S4E27: Bob le Flambeur

RIP Gunther von Hagens. It remains to be seen if his little hat will be displayed on his plastinated corpse in Bodyworlds for future generations.

I'm sorry but every time Abi does the french accent or tries to speak in french I burst out laughing. For some reason I find it extremely funny.

Guess "courtroom defendant sketch giantess vore" is gonna be my new discord display name if it fits

If the Guinness Book of World Records is to be believed, the first recorded use of a getaway car was in Spain in 1904. So based on what you said about "if you're early enough somebody has to come up with it," the innovation was probably not using a *fast* car, but using an automobile *at all*

To the tune of the Bob the Builder theme: "Bob le Flambeur, can he squander it? Bob le Flambeur, presumably yes"

Credited with a mononym, presumably so the viewer will go "wow, fresh off of writing Moby Dick?"

I've been reading quite a bit of noir lately. What I find interesting is how many American noir authors bomb in the US, but find wild success in France. Often the reason is, quite funnily- the more bleak it is, the less American audiences liked it. But the French loved it. There is a book of noir shorts called The Best American Noir of the Century that gives brief history on every author and lists various film adaptations of their works. Really recommend it to anyone interested in noir.

Jumping the turnstyle of death's mass transit system and getting instantly killed again by four hundred thousand cops

important question: has nova played CloverPit

Dans da clerb, on est tous fam.

Random thought bored at work, I feel like Glengarry Glen Ross is an interesting movie about masculinity that could make enough of a case for being a heist movie to be worth a pop. Also don't think of this as a movie recommendation, think of it as a good lead.

I watched Bob le Flambeur on TV in a hotel room in Beijing while on a school trip

Seven Samurai is older than this movie, right?

I be grungling

An interesting companion to this, (i.e. a proto-heist film from the same year, made early in the career of a celebrated director) would be Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. It's centred around a robbery at a racetrack.

I didn't have "Cumtown's Derek Chauvin bit in French" on my bingo card.

It's so seldom I can say anything nice about the United States, but it took me less than a minute to find Bob le Flambeur streaming on two different platforms. One of which is my local public library.

maybe its cuz im american but i dont understand the fench acorn/gland joke

I'd also be remiss not mentioning the modern remake of this movie, The Good Thief, which I found quite good. Featuring Nick Nolte at his most unintelligible, the regretted Tchéky Karyo, Saïd Taghmaoui whomst y'all may know as "every evil Arab military guy during the W Bush years of Hollywood (also that guy from La Haine)", an actual trans woman built like a brick shithouse, and a cameo by Emir fucking Kusturica.

French note : the idiom "papa gâteau" is actually a double entendre. On the one hand it does literally mean "cake daddy" and thus shares the same semantic universe as "sugar daddy", i.e. a person that's not interested in serious marriage but only flirting, courtship and sharing sweet things. But "gâteau" (or the shortened version "gaga") also means crazy, specifically the old age dementia kind of "crazy but harmless/nice". So in that sense, it's altogether not as predatory as maybe "sugar daddy" implies in English (or perhaps the predation is implied to be more on the young woman's side of the relationship).

klezmer mentionnnn! it's actually not that weird that klezmer would be with the jazz bars given that klezmer was a pretty heavy influence on jazz! klezmer is the og for doing something fucked up (positive) on a clarinet. honestly it's kind of sweet and lovely to have the idea of french jews having survived the war and having a great time playing fun music

I will point out that El Chapo is notoriously insistent on breaking out of prison, so Nova should be more careful about making definitive statements about him being in prison.

oh man hearing nova mention potentially doing M would be great; you could even do it main line tbh, so much of its DNA carries thru all the Eurospy movies you covered

I am so glad y'all are doing this movie

...the champagne/cognac relationship...

Very funny to hear sudden incidental "Abi finds out the answer to a question she has presumably had for the better part of a decade" (now that you have the parts, the "joke" of Chapo Trap House's name is that it sounds like a period appropriate rap mixtape and not like three nerds doing leftist shock jock radio hour) EDIT: Also way to bring up the most baffling interpretation of any section of any film on the pod so far (the ending of Perfect Blue, of which the Chapo movie spinoff series had the much better understanding) once again!

Surprised no one, especially November, mentioned that the reason that the director went by Melville was because that was his codename in the French Resistance.

Not sure if you actually mentioned that Isabelle Corey was 17 when she played Anne. I saw this at the BFI (favourable conditions film club). The reason I wanted to go see it was because I had been a big fan on Neil Jordan’s 2002 remake The Good Thief starring Nick Nolte as Bob. I’d recommend The Good Thief for the podcast, it sort of ties into religion season and is explicitly a film about masculinity. Also, infinitely better than The Italian Job remake.

holy shit vibraphone mention

I didn't know what a trap house was, despite having spent many days of my wasted youth in them.

I got whiplash when my hometown of Yakima made the podcast. Shout out 509 I guess! Make sure to try our wines 🍷

Hmmm, doesn't want to download on my phone, same for one of the BIW episodes as well...

Arthur Conan Doyle's chauffeur invented the drive by.

always crazy to me how good + quick abi is at turning a word backwards

Surprised by Nova's familiarity with two cities in Washington state that aren't Seattle.

Courtroom hentai artists? You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention.

'Turn this opportunity oui.' Is perfection. It even low key sounds like what Don would say to a reluctant French guy.

Seven Samurai is older than this film lol

the Session Drummer Hitler bit absolutely destroyed me. A++, y'all, this was a great episode.

Have to hit the buzzer I’m afraid, the earliest film you’ve covered was Seven Samurai (1954). Admittedly November wasn’t there for that one but there was also Moby Dick which came out the same year as this.

I'm sure I said something similar in Croupier, but I was obsessed with hustling/gambling as a kid. I loved pool, and Casino Royale had just come out, and I never got into pool hustling or casinos in real life because I basically just worked at the grocery store and scrolled and slept for the past 15 years, but I did get addicted to scratchoff lottery tickets. Just about the least glamorous glamorous form of gambling

interesting to see Normal Horseracing be considered doing it wrong. We still do it with the chariots in sweden, and seemingly in France too

On old heists: Lavender Hill? I don‘t remember any slurs (Kind Hearts has an n-bomb in the trailer, its class war aspect and Dennis Price thirst cover a lot there), exoticised Brazil iffy maybe. Filmed in sunny Ealing, obvs.

Honestly I think you could probably get away with making up an obscure movie to review. 1960s Bolivian all female heist movie, early 2000s French cyberpunk romance, Korean murder mystery set on a disputed territory island, American teen movie about a dog who plays basketball. You could make up anything.