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00;00;00;03 - 00;00;24;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This is death by DVD and you are listening to Harry Scott Sullivan, your host. And on this episode we are going to get wet. Tonight's movie stars a golden era hero, Burt Lancaster. I know a good portion of our audience is probably wondering who Burt Lancaster is, which is a sad fact, but we can go in through a brief history lesson.

00;00;24;12 - 00;00;48;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Burt Lancaster, you know, from Here to Eternity. He was the Hollywood intellectual. He played Wyatt Earp and Gunfight at the okay corral, one of the most legendary versions before something like tombstone, Birdman of Alcatraz, Airport. We can never forget airport. He was in Atlantic City, a legendary old world Hollywood actor. And the movie is The Swimmer from 1968.

00;00;48;10 - 00;01;06;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Directed for the most part by Frank Perry, based on a screenplay by his wife, Eleanor Perry. Partially directed, and we might get into this later, Might. I'll explain why I use that word by, Sydney Pollack, based on a short story by John Cheever. Now, let's get into that might there's two ways that we can talk about the swimmer.

00;01;06;07 - 00;01;22;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We can talk about the movie and what it's about and the characters, and we can get into some themes and some concept, or we can talk about how the swimmer was made, which is almost as interesting as the movie. It really isn't. You hear that a lot. It's as great and it's a lot of technical crap, and it's not that much fun.

00;01;22;28 - 00;01;39;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But this really does have an intriguing story behind it, and it's a very charismatic story, and it really lets you know about the people that were involved. And I think it's very sincere and interesting. I kind of wanted to talk about the movie. I want to talk about The Swimmer. So we're going to leave a lot of technical aspects out.

00;01;39;14 - 00;01;53;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We're going to leave a lot of backstory as to the making of this movie out. And I know usually I really like to get in depth into things here, but I think the focus deserves to be on the story of the swimmer, because there is a lot of information already out there on the making of this movie that you can find.

00;01;53;26 - 00;02;10;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The best way of doing so is heading over to Grindhouse Pictures and getting yourself the new Blu ray. It is a three disc set, DVD, Blu ray. It's got over 2.5 hours of special features, telling you everything you need to know about the creation of this movie, all of the behind the scenes stories, and it comes with the soundtrack.

00;02;10;15 - 00;02;28;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That's a bonus when it comes to Grindhouse, they throw in soundtracks for a good few releases, really enjoy the Cannibal Holocaust and the Cannibal Fair Rock soundtrack. Those are always great to have in collection, but The Swimmer is a really interesting movie. It's a very different movie. It's it's a different career choice for somebody like Burt Lancaster. He was always known as such a strong guy.

00;02;28;01 - 00;02;49;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He was. It wasn't quite the John Wayne type. He didn't really play bruiser, jock, cowboy as he played more of a white hat hero. And yeah, John Wayne did too. But he always had an edge to him. And just using it as a description, I think you can understand the difference. I mean, he was always clean cut, very handsome, always an incredible shape, and he always played, for the most part, a heroic character.

00;02;49;00 - 00;03;08;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And Lancaster is a really interesting guy. He was an artist. He was a man about messages. He was sometimes more interested in the message of a picture over the story or the plot that if it was a strong enough and good enough message, it might outweigh what you're actually visually seeing on screen. As long as you can understand and feel things.

00;03;09;03 - 00;03;28;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He was always known as the literate star. He was an avid reader. He was just he was an interesting character and he took some risks. Definitely. In the 1960s, one of the biggest being The Swimmer, something that was drastically a bomb when it came out. But to the end of his career, to the end of his life, I believe he died of a heart attack in 1994, he said.

00;03;28;06 - 00;03;48;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The swimmer was one of his favorite productions, one of the favorite shows he ever committed to, and there's great reason for that. I'd honestly say I think this is one of the grandest, if not the greatest, performance in Burt Lancaster career because of the amount of depth and emotion, but emotion and all the different places that the character that Burt Lancaster gives the character in this really is an onion.

00;03;48;26 - 00;04;13;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This whole movie is an onion, the characters an onion. It's so layered. Well, trying it through all the layers. We're going to do this differently than most shows because, you know, I'll just shoot. I'll just go as deep as I can and I'll try and get everything out there. I go through my notes and I attempt to make a big piece out of it, but this time we're going to do it chapter by chapter, and we're going to see what happens with that.

00;04;13;11 - 00;04;33;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Maybe we'll abandon it, I don't know, but like I said, we're going to really focus on the story of the swimmer husband and wife team. Eleanor and Frank Perry were pretty inexperienced when it came to shooting The Swimmer. They had only done a short film. David and Lisa. Ladybug, ladybug, ladybug for ladybug. Ladybug. Wait, no. Only two. Whoops.

00;04;33;10 - 00;04;56;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
A TV movie and then The swimmer. Now later on, you've got Mommie Dearest, diary of a mad housewife and Rancho Deluxe, which is just fun to say. I think out of everything, The swimmer speaks for their career and it speaks pretty loudly now. I bought up Grindhouse a little while ago. They put this out years ago on DVD and it's now being rereleased on Blu ray, but primarily it's like outside.

00;04;56;23 - 00;05;15;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Can't see it on Turner Classic Movies. Probably the best way that you're going to be able to find the Swimmer. And really, when it comes to Grindhouse, we'll do a little ass kissing here. You're paying for absolutely fantastic quality. There's not a release that I own. Personally. I don't own every Grindhouse release, but what I can speak for is always excellent.

00;05;15;13 - 00;05;31;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's always hours of special features. You can really dig into it. And, slip covers are your game. The new Blu rays, for the most part, I believe, have them. I don't know if things like American Hippie in Israel do, but still, you should buy American Hippie in Israel, because that's a pretty weird movie itself. We'll talk about that one another day.

00;05;31;26 - 00;05;47;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Now on to The Swimmer, a story that on the one hand you could say is about a man who decides to swim his way home. And at that rate, it kind of sounds like a family friendly movie that's going to have some really deep seated message about trying hard. And you'll succeed and you can swim your way home.

00;05;47;26 - 00;06;21;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Sky is going to swim roughly eight miles to his house. The whole entire county. A river, essentially a river of swimming pools. This man has realized with a new construction of a nearby neighbor's swimming pool, that he can essentially, with some hiking, swim his entire way home. Sounds kind of dopey, but a little riveting. And especially knowing that it's a 1960s movie, you're going to assume that it's got some tacky big band soundtrack and everything works out, and it's really happy at the end of the day, it stars Burt Lancaster.

00;06;21;20 - 00;06;49;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Well, you're wrong. I'm here to tell you you're wrong. But it is about all of those things. The swimmer is a movie about failed dreams from rich to poor, popular to disdain. It is a fantasy. Fallen, living in the past, not accepting the future. It literally is repeating something enough until it's true. One of my favorite things about the release is the back of the box, which reads The Swimmer is a film like no other, a feature length Twilight Zone episode by way of The New Yorker.

00;06;49;20 - 00;07;11;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that is a really great way to put it, because the journey you're taking on is an egotistical, psychotic trip, truly fit from the brain of Rod Serling. But like I mentioned, it comes from the short story of John Cheever, and there is some discrepancies between The swimmer from 1968 and the short story You've Got a Very Human Story, A Story of Man.

00;07;11;13 - 00;07;40;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The characters are all stark depictions of people boring, drab, self-obsessed, proud of nothing, really proud of nothing in particular but objects and things they own, but not so much things they've achieved. They're proud of stature, but stature that they've by no means accumulated. They're proud of being above other people. They're proud of separating themselves and considering themselves a different percentage because they're rich, or they can judge themselves by the objects they have not so much by what they've actually achieved, unfortunately.

00;07;40;11 - 00;08;01;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Mindless, self-obsessed, self-indulgent, boorish. I mean, that's kind of what people are, you know, as a whole. I'm not trying to be a doom or and constantly negative, but in general, people are self-obsessed. They just care about what's directly in front of them. People are more worried about what their neighbors have instead of what their neighbors don't have. They look at jealousy instead of looking and going, do they have enough?

00;08;01;24 - 00;08;19;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Are they okay? Is there something I can do for them? This is a story about that side of human nature. It's not always doom and gloom, but it is something that needs to be examined and it is something that's inside of all of us. Everyone has those tendencies, and everyone has that nature. And something that is very important is that you really don't know what you look like.

00;08;19;22 - 00;08;36;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
They're other people's eyes and you don't know what other people's perceptions are of you. But unfortunately, for the most part, people build such a high wall that their reality is now completely lost and jaded between what they want to believe is true and what is actually true, or what other people might have a perception of truth to be.

00;08;36;23 - 00;09;04;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Are you with me? That's the kind of story that The Swimmer, a story of emptiness and loneliness and madness. So we'll try and break this try. I stress the word try into nine parts because essentially that's the movie. There are nine parts, nine chapters, the first of which being rather awkward. Now again, there are so many comparisons between this and the short story, but we have to try and separate that, because what we're dealing with here is the swimmer, Frank Perry, Eleanor Perry, their movie The Swimmer.

00;09;04;05 - 00;09;23;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So we have to stay in this universe. And the source material, although very similar, it does have some discrepancies, like I've said before. So I guess a gathering of sorts, a pool party is going on in the upper rich, upper white 1%. I don't know if they're celebrities, but everyone is incredibly well-off. Connecticut. It's the it's a very rich, very, very, very rich.

00;09;23;07 - 00;09;45;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, I hate using the term, but, you know, Trump money when Nietzsche talked about decadence, that type of money. Okay. And this dude kind of appears I mean, this really is the beginning of the movie. This dude just comes out of the woods, man. And he does. It's Burt Lancaster. He literally just appears out of the woods in the swimming trunks, absolutely nothing else, and dives into the pool.

00;09;45;05 - 00;10;02;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And when he comes out, he's greeted really happily by the people whose house is pretty much invaded. Well, I mean, he's not invaded their house, but pool invasion. I guess you could say this is a part of the subgenre home invasion, as it is sort of a pool invasion movie. You could describe it that way, but everyone's pretty genuinely happy to see him.

00;10;02;01 - 00;10;26;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
They're calling out his name. They're really surprised. Burt Lancaster is playing a fellow named Ned Merrill, who is affectionately called Nettie. And all the women are just, you know, it's static. Oh, Nettie have not seen you in so long. Oh, wait, let me do my Katharine Hepburn impersonation. Oh, Nettie, I haven't seen you in so long. Nobody really sounds like Katharine Hepburn in the movie, but I've been dying to do that on an episode for a really long time.

00;10;26;01 - 00;10;33;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I think it's spot on. I don't care what you think.

00;10;33;25 - 00;10;53;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I think it's great. It's not the right place. Katharine Hepburn is not from Connecticut, is she? She's one of those places. God, what audience am I making this show for? It's a Burt Lancaster movie, and this asshole's making Katharine Hepburn jokes. I don't get it. I don't get it. What's going on here? Everyone is so kind, and they're just so happy to see him.

00;10;53;02 - 00;11;10;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And there's an obvious stance that he's not been around for a while. No one's seen him. No one knows what he's doing. They're asking about his wife and his kids, which immediately he's a little standoffish about. He constantly brings up the fact that his kids are at home playing tennis. And his wife, Lucinda, is. She's just fine. Everything's okay.

00;11;10;13 - 00;11;28;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So our characters just kind of, like, birthed into this reality and immediately goes into water, which I thought was kind of symbolic. We're going to get a little deep here, you know, he just comes out of nowhere and there's no explanation to what he was doing previously to this, why he decided that he was just going to go swimming at his neighbor's house.

00;11;28;12 - 00;11;58;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And you definitely are given the understanding that he really is into swimming. This guy cares about nothing more than swimming. It seems to be a fascination and obsession with his life, and he dives deeply into the water, deeply into the birthing pool of the reality of this movie and your real introduction to him when there is a line of dialog, is once he kind of births himself, quote unquote, and comes out of the water and he's now introduced into almost a pseudo reality, because one thing that we're going to get into here is identity, or the lack thereof, or identity crisis in general.

