Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.
So this week, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.
Harry Caul is one of the best surveillance operators in America. However, when Harry finds himself in possession of a potentially inflammatory recording with very real consequences, he finds hismel at a crossroads. Can the professional eavesdropper remain a passive observer in the drama unfolding around him, or will events force him into a more active role?
At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Show Notes:
- Recorded 17th February 2022.
- Note: Due to the COVID-19 situation, this episode was recorded remotely. We suspect, going forward that a lot of our episodes will be until the crisis resolves.
- The Conversation at The Internet Movie Database.
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- Read Ciara at The Sundae.
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- Bill Desowitz at The New York Times looks at Francis Ford Coppola’s own opinion of The Conversation, January 2001.
- Ben Parson at /Film argues for The Conversation as Francis Ford Coppola’s best film, May 2020.
- Margjorie Rosen interviews Francis Ford Coppola for Film Comment, December 2017.
- Francis Ford Coppola talks to Vanity Fair about his life and career, November 2007.
- Philip French at The Guardian looks back on Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart, January 2012.
- William Fischer at Collider looks at the production and legacy of One From the Heart, December 2021.
- Nick Pinkerton at The L Magazine looks at the movie musicals of the late seventies, June 2011.
- Kyle Anderson at The Nerdist looks at Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13, September 2021.
- Tim Stack at Entertainment Weekly reports on the use of Steven Spielberg’s movie posters in Dawson’s Creek, March 2018.
- Kevin Williamson talks to Entertainment Weekly about the ending of Dawson’s Creek, April 2014.
- Fiona Sturges at The Guardian looks at What Would Diplo Do?, October 2017.
- Jonathan Kirshner at Slate looks at how The Conversation tapped into so many of the anxieties around Watergate, June 2017.
- Brian dePalma interviews Francis Ford Coppola for Filmmakers’ Newsletter, May 1974.
- John Patterson at The Guardian looks at the history of American Zoetrope, November 2011.
- Mark Morthier at Sports History Network looks back on American professional wrestling during the seventies, August 2021.
- Daniel Fienberg at UpRoxx looks at 1974 as the best year in movie history, April 2015.
- Critics at The Washington Post argue over the best years in the history of cinema, December 2018.
- Charles Bramesco at The Dissolve looks at how The Conversation is a movie about a sound editor made by a sound editor, April 2015.
- Walter Murch talks to Filmmaker Magazine about the development and production of The Conversation, January 2022.
- Walter Murch talks to IndieWire about The Conversation, January 2022.
- D.B. at The Economist looks back at The Conversation, March 2020.
- Alex Markels at NPR looks back at the history of wiretapping, December 2005.
- Ross Douthat at The Atlantic looks at the ubiquity of paranoia in seventies cinema, April 2008.
- Bilge Ebiri at Vulture offers a brief history of surveillance in American cinema, June 2013.
- Alan Glynn at Vulture explores the complicated legacy of the paranoid thriller, January 2019.
- Alan MacKenzie at The Harrison Ford Story looks back on the casting of Harrison Ford in The Conversation, December 2012.
- Harrison Ford talks to Empire about his early career, including film roles in The Conversation, November 2019.
- David Van Biema at Time discusses Mother Teresa’ crisis of faith, August 2007.
- Dale Jacquette at The Journal of Religion discusses Bishop Berkeley’s argument for God’s existence, January 1985.
- Eve Tushnet at Kirk Centre discusses the religious subtext of The Conversation, December 2012.
- Scott Tobias at The Dissolve explores the morality of The Conversation, April 2015.
- Steven Farber at The New York Times discusses the voyeurism of The Conversation, May 1974.
- Adam Begley at Yalebooks looks at the story of how Harry Houdini died, March 2020.
- Jack King at GQ Magazine looks at the ethical implications of the computer-generated Luke Skywalker, February 2022.
- Darren Mooney at The Escapist looks at the dissolution of media into content, February 2022.
- Ron Steinman at The New York Times looks back on Vietnam as “the first televised war”, April 2017.
- Alexander Huls at The Atlantic discusses the implications of The Conversation in modern internet culture, April 2014.
- Matt Burgess at Wired reflects on the lessons learned from Edward Snowden, September 2019.
- Yaqiu Wang at MSNBC looks at how Zoom compromised itself for access to the Chinese market, December 2020.
- Tripti Lahiri at QZ reports on the use of unsecured iPhones by President Donald Trump and the resulting risk of bugging, October 2018.
- Brendan O’Connor at The Baffler discusses the “border profiteers” in America, July 2019.
- Richard Schickel reviews The Parallax View for Time, July 1974.
- Vincent Canby reviews The Conversation for The New York Times, April 1974.
- Robert Taylor at Collider argues that Tokyo Drift saved the Fast and Furious franchise, April 2021.
- Tom Eames at Digital Spy looks at the complicated internal chronology of the Fast and Furious franchise, March 2022.
- Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew reports on Matt Groening’s relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, August 2019.
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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: belief, Catholicism, francis ford coppola, gene hackman, nixon, podcast, religion, spying, surveillance, The 250, the conversation, voyeurism, watergate |
the m0vie blog 
The Conversation’s a really fascinating film, for a lot of reasons. It feels like it was written in the aftermath of the early 70s….even though Coppola wrote the script in the mid 60s.
I don’t think the implication is that Harry’s incompetent or bad at his job, per se. I just think that in his line of work, no matter how good you are…someone could always be watching.