In The Conversation—the 1974 conspiracy thriller/psychodrama from writer/director Francis Ford Coppola—we follow the story of Harry Caul, the greatest surveillance technician in the world. Caul has been hired to clandestinely record a conversation for a mysterious corporate client—but that conversation ends up having lethal implications. So, what did Coppola know about the surveillance state, and what does this half-century old film have to teach us about the electronic panopticon that exists around us in 2026? Joining us to dissect this New Hollywood-era classic is Antony Rotunno, the host of the Film Gold podcast.
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SHOW NOTES
antonyrotunno.com – Life and Life Only podcast / Glass Onion podcast / Film Gold podcast
Interview 1627 – James Corbett on Life and Life Only
Interview 1672 – James Corbett on The US vs John Lennon
‘F**k Flock’: Is the backlash to surveillance cameras winning?
The Conversation (1974) – DIRECTOR COMMENTARY (FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA)
Walter Murch on The Conversation and working with Francis Ford Coppola | BFI Q&A
Episode 20- On Conpiracy Theories, Truth & Alternative Worldviews with Ricky Green
Bill Murray had a showdown with Bob Woodward shortly after trashing him on Joe Rogan’s show
Construction on the Pentagon began on September 11, 1941
Matrix Foreshadowing: Neo’s Passport’s 9/11 Expiration?
Episode 73: The Psychology of Everyday Life with Rob Ager
The Internet Marked Flock Safety CEO’s Home As A Public Toilet Online
NEXT MONTH: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The section “The Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov (I believe) is sometimes published separately from the book and the text is available at the link below for free:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8578/8578-h/8578-h.htm
I loved the movie. I used the sample “He’ll kill you if he gets a chance” on our single Charlie Said. https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/1507050
More synchro mysticism. I did work with Sophia Coppola. Hollywood is peppered with truth drops.
Gene Hackman’s weird death was suspicious.
~~~ YouTube’s Thumbnail Rendition ~~~ subtle differences
The YouTube video title is:
Coppola Showed Us the Panopticon in 1974!
…as opposed to Odysee’s title:
The Conversation (1974) – Film, Literature and the New World Order
The YouTube Thumbnail Image contains the all-caps of COPPOLA KNEW along with a panopticon image, a Gene Hackman image and a dark-bearded Francis Ford Coppola image.
See this vantage view…
https://www.youtube.com/@corbettreport/videos
Once clicked from the ‘YouTube general audience showcase’ the thumbnail disappears.
Time stamps are also different: YouTube = 1:10:40 | Odysee = 1:11:15
The first line of the YouTube shownotes reads:
“THIS IS THE CENSORED VERSION. SEE THE UNCENSORED VERSION AT CORBETTREPORT.COM:” https://corbettreport.com/the-conversation-1974/
$15,000 is paid to Harry Caul in “The Conversation” (1974)…
See what things cost in 1974, plus see Corbett’s write-up WTF Happened in 1971? and also the listings of events in the 1970’s by various Corbett Report Members…
https://corbettreport.com/9-11-battle-royale-and-september-open-thread/#comment-189940
I thought the bug was in his glasses based on the woman touching the glasses scene.
Yes, Harry didn’t like to be bugged, but… the recording made of him, and that got played back to him, with the woman was when he was explaining about the Terri Garr character. So, that particular conversation was extremely personal to him. That is why he was so upset about it.
Yes, why did he flush the toilet? and wasn’t he worried about having to clean it up, and him being identified as the murderer, wasn’t there going to be footprints of his shoes all over the place? These questions speak to the scene being a dream/etc.
Something that was never brought up..
During the whole movie you (at least, I was) are lead to believe that “the director” was recording his wife and her lover in order to kill them. However, it turns out that they were setting “the director” up (because they knew he was recording them) to Kill Him !! At least that is how I perceived it. This made me think about the currents events narratives that we (the general public) are being fed about the Iran and Ukraine wars. We are being lead to believe one thing, but there is something else actually going on.