00;11;58;17 - 00;12;13;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Turning 50 something and just not knowing what to do with your life, getting a mistress, buying a new car. Some people do that. Other people, they decide to swim their entire way home through all of their neighbors backyards. But that's one of the concepts. But it's brought up over and over and over. No one's seen you for ages, but you haven't changed one bit.

00;12;13;28 - 00;12;30;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You're just the same. Nothing about you has changed. And he says something to the effect of I was just around and wanted to go for a swim, which really, when you examine the situation, is kind of psychotic. Your neighbor, just barefoot and in swimming trunks, pops out of the trees and dives into your pool and is really, I guess, where it gets a little psychotic.

00;12;31;02 - 00;13;02;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Because staring vacantly into the void, he decides that he can swim his entire way home. That because of the construction of a new pool by a nearby neighbor, he has essentially a river that he can find his entire way back to his home, an eight mile river. It's going to be this glorious, self-important thing. He's convinced the character you get this feeling right off the bat has a very, very big ego and a very big feeling of self-importance, almost to the fact that he feels he's the stuff of legends, that he feels that he is something much more vast than possibly a man.

00;13;02;26 - 00;13;22;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And deep down inside, we are all merely men. And of course, I mean that in a vague terminology of the human race, we are men, okay? And that's about it. I mean, he's going to do it like the Nike logo. Just do it. He does it. He decides at this moment in time, this is what he's going to do, that it's again going to help support his ego.

00;13;22;02 - 00;13;44;24
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's going to help support his legendary status. The man, Ned Merrill, who swam across the county all the way home. People will talk about that for years. People will never forget me. People will remember all those great, wonderful, fantastic times. Something to one of the other themes that we're going to be diving into. Diving. You get it. It is a joke.

00;13;44;26 - 00;14;01;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Is the past now some people, most people, a lot of people, they live in the past. They've got these memories of the good times. And when they were successful, when they were pretty, when they were thin, when they were popular, when they were loved, when they had a really nice car. And they can't really escape that because reality sucks.

00;14;02;01 - 00;14;22;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Not for everybody. I mean, some people's reality is just constant crushing, slow death and depression, and they just can't get past that. One time in 1994, when things were really cool, everyone was getting slices designed for non blonds were popular and they just can't get over it. They just can't let it be. They can't move on or find any form of progression.

00;14;22;26 - 00;14;40;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But a lot of the time that happens because of faults. A lot of the times it's because you can't move past certain things that you've done or done to other people your behavior, your ego, your your inner self that makes you think you're a god. But that's not everybody, right? You're caught by the ghosts and the demons of the past, to the point that it almost drives you a little insane.

00;14;40;25 - 00;14;59;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It causes you to become a disassociated mess. You're just drawn to these good times. You don't have any concept of what is or what isn't. And that's where Ned's at. And he just has this harebrained idea that he can do this. And, yeah, I mean, it's kind of a cool idea, but I assume you're going to have to know what you're doing to do this.

00;14;59;05 - 00;15;26;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And it's not like this movie is about training for an Ironman triathlon or something like that. Ned just literally with with nothing but a pair of swim trunks runs off pretty much into this wilderness area. I mean, it's the upper. It's like where, Ghislaine Maxwell got arrested, you know, giant mansions, huge Olympic sized swimming pools, and then a vast amount of nothing and well manicured woodland areas that he's got to traverse until he gets to the next pool.

00;15;26;29 - 00;15;49;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So some things to note here in this first chapter, whenever Ned is asked about his wife, he genuinely is a little upset about it. He seems to be a little aggressive. She's home, she's fine, and the kids are just playing tennis, and he doesn't really want to talk about the subject matter. Another is the constant referencing to the fact that he hasn't been around for quite some time, and everyone is very surprised to see him at this portion of the film.

00;15;49;01 - 00;16;07;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
They're overjoyed and happy to see him, and it's very warming and it's very exciting and everything is fun in the sun. The sun is burning hot and everything is wonderful and the day is clear and perfect. But you can tell Ned is a man who lusts for a time when he was on top. You can see that he has not been able to let go of the glory days.

00;16;07;13 - 00;16;29;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And with that Ned disappears from the pool and into the woods, leaving his friends standing there thinking it's all kind of a joke, reminiscing on also the good times that they had with Ned. And we move into chapter two. Ned arrives at the next pool, where he's greeted by an old friend, and they begin having a discussion that gets a little cross, where she begins to remember how he used to treat her husband, and he doesn't seem to remember it.

00;16;29;26 - 00;16;45;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Something else we're going to have to note here get a pencil and paper and write down all the things I say. You have to note that at the end of the quiz here. Let's be honest, I won't remember that. No quiz. We're not quizzing whenever it's addressed. His previous behavior in life, he just doesn't remember. And it's not like a game.

00;16;45;11 - 00;17;05;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's not well, gee, Davy, I don't remember. He genuinely seems confused and he's always confused and almost upset by people's behavior when they seem to have a problem with them. A flaw, a flaw with me. But I am God, I am Superman. There are no flaws with me. I am absolutely perfect and everything I did was perfect. And you loved every absolute moment you spent with me.

00;17;05;27 - 00;17;27;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There is no other side to the story but mine. That's Ned's perspective. So it's addressed and brought up that he was really rude to her husband years beforehand. And he has a story. He always has a story. He always has a card. He always has some charm to get him out of the situation, which you start to round up and realize in the long run might have actually not worked for him.

00;17;27;15 - 00;17;55;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And it's just this last dying breath of someone attempting to fit in again, attempting to be something, attempting to go back to the past and reconnect with those glory days. Getting a slice is, and listening to four non blonds in 1994, you know, of all bands to reference, I don't know, Iowa for non blonds like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, there's I don't know what's going on.

00;17;55;09 - 00;18;18;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And as excuse of course is I was mad about you. I thought you were the greatest thing. That's why I got drunk at your wedding. And every time we go to a different pool, we start learning a little bit more about the inner workings of Ned. And we find out here that it looks like he got into his relationship with his wife, Lucinda, by cheating or having heard cheat on her spouse with him because there's a whole little reference about it.

00;18;18;10 - 00;18;35;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But the main point here is the fact that he will always use some form of charm, something that he feels he uses to get his way out of a situation. And then you were presented. Once the husband finally shows up with his brand new toy, one of them fancy lawn mowers you can ride. He has the oh, it's idling too fast.

00;18;35;11 - 00;18;53;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I've got to check this out. I've got to tinker with it. You can tell more and more his sense of authority, his sense of I'm grand. I'm above you. I must be able to do something you can't do. Let me interject. Let me explain, let me mansplain. Let me let you know what actually is going on. Because this is my reality.

00;18;53;03 - 00;19;13;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This is my world. You have to believe it because it's what I'm seeing. And there's this thing, there's this. And again, just pointing out the boorish, lame nature of human beings. The wife is so excited to tell Ned about the pool and all these faculties and all these fancy things that it's 99.90 9.90 9.90 9.90 9.99 point.

00;19;13;06 - 00;19;27;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Sorry, I was stuck percent clean. And you could even drink from the pool. But the second the husband appears, he has to say the same thing because they're proud of these false achievements. I mean, shit, yeah, it's cool if you get something cool, you want to talk about it. But it comes to a point that it's identity almost.

00;19;27;12 - 00;19;44;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It comes to a point that it's all you're consumed by. Are these things you have and not the things you've done or not who you are, but two, there's another side to that coin, because you can also end up being consumed by the things you've done and by what you were, instead of progressing forward or evolving or changing or, you know, metamorphosis, turning into a cockroach, you know what I mean?

00;19;44;25 - 00;20;03;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There are so many different sides to everything, because you can take something absolutely positive and still have a regressive and down falling side, like getting stuck in the past. It's good to remember the things you've done and to grow from them, and to change and to mold yourself into different things. If you have achieved something wonderful your entire life, then of course you're going to continue achieving.

00;20;03;17 - 00;20;19;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You're going to find out new ways to achieve, in new ways to become successful. You're going to keep growing. You know what I mean? There's a positive to it. But if you're caught on that one thing you did 15 years ago and you just can't get over it, you're going to be consumed by the fact that you're a loser and all you can do is lose, and all you can do is fail.

00;20;19;06 - 00;20;44;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So, you know, side A's, side B, yin and yang, one and the other. Am I making sense? So everyone seems to know Ned's story. But Ned again, when his daughters and his wife is brought up, he is hesitant to give a clear answer outside of their home. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it. And here's really where you start getting to see other people seem to really understand and know maybe a little bit more than him, that it's just the general reactions of confusion.

00;20;44;12 - 00;21;02;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Maybe just a teensy bit of disdain you can start feeling things get a little bit colder, and you can start seeing even at the second house, that not everyone seems to think Ned Merrow is as good as Ned Merril thinks he is, and he is explaining what he's doing to everyone. He explains his idea that I'm going to swim the whole county.

00;21;02;04 - 00;21;12;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I'm a legend. I'm going to do this awesome feat, and it's going to be really cool, you know? Hi, I'm Ned Merrill, welcome to jackass.

00;21;12;19 - 00;21;29;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He does the whole spiel and explains what's going on and just moves along. You know, he's offered a drink constantly and never seems to finish one. Most of the time it's an alcoholic beverage, and I'll have a few sips and maybe alludes a little bit to some of his previous behavior, but we'll get into that in some of the following chapters.

00;21;29;18 - 00;21;52;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So to chapter two of the story, Ned is at his second war and he is falling further into, disillusion of life. He has this idea that everything he does is pure and perfect and he's wonderful, and that everything he touches can be fixed. And there's no worry about it, because Ned's here, Superman's here. I'm the Ubermensch to make another Nietzsche reference on this show.

00;21;52;19 - 00;22;20;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
An unnecessary Friedrich Nietzsche reference. There is no wrong with me. And he has to move on. So I guess it's time for chapter three. You start to get this idea, and it's just the theme that's within the movie, something that I think really adds to why this is such a terrific film and why it is absolutely horrifying. You can read into a lot of different directions that have a lot of different theories, but you get a little bit, you know, something has happened at this point to his wife and daughter.

00;22;20;02 - 00;22;39;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You don't know if maybe his wife has left him or his daughters have left him, but there seems to be multiple open avenues that things aren't quite as nice on his big white house on the hill as he makes people think they are. So the third chapter, the homeowners aren't home, and he comes across a teenage girl and finds out lo and behold, it is his old babysitter and she's grown up.

00;22;39;17 - 00;22;59;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He just doesn't seem to remember when he remembers when she was knee high. Her brother enters the scene and he's again surprised, even makes the gesture to your brother. No, he was only knee high. There's no way. And he's certainly enchanted. Which the role is played by Janet Land Guard. She plays a character named Julie Hooper and she is very, very beautiful and blond and angelic, and he's overtaken.

00;22;59;17 - 00;23;14;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
At first you start to think maybe by the innocence of the character, but he just doesn't seem to have a frame of reference and time. And here again, we move into what has happened to his family. You really start to get a little bit of a crack in the egg of this movie. The yolk hasn't seeped out yet.

00;23;14;06 - 00;23;32;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We've got one firm egg, but soon we're going to have a whole omelet. He tells Julie that of course he still needs a babysitter, and she just seems a little taken aback by it. She asks what he means, and of course, no, I need a babysitter. I can come pick you up the Sunday. It would be perfect. And Julie says, well, you've got the kids would be so mad if they could hear you say that.

00;23;32;22 - 00;23;55;08
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So I thought at first, you know, something horribly had happened to the children. But I think at this point he's just devastatingly alone. I think you're starting to find out that everyone else really knows something about Ned, and he either has completely neglected to bring it up, he's faking it. He's completely lying to everyone or he has become disillusioned and disassociated.

