Ep. 5’s Black Mass segment skewers Hillary Clinton’s private email scandal, mocking her "right-wing conspiracy" claims while exposing potential conflicts like Freddie Mac donations and China lobbying, then pivots to Andrew Clavin’s show, where he praises Black Mass—Johnny Depp’s FBI-protected mobster role—as a rebellion against authority akin to Satan’s defiance in Paradise Lost, contrasting it with the left’s anti-religious hypocrisy. Clavin ties gangster films’ appeal to moral ambiguity, from Cagney’s grapefruit-smashing to Bulger’s chaos, before teasing unsettling cultural critiques ahead. [Automatically generated summary]
Hillary Clinton went on Meet the Press last weekend to answer questions after it was explained to her what the press is, why she had to meet them, and why anyone would ask her questions when all she wants is to be appointed president now that it's her turn.
On Meet the Press, Mrs. Clinton had to explain yet again why, as Secretary of State, she sent official emails on a private server, even though she's already explained that she didn't send any classified materials, or if she did, they weren't classified at the time.
Or if they were, they weren't marked as classified, or if they were, it's an old story, and if it's not, it's a right-wing conspiracy.
Mrs. Clinton's responses to the Meet the Press interrogation were models of clarity and transparency, according to Mrs. Clinton, and many people agreed, judging by the avalanche of positive responses on Twitter, including this tweet that said, questions on Hillary Clinton's emails on this morning's Meet the Press, asked and answered, time to move on.
And another tweet that said, questions on Hillary Clinton's emails on this morning's Meet the Press, asked and answered, time to move on.
Or yet another tweet that put it this way, questions on Hillary Clinton's emails on this morning's Meet the Press, asked and answered, time to move on.
When observers wondered if Mrs. Clinton had coordinated these Twitter responses in a shabby and clumsy attempt to sway public opinion, Mrs. Clinton replied, that question has been asked and answered.
It's time to move on.
Now, speaking personally, I feel the Clinton email scandal is trivial nonsense.
It's not like Mrs. Clinton lied about whether the emails were subpoenaed by Congress, and it's not like she had her server professionally wiped clean before turning it over to authorities.
All right, maybe it is kind of like that.
But shouldn't we give Mrs. Clinton the benefit of the doubt?
Just because as a U.S. Senator, she helped block attempts to regulate the disastrous mortgage giant Freddie Mac after Freddie made a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation, or helped upstate New York real estate developers win building approvals after they gave a donation,
or lobbied China on behalf of a major fiber optic company after they gave the foundation a huge donation, that doesn't mean she continued trading favors for cash while she was Secretary of State and her foundation was receiving donations from countries like Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and, oh man.
Wait, sorry, that's Oman.
After the Meet the Press interview, Mrs. Clinton complained that the scandal had been caused by racist Republicans who were hounding her because she's black.
Or if she's not black, they're hounding her because she's a woman or maybe she's an Indian or anyway, she's one of those things where people aren't allowed to ask you questions.
Mrs. Clinton said in future, she would be sure to update the public whenever her explanations changed and would eventually become so transparent that no one would be able to see her and she could quietly slip away.
But even as Mrs. Clinton spoke, investigators uncovered yet another mysterious email on her cell phone, this one reading only, trigger warning.
I'm Andrew Clavin, and this is the Andy Claven show.
We are back.
It's yet another day.
I have no idea what idea what day it is, but it's somewhere in the middle of the week.
We have changed locations.
We are now broadcasting from an underground missile silo that just by coincidence happens to be near Matthew McConaughey's farm.
They're laughing as obscure interstellar jokes are very big with this crowd.
But this is, you know, this is still a shortened version of the show.
It's a work in progress.
It's going to get longer.
We'll have interviews.
We'll have a bigger studio.
And it's a work in progress for me, too, because I've spent my life as a novelist, as a writer.
And the whole thing about being a writer, one of the actual reasons I became a writer, is you get to perfect everything before you bring it to the public.
Out here, I'm talking away like I know what I'm doing, and I'm a little nervous about that.
And I've been reviewing the previous shows to see if I can improve things.
And one of the things I noticed is that when we start the show, I kind of ramble on like this a little bit.
And I've always managed every single time to be offensive.
And I've begun to think that maybe it's me.
I think the last time, the last time I think I was offending Jews, I think, which is kind of a waste of time because there's like, talk about five guys named Mo.
There just aren't enough Jews to go around.
Family Secrets Revealed00:12:09
I think, you know, it's like, you know, who said that?
Who is that talking?
It's like three guys.
