Scoring William Wyler / Barrel Private Release Rye

0:02 Today on the Film and Whiskey Podcast, we will be scoring out director William Wyler. Then we'll be trying a private release rye from our favorite producer. This is the. Film and Whiskey Podcast. Hey everybody, Welcome into the Film and Whiskey Podcast. I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad Gee. And we are coming at you with another special bonus episode.

0:43 Bonus episode. Brad, we're starting to wind down on season seven. We sure are, man. I look back through the list of directors that we've tackled already and there are only a couple standing in our way at this point. Literally to, Yeah. To a couple, and we're going to knock out one of them today because we are looking at William Wyler who we just wrapped up this past week with our friend Patrick H Willems. We watched 3 movies by William Wyler, probably his most famous one being Ben Hur, followed by The Best Years of Our Lives, followed by Roman Holiday. And you know, I was just listening back to the episode where we scored Kubrick and I said. I don't think that we've ever done a director where we have such varied thematic material across 3 movies. And I already think Wyler is giving him a run for his money in that regard.

1:36 Yeah, 100%. I mean we're we're talking time of Jesus, Roman World, we're talking post World War 2 and I mean, I guess Roman Holiday could also fall in the post World War 2 world, but but not in the sense that it refers to World War 2 at all, yeah. You know, Brad, I know that every week or every time we do one of these director scoring mini episodes, we have to explain the whole process. But I I got to be honest with you, man, I have to find a better way of describing them. When I title the episodes, I just call them, like scoring Stanley Kubrick and it makes it sound like a 1980s sex comedy. Like like. We're scoring Kubrick, baby. We're going on a road trip to sleep with Stanley. Yeah, Kubrick.

2:20 Which honestly, I'll green light that movie anytime someone wants to make it. Like that sounds weird and I'm all here for it. The Book Production studio. But anyway, we are here to run the three films by Wyler through a metric we developed last season where we tried to numerically determine how you can figure out if someone is a good director or not, and greatness of art. Yes, which is always measured numerically through a metric. And we tried to figure out what are the five categories that we would need to evaluate to determine if somebody is good at directing. And Brad, what were those categories and what do they mean? Performances. How good of acting performances does our director draw from his actors cinematography?

3:06 Do you like what you see on screen editing? Do you like how what you see on screen moves and sounds cohesion? Does the world of the movie stand like, stick together well, and work and uniqueness? How does this director's body of work stand out among their peers as well? As, you know, cinematic history. And important to note, we are scoring them based on not their entire body of work, rather our selected three or four movies that we watch. Yes, and that comes into play when we score directors like Scorsese or Spielberg or even Kubrick. We can't. We can't factor in movies we may have watched in other seasons.

3:48 If this was the director's entire catalog, how would he or she fare? So we're going to talk about Wyler here for a minute, A director that you know across his three movies. Brad, we didn't really talk much about him, and I don't know what that says about the movies he makes, but especially when we dive into directors like A Kubrick who is so formally respected. Or a director like Spielberg, who infuses so much of his own personality and psychology into his movies. When you have a director like Wyler, like it's all up there on the screen in terms of his abilities. But there seemed to be like a level of, I don't know, detachment. Like, I didn't learn much about William Wyler, the guy watching these movies.

4:34 Yeah, that's interesting. I think that Wyler definitely is a more critical eye on the subjects, and it seems like he's more curious about the stories being told than how he interacts with those stories. And I I think that's probably one of the reasons why he's chosen to direct a picture like Ben Hur. You know, in the in the 50s there's this massive outpouring of respect and desire for like biblically accurate media. And if you look at like America as a whole, statistically, the 50s were actually the highest level of religiosity that America has ever experienced, even considering like Puritan times and all that, like highest amount of church attendance was in the 1950s.

5:26 And so with this wave of prochristian prochristianity in our culture, somebody like William Wyler makes sense to direct a massive biblical bioepic. And I I think it's because he doesn't put his personal spin on things. It seems like he tries to just tell the stories as they are. And I and I honestly, I kind of appreciate that. There's a really good article on the Criterion Collections website and it's all about, I think it's called The Grounded Cinema of William Wyler. And it goes through his whole career, and this author is trying to kind of make sense of, you know, what's his style, what's his formal bent. And he talks a lot about how Wyler doesn't use a lot of, like, really fancy camera moves.