00;23;55;10 - 00;24;11;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He has let his lies and what he wants to believe become reality to the extent that he actually can't see the future because he is so obsessed with the past, and he's so obsessed with what he thought was reality and what he took to be his level of reality that he is almost permanently stuck on. And she's just baffled.

00;24;11;24 - 00;24;29;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Yeah, okay, I completely understand. Maybe, whatever. She takes it a little lightly, but you can really tell. And you again, this is the second time that you've sensed with the background characters that something's wrong. You know, the other characters, the other teens in the scene are offended. Well, why wouldn't they have called us if they were back?

00;24;29;06 - 00;24;47;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
They don't understand. Quite what's going on. And Ned has this concept that his children are nine and ten years old. As to where you're shown with the Julie Hooper character that she is, 20, his children aren't children. They've grown. But for some reason, Ed doesn't have this concept or the recognition that this has happened. I mean, where are the years?

00;24;47;11 - 00;25;04;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Where are the memories? This takes us back to chapter one with where did it come from? It just popped out of the woods in a swimsuit and dived into his neighbor's pool. Where the hell was he? What was Ned Merrill doing? But after this awkward situation, he explains to Julie what he's doing, that he is swimming his way home and she thinks it's legendary.

00;25;04;21 - 00;25;22;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Of course it appeals to her. She's 20 years old. She thinks it's a heroic act. She thinks something amazing is going on here. And I'm not saying the average 20 year old is a dimwit, but the whole point, I think why Julie becomes part of the cult of Ned Merrill is because she's infatuated with the idea of just doing something.

00;25;22;09 - 00;25;46;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
When you're young and haven't done anything, anything sounds fantastic. Anything sounds like something. And we find out, well, I guess this is the next chapter. We find out that Julie has been obsessed with Ned since she was a child, that she, you know, had a little girl crush on them. She stole one of his work shirts, and she always dreamt when he would take her home from babysitting that they were madly in love and couldn't be together, and she had to leave for Paris.

00;25;46;10 - 00;26;04;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So there was an ocean between them. And she was a little girl with a crush. But Ned with his ego, with this concept that he is the greatest thing in the world. When he hears this from her, it just changes them. And it's incredibly uncomfortable. But at the same time, you're almost given this idea that Ned just wants to feel a sense of importance.

00;26;04;11 - 00;26;29;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He wants to feel that he's protecting and doing something, that he's missing something inside, that he had an inability to do that previously beforehand, that perhaps maybe he wasn't the huge Superman white knight God. Maybe he wasn't all the money. Maybe he wasn't all the power. Maybe he was faking it the entire time, which is pretty much leading to this odd dissociative state that he's gotten himself into, this psychosis of really not being able to recognize his past.

00;26;29;22 - 00;26;46;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So Julie decides to leave with him. We got a little bit of ahead of ourselves, but she loves this idea. She's enamored with this idea. So she goes, all right, let's go surfing now. Everybody's different now. No singing. We're not going to sing. I'm not singing and they're not surfing. They're swimming, but let's go swimming now doesn't sound anywhere near as fun.

00;26;46;19 - 00;27;07;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Imagine if the Beach Boys were just called the Pool Boys. Kokomo would have just been about a pool in Hackensack, new Jersey. So Julie and Ned leave, and they're on their merry way to chapter four. Like I said, we got a bit of ahead of ourselves because a lot of the things I just explained are what happened at the end of chapter four, Julie tells Ned that she was infatuated with them as they're on the rise to approaching a nearby pool party.

00;27;07;27 - 00;27;35;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
A lot of pool parties, I guess, are going on the moment they arrive. Everyone, like the first chapter, is incredibly excited to see them, but this time the difference is all of them ask, where have you been? What's going on? One character even says, and I quote, how can I diplomatically say this? How's your wife? So you really get a sense that there is some form of separation that for one, no one has seen Ned, no one in this social surf, this upper class, white, super rich society.

00;27;35;09 - 00;27;58;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Everyone parties together, everyone knows each other. They're all part of the same little clubs. They all golf and eat finger sandwiches and mock the board together. Everyone knows each other and they're just shocked but excited. At this point. He's still warm and the sun is still shining and everything is beautiful. Oh, you know what? On the sense of that, there was something we left out from chapter two talking about warmth, talking about how everything is absolutely beautiful.

00;27;58;11 - 00;28;17;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That's what jogged my memory. In chapter two, there's a really potent scene where he's standing and there, there Ned is standing in there on the edge of the pool, and they're looking up at the clouds and the neighbor that he's barged in on, she mentions, it's a beautiful day. The husband says something to the effect of not for that big ugly cloud in the sky, something which Ned overlooks.

00;28;17;25 - 00;28;35;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He chooses to see in his reality the absolute beauty, and not this horrible big black storm cloud that is moving closer and closer and closer. But let's skip all the way back to where we are chapter four. And he has the same excuse. You know, the kids are playing tennis, my wife is fine, everything's okay. And he's got this essentially child with him.

00;28;35;28 - 00;28;57;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
She's 20 years old, but he's got this very schoolgirl youth with him, which most people are taken aback by. That is very quick to get Julie away from everyone. They stand for a moment, have a glass of champagne, where he spouts out one of the most iconic lines of the film, toasting Dawn Perry on with a child. Here's to the sugar on the strawberry and he's very quick to not have her around anyone else.

00;28;57;09 - 00;29;21;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He introduces her awkwardly as his babysitter, which leads to another really intriguing scene, giving some depth to his family and possibly the identity crisis that he's having. The house in which this pool he has to swim through is owned by a foxy mill, someone who is recently separated from her husband and clearly has some interest in Ned when they're standing and talking, and he introduces her to Julie, she has no regard.

00;29;21;09 - 00;29;40;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
She's only about Ned. She wants to talk to him, and to his surprise, I mean, he obviously has been away long enough that he didn't even know that his neighbor has been separated. Somebody that he seems to know somewhat intimately at least judging by their conversation and behavior. She invites him over for dinner, and you can tell that there's something sensual about the entire thing.

00;29;40;01 - 00;29;56;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And he mentions his wife, Lucinda, which she has a great deal of disdain for, and it's one big joke to him. He even makes a face to Julie like, who cares? And he's got a swim. At this point, he's gonna finish the pool because that's one of the essential things. He might be able to stand and talk.

00;29;56;04 - 00;30;17;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And as he says, let's, make sure everything's okay with the locals. He'll have a drink that he never seems to finish. But he's got a swim. He's got to do the entirety of the pool. So he dives, then he finishes, and then it's leaving the reality. He bursts himself each time into this new reality by jumping in and then washes himself free of it, Pontius Pilate style, and moves away.

00;30;17;16 - 00;30;37;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Just assuming all the people love me still. Look at how many people shook my hand and wanted me to have a drink and told me how wonderful I am and love daddy, daddy, daddy, does my farts smell like beauty? And I don't know what beauty smells like? Andy Warhol said it smelled like Chanel number five, but Andy Warhol also painted a lot of chicken soup cans, so I don't know if you want to take that opinion.

00;30;37;11 - 00;30;53;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I like him, and now we move to chapter number five. Or is it chapter six? I don't know, there's a tail end to this because as they leave the party, they escape into the woods and there's an unnecessary scene. You start getting into some of the territory here, and I mentioned we might talk about it. I guess we're going to end up talking about it.

00;30;54;00 - 00;31;15;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So for the most part, this film was shot by Frank Berry, but the producer, Sam Spiegel, just didn't want anyone to have a nice time. And Sam Spiegel, unfortunately had a great deal of power. This is the fella that produced On the Waterfront, the African Queen Lawrence of Arabia, bridge on the River Kwai. He had some power behind his name and he just he wasn't interested in this.

00;31;15;00 - 00;31;34;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And something that I really think can be said about the swimmer is that it is an exploitation film. It is, you can call it a cult film. The back of the box says it's a cult film, but it really, at its core, is an early exploitation film, a Columbia exploitation film, a big budget, a lot of money put behind this, and that's honestly the reasons why it didn't fly the way it did.

00;31;34;24 - 00;31;53;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There was a lot of recasting. Elia Kazan's wife had a scene in which he supported Frank Perry and Eleanor Perry's idea and what was going on with it. But he had behind the scenes, had a lot of disdain and worked with Sam Spiegel to get it cut. There's a lot of manipulative stuff that happened behind the scenes here, and this is why I said at the beginning, we can only do this one of two ways.

00;31;53;29 - 00;32;09;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We can talk about the swimmer, or we can talk about how the swimmer was made. And again, I will lead you to Grindhouse Pictures. Go buy yourself a copy of this movie and you can learn all the fascinating things and all of this backstory. But this sequence was shot by, Sydney Pollack. And I don't mean to say like Sydney Pollack.

00;32;09;19 - 00;32;25;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean the great Sydney Pollack, the guy that did the Yakuza. Tootsie. You know, Tootsie that guy again, I don't know what audience I'm doing this show for, you know, Tootsie as the entire audience shakes their head. No, no, I don't I don't know any of the things you're talking about, Hank. It's okay. I'm sorry. Actually, I'm not.

00;32;25;20 - 00;32;43;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You should learn all this. It's fascinating. You should enjoy yourself. And there is some importance of the scene. You've got Ned almost putting on a show. Almost performing for Julie. He's not so much trying to serenade her, but at this point, he already knows that she's infatuated or was, as a child with him, something that he kind of neglects.

00;32;43;27 - 00;33;01;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
His feelings always remain the same, but he doesn't seem to recognize or deal with the fact that other people's realities and emotions have changed over time. Some things change over time. It might have been the connection and the affection attached to an old T-shirt, or an old love, or somebody that has died just using all these as references.

00;33;01;15 - 00;33;17;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The t shirt being one of, which is in the movie, it's a dress shirt. It's not a t shirt, but all of all things change everything. Like the seasons. It's aging and trying to recapture it, trying to even rekindle that flame, that passion that you had in that moment, something you might have not even known about 20 years ago.

00;33;17;23 - 00;33;38;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's completely impossible. And more so than anything, it's uncomfortable. So Julie has opened herself up to Ned and has told him these things, these feelings from when she was 11, 12 years old that he now seems to just be obsessed with and it doesn't even come off overtly sexual. There's a very awkward scene where he makes a biblical reference while touching her stomach and she withdrawal.

00;33;38;16 - 00;33;56;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
She's not happy about this. There was a sense of safety and respect in the legend of Ned Merrill, and now that she's dealing with the personal reality of them, there definitely is discomfort. Something he is just not aware of. He can't even recognize and see outside of I'm great. I can take care of you, and that's what I'm going to do.

00;33;56;02 - 00;34;10;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that's what he says to her. You know, you work in the city. I could go on the train with you every day, and we could go to lunch, and I could take care of you, and I could. I could make everything okay. He doesn't say I'd fuck the shit out of you. He doesn't say anything outlandish, but it's just so out of place.

00;34;10;01 - 00;34;30;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's just not really something that you should have said. It's. You've not seen this girl in years. You don't even remember the last time you saw. You thought she was a child. You don't know anything really about her. And now you just want to take care of her. This overwhelming need, a sense of reality through taking care of someone, a sense of power, through maybe taking care of someone, a sense of identity through taking care of someone.

00;34;30;05 - 00;34;47;24
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Because now you're something again, and you're starting to get the sense that maybe Ned wasn't so much of a something as he thought he was. Maybe he did have the power and the money, but it might not have been his. It might. It might have been something he married into. And as you're getting this kind of picture that his wife is out, she's gone.

00;34;47;26 - 00;35;08;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It doesn't matter if she's dead. It doesn't matter if his daughters are dead. They're not in the picture anymore. And you're starting to realize that Ned is devastatingly alone, and he's trying to do absolutely everything to reconnect to his reality, to his past, to his beauty, to what he considers the absolute truth through his eyes, refusing to recognize anybody else's emotions, thoughts, or feelings along the way.

