Battling Butler / The General with Jamelle Bouie

Blank Check with Griffin & David

Blank Check Productions / Talkhouse

Tv & Film, Society & Culture, Comedy, Film Reviews

4.6 • 6.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2023

⏱️ 158 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of narrative cinema’s earliest training sequences, and one of cinema’s most famous trains - that’s right, we’re covering Buster Keaton’s 1926 films BATTLING BUTLER and THE GENERAL. Gentleman, scholar, and action movie aficionado Jamelle Bouie joins us to unpack this week’s double feature, providing some essential historical context for THE GENERAL’s unfortunate Civil War setting. Plus, Ben starts researching how one buys a train.

Guest Links:
Read Jamelle’s writing at The New York Times
Listen to Unclear and Present Danger
Subscribe to Unclear and Present Danger Patreon

This episode is sponsored by:
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Transcript

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0:00.0	music
0:22.0	There were two loves in his life. His engine and
0:25.6	the
0:27.6	cut to picture blank check podcast artwork. Oh great perfect there you go. You're
0:31.6	saying we're like a sweet heart sweet lady a little sweet heart and a
0:35.9	little framed picture. Absolutely Griffin. Thank you for that.
0:40.6	What do you do when you're looking for the quote there? There are quote like
0:46.0	like on a TV there's like the title cards. Yes.
0:50.0	I'm still I want I want a fucking tagline for one of these. This is what I was
0:55.3	searching for. I was like this must have had a tagline but I can't find one.
1:01.0	I when it's a fair quit like I feel like movie taglines have always existed.
1:06.8	Oh okay okay here I here's one but some of these it says like trade paper at.
1:13.2	Here's the one that's that seems to be okay semi-legit. The tale of a lad a
1:18.8	last and a locomotive. That's a fun tagline. Right and then there's another one that
1:23.0	is love locomotives and laughs that's what I'm looking for but then a lot of them are like
1:27.6	what they list as taglines are like his first united artist picture. Right that's
1:34.0	that's not really gonna you know maybe run to the figure. I just thought of one. What?
1:39.2	The South will ride again. Well truly. It is kind of the picture of this movie.
1:47.4	Oh boy. Hello everyone this is Blaine Check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin and David
1:53.5	no giggling David this is very serious happens. Pant giggle ever. Certainly not when talking about
1:58.4	Buster. Deadpan we need flat pans no land no breaking. Stone faces. Yes we're gonna talk
2:04.8	separately and not giggle. Out of respect to the great Buster Keaton. Blaine Check with
	...

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