Episode 296: SECONDS (1966) with Natalie Marlin

Trylove

With returning guest Natalie Marlin!

SECONDS is a 1966 film directed by John Frankenheimer from the original novel by David Ely. Past-his-prime New York banker Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) elects to undergo a procedure to give himself a new face and a new life.

The Company, the shady organization that offers this service, completely reconstructs Arthur, altering every detail of his identity (his face, his body, his voice, his backstory) to build Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson) — a handsome bachelor who lives on the beach in Malibu. But the change isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and before long, Tony finds himself falling victim to the same habits that plagued his life as Arthur.

When he learns that his new community, including the free-spirited Nora (Salome Jens), is made up of Company cronies and other “reborns” like him, Tony seeks another do-over — a second second chance in the hopes of “beginning again”, as Tony puts it — restarting his original life with the benefit of hindsight, rather than abandoning it entirely. To “begin again”, as Tony puts it. The Company is happy to oblige — for a price.

Despite being nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for cinematography, it was a box office bomb, and has since come to be regarded as a cult classic, with particular praise directed at the cinematography by James Wong Howe and Rock Hudson’s performance as Tony.

References:

• Watch SECONDS on the Internet Archive
• “Rock Hudson Deserved Better from Hollywood” by Matt Lambert for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
• “Seconds: Be Careful What You Wish For” by Bob Aulert for Perisphere, the Trylon blog
• Check the calendar, preview upcoming series, and buy tickets at https://www.trylon.org/
• Contribute to Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/perisphere-blog-post-guidelines/

Find Natalie…

• On Twitter and Bluesky at @NataliesNotInIt
• On Letterboxd at @framingthepic
• Hosting Pod Hero in the Indieheads Podcast feed
• In the byline for Noise Music, a forthcoming entry in Genre: A 33 ⅓ Series book about the noise genre and its influences on and intersections with culture
• On Trylove Episode 162: THE THIRD MAN (1949), Episode 182: CHESS OF THE WIND (1979), Episode 197: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985), Episode 210: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015), Episode 239: MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001), Episode 249: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (1999), LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (2018), ZARDOZ (1974), NOSTALGHIA (1987)

#JohnFrankenheimers1960s #DCP

Follow us on Twitter at @trylovepodcast and email us at [e-mail] to get in touch!

Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Main Title” from the SECONDS soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

Timestamps

0:00 - Episode 296: SECONDS (1966) with Natalie Marlin

7:22 - The episode actually starts

7:45 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary

10:15 - How SECONDS came to resonate for Natalie

20:48 - Advertising, pacing, and paranoia

31:02 - The intersection of metatextual threads: Advertising & queer self-determination

50:15 - Tony’s new life and Rock Hudson’s Hollywood assimilation

1:04:58 - The evolution of Jerry Goldsmith’s score from dissonant dysphoria to structured harmony

1:17:04 - The Junk Drawer

1:25:50 - To All the Loves We’ve Tried Before: 1966

1:28:26 - Cody’s Noteys: The House of Champions (Seconds!) – 1966