnap her and run, but the mob is on his heels. 00:29:37.69 Jala Mm hmm. 00:29:42.11 Doug Lief ah They chase him to the Seine, where he ah gets tries to be the master of illusion one last time by holding up his hand as if he has something dangerous in it, only to reveal, of course, there is nothing. 00:29:54.25 Doug Lief ah The Phantom is an illusion. 00:29:54.41 Jala And cackling, uh huh. 00:29:56.03 Doug Lief and and cackling as they beat him to death and throw him in the sand. Finis. 00:30:02.19 Jala Right. So, uh, I think it is absolutely. 00:30:03.82 Alex _ picklefactory I, in my scene, there was actually, there was actually a poet. 00:30:04.47 Jala hope Oh, uh-huh. 00:30:06.41 Alex _ picklefactory There's a scene at the end where it's a honeymoon and it's just like one shot of, uh, of Raul and Christine. 00:30:07.32 Doug Lief Oh. 00:30:09.08 Jala Yeah. 00:30:12.88 Jala Yeah. Yeah. That one's in the 29 release. So. 00:30:16.72 Alex _ picklefactory Interesting. 00:30:16.92 Doug Lief Hmm. 00:30:17.41 Jala Yeah, so i I also have to say, I think it is absolutely hilarious that in this version, the Lon Chaney version, ah he's an ex-convict who's horribly disfigured but composes masterwork operas and plays the organ. 00:30:30.57 Jala Like, what? What? 00:30:31.62 Alex _ picklefactory And an architect in the book. 00:30:33.05 Jala Yeah, I know. Well, in the book that, yeah, but like that's not mentioned here. um You know, like you find out later, you know, like in the book, yes, but like in this, yeah, well, 00:30:40.97 Alex _ picklefactory How did he get this stuff in from where? Who knows? It's not and all gone into, yeah. 00:30:45.17 Jala Well, this iteration, though, he's it doesn't make any sense for him to be this master musician or anything when he's like an ex-con, you know, so that's very, very silly. 00:30:52.14 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:30:55.17 Jala um But like I mentioned, kind of leaning into, um oh, before we would get into the production stuff. um So, that the massive changes, the major changes from this, from the book, um you have Duroga, who used to be the Persian, who is now Inspector Ladue. You have Eric as an ex-convict rather than someone who was deformed at birth. 00:31:18.27 Jala um So that's a different kind of situation. ah the The ending here is a little bit different because in the book, ah he is like, okay, fine, you know, take, take you know, Raul, take her and go or whatever. 00:31:31.96 Jala um And then in this version, you know, he's still trying to run away with her this whole time. 00:31:38.00 Alex _ picklefactory I would say in the book he wins, basically. 00:31:39.68 Jala Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's a little bit different um kind of portrayal, but again, in this version, they really, really want to make you deeply dislike Eric. 00:31:48.04 Alex _ picklefactory Yep. 00:31:51.13 Jala So. 00:31:52.73 Doug Lief Yeah, i I like this version, I guess, for that reason. I you know i usually, like I said, they usually soften him up too much. It's interesting. They don't exactly reveal his disfigurement. 00:32:02.94 Doug Lief I think they imply it's from birth. But then there was a scene that was cut where he was in Persia and his punishment was like being he was going to be eaten to death by ants. And like that left him disfigured, which was was cut. 00:32:13.27 Jala yeah yep 00:32:16.09 Doug Lief um But I think he because he does. There are a few things he says, which would indicate he has always been like this. 00:32:22.21 Jala ah 00:32:22.24 Doug Lief um He talks about the you the world hates me and um you know feast your eyes and glut your soul on my accursed ugliness. There are there are so certain bits of dialogue that would suggest he's been disfigured from from birth, which again, I think that characterization is way more interesting as a person who has never known the likeness or kindness though of another human being ah because of this. 00:32:39.47 Jala yep. Right. 00:32:44.06 Doug Lief so um 00:32:44.93 Jala Yeah. 00:32:45.78 Doug Lief But again, yeah, lots, lots and lots of cut scenes and what it was maybe four different endings were cooked up for this movie. And before we got the final one. 00:32:52.02 Jala Mm hmm. Yeah. And like I said, there were so something like 10 different people working on the screenplay. So some of the vestiges of one you know person's dialogue probably still stayed when they ended up you know rewriting it and then just leaving some of the the stuff in there and then not really thinking about it too much and just altering bits here and there as they went. 00:33:13.43 Jala So um one of the different writers, in fact, who first got their hands on it and initially was trying to make the screenplay said, if we do it, for God's sake, let's not botch it. 00:33:24.51 Alex _ picklefactory It took four hours. 00:33:26.26 Jala So, and that's kind of like up for interpretation, right? right ah It's kind of up for interpretation um as to like whether this is um quote unquote botched because it it just kind of depends on your opinion. Now, like in so far as success and longevity of the movie, no, it's not botched. 00:33:44.09 Jala um And so far as like ah being super, super faithful to the book, yes, this was the best adaptation at that time within 15 years of the release of the novel. 00:33:54.85 Jala But um you know like I don't know. like I don't think that there has been a truly faithful to the book 100% version ever. 00:34:05.23 Jala Everybody likes to do their spin. 00:34:06.51 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:34:07.48 Jala you know Yes. 00:34:07.63 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:34:07.94 Alex _ picklefactory It's so much more briskly paced in terms of just getting things going than the novel, which takes a long time to to start. I mean, it starts with you know all this stuff about the opera ghost and Eric demanding money from the the the ah new proprietors and arranging for accidents and you know all that all the stuff about how Gaston learned that the opera ghost is real. 00:34:32.40 Alex _ picklefactory and you know But I did notice, interestingly, that like 00:34:33.96 Jala yeah 00:34:36.94 Alex _ picklefactory The scene where Eric is unmasked is kind of like in right in the middle. It's the exactly in the middle of both the book and the movie, pretty much. 00:34:44.69 Jala Mmhmm. Yeah. 00:34:46.66 Alex _ picklefactory you know and it It seems to be kind of like, it seems at least in that regard, paced in the same way. you know It's just so much faster, right? There's there's none of this, um 00:35:00.92 Alex _ picklefactory lots of stuff is cut out, right? 00:35:02.94 Jala Yeah. 00:35:03.02 Alex _ picklefactory Like everything about ah Christine's, you know Mama, Valerius, and all that stuff is is just not present. 00:35:07.17 Jala Mmhmm. 00:35:11.02 Doug Lief Right, the trip to the the the graveyard as well is missing ah from this version. 00:35:14.79 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:35:16.07 Doug Lief I think they might have shot it again. so Might have been a cutting room floor thing, but like I think yeah, there's never been a version that quite. 00:35:19.43 Alex _ picklefactory Yep. 00:35:22.97 Alex _ picklefactory It would be a miniseries if you we wanted your filaments. 00:35:24.01 Jala Yeah, I would have to be. 00:35:25.44 Doug Lief And there was a miniseries, but it was nothing like the original ah book at all. 00:35:25.63 Jala Yeah. 00:35:29.71 Doug Lief um But the yeah, I think if you were to take this movie and have a teleporter accident with the Weber musical, like between those two things, I think those are the closest you get to adapting the book. 00:35:37.47 Alex _ picklefactory Hm. 00:35:41.11 Jala Right. 00:35:42.53 Doug Lief But um yeah, no one version is quite gone. After it, but I don't think they need to honestly I think both of these are an improvement on the original Arru novel It's it's one of the things we're like he hit on a good idea. 00:35:48.85 Jala Mm-mm. Yes. 00:35:55.07 Doug Lief I don't know that his is actually the best execution of it 00:35:58.01 Jala Right. It's, it's kind of like a, a Lovecraft situation, right? You know, like Lovecraft wrote some stuff and you know, that whatever you think about Lovecraft's original writings, all the stuff that has been done with Lovecraft since is real interesting. 00:36:12.56 Jala And like, there are some really standout pieces of work out there in the world that are Lovecraftian inspired by this, that, and the other drawing characters and ideas from his work and then improving on it, you know? 00:36:26.14 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. It was the style of the time to have a massive extraneous detail. 00:36:28.14 Jala Yeah. Right, right, right, for sure. So ah now we can move on a little bit, I think, to the production stuff. 00:36:34.92 Doug Lief Mm hmm. 00:36:35.42 Jala We already started mentioning some of the cut scenes and things like that. So the way that this ended up originally starting is that the president of Universal Studios met LaRue when in Paris and LaRue gave him a copy of his book because the president mentioned how much he and and like admired the Paris Opera House. 00:36:52.13 Jala So then the ah owner of Universal read the book in one night, bought the film rights, and then turned it into specifically a vehicle for Lon Chaney. So that is why, again, the other characters in the movie are fairly well short-changed. They do not get as much attention as Eric himself. 00:37:14.09 Doug Lief Yeah, it should be it should be mentioned that Carl Lemley is the person you're talking about there, the the president of the studio, yeah luminary and you know visionary founder of of Universal. ah He's the one who actually bought the lot where Universal Studios currently sits and has to this day. 00:37:30.30 Doug Lief Um the other thing you taught you mentioned it as a vehicle for Lon Chaney. Lon Chaney was not in the universal studio system and you know under the studio system back then you know you were kind of as an actor it was like being like ah in a theater company that you belong to a certain studio um but They were like, no, we we have to use him for this. 00:37:49.16 Doug Lief Like he worked. He was the one who had to go through all the machinations of working out the deals so that Lon Chaney could come and do this because basically their feeling was like, if if there is no Lon Chaney, there is no movie. 