Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

John Borman is a filmmaker.

The word is useful because for the last half century he's been writing, directing and

producing his own pictures, but it's a word that doesn't quite seem to encompass what he does.

To describe that properly, we need to look for other terms, something that would satisfy the

feeling that, yes, what's upon the screen was shot by him, one morning, or evening, with lamps and boom mics and polystyrene reflectors, but is also somehow archetypal, like it always happened, and might somewhere be happening now.

John Voigt and Bert Reynolds crashing down that river in deliverance, driven by instincts that can only be felt

once they've killed and feared to be killed. Lee Marvin and Toshira Mifune locked in

combat on that remote island in Hell in the Pacific, a place where words are useless and unnecessary.

The bizarre society of Zardos administered by a floating stone head that issues a cascade

of rifles from its mouth and urges its acolytes to punish the human race for its fecundity,

the blood-slaked visionary's an exhalibur.

The boy has drawn the sword.

The boy drew the sword.

If a boy has been chosen, a boy shall be king.

Yes!

They're mythos, and mental tests, they've been to be home.

They're myths, I suppose, and some of them are of Bourman's own making.

And that mythographic quality is even present in movies that are explicitly autobiographical,

pictures for which Borman has recreated, out in the world and then in the camera,

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