6:13 Like it's pretty functional and it's pretty utilitarian. But he also has a really sensitive touch when it comes to telling human dramas, and I think it's a it's a good way to think about him. He's not like a melodrama guy, even though he directed a couple melodramas. But it doesn't really seem overwrought, except for in like a few scenes in Ben Hur where it's meant to be overwrought. I think about a movie like The Best Years of Our Lives and it's just a very, I guess Frank would be the right word for me to use. Like it's just like these are the problems these people are dealing with. I'm not going to put any frills on it and I want to address it frankly and I really appreciate that about him. There's there's not a lot of extra stuff around or in his movies.

6:59 So Brad, with that said, I think we should dive in here and we'll start with the performances, the the cornerstone of these human dramas. What kind of a score would you give him when it comes to the performances in these three films? I think this is one of the categories he really succeeds in. I think that in Roman Holiday he gets an incredible, as Patrick put it, like an introduction performance to Audrey Hepburn. Even though I kept wanting it to be Cary Grant, I think he did a great job of getting a unique performance out of Gregory Peck. I think when you look at Ben Hur, there's definitely a melodrama about Ben Hur that reminds me of something like Gone With the Wind. I think that Charlton Heston is a fascinating actor. I think that the female performances in there are really great and then you get to Best Years of Our Lives, which was incredible.

7:51 You know the the way he brought about. I can't remember his name right now, but the gentleman with the hooks for hands. Oh yeah, Homer. Yes, Homer. The way he brings him about who is not an actor and to give such an emotionally moving performance was incredible. So I I think I'm going to give him a 9 1/2 out of 10 here. I think I'm going to give him a nine. And part of it is because like, he gets really good performances out of his actors. But a lot of times the actors that he chooses are not always the most. I don't know. At the top of their game, actor. Sorry, maybe they're at the top of their game. They're just not, like always, upper tier actors. Frederick March.

8:33 Myrna Loy. Absolutely. Charlton Heston. Like, he does pretty good and he wins an Oscar for that movie. But like, Meh, Audrey Hepburn. Gregory Peck. Absolutely. But then you get into like the best years of our lives. And Homer's girlfriend, I think her name is like she has a very Irish last name because she's also in Ben Hur and we were joking about how. He got the most Irish person to be playing Middle Eastern O'Connell or something. Yeah, O'Connell, yeah, yeah. She's not a good actress, man. And you know, he seemed pretty loyal to including her thirteen years later in that movie. So the performances are good, but he also kind of limits himself sometimes with the actors that he chooses. So I'm going to give him a nine here, yeah. And as we move into cinematography, I think here's a question I have for you.

9:21 Is it better to be simple or complex when it comes to the use of the camera? Because if we're being frank, he is on the simpler side of camera movement. 100%, yeah. And I think I mentioned this in the Roman Holiday episode. That's the one with the most kind of inventive camera work and the way they they film the architecture and the scene on the little scooter. Like there's a lot of movement in the camera there. I think when I judge this category, I'm always thinking of like did the camera. Do what needed to be done to tell the story the best way possible. And I think he succeeds really well here. Honestly, I think the one that I liked the least was Ben Hur and that had like the big widescreen. And you know, we talked about how Wyler hated using widescreen.

10:06 And I think it kind of shows like they're not always framed the best. But even then that movie wins the Oscar for cinematography. So it's like I'm over here nitpicking and the guy is racking up awards for the way his movies look. So once again. I want to give him a nine. I think I'll come down just a little bit. I'll give him an 8 1/2 on cinematography. Yeah. For me, I think that overall he's like a 7 1/2 to an 8 out of 10 cinematographer with a few scenes that just skyrocket him up to the top. I think that the the chariot race is one of the most famous Hollywood sequences for very good reasons. I think even the the scene when they are on the ship and I I don't know the way he films the slaves and the the guy beating the drum and the cutbacks to the the man who kind of becomes Ben Hur's father figure.

11:02 Like there's just a lot going on there and even in the battle scene when he he has the camera shot of through the porthole that Charleston Heston is at and the ship is coming towards him, like I think he does a lot of great stuff with the camera, even if the cameras not always moving right. So I think I'll give him a nine out of 10 here, a little down from the performances, but man, he has some epic moments with the camera throughout these three films. And listen, we know. You know, sometimes we slip up and say something like. Wyler is a good cinematographer or Wyler is a bad. It's like we understand that there is a cinematographer on these movies. But with a lot of these directors, they have such a signature visual style that you can almost call them a cinematographer. And even the ones that don't, at the end of the day, what's on the screen, the buck stops with them. Like they have to know what they're putting on the screen and are their visuals up to snuff or not. So I don't know.