00;35;08;20 - 00;35;29;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Thus, by doing this absolutely frightens Julie, who thinks that she's in harm. She's going to be raped, that something awful is going to happen. And that definitely is the illusion that you're presented in the situation. She fucking runs. She gets up and she jets. She gets out of the situation, leaving Ned once again devastatingly alone. Which leads us to an end of chapter four.

00;35;29;05 - 00;35;43;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Or wait, where are we on chapter five? We were at the party. Have we moved past the party? Oh, Tim Allen noises intensify.

00;35;43;09 - 00;36;01;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I don't know, chapter five. I think we're on chapter five. Oh, this is going to get rough. So Nat is alone and he's hurt his dog and pony show. Dancing around and jumping over equestrian props for Julie has led him to injure himself. And now he's weakened and he feels a little bit of disdain. The day is starting to take its toll on him.

00;36;01;21 - 00;36;19;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He arrives at the next pool and finds a young boy with a lemonade stand. He has no money, mind you. He's wearing only swimming trunks, no shoes. He's been hiking through the Connecticut wilderness, getting from pole to pole. He's tired, he's dirty, and he starts to haggle with this boy who's charging $0.10 for a glass of lemonade that he'll get him back the next day.

00;36;19;04 - 00;36;33;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
No worries about it. Just like a crackhead outside a 7-Eleven. Yo, let me get a cigaret, man. They never have the money. They'll come back. I just lost it. You went inside. I was going to get the cigaret, and you got the cigarets for me. And I got the money, man. A fucking chupacabra came out of the woods and they got me.

00;36;33;02 - 00;36;47;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And I guess there's nothing I can do about it. I can't even give you back the money. And can I get the can of cigarets? You still got the cigarets. Ned Merrill is a crackhead outside of a 7-Eleven. What a segue we got. Damn, we got we got off there. Sorry. Exactly like that. Haggling with this child that will pay him back tomorrow.

00;36;48;00 - 00;37;12;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The kid's parents, who you assume that knows he knew their names and he mentions them. They are at home and the kid has some wacky dialog. It reminds me a little bit of that Cassavetes movie, Gloria, with that fast talking Puerto Rican kid got the hit. The dialog was wonderful. It's a shame that little dude didn't go on to make some amazing cinema.

00;37;12;06 - 00;37;32;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This little kid has some just hysterical dialog about his family and just a reflection on really life in general. I have to rely on my mom for news, my dad's in love with the manicurist, and my mom's on a honeymoon. I can't go on it. And it's just this little kid that's been left alone with the maids that Ned has come across, and he seems to show no real emotion toward the situation.

00;37;32;14 - 00;37;47;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He just wants to finish his journey. At this point, he's had another beverage. After haggling with the child for $0.10 to have lemonade that he doesn't finish doesn't even get his $0.10 worth, and he decides to trek on to the pool. The kid tries to warn him that it's empty, but by the time he gets there, he realizes his dreams are crushed.

00;37;47;14 - 00;38;04;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There's nothing he can do. Everything counted on him being able to swim across the county, and now he can't do anything. But he ends up having this discussion with the child who lets him know the pool was empty. Because I'm not good at anything. I'm not good at swimming, I'm just not really good at anything. And that tells him, and this is really important.

00;38;04;18 - 00;38;20;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This is a big note. It doesn't matter. Being good at things doesn't matter. It's overrated. You don't want to be captain of the football team. You don't want the responsibility. You don't want to have to deal with all this stuff. You should just float through a life you don't want to have to deal with things, which is a very big key into who Ned is.

00;38;20;21 - 00;38;38;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And possibly that all of these things that he relished and in his luxury and how much things were wonderful, he definitely isn't the God he thinks he is. His ego at this point is just absolutely raging. And he tells the child, if you believe in something enough, you can believe it's true. Underlined, underlined, underline. You believe it's true.

00;38;38;22 - 00;38;56;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
If you believe in something, and if you can trick yourself into making it your reality, into making it your existence and to you not recognizing what's going on around you because you're so concerned with your ego, with your past, with the reflection of how other people see you without even understanding and realizing you might have a perception of yourself.

00;38;56;04 - 00;39;17;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But there's no way at all anybody else in the world could ever have that same thought. You are something completely different from somebody else. It doesn't matter how James Dean you are, somebody might think you're Marlon Brando. Ned is not willing to accept this, but what Ned is willing to accept is the fantasy, something in which he instills upon this child by swimming, quote unquote, the pool, despite it being not filled with water.

00;39;17;29 - 00;39;32;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He does all the strokes, and that's something he teaches him. If you do all the strokes, if you do all the things you technically did it so you can cheat your way through things, you can fake your way through things, you can fake it till you make it. But as long as you did the motions well enough, it still counts.

00;39;32;01 - 00;39;49;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's still like it's real. So let's put this into example of having a wife and kids. You can have a family, you can go to work every day. You can work absolutely every single day and have yourself convinced that you've done it for your family, that you've done everything for them. But did you did you do anything in the reality that they wanted you to do?

00;39;49;07 - 00;40;16;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Did you spend time with them? Did you love them? Did you show them affection? Did you care? Were you there when they had great achievements? Were you there when they were in trouble? Did you actually care when they were in trouble? And this is something that is somewhat interesting with the concept of these daughters, because you start slowly realizing that his kids are definitely older than he is, the perception of them being, and they're not the greatest kids his wife seems to have left him, and his kids kind of look like monster, but none of this is apparent to Ned.

00;40;16;06 - 00;40;30;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
None of this seems to even reflect in his mind's eye, because he's convinced himself everything he's done has made him the greatest thing in the world. I worked for everyone. I worked at the office. I've done all these things. Look at my house. Look at my swimming pool. The big bulge in my wallet. Isn't it? Big boom, boom boom.

00;40;30;28 - 00;40;53;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's so thick. But none of these things essentially matter at the end of the day. Because love, compassion, family, familiarity, just peace of mind knowing that somebody acknowledges your existence and loves you. These are the wholesome things that actually matter and build relationships and build families and build all of the wonderful things that people call Noah's love.

00;40;53;23 - 00;41;11;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Something that Ned only seems to have an idea of. He seems to love the idea of all of these things, but when it comes down to how he actually did it, we're starting to understand it might not have been the best way. So he instills in this kid, if you believe in things enough, it's reality and it's time for the chapter.

00;41;11;20 - 00;41;30;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
At the end, he's got to go on his merry way. As he's leaving, he hears a little boy jumping on the diving board and realizes what he had just told him, and he rushes back, limping. Age and time and the day has started to truly affect him and pull away some of his superpowers. And he grabs a little boy and he grabs them and hugs them, and he holds them in an embrace.

00;41;30;11 - 00;41;52;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And the child goes, what's wrong? Why did you come back? And he tells them, I just thought you were going to jump. And the boy looks at him so astutely and says, well, the pool is not filled with water. And that itself is a nod, letting you know again that everybody else's reality is reality, that Ned somehow keeps birthing himself into these worlds, that he won't recognize, that he won't be a contender.

00;41;52;16 - 00;42;14;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
With that, he won't realize what is going on and what has happened to him and what he's doing to these other people by just showing up and abruptly birthing himself into this reality that he has been lacking him for years. He's been in literally the the abyssal void. Nobody fucking knows what he's been doing.

00;42;14;10 - 00;42;36;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But this child has a completely different perspective, and that's the point. I'm driving here and he doesn't take that for for any advantage. He doesn't realize his words aren't gold. He's just kind of happy about the situation. And he goes on his merry little way to the next chapter. Oh, God, is a chapter six or chapter seven. I said this was a nine part chapter.

00;42;36;22 - 00;42;55;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So I guess we're going to figure out at the end. I'm either really, really bad at math or, I missed something, I don't know. The sixth chapter leads us into a slight bit of comedy, but there's not much allowance for laughs if anything, it's a bit of social commentary that is smirk ish. You can grin a little bit about what's going on.

00;42;55;21 - 00;43;16;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So Ned appears and he is found by the driver of the owners of the house of his next venture, the next pool that he has to swim in the river Lucinda on his quest to get back home. His eight mile quest to get back home. He can't seem to remember the driver. He recalls him as somebody else. And it's a little bit of a commentary here on racism because, well, all you black people look the same.

00;43;16;19 - 00;43;32;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That sort of thing. It's an African American driver, which was going to be played by Billy Dee Williams. I think scenes were shot with Billy Dee Williams, but these were some of the things that Sam Spiegel didn't think were that great. And had reshot by Sydney Pollack. And that's really the direction of the scene going into. Burt Lancaster even apologizes.

00;43;32;25 - 00;43;59;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I'm sorry I mistook you for Sam. I don't know why I thought you'd be him. And it's incredibly uncomfortable. And the driver doesn't seem to have. He seems to show some disdain for Mr. Merrill. He doesn't seem to particularly enjoy the presence of Ned. He's very quiet and everything he has to say back. There's a lack of jocularity, and it clearly is a representation of the upper white middle class mistaking anyone of color for the same person because of their own ignorance and xenophobia.

00;43;59;29 - 00;44;15;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But what makes it well-rounded in the scene to pay off is the fact that he is stopping by the house of a couple, an older couple who are nudists. But it's not for some sensual nature. It's not exotic, and it's not a kink to them. It's the fact that they think the world is a little bit too prude.

00;44;15;26 - 00;44;34;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
They're not communists. They're told by other rich, upper class white people that they're communists, and they seem to have some enjoyment with it. And again, you're looking at the political nature. This movie was shot in 1966 and eventually released, or I got 65 and 66, you know, like get that Grindhouse DVD, you know, all the facts and you don't have to worry about me getting them wrong.

00;44;34;24 - 00;44;51;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But when it came out in 1968, the political climate, especially dealing with something as sensitive as topics like communism is really unique. And that's kind of the depiction you're showing with these characters. And I guess why they tried to use a little bit of it's not so much that needs are racist, it's just the average typical behavior of somebody that wouldn't think of anybody.

00;44;51;29 - 00;45;10;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But themselves that, oh gosh, I'm sorry, I thought you were the other African American gentleman that worked here. I can't tell the difference. And that's the tone that you're being given with this. This perception of of Ned's mistake. But he genuinely seems upset about it. But again, he doesn't genuinely seem upset about anything. It's all sort of a fake bravado.

00;45;10;19 - 00;45;42;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's kind of a Patrick Bateman American Psycho thing, you know, you may shake my hand, but I'm not actually there.

00;45;42;03 - 00;45;57;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
As he approaches the couple, they're talking amongst themselves and they're really worried he's going to ask for money. And you start realizing. And there's been a nod to it here and there that he has gone around, maybe drunkenly, maybe out of his wits and asked for money, begged for help. And obviously it's not some small sum of money.

00;45;57;29 - 00;46;20;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's not like he's tried to bum 50 bucks here and there. It's in the thousands and God knows how much higher. You're really starting to understand that Ned has nothing and that everything, everything, not just like a collection of his albums got lost, but everything has been thrown to the dust, and that he is now just existing in the wake of it, in some strange void that he is a hero to everyone and beloved.

00;46;20;27 - 00;46;40;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And he he just is in like a psychosis. He doesn't ask them for anything. He approaches them. He strips to the nude. You get to see Burt Lancaster's ass. If that's something that you've craved for years and years and years. Yes, The Swimmer from 1968. It includes Burt Lancaster's ass and again tells them what he wants to do.

00;46;40;11 - 00;46;58;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He's very defensive and upset when anything's brought up with his daughters or his wife. He tells them the same story they're playing tennis and she's at home. Everything's okay. You don't need to worry about it. And in this instance, he gets pretty rightfully upset and he dives into the pool and decides to leave over it because to him, it's badgering to him.

00;46;58;22 - 00;47;20;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
These people are invading his reality where everything is fine. I'm a god, I'm Superman. Don't worry about me. You should worry about yourself. I can deal with absolutely everything. And people keep bringing up to him. Like, well, you know, because of the situation you're in, we're blah, blah, blah. We feel bad for you. We're sorry about this. He wants to even attend a ball that's being set up by this couple.

