Midweek Mention... God's Pocket

SPEAKER_02 0:12

This uh one that we're talking about first, uh Chris, of your norms. Yes, God's pockets. Yes. It's the start of Pocket Week.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Actually, yeah. Well, it it's pocket, big pockets, yeah. Hot pockets, hot pockets, yeah, all the pockets kind of pockets.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

I hadn't heard of this one. It is Philip Seymour Hoffman's but it says one of.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Yeah, I don't think it's the last one, but it's one of the last. I thought we'd watched another one that might have been his last one. Claimed to be his last. Yeah. We've watched that one where he's like Berlin or something.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

It depends on the order that they then got released, because this premiered at Sundance and he died a fortnight later. So it might not be his final performance, but it was the last one to come out, let's say. Which had been released, yeah. And it is directed by a dude called John Slattery. Okay. Who was before that an actor and he appeared in Mad Men as Roger Sterling. Yes. Yeah, yeah. He's a silver fox. You'd know him if you saw him, actually. It also the film also features Christine Hendrix, who was uh the Mad Men connection. Yeah. Alright. And I guess it sort of starts off with a voiceover, doesn't it, about the town. Well Yes, I think it's from a article from a newspaper article. Yeah, we meet the guy later on, but he is reading out about what this place is. So if you imagine the the area they call it God's pocket, if you imagine like Hell's Kitchen, or it's the that sort of it's a bit rough around the edges, the people there all he's describing them in his in this piece about they all know each other's business, they all steal from each other, but no one really minds, you know, as long as you're local, but it's hyper-local. So if you're like an outsider, deep mistrust. And this is a a journo, we haven't met him yet, but this is his piece, and we get a a sort of tour around the area, meeting, getting introduced to all the main characters that we're going to see throughout the film. And the film does start with this narration and then with the funeral. Yeah. So then we see Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christina Hendrix characters come into the the funeral ceremony, and there's a youngish chap there who looks I don't think it's his son though, is it? No, it's uh his stepson. His stepson, uh her son. And then it kind of then flashes back to when we're gonna learn how how he died. How the young lad died, yeah. What happened to him? So first of all, we see Philip Seymour banging Christina Hendrix. I would think it's fair to say he got more out of it than she got. He definitely got more out of it, yeah. She's just kind of like lying there. And the son's bedroom is so fucking close to it.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Yeah, because you can hear the bed just banging on the you know the headboard just banging on the wall, and then he's like, Oh, you need to wake up, Leon. I'm thinking he's awake. Awake, but okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

He's probably having a shit time. And when when he does get out of bed, he's got a handful of pills, and it it's pretty obvious this guy's like he's not on the straight and narrow necessarily. She gives him some food to take with him, he lobs it out the window so he gets as well.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Straight, yeah, straight. As soon as he gets in the car, he just looks inside the sandwich, throws it outside of the window, just in front of their house.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

He's he's working at a construction job, but I think it's fair to say he's on the like labouring side rather than like skilled.

SPEAKER_03 3:34

And he is a bit of a bell-end.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

But he's straight away, he's massively racist, isn't he? Yeah. He comes through some corridor, whatever, he's carrying something, he's like, How come the white man has to carry this? Where's that? And he drops an N the N-bomb to some old fella, gets to go in, and he's in like a sort of The guy's d like a driving a digger or a lift forklift or something.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

So he's actually working, but he just sat in the thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:59

Driving around the double, triple his age, do you know what I mean? And then we kind of cut back to Philip C. Moffin, and he we meet John Tuturo and another guy. Yeah, I can't remember Saul or something. He's called Saul. He was carver in The Wire.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Oh yeah. He's in all sorts of films where he's like either a tough guy or a mobster or uh some every He's got the heavy Baltimore accent.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

I thought that I thought at first that John Tuturo was the boss. Because he's like dressed flash, he's in the car with the shades on, but he's not, he owes money to Saul. And they're going off to do a job, they steal a lorry, don't they? Yeah, they steal a lorry with loads of frozen meat in it. Yeah. And so we meet them and then we go back to the construction site and they're having a break, they're all having their lunch. And while they're all sat in the sort of courtyard area, this young lad who we've seen that does die, he's just shouting loads of abuse.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

He's just like going through them all like being a- He basically tells a story how he killed a cat with his uh flying hand.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