11:59 I was going to say if if you jump into the sports world, something that I have found fascinating is that when football players go into the Hall of Fame, an offensive lineman or a wide receiver or a cornerback does not have a win total attached to their name. But do you know who does? Quarterbacks and head coaches, right? Like they are defined by how many wins they get. And I kind of view directors in the same way. Like, yes, they have an offensive line that's called the cinematographer. Yes, they have a wide receiver that that runs, you know, different aspects of the things. But at the end of the day, they are the one who is said that movie sucked and it's the director's fault or that movie was incredible and it was the director's, you know, because of the director. All right, let's breeze through these man. Editing is I think 1 where I'm going to Ding him a bit. And when we talk about editing, we're talking about the rhythm and the flow of the movie, as well as things like how are the cuts made, How does the sound affect the movie? These movies are pretty much all too long. Even Roman Holiday I I had some issues with the 1st 25 minutes being just a little bit too long. They all hold together well and I think that's why I'll give him a good cohesion score.

13:12 But on editing, I'm just going to give him a 7 1/2 Brad. Yeah, this is funny. I keep being 1/2 point higher than you. I'm at an 8 out of 10 for him. I think that he does a really solid job in this category, but like B minus is the right grade to give him. All right, so cohesion is what I just said. Does the director build a believable world? And do the movies hold together? And I think for the most part, yes, they do. Especially the best years of our lives. Like, that's not 100% what America looked like post war, but for the world that they're trying to build. In that movie, you know, we we were talking about how he made the sets smaller than normal than the normal Hollywood set so that it would look more claustrophobic and intimate and like a real apt.

14:01 I think that movie is just brilliant. Same thing with Roman Holiday. Like, you believe this dream world that these people are living in. I'm going to give him a nine on cohesion. I'm at a nine and a half Bob, genuinely. I think that he just has a stellar vision for the, like I said earlier, the stories that he is trying to tell within these movies and from Ben Hur all the way through Roman Holiday, I I think he does a spectacular job at accomplishing that vision in a way that's compelling to start to from start to finish. Now uniqueness is 1 where I think I really. Struggle because he doesn't have the sort of like masculine, muscular filmmaking of someone like John Ford, even though he's making movies in that vein with like Ben Hur. He also, even though he tells these very humanistic stories, he doesn't have the sort of like really delicate touch of a movie maker like George Cucor who did a lot of movies focused on women.

15:04 Or like Frank Capra, who tips a lot more into like the sentimental. And so it's really hard because he he does a good job of kind of playing the middle ground with both of those extremes. But that also means that there's not as much in his movies that you can easily put your finger on and say like this is a William Wyler trait. And because of that, I think I'm only going to give him a 7 1/2 here. No, wait, are you? I scored all of this out before we even got on and I I met an 8. Wow, dude, that's crazy. Yeah, I I think I am 100% in agreement with you. If like, honestly, we talked a ton about how there's a lot in common between Kubrick and Rob Reiner. I I think that in the uniqueness category, I kind of feel similarly about Wyler and Reiner where he makes unique movies. He none of them are a ton like the other, but none of them like stand out necessarily as best in class or have certain you know certain cinematography that like stands out in The Shining that you know takes Kubrick to the next level. I think that he's a solid B to A in almost all the categories. But here in Uniqueness, I'm kind of like, yeah, he he doesn't necessarily stand out from everybody else in the 40s, fifties and 60s, you know, at least with these three films, Yeah, But there's still a a

16:39 really great example of solid filmmaking from that era. So I think he's an 8 out of 10 in uniqueness. Well, that's bringing me to a 41 1/2 out of 50 on him. Brad, what are you at? I at 2 1/2 points higher than you Bob. Half point higher every time. Should be at a 44 out of 50. You sure are. So that's bringing our average on Weiler to a 42.75. And I will say, Brad, that's what makes this exercise really cool. Not that I always agree with doing it. It's fun, you know. But like, we're never going to say that our score on a director is how we should think about that director. But it also does kind of. Offer surprises sometimes, like he scored higher than Clint Eastwood and I would say that I think Clint Eastwood is probably a better director than him.