00:37:52.92 Jala Mmhmm. 00:37:59.11 Doug Lief Like this doesn't work without him. 00:37:59.64 Jala Right. Mmhmm. Absolutely. And also because of his love of the Paris Opera House, they ended up creating a very faithful replica of the opera house for the setting for the movie. 00:38:12.69 Jala So like they did try to make it as close as they could to the actual setting, um you know, from Paris. So. 00:38:21.04 Alex _ picklefactory It looks amazing. 00:38:22.18 Jala Mm hmm. 00:38:22.17 Doug Lief Yeah, and that's set. 00:38:22.63 Alex _ picklefactory I wish I could see a very high resolution rendition of that. I wish I could see it in person. 00:38:27.52 Jala Yeah. 00:38:27.57 Doug Lief Well, you can um in a way. 00:38:28.81 Jala Oh, OK. 00:38:30.03 Doug Lief So first of all, unfortunately, it's not there anymore. It was at on Lot 28 in Universal for 90 years. It was there till, I think, 2014 when they finally took it down. 00:38:37.61 Alex _ picklefactory Wow. 00:38:39.60 Jala Mm-hmm. 00:38:41.15 Doug Lief But they used it. 00:38:41.80 Jala Aww. 00:38:42.61 Doug Lief If you want to see what it looks like in better resolution, go watch Phantom of the Opera 1943 with Claude Rains. 00:38:47.46 Jala Mm! 00:38:47.65 Alex _ picklefactory well 00:38:47.71 Doug Lief They use the exact same set. um And it's used for they used it in a number of Hitchcock movies. Like if you go look it up, um you can find this opera house set used in many, many, many films, because they put all that work into it. 00:39:00.47 Jala Yeah. 00:39:00.42 Doug Lief And it looks glorious. So if you really want to get kind like a higher res, like in color, like kind of touristy visit to it. Yeah, Phantom of the Opera 43 is actually a good way to kind of get your eyes on what it looks like in better detail. 00:39:13.54 Alex _ picklefactory Hm. 00:39:14.40 Jala That's awesome. So ah we already mentioned about some of the cut scenes because the whole section where um Phantom summons Christine to her father's graveyard and then place the resurrection of Lazarus on his violin, that section was cut out. There was also another flashback to Persia, which you already mentioned, Doug, with the ants and the whatever. and That was also eliminated due to story conferences. um just like subsequent story conferences and and all of that, but then also like budget. 00:39:42.73 Alex _ picklefactory We don't need backstory. 00:39:45.91 Jala I mean, they swapped it out for a line of exposition. 00:39:46.49 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah, proof. 00:39:49.48 Jala So they just explained it in a very simple way if with one line of exposition and cut that part out ah to to save on budget, but also probably because they felt that it would change the pacing too much to have this flashback or whatever. 00:40:02.84 Jala so and ah Pacing wise, I don't know if that would have necessarily fit. I think that the graveyard scene would have been a better fit, but I don't know that the Persia scene would have um slowed down the pacing a bit too much because they did make it a fairly snappy pace. 00:40:17.16 Jala so Um, yeah, the studio, as we mentioned, did consider the novels ending too low key, and then they created several different renditions. So, um, there is one revision to the script where Christine gives Phantom a kiss, uh, then he is very shaken and then moans that even my own mother would never kiss me. And then the mob shows up and all of that, and then flees the opera house with Chris, you know, he, Eric flees the opera house with Christine and all that other stuff happens. 00:40:47.50 Jala um But um he ends up escaping the mob by scaling a bridge with his strangler's lasso, and then waiting for him at the top is Simon Bouquet, whose brother was killed by Eric, who cuts the lasso. And then the phantom is dying. He falls and is dying. And then his last words are, all I wanted was to have a wife like anybody else and to take her out on Sundays. 00:41:13.46 Alex _ picklefactory Really steered it into the wall with that last pit, but up until then. 00:41:15.34 Jala i I know, it's like, wow, ah it was it was going kind of interesting. I would have liked to see that lasso scene and everything and all of that, but... um Right, right. 00:41:24.01 Alex _ picklefactory A little bit of dramatic irony there too, not bad. 00:41:28.28 Jala ah In another one of those endings, Eric and Christine flee the mob and then take refuge in her house. And before entering, Eric says, ah is is it like cringing and as as if Satan before the cross. 00:41:41.56 Jala And then inside her room, he's overcome and says that he's dying. I don't know what where that came from, but then he asks if she will kiss him and proposes to give her a wedding ring, and Christine can give that to Raoul. So then the Persians, Simon, and Raoul burst into the house. Christine tells them Erica's ill. He slumps dead to the floor, sending the wedding ring rolling across the carpet. Christine sobs and flees to the garden, and Raoul follows to console her. 00:42:08.92 Jala And, uh, this ending is kind of, it's the house thing and all of that. That's like, wait, that's another step too far. I think, um, some of it though, some of these aspects where he's dying and, um, he offers her a ring and this, that, and the other, uh, those aspects actually kind of come up in Susan Kay's book phantom. 00:42:28.06 Alex _ picklefactory This is the melodrama cut right here. 00:42:28.06 Jala So. Yeah. Yeah. 00:42:30.37 Doug Lief Yeah. And some of that stuff does relate back to things in the in the LaRue novel, but it's it's weirdly kind of like, well, what if it all happened in an afternoon? 00:42:33.69 Alex _ picklefactory Yep. 00:42:37.28 Alex _ picklefactory None of it, none of it at all emphasized earlier, so. 00:42:40.03 Jala Yeah. 00:42:41.42 Doug Lief Yeah, this does not work for yeah, but yeah I'll buy the like kind of capital R romantic idea that Eric is dying of, you know, a broken heart, but not in the span of like 10 minutes. You know, it doesn't it doesn't work. 00:42:51.49 Jala I know. Yeah, yeah. So ah there's one more version that I know of at least. ah To save Raoul, Christine agrees to wed Eric and she kisses his forehead. 00:43:03.53 Jala Eric is overcome by Christine's purity and his own ugliness. The mob enters his lair under the Opera House only to find him slumped dead over his organ where he had been playing his composition Don Juan Triumphant. 00:43:18.51 Jala I think that's fine. That would have been fine. I mean, like, I don't know how how I feel about it. How do y'all feel about the let's let's lynch him and throw him in the sand kind of ending here that that they actually give him? I kind of like that he does the whole fake out at the end and has his last cackle because it just kind of reminds you and underlines. Don't feel bad for him even though he's about to get lynched and killed and thrown into this river um because he's still terrible and horrible, you know? 00:43:45.69 Alex _ picklefactory It's in keeping with centering him in ah and right in the middle of the movie. 00:43:49.34 Jala Yeah. 00:43:49.85 Alex _ picklefactory right He's the most magnetic thing about the movie all throughout. right It really kind of makes sense to like finish on that. It's quite strong in terms of that, but it doesn't 00:44:01.91 Alex _ picklefactory You know, the mob scene is kind of borrowed from another story, almost, right? 00:44:08.25 Jala this 00:44:09.15 Alex _ picklefactory It doesn' it doesn't really seem to bring anything unique to to what's going on to it. Unlike, you know, the previous, like, the at least those other ones had something to do with the, you know, that the story and kind of the themes of ah the love triangle involved, right? 00:44:23.83 Jala Mm hmm. 00:44:25.05 Alex _ picklefactory get Just getting hunted down by the mob, eh, not so much. 00:44:25.04 Jala Right. 00:44:27.42 Jala I know it's like, and then the angry mob like what? 00:44:27.62 Alex _ picklefactory You know, and we Or we had we had his ah his brother getting revenge. That makes some sense, right? 00:44:33.17 Jala Yeah, yeah, I know, like everything's on a more personal scale and then the angry mob is just kind of like, I mean, yes, it's fitting for um the kind of era that Paris had been in. 00:44:33.27 Alex _ picklefactory so 00:44:42.32 Alex _ picklefactory Sure, it makes sense, I guess. yeah but 00:44:43.82 Jala Yeah, but at the same time, like for the story, the story is on a micro scale and then adding the mob in there is more macro. 00:44:44.59 Alex _ picklefactory yeah 00:44:50.60 Jala So, you know, I don't know, Doug, what do you think? 00:44:53.85 Doug Lief So ah what I like about the ending that we actually get in this film is the moment where he you know he raises his fist right he's got one last ah you know it's all an illusion right that actually feeds into the theme of like ah the the phantom as a persona that he creates and just how sadly human he is underneath and it's all you know it is all just 00:45:01.65 Jala Mm hmm. 00:45:08.41 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:45:09.97 Jala Yes. 00:45:14.43 Doug Lief smoke and mirrors, literally. 00:45:15.29 Alex _ picklefactory um i 00:45:16.08 Doug Lief ah So I do like that. But as you said, the mob creates a problem. ah Because we, you know, this is torches and pitchforks and the monster has to die. 00:45:25.64 Alex _ picklefactory the 00:45:26.04 Doug Lief Because of that, that kind of robs us of the poetic moment from the book of the idea of Christine giving him this, you know, powerful ah kiss on the forehead that kind of changes him a little bit. 00:45:37.00 Doug Lief So we it's a little weird to have that and then he's just up then he died of a broken heart again immediately ah that doesn't work so. 00:45:43.23 Alex _ picklefactory And yeah. 00:45:43.99 Jala yeah 00:45:46.22 Doug Lief The only version that kind of worked this right again is the Weber musical because the Weber musical has the courage to not have Eric just die at the end. He kind of just vanishes, right? 00:45:56.55 Doug Lief it's just it's the this this It's over now, the music of the night. 00:45:57.09 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:45:59.55 Doug Lief He just disappears. And we don't know what happens to him. And that's kind of a nice poetic thing where you do get the mob, but by the time the mob gets there, 00:46:05.55 Jala Yeah. 00:46:07.52 Doug Lief he you know He's gone. um That would not have worked in 1925. 