Episode 820: Getting Straight (2026)

Why did the one campus-protest picture that drew a crowd end up forgotten? Mike White, Andras Jones and Bill Ackerman reopen Getting Straight (1970), Richard Rush's comedy about a Vietnam veteran, played by Elliott Gould, who is trying to finish his teaching degree while the faculty makes it hard and campus unrest makes it harder. Candice Bergen plays his girlfriend, Jan.

The panel digs into Gould's all-in performance, Rush's long-lens, rack-focus style on a glass-walled campus, Jeannie Berlin's scenes, and what the film keeps and drops from the novel. They test it against The Graduate (1967) and Five Easy Pieces (1970), and ask whether Hollywood would make political youth films now.

Then director Richard Rush joins Mike to talk about winning over Columbia, working with Gould, and shooting in widescreen.

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