17:24 He scored, he scored right in line with Billy Wilder, like he's a 1/4 point lower than Billy Wilder. And I would say that Billy Wilder is a way better director than him. So it's interesting when you take everything else out of it and just evaluate each of these categories in a vacuum. Sometimes you, you end up respecting a guy a little bit more. Yeah. And and I think another part is that you know you and I have talked about this off air. It also really depends on the categories you choose. Like you know there are probably other categories we could choose to score these guys on that would maybe drastically change the outcome of the of of where we're at.

18:05 I think another piece is like we're not, we're not choosing a bunch of schlub, you know, C level directors. Like, like we're We're talking about going from Spielberg at the start of last season to Hitchcock at the end of this season. Like in in two seasons we've moved through a vast swath of directors that all probably fall at the very lowest at like an 85 out of a. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? Like. All right, man. I think that we're in a good spot on William Wyler. We want to say thank you and adieu to him as we move into Hitchcock starting next week. But Brad, before we get there, we've got a really special whiskey to try.

18:47 What do you say we get to it? Let's get to it, Bob. All right. Today, folks, we are drinking something that we don't typically drink on the film and Whiskey podcast, and that is a single barrel from a private release label. So that means y'all can't get it unless you were lucky enough to be at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. Yeah. And if anything, the reason we're drinking. This is not to say you need to chase this specific whiskey, although if you want to, I'm saying a dag on it's a it's a dag on good whiskey. But what we really want to highlight is the fact that the the distillery, well, I shouldn't say distillery. The company that we are highlighting here is one of our absolute favorites.

19:35 If you've been around the podcast long enough, you know that we are talking about Barrel. I love me some barrel products dude. Like you know we're we're tactful. We we like lots of different companies and and always try to promote people where we can because the world of whiskey is great and there's a lot of great stuff out there. But in my private life, when I when I talk to friends and they asked me for recommendations on whiskey. Barrels pretty much always at the top of the list of things that I recommend. I have never had a barrel product that I did not like like legitimately, and I think the worst, like quote, UN quote, the worst one I ever tried was the first time we got sent like their regular barrel bourbon and barrel rye. I liked the barrel bourbon better than the rye. You liked the rye better than the bourbon. I think I'd probably put that barrel rye as my least favorite thing and we still scored it at like a 40 out of 50. Like everything they release is incredible. And so today, 100%.

20:31 We're drinking from a bottle that we picked up at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. Now if you go to KB F, as it's called every year, they've got a tent full of bottles that were hand selected to be sold on site at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival and nowhere else. They call it the Distillers Row Series. The cool thing they did this year was like every tent. That was set up by a company. The company could also sell those bottles at their tent. This year it did a great job of cutting down on the length of lines and stuff. And so we walked up to the barrel tents where they were pouring everything they sell, including the the Gray label seagrass, the gold label seagrass. It was like they were pouring everything and we said let's try your barrel pick and it's a barrel rye, so it's under the label Barrel Rye private release. This is a rye whiskey finished in Pedro Jimenez Sherry barrels. It clocks in at 116.38 proof.

21:27 Brad, we've tried barrel rye just a few times on the show, including things like seagrass. How does this? I don't want to say how does this compare to seagrass because that's your favorite whiskey. But like, just in general, we're not finishing in a ton of different barrels here, we're just finishing in one kind of barrel. What are you picking up on the nose? And like how would you situate it among all the barrel ryes that you've tried. I think that this one has more simplicity to it, you know and and that would be expected it's 11 barrel finish. I think that this is a caramel bomb with a a smattering of like deep dark rye spice and it is rich and it is spicy and you know to to jump into the pallet as well. This thing is, it's not quite as decadent as the Seagrass, It has a much more straightforward palette, but it what it offers is A you can tell that this is a really high quality rye whiskey, and B, you can tell that they put it in the Pedro Jimenez butts for like the perfect amount of time because you just get a little bit of that grapey, a little bit of that, the richness from that.

22:50 But man oh man, the rye spice really shines through here. So I'm on the barrel website and they just started doing these private releases with rye a couple months ago. The cool thing is when you do the private release, it's actually a single barrel. So they take one barrel's worth of whiskey that they have blended, I assume, and then finish it in a barrel of your choosing. And so the cool thing is like, there's ten different kinds of casks you can get your private release barrel finished in. So Kentucky Bourbon Festival chose the PX barrels. Like Brad said, it is like you don't get a ton of Sherry on the nose here, but what it does is it brings out those like really well-rounded caramel and a little bit of floral notes.