00:46:08.94 Jala Right. 00:46:11.71 Doug Lief I feel like this this crowd, like no, we want our monster you know good and dead. 00:46:11.94 Jala No. 00:46:15.98 Doug Lief we didn't We didn't go to Home Depot and buy all these torches and pitchforks for nothing. you know so 00:46:21.37 Jala right 00:46:21.39 Doug Lief you know ah Plus, it gave them a chance to reuse the Notre Dame set. which is cool. One, kind of a nod because Lon Chaney, of course, famously played Quasimodo in that movie. 00:46:34.14 Doug Lief So it's nice. It gives you a little more of the sense of the grandeur of Paris outside of the opera house. So there's things about, there's things, this ending doesn't not work, but it doesn't work as well as maybe it could. 00:46:43.76 Jala Right. 00:46:46.34 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah, I mean 00:46:46.70 Jala Yeah. And that that's that's where I kind of land too. Sorry, Alex. Go ahead. 00:46:49.84 Alex _ picklefactory No, no, I mean i'm just i just think there's there's plenty of crowd scenes in this movie. 00:46:50.44 Jala Yeah. 00:46:53.48 Alex _ picklefactory like Shots of ballerinas or the audience. 00:46:53.46 Jala Yeah. 00:46:56.35 Alex _ picklefactory it's all It's never torches and pitchforks until this very last moment. 00:47:00.96 Jala Yeah, 00:47:01.34 Alex _ picklefactory you know and it kind So it kind of works in a way to like mirror those things. but But again, it's not like that ever paid played a part earlier. or either yeah I agree. 00:47:10.08 Jala I think it would have. 00:47:11.22 Alex _ picklefactory the the the the The musical really kind of na nailed it. right like you You came too close, and and that's you know that's the end. 00:47:18.77 Jala Right. 00:47:18.94 Alex _ picklefactory It has to be that way. 00:47:20.13 Jala i I think that this would have worked better for me. This ending would have worked better for me if the crowd of people, because the crowd of people, you are correct, are there in lots of different scenes. 00:47:30.74 Jala ah The chandelier gets dropped on them and they're there for the masquerade and all of that. ah They're everywhere. There's all the ballerinas and everything. There's always masses of people, but they're always kind of backgrounded. 00:47:42.09 Jala So if they had, but like they do focus a little bit on Simon Bouquet, who is the leader of this mob, but they don't focus on him a whole lot near the end. So if they had focused more on him and made it again kind of like that micro scale, his personal revenge assisted by this mob that's in the background, then I think that would have felt a little bit better for me personally. 00:48:05.27 Jala especially if they, you know, like really just emphasize him and his part in the winching slash the throwing, you know, Phantom. they They didn't emphasize. I mean, like you get this wider shot of a bunch of people beating the crap out of Lon Chaney, you know, or the dummy or whatever they're doing um and then throwing him in the sand and things like that. 00:48:17.55 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 00:48:22.69 Jala And like if it had been a little bit more personalized, I think that that would have been it. That's all I would have needed to make that work just fine for this movie. 00:48:31.94 Alex _ picklefactory he he um He has almost no screen time. Okay. 00:48:34.50 Jala yeah Yeah. 00:48:35.31 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah, he's not in the middle of the movie at all. 00:48:38.29 Jala Right, and and if they had played him up a little bit and used him a little bit more smartly, I feel like that would have been enough to to carry that last scene to 100% satisfactory for me. 00:48:48.84 Jala So um going on to talk about some of the advertisements for this film. ah They didn't show the Phantom at all, or if they did, it was in his cape and mask or with his red masquerade costume. 00:48:59.97 Jala The great unveiling of his face was saved for the silver screen, which, by the way, all of the different theaters that this was showing at, where yeah all of them were encouraged to keep selling smelling salts on them so that they could revive the ladies if they fainted from watching you know the unveiling of the the mask you know the mask take coming off and then you get to see lancini's terror face so right 00:49:24.32 Alex _ picklefactory It really has some impact even now. Somehow, seeing that is just eye-opening. Yeah. 00:49:30.84 Doug Lief it Yeah, it's crazy as a society how far we've come from that because, Jala, I sent you a link to this. There's a Muppet Babies episode that has like footage of that in there. 00:49:38.45 Jala Yes. 00:49:41.63 Doug Lief So to think like something that was like so horrifying that we needed to keep like, you know, first aid on hand for people who saw it is now fit for Saturday morning cartoons for for elementary school kids. 00:49:53.51 Doug Lief you know But I will say, Part of it is that like when you watch it in the film, you've watched the 50, however many minutes there are to lead up to this. like There's so much terror that goes into that of like the creepy settings under the opera house and all of just every little thing about him that just this creeping sense of dread getting worse and worse than when he does find she pulls the mask off. 00:50:17.41 Doug Lief like It's effective, and that makeup is unbelievable, even to this day. 00:50:22.50 Jala Yes. 00:50:22.78 Doug Lief like It looks so good. 00:50:24.26 Jala Mhm. 00:50:25.39 Doug Lief ah Just the. 00:50:26.05 Alex _ picklefactory it it's um it It really does. It's amazing, too, how they make a set that is so well lit look so kind of, yeah, as you say, creepy, dreadful. You know, you have an anticipation of horror there. 00:50:39.37 Jala Right. And, you know, it kind of also is in line with Universal Studios um movie monsters of that entire era. Right. You know, like they have all of the movie monsters, you know, that they had, they had their Wolfman, they had their mommy, they had their Frankenstein and Dracula and all of that. 00:50:54.53 Jala And, um you know, Lon Chaney was one of those monsters, you know, not usually portrayed as one of the Universal Studios monsters, but definitely one of those. So. 00:51:05.27 Doug Lief Yeah, he's sometimes in there, like how certain characters, like sometimes they're in the Avengers, but not always. 00:51:06.91 Jala Yeah. 00:51:10.27 Jala right it's it's one of those so right right so yeah talking about the makeup though so Cheney said that he created the death set of the phantom with paint in the right places he used a color illustration of ah the novel by I cannot I'm not French ah Andre Cass I don't know how to say that name 00:51:10.44 Doug Lief Like, yeah. 00:51:10.69 Alex _ picklefactory He's a designated hitter of um of a monster. Huh. 00:51:26.72 Doug Lief I think 00:51:30.67 Alex _ picklefactory Castain, I believe. 00:51:31.12 Doug Lief Castain. 00:51:32.07 Jala OK, we'll just say that that guy, they're great illustrations. I will put a link in the show notes for folks. And he modeled his phantoms appearance off of these illustrations. And he raised the contours of his cheekbones by stuffing, wadding inside his cheeks. He used a skull cap to raise his forehead several inches and accentuate the bald dome of the phantom skull. He glued his ears to his head and painted his eye sockets black and added white highlights under his eyes for skeletal effect. 00:52:02.45 Jala He added prongs to a set of rotting false teeth, encoded his lips with grease paint. He applied putty to his nose to sharpen the angle and inserted two loops of wire into his nostrils. Guide wires under the putty pulled his nostrils upward. Some sources claim that he added egg whites to his eyeballs to make them appear cloudy. 00:52:23.41 Jala So he did a lot. I mean, like, there are books, you know, like, I think it's still very common for in theater, makeup books and stuff to still reference all the stuff that Lon Chaney used to do ah in his Man of a Thousand Faces, you know, um like reputation. 00:52:40.63 Alex _ picklefactory Cutting edge guy, certainly. 00:52:42.44 Jala Right, right. So um also something I wanted to mention that I found out when I was doing research is that Cheney was the son of deaf mute parents. And thus he had a whole lifetime of miming experience to draw on for his acting career. 00:52:55.90 Jala So ah that's really cool that he, he like, you know, is the sake second nature for him to do all of that. 00:52:58.64 Doug Lief i mean yeah 00:53:03.97 Doug Lief It really comes across in the performance. 00:53:05.98 Jala Mm hmm. 00:53:05.93 Doug Lief We talked a little bit about this on my episode, but there's so many scenes where you know ah he is, we we only see him in silhouette. We see him with the mask on. 00:53:16.98 Doug Lief We see just his hand. And like he's so measured with all of these little movements that you can totally read him, like his personality. 00:53:24.29 Alex _ picklefactory Yep. 00:53:27.50 Doug Lief All of this like scary stuff comes through even before. He actually gets to, you know, act with his own human features, ah such as they are like he it's that all really comes through in the performances. 00:53:34.36 Jala Right. 00:53:40.37 Doug Lief It's it's stunning. He's so good at that. 00:53:43.88 Jala Right. Right. And that's what really makes him just so memorable all these years later where people still talk in awe about his work. But ah as for this movie, somebody already mentioned it. 00:53:57.67 Jala But four hours long, they the original rough cut of the film was about four hours. So um yeah, they were trying to get in there as many many things from the novel as they could. 00:54:07.18 Alex _ picklefactory were More shots of ballerinas, more shots of audiences. 00:54:08.90 Jala Ding, dang it. 00:54:11.73 Jala Right? Well, I mean, like that served them later when it comes to preservation. We'll we'll get to that a little bit later. But some yeah, the production was really troubled though. So the first cut was previewed in 1925, but the audience reaction was negative. So the studio decided not to redeem Phantom with a kiss, better to have kept him a devil to the end. And you know Honestly, the way that this movie portrays him, we've already discussed it, but like that one scene right before he's lynched when he's getting his last laugh very literally, um that really is is kind of like the cap on this production for me. 00:54:52.10 Jala So ah the script was rewritten to focus more on Christine's love life and it was turned into a romantic comedy at some point. 