Slate Money Goes to The Movies: The Harder They Come
Slate Money
Slate Podcasts
4.1 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to Slate Money Goes to the Movies, a miniseries in which Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and a different guest each week discuss popular business-themed movies.
The Wall Street Journal’s Vipal Monga joins Felix and Emily to talk about the Jamaican crime film, The Harder They Come. They discuss the mix between crime and music, what makes the movie good (and bad), and the film’s treatment of women.
Email: slatemoney@slate.com
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the harder they come episode of Slate Money goes to the movies. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm Felix Hammond of Axios. I'm here with Emily Peck also of Axios. Hi. Hi Emily and we're also here with |
| 0:25.4 | V-Pel monger of the Wall Street Journal. Hi V-PeePel. Hi V-Peepel you have |
| 0:30.4 | picked a 50-year low budget movie from Jamaica for us to watch this week. |
| 0:39.0 | What is it and why did you pick it? |
| 0:41.0 | The movies called The Harder They Come. it's the first feature film to come out of |
| 0:45.2 | Jamaica and I picked it because I think it has a lot to say about the music business today |
| 0:52.2 | even though it was made 50 years ago. |
| 0:54.0 | We are going to talk about whether or not there are parallels to today's music industry. |
| 0:58.7 | We're going to talk about the themes of the movie, the quality of the movie, the vibe of the movie. It's all coming up. the |
| 1:03.0 | the vibe of the movie, the vibe of the movie, |
| 1:04.5 | it's all coming up on Slate Money goes to the movies. |
| 1:09.5 | To rewind a little bit, we're watching this movie |
| 1:12.3 | that was made in what 1972 somewhere around there. a little bit violent, but he eventually manages to make a record, and eventually the record becomes popular, and the way it becomes popular is he does the 1972 Jamaican thing of like blowing up on |
| 1:36.0 | Tik-Tok which is apparently killing a bunch of policemen? |
| 1:38.7 | Becoming an outlaw hero just like Django I mean there's a clip from Jango in the movie. And that's what gets him up the charts. I mean, it's his, when he comes from the village to the city to Kingston, he wants to be be famous he wants to be rich and the only way he can get notoriety is by going outside the law because |
| 1:59.0 | If you watch the arc of the movie being inside the system crushes him. You can't make it inside. |
| 2:07.0 | Yeah, there's really no, I mean, it seems like the Jamaican economy just there's no real work to be done he kind of he tries his |
| 2:14.7 | best to find work he's really hungry I like the scene where he tries to steal I |
| 2:19.7 | think it's a mango or banana or something and like some woman's got a knife like right on his |
| 2:23.7 | wrist as he's trying to take the piece of fruit. Then he tries to he works for like a |
| 2:30.3 | preacher for a while preacher is the guy's name like they're really |
... |
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