23:31 The rye is just kind of like underneath all that. It's not a super minty rye. I would call it closer to like a dill, but it's still covered in those caramel notes, which appeals to me as a bourbon fan more than a rye fan. Brad, as you get into the flavor here. What? What are you picking up? Like I said, there is a nice foundation of caramel here, but overall this is one of the spicier rise that I've ever had, and it gets into that dill. It turns minty at the back end for me, and I think that there's a little bit of nuttiness that kind of rounds out the spiciness in a really beautiful way.

24:13 There's like a little bit of almost simple syrup at the very back, like it just turns into sugar for me at the very back or or even like a like a watered down Cocacola kind of a thing. It's really pleasant. And I think, Brad, I'm going to ask you real quick to do this. When you say it's a spicy rye, I don't think that you mean that this is like a really ethanol forward product because it's 116 proof, It doesn't drink like 116 proof. So for our listeners like what do you mean? What's the difference between spicy? And like alcohol. Aggressive. Yeah, and hot. Yeah, I would say hot is your palate can't place what's happening. Like I I think that's the best way I can describe ethanol forward is that your nose, your palate gets hit with this wave of experience and it doesn't have a reference point. Whereas like spicy and like a spice bomb, it's almost like you took every single like, savory spice out of your spice rack, opened them all up, and just like took a whiff a run at all of them.

25:24 Like for me, there's some clove here. There's some black pepper. the IT tastes like fresh rye bread. There's just all sorts of things going on here. But my my palate knows what to do with them. It knows where to categorize them. And I I think, I don't know it. Would you say that's fair? I think that's. A good I think that's a great description. And again, especially since you're the rye drinker of us, like, I can try to explain what it does on my palate. But at the end of the day, I want to know what you think is a good spicy rye versus something that's just like hot. And I think you know not to put too neat of a bow on this Brad, but like. Barrel does it really well. Like I said, it's 116 proof.

26:05 It drinks like a 95 proof whiskey. It doesn't feel thin, but it also doesn't have like a super aggressive burn on the palate. More in your chest after you swallow, yeah. And I I think to to differentiate between a good rye and a bad rye. I think the bad rise I've had you only get the rye flavor and I think that's like the key thing is that rye is not a great flavor by itself in my opinion. I think that the the best rye use the rye as like a cherry on top of a really solid sweet foundation. And when you when you're able to marry that combination of decadence and spice, I I think that brings a complexity that can often be missing on bourbons where it's more leans way more heavily into the sweet factor.

27:01 And so I I I think genuinely on the other swing side of things if all you have going on is rye in a rye whiskey, I I still think it's good, but it it definitely misses for me. Well, that's not the case here man. And if we were scoring this with our, you know, usual metric, I think this is going over a 40 out of 50 for me for sure. Yeah, I I think I'm in the 45 range. I think this is like a 88 to 92 out of 100 top tier whiskey. Now else, OK, let's put it like this. We can't recommend this bottle for people to go buy barrel private release Rye in general. We've tried one of the 10 finishes. I think I feel comfortable enough saying that if all of the finishes have this level of attention to detail and care put into them.

27:48 It's kind of a nobrainer pickup, especially the PX casks, but I would trust pretty much anything they're putting out of barrel right now. This bottle I believe was like, was it $90.90 or $100? 90 you know, their normal stuff is like $80.00. So to to spend the extra 10 bucks and get something that is handpicked like this, I I don't really see any downside to this bottle bread. No, not at all. And and if you're not able to get your hands on this, you know, limited distribution and all that, their barrel seagrass is more widely distributed and frankly, the best whisk I've ever had. So if you're looking to get your hands on some barrel, please, please grab some barrel seagrass.

28:30 And if if rye isn't quite your jam, a, it needs to be your jam. And B, their dovetail is incredible. Their vantage is incredible like they had like they have so many other options that fit different pallets. As I said at the very start of this segment, we're just here to promote barrel. They're incredible. Go by. There, and we say promote, we're not accepting. I mean, we would accept. We're not getting any money from them right now. Like now. Not at all. Genuinely love this brand. We we paid $180 between the two of us for these two bottles. Yep. So with and it was money. We've put our money where our mouth is. We buy their products. It's incredible. All right, Brad, that does it for us today. We'll be back on Tuesday to kick off Alfred Hitchcock. With his 1946 film Notorious.

29:17 A movie that fun fact I have never seen. Oh, Robert. I know. Look at us. So we will see you on Tuesday for that movie. But until then, I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time.