00:54:57.40 Alex _ picklefactory And. 00:54:59.38 Jala ah That new version was booed off the screen. They didn't even get to finish showing that with ah understandable reasons. you know um that's that's That's not Phantom of the Opera that were going on there. 00:55:14.39 Jala the third and final cut. ah The third and final version ended up cutting more out and the ending was left with Eric being hunted by the mob and thrown in the sin. much of the original work was put back in, though some important characters and scenes were not restored. ah The score was not prepared in time, so a rushed job was done on it, but there was no expense spared at the premiere. There was a full organ installed at the Astor for the event when they premiered this movie. So it would have been very cool if your first 00:55:45.95 Jala way of seeing this would have been like to see the movie and then have like the actual organ there playing the music and stuff. That's pretty cool. 00:55:55.29 Doug Lief They did that recently. I wish I had known about it. They did it last year. There's a nice theater near where I live. It's usually where I'll go to see like you know Broadway-style productions and stuff. And last year, yeah, they had a live organist accompany this movie. 00:56:09.51 Doug Lief And I'm like, I'm kicking myself. They're like, ah, because I was like, I wonder if they're going to show this anywhere this year. and I was like, too late. 00:56:15.69 Jala Oh, that's tough. 00:56:16.46 Doug Lief Yeah. 00:56:18.18 Jala Well, hopefully they'll bring it back again sometime. So ah yeah. 00:56:21.56 Doug Lief That's in the public domain. I don't see why they would certainly wouldn't be a discouragement. 00:56:26.52 Jala Right, right. So let's go ahead and kind of discuss some of the preservation troubles that this whole thing came across. So the original 25 version only survives through poorer quality 16 millimeter show at home prints because Universal destroyed the 25 millimeter reels, thinking them worth worthless. um This was very rampant back in very early holiday or um Hollywood days where they would just kind of like throw them away all the time. They didn't keep or preserve any of these things from the very, very early portions of Hollywood. So um Doug, do you have any like information about any of that stuff from the early era, golden, golden age of Hollywood? 00:57:12.54 Doug Lief i I wish I did know more about that. I can only assume that it's because at the time they you know no one was thinking ah you know in in those terms because this was the dawn of cinema. 00:57:23.20 Doug Lief People didn't know this was going to be worthwhile. 00:57:23.65 Jala Right. 00:57:25.24 Doug Lief Someone would want to see it again. you know Think about we where they're coming off of the world of stage plays where you know if you wanted to see hamlet You just get a theater company together and put on another Hamlet. 00:57:36.30 Doug Lief You wouldn't preserve it for for the future. So I can only assume that there's a little of that in there. um you know People didn't know what copyright to be where people didn't know they would be able to stream these things into their homes. 00:57:44.20 Alex _ picklefactory So. 00:57:48.28 Doug Lief so 00:57:48.41 Jala Right. 00:57:49.55 Alex _ picklefactory It's crazy to think of them just taking several runs at it, you know, we're just going to film all this extra footage and all this extra stuff and these several extra endings and just all of it, you know, and you can see why it could see kind of seem like a lot. 00:57:49.51 Doug Lief you know 00:57:51.87 Jala Right. 00:58:05.90 Alex _ picklefactory But I don't I don't have any like why not just keep it all. Yeah. 00:58:09.34 Jala right 00:58:09.32 Doug Lief Yeah. I mean, the way to see a movie was in the movie theaters, the television wouldn't be invented for, I think it was invented originally in the thirties, but not really. 00:58:14.89 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. And then they did the same thing in television, from what I understand, and just started erasing tapes and throwing away film and a lot of that early 50s stuff is still lost, right? 00:58:23.34 Jala yeah Yeah, for sure. 00:58:26.26 Doug Lief Yep. 00:58:28.01 Jala And there's a lot of that kind of thing. And this is actually something that is echoed not to the same extent, but in the video game preservation kind of situation. We are in a video game preservation kind of crisis, you know trying to ah make sure that we have old hardware and old you know hard copies of things or digitized versions of them. 00:58:37.28 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah, I mean... 00:58:49.17 Jala and um you know there's lots and lots of debate all the time about this kind of thing. so you know like that the The preservation of media, even in the internet age, is difficult. 00:58:59.64 Jala so But the best quality print of the film was struck from an original camera negative for George Eastman House in the early 50s by Universal Pictures. Because of the better quality of this version, many home video releases use it as the basis of their transfers. ah This version has Mary Fabian in the role of Carlotta with the original actress for Carlotta, Virginia Pearson, referred to as Carlotta's mother instead. 00:59:27.38 Jala And yeah, the version that I watched had had that. 00:59:27.50 Doug Lief Yeah, I think that's what I watched. 00:59:30.77 Jala But I think the first time I watched it, it was just Carlotta. It wasn't Carlotta's mom. so um Most of the silent footage in the 1930 version is actually from a second camera used to photograph the film for foreign markets and second negatives. 00:59:47.07 Jala So shots are slightly askew between versions. And that's something we'll get into. We will talk a little bit about some version differences here in a minute. In 2009, Real Classic DVD issued a special edition multi-disc version which included a match shot by shot or shot side by side comparison of the two versions, which is very cool. 01:00:01.94 Alex _ picklefactory Hmm. 01:00:06.48 Alex _ picklefactory I would love to see that sometime. 01:00:07.83 Jala Yeah, I know I actually didn't go try to track it down, but that would have been very good to see. 01:00:07.82 Doug Lief Hmm. 01:00:13.49 Jala And the 2003 image entertainment DVD set had the 1930 soundtrack, which was re-edited in an attempt to make ah the Eastman House print as good as possible. 01:00:25.02 Jala However, there is no corresponding man with lantern sequence on the sound discs. The music and effect reels without dialogue seem to follow the discs fairly closely. but the scenes with dialogue are generally shorter than their corresponding sequences on the discs. Also, since the sound discs were synchronized with a projection projection speed of 24 frames per second and the film on the DVD is presented at a slower frame rate to reproduce natural speed, the soundtrack on the DVD has been altered to run more slowly than than the original recorded speed. So that's a little bit kind of a jank version. 2012 saw Shadowland Productions releasing a two-disc DVD set featuring a newly recorded dialogue track with sound effects and an original musical score. The film was also re-edited, combining elements of the 25 version with the 1929 release. um The 3D Anaglyph version is included as an additional special feature. 01:01:22.80 Jala Now, what I'm wondering, since this one is like a mixture of the 25 and 29 release, I wonder if the version that I saw on Amazon Prime was this Shadowland Productions version because that would make sense because some of it seemed like it was the 1925 version, but then um some of it was definitely from the 29 version. 01:01:35.11 Alex _ picklefactory Okay. 01:01:44.32 Jala ah So yeah, ah talking a little bit more about like cinematography and lighting, they're great in some areas such as the grand staircase and the underground layer, along with the masquerade scenes. And um again, we've already mentioned it, but Norman Carey is not given very much time to shine on screen as Raoul, and the pacing is so matter of fact. 01:02:05.81 Jala Such as with a chandelier drop which happens really quickly it It drops like a stone people panic and run and then it's on to the next scenes So like you don't really get to sit with the horror of that in the moment ah because uh Yeah, yeah, it's pretty rough that way 01:02:08.75 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:02:16.77 Alex _ picklefactory There's a lot of, there's a lot of mustache acting and and uniform, you know, focus. It's not really, he doesn't really get to do much. Yeah. In that sense, the abruptness of that first act is striking. 01:02:36.50 Alex _ picklefactory Both versions, I feel, arranged either way, but it just gets right into it. 01:02:37.97 Jala Yeah. 01:02:41.83 Doug Lief See, I kind of like this. 01:02:42.28 Alex _ picklefactory You start seeing a threatening letter in the first couple of minutes. 01:02:47.23 Doug Lief Yeah, I kind of like the ah the at least a version I saw, which is the only one I can vouch for. 01:02:52.78 Jala Right. 01:02:53.67 Doug Lief I i thought the first act was paced well, and I liked the chandelier sequence because it it it reminded me of like some of the best horror movies where there's like ah there's that buildup of like, wait, what's going to happen? 01:02:59.26 Alex _ picklefactory Oh yes. 01:03:06.70 Doug Lief There's like lights flickering. um You know, things things are so are kind of off. We see this phantom shadow um until he builds to, you know, behold, she is singing to bring down the chandelier. Um, it falls and there's something cool about the way it falls abruptly. 01:03:21.81 Doug Lief Um, it feels more like you're watching footage of an actual disaster. Think like, you know, towers falling on 9 11, something like that, where it's just like, Oh, they just, I know they didn't, but its like it looks like they just dropped the chandelier on a crowd of people. 