He keeps carrying this knife around, doesn't he? And he thinks he's a hard man, but he's just a fucking idiot. He really is a fucking prick. And he starts getting racial again with this old fella, and then he turns around to say something, and you just hear whack, and the guy, the black fella, just has fucking hit him over the head with a massive bit of pipe. That's how he dies. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

So when the police comes, then no one reacts.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, they decide to sit there and Okay. And it it's you can it's a completely closed shot. This is not getting out anywhere. So the next thing, the police have arrived, and they've got this bit of crane that's like hanging down, you know, that you would you would fasten the stuff to lift off the crane. Basically a big long hook on a bit of chain. And they say, Oh yeah, it just swung and it he wasn't looking where he was going, and it whacked, he wasn't wearing a hard hat. And the policeman's like, Yeah, okay. Like there's no blood on you. And he's just looking around and everyone's like, Yeah, that's exactly what happened. I've seen it too. I've seen it too. Apart from one guy you can see who's really not comfortable with the bullshit, but he doesn't chip up initially. No, yeah. He uh he's I think he might be next to go if he was to speak up. Eddie Marsan is in it, remember him? Yeah. So he's the he's the kind of mortuary guy, funeral director guy. But he's crooked as well. Like everyone is like it's got an angle, everyone's around.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Well, this is what it says at the beginning. He's like everyone stole something as a child or set something on fire, but as long as you're from God's pocket, it's okay. Everything's forgiven. So these are the people kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

And they all kind of interact either at work or at night, they go to this bar. The guy that runs the bar was also in the Y, he was the judge.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Yeah, the Hollywood bar.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yeah. Which is a shithole. And this is where we first meet. The journalist whose story was being whose column was being read out at the start over the little montage area, he's like clearly an alcoholic. Yeah. He's lining up. Screwdriver's just a what could be a little bit. Yeah, he's got he drinks 18 of them, I think. 18 because 19 was and he's he's obviously at some point been a quite well-renowned journalist. And so people who are into that, i.e., this young girl who's just graduated from college, she clocks him straight away and like makes a beeline for him. Shellburn, something shell burn. Yeah, and he gets chatting to her, and she's sort of in awe of him, even though he looks like a bit of a fuckwit. I think he takes a call while he's speaking to her, and the guy says, Yeah, I got your column. It's the same fucking column you gave me last year. It's something about the anniversary of the tower. Yeah, yeah. Your anniversary column.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

And the guy and then he goes, Why is it the same one I gave you for the last four years? So don't worry about it, son.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

And then he he takes this girl back and she's talking to him. She's lying there naked in bed. You see like him from the waist up and she's lying there topless, and you just see a hand gun. But he's had so much to drink he can't get it up.

SPEAKER_03 7:51

And that's when he says, You had uh 18 screwdrivers, or loads of screwdrivers, he's like, Yeah, I've had 18 of them. I would have had 19, but you drank one. That's why I can't get it up. So he's like a womanizing kind of misogynist.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

So misogynist, his wife has left him, probably because of the drink. So he's but it's clear that the piece that or it becomes clear later on that the piece that was read out at the start is not the one that he'd submitted to the paper because the guys called him out on it. Although while this is going on, Christina Hendrix has sort of got a feeling that this is bullshit the way he died.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Because the police calls and they're like, Oh, look, something fall fell on his head and he died, and she's like, No. That just wouldn't happen.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Yeah. And Philip Simon Hoffman hasn't got the money at the moment to pay for the funeral. So he's doing a bit with Eddie Marshall and say, Look, I can give you the money in a fortnight's time, just let I need the funeral to happen this weekend. You know, I can't I I'll get you the money, but it'll be in like four.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

He also they made a collection at the bar. Because this is actually quite important in the whole grand scheme of things, because they make a collection at the bar, they put a massive jar, and then the bartender gives him the money, he's like, it's fourteen hundred and forty pounds, forty dollars. Can you give me my bag back? It's just like a crumpled old paper bag. It's like when you got when you finish with it, can I have the bag back, which is quite random. And then he goes, him and John Torturo goes straight to the bookies, and there's a massive horse that they keep talking about, then there's a big race, and he just basically bets a quarter of the funeral money because he needs five grand. He he bets 1400 pounds on this horse who finishes second.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Yeah, it's classic. He just watches the race and you could just see the one coming up on the side and it just overtakes him. And John Show is like I told you we shouldn't have done the lot, you know, and he's like, fucking hell. So he goes to see Eddie Marson again and they get a bit rowdy and eventually comes round and says, Don't worry, we'll make it happen. And he sends him out through the back door. And then he falls, yeah, he falls over in the rain, and then he looks down, and his stepson's dead body is just like out in the street.

