Episode 8: The History of Sound

We discuss The History of Sound by Oliver Hermanus, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2025

Autumn has fallen in New York and Charlene and Jackie celebrate by tumbling down the stairs of the Angelika straight into Oliver Hermanus’s Palme D’Or nominated The History of Sound.

A WWI (?), gay, heart wrenching tour de force starring mischievous scamp Josh O’Connor and former Phantom of the Opera Paul Mescal. Listen in as they discuss period filmmaking on a budget, the possible litigious wrath of Hanya Yanagihara, and what all this had to do with the “Stomp Clap Hey” music of Barack Obama’s first term

COMPLETE SHOW NOTES:

0:47 Autumn in New York ….rated the #1 creepiest age gap film of all time

3:00 Oliver Hermanus has in fact had multiple films at Cannes

6:22 “The jacket scene in Brokeback Mountain…oh my god”

12:52 The History Of Sound: a short story by Ben Shattuck 

18:22 Fat City: Both a film and a production company with a great logo 

20:00 The cover of the collection of stories is the same as the poster is the same as the cover of A Little Life, and they made Josh O Connor the HAND

23:53 Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Rationed Jolly Ranchers While Filming The History of Sound

26:00 Paul Mescal can sing!!!

36:54 The island the two characters visit is Malaga island, and the conflict they witness actually happened in 1912

38:35 Bury Your Gays is a literary trope which originated in the late 19th century, gained traction in the early 20th century, and which persists in modern media. The pattern of this trope’s usage states that in a narrative work (novels especially), which features a same-gender romantic couple, one of the lovers must die or otherwise be destroyed by the end of the story

43:02 The film began pre production five years ago -  “by the Thanksgiving of 2020, the script was done, ready to be sent to Mescal and O’Connor”

44:36 Indiewires Top 100 Movies of the 2020s So Far

48:22 The Tragedy of Stomp Clap Hey 

48:45 Every song in The History of Sound sounds like this 

49:50 When he started the newsletter for Trader Joe’s in the 1960s…he knew these images belonged to the public domain and were free to use. Sixty years later, Victorian art is still a mainstay of Trader Joe’s’ brand.

52:30 Chris Cooper on playing the older version of Paul Mescal: “Cooper contacted Mescal’s coach and “told him that once Paul was comfortable with it, to send me his work and I’ll try to match it.”

54:20 iPhone Face aka “Ben Affleck has a face that knows about emails”

58:22 Mary and Georges, one of the many tv shows starring Julianne Moore

1:00:15 The Ha Ha preview of The Mastermind

1:01 Daniel Day-Lewis ends 7-year retirement to act in his son's film

1:02:29 Joanna Hogg and Tilda Swinton: “The pair have been friends since childhood and collaborated on Hogg’s first short, Caprice (1986).”

1:05:12 The Baby Carriage in the Battleship Potemkin aka what the Angelika stairs are going to look like now that the second escalator is broken

Full List of Movies,TV Shows, and Plays Referenced in this Episode:

• Autumn in New York 

• You’ve Got Mail 

• The Whale 

• Brokeback Mountain

• The Brutalist 

• The English Patient

• The Talented Mr. Ripley

• Fat City

• The Silence of The Lambs

• Challengers 

• La Chimera

• The Crown

• The Mastermind

• Normal People

• Aftersun

• Brooklyn

• Billy Elliot

• All of Us Strangers

• Challengers 

• Mary and George 

• Big Little Lies 

• Rebuilding

• Anemone

• The Souvenir 

• The Souvenir Part II

• The Eternal Daughter

• Wildcat

• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

• The Battleship Potemkin

• Materialists 

• Anne of Green Gables

• The Farewell

• 12 Years a Slave

• Little Women

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