Won Fat,
That’s an acute epitaph for the Corbett Report.
“We are being lead to believe one thing, but there is something else actually going on.”
Reply
Meowking mentions Blow- Up . It made me think of “Momento”
Seems the come and go in groups with gaps.
Great talk and thank you Antony for the recommendation, I’d never even heard of this movie. I tried to go down the director’s commentary path as well but didn’t get very far as almost Coppola’s first comment is that this was his attempt to make a movie like Antonioni’s Blow-up (in reference to the mime in the opening scene). I’d heard of that but not seen it, so I parked that commentary and went off to watch Blow-up. Having watched Blow-up I can definitely agree with James that we aren’t supposed to know whether the murder even happened or whether the main character is just losing it. That’s more of less the whole theme of Blow-up.
You are indeed correct. A quick search showed me that the cornerstone for the Pentagon was laid on September 11th, 1941.
The diagram showing the scenes that were never filmed make it clear that the finished version is not the whole story. Which is probably the most important take away in understanding it’s ambiguity.
A friend of mine, a good man who was the husband of a teacher I worked with with multi-handicapped children back then, was a SFPD Rookie and got to play a small part in the movie as a cop extra. He later was pressured out of the force for reporting police abuse.
Hackman’s 1998 Enemy of the State with Will Smith had a similar theme of the pervasive power of government using high tech to track and trace behavior. Many other films over the years has had that theme as well…the ability for people to invade others privacy.
In the late 60’s and early 70’s when we would have political meetings at someone’s house then only threat of surveillance then were the land line phones and the governments ability to listen in through the mouth piece using Inline Harmonic Amplification electronics, so we would unplug the phones from the wall.
Just imagine what is being done today with SMART devices.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“The amount of tyranny you get, is the exact amount you put up with”
-Thomas Jefferson
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
THEY GOT YOU GOOD (song)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/Hpm24888Hud2
Your description of your political meetings and wires in the wall reminds me of another great surveillance movie “The lives of others”. The only downside of that one is that it seems to portray the problem as just an aspect of totalitarian communism, not something we should worry about today. It could use a sequel set in today’s Germany.
@MeowKing
Tried looking it up on IMBD but there are 20 titles :-O
The controllers have been very clever providing truths as “entertainment.” It is said by some they do that to avoid some sort of future “Karmic” issues. I have no idea why they do so many of the things they do so I try to stay in the fact world on issues.
It may just be basic greed, some pathology, bloodlines, or even off planet invasion schedule and tactics. What I have discovered in my long life as a political/social activist is that the levels of secrecy and authority go well beyond what we may think are the “bosses.”
I just try to be stoic and understand my boundaries of what I can actually have some effect on, you know, think global act local. Just went over 150K on my music site which is promising 😎
WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID (song)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/lMHyu4q52X3Y/
Congrats on your music site success 🙂 The movie I’m talking about is https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/ , German language, 2006
Thanks, will look it up on my VSee Box
Found it on Vsee. I watched about 15 mins of it. It had a pretty depressing air to it.
It was just unrelenting downer stuff that just didn’t draw me in. After decades of political/social activism it was hard to find any “light” in it.
Thanks
It’s not just with films that we have seen the concern about mass surveillance.
In a previous podcast of mine on the topic, I had previously commenced that post with the following lyrics of the 1983 song called ‘Somebody’s Watching Me‘ by Rockwell (also see the music video):
I’m just an average man with an average life
I work from nine to five, hey, hell, I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone in my average home
But why do I always feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone? And
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Tell me, is it just a dream?
When I come home at night
I bolt the door real tight
People call me on the phone, I’m trying to avoid
But can the people on TV see me, or am I just paranoid?
When I’m in the shower, I’m afraid to wash my hair
‘Cause I might open my eyes and find someone standing there
People say I’m crazy, just a little touched
But maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much, that’s why
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
And I have no privacy
I always feel like somebody’s watchin’ me
Who’s playing tricks on me?