SPEAKER_03 10:02

Oh. He's basically the the funeral director just basically you don't have the money, uh it's not my problem. I'll take the body out.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Plyme.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

So he's It almost becomes a bit almost a bit weakend at Bernie's this point. So he he's trying to like drag him around and lift up. He stands him up against the wall at one point and walks off into the body just rolls like that. And he he then he because they're the front for their sort of well, I think it is their business, but it it's not legit. They they've got um like a soprano is like a fucking butchery like meat. And he's got a f a freezer van. So the body goes in the freezer. Nice with all the meats and stuff and he goes, he goes to try and shift some meat to this butcher. They've always got like whole sides of like beef or lamb or whatever. Um the guy's like, well, I need to see it. And he's like, Well, can you just take my word for it? It's good. And the guy's like, no, and he climbs in and he just looks around and it's fucking coarse. Oh my god. But it's all played like Does he buy the meat? No, it's like I don't know what's contaminated and what the fuck. I can't, I can't I don't even want to like let's just pretend I haven't seen anything. Yeah. So he's like he is he he knows he has to fucking get this sort out. And like it sounds funny, but it's played really dead straight in the movie.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

You can see slowly how he he gets desperate. While he all this is happening, they keep changing scenarios. His missus at home has the two sisters over, and the journalist comes to the house, and you can see the first the police officer when he sits with her, he's looking at her like he would want to eat her. Because she's fit, she's like voluptuous and whatever. And then when the journalist comes in, this guy, he just goes straight away, grabs her hand, and just Yeah, it's like totally creepy. Yeah, he just there's there's no even and she's like, So do you want to hear about my son? He's like, Listen, this whole hand and goes up to his room and they just hold hands together and he falls asleep because he's so drunk, he falls asleep in the kid's bed, and he wakes up and then and then she's like, So you need to tell me more about Leon? You're gonna write about him, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So while while Philip Seymour Hoffman tries to sort out this funeral for her kid, basically she's just trying to figure out what happened. At the same time, they speak to Saul. Doroturo speaks to Saul, the mafia guy, to send some boys over at the building site to see exactly what happened, if they can find out anything. And the guy beats them up. He puts his thumb into the guy's eye socket and takes his eye out.

SPEAKER_02 12:40

And you can see like they they've they these two like two big guys, and they go to the like the foreman on the site and they think they can intimidate him. He's having none of it, he's even fucking bigger, and he just takes the book out. Oh my god. One is one killed? Yeah, one of them definitely defended. That's Saul's cousin or something. Yeah. So he wants retribution out. So he goes to see John Jaturo. There's another business, a flower shop, that his mum? Or her mum or something. She's older than him, but it wasn't clear exactly what the relationship was. And she's like, Oh, he's not here, he's not here, but he's got your money. And Saul's like fucking raging, and he puts a gun in her face, says, You need to shut up. And he goes into the back, she just pulls out a gun and fucking executes him. Whoa. Yeah, it takes you by surprise that bit. Him and the cousin, we changed the cousin first, and then he looks around and she shoots him twice, and he's just dying on the floor. And John Sherlock's like, What the fuck have you done? Yeah. Um because you know, he's got bosses that are gonna now come, you know. And she's like, You need to she's he's like kicking him while he's on the floor. He's like, No, you've got blood in your trousers, you need to change, you need to get out of here. She's gonna display it as a robbery.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

Yeah, he she calls the police and she's like, These two guys pulled a gun on me and I shot basically that. And then 911 report of attempted robbery at my flower shop, these two guys came in and tried, you know, like an older woman.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

But she just executed them.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So the state of play is that Mickey still hasn't got the the funeral thing resolved and he just needs that to happen. He's getting it just needs to happen because it's a thing that needs to happen, but also he knows like his wife is struggling with everything and it just needs some resolution. So the only thing he can do is now sell the van. So he takes the van, which by the way, still has the corpse in it. Yeah, I was gonna ask you. To a guy who's who's obviously been asking about it before because he says, Are you finally ready to sell it? And he's like, Yeah, okay, it's gotta be worth six and a half, and they sort of end up on that as a price. And he says, You can look at it, but you can't drive it. And the guy looks at him and goes, I'm telling you, listen to me now, I'm telling you, you can't get in it. You can look at it.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

