The topic of today's post is something probably no one but me could have recognized, lest they were both readers of my blog and listeners to a particular podcast I'm going to discuss. (Which describes at least one of my readers.) That makes it internal, but it very much involves something from the external world.
As you would know -- I'm assuming regular rather than first-time readership here -- I have just begun a bi-monthly 2022 series in which I watch the films of Martin Scorsese that I haven't yet seen. It's called Settling the Scorsese.
So has Filmspotting -- only they announced theirs after mine.
The stalwart podcast, one of the first movie podcasts out there, has recently developed a pandemic-era recurring series called the "oeuvreview," in which they "review" all the films in a director's "oeuvre." A cleverer term I may never have heard, even if it doesn't roll off the tongue.
They started in 2020 with Christopher Nolan, rewatching all ten of his previously exiting feature-length films leading up to the release of Tenet, one of the few tentpoles that did actually come out in that COVID year. They repeated the series last year, in this case also filling in some blind spots, and watched all the Jane Campion they had or had not seen, culminating in the release of The Power of the Dog.
On Sunday as I was taking a morning walk, I caught up with their January 28th episode, in which they announced an oeuvreview with modified rules for 2022. Because they could not possibly watch all the films of Martin Scorsese leading up to the release of Killers of the Flower Moon -- unless they wanted to do little else with the available hours of their weekly podcast -- they selected only the films that one or both of them had not seen, which gave them about that same range of seven to ten films that had been discussed between Nolan and Campion.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
If it were possible to stop further, I would have done so when they announced the titles they were going to be watching -- five of which were five of the six I am watching for Settling the Scorsese. In fact, the only film I'm watching that they're not watching is New York Stories, which is not a proper Scorsese feature, since he only directs one of the three stories, though I was forced to use it because there were only five Scorsese features I hadn't seen.
So let's review the coincidences as they pile up:
1. Filmspotting decided to watch Martin Scorsese films in 2022, just like I did.
2. Filmspotting had to modify their existing rules for the series in order to do this, making it all the more unlikely.
3. Their goal was expressly to become Scorsese completists, which is also my goal.
4. Between the two hosts, they also had to have not seen the same films I had not seen.
The only title I remember them mentioning they were going to watch, that I had already watched, was Boxcar Bertha, which I picked off on a random Monday night in July of 2016. There may have been one other but it didn't stand out to me.
So one or both of the hosts shared my conclusion that Who's That Knocking at My Door, New York New York, The Color of Money, The Age of Innocence and Kundun all did not rise to the level of a viewing priority before now.
Adam Kempenaar was especially aghast that Josh Larsen had not yet seen The Color of Money, as Adam said it might have been the Scorsese film he'd seen most. Seems like Adam was probably in a position to watch this when it came out in 1986, and then rewatch it on repeat on cable, but Josh and I were not, and we never made time for it as adults.
This seems like my best shot to get a third on-air mention on Filmspotting. The previous two came 1) when I emailed them to point out that a phrase they made a game of trying not to say -- "a whole nother" -- actually appears in the dialogue in Star Wars, and 2) when I made a donation to the podcast. I've emailed them one or two other times, but the witty observation of that particular message did not make the cut.
Even though they haven't been reading nearly as much listener feedback on the show recently -- really only during their "Massacre Theatre" segment, in which we have to guess the film scene they're massacring with their bad acting -- I do think I have a chance to get on air with Settling the Scorsese, which I emailed them about less than a half-hour after hearing their announcement of the upcoming oeuvreview. (In fact, the moment I got home from my walk.)
Especially since it is indisputable that I did not steal the idea from them. I posted my first announcement of Settling the Scorsese on my blog on January 12th, and their podcast didn't drop until 16 days later.
I've "stolen" ideas from them in the past. For example, I decided to catch up with, and write about, Krzysztof Kieslowski's colors trilogy -- Red, White and Blue -- after hearing them discuss it.
But never has this granddaddy of film podcasts stolen from me, and it's a great day.
Of course, they didn't really. But there are enough coincidences with this one to make a person wonder.
If you listen to Filmspotting, keep your ears open. You might soon be hearing my name.
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