ST ch 19 French 75s, Greasy Thumb Guzik

Wed May 13 07:49:22 UTC 2026

I understand that the Idea for the car chase scenes--besides form* Bullitt*--
came as he and others were driving such hills in Arizona
but found these better hills for the film in California. Money was no
object and he showed that.

MISC:  To get those unique shots, cinematographer Michael Bauman used
*VistaVision* cameras and long lenses to compress the road, making the
hills look much steeper and more dramatic than they appear to the average
driver!

On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 10:14 AM Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com> wrote:

> Just didn't seem right to me, since there is this dead body of a CC member
> on the highway  and the car from which Penn was shot ( hardly a French 75
> vehicle) which is gonna come to police attention,or Penn's, since he is
> walking along the same road. The Penn character is supposed to know how to
> find shit out and has the power to do so.  Just seems like a non credible
> loose end in order to do the scene with the Nazi style gas chamber and
> Penn's smiling ripped face  looking like a George Grosz drawing.
>
> The  driving scene was shot in southern California near Palm Springs about
> 8-10 hours from Humboldt County. No terrain like that up there, but one of
> the more stomach churning car chase scenes ever.
> On 5/12/26 4:34 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> O yeah....the Sean Penn character believed it was his Leftie enemies, the
> French 75s
> who tried to kill him.....staring at the barrel of a rifle for a
> bare second or tow before being shot in the face
> makes it hard to see who shot.....film cutting nice on that, imo....
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 12:05 AM Joseph Tracy via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>
>> I thought the movie was a kind of surrogate imaginary revenge against
>> Trump for people who aren't going to do shit to work for change, or to
>> stop the bipartisan genocide and scapegoating of refugees fleeing
>> poverty and right wing narco states. No Zionists in the Christmas Club,
>> no Rubio, No Condaleeza, no Clarence Thomas.  Also there was no family
>> in Humboldt County, which was quite central to the novel. The only
>> 'education for the Prairie character was violence and terror resolved in
>> classic hollywood fashion when she shoots her designated killer. Why did
>> Sean Penn still join the weird club after they tried to kill him and
>> left him disfigured? Vato and Blood telling the fascist prick he would
>> have to leave his bones behind but he would get used to it was better.
>> DiCaprio and Del Toro( substitute for family)  and the young woman who
>> plays the Prairie type role were excellent as were several other
>> performances. The French 75 started out with an appealing action and
>> then they are robbing banks and murdering the security guard.  Did that
>> make anyone want to join the revolution?
>>    One realistic aspect was the extreme difficulty of organizing a
>> violent revolution in an age of pervasive digital surveillance.
>>
>>
>> The scene with the letter worked for me only because I thought it was
>> obvious DiCaprio wrote the letter and that his daughter knew it.
>> Otherwise it would be like a manipulative  Hollywood resolution where
>> abandonment and murderous betrayal is healed by a profession of love. In
>> Vineland Frenesi takes the risk of going north and showing up.
>>
>> I hate to be so negative. Was looking forward to the movie. Liked his
>> version of IV.  I found it slightly better watched on a TV in a second
>> view with my visiting daughter, who was not too impressed.
>>
>>
>> On 5/11/26 12:34 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> > us thSo, we differ and maybe I’m too accepting.
>> >
>> > Here’s  to pluralism.
>> >
>> > On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 12:08 PM Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I'm just not a fan of PTA, other than Boogie Nights, and I find
>> nothing in
>> >> his movies that echos or resonates about America or the world the way
>> >> Pynchon does, or even, for that matter, the old doc The World at War
>> (which
>> >> I'm currently rewatching) does. In an interview, he said that Benicio
>> del
>> >> Toro actually helped craft the plot of the latter part of the movie,
>> which
>> >> is "inspired by," not an adaptation of Vineland. So I don't see PTA as
>> >> anything approaching the deliberate craftsmanship of Pynchon.
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:53 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Anderson’s movies’ tones are not  literally the decade they are set,
>> imo.
>> >>> Look at the Master, Magnolia, others. They are thematic thematic tones
>> >>> resonating beyond their present.
>> >>>
>> >>> In OBAA it is the eternal present of America from the sixties to
>> Tiffany,
>> >>> imo.
>> >>>
>> >>> I think one reason Anderson is a fan and has had his artistic vision
>> >>> shaped by TRP is to try to emulate that poised both sides/times now.
>> >>>
>> >>> See Lawrence and H Rap Brown among others on violence and America.
>> >>>
>> >>> On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 11:37 AM Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <
>> >>> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> I understand what you are saying about the initial setting of the
>> movie
>> >>>> in the Obama era. Of course, no names are named. However, the
>> historical
>> >>>> POV of most of the movie is in the present tense, or at least a
>> present
>> >>>> tense. Thank you for mentioning Assata Shakur and Fred Hampton. That
>> would
>> >>>> be more on-point, in that regard you are right as regards French 75.
>> The
>> >>>> point of 24fps was to document police actions against protesters,
>> something
>> >>>> that was happening a lot at Earth First and associated rallies in the
>> >>>> Emerald Triangle in the late 1980s/early 1990s, lots of folks
>> circling the
>> >>>> scene with handheld videocams.
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> On 05/11/2026 8:17 AM PDT Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Saw One Battle After Another a couple of days ago. "French 75"
>> appears
>> >>>> to be a group modeled after the SDS or Black Panthers but set in the
>> >>>> present tense rather than the late 1960s/early 1970s like 24fps.
>> >>>>> French 75 appears to me to be modeled after more violent groups like
>> >>>> The Weathermen and BLA, and Perfidia clearly referenced Assata
>> Shakur, who
>> >>>> died about a week (if I remember) before OBAA had its theatrical
>> release.
>> >>>> The violence of these groups was a response to the FBI's
>> assassination of
>> >>>> Fred Hampton and the excesses of the Nixon administration and
>> COINTELPRO.
>> >>>> To set a similar group ahistorically in the tepid years of the late
>> Obama
>> >>>> period seems politically tone deaf to me. It's not something that
>> Pynchon
>> >>>> would ever do, and certainly didn't do in Vineland. That's one of my
>> many
>> >>>> objections to the movie.
>> >>>>> Laura
>> >>>>>
>> >>> --
>> >>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> >>>>
>> > --
>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>