Tag Archives: rhys muldoon

Everyone On Scorsese

Nine years. 108 episodes. 126 filmmakers. Lots of minutes.

It’s been a brilliant run, but it had to end at some point, and nine years feels like the right number. It’s a lot without dipping into double figures, which feels too many.

That said, there’s an important caveat: this is not necessarily the end of the show. What’s ending is Hyphenates as a monthly series. We’re leaving the door wide open for future episodes, standalone shows that may drop at any moment. You may hear one later this year. Or you might not hear it for a good couple of years. And we don’t even know what format it will take, who will be hosting, how it will sound. Your best bet is to remain subscribed, with an eye on our social media accounts, so you don’t miss out when we suddenly get, say, Quentin Tarantino on to talk about the films of Paul Anthony Nelson. (Watch Trench now on Amazon Prime!)

And we can’t imagine all of you have heard every single episode from our past, so feel free to click on the Index tab up the top of the page and browse our archives. See if there’s a filmmaker or guest you want to catch up. We’ve talked to a lot of cool people about a lot of other cool people, so there’s lots of gold in there.

But for now, let’s focus on this month’s episode. You may have noticed that our usually-militant one-hour running time has been blowing out a bit lately. We parted a bit too hard for our 100th episode, and it was hard to maintain the discipline in the months that followed. But for our last show, we really let it fly, with the show clocking in at an epic 222 minutes. That’s 3 hours and 42 minutes.

But fear not, because it’s not just three voices for all that time. We decided to end with a look at the films of Martin Scorsese, one of the few filmmakers who you could legitimately claim every film is somebody’s favourite. And although we didn’t find the person who wanted to spruik Boxcar Bertha above all others, we covered almost every one of his films, without giving any direction or influence to our guests.

A whole bunch of our alumni returned to talk about their favourite Scorsese thing, be it a film, a scene, a shot, or something entirely different. For this episode, we’re joined by Ian Barr, Michael Ian Black, David Caesar, Sarah Caldwell, Thomas Caldwell, Mel Campbell, Tom Clift, Perri Cummings, Guy Davis, Glenn Dunks, Tim Egan, Marc Fennell, Abe Forsythe, Garth Franklin, Rhys Graham, Richard Gray, Giles Hardie, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Zak Hepburn, Jon Hewitt, Tegan Higginbotham, Blake Howard, Cerise Howard, Hayley Inch, Briony Kidd, Maria Lewis, Alicia Malone, Shannon Marinko, So Mayer, Pollyanna McIntosh, Drew McWeeny, Simon Miraudo, Anthony Morris, Rhys Muldoon, Josh Nelson, Jennifer Reeder, Eloise Ross, Stephen A Russell, Jeremy Smith, Rohan Spong, Kriv Stenders, Chris Taylor, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Christos Tsiolkas, George Viscas, Andrew Kevin Walker, Sarah Ward, Scott Weinberg, Emma Westwood, and Cate Wolfe.

And, of course, Paul returns, joining Rochelle and Lee for the entire show to help see Hi4H off.

We hope you enjoy this episode. We hope you enjoyed the show. And we’ll see you when we see you.

Muldoon On Kubrick

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“They work with Stanley and go through hells that nothing in their careers could have prepared them for, they think they must have been mad to get involved, they think that they'd die before they would ever work with him again, that fixated maniac; and when it's all behind them and the profound fatigue of so much intensity has worn off, they'd do anything in the world to work for him again. For the rest of their professional lives they long to work with someone who cared the way Stanley did, someone they could learn from. They look for someone to respect the way they’d come to respect him, but they can never find anybody … I've heard this story so many times.” - Michael Herr, screenwriter of Full Metal Jacket

There's something extra fascinating about having an actor as a guest on the show, as it's very easy to infer that their choice of filmmaker is someone they would love to have worked with. Despite the stories of endless takes and production schedules that stretch into years, would Rhys Muldoon have still wanted to work with cinema's acknowledged master? You'll have to listen to find out.

Stanley Kubrick is the Hell Is For Hyphenates white whale (we have about seventy white whales, btw) and it was exciting to finally cover his groundbreaking, influential works. And only a month after we talked Hitchcock, it's making 2016 a concentration of cinema's great architects.

But before Rhys joins us, we look at a selection of the past month's new releases, including the superpowered kids of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children, the 1930s Hollywood of Café Society and the strangely communicative aliens of Arrival.

If that doesn't satisfy you, please enjoy this further reading:

  • The goofy Full Metal Jacket audition tape made by actor Brian Atene as mentioned in this month's episode can be viewed in its toe-curling glory here.
  • The Kubrick Site is a non-profit and comprehensive archive devoted to the works of Stanley Kubrick.
  • There were not many interviews with Kubrick, but this from 1987 conducted by Rolling Stone is worth a read.
  • Few filmmakers have been as heavily-mythologised as Kubrick, and this fantastic article from Taste of Cinema examines the ten greatest in seductive detail.
  • This must-read piece from the BFI and Sight and Sound looks at Stanley Kubrick as cinephile, and includes the only known list Kubrick ever made of his ten favourite films. The list was written back in 1963, and there's some informed guesswork as to how it may have changed in the following decades. Feel free to speculate, as we have been, which filmmaker Stanley might have chosen to talk about had we ever enticed him to appear on Hyphenates.
  • Sophie made the journey to the actual Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and says it’s one fo the coolest places she’s ever been to. Check out this article from Fact Mag about the upcoming horror-themed Overlook Film Festival.
  • Finally, if you've never seen Lee's TV show The Bazura Project, then congratulations on missing his questionable impressions of James Mason in Lolita, Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket.