01:03:25.80 Jala Mhmm. 01:03:26.54 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:03:31.88 Jala Mhmm. 01:03:34.88 Doug Lief And it's the way it would look if you were really sitting there, as opposed to say like the 2004 version where it's like, you know, I don't know if it goes into slow mo and there's the score is going nuts. 01:03:43.63 Alex _ picklefactory It. 01:03:45.12 Doug Lief And it's like, it feels too like romanticized as opposed to like what it actually is, which is like, just a supreme act of just terror on, you know, a crowd. And like we've unfortunately had to live through so many of those moments like it if in this movie it feels like one of those like it's like oh wow you just watched a whole bunch of people get crushed under this thing. 01:04:05.79 Jala right it's kind of from it's It's not trading in the dramatic kind of cinematography style that we have in 01:04:13.55 Alex _ picklefactory just because for scale, it's so large. 01:04:16.11 Jala Yeah, it is. It's a massive chandelier. like When it drops on the audience, it drops on most of the audience. We should be clear about that. 01:04:22.63 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:04:24.15 Jala like The people who are left over make up the mob because everybody else just died. So so yeah. Do you all have any comments that you want to make about the production stuff on this film before we get into just a little bit of chat about version differences and analysis? 01:04:43.31 Doug Lief No, not me. I'm good. 01:04:45.38 Alex _ picklefactory Nope, same. 01:04:46.28 Jala Rock on. So most of the version differences have to do with the camera that is being used. And we already mentioned this. So um and that is to say the 1929 version ends up using a lot of B reels and cut takes. ah So we're not going to enumerate all the 7,000 times this happens. 01:05:05.57 Jala But that is that is something that you'll notice. I will put in the ah show notes a link to just a so an example being the the famous unmasking scene where you can see side by side the 1925 version and the 1929 version and how it looks a little bit different and you you know how the 1925 original is a little bit better than what you get in 1929. 01:05:28.43 Jala um So yeah, most of the shots that were in both of those two versions ah also are different because Universal added sound to it and things like that as well. There were some voice lines that were later on you know added later on to different iterations of this movie as well. i I saw a silent one. I mean, it had music, but it didn't have ah voices. It had the inter inter subtitle type things, inter-title cards. um Yeah, there's different title cards and a few different um parts where the lines are slightly different in the 1925 versus 1929. Both of those two versions have a different order to the first act, like the the events the sequence of events is shuffled in the 1929 version. 01:06:19.27 Jala So ah there's a lot of different stuff like that. There are a lot of added sections of, here's some more scenes of the ballet dancers. Here's some more scenes of the singing or this, that, and the other in the 29 version, which pads out the length of that film. ah The dialogue between Christine and Raoul in the dressing room ah is different as well because in 1925 she says that she can't marry yet and vaguely suggests that there's some force keeping her at the opera house and in 1929 she says they won't be married at all and he needs to forget about her. 01:06:52.19 Jala so ah We did mention Carlotta and Carlotta's mother. In the original version it was Carlotta herself. And then in 1929 they called the original Carlotta person Carlotta's mother because they had to reshoot a lot of those scenes with somebody else playing Carlotta. So that's why they ended up doing that. 01:07:12.30 Jala And Eric ends up telling Christine explicitly in the 1925 version that she will replace Carlotta. So, um you know, a little bit more of an aggressive take there. ah The 1925 also has an extra scene between Christine and Raoul in a garden where she tells him that they are not going to be together anymore. Christine also explains that she's gained newfound gifts from a so a mysterious specter whom she suspects to be the spirit of music sent by her father. 01:07:40.39 Jala And this was completely cut out of the 1929 version. 1925 has extra shots of Christine pretending not to know who Raoul is after being commanded by the phantom. And Raoul then listens to her speak to the phantom, waiting for her to leave, and then returns to the room searching for the man that he heard. And all of that was cut out of the 1929 version. 1925 had additional scene of Ledoux discussing the situation at the opera house with the chief of police and assuring his boss that he would continue to investigate the phantom. 01:08:13.49 Jala During Carlotta's performance of Faust, the 1925 version clarifies that the managers are further defying the Phantom by sitting in box 5. There's extra title cards that say things like in the 1925 version that the Phantom's voice is heard by the entire auditorium when he is about to drop the chandelier. In the 1925 version when Raoul discovers the gunpowder in the lower levels, the Phantom responds with a joke about selling barrels as he continues to play the organ upstairs, implying that they can hear one another since the Phantom is just one floor above Raoul. 01:08:47.59 Jala And the 1925 has that epilogue scene that you mentioned, Alex, which is not present in the 1929 version that shows Christine and Raoul on their honeymoon. 01:08:59.52 Jala So um there's a lot more to the 1925 version, ah the the original version of this film that you know is not present in the 29 or is reworked. And the 29 kind of pads itself out by having some extra scenes of stuff that doesn't matter mostly. 01:09:19.71 Jala So I don't know I I kind of find it interesting to just kind of watch different iterations of this like every time that I Go back to watch this movie. I kind of consciously look for is there a different cut? Is there you know like which which version did I see before? Let me see if I can find a different one to watch this time just to you know kind of observe the differences again um as I like to do so um turning it over to y'all though what like there's a whole section that I went where I went through like a whole paper that was discussing like how to analyze this and it suggests stuff about the freakification so man's hatred has made me so freakification and the shifting gaze in the phantom of the opera and again that's ah that'll be linked in the show notes 01:10:12.10 Jala um What do you all think about, you know, obviously this is a monster movie. It's not really trying to ah think on society and things like that on the whole, but like as a monster, Phantom is interesting because he's just a guy who has a disfigured face. Or is he? 01:10:35.46 Alex _ picklefactory Well, he's also musically talented. and 01:10:37.42 Jala He's a talented guy with a ruined face. Okay. 01:10:42.67 Alex _ picklefactory I mean, I don't i don't know. like it's not kind of It's really not gone into it all the way that he's influencing what happens at the opera. right like It almost seems like he just is there because he can hide there and because he can have the advantage of the trap doors and things. 01:10:52.17 Jala but 01:11:02.30 Alex _ picklefactory Whereas in the book, it's really kind of gone into what his whole deal is, why he's there. He helped build the place, all this other you know backstory. right 01:11:12.12 Jala Yeah. Yeah. The original version of Phantom makes him out to be this just complete savant. 01:11:18.39 Alex _ picklefactory Yes, he's not I you wouldn't yeah, he's not there to be gawked out at all. He's really kind of You know, it's it's the it's the gothic horror part of it that it's that it's emphasizing there, right? Rather than the monster movie part of it 01:11:32.75 Jala Doug, what do you think? 01:11:34.28 Doug Lief ah I think they hinted this stuff. they They could draw a more direct line to some of these concepts because as as you said, Alex, these s things are in the book. ah The idea that he is a a savant with all of these other talents he's amassed over the course of his life in the black arts, basically, right? 01:11:52.50 Doug Lief is his Yes, but he has specific skills in you know ventriloquism and magic and architecture. 01:11:52.76 Alex _ picklefactory and In contrast to the callow Raoul. 01:11:55.02 Jala right 01:12:00.03 Jala Right. 01:12:00.17 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. And in fact, he he makes the opera go wrong for Colota specifically using ventriloquism in the novel too. 01:12:06.11 Jala Mm hmm. Yeah. 01:12:09.29 Alex _ picklefactory And that's not that's also not kind of ah discussed at all other than him making his voice appear to the the crowd, I guess that's part of it. 01:12:16.28 Doug Lief Yeah, but as far as the like society angle, um I do think they hinted this day. They they use title cards again to kind of highlight how this beautiful opera house is built on top of, you know, torture chambers and horrible things. 01:12:30.78 Jala Mm hmm. 01:12:32.45 Doug Lief And that the the. Little bit of a like ah what's at the time machine, right? We've got the Eloy and the Morlocks below like the like. 01:12:39.96 Jala Right. 01:12:40.06 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah, a subterranean who was swooped in a coffin. 01:12:41.91 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:12:44.52 Jala Mm hmm. 01:12:44.83 Doug Lief Right. Like he, this is a place beneath the opera house for the things in society we don't want to think about and the people we don't want to interact with. 01:12:52.15 Jala Right. 01:12:52.23 Doug Lief Right. So, and that's what Eric is. He is a cast off of, of society. He said, you know, he talks about, you know, again, mankind's hatred has made me this way. Um, he, at one point he says like, you'll see the, the devil that makes my evil face or the evil spirit that makes my evil face. 01:13:09.79 Doug Lief Um, So he does at times invoke these kinds of concepts that they're you know he is you of this forgotten group of, you know, you you service dwellers, you don't know how good you've got it up there. 01:13:25.17 Alex _ picklefactory he's He's atavistic. He's capable of violence, right? 01:13:27.64 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:13:28.20 Alex _ picklefactory When he grabs Christine, when he he drowns that guy, right? 