So next time I'm going to try and move on to offending women, because then you get like half the population in one fell swoop.
But this is a conservative show about the culture.
A conservative look at the culture, and that means the way we live and the way we relate to each other, but also the arts.
And today we're going to talk about the movies, which is something I'm far more interested in than politics anyway.
I spent the weekend catching up on movies.
I've been traveling, so I had to get back in the game.
And I saw a couple of DVDs.
I saw Unfriended, which is a kind of cute little horror show, very watchable.
It's just the entire show takes place on somebody's computer, and it's what I call a one-by-one movie, which is where the kids get killed off one by one.
And it's a good showcase for young talent.
And it was, like I said, it was very watchable, very entertaining.
And then I saw A Walk Among the Tombstones, which is based on a mystery story by the great mystery writer Lawrence Block.
And, you know, it's funny, the Hollywood wisdom is they don't make detective shows and police shows anymore, police movies anymore, because the going wisdom is that they're not big enough for the movies because the detective, the main character, is just an observer.
So they've kind of been relegated to TV, which tells these mystery stories very well.
And this was an old-fashioned mystery story, and because it's Larry Block, it was really well plotted.
But actually, the Hollywood wisdom is right.
It kind of did feel like a TV show.
The big movie, the most modern movie I saw, was Black Mass.
And that's what I want to talk about.
Black Mass is the story of James Whitey Bulger, who was a mob boss who just absolutely terrorized South Boston during the 80s.
Just a violent monster of a guy, but he did it.
He was able to do it because he had become an FBI informant.
And so the FBI was actually protecting him, feeling that they were getting enough information from him to make it worthwhile to allow him to go about killing people.
And so it's really the story not just of this violent killer, but also of the FBI agents who enable him.
And I recommend it if you love gangster movies, as I love gangster movies.
It's a really, really good movie, but it's extraordinarily violent and extraordinarily dark, and it's not going to be a musical comedy anytime soon.
And if you are disturbed by that, you probably shouldn't go see it.
It is, without question, it's Johnny Depp's best performance in a long time.
I have this crazy Johnny Depp theory that I will put before you.
I have no proof of this theory.
I was explaining this to Jeremy, our producer, a couple of days ago.
I believe that Johnny Depp's entire career has been blighted by watching the performance of Marlon Brando in Mutiny on the Bounty.
And people have forgotten about this, but this was a huge deal back in the 60s.
Was that Ping Me?
Oh, it was.
All right.
This was a huge deal back in the sound.
There it is.
Back in the 60s.
The original Mutiny on the Bounty, which is based on the true story of taking over the bounty, was a great, great black and white film made in 1935.
It is one of the classics of old-time Hollywood.
And one day we'll talk about it more on stuff I like.
But it starred Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian, who seizes, he's the first mate, he seizes the ship from the Martinette Captain Bly, who was played by another fantastic forgotten actor named Charles Lawton.
And Clark Gable is not as remembered today as old stars like Bogart and John Wayne, but in his time, he was, they called him the king.
He was the king of Hollywood.
And I mean, Judy Garland actually sang a famous song to him in a movie while he was still active in Hollywood.
And she was in another movie without him in it.
Anyway, he was absolutely the standard of male virility.
And he married a movie star named Carol Lombard.
And somebody once asked her, what's it like making love to the king?
And Lombard said, well, I just close my eyes and pretend I'm with Clark Abel.
And which for anyone who's actually had sex, that's actually a pretty profound line.
Anyway, so he brought this incredible bristling masculinity that is rolled.
guy's taken across a ship.
He says, Captain, I'm taking this ship because you've killed these men and the ship is...
30 years later, Marlon Brando, who was then the new standard of masculinity, his brooding, dark, overly muscled guy, he made this film.
And the film, the filming was an absolute disaster.
Way, way over budget.
Part of the show takes place in, the story takes place in Tahiti.
They went to Tahiti.
The cast was running around chasing the native girls.
Brando actually married, carried off one of the native girls and married her.
The movie comes out, no possibility could ever make its money back.
And Brando has turned in this performance as Fletcher Christian, the Clark Abel part, as an absolute fop.
I mean, he comes just this close to play.
He can't play him as actually gay because he has to fall in love in the picture, but he's like, Captain Bly, I am going to take, you are a mean man and I'm going to take this ship away from you and I'm going to sell it myself if it's the last thing I do.
I mean, it was like Truman Capote starring in Mutiny on the Valley.
It was like Truman Capote had taken over the ship.
I believe that Johnny Depp saw this movie at some impressionable age and he just decided that the ultimate profundity was turning each character into a fop.