That’s not the full song above. Here is Verse 3:
(Who’s watching me?) I don’t know anymore
Are the neighbors watching me? (Who’s watching?)
Well, is the mailman watching me? (Tell me, who’s watching?)
And I don’t feel safe anymore, oh, what a mess
I wonder who’s watching me now (Who?), the IRS?
Full lyrics for the song here.
Rockwell was certainly ahead of his time!
This is a song of mine from 1978.
GLASS EYES WATCHIN’ YOU (Politics)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/8V5RDcAQlpR8/
Great lyrics. Very foretelling.
Thanks. It was a time of reading lots of books, attending lots of private and public meetings and without the web our minds were pretty clear.
My fav part of the song is the guitar mimicking a helicopter 🙂
“without the web” – I’m Gen X, so I recall this period as well (in my teens). Back then we had to obtain real (or at least useful) knowledge from books in libraries (not TV of course with the exception of the odd NatGeo documentary). That was the first phase, then “smart”phones, now AI. It’s a gradual degradation of human inquiry.
Back to songs, can you think of other songs since the 1980s that touch upon this theme of mass surveillance?
Hey all! Anyone want to discuss Foucault’s Pendulum next month? Email me at [SNIP – no email addresses in the comments, please. Anyone who is interested in contacting you can contact me to be connected. -JC]
Curious to understand the differences between “censored” youtube version and this one. Anyone checked?
This was an enjoyable conversation about “The Conversation.”
I had never watched the film before.
Backdrop visuals of the film jogged old memory cells. The life-endangering Vespa motorcycle, electronics of the era, apparel and hair styles, phones, etc.
I one hundred percent agree with James Corbett about Harry Caul’s concept of a murder taking place.
Wow! Corbett’s cracker-jack observation about Enemy of the State with its embedded Harry Caul aspects was really interesting!
He discusses Enemy of the State around the 43 minute-mark. In July 2013 Corbett had Enemy of the State – FLNWO #06.
I thought that the last part of The Conversation was deliberately filled with confusions, and that the audience is left to determine what occurred. Personally, I have a hard time with nebulous story endings…I don’t like ‘em.
Now-a-days with Meta spy glasses, Ring cameras, Flock, new car surveillance, credit card data harvesting, the internet and phones; it is difficult to escape Big Brother. It would probably prompt Gene Hackman to retire out in the sticks of New Mexico.
“…what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.”
Whether Carl Jung said that phrase, I don’t know for sure. But there are other adages which allude to the ways our ‘trapped attention units’ can manifest.
Books are written about the topic of “Attention.”
I would contend that man has a tough time actually controlling and volitionally directing his own attention. This aspect can explain many behaviors and character patterns.
Homie,
Deep dive there. Hollywood is linear, books can go so many ways into perception that film cannot penetrate. That doesn’t keep them from trying… If you can connect with the past just a little you expand the linear space.
For example; Denzel Washington playing Robert McCall in ” The Equalizer” It reaches back just with a name but in a similar genera . Cheap Temple theatrics.
Listening to this discussion about The Conversation, I kept thinking about Slovenia, because what I observed there made me wonder whether we are already looking at something far beyond the surveillance model imagined in 1974.
Slovenia is almost paradoxical. It is extraordinarily beautiful: mountains, forests, remarkably good water, a strong culture and a peaceful and pleasant living environment. Yet underneath that surface I observed an extraordinary amount of technological surveillance, including drones, while measurements of the electromagnetic environment produced strikingly different patterns from those I encountered elsewhere.
That combination made me wonder whether Slovenia should be looked at as a kind of living laboratory.
Not merely for cameras or conventional surveillance, but for the integration of AI, drones, sensors, communications technologies, environmental monitoring and potentially technologies involving electromagnetic frequencies and human interaction technologically managed environments.