00;47;20;00 - 00;47;41;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And this is right before he dives into the pool to continue his journey. He insists that his name is right, written down for $1,000 a table seat. And immediately, once he finishes swimming, the husband is sort of jocular with his wife and says, well, you know, he must be back on his feet. Everything's okay. And it's very clear she crosses his name out, because that's the not just woman's intuition.

00;47;41;07 - 00;48;10;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That's the cold, bloody fact he is. Something's wrong. Everyone knows something's wrong. Button, Admiral. And now we move on to the next chapter. Wait a second. Oh, no. One chapters before the next one. I think we managed to give you plot devices before they were exposed, but not fuck up the story. My God, how have I managed to do it?

00;48;10;06 - 00;48;30;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Okay, it looks like essentially we have recut the swimmer here. All right. The death by DVD cut of The Swimmer. We did, in fact, get one of the chapters before the other one, but we did. We haven't uncovered the glory here yet. And as usual, this is full disclosure. We're going to talk about what happens. You're going to hear what happens at the end of this movie.

00;48;30;26 - 00;48;51;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You know, it's all going to become uncovered. It's going to be the full monty, full exposure. So spoiler warning, still, where we're at right now, I've managed to not specifically ruin anything. Now let's go back and try and correct a little bit of our error. So after Julie runs away, discomforted by Ned's advances, that's when he meets the older, wealthy nudist couple.

00;48;51;16 - 00;49;09;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Well, everyone is particularly wealthy in this movie, but we got it a little reversed. So he meets the nudist scalpel, and once he leaves there, he meets Kevin, the little boy with the lemonade stand. And I still don't know what chapter we're on. Eight. I guess we're on eight at this point. So we've been a number of the entire time.

00;49;09;10 - 00;49;26;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Man, I bet it's a pleasure listening to death by DVD book, and Guy doesn't know what he's talking about. It's supposed to be a horror movie show. Talking about Burt Lancaster, I don't apologize. I'm not sorry. Not one bit. No, we're not. We're on seven. All right? Math is not one of my strong points. Simple math. It doesn't matter.

00;49;26;26 - 00;49;45;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Don't make fun of me. Don't shame me. All right. Maybe a little bit. So the concepts of freedom and responsibility and or the lack thereof have become very evident and clear. And what we're seeing in the swimmer at this point, Ned is almost incapable of allowing himself to have freedom. He's convinced himself that he has to continue this route.

00;49;45;13 - 00;50;03;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
By no means can he break it. And every time he tries to meet someone new, he just can't connect with them. He's stuck on the superficial level where nothing seems to matter because no one's on his level, no one's on his little plateau of existence, that he is definitely above them no matter what happens, because he seems to just know it.

00;50;03;29 - 00;50;22;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
No one else seems to know it. He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand why these people aren't facilitating his thoughts. And now the shift begins. He's started to get cold, and the more and more he realizes that people don't think of him the way he thinks of himself, a chill catches and he just can't seem to get warm.

00;50;22;20 - 00;50;48;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And it's like the summer is just dissipating and that the seasons are changing. The album is moving closer, an allegory itself. I mean, the entire movie is an allegory, but with him getting colder and colder and colder in the sun getting farther and farther away, you are given this perception, an allegory of where he is and him realizing his true self, him realizing where he's at and what he's done, and that he is evidently alone.

00;50;48;19 - 00;51;08;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He arrives at a party. Another party. It's a bebop and happy party summer. But this time things aren't like the others. It's definitely a cold room. Immediately, he's addressed by the homeowner as a gate crasher, and they don't seem specifically happy with his presence being there. He's chilled, he's tired, he needs some rejuvenation, and he asks for a drink.

00;51;08;05 - 00;51;26;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Could a gate crasher get a drink? And she doesn't care, and that's what she tells him at the bar. And that attempts to understand the human plight by befriending Joan Rivers, the Joan Rivers in her very first film appearance, years before she became the melted plastic Barbie doll she was. And I say that with the utmost love and respect.

00;51;26;22 - 00;51;53;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I love Joan Rivers. She was a dirty, filthy bitch. God bless your soul. One of the funniest comedians of all time. She was great.

00;51;53;07 - 00;52;16;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And she's playing a hooker. She's. She's playing a whore. You remember the Sopranos? Ralph's the Fredo. Could anyone say whore better than him? God. Who? Oh, I can't even do it. I you know, I just can't do it. There's something about Joey Pants. That guy says for the most entertaining, the, It's great. It's great. If you've never been interested in The Sopranos, please just check it out to hear Joey Pants say.

00;52;16;14 - 00;52;23;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Or.

00;52;23;05 - 00;52;38;24
Harry-Scott Sullivan
She's a bleach blond girl at the party. She's just there, too. I mean, maybe we're being a little rough here, but I've been listening to some interviews with Joan, and this is what she took her character. So I'm just taking this straight from the horse's mouth. And this is before she got her teeth thick. She did have those big old horse teeth.

00;52;39;02 - 00;52;54;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I feel I have to make fun of her as much as humanly possible, because that's what she would have wanted if you could just bash her and call all of her dresses tacky, as she did thousands and thousands of people on the red carpet all the time. I think that would be the best way to honor Joan Rivers.

00;52;55;01 - 00;53;14;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Colbert. Dirty bitch. But call her at 30 bitch with love and respect, mind you. So he's trying to have this conversation with her and it immediately becomes this egotistical driven. You've never met anyone like me. I'm absolutely amazing. Within three minutes of speaking to her, he asked, come on my journey. I'm swimming all my way home and everyone says to that when he brings this up, like, I didn't know you could do that.

00;53;14;12 - 00;53;36;08
Harry-Scott Sullivan
No one's really interested or particularly cares about this quest, this legendary feat, this this Herculean. I don't know if that's a term, this Herculean feat that he is attempting to go through to. To what, prove to himself that he's still a badass. It's all right. You know, he's attractive, he has a nice body, he speaks incredibly well, and that at first seems to be enough.

00;53;36;08 - 00;53;56;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But once people start talking to him, all of that charm just completely melts and goes away and you realize he just is unable to even have a relationship. He cares so much about himself that's sociopathic and that's one of the leading things he says. The Joan Rivers I want to take you away. I love you so much. This character who is just at the party, someone he's never met, somebody that he has no establishment.

00;53;56;02 - 00;54;14;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He even makes the point to tell her that he doesn't really know the host, that they weren't even part of his Christmas card list, that his wife, Lucinda didn't even seem to care about them. This omnibus missing character, Lucinda, that he holds in this high Mother Teresa guard when he speaks of her but absolutely doesn't seem to have an appearance, doesn't seem to even be in his life.

00;54;14;15 - 00;54;33;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And Joan's upset. The character, also named Joan. It was actually written for her. It was specifically crafted for Joan Rivers. And again, as I mentioned it earlier, her very first role, her debut beforehand, she had just been working as a comedian. The advances are just as awkward as the weird love that he gave Julie the I'll take care of you.

00;54;33;05 - 00;54;57;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We can go into the city every day. Everything will be perfect. Run away with me. He's just. It's not even disillusioned. It's psychosis. He has no regard for other people's concepts and other people's reality. And Joan's boyfriend quickly jerks her away. And he's kind of left alone again, something that is a constant theme every time that he is birthed into a new world, every time that he comes into a new pool, he is left devastatingly alone.

00;54;57;03 - 00;55;13;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
At the beginning of the movie, the people seemed charmed and happy to be around him, but it just seems like a inconsequential charm that they're happy because they haven't seen him for a while. But once he's gone, it's like a breath of fresh air. Oh, God, he didn't ask for money. Everything's okay. Something of which that he completely disregards.

00;55;13;22 - 00;55;32;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He doesn't seem to have any thought. He doesn't seem to recognize that he has done all of these things. Again, making notion to the fact that he keeps telling people his wife is at home when the kids are playing tennis and everything's fine, but where are they? Where did he even come from? We have to go even back to the beginning and keep asking that question where did he come from?

00;55;32;02 - 00;55;54;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The void. So Jonas pulled aside by her boyfriend, leaving Ned devastatingly alone once again, where he dives into the pool. Upon coming out of this birthing canal, the new reality is something devastating because he recognizes something he sees, something that was his own. The hot dog cart.

00;55;54;12 - 00;56;19;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The infamous hot dog cart. And I think that's something everyone can relate to. When you hit rock bottom, you lose your hot dog cart. It's something every boy and girl and everything in between those hotdog carts, like, you know, when you're 18 and you lose your first high school love and they take your hot dog cart that happens to everybody, right?

00;56;19;09 - 00;56;41;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That happened to me. And again, this is a really big bourgeois party. So they have a hot dog cart coming by. I mean, like when I say party, it's not a couple of guys drinking some IPA smoking American spirits with a shitty bowl that's got a crack down the middle, and they're all smoking mids. It's a lot of rich people and really nice clothes, and they're all drinking martinis and they're slamming 60s music like 60, 70 people.

00;56;41;21 - 00;56;48;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
They're banging parties, not with you and your friends do on a Thursday night.

00;56;48;23 - 00;57;06;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Ned Merrill is up in arms over this hot dog cart. He just knows it's his. He knows it belongs to his. And immediately he's upset about it. He leaps out of the water, and he addresses the situation where he finds out that it was sold at auction. Homeowner's wife purchased the cart and it was theirs. It's definitely his.

00;57;06;22 - 00;57;24;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He recognizes pieces of it that he reconstructed and helped put back together. When it was under his ownership. So it's not like he's delusional and he's just imagining a random hotdog cart is is it was something that previously belonged to him and it's established and you're told it was bought at auction. Your wife must have put it up for auction.

00;57;24;16 - 00;57;40;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So he offers to buy it back for double the price. And he's assaulted at this point where he's pushed away and hit by the homeowner and said, get out of here. Beat it. You're a punk. Nobody wants your money. Nobody believes you. Nobody likes you. So our God has fallen. Superman has become the villain. This is better than Brightburn.

00;57;40;09 - 00;58;02;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, that's the whole story of what if Superman was a villain? But really, I mean, you have the entire idea of Nietzsche's ubermensch. You have the perfection, the perfect man. He's doing everything. He's handsome, he's doing everything right. He has money, he's got mistresses, he's married with children and has everything you could dream of. But deep down inside, there's something hollow and imperfect about it.

00;58;02;16 - 00;58;34;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There's always a fault to that amount of perfection. And really, this could be that whole retelling. You can go watch Brightburn, or you could watch The Swimmer. So the homeowner knocks him on his ass, and he's forced to take the walk of shame while everyone at this party, this bebop and swinging, happening 60s party, stands on the hill and watches and begrudgingly limp away, still injured from his dog and pony show, jumping around for Julie, attempting to be part of the crowd, attempting to sway the love of somebody that had a child like crush foreign, lost in the senselessness.

00;58;34;27 - 00;58;55;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, really, there's no reality for him at this point. He's just wandering, attempting to reconnect these emotions. He had these achievements that really are pseudo achievements, things that he never really did just this charm he feels he oozes that is absent to everyone else but him. Again, how? Everyone seems to know his story, but he can't recall it.

00;58;55;21 - 00;59;15;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He chooses to not recall it. He's allowed his memory to become jaded and clouded by what he thinks is his reality. Because he's just so great. And mind you, he thinks this is all true. He it's not so much that he thinks he's God, but he thinks is much more than everybody else. He thinks that there is this notion of who Ned Merrill is, and nobody seems to recognize it.

00;59;15;20 - 00;59;31;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that makes me take it back to you don't know what things look like. They're other people's eyes, the Butthole Surfers. Pepper, you ever heard that song? Check it out. Pause the show. Go listen to Pepper by the Butthole Surfers and then come back just because you believe something to be true, and you repeat it to yourself over and over and over again.

00;59;31;11 - 00;59;49;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And your reality doesn't make it true in your perception of course. Yes, but your depth might not be the same as anyone else's. And the fact that Ned has truly convinced himself there is nothing more than his established persona. That should be enough to tell you that there is something horrifying going on in the inner workings of his personal life.