So he has that pirate Jack Sparrow who comes in to, what's that, the Pirates of the Caribbean.
And Jack Sparrow comes in, does the same thing.
It's like, hello, I'm a pirate.
And then he has the Mad.
Wouldn't it be interesting if the Mad Hatter were effeminate?
Wouldn't it be interesting if Willy Wonka were a feminine?
He just keeps playing the same Tanto.
Tanto is a, you know, play Tanto as a strange, eccentric character.
And then every now and again, just as his career is about to go down the drain, he turns in a kind of male, you know, gangster performance, public enemies, or in this case, in black mass as Whitey Bulger.
And it really is an excellent performance.
He really seems to understand what evil is like.
He plays it with these blank, inward-turning eyes, as total narcissism.
I have a scene from it.
Anyone who's seen the mobster picture, Goodfellows, remembers the famous scene where Joe Pesci draws Rayleigh out of laughing at one of his jokes and then turns around and says, what am I, a clown?
What are you laughing at me?
I'm a clown.
And this is a very similar scene in which the gangster Bulger is talking to an FBI agent that he's corrupted, and he starts to ask him about the steak that the FBI agent has barbecued and why it tastes so good.
So I'll listen in to Johnny Depp taunting this FBI agent.
And Morris, what did you marinate this steak because it's out of this world?
You're killing me with sadness.
It's a family secret.
Come on, you gotta tell me that.
Come on, you could do it.
What's the family secret recipe?
It's ground garlic.
A little bit of soy.
That's it?
Yeah, that's it.
I thought it was a family secret.
It's a recipe.
No.
No.
You said to me, this is a family secret, and you gave it up to me.
Boom.
Don't look to John, because he's not going to help you.
You spill the secret family recipe today.
Maybe you spill about me tomorrow.
Is that something?
Maybe that's a possibility.
I was just saying.
You were just saying.
Just saying gets people sent to Allenwood.
Just saying could get you buried real quick.
Just saying.
Could get you buried real quick.
So he really is really a good performance.
I was looking up, after I saw this, I was looking up what people had written about it.
And there's article after article.
I think this happens every time a gangster movie comes out, article after article.
Why do we love gangster movies?
Why do we love gangster movies?
There was one in The New Yorker that was like a parody of the New York area.
It was this psychological, cultural meandering about why we love gangster stories.
But we all know why we love gangster stories.
I mean, Goodfellas is about, remember the opening from Goodfellas?
I wrote, I couldn't find the opening from Goodfellas online.
I couldn't find the actual clip.
But here's the opening monologue from Goodfellas, just very briefly.
As far back as I can remember, this is the young Releota looking at the gangsters.
I always wanted to be a gangster.
To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States.
To me, it meant being somebody in a neighborhood full of nobodies.
They weren't like anyone else.
They did whatever they wanted.
They double park in front of the Hydron.
Nobody ever gave them a ticket.
In the summer, when they played cards all night, nobody ever called the cops.
We love gangster movies because they're full of gangsters.
They're full of guys who do whatever they want.
They're men.
They take what they want.
They take any woman they want.
They kill anybody who gets in their way.
They are the guys that men secretly and not so secretly want to be, and women secretly and not so secretly want to fall in love with.
And this just kind of boggles the minds of these high-class journalists, and they can't accept that we would want to be anything so awful because in real life, of course, gangsters are terrible people, and nobody wants to live that life.
You know, when I was in college, it reminds me of when I was in college, which is back in the Jurassic Age.
I was an English major, and we all English majors had to read Paradise Lost.
And Paradise Lost is one of the greatest poems in the English language, second to John Milton, second only to Shakespeare as a poet.
And of course, it tells the story of the original sin.
It tells the story, first of Satan being expelled from heaven, and then of Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden.
And everybody who reads it, especially undergrads who've never read it before, are struck by the fact that Satan is really appealing.
There's this really famous scene, one of the most famous scenes in all of literature, when Satan is hurled from heaven into hell, and he kind of shakes his fist at God, and he says, well, all right, then good, I'm in hell.
At least I'm a free man, I'm a free demon in hell, and at least I'm in charge.
And it has one of the most famous lines in English poetry.
He says, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
And when undergrads read this, every single one of them, and I was no exception, I'm ashamed to say, writes an essay.
The essay they write on Paradise Lost is, Why is Satan the Tragic Hero of Paradise Lost?
And I wrote in my essay, I still remember this to this day, I wrote, he's the hero because anybody who takes on, who rebels against an overwhelming force is admirable.
