Episode review
Burn After Reading (2008) Review
The movie that started it
Chris and I met about ten years ago, working in the same room. We got talking about movies, and pretty quickly found out we both loved Burn After Reading, for exactly the same reasons: the weird tics, the facial expressions, the awkward characters. That is more or less all this movie is, and it told each of us the other guy was on the same page. So this one goes back further than the show does.
How we pitched it
A CIA analyst quits his job and decides to write a memoir. At the same time, his wife decides to divorce him. Through an absurd series of events, a copy of the memoir ends up in the hands of two gym employees, who decide it is a good idea to blackmail him because they think it is top secret. Chaos follows. It all gets resolved by everyone either dying or agreeing not to talk about it, and the CIA ends up completely baffled about what actually happened, and happy just to keep it quiet.
How it hooked me
I did not choose to watch it the first time. My dad put it on, which meant the whole house was watching it, and I was barely paying attention. I was getting up to go to the kitchen when I glanced at the TV right as Brad Pitt gets found in the closet. I saw the face he makes and said, "Dad, you have to rewind that." I do not remember a lot from the last twenty years, but I can tell you exactly where I was sitting for that.
Chris came to it the other way, as a Coen brothers fan around 2009 or 2010, curious how anyone could tie CIA analysts and gym workers into one story.
A surreal world full of idiots
Everyone in this movie is a little off, and you feel it before you can name it. Even the small parts: Ted, the gym manager, orders a Tab at a bar. The dinner parties are full of people who are annoyed with each other and passive aggressive about it. The way we see it, the point is simple: in the Coens' Washington, America is a country full of idiots, and that includes the CIA.
Osborne Cox is the audience
Chris is Osborne Cox, and not because he thinks he is smarter than everyone. It is because the stupid things he sees people do every day baffle him the way they baffle Cox. Cox is the one man who sees through all of it, and it drives him to screaming in almost every scene.
One theory we kicked around: Cox is there to stand in for the audience. Everyone around him is so dumb that the natural response is to lose it, which is exactly what he does. By the time he is in his bathrobe with a gun in one hand and a drink in the other, telling Ted he has been fighting morons his whole life, he is saying what you have been thinking for ninety minutes.
For me, I switched my pick after the date scene. More on that below.
Palmer, and a face I knew from Sledge Hammer
The movie opens by dropping you straight into the office where Palmer demotes Cox, and it introduces the two best characters at once. Palmer has maybe three scenes and a handful of lines, and he steals the movie. He stutters, stops mid sentence, and softens the blow with something less threatening. We found something else for you. It is a little lower clearance. But we are not going to terminate you.
The first time I saw it, I said out loud, "That's Sledge Hammer." David Rasche, who plays Palmer, starred in Sledge Hammer!, a mid 80s send up of Dirty Harry that I thought was hilarious when I was about three. I have never seen anything else he has done, and I am not sure anyone else remembers that show. He is incredible in this.
The whole opening is a clinic in reactions. Malkovich massaging his temples. Peck blurting out "you have a drinking problem." The guy by the door raising his eyebrows after Cox slams it. This movie is the Mount Rushmore of faces.
Linda, Chad and Hardbodies
Frances McDormand's Linda Litzke wants tens of thousands of dollars of surgery to fix a body that does not need much fixing, and she works at a gym. Her doctor even tells her the thing she wants liposuction for responds well to exercise. She will find every way around doing the work except doing the work, and it drives the whole plot.
Then there is Brad Pitt as Chad, which is funny on its own now that "Chad" is a meme. Linda points out a guy on a dating site who works at the State Department, and Chad says "that's cool" with total sincerity. That is when it clicks that everyone in this movie has been told to play it dumb. We are pretty sure that came from the Coens, not the actors.
The saddest date in movies
Linda's first date from the website is the most depressing scene in the film. They go to a comedy, and she laughs while he sits there stone faced. At dinner he eats with his head down and says nothing. They sleep together, he passes out snoring, and she goes through his wallet and finds out he is married.
That is when I changed my answer. I am that guy. I would sit through a comedy not laughing, and eat dinner in silence. Maybe he is just apathetic. Or maybe the fake movie on screen, which is about someone who will not commit, hits a little close to home for a married man on a dating site.
Later, Clooney's Harry dates Linda and it looks like the complete opposite: laughing, banter, charm. But it is really the same guy with a better face. He is not far enough into the apathy yet.
The world of Washington
We spent a while on how sterile this world is. The actors are in their forties, and the characters are married and still dating like they are in high school. Nobody seems to have kids. They live in townhouses in DC that must cost as much as a house with land an hour west. It plays like a critique of people who make a government job their whole life. It is a sad, mundane world, and the Coens make it bizarre and funny.
The scenes we could not stop quoting
- "Is this Osborne Cox?" Chad calls Cox in the middle of the night and keeps asking. "Osborne. Osborne Cox." The more Cox yells, the more Chad tells him not to blow a gasket.
- The car meeting. Chad chains up his bike for a five minute rendezvous, then squints at Cox a second too late to look intimidating. You can almost hear Cox thinking nobody could really be this dumb, so it must be a trick.
- The Russian embassy. Linda hands a Russian diplomat a disc of "CIA secrets," and his first question is PC or Mac. She keeps checking her watch because she has a date. Chad worries about his bike lock. Chris has one complaint about the writing here: Chad can barely keep it together, yet he is the one who comes up with selling it to the Russians.
- Harry's run. Clooney is always buckling his belt after an affair and announcing he can get a run in. When he falls apart, he has not run in three days. It made me think of Patrick Bateman needing to return some videotapes.
- The closet. Harry takes a twenty second shower while Chad hides in the closet instead of running. Harry opens the door, Chad gives him a sheepish "you got me" smile, and Harry shoots him on the spot. His suit has the tags ripped out and his wallet has no ID, which only feeds Harry's paranoia. For the record, it looks like a .357 revolver.
"What did we learn, Palmer?"
The last scene is Chris's favorite, and it is the scene the two of us bonded over back when we first met. Palmer has to brief his superior at the CIA on a mess so convoluted he does not know where to start. "The Russians?" There was one other snag. Cox is a level three. No biggie. Harry was caught flying to Venezuela, which has no extradition treaty, so put him on the next flight there.
Watch Palmer's face when he realizes his boss barely cares. Then the boss asks what they learned, and Palmer does not know either. Maybe not to do it again. It is the cherry on top.
Why Chris gives it a 7.5
There is a lot of story packed into ninety minutes, it is very well written, the cast is as good as it gets, and there are hardly any holes. It is funny from start to finish. He stops at 7.5 because the subject matter can drag, even if that is the point: federal employees in DC tied to a couple of gym workers is not the sexiest setup.
Why I give it a 7
Every scene is funny, and every scene has exactly what I love in a movie: crazy facial expressions and insane reactions. That is honestly half the film. But it is not one I rewatch often, maybe once every few years. The Washington world, the federal employee world, dating in your forties, all of it is boring and depressing on paper. The Coens make it bizarre and hilarious.
Listen to the full episode
Fifty eight minutes on Burn After Reading, from the demotion to "what did we learn, Palmer?"
Also on the show: There Will Be Blood, Enemy, The Big Lebowski. Every episode is on the Regular or Menthol homepage.