01:13:32.17 Jala Yeah. 01:13:32.42 Alex _ picklefactory He capsizes his boat. 01:13:34.23 Jala Yep. Yep. 01:13:35.39 Doug Lief right yeah he He lives outside of society's laws, which in his mind enables him to commit these crimes with impunity. He doesn't have to follow humanity's rules because humanity has decided he is not but ah part of the group. And he he acts that way. um he He's interesting, he's this especially this version of the Phantom, he's really narcissistic ah in that way that like he can't accept responsibility for anything. It's like, if I am to be good, it's because you, Christine, you know bestow your love and kindness upon me. But if I'm bad, it's because humanity has made me that way. At no point does he ever just sort of say like, well, I chose to do this. you know I personally you know murdered these people. 01:14:20.34 Doug Lief because i enjoyed it or because it helped me achieve my goal or whatever it's he is a victim at all times even though yeah he is a victim but that he's not it's not solely on the rest of us 01:14:31.43 Jala Right. Right. There's a certain point where you have to take accountability for you know your own actions and you know put like a stopper on where you know your power ends and you know where the power others have over you is. you know like That that's something that everybody has to learn in life and like Eric because he was stunted You know in his growth the way that I've mentioned a few times doesn't ever have that opportunity Because he doesn't have like any comeuppance He has a lynching and then he's gone and like he doesn't have like the the way the path forward to Really ah learning that lesson because he lives by himself He isn't checked by anyone until Christine in this whole situation, but then it escalates wildly out of control because 01:15:18.09 Jala of you know his unstable emotional state and his upping the ante. you know 01:15:24.41 Doug Lief I mean, no matter how big a crush you've got, you just can't drop a chandelier on people just just how it is, you know, um and I don't think that's why this story resonates to people because we've all felt that way. 01:15:30.74 Jala okay 01:15:34.32 Doug Lief We've all known unrequited love at some point in our lives. And so it's easy to look at this and go like, Ah, yes, you know, his, his yearning for her, but there's a difference. And this is why I think the disfigurement from birth thing matters, which is like, 01:15:46.75 Doug Lief Yeah, I remember being like 15 and having a crush I couldn't do anything about. That's not the same as saying you are you need to hide your face from society and no one will ever interact with you ever ah because of who you are and what you look like. 01:15:56.92 Jala Mm hmm. 01:16:00.12 Doug Lief That's a whole different you know psychological profile for for someone like that. And that's why I think it's like it's easy to get caught up in the idea of Eric is this, you know, by ironic hero ah versus actually know he's not he is the bad guy, you know. 01:16:18.23 Jala So, oh, god go ahead. 01:16:18.20 Doug Lief So. 01:16:18.39 Alex _ picklefactory Well, I mean, no, I would just like, I agree. And I think that like the the musical in particular paints him as like a seducer, right? 01:16:26.84 Jala Yes, absolutely. 01:16:27.18 Alex _ picklefactory Like a Dracula figure. Whereas this one very explicitly paints Eric, like you say, he's he's a Traglodyte, you know, yeah it the characterization is his transformed by by 01:16:34.31 Jala Yeah. 01:16:40.64 Alex _ picklefactory but the music And I don't like, i've I really, if you've got to do it in in a couple hours and you're going to sing a bunch of songs, that's the way to do it, I think, right? 01:16:49.69 Jala Yeah. I mean, mm-hmm. 01:16:50.28 Alex _ picklefactory Whereas if you were going to do this kind of thing makes perfect sense, right? Like they're well suited, like the adaptations are are well suited in that way. You can see why they both have like that enduring power, right? 01:17:01.25 Alex _ picklefactory But they, they know what to make of their protagonist. Well, I don't want to say protagonist, main character. 01:17:06.20 Jala Yeah, yeah. So there's a few things that I want to add as well. ah First and foremost, that ah the way that Eric is talking about himself in this, and he's trying to make him out to be himself out to be a victim of society and such, is 100% Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel. 01:17:24.87 Jala because it's the idea of the noble savage. He thinks of himself as the noble savage. He is the person who would have been good if society had let him, but society sucks and that's why he is the way he is. You know, man's hatred made me so. 01:17:39.69 Jala You know, uh, so you've got the idea of the noble Savage that he's, you know, cribbing off of Shelley. 01:17:43.48 Alex _ picklefactory It's all because of my mother. 01:17:44.76 Jala Yeah. All because of my mom. 01:17:45.47 Alex _ picklefactory ah piagon 01:17:46.35 Jala Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and and for, for, um, Frankenstein's monster, it's ah the father, the creator that has done that. 01:17:48.36 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:17:52.35 Alex _ picklefactory yeah 01:17:53.40 Jala So it's very much playing in that same space. It also is playing in fairy tale space. because in fairy tales, what is true? If you have anyone ugly, they're bad, very bad. yeah They're the worst. ah If there's anybody pretty, which would be Raul, the pretty boy, the the rich person, that's got to be your good guy in every fairy tale. so It's also trading in this fairy tale space as well. you you know He is an unrepentant, horrible, horrible man, this this you know scarred up, horrible looking Eric figure up to the very end when he's 01:18:25.23 Jala killed, and you are supposed to cheer that he is dead at this point. you know um Also, another thing I wanted to mention, and this is something that we kind of talked about off and on preparing like leading up to this episode, is the fact that like back in this era, you didn't have the sexification of every monster known to mankind that we have in our day and age. 01:18:41.83 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:18:44.19 Jala right So like back then, when they had their monsters, they wasn't like, ooh, sexy devil or anything like that. It was, no, these are horrible and scary. right And um you know they might have some elements of, oh, there's a little bit of a draw there or whatever, but that's always thwarted by their intrinsic evil and you know the terror of who they truly are or what they truly are. And every single Hollywood monster has basically been turned into a sex icon in our our modern society. 01:19:14.09 Jala So ah yeah, there's there's definitely that kind of vibe and you know ah Weber's version in the musical of Eric being this kind of like but Without the mask on that one side like the other side of his face is very handsome and he's attractive and you know He's seducing Christine and has like all of this stuff that that lends itself to the musical format because you know music is often tied to romantic situations and and you know, like the drama of that kind of human emotional 01:19:27.34 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:19:43.84 Jala Landscape right it's not for the kind of terror that you have in this movie Sure 01:19:51.16 Doug Lief Well, there's two interesting points that I would raise in response to that. One, in terms of sexification of monsters, um remember, eric is this is a French story, and the most famous French stories I can think of all are about deformed people in love. 01:20:06.27 Doug Lief You got the Hunchback in Notre Dame. um 01:20:07.94 Alex _ picklefactory um 01:20:08.15 Jala Yes 01:20:08.58 Doug Lief you've you've You've got Cerro de Bergerac, you've got Beauty and the Beast, and you've got this. 01:20:13.75 Jala True. 01:20:13.74 Doug Lief but but yeah But this is the old, oh yeah, the Man in the Iron Mask, sort of. 01:20:13.93 Alex _ picklefactory You got that guy in the mask. 01:20:18.07 Doug Lief But like this one is the only one where like Eric really is a monster. like Those other ones, Quasimodo is decidedly not a monster. 01:20:22.21 Jala Yeah. 01:20:25.43 Doug Lief That's the whole point. 01:20:25.88 Jala That's true. 01:20:26.46 Doug Lief right um but ah So I think there's an interesting space to kind of consider that. 01:20:26.64 Jala yeah 01:20:32.63 Doug Lief um The other thing, oh, I lost my train of thought. Damn it. um 01:20:39.58 Jala You can think about it. 01:20:39.75 Doug Lief Welcome back to it. ah Yeah. 01:20:40.52 Jala It's fine. ah Yeah, yeah. So ah that is true. That's a very, very good point. um And then too, Lon Chaney had done The Hunchback, for example. 01:20:51.06 Jala And so he had already played that role and and had all of that kind of a situation. 01:20:51.36 Alex _ picklefactory Indeed. 01:20:56.09 Jala I feel more for like, they they tried the romance angle is the thing. They tried that, Universal tried that in their different screenings of this movie in 1925. And the audience said, not just no, but hell no. 01:21:09.15 Jala So nobody wanted to see Eric get a romantic situation. Everybody wanted him to die. So that's what happened. Like they got they tried multiple times to give him a nicer ending. 01:21:18.68 Doug Lief Yeah. 01:21:22.83 Jala And they didn they didn't want that they wanted him to be an unrepentant monster. So um another Oh, yeah. 01:21:28.05 Doug Lief Yeah, I remember the other point I was gonna say, which is you you mentioned that was tied into the music, right? 01:21:30.79 Jala Hmm. 01:21:32.73 Doug Lief That like, you know, Eric as musician, um and that when you put it into the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, you actually, of course, get to hear music as opposed to a silent film. 01:21:33.13 Jala Yes. 01:21:43.70 Doug Lief But I i do think the music they compose or that Webber uses for Don Juan triumphant, whenever you hear pieces of it, um are really great because they it's very different from the rest of the music in Phantom. 01:21:56.00 Doug Lief It's much more discordant. 01:21:56.29 Jala Yes. 01:21:57.48 Doug Lief It's really um shrill in places. Also beautiful, but like it it is like this feels like the product of Eric's mind. like This is the music he would write. 01:22:05.62 Alex _ picklefactory Um hmm. 01:22:06.83 Doug Lief And I think that the score the um I forget is the German fellow who did the music for this I think the Don Juan triumphant music that you hear when Eric's sitting at the organ does kind of a similar thing, right? 