That's admirable, even if the overwhelming force is the overwhelming force of good.
And I always remember this.
My professor, who was a famous Milton professor, wrote on the essay, that's moral applesauce.
And I looked at it and I thought, well, of course it's moral applesauce.
I'm not making a moral point.
There are things that we admire that have no moral weight at all.
Beauty in women, strength in men, independence.
These are things we admire, but they can be used for evil, all of them.
And so, I mean, that's because we're all descendants of Satan.
We all feel it would be better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
The human heart is not a moral country.
And that's why our founders said that in order to be free, you have to have religion.
Every single one of them said this is a constitution made for a religious people, because without that self-governing force of relationship with God, you can't be free.
And so the left now, which is really amping up its war on Christianity, trying to stamp it out wherever it appears, they think that's going to make them free.
They think it's going to make them free of the inner constraints that religion imposes on you.
But in fact, of course, it's only going to require that the government become more and more powerful until we're crushed by an outer slavery instead of inner moral constraints.
Why We Love Gangster Movies00:04:19
So that's why we love gangster movies.
I like to end with things I like.
Movies, books, computer games, anything.
And since we're talking about mobster movies, I had to go back to the original gangster movie, at least one of the original gangster movies.
Right around 1931, there's a little dispute about when these came out.
Two films came out that were among the first gangster movies.
One was called Public Enemy and one was called Little Caesar.
Both of them turned their stars into major stars and they turned Warner Brothers into the great gangster movie studio that it became.
Little Caesar starred Edward G. Robinson, who then became a huge star.
And those who don't remember Edward G. Robinson probably remember Bugs Bunny going, yeah, see, I'm a gangster, see?
That was Bugs' imitation of Edward G. Robinson.
Little Caesar dates.
1930 is a long, long time ago, and it dates.
Public Enemy, however, which starred James Cagney and shot him to the top of the star list, is as great today as it ever was.
It is an absolutely riveting depiction of Prohibition turning a guy into a gangster.
One of the things that's interesting, by the way, especially for us who don't believe, those of us who don't believe in a lot of government regulation, it was Prohibition that turned him into a, that turned the first mobsters into mobsters, into powerful mobsters.
With Whitey Bulger, this is left out of the movie, but it was bussing.
It was bussing that united South Boston in anger against the government and turned them into this closed community that Bulger could take advantage of and terrorize like that.
So here's the famous scene.
I mean, in any list of 100 famous scenes from all movies of all time, this scene is in there.
It is one of the cruelest scenes in movies.
But this is the scene, this is before the Hayes Office.
These gangster movies were part of the reason the Hayes Office came into being because the movie studios were desperate to make a living during the Depression, so they just kept getting more and more sensational, and the Hayes Office kind of clamped down on that.
This is one of the cruelest scenes in movies, one of the most famous scenes in movies.
Jimmy Cagney as a gangster is living with his mall, along with another gangster who's living with his mom.
And he sits down to breakfast after a bad day.
I think he's already starting to fall in love with the glamorous Gene Harlow.
And all this poor woman played by Mae Clark wants is a domestic relationship with this guy.
And so they sit down to have a grapefruit over breakfast.
And this is what happens.
Can we play this method?
Go ready, Tom.
Did you get a drink in the house?
Well, not before breakfast, dear.
I didn't ask you for any lip.
I asked you if you had a drink.
I know, Tom, but...
Yeah, I wish that...
There you go, don't wish and stop again.
I wish you was a wishing well.
But I'd like to tie a bucket to you and sink it.
Maybe you found someone you like better.
So if you don't subscribe and you can't watch the video and you're just listening, he picks up the grapefruit and he smashes her in the face with it.
And William Wellman, the great director, he made the Oxbow incident and A Star Is Born.
He was a great early director.
He said that he put this scene in because he always wanted to do this to his wife.
And so instead of actually doing it to his wife, he put it in.
The legend is that Mae Clark's ex-husband used to come to the theater every day and watch just the scene.
Just watch the scene.
Cagney shoved the grapefruit into her face and then leave the theater.
But the point about this is that scene alone made Cagney a heartthrob.
The fact that he abused that girl, and it's such a cruel scene, she bursts into tears, she's such a sad little character, that made him a heartthrob with women, and it made him a star to men.
So whenever anybody asks you why people love gangster movies, that's why, folks, because that's who we are in our hearts.
And when we see it, we get to kind of wag our fingers and say that's evil, but to also enjoy it and participate in it.
All right, that's all I've got to say.
And we will be back again tomorrow with more disturbing reflections on everyday life.