00;59;49;21 - 01;00;09;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Now, like I had said, there could be an illusion that the daughters and wife are dead. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they're dead or they have left him. What is certain and what is significant is the fact that he is alone and the crushing, brutal nature of being alone, not lonely. I mean, he is alone and lonely, but what matters more in this essence is that he's alone.

01;00;09;04 - 01;00;33;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The crushing, brutal reality that he is alone and that he cannot take it to the extent that he has created this false world, this, this hole, never, never land. He has become a lost boy. He has become Peter Pan trying to keep this infinite youth, to keep his jocularity, to keep his strength. I am everything, I am beautiful, I am charming, I can always do right and there is no way you can tell me anything different.

01;00;33;11 - 01;00;54;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's really Peter Pan. I mean, it's that's the whole thing. These kids, they never come back home so they can constantly live within that beauty of the past. They can always be happy. They don't have to go to bedtime, and they can eat cookies every single day of the week. It's very childlike and it's very sophomoric. Just for the extent that he doesn't want to grow up, he doesn't want to deal with the responsibility.

01;00;54;01 - 01;01;11;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He doesn't want to have these things haunting him. He just wants to be great. He just wants to be wonderful. Ned Merrill just wants to be God, which is something every man wants to be. Everyone wants to be a God. They want to be the most significant, important thing in their reality. They want to be the master of that reality.

01;01;11;29 - 01;01;32;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But not everyone is a psychopath or a sociopath. I mean, Ned is sharing traits from both of these fields at this point. He doesn't have any regard for anyone else. He acts completely on his own inhibitions without the thought or regard of anyone else. It's dangerous. It's becoming alarming, and you can start to see why Ned is alone, but he just doesn't know it.

01;01;32;23 - 01;01;55;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Ned also begins to become colder and colder, and it begins to become more relevant that the chill he is feeling is caused by people. The opinion of him is causing him to just lose the sun, lose that warmth he doesn't understand quite yet, but he knows that he's cold and everyone around him is slowly. From that very first chapter that was excited to see him and so happy to be in his room.

01;01;55;05 - 01;02;14;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Where have you been, buddy? I've not seen you in a year or two. How's the kids now? It's regressed and turned into a point of this. Son of a bitch. He's going to ask for money. Oh. You're back. How's your wife? It's all really sarcastic. It's all really hurtful. And it's all really deep seated and something that Ned just doesn't seem to be able to even understand.

01;02;14;09 - 01;02;41;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's like a confused child or even like somebody with Alzheimer's. You could take this to a different perspective of somebody that's a whole entire life is starting to disappear. I mean, I've been making this, like notion that things are incredibly similar to the innocence of a child, but really, it is more apt to bring up something like an older person suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's because they've lived there all these glory eras, and they understand certain things and they remember certain people, attitudes and things they acknowledge.

01;02;41;16 - 01;03;17;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But as the mind rots and the disease takes more and more and more, it's just these blips. It's these bits and pieces. It's like when you watch a clip from a movie on YouTube, you remember that one scene, but nothing else. And all the other things, they fade away into nonexistence. He's got his own self according Alzheimer's. He has given himself situational dementia and choosing to not acknowledge the awful things he's done, but only regale and rejoice in the wonderful things he's done and how big his dick is, and all these pseudo achievements and his tennis courts and his red jag wires and his perfect picturesque white picket fence family.

01;03;17;09 - 01;03;40;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He's very concerned with front facing. If it looks good on the outside, it doesn't matter what's going on on the inside and you're obvious that things didn't work out on the inside. I mean, it's it's it's a horror story. There's no good. There's nothing he has touched that hasn't turned to rust. There's nothing that Ned has done that hasn't backfired, but he still has this obligation to himself, almost a convince over and over and over again.

01;03;40;10 - 01;04;07;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I'm great. I'm good. There's nothing better than me. And you love it. And that leads us into chapter eight. Chapter eight is a scene that was a reshoot by Sydney Pollack. The original scene starred Barbara Layden, the wife of Elia Kazan. Part of the problem with this movie, there were some sequences that didn't go right with this. With the shooting of this, it seemed like Burt might have been a little rough with what happened in the sequence.

01;04;07;11 - 01;04;25;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And we'll get into that and what happens in this sequence. But it didn't work out. Elia was really upset about it, and he had spoken privately to Sam Spiegel about it not ending up in the film, much to the dismay of Frank and Eleanor Parry, because he had come to them and had made it seem like he was all for it, and that they were helping him out by having his wife.

01;04;25;23 - 01;04;52;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And I mean, it's Elia Kazan, so it's not like you're really helping the guy out. But at the same time, he was trying to be really nice to them. While playing them in a different direction. So the scene was one of the many reshoots that Pollack did. What we have here is Ned coming across as mistress, something that I thought was really interesting in the first chapter when he comes up with his entire plan and he devises how he's going to swim the eight miles back to his home, there's a certain person whose name he just can't remember, and it's the last house.

01;04;52;06 - 01;05;15;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He just doesn't remember who lives there. And when the name is given to him, it said so coyly and with a sense of sarcasm that it's something that you need to take, is a subtlety that Ned is having a hard time. He just doesn't seem to remember what's going on. And this person is somebody that he, with intent, has left out of his memory, and he's lost their name because he's done incredibly awful things to them.

01;05;15;00 - 01;05;33;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
If not, the reasons he doesn't have a family anymore are because of this woman. I don't mean to put the blame on the woman. It's not that it's her. It's not that the things she did or why he might not have a family, it's the things that he has done with her. And it's not her fault whatsoever. Again, we need to keep in to restrain here.

01;05;33;21 - 01;05;52;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That Ned Merrill we're uncovering is not a good man. He's not a particularly nice person. And he's got this egocentric complexity that he just thinks he's Superman. He just thinks he's the most marvelous thing in the world. And unfortunately, that's just a symptom of his psychosis, which you can clearly see. It's not something that just started with this movie.

01;05;52;01 - 01;06;10;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, he appears completely randomly out of the woods and dives into someone's pool. But this is a form and this is a behavior that obviously has been something that has stoked his entire life, that he has consistently and continually thought of himself as more than he was, which is an all too human trait, and it's something that almost everyone is guilty with.

01;06;10;16 - 01;06;27;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But there, again, like we discussed earlier, two spectrums to that because there are people that think they are far more entirely important than they are. And then there are people that think they are far lower and lesser than they are, and people that have problems not even coping or realizing that they're beautiful and perfect and wonderful in every way.

01;06;27;11 - 01;06;46;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And you are. And everyone that listens to the show absolutely is. Unless they are a shit sucking Nazi, that's all for the regime. If you're hurt Trump, then I can't really speak about your beauty. Every man and every woman and star. A concept that Ned just can't get under his thumb. He is the star. There is no other person in this show.

01;06;46;23 - 01;07;07;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It is all about Ned, and he is unable to realize this as he comes upon his mistress. Because for once and this situation, he's going to have some relief at the beginning of the story, everything was lovey dovey and wonderful and everyone was so excited to see Ned. But as we've progressed through the chapters, it's become dark and cold and dreary and the seasons seem to almost be changing on him.

01;07;07;17 - 01;07;26;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It becomes one day and then it's the next. He has no recollection of what he's done, who he's been or where he's at. And it's just this continuous search. He has to keep swimming until he gets home. But there's comfort now. This is my mistress. Everything's going to be okay. I'm going to receive that love. I never got that.

01;07;26;10 - 01;07;51;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I had to hold secret that I couldn't let other people know about. This was something that was just for me. Another selfish notion that we received from Ned Merril. And this person doesn't reciprocate. Like the instance with the child, Ned is almost forced into realizing his reality isn't the concept everyone else has. But again, as with the child, he completely negates to realize and recognize what's going on.

01;07;51;24 - 01;08;20;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The scene was reshot by Sydney Pollack with Janice Rule, Janice plays a hurt and broken human being that has waited and hoped for the hero that Ned Merrill feels he is that she tried to believe in Superman. She tried to have the same thoughts as he did, but unfortunately, like we, the audience, are presented throughout the movie. She saw the shortcomings and the failings and the lies and all these awful things and the incompatibility that these two could ever be together.

01;08;20;01 - 01;08;39;24
Harry-Scott Sullivan
She saw the ghosts. She realized and understood that there was no way that this man was ever going to let those ghosts that haunt and star in the picture show that is his past ever go away. Ned is so loving. He's so happy. He kisses her feet, he makes a drink, and when she kicks him in the face and pushes him away, somebody that finally is putting him in his place.

01;08;39;24 - 01;09;02;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Somebody that finally is spanking the child. And he doesn't understand. He has no concept as to why she's being so upset. And he begins recounting memories, things that happened between them and all the sweet nothings while he cheated on his wife with her. But all these things are wrong. The memories aren't. Maybe her. She hasn't been. He he goes onto this whole tangent how they had this beautiful affair in Toronto last year to where she laughed.

01;09;02;12 - 01;09;22;08
Harry-Scott Sullivan
She hasn't been in Toronto for three years. She doesn't know what he's talking about. He mentions that her bathing suit is lovely and she says it's last year's. Oh well, I don't remember seeing it. You weren't around last year again, something he has absolutely no recollection over, that he has become so despondent to reality he doesn't know what's going on.

01;09;22;08 - 01;09;51;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He's so self-obsessed with his conscious decisions of being the greatest in the world, the most dependent, the most wonderful man. He can't see the fact that there are other perceptions of him whatsoever, or the fact that he has devastatingly destroyed people because of those perceptions, his own self perceptions. Shirley, his mistress played by Janice Rule, tells him a story of where she spied on him one night after he had slept with her just several hours before, and he was with his family, taking them to the opera.

01;09;51;12 - 01;10;10;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And she watched his children and his aging Vassar ask wife and how beautiful and everything was, and the fact that he was so pleasant and happy. But it was because he had been with her an hour before, and he was faking it. Every piece of his reality has been fake. Every part of his personality, every part of who he is, has been faked.

01;10;10;20 - 01;10;28;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
In fact, there really doesn't seem to be a need. Meryl. And this is where we're at. When we're at this eighth pool, we start to finally realize the person that we've been watching the entire time. And you have a lot of sympathy as the story begins to unfold and as things start to construct the beginning of the movie, you're wondering like, why are people treating him this way?

01;10;28;23 - 01;10;44;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
What's gone on? And again, you're like, this is your lead, your hero, just to use that term, you're given somebody that you you know, it's a writer's term. You have to follow and acknowledge them. So you don't really want to have disdain for your hero. You want to follow them and have a representation of yourself inside of them.

01;10;44;13 - 01;11;03;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And maybe something that at the end of the day, you can go, well, I'm like that person, but when you watch this movie, hopefully you start detaching from that and slowly realizing this is inhuman. This is the farthest thing from being human that you can possibly be. This person is a character. He's a he's a complete, absolute character of what a human is.

01;11;03;21 - 01;11;22;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He takes the story with little acknowledgment as to where Shirley retorts with, when you left and you went home and you called me from the train station crying about your wife and how you truly loved me but couldn't be with me. I was sleeping with somebody else and we listened to your cries on the phone the entire time, and he refuses to believe it.

01;11;22;03 - 01;11;37;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He refuses to acknowledge what's going on, and she says something really put it back to him. You'll never know, as if he ever has. And at this point, I think what we're told and exposed to what the character is, he hasn't known anything the entire time, and neither have we. We are lost in the same shrouded void as he is.

01;11;37;21 - 01;12;06;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We don't know what he's trying to connect to, but I think at the most it's it's his past. He's trying to connect to this arrow, this point, this place where he was a something where he wasn't anything when he wasn't just lackluster, when he wasn't average, when he wasn't a poor person, when he wasn't just part of society, when he wasn't just a mere meager man, he remembers and requests everyone to think of him as Superman.