What systems are actually operating, what frequencies do they use, what is being measured, what experiments and pilot programmes are taking place, and what happens to the resulting data?
The historical context makes this particularly fascinating.
Slovenia emerged from socialist Yugoslavia and separated from it during the Ten-Day War of 1991. The twentieth-century model of state surveillance was comparatively recognisable: institutions watched people, collected files and exercised visible authority.
The twenty-first-century version could be fundamentally different.
Since March 2026 Slovenia’s national AI strategy explicitly encompasses national security, defence, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, crisis management and threat detection. Combine AI with drones, cameras, sensors, databases, edge computing and increasingly sophisticated communications infrastructure and surveillance no longer needs to resemble the surveillance state we learned to recognise.
It can disappear into the environment itself.
This is also why I find the contrast with Gaza so disturbing and intellectually important. Gaza represents an extreme in which technological surveillance, military power and physical control are brutally visible. Slovenia raises almost the opposite question: what happens when extremely sophisticated technological observation develops inside an environment that remains beautiful, peaceful, culturally rich and apparently “free”?
And This perfect twenty-first-century living laboratory looks not at all dystopian.
it would look like somewhere people actively want to live if the shit hits the van …
That is what The Conversation makes me wonder about. In 1974 the frightening possibility was that somebody could secretly listen to you.
Fifty years later, the much larger question may be whether the environment around us can observe, measure, classify and respond to us — while we no longer even recognise where the surveillance begins and ends.
the next question is unavoidable:
Are we only being observed, or are technologically managed environments also being used to study how human beings respond?
Mo,
Do you suppose Melania Trump is a Stepford Wife of Slovenian invention?
@Mo
The controllers intentions for centuries has been to take away the natural connection of the Earth and Humanity. From the Native American Sun Dance, the use of drums, flutes, etc. by tribal folk, the lies to burn “witches,” to the destruction of the back to the Earth movement in the 60’s demonizing them with negative words like “hippie,” etc. said to be fostered by the CIA, maybe.
Around 1913 Rockefeller purchased the medical schools who were teaching natural healing with herbs, sound, etc. to make room for his oil products of pills and ointments. The recent revelations by folks across the world about the Tartarians whose influence of the grand cathedrals which were not about religion but rather buildings for healing with sound (bells, organs, choirs,) the Stain Glass Windows, even whole towns using the healing power of the Earth cycles and free electrical energy in building construction long before Tesla.
With the use of their “entertainment” industry, media, etc. the controllers have trivialized any aspect of any natural or Earth based gifts. Think about the countless references in movies/TV to making fun of anyone who uses herbs, sound, etc. as being “kooks” or fools. A few movies now and then illustrate indigenous people’s healing skills.
The magic of life is so far beyond the majority of people caught up in the acquisition of wealth, power and position, even at the working class level, that a true expansion of consciousness seems hopeless, but that is just how the controllers want us to think.
IMO there IS hope and skills in progress by many. Hence all the distractions of false flag wars, illness, etc.
CAUGHT IN THE DREAM (Politics)
https://old.bitchute.com/video/VgucD740mQtR/
I can’t help but compare the ending of 2001 A space Odyssey with the ending of The Conversation.
Reality becomes non linear. The mind slips its hold on sanity. You never mention Stanley Kubrick once.
Now that I have (slowly) seen the movie. Some of what was said was not there visually . To solve that , a little digging and I discovered the film I watched was edited. For ? Why? At least they said it was edited post production . Now that’s over. I hope we get back to Books. What people see and read will generally not be any different than the 1st addition . The wonderful contextual permanency of a bound book.
I suggest the book by Ben Bova, Millinium. 1976 . Full of foretelling of future plans. Many that have come to pass and face us ( plague us ) today.
