“Whole world’s comin’ to an end, Mal.”
The Distinguished Professors give into fate and face off against Oliver Stone’s crazed take on the Bonnie and Clyde story, Natural Born Killers. Topics include the mystery of Owen, the symbolic end of our world and the beginning of a new one, apocalypse as revelation, John Milton’s love of Satan, our inability to say “apocalyptic” or “cinematography,” Woody Harrelson’s heel turn from Cheers, Juliette Lewis getting typecast, Rodney Dangerfield’s even more horrifying heel turn, Wayne Gale as our viewpoint character, Charles Starkweather and Charles Whitman and Charles Manson, the critique of TV culture and parallels with Robocop,the 1990s’ greatest hits of true crime, Stone’s errors in seeing himself as a crusaderand the failure of JFK, Tarantino’s original script, ubiquitous Dutch angles, musing about what Tarantino’s version would have looked like, American Maniacs, Vanderpool resolves to not be the weakest link, Leave it to Beaver as an early distortion of reality through TV, Mallory as the sympathetic center of the movie, the amazing Russell Means and Native American imagery as another layer of meaning, the ambiguity of Kevin, the Trent Reznor-supervised soundtrack, Steven Jesse Bernstein and the opening montage, 89X out of Detroit, the wedding scene, the metaphysical reading of the movie and Mickey as a god, NBK as a magical working, chaos magic, American Mary, Charles in Charge and the Electric Hellfire Club’s cover of the show’s theme, the very special episode of Diff’rent Strokes and the juxtaposition of sitcom elements with Mallory’s backstory, a perfect reset, why it’s important to not be so eager, our plug for why everyone needs to see this movie, Tommy Lee Jones cannot sanction your tomfoolery, the awfulness of Scagnetti, the guilt of the spectator and audience, being “lost in a world of ghosts,” the (eventual) redemption of Wayne Gale, British moral panic about NBK and Trainspotting, Mickey’s more mysterious trauma and the link between murder and childhood trauma, Charles Whitman and the UT Austin shooting, blurring of hero and villain, Altamont and the Maysles, Moll Flanders and the audience’s love of terrible people, our crisis of purpose when we talk about good movies, and why we shouldn’t censorthe word “douchebag.”
