TMR 065 – Harold and Maude

This week on Total Movie Recall, we watch the first Manic Pixie Dream Girl ever on screen, who is not a girl at all, but is most decidedly a woman. It’s the perfect post-2020 movie, and not just because of the constant suicides. It’s twee and precious and we absolutely loved it.

Harold & Maude (1971)

d. Hal Ashby

w. Colin Higgins

Music by: Cat Steven (Yusuf Islam)

Starring:
Ruth Gordon
Bud Cort
Vivian Pickles

Cult classic pairs Cort as a dead-pan disillusioned 20-year-old obsessed with suicide and a loveable Gordon as a fun-loving 80-year-old eccentric. They meet at a funeral, and develop a taboo romantic relationship, in which they explore the tired theme of the meaning of life with a fresh perspective.

Things discussed in the show:

Savages (Oliver Stone, Shane Salerno, Don Winslow, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively)

Santa Muerte

Dunkirk (70mm, Christopher Nolan, Fionn Whitehead, Barry Keoghan, Mark Rylance)

Overlord (Julius Avery, Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier)

Tenet (Christopher Nolan, John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki)

1917 (Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Daniel Mays)

Rolling Thunder (Vietnam POWs, John Flynn, William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes)

Men in Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino)

Mental health and the military

The Four Feathers 1939 (Zoltan Korda, John Clements, Ralph Richardson, C. Aubrey Smith)

The Last Blockbuster (documentary, Smash Mouth, Taylor Morden, Lauren Lapkus, Sandi Harding, Ken Tisher, Doug Benson, Doug Loves Movies podcast, Kevin Smith, Samm Levine, Brian Posehn, Jamie Kennedy, Ron Funches, Ione Skye, Lloyd Kaufman, Troma, Paul Scheer)

Clerks (Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Scott Mosier)

Letterbox app

Streaming services

Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, Philip K. Dick (short story), Scott Frank, Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton)

King Billy Corgan, monarch of Chicago

Suicide

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden)

Next week: Full Metal Jacket