The Manchurian Candidate

“Although I said that I was surprised that you didn’t have Psycho, both of the films that I’ve spoken about here gave my parents a gravitas within the industry that had eluded them both. So The Manchurian Candidate was a film – my mother plays the girlfriend of Frank Sinatra. It’s a really quiet performance. It’s a beautiful performance. Very serious performance. Very sexy. And I’m… you know, saying that about my mother. But apparently Tony Curtis served her divorce papers. What my mother told me is that she was served divorce papers and then went and did the train scene with Frank Sinatra in the little vestibule. Whenever I see this movie, I think about that moment for this woman, an actress, mother of two, who had been left by her husband. I think about that, and it’s sort of an amazing performance. It is an amazing– it’s not sort of. It is fully an amazing performance.”

“Oh, okay, so this is, oh, I'm still, I can still reach it, Manchurian Candidate. This is a film I don't, I've seen, I saw it a long, long, long time ago, but I don't remember, but it was directed by the late John Frankenheimer. And, John was, was a character, oh my lord. He had some, you know, he had a great career and then he had some personal difficulties and then he got through those, and then he was coming back directing. And on his, on what I call the comeback trail for John, he directed a movie called Against the Wall. I was in it, Samuel Jackson was in it, the late Anne Heche, I'm so sorry to hear what's happened to her. And John was kind of my champion. He reached out to me and he said, "I really want you for this movie." And I was like, John Frankenheimer, I was like, "Absolutely." Well, the guys at HBO, Bob Cooper, they weren't sure. So they said, "Well, he's going to have to audition." So John was like, "Well, Kyle, we're going to do this and we're going to audition at my house, we're going to make it happen." My John Frankenheimer and my John Huston are very, very similar, so don't pay attention to that. Anyway, directed by John Frankenheimer. Loved John. Tough on his crew, but, loved his actors, loved his actors.”

“This movie is upsettingly good. I make my girlfriend watch movies with me constantly to the point where I think she's sick of watching movies and probably sick of me, but this was one of the movies that I think made it all worth it. Watched it together, she was like, "That's a great fucking movie." And like, after that, like, every now and then I'm like—like, to get her to watch a movie, I'd be like, "It's Frankenheimer," and like, reluctantly, like, "Okay." But yeah, this is, this made me dig into all of Sinatra's other films as well that he acted in, like The Man with the Golden Arm. And, you know, Sinatra's great because he is exactly what he is when he's emulated, and everyone loves his music, but this was his finest work. Like, Frankenheimer really got a great performance out of him, and I already own this, but this movie is perfect.”