01:22:18.33 Doug Lief They talked about like there's an undercurrent of warning in it. Like it's this is this guy's fantasies of being a great lover and as expressed through his one musical talent. 01:22:28.68 Alex _ picklefactory An obsession. 01:22:29.67 Doug Lief Yeah, it it's a great way of like getting to know the inside of this guy's mind through his his work. 01:22:30.30 Jala Mmhmm. 01:22:36.74 Jala Right. And that music was by Gustav Hinrichs. So I do have that note in here. So yeah, that is definitely um a very good point as well, because anybody who is a creator of anything, whatever kind of artwork or writing or whatever that you are working on ah does end up reflecting some aspects of you in one way or another. ah And that's just like the nature of the beast and being a creative person. 01:23:02.64 Jala um 01:23:03.01 Alex _ picklefactory but It's very much like you say, right? Like when the mask on, he's very much, and it's a full face mask when he wear wears it in this movie too, right? 01:23:09.77 Jala Yes. 01:23:11.41 Alex _ picklefactory It's not the it' not the musical one that's kind of handsome guy, but something happened. It's, you know, it covers him down to his chin pretty much. Right? And it's amazing how much he can still get across like you were saying earlier, you know, with his face completely covered like that. But it's really, he's so in control, right? All through this, you know, every scene where he has the mask on. And then, as you say, right, like tantrum Eric comes out when when it's off. And only then. 01:23:38.82 Jala Right. And I would even venture to say Christine in this movie does a fine job, but there are points where I'm not 100% sure exactly what she's feeling and thinks, yeah, what is she really trying to get across? 01:23:48.67 Alex _ picklefactory What is she getting across here? 01:23:51.56 Jala I'm not 100% sure on sometimes, but with Lon Chaney, 01:23:53.92 Alex _ picklefactory I'm seeing things. Sometimes it feels like... 01:23:56.01 Jala Yeah. Yeah. And then like with Lon Chaney, there's no question at all. 01:23:59.97 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:24:00.35 Jala So, so yeah, for sure. Another thing I wanted to mention as well, just thinking from it an analytical angle is that um this is very much one of those stories that echoes the whole, you know, like here's the devil at play. 01:24:13.34 Jala Like the devil is this beautiful alluring thing, you know, sort of. you know like and And this is more in the the musicals, you see this. But like ah the concept of mask on, he's you know um more controlled. 01:24:27.27 Jala He is not violent when he has his mask on necessarily. um He is you know just kind of like waiting in the wings. right But once that mask comes off, that's when the gloves are off. 01:24:37.71 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. That's when the violence that's the the moment of violence when he tells Christine, you have to look at me and know and and grabs her hair and makes her do it. 01:24:44.16 Jala Yeah. 01:24:46.53 Alex _ picklefactory but And that's what that's in the book too, right? But that's a very powerful scene. you know and But it has to be the climax of of pretty much any adaptation of this, right? 01:24:55.87 Jala Right. And there are two, I think there's only two scenes in this movie where Eric laughs. One of them is when ah she's terrified of him and he makes her look at him and he's just like laughing out of just like, I don't know, frenzy or something, you know? And then at the end of the movie, right before he's thrown into the sin, like the the heights of his wickedness, it feels like, because I mean, yes, he did so you know kill so many people with that ah chandelier, but he's too busy doing other stuff that that ends up being more of a um side note for him. 01:25:28.36 Jala like He doesn't care about those people. They are nothing but ants. But ah personal wickedness where he is reveling in the moment, that's when he laughs in these a scenes. 01:25:40.47 Alex _ picklefactory Okay. 01:25:42.44 Jala So. But um just to cover a little bit of what is in that freakification article, ah it talks about the movie being an extension of the dying freak show culture, ah pointing out that ah Eric's reclamation of his personhood ah when made into a horror object. So um he's a horror object. People point and and whatever and and all of that. in it's Definitely ah a product of its time when you think about it and you're like, oh, you know, all the other universal monsters are like monsters, monsters, you know, ah mythological beasts of some form or fashion. And Eric is a guy who has some some wounds on his face. um Part of that, too, really makes me think about, you know, the First World War and how people would come back from that totally disfigured where they had like 01:26:35.85 Jala metal stuff that prosthesis that they would wear in place of a nose because they don't have a nose and things like that. So like this kind of disfigurement for people during this era was completely terrifying because they didn't have any form of, you know, ah surgeries or anything to kind of repair any of that damage. 01:26:41.80 Alex _ picklefactory And. 01:26:53.74 Jala So, um you know, like that I think would have hit home even harder for people when this movie first came out. um 01:27:03.46 Doug Lief Yeah, there's a yeah famous Dutch astronomer. This is ah this would have been a few hundred years before Phantom of the Opera, but I got a guy named Tycho Brahe, um who had a gold nose ah for a prosthetic. So like this thing, like that sort of thing did exist in some form. I think that's why LaRue has to go out of his way to make the deformity so drastic, which is like, I don't know if he's missing a nose, put on a prosthetic nose and go on with your life. Like people will understand what that means. 01:27:29.79 Jala Yeah. 01:27:29.73 Doug Lief Uh, like, so it has to be more dramatic, but also, you know, the, the deformity goes beyond his face and into his soul. Like the you have to understand that, like at some level, like the it goes beyond. 01:27:37.79 Jala Yes. 01:27:38.46 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:27:44.58 Alex _ picklefactory It's as if you were dead already. 01:27:47.03 Doug Lief yeah Yeah. I mean, he's still also a sociopath, you know, like he's, he's scary on other levels that have nothing to do with his ugliness to the point where there's that one weird, uh, adaptation, I think a Dario Argento one where he's actually looks normal. 01:27:59.21 Doug Lief You know, there's, there's something to that idea of like, he's just a serial killer. You know, also he's ugly. 01:28:05.76 Jala Right, right. 01:28:06.60 Doug Lief So. 01:28:06.71 Alex _ picklefactory yes 01:28:08.08 Jala So ah it's kind of interesting though because like this deformation of the face thing is a lot of Lon Chaney's trade you know at at this time like he doesn't always play a disfigured person but some of his most notable roles I feel are all the ones where he's done his own makeup and made himself 01:28:18.38 Alex _ picklefactory And. 01:28:27.64 Jala into this kind of monster, whatever monster he happens to be playing at that time. So um so it's interesting. I wanted to link that article and bring it up mostly because you know I'm like, oh, that's an interesting take on that thing. um I don't know if I 100% ascribe to the same ideas, but it is an interesting um you know exercise for thought. 01:28:49.17 Jala so 01:28:49.94 Alex _ picklefactory Indeed. 01:28:51.07 Jala So, yeah, um do you all have any other wrap up thoughts about this movie, though? Because I think we pretty much have covered all of the production and all of the other stuff. And again, Doug has already gone through the entire storyline on his show, Nostalgium Arkenum, which you all should be hearing. 01:29:10.66 Doug Lief I mean, as far as final wrap up thoughts on this go, you know, we've talked a lot about kind of the ah the the things that make Eric a monster. I think there are still things in here that address how human he is. 01:29:27.23 Jala Yeah. 01:29:27.91 Doug Lief But um to me, like, There's so many cuts of this movie and there's so many different ways to watch it. But I will say I think what's fairly consistent is the best part of this movie, which is everything from the chandelier dropping down into the layer through the unmasking scene. 01:29:44.56 Alex _ picklefactory Yes, gripping. 01:29:45.47 Doug Lief Uh, that to me is the highlight of this film. It's really special. And the, like the way just the, the, the shots beneath the opera house work, the shots of Eric in his mask, which we haven't touched on this. 01:29:58.23 Doug Lief That mask is every bit as frightening as his actual face. 01:29:59.67 Alex _ picklefactory Yes. 01:30:00.90 Jala Yes. 01:30:01.72 Doug Lief Um, it is like, it is like every other version of the Phantom, the mask is like yeah either utilitarian or sort of weirdly beautiful in its own way. Not here. This is just like. 01:30:12.91 Doug Lief It's just a creepy ass face with gauze below it to cover his his messed up teeth. But all through this section of the movie, this is really pushing to the forefront. The the themes that are here about kind of the the phantom as this outward projection that Eric wants to make to hide who he wrotete truly is. And then the puncturing of that. 01:30:37.12 Jala Right. 01:30:37.13 Doug Lief ah Like that alone to me is worth the price of admission that all of the film craft that goes into this between the the shot composition and then the acting ah from Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin here is just out of this world. 01:30:53.57 Jala Right, right. How about you Alex? Do you have any final thoughts on this? 01:30:59.67 Alex _ picklefactory It's quite astonishing that transformation. you know it help That's really the theme that I get from it the most, right? The, the the the you know, as you say, the the liminal space that this character occupies and the way that he seems to transform this way from this, you know, someone who is the mastermind of the opera terrorizing whoever he wishes, appearing as the, you know, Red Death, you know. 01:31:24.59 Alex _ picklefactory He makes he may he makes a a strong man faint in the hallway. 01:31:28.37 Jala Mmhmm. 