01;12;06;11 - 01;12;40;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that's just not how it is. People see you the way that they see you. You can't change it. Things go awry when Ned continuously pushes himself to. Shirley continuously tries to remind her of how wonderful things are. They eventually get into the pool with his internal quest of having to finish things. This is the first time he's managed to get somebody to come into his birthing canal to join him in this reality, and I think personally, he's hoping in this essence that he can convince Shirley to be a part of his new reality, to be a part of everything, and that it's going to be okay and wonderful and beautiful.

01;12;41;03 - 01;13;01;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And she rejects it. He begins telling her about how they made love in the pool and how wonderful it was, and she tells him it was an act you talk about yourself and how wonderful you are, and you talk about your wife and your woes and your misery and all of these self-inflicted bullshit things. You talk about sports and how you're a swimmer and your yachts and how big your dick is and how wonderful you are.

01;13;01;19 - 01;13;23;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You talk so egocentric about how you just might be the next coming Jesus Christ, but in fact, you're fucking boring. And I acted, I faked it, I just nodded and smiled and you know, and Ned does the same thing he does the entire time. He nods and he smiles and he tells her,

01;13;23;23 - 01;13;45;04
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I was the best. And you loved it. You loved every second of it. You loved everything. You can't lie to me because I'm Ned. Meryl, and there is no one that will ever be greater than me. And there's no time that you've ever spent on this planet that could ever be better than with me, Ned and Meryl. She leaves him in his birthing canal and storms inside while he screams.

01;13;45;04 - 01;14;06;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You know, I mean, it's just like Star Trek to come on, but he's just yelling. You loved it psychotically, like an angry jock outside of a kegger. When a girl, there's a Bud Light in his face. You love it. You loved every second of it. You love me. Not even just accentuating that. He's such a great lover. It's just you loved me.

01;14;06;18 - 01;14;31;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You loved the experience. You loved being around me. Because I am the best. I am the best.

01;14;31;28 - 01;15;01;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Something that he can't get over. He can't get past the fact that other people can't see this greatness. His psychotic breakdown, that he is God, you know, other people view and they're seeing this and they're feeling whoa. They're feeling shame. Shirley is heartbroken. Shirley loved Ned. She wanted nothing more than the reality that he made for her, that he would lie and spin all these webs, that things are going to be beautiful and we're going to have this wonderful, nice sunset, picturesque Van Gogh, starry, starry night.

01;15;01;07 - 01;15;24;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And every day you wait and wait and wait for a liar. Every day you wait and wait and wait for somebody that has gaslighted you and made you into a broken nothing mess. And then they appear like they're gone. What do you do outside of sharing how you truly feel? And what do you do when the person doesn't care and that's where we're at with Ned, because he's a man on a mission, and this is just something that's beneath him.

01;15;24;03 - 01;15;47;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He is convinced you loved it. You loved every minute of it. You loved it. And that's all he cares about, because that's what his recognition of reality is. You love it. You love me. And I am a number one. The Duke king of New York. I'm that guy personally, for making escape from New York references. I'm more of a brain.

01;15;47;06 - 01;15;56;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I'm the brain. Just saying.

01;15;56;15 - 01;16;15;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
For one person, this is a crucial moment in their reality that is nothing but hate and pain and woe and a scab being ripped. But for Ned, it's just swimming. For Ned, it's getting wet. It's taking a dip. And he must progress forward, because nothing matters more than to getting home. Because his wife is there and everything is happening.

01;16;15;02 - 01;16;33;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
His kids are just hanging out, playing tennis. They're waiting for him. It's Sunday, they'd like to have Sunday meals together and everything is going to be picturesque and perfect. And now we move into chapter nine and if this was the inferno, this would be moving into hell. This is when Ned has a meeting with Virgil. Sort of. This is the public pool.

01;16;33;12 - 01;16;53;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This is finally coming down to the broken nature of all the things he stood up against, all the things that he thought he was better than, all the things that made him a God at this point. Now, that is a commoner that is forced to go to the public pool. His last stretch of getting home, the one thing that stands between his house and it costs a mere $0.50 to get inside.

01;16;53;09 - 01;17;10;24
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But mind you, this man is wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks so he can't really functionally do anything again, as he did with the child. He begs and he barters, attempting to get in. But the harsh realization of everyday life is nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares if you don't have money. Nobody cares if you don't have a place to stay, and nobody cares if you don't have food.

01;17;10;24 - 01;17;31;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Nobody cares. Nobody cares about anything. That takes us back to the sad and brutal realization of what humanity is. It's a bunch of people that are obsessed with false achievements and stupid products and things that don't actually matter, instead of their own achievements, and looking at your neighbor and seeing if they're doing well enough, seeing the people around you are doing well enough.

01;17;31;03 - 01;17;51;09
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Taking care of other people, loving other people, having compassion, having a thought your own singular thought about other people that is demeaned. As a common man, he's forced to shower before he can enter the public pool. He's forced to beg somebody that he knew in a previous life for $0.50 to get inside, and he has to wash his feet.

01;17;51;09 - 01;18;11;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that's something I thought was really unique, that he is degraded. He is put down on to our level. And by our level I mean the average man. I mean, if some billionaire is listening to death by DVD, by a t shirt, for God's sakes. Come on. Hey, help us out a little bit. This shit isn't free. The average person has to stand in line.

01;18;11;11 - 01;18;29;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The average person then has to deal with the mundane, brutal nature of what life is. The boring essence of life. There are no get out of jail free cards for us. You can't pay your way out of getting in trouble or drunk driving or speeding tickets. The average person doesn't get to cut going to the movie theater. We don't get the box seats at concerts.

01;18;29;27 - 01;18;49;02
Harry-Scott Sullivan
We don't get to shake hands with Mick Jagger and meet the Rolling Stones when they play Our Town for $190 for the worse ticket available in the back bleachers, seats of a stadium. No, the average person doesn't get to have those things. This is something that is elite. This is something that is given to those that don't seem to care about the others.

01;18;49;02 - 01;19;08;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And I'm using that as a reference for an admiral, because it truly is something that is a constant theme from chapter one to where we're at now. This man has not been able to have even a conversation with somebody that doesn't turn to him talking about how great he is. So he doesn't have a concept about anybody else's woe, anybody else's pain, anybody else's feelings.

01;19;08;12 - 01;19;30;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So he's degraded and forced through the circus of being average to the circus of mediocrity, the circus of what all of us normal people have to deal with, until finally he can jump into an ultra crowded pool. Everywhere he's been has been pristine and upper class and rich and beautiful, and it's had the greatest filtration systems. You could drink the water out of the swimming pools.

01;19;30;23 - 01;19;54;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's just great. And now he's in a chlorine filled piss and shit pool with 800 other townees inside of it, lifeguards blowing whistles left and right. It's pure confusion. Anarchy, chaos. It is anxiety. And we're reaching a point where maybe where he's realizing that he isn't what it all seems to be. He isn't cut out to be this golden God.

01;19;54;03 - 01;20;10;01
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He's got to deal with the common folk. He's got to deal with the poor. He's got to deal with the people he possibly could have wronged. And he struggles his way through the pool. They call it the East River crawl. It's where you throw your hand in front of yourself and just try and push trash out of your face, like you're swimming through the East River, which is funny.

01;20;10;02 - 01;20;29;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Prior to taking this role, Burt Lancaster had a disdain for being wet. He couldn't stand even swimming when he was a child of youth, he was stuck under a pier, couldn't breathe completely, thought he was going to die, and since then have had a lifelong hatred of swimming and being wet, and his children would describe him as a pretty jocular guy and would play in the pool with him.

01;20;29;15 - 01;20;48;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But by no means was he a swimmer. He actually took courses with the UCLA Olympic swim coach to figure out how to perfectly be a swimmer, which I guess is a testament to Burt Lancaster. He didn't want this to just look fake, and that's something really about him. He was an artist. He really was into something, having a message.

01;20;48;25 - 01;21;07;06
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that's what was important to this significant product and something that he was really proud of to the fact that the production company Columbia, Sam Spiegel, stepped out, and he ended up paying about $100,000 of his own money to keep production online, that he was proud of. The message that this movie was showing he was proud of the art.

01;21;07;06 - 01;21;26;20
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He thought it had integrity. And that speaks volumes on Burt Lancaster. So he exits the pool and he meets the couple that he hadn't met while he was going in. He begged from them to get the $0.50 to come inside of the pool. And at this point they've been enjoying watching him. They've had pleasure seeing how the mighty have fallen, and this is one of the most bitter scenes.

01;21;26;20 - 01;21;46;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And when things truly become cold now remind you this entire time, as we progress through the story, Ned has gotten colder and colder. He's caught a chill and he's been unable to really shake it. And now he's just freezing. I mean, the sun is still shining, it's still beautiful outside, and Ned just can't take it anymore. And two couples are standing and waiting for him.

01;21;46;21 - 01;22;10;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Two people that he seems to owe money to that are very angry about it, one of which is a somewhat kind husband who just attempts to speak to him and attempts to figure out what's going on. He seems to have the clue that everyone else does that they know something Ned doesn't know, and he's just baffled. They bring up his daughters and how rude they are, and how he's kept their names out of the newspaper when they've had a car accident.

01;22;10;19 - 01;22;30;24
Harry-Scott Sullivan
You know, like George W Bush, his daughters. It's a similar situation to something like that. And he just is baffled. He doesn't understand why people are attacking him while they're being rude to him. And then you're given the idea that he owes money, that he doesn't pay his debts, that for the last year, maybe two years from the last pool party, looks like three years.

01;22;30;29 - 01;22;58;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He's been out of circulation and has just not existed. You're given this idea when he encounters his mistress and is attempting to circumnavigate through all of his problems, that his wife owned everything, that his wife's name was on the lease, she was the money. And that whatever has happened has left him completely devastated because one, he was a misogynist, a sociopath and a psychopath and absolutely doesn't seem to care about anything except himself on the front facing.

01;22;58;03 - 01;23;16;15
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And this beautiful notion that I have things. Look at how proud I am. Look at all the things I have. Look at how great I am, when in actuality you have nothing but a broken home and a basket full of lies. And then again, driving the point that he doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't seem to recognize and realize what's going on.

01;23;16;15 - 01;23;35;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So at the city pool, these people that he has wronged, there are people that seem to own a market from town. One man talks about having a restaurant and how Ned would come in, and he could count on him having a couple drinks and a hamburger, that he's the only louse they've ever had. He's the only deadbeat they've ever had that everyone else manages to pay their bills but him.

01;23;35;03 - 01;23;58;27
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So these things are starting to connect. This loneliness, this emptiness that he can't even have a fan base with the local people. He can't even have a fellowship. And the, the, the lower class average Americans can't even look up to him. I'd say like Donald Trump, but unfortunately it's a psychotic following that still preys to the mass of this ludicrous Nazi, so I can't even make that allegory.

01;23;59;02 - 01;24;20;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
What a fucking shame. Really. Like, what a fucking shame. But he takes it and he takes it with such utter confusion, he doesn't understand why anyone would have something negative to say about his perfect daughters. He doesn't understand why anyone would have anger to say about his wife, because in his mind and his concept of reality, he's done everything perfectly and there's been no fault he's done nothing.

01;24;20;10 - 01;24;42;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But Ray's respectable, wonderful grade A white Americans. And that's the dream, right? That's the whole thing. We we're upper class. Everything's perfect. And we're going to go to Yale. And don't worry about it when you get home, if you don't want to be a lawyer, you can just take the yard out, enjoy yourself. Don't worry about it. We'll have the servants take care of things.

01;24;42;29 - 01;25;03;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's this whole concept, this whole non reality where you don't function, where you don't work for anything, where you don't have any goals, where you don't have any pride. And I don't mean that in the sense of working is going to fucking a grocery store every single day of your life and making slave wages that you can't even live on, and dying eventually.