Fifty years ago I believed the only hope for enlightenment of the masses was movies. MSM = 100% propaganda. Today, Is YT, X, the internet considered MSM? Obviously, it’s a mixed up mess that requires careful monitoring, discretion. AI is anonymous, and therefore unreliable. I rely on sites that have people who have proven themselves. Movie wise, #1 are writers, directors, producers with a tract record, e.g., Tony Gilroy (“Andor”). Past – Movies of Robert Redford, e.g., “3 Days of the Condor” (book “6 days…” was more revealing). Documentaries, e.g., “Loose Change”.
I am watching “Starlink” which I foresee may make censorship impossible, allowing worldwide peer-peer communication.
James! Please consider doing next month’s Brothers K episode with Richard Dolan as a co-host. He has said at least once that it’s his favorite book.
richarddolanmembers.com
AND — it would be an excellent opportunity for crossover audience exposure.
AND FURTHERMORE — In addition to your common interest in false flag events (he has done a lot of historical research on this), he’d be a good person to give you an intro-to-UAP-world overview (separate episode, obviously). He has an academic background and has been a key historian voice in ufology.
Please consider this! I’ll bet 5 bucks I’m not the only person in your audience that also tunes into his work.
Transcript for this show and more. Updated monthly.
https://mega.nz/folder/K91GkZ7Z#wGmMEBdRZzo4VOQnZkWxPQ
Thanks for this brilliant series, and I enjoy the comments from the members as a continuation of the discussion (great minds)
The main message from The Conversation, for me, was that the spy (Harry) is realising for the second time that his spying is actually an act of violence, or rather he is culpable and has guilt.
The film in my mind is about him processing his immorality and unethical career (the catholic confession, the distance he tries to put between himself and everyone else). And this essentially drives him to madness as his sense of reality is undermined, the more he listens and sees the less he knows.
It clearly began as a geekish quest of engineering gadgets, like so many great minds that become weaponised. Where are your efforts spent? Even indirectly what are the consequences?
He is also admired by his fellow professionals yet he is clearly small fry given he is being spied on and fails to find out how. A very humbling moment, which is perhaps not even real.
As he listens repeatedly to the tape in his workshop I would even question if what appears to come out of the recording, after some furious knob twiddling, was even real.
A great thread to follow from last months book (Philip K Dick).
P.s. reminded me of the film “the lives of others”
Thank you so much for this fun experience!! I fired up this video on a beautiful day that I was trapped inside, needing something fun to do while sititng around and voila!.
I extra-appreciated, when a few minutes into the video, James said something like, “Uh, spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen the film, we’re going to dive into it…” I had been intending to just watch the video as I saw The Convesation about twenty years ago, but that prompt made me realize, no! I should watch it again. (Thank you, James!)
So I watched it and then restarted the video, making an afternoon of it.
I continue to ponder James’ ideas about the end being a chronicle of Caul’s mental breakdown, rather than of objective reality….and am still enjoying playing around with different interpretations of the story’s arc.Facinating, too, to learn about the large amount of indended story that didn’t make it into the film.
I am grateful for the times we turn a degree or two away from staying informed about reality, and settle into the fun of enjoying some life and art together.
The NSA: I interviewed with them in 1966. They flew me from Indiana to D.C. for an all-day interview/show-and-tell. I had an MSEE (Purdue). A fascinating day that I remember well. Some great stories are still stuck in my head. They were definitely interested and offered me a job. I refused, but they were persistent. Had I accepted, my life would surely be very different today.
I was glad to hear James and guest mention the strange and conspicuous rain slicker worn by the protagonist. The first time I saw the movie many years ago the name Harry Caul rung a bell of recollection to the James Hearst short story “The Scarlet Ibis”. The tragic figure in that story was said to be born in a caul, the unbroken amniotic sac, which folkways held to be a fabric gift of the Virgin Mary, a sign of her holy protection. When I saw Harry appear in that ridiculous rain jacket there seemed to be no other explanation. When he smashed the statue of the Virgin Mary it fortified my understanding of the reference. Just thought I would throw in the onomastic choice of the writer. I need to go watch the movie again in light of other great points that have been made. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it.