01:31:28.43 Alex _ picklefactory right but it's when he The unmasking scene is when he becomes terrifying. right That's the the center of this movie. ah i just I just want to watch it about 10 times in a row every time I come across it. 01:31:43.90 Jala Right. and And that's a very good point because ah for as many horrible things and controlling things that he has done up until the point of the unmasking and dropping the chandelier and all of these other things, he's killed so many people. 01:31:44.28 Alex _ picklefactory I love it. 01:31:57.57 Jala He's terrorized so many people. And yet the true horror has yet to actually approach. 01:32:03.55 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:32:04.02 Jala You haven't even seen him warm up yet until he takes off his mask. 01:32:04.49 Alex _ picklefactory and it's And that is the that is what launch that is why Lon Chaney is the guy who had to be the one who adapted this. 01:32:13.23 Jala Yes. 01:32:13.66 Alex _ picklefactory right That's why the film rights had to be for him. It's because he's the only one who was able the pu he was pioneering people's ability to do this. But I mean, like you know people have always used you know the opera art to transform themselves, right? But he was doing it in this physical way in a new medium, right? In a way you had to have like these huge spotlights shining on you, right? You had to, had to you know, capture it at 20 frames per second instead of having people, you know, there present to actually take in your performance, right? And he was able to to translate that in a way that still feels kind of fresh and amazing right now, watching it 95 years later, right? 01:32:54.47 Doug Lief Yeah, one last thing i'll I'll mention on that subject about how kind of amazing Lon Chaney is. 01:32:54.57 Jala Yeah. 01:32:59.73 Doug Lief I talked about this on my show as well, but I'll mention it here that I had the unbelievable good fortune to meet Mary Philbin. 01:33:02.25 Jala Ooh. 01:33:06.43 Doug Lief um she She moved in a couple of doors down from my grandmother. 01:33:06.77 Alex _ picklefactory Wow. 01:33:11.14 Doug Lief This was like just before she died. This would have been like, you know, very early 90s. And my grandmother knew that I was a fan of Phantom of the Opera at that time. And she's like, you you won't believe this. But she moved in. 01:33:22.67 Doug Lief So I went over there and I got her autograph and I spent an hour chatting with her. And I don't remember much of the discussion. But one of the things I took away from it was her kind of glowing praise for Lon Chaney and what a gentleman he was and how kind he was. 01:33:37.27 Doug Lief And, ah you know, we didn't we didn't mention it here. But like when he was that unmasking scene happened, no one the cast, the crew, ah no one had seen what he looked like yet. 01:33:45.27 Jala Mmhmm. 01:33:46.35 Doug Lief all of the terror on her face is real ah in that moment. That's why there's that blurry shot right afterwards of him like coming towards the camera. 01:33:53.25 Jala Mmhmm. 01:33:54.46 Doug Lief It's because the camera operator was so scared. 01:33:54.86 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:33:56.42 Doug Lief He didn't know what to do. ah But but her description of him you know again at the end of her life here, she was 90 something was just nothing but like, yeah, like this guy was really special. 01:34:07.24 Doug Lief He was really one of a kind. And it was yeah ah just a a great privilege of her life to get to be in this film with him. um And so, yeah, like I want to go out and watch more of his stuff like he's you really, really just. 01:34:22.53 Doug Lief It's hard to ah explain to people when you haven't seen that many silent movies and you're like, well, you're so used to equating an actor's skill with you know their their tone of voice and everything. that ah it's hard You have to look at this and realize like through most of this, you don't see him at all. 01:34:37.39 Doug Lief like is it you don't You don't physically see him. He's a shadow. He's a hand. He's masked. um and And even when you see him, you still can't hear him. 01:34:42.26 Alex _ picklefactory This is so wet. 01:34:43.27 Jala Yeah. 01:34:46.13 Doug Lief And yet, like he just casts a spell over this whole movie. 01:34:50.35 Jala Yeah, I mean, like, i if I had heard his laugh in those scenes, I think I would have been completely chilled to the bone. 01:34:59.19 Alex _ picklefactory ahlump Yeah. bumps. 01:34:59.64 Jala I mean, just just seeing the face he's making when he's doing the laugh is enough to really convey that kind of depth of of darkness that this character 01:35:00.02 Alex _ picklefactory Yeah. 01:35:10.78 Jala has within himself. And you know like again, Lon Chaney is working with nothing. He doesn't have professional artist makeup kits. Those didn't exist. The the actors had to do all that stuff in themselves. He was helping with directing the stuff for his own scenes and things like that. you know he he was you know the The actress at this point, we had a lot more agency in the actual production of the thing. And so you know like he had his hand all over this thing. 01:35:38.52 Jala And, you know, he was the makeup artist. He was, you know, the guy working with the lighting guys. You know, he was directing some of these scenes, you know, for himself down in the basement of the opera. 01:35:44.91 Alex _ picklefactory And. 01:35:50.56 Jala So, yeah, ah definitely phenomenal. And I can't kind of came away with the same thing. I'm like, you know, I really want to see more stuff from Lon Chaney because, yeah, with his magical performance here, it's like, you know, this is the only thing I think I might have ever seen of his. 01:36:06.37 Jala ah So I definitely am remiss for not having checked out more of his work sooner, but it's on the list to do in the future. So yeah. Oh, do we want to touch on Mask of the Red Death at all? Like the story from Edgar Allan Poe? 01:36:24.10 Doug Lief I'll just say, you know again, Gaston LaRue was a big lover of Edgar Allan Poe. 01:36:28.18 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:36:28.25 Doug Lief He was very inspired by him, and that's why he he put that reference in there. The Mask of the Red Death is interesting as it relates to this. One, of course, that the Red Death is like a pestilence. 01:36:39.07 Doug Lief Uh, and so metaphorically, uh, Eric as pestilence, I think is interesting. 01:36:43.97 Jala Yes. 01:36:44.03 Doug Lief The only thing that happened, very little happens in the story. Basically these people are having a ah ah fancy party to, uh, try and avoid, uh, the red death. They figure if they hunker down in this house, just him, like the main character and a thousand of his closest friends. 01:36:58.41 Jala Well, and it's important to know, too, it's the prince and a bunch of nobles. 01:36:58.45 Doug Lief All right. Yeah. 01:37:03.54 Jala So it's all the the rich people who then let everybody else suffer and just seal off their castle from the rest of the world and say, have fun, guys. 01:37:11.45 Doug Lief Right. And so this figure in ah ah and the stroke of midnight, this guy in a Red Dead costume, just like the one we see in this movie, Walt is in ah scares the hell out of everybody. The prince basically says, stop that guy. And then they go to like grab him. And when they do the clothes fall away and there's actually nothing there. And then they all die of the Red Death. 01:37:31.21 Doug Lief ah So the the idea again of this like he he is a phantom, right? It's a projection. There's really nothing there. I think that links well again to that last scene with the the hand grenade, quote unquote, and Lon Chaney. You know, there's this idea that um the the phantom is is ah is this illusion that Eric creates to protect the real Eric ah from the outside world and to kind of affect his will upon it. 01:37:59.90 Jala So what's interesting to me is when you're mentioning the quote unquote hand grenade scene at the end there. um it's Eric, who has like this dark side of humanity to him, right? And he but opens up his hand. There's nothing there. He cackles. And then everyone in the crowd immediately undergoes doing the dark side of humanity's work in lynching him and throwing him into the sense. So I mean, like they don't arrest him to put him back in a prison. They kill him. They murder him and throw him in the sense. So, um you know, in that way, it kind of mirrors 01:38:36.21 Jala a little bit what happens in the Mask of the Red Death as well. 01:38:40.25 Doug Lief Right. 01:38:41.29 Jala Yeah, yeah. So I feel that this is a good place to stop. So I will then pass to both of y'all to see where in the world people can find you if you are to be found anywhere. 01:38:52.61 Jala So Alex, I will kick to you first. Are you findable on the internet? And if the answer is no, that is fine. You may be an internet cryptid. 01:39:00.18 Alex _ picklefactory Uh, normally I am. I am on Blue Sky these days, uh, at picklefactory dot.org. 01:39:03.39 Jala Mm-hmm. 01:39:06.90 Alex _ picklefactory Uh, you'll have to mention me because I have DMs turned off. Or I'm on Jala's Discord sometimes. 01:39:10.99 Jala Yeah. Yep. Yep. And Doug, how about you? 01:39:16.26 Doug Lief I am also in Jala's Discord from time to time. You can find the show, Nostalgam Arcanum, on any social media network of choice. ah Just look for Nostalgam Arcanum or Nostalgam Pod. Nothing else is spelled that way, so you'll find it pretty quickly. um If you want to find me personally, I'm on the Twitter, at HumanJSherman. 01:39:35.61 Doug Lief because I am very John Levitsy. So that's where you'll find me there. And ah if you are so inclined as to listen to the show to check out the the Phantom episode we did, I would strongly encourage you to check out the other episodes that Jala was on. 01:39:46.94 Doug Lief She was on talking most recently on a living color and before that, ah Predator, the original Terminator and Carebearers. So those would be good places to start. 01:39:55.78 Jala Yes, a wide variety of different things. Two Arneys, though. Two Arneys, probably more Arneys in the future. 01:40:04.94 Doug Lief oh yeah 01:40:06.60 Jala Yep, yep. So ah as for me, you can find me anywhere that I may be found @jalachan, including jalachan.place where you found this episode and all of the others. 01:40:16.63 Jala And a side note, ah Doug's episode on the Phantom is in the show notes. So just go there and follow the link and you will get there. Yes. So until next time y'all, take care of yourself and remember to smile. 01:40:30.96 Doug Lief Oh, yeah. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]