01;25;03;17 - 01;25;30;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, working for a goal or working for a better tomorrow for yourself. Or maybe the world. I mean, not everyone's going to be a Nobel Prize winning scientist, but hey, write a story, make some art, do something for yourself. That's the whole driving force, you know, do something in this existence, this short time that you're given to be in reality and your reality and everyone's reality and the shared consensus of whatever the fuck reality may be, do something that, pleases you.

01;25;30;23 - 01;25;47;08
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But if you're involving other people, you have to. If you're a family man, if you have a wife, if you have children, you can't just have a reality. And I'm going to do this, and this is me, and I'm a god, and I'm going to jump out every single day and stick my dick in absolutely everything because, hey, yeah, that's what I can do.

01;25;47;08 - 01;26;08;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I know how to do it. There's no reality. There's no life, there's no passion. You just. Yeah, you're fulfilling a circle. You're just circle jerking. Let's use that as a term. It's just one big infinite circle jerk. Nothing really is productive and nothing really happens. And then you die. Ned seems to be in the cycle. This infinite circle jerk of I just.

01;26;08;22 - 01;26;29;11
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I gotta do it. I gotta do it because that's what you do, and that's how things are done. And it's confronted truly with the ghost of his past, like Ebenezer Scrooge at the pool. At the public pool. Because these people not only know who he is as some rich fuck as some big one percenter, as somebody that's always looked down on other people, that's never had time for the common folk.

01;26;29;11 - 01;26;46;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But they also look on him now as a common person, as a commoner that's below them. But the the equation has completely changed, the tables have flipped, and we are realizing and seeing what the common person thinks of Ned Merrell, what all of the people think of Ned Merrill. We go back to chapter one. Is this how everyone thought of him?

01;26;46;24 - 01;27;10;17
Harry-Scott Sullivan
The the oh so nice friends? Are they just showing concern because they know he's broken? Because they know that Ned has gone insane and there's nothing that anyone can do about it who knows? But what we are shown, and the stark reality and the brutal, rude nature of reality is that the lesser class, the lower class, the bottom class, they have disdain for anyone else in power.

01;27;10;17 - 01;27;30;28
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And it's it's a almost a tribal show. You get to understand and see collectively that these people all feel disdain because Ned not just Ned, but that 1% people like Ned have wronged them. People like Ned are the reason things aren't good, because people like Ned only care about themselves and are only stuck in the situation where they care about themselves.

01;27;30;28 - 01;27;53;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There's no diplomacy. There's nothing beautiful about it there absolutely is an inclusive nature. When you're rich, when you're successful and you're beautiful, you're only surrounding yourself with rich and successful, beautiful people. And the rest of the world becomes a false reality that you just can't acknowledge or recognize anymore. That's where Ned is. He can't deal with this. He can't take what these people are saying to him.

01;27;53;14 - 01;28;17;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So he flees and he literally runs up a giant hill, hurts himself, injures himself to escape the situation. He can't deal with the the the idea that these people don't recognize and see him as a golden deity. For once, the things people say to him seem to have some sort of effect. They seem to stir and cause any form of emotion they strike and they cause anger, confusion.

01;28;17;22 - 01;28;37;21
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He's absolutely baffled. There's just no sense to any of this. He just can't see what other people realize. He's broken. He runs away and this is finally over the hill. We've passed the eight miles and he's heading home. We finish the river. Lucinda. We've gone through all the heights and all the lows we've encountered, the natives we've explored.

01;28;37;21 - 01;29;04;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that was one of the big points for Ned. He wanted to be an explorer. He wanted to come over new territory. So really, I mean, you could even, like, throw this in with a comparison of a heart of darkness. I mean, it's really somebody going up river and, like, let's strip Apocalypse Now from this and just talk about Heart of Darkness, what you've got with the narrator and their reach and their search into finding Kurtz is the deepness of their soul, is un turning every single rock and stone.

01;29;04;12 - 01;29;27;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And the bitter utmost nature of being alone, not lonely. And what we realize and what we discover with Burt Lancaster's Ned Merrill is he is devastatingly alone, that he has done nothing but fabricated his own reality. Because we get to his house, gates are covered with rust. He can't break past. He finally gets inside and it begins pouring down rain.

01;29;27;29 - 01;29;42;12
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That cloud from chapter two, that ugly cloud that was called out, finally comes over his head and starts bursting down rain and thunder. And he is stuck and despair.

01;29;42;15 - 01;30;03;10
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He is stuck in the absolute bottom level of hell. At this point, he's banging on the door to his house. There's no salvation. There's no way of getting inside. He can't. He's struggling and he's cold. And what you slowly start to realize is the dismay that this house is in. Everything's falling apart and everything is ugly and it's overgrown.

01;30;03;12 - 01;30;25;18
Harry-Scott Sullivan
It's not been painted, it's not been cleaned, the windows are broken, and we focus in on the broken window and it lets us examine the true nature of not only Ned Merrill's home, but Ned Merrill's soul. Empty, lonely, and everything has been stripped and sold and auctioned off away to other people. Because he never once had his own idea, he never once had his own concept of the soul.

01;30;25;26 - 01;30;50;29
Harry-Scott Sullivan
He never once had any grasp of human nature. He lived specifically to go through the throes he lived, just as he acted. I mean, let's look at Burt Lancaster as an actor and something I discussed earlier in the show of his nonstop heroic tough guy roles, something he later on had disdain for. That's what Ned Merrill is just a tough guy role, but this person never had disdain for it.

01;30;50;29 - 01;31;19;14
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Ned Merrill actually felt they were the primordial essence of man. What mattered, what needed to be done. I have done everything possible. I have great kids. My kids love me. I've done everything for them. All I ever did was worked for them. So they obviously have to love me because I did things for them, but not loved them, not loved anyone, not shown any compassion of the nature of compassion, not showing any absolution and true love.

01;31;19;15 - 01;31;48;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This is a story of emptiness, loneliness and madness. The swimmer, 1968 screenplay by Eleanor Perry, directed by Frank Perry. Some scenes by Sydney Pollack, short story by John Cheever. It's one hell of a ride. This truly is a gem. This is a beautiful movie and a near-perfect movie. This is a movie where the message matters more than the story.

01;31;48;19 - 01;32;08;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
This is a movie where the feeling matters more than what you're presented and shown. But unfortunately, there are a lot of dense people out in this world, and it has never been a favorite. It's a quote unquote lost movie. We can be so thankful for Grindhouse and Bob Murawski and company that have kept this title alive and have rereleased it.

01;32;08;06 - 01;32;37;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
But what we're dealing with here truly is a late era, big budget, massive company. Columbia produced exploitation film. But this isn't like maniac. This isn't like New York Ripper. This isn't like Suspiria. This is something different. And the subtle nature and the growth and how each chapter grows and each chapter starts to present a different form. Each chapter takes a different shape.

01;32;37;05 - 01;33;02;19
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Each story, almost like an anthology, separates itself and allows you to be exposed to who Ned Merrill actually is, to break down the God. That's what the beauty and just the amazing nature of the swimmer is just one hell of a movie. A big budget movie that just doesn't seem to have the attention with the exploitation and horror crowd that you'd think it would.

01;33;02;19 - 01;33;35;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, you have so many people that rave and love like God got Clive Barker so genius. I could use a Stephen King. I just, I love him, I think he's so great. Well, watch The Swimmer. Okay? I won't insult you. Watch The Swimmer. I'm not going to say that one thing is lesser than the other, but when you sit down and you watch Creepshow, when you watch anthology films, when you watch things like NCIS and whatever, whatever with Christopher Maloney, you want that shock you're excited about trying to figure out the case like Columbo.

01;33;35;00 - 01;34;05;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
That's the fucking best thing about Columbo. Each episode starts off with the crime and then the whole process is figuring out how Columbo solves the crime. That's the goddamn trick. That's the beautiful thing about The Swimmer. That's what makes this movie money. It's a bear, baby. It's a fucking bear. It's money, the swimmer. It's money. Because each layer that you progressively get to, each time you take a step with this character, and each time he goes to a different pool, it essentially is a step.

01;34;05;11 - 01;34;24;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
So it's like the entire movie is getting somewhere. It's going somewhere. It's going on a journey. It's going to the top of the stairs. Each time Ned Merrill takes a step and you start feeling disdain and you start feeling disgust, and you start realizing the true nature of him. What you're actually doing is recognizing the nature of man, yourself, and everyone around you.

01;34;24;22 - 01;34;50;05
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Because unfortunately, Ned Merrill is the greatest personification of an American, of an American man, of a white American. This is Ned Merrill because he doesn't care. He doesn't care at all about you. He doesn't care about your family. He doesn't care if you're sick. He doesn't care about black people. He doesn't care. That's Ned Merrill. It is a man who doesn't care.

01;34;50;12 - 01;35;12;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Which is funny, because you've got this whole crowd of people walking around and quoting things like, I'm a man who couldn't take it any more. I'm Travis Bickle. It's the same personification, and it's scary. It's not something to think of as a hero. Travis Bickle, Tyler Durden, Alex from A Clockwork Orange these aren't heroes. They're people that couldn't even feel the slightest bit of empathy.

01;35;12;13 - 01;35;38;26
Harry-Scott Sullivan
People that were so stuck in their own reality that they couldn't see the way the sun set. People like Ned Merrill, Burt Lancaster and The Swimmer, 1968. The last chapter is Ned Merrill returning home at the end of his journey, he finally makes the eight miles. He finally finds everything broken and lost. Nothing is. He remembers. Nothing is his reality.

01;35;38;29 - 01;36;01;25
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And that's just the way it is. You focus and you spend so much time on those good years and those good times and all those things that made your life without the recognition of the people or the thought. All these things like tears and rain. God damn you, Ridley Scott, God damn you, Blade Runner. But yeah, time to die.

01;36;01;25 - 01;36;24;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
I mean, really, what's left? That that's what the end of this movie is. It's the broken thoughts. It is somebody that is coming to terms and realizing that they're not God, that they are not anything and really is anyone. Is anyone anything? You've got your dreams and your hopes and your aspirations. But the thing is, that's not what you are and not your reality.

01;36;24;07 - 01;36;45;07
Harry-Scott Sullivan
And you've got to work through whatever that is to figure out who you are or you end up dying. Just some carbon copy of something else. Just some hallmark card. They were a good man. They were nice. A generic non statement. Ned Merrill, he faked it the entire way. He faked it until he thought it made it. But in actuality, there's nothing.

01;36;45;07 - 01;37;05;22
Harry-Scott Sullivan
There's nothing but emptiness. And the inevitable return to emptiness. He faked it until he thought he made it. And there is nothing. There is nothing for him. At the end of the day, he's got an empty home of things that were sold at auction and no family, no life, no wife. But the concept of I'm a God, broken and lost and the rain.

01;37;05;28 - 01;37;26;16
Harry-Scott Sullivan
What happens to those thoughts? What happens to those memories? What happens to those people? Where do they go? Where does does Ned just return back into the woods as he appeared so briskly at the beginning of the movie, diving into a pool full of life, full of ego, full of concepts of love and sex, and how rich and wonderful he was.

01;37;26;22 - 01;37;52;03
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Does he just disappear, is broken and despondent? Does he just go with disdain into nothingness and seep into the void? What we're left with is all of these questions, and we have ultimately the thought and the construct that Ned has never known anything. What we've gotten is a story of pain while with his mistress. As she pushes him away, Ned says something to the effect of what's wrong with the sun?

01;37;52;03 - 01;38;03;13
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Why isn't it warm anymore? He tells her nothing has turned out the way I thought it would be.

01;38;03;16 - 01;38;33;23
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Well, unfortunately, that's life. That's reality, but not the reality that he chose for himself. Ned Merrill, a man constantly lost. Ned Merrill, a man who can't recognize the future. Ned Merrill, a man haunted by the ghosts of what were and what could have been. The ashtray is full and the bottle is empty. Thank you for listening to death by DVD.

01;38;33;25 - 01;38;37;00
Harry-Scott Sullivan
Until next time. Be pleasant.