Episode 167 – The Warriors (1979)/Newsletter #78

A guy in a baseball uniform with full yellowy neck and face paint waves a bat manically.

The gangs of New York come together for a conclave, only for the charismatic leader Cyrus to be assassinated, and Coney Island’s Warriors to be falsely accused. Can they make it home before the rest of the city tries to kill them?

Joining us is a special guest, the writer and cartoonist Michael Kupperman, creator of Snake ‘n’ Bacon and author of All the Answers.

Starring Michael Beck, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, and Deborah Van Valkenburgh. Directed by Walter Hill. Written by Walter Hill and David Shaber, from Sol Yurick’s novel.

Welcome to the Mary Versus the Movies newsletter! CAN YOU DIG IT???

This week: 12/12/2024

EPISODE 167 – THE WARRIORS (1979)

The Warriors is loosely based on Xenophon’s military memoir, the Anabasis, about his trek from a disastrous mercenary job in Persia and flight back to the safety of the Mediterranean; along the way, he and his band of warriors encounter all sorts of strange peoples, until they finally arrive at the sea; in The Warriors, Persia is replaced with New York City, and “the Sea” is the beach at Coney Island. Along the way, the gang fights groups like The Baseball Furies, the Orphans, and the Lizzies, before finally going up against their false accusers, lead by the delirious David Patrick Kelly. Director and writer Walter Hill is trafficking in the mythic here, the action, dialogue, and acting are all heightened, not unlike the other film of his we’ve covered for the show, Streets of Fire.

Joining us is a special guest, the writer and cartoonist Michael Kupperman, creator of Snake ‘n’ Bacon and author of All the Answers. I’ve been a fan of his work and a mutual on social media with Michael for several years, and I’m so glad we finally got to talk to him about this movie.

Starring Michael Beck, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, and Deborah Van Valkenburgh. Directed by Walter Hill. Written by Walter Hill and David Shaber, from Sol Yurick’s novel.

HOLLWOOD AVALON – TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (2017)

We are joined with a special guest, Tim Ryan, the King of Janitors, for a watch of Michael Bay’s Arthurian epic, Transformers: The Last Knight, in which Mark Wahlberg teams up with a hot Oxford don who is apparently the last descendent of Merlin, and a selection of Autobots, to take on a corrupted Optimus Prime, using Excalibur. No, I’m not making this up. It’s a complete nonsense movie.

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, Anthony Hopkins, Stanley Tucci, Laura Haddock, Isabela Moner, Jerrod Carmichael, Tony Hale, Mitch Pileggi, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Gemma Chan, John Goodman, and Omar Sy.

This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies.

What else are we up to this week?

Mary: I’ve been overwhelmed with the holidays coming up, not to mention some family things going on, and some issues with work, so I haven’t been able to watch very much lately, but I did get a chance to rewatch The Grand Budapest Hotelfor the first time in a while. It’s hard for me to say which is my favorite Wes Anderson film, but this is certainly up there. In in the 1930s, a fictional European country is on the brink of being invaded, and a foppish hotel concierge is falsely accused of murder by the villainous offspring of a murdered noblewoman; the story is nested as being told by the concierge’s apprentice, now grown, relating the story to an author, who is in turn narrating the novel, now dramatized as the film we are watching.

Within all these layers of distance is a story which is surprisingly relevant, not only in 2014, when the film came out, but in 2024. It’s easy enough to watch the film as a pastiche of Ernst Lubitsch films, especially To Be Or Not To Be, his comedy about the Nazi invasion of Poland, but, like Lubitsch’s own films, there’s more going on than a farce about trying to outwit fascists (indeed, unlike that film, GBH is ultimately a tragedy). Early on, it’s made clear that the apprentice Zero is a refugee, presumably from somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa, and the racism he faces in this fictional 1930s country is the same that was and is faced by refugees from the same areas, not only in 2014, but ten years on. The flamboyant center of the film, M. Gustav, is an openly bisexual gigolo who puts all his faith and efforts into a type of sophistication and glamor that was already dying out; what connections he can draw upon early in the film, using charm and later money, are slowly eaten away at by the brutal forces taking over Europe in the 1930s, but it’s hard to watch now and not see a reflection of our own times. When Anderson wrote and directed the film a decade ago it was before Trump, but not before the earliest part of the war in Ukraine, the rise of the right elsewhere in the world, and the panic about immigration. It’s been a long ten years, and the world has grown darker in the meantime.

Dennis: Things have been crazy busy since we’ve come back. I did have an afternoon free to hike at Valley Green for a bit. Below are some sketches from that day. The top one is outside of the old Textile College (now Jefferson University) in Chestnut Hill. A view as walking on the stone wall outside while I think her younger sister yelled at her while their father walked on. Below that was a couple eating a meal on a rock in the middle of Wissahickon Creek.

I saw the Warriors my first year at Tyler School of Art (part of Temple) on a projection tv. I remember liking it, but I watched a lot of movies back then and I’m not sure if left much of an impression. I caught it later and loved the exaggerated cartoon elements of the gangs. I’ve never been one who needed realism in films. The more dreamlike the better as far as I’m concerned.

Pizza: It was looking like I would never eat pizza again. But then I was asked to come into work for 3 days (we normally work from home) and a group having a meeting next to us left a few boxes of pizza. I found a cold garlicky slice of margherita pizza. It was pretty good. I found out in Italy that it’s named after Margherita of Savoy, the Queen of Italy at the time and she preferred it because it featured the colors of the newly created Italian flag. Anyway I liked it. 3 out of 4 with a point off for the lack of more slices.

NEXT EPISODE: We ring in the holidays with the musical Scrooge.

Follow Us:

Twitter: @maryvsmovies

Instagram: @maryvsmovies

Threads: @maryvsmovies

Bluesky: @maryvsmovies

Mastodon: @maryvsmovies@mas.to

TikTok: @maryvsmovies

Tumblr: https://at.tumblr.com/maryversusthemovies

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MaryVsMovies

Letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/tlachtga/