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Of course, this is not always possible. They talk about a lot of movies on my movie podcasts and I'm not going to be able to see each one before I listen to the episode. Some would skip the episode in this situation, but I'm too much of a completist to do that. I like to tackle them in order, even if I'm sometimes operating a couple months behind. (My incessant fantasy baseball podcasts throughout the baseball season put me way behind on other sorts of podcasts.)
Just yesterday, for example, I listened to an episode of Filmspotting in which they made mention of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, David Wain's new movie. Now it isn't usually possible to spoil a comedy, and Filmspotting tries to avoid spoiling any movie it's talking about. But as a result of listening to that episode, I now know which celebrity Gail Daughtry's husband sleeps with, setting in motion her quest to sleep with her one celebrity she gets to sleep with. (Think Ross Geller and Isabella Rosselini if you want to get the gist of the sex pass.) It doesn't spoil the movie but I would have preferred to be surprised by that. Still, I'm not going to hold off listening to the episode because of one five-minute segment of the show devoted to this one movie.
The thinking is a little different, it turns out, when it comes to a classic movie you've already seen. On this same episode, they were also doing a 30th anniversary Pantheon project review of Fargo. Just quickly, for context: "The Pantheon" is the show's movie hall of fame, where if they assign a film to it, it means they don't discuss that film anymore on the podcast. It means it's too great and it would come up in too many discussions, so it is effectively "retired." Many of these films never got an initial discussion on the show, so now they're going back to do their one discussion and, in some cases, deciding that the movie is not Pantheon-worthy. Let's just say the worthiness of Fargo was wholeheartedly confirmed by hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen.
As I was listening, and getting a ton out of the discussion, I thought "It's too bad I didn't watch Fargo beforehand in order to maximize the richness of this conversation." I should mention that Fargo is a top ten movie for me (#8 on Flickchart) and it has also been fourteen years since I've seen it, which is longer than possibly any other movie in my top ten. (Nope, not quite. I haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark since 2011.)
Then I realized a couple things:
1) It's streaming on Netflix, which they mentioned at the end of the discussion (I own a DVD copy, but no longer a DVD player);
2) It's only 98 minutes, which is the kind of thing you know about a movie but don't immediately remember if you haven't seen it in a decade and a half;
3) I could just watch it after their discussion, rather than before.
So I did, that night.
There are some clear benefits to this. When Adam and Josh go in depth on a movie, they talk about it for maybe 45 minutes -- nine times as long as Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass -- and they get down into the nitty gritty, such as minute details of the facial expressions of the actors in certain scenes. As well as larger thematic elements that I wouldn't have considered, such as the fact that this movie shows three different versions of mildly unhappy domesticity, down even to the parody of a marriage between the two kidnappers played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare.
If I were to have watched Fargo prior to this discussion, I might have said "Oh yeah!" during a couple of their observations. But by watching it afterward, I could make sure to sharpen my focus as certain moments in the film arrived, since my memory of their discussion of those moments would be fresh in mind. I could pay attention to facial expressions by William H. Macy and Frances McDormand at the moment they made those expressions.
Another thing their discussion revealed to me? That it takes more than a half hour for McDormand's Marge Gunderson -- the role that won her her first of an eventual three Oscars -- to even appear in the movie. I couldn't believe that was true, just based on my 14-year-old memory of my last viewing. But sure enough, during this screening I paused the movie to check the time stamp during the first pan over to Marge as she's sleeping and gets the phone call about the roadside murders. It's not only after 30 minutes, it's after 33 minutes.
The other thing the podcast did is it gave me a taste for watching Fargo again. It's weird to think that it would take any sort of external stimulus to get me to watch my eighth favorite movie of all time, but there's evidently something about Fargo that prevents me from revisiting it with any regularity. It's a notable contrast with the other Coen brothers movie in my top ten, Raising Arizona, which you would know is my favorite movie of all time, and which I watch at least every four years. My most recent viewing was after only two years. Fargo? This could be as few as my fifth viewing overall.
So I wouldn't have rushed to watch Fargo just because I knew it was coming up on Filmspotting, if I did even know that. (I can't remember if I knew it or not.) However, the deep podcast discussion made me want to run and watch it, even during my afternoon slot of availability, before my late night one. (And even though I started around 10:20, I was in no danger of falling asleep, as I do during almost every new movie I start at that time. I've written before about how you don't fall asleep during movies you love, no matter what time it is -- and even though there are no stakes to falling asleep because you've already seen it.)
And I think it certainly won't be another 14 years before I watch Fargo again.
I could get into some of Adam and Josh's other shrewd observations about this classic, but that's not the sort of post this is. This is the sort of post that reminds you, if you are in the same position, that you haven't missed the boat if you listen to the podcast but haven't rewatched that classic in preparation. Sometimes, watching afterward is just as good, if not better.