And you can start it. Scrape it out. He actually starts, you can start it.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

But don't you just don't like alright, fine. And then they're talking in the office and just see it start get driven off. And he he literally sprints down the road after, and this guy's like looking in the mirror, just trying to drive the car, see if it's alright. Wouldn't you know it? Eventually, it's a big fucking smash van, like body comes flying out. Yeah. And then you just there's just a scene in the street of people just looking at this thing going, what the fuck? And then people start screaming. Just in the middle of the street.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

But I'm getting the idea that this is quite a bleak film. It's tremendously bleak. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:19

You see the police pulling up, and and because it's all like slow, there's no there's no action, there's no, you know, and you can see the police officer just hands on his hips, just looking around, then kind of looking at a corpse as if like if it would be a a a knee of beef or something.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

There didn't seem to be any like comeback onto Mickey for this. No. He surely there would be like, why is there a dead body in the van that's registered to your business?

SPEAKER_01 15:44

And they come up and so he runs off.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

It just comes into it, she finds out because it's in the paper. Yeah, but he runs back and goes to the guy from the body shop, he's like, You need to give me the money. And he's like, I need to s drive it first. He's like, no, you've agreed, you need and the guy in the end, we f see the funeral director, he gives him the money, and then his missus finds out from the paper that the her son is killed again.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, so they they think that I don't I didn't really understand that bit, because they know this guy, they know who he is.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

They know he was they knew he was dead. Well, yeah, I think what they said was when he goes to funeral director, back to Oh, he fends the morgue, doesn't he? He says, I'll call the morgue and I'll arrange it. So I think because he's the funeral director, he's like, Look, I had to throw the corpse while whatever it was, you don't really know about that. While this all all this is happening and he the there's this body flying out of his van, his missus gets shagged by the journalist.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

He takes her out to this field, this bit of land that he owns, and he just starts basically fingering her. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

This is the creepy hand holding, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

While they're on the pitney blanket, and he's just it just sort of coerces her into having sex.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

And it's kind of the same vibe because he's but the same idea.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

To be fair, it's the only way I would have got laid, to be fair.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

She just kind of sits there, not really Again, she's getting nothing out of this. Yeah, she just kind of sits there and he's just kind of having a goal, and then you're the most beautiful I loved you from the whole day.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

They met the the day before, and he's like, I love you, I've always loved you. Like, what?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Always loved you for the whole day.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Then he then now he's able to write this column for the newspaper, which is the one we heard played out over the intro of the film. And then we go to the we go to the funeral and it's back to where we the movie started, so we see them sad and crying and whatever. Eddie Marson gets punched outside, which we've seen at the start as well. And da da da all that happens, and we go back to the Hollywood bar.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

And while the funeral gets played, the whole column gets read out.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

Yeah, and it's sort of it's it's one of those that and you're like what happens next is he means it to be these are you like salt of the earth kind of people that would do anything for you. Yes, it might look a bit rough around the edges, and you know, there's not a lot of wealth and not a lot of money or they've got dirty faces and whatever. These are good people, they're hardworking people, but it doesn't say that it's all like this is clean. Straight away the landlord's like, you better fuck off because people's not gonna be good for you. And straight away, a couple of younger lads are like, What the fuck are you saying about us having dirty faces and all this sort of shit? And he's like, he looks at me, he's like, It's a compliment, and they're just like no, they're not having it. So, like vigilante mob just take him outside and give him a shoeing. Alright. Mickey like Phillips him off and tries to break it up while Jeannie's watching for the power go down, and he just has to he he gets overpowered, doesn't he? Mickey and he's gonna be able to get it.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Yeah, he tries to hold them all off, but he he just gets pushed aside and just like proper fill him in. And he's yeah, he's basically Well beaten to death. Yeah. The camera just sort of pans away. It doesn't tell you specifically, but everybody in the end just kind of moves leaves.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So the community getting revenge on this guy, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Yeah, they they just misunderstood the point he was trying to make.