Outro music: “We’ll Meet Again”, written by Ross Parker and Hugh Charles, and performed by Vera Lynn, from Dr Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

The latest episode of Hell Is For Hyphenates, featuring Rhys Muldoon talking Stanley Kubrick, can be subscribed to on iTunes, listened to on Stitcher Smart Radio, or downloaded/streamed directly from our website.

Hell Is For Hyphenates – October 2016

Actor, author and musician Rhys Muldoon is our guest this month, as we look back at some of the key films of October 2016, including Tim Burton’s Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, Woody Allen’s Café Society, and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival. Then Rhys takes us through the films, career and influence of cinema’s most enigmatic and revered figure, Stanley Kubrick.

The Stanley Kubrick Cheat Sheet

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Want to become an instant expert in our filmmaker of the month without committing yourself to an entire filmography? Then you need the Hell Is For Hyphenates Cheat Sheet: we program you a double that will not only make for a great evening's viewing, but bring you suitably up-to-speed before our next episode lands…

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DR STRANGELOVE (1964) and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

Which two films sum up Stanley Kubrick's career? Can two films possibly do such a thing? They cannot, which speaks to the eclectic genius that Kubrick embodied. But with these two choices, we're confident you'll get a good idea of the different shades of Stanley: his humour and his control, his insight and his imagination. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is the ultimate cold war satire, an achingly funny film about the USA and Russia on the brink of nuclear war. Peter Sellers stars as US President Merkin Muffley, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, and the titular Dr Strangelove, in this profoundly quotable and keenly rewatchable comedy. Once you've watched that, you'll need to go and find a rep cinema. An actual rep cinema that's playing 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm, or maybe 35mm, or in a stretch 4K digital. If there was ever a film that should only ever under any circumstance be seen big, it's this one. (Okay, maybe Lawrence of Arabia.) But - grudgingly - perhaps in the era of high-definition television and Blu-ray players and surround sound, we can just about countenance the idea of you watching arguably the most profound cinematic experiences of all time in the comfort of your own home. But only if you turn the lights off and put your phone in the other room, because you're in church.

Substitutions: If you can't get or have already seen Dr Strangelove, seek out 1962's Lolita. It's not exactly a clean substitute, but it's an equally great insight into human psychology (albeit from an entirely different angle), and hey, Peter Sellers. If you can't get or have already seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, seek out 1980's The Shining. Look, there's obviously no corroboration here. What, are we going to point you to Kubrick's other science fiction film that forever redefined cinema? But, like every possible combination of Kubrick films, you can't really fault this double.

The Hidden Gem: Kubrick's earlier films aren't as widely discussed as his later work, which means his debut feature Fear and Desire (1953) rarely gets a look-in. And that's a shame, because his film about four soldiers trapped behind enemy lines is an intense and complex work. It's rawer than his more controlled movies, but you can see the seeds of his style being sown in this tight 62 minute introduction.

The next episode of Hell Is For Hyphenates, featuring Rhys Muldoon talking Stanley Kubrick, will be released on 31 October 2016.

Our Next Hyphenate: Rhys Muldoon

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Actor, author and October 2016 Hyphenate Rhys Muldoon

Rhys Muldoon is the very definition of a multi-hyphenate.

As an actor, he's appeared in films such as Danny Deckchair (2003), The Crop (2004), The Extra (2005), Valentine's Day (2007) and Bitter & Twisted (2008), in television shows such as Bastard Boys, House Husbands, Blackjack, Grass Roots and Play School, and on stage in Don's Party, Amadeus, Romeo + Juliet, Stuff Happens, and Steven Soderbergh's production of Tot Mom.

He has released two albums of children's music, both of which were nominated for ARIA Awards: I'm Not Singing (2012) and Perfect is the Enemy of Good (2015). He also co-wrote the children's book Jasper & Abby and the Great Australia Day Kerfuffle with then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Now, one line on the CV is about to eclipse all the others: Hell Is For Hyphenates guest host!

We are delighted Rhys will be joining us in this month's episode, and very excited at his choice of filmmaker…

Stanley Kubrick!
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Kubrick, the filmmaker still spoken of in hushed, reverent tones by cinephiles and filmmakers alike, hardly needs an introduction. Which is usually the thing you say before you introduce them anyway.

The obsessive and detailed Kubrick only made 13 films, but few would argue against the idea that his works changed cinema forever: Fear and Desire (1953), Killer's Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Spartacus (1960), Lolita (1962), Dr Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

We're just gonna leave that list there. Not much else needs to be said. Although we will be saying a lot more, so make sure you come back on the morning of October 31 as we chat Stanley Kubrick with Rhys Muldoon!

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Our next filmmaker of the month, Stanley Kubrick