Episode 242: WITNESS (1985)

Inside its genre ‘guardrails,’ WITNESS tells the story of worlds brought together by tragedy – but whose intersection point (a haggard Harrison Ford and a repressed Kelly McGillis) exemplifies the deep, dignified richness of human love and connection. Also, Angus MacInnes dies horribly via grain entrapment and Danny Glover’s guts get spilled in cow shit. Watch WITNESS on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/Witness_1985 Get tickets to the Peter Weir series at the Trylon: https://www.trylon.org/films/category/peter-weir/ “Harrison Ford and the Power of Star Persona in Witness and The Mosquito Coast” by John Blair for Perisphere, the Trylon blog: https://www.perisphere.org/2023/08/25/harrison-ford-and-the-power-of-star-persona-in-witness-and-the-mosquito-coast/ Roger Ebert’s 1985 review of WITNESS: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/witness-1985 “Peter Weir’s ‘Witness’: A Deep, Subtle and Complex Social Comment Disguised as a Police Thriller” by Sven Mikulec for Cinephilia & Beyond (containing an excerpt of Virginia Campbell’s interview with Peter Weir for Movieline in 1998): https://cinephiliabeyond.org/peter-weirs-witness-deep-subtle-complex-social-comment-disguised-police-thriller/ Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trylovepodcast and email us at [email protected] to get in touch! Buy tickets and support the Trylon at https://www.trylon.org/. Theme: "Raindrops" by Huma-Huma/"No Smoking" PSA by John Waters. Outro music: “Main Theme” by Maurice Jarre from the WITNESS soundtrack. Timestamps 0:00 - Episode 242: WITNESS (1985) 3:05 - The episode actually starts 9:15 - The Patented Aaron Grossman Summary 11:20 - First reactions to WITNESS and its ‘guardrail moments’ 21:52 - Is WITNESS too married to its genre inspirations? 43:00 - Peter Weir’s rewritten ‘hopeless’ ending 53:29 - The Junk Drawer 1:05:01 - Good Grief, Give Me a GIF! 1:09:48 - Cody’s Noteys: Bearing WITNESS (August trivia through the years)