SPEAKER_03 19:12

They're also upset with the fact that they've seen Jeannie getting into his car, and then they're all like, he fucked her, and she's one of us. Yeah. And we're outsider, yeah, yeah. And it's like, why did he do it? Blah blah blah. And then because even the the bartender tells Mickey, he's like, Fuck you, you're not one of us either. You're not from here either. You're not from God's pocket. So it's kind of one of them. And I think I know the at at the end they kind of go, everything goes dark with the body in the street, which we don't know if it's dead or alive, but it looks more dead than he was dead. And it moves to the last scene where John Torturo sits outside a trailer.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Like a static home. Yeah, like a caravan.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

Like a caravan, a trailer, whatever, and he's got one of those trays that he's soaking up the sun with. Alright, okay. It's him, his auntie, or whoever it was from the flower shop. And Mickey, who now live together in a sunny spot somewhere. He they've had to flee because they killed us all.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yeah. So they're living incognito, and uh him, John Taturo, and this lady walk off with a gun. And I was like, what's gonna happen here? And she's just teaching him how to shoot, basically. You just hear a load of gun shots going off, and she's training him how to fucking look after himself because she might not be around to do it or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

Fade to black, yeah. Yeah, and that's the end. Wow. So that's the happy end of of what's happening in God's pocket.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

That's the only time you get any sort of like colour palette in the movie, yes, where it's a bit more colourful and a bit more sunny. Everything else is it's almost sepia. It's dark, it's like raining, you know, like seven where the whole thing's movie just seems to be in the rain, it's a bit like that. It's really bleak. It's not it sounds quite funny when I'm talking about it, but it's not like no in the in the film itself. There's no one in it. There's no like redemptive story or any characters to root for, really.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Like Philip Seymour Hoffman is the He's the nicest guy of them all, but he's also He's a crook stolen a truck and he's got a body from the van and you know, he's he's not up, he's a complete fuck up. And he just spent all the funeral money on a horse and you know, he he's not really a nice guy, really. But yeah, I don't know. I quite enjoyed it to be fair. It's only 90 minutes, I think, or 98 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

One out of twenty-eight, one time wasn't it? It's yeah, it's patchy film, I would say. Like tonally, it's it's bleak, but it's got these weird things that like shifted his body around, which just was like unintentionally funny, I thought.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Oh, right. They don't lean into the because like something like that can be humorous, like even in the middle of something really bleak, but yeah, it I don't know if they're putting it into like lighten the mood.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yeah. But it was yeah, the the score was weird. Henry s like just sticks out in the town because she's so much more like glamorous and better looking than all the only other women we see I think is the young girl from the college and then the drunk like fuck up in the bar.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Yeah, the one in the bar and her sisters who are both.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

So but what is it really about? So it's sort of about like closed communities of the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

It's almost like a life story in God's pocket, basically, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

That that's the way it's And what are we to make of the people of God's pockets? I mean they sound like cunts basically.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

Yeah, that's the thing. Like, you know, when you get something like The Wire, which is absolutely about Baltimore and all the different facets. It's very layered. It's got the time to tell a story. You know, what makes this town work, what how everything sort of fits together. They don't have time in this movie to do that, and it's just sort of saying I don't know what it's saying, but it's like these people, you know, it's a community where people kind of look out for each other, but if you're if you step out of line or if you're not from there, then you'll be in you're fighting. So I don't really know what the the overarching message of it was, but it is a short. Did you happen to see that Christina Hendrix does a little bit of DJing on the side? Does she? Yeah, she DJ's the other day on I think it was I'm not gonna say that because you won't believe me. But she uh she did uh DJ the other night and the playlist consisted of loads of indie rock classics. She likes indie rock, does she? Spiritualised been there, Wolf Alice, Warpoint, Dead Man's Bones, Japanese Breakfast, The Knife, Cocteau Twins. Big yes for that. St. Vincent, Villana Del Ray, Tori Amor, Stone Roses. Alright. Ride, Beach House, so Rather Verve. Where was she DJ? It was no, it was at an event in San Diego. In a bar in San Diego. So that's pretty rad. Yeah. That's a moderate recommend, I think, the movie.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Yeah, it's not it's not a strong recommend, but he Mickey plays like Philip Seymour Hoffman is probably he plays it really well.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

He's nearly always the best in anything that he's in, isn't he? So he's he's outstanding.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

But the the the role this role itself doesn't give him a chance to really flex his like it's a lot of T V actors and it's directed by a T V guy as well. So I'm wondering if that factors in into it a lot. Moderate recommend. Yeah.