THE POSTMAN (1997): TALKING POINTS / RECORDING GUIDE
1. The Core Irony
- The fucking irony of a movie called “The Postman” not trusting its audience to get its message is really all that needs to be said about this 3-hour slog. Message NOT delivered.
- It’s a film whose central metaphor—the power of stories and symbols—is undermined by its need to explain, reinforce, restate, and literalize everything.
- If this movie were mail, it would be certified, insured, return-receipt requested, with a guy following you home to make sure you read it correctly.
2. “Mad Max: Tepid Road”
- The film is very clearly post-apocalyptic cosplay, borrowing aesthetics from Mad Max without the danger or weirdness, but with a much higher budget.
- Society has supposedly collapsed ~30 years ago… yet:
- Everyone lives like medieval peasants.
- Horses are everywhere, but sewing machines disappeared completely in the apocalypse.
- Clothing also disintegrated and never recovered.
- Production design feels symbolic rather than logical:
- “Rags = hardship” is the only note.
- No thought given to how people would realistically adapt, preserve, or repurpose pre-collapse materials.
- The world isn’t observed, it’s asserted.
3. Kevin Costner’s Vanity Western (In Disguise)
- This is a Kevin Costner Passion Project™, through and through.
- The opening act pretends at humility:
- He’s selfish.
- He’s cowardly.
- He’s opportunistic.
- But this “false modesty” quickly gives way to:
- Noble speeches.
- Messianic framing.
- Slow ascension into myth.
- The arc is basically Dances with Wolves in a leather duster:
- Aw-shucks outsider.
- Accidental leader.
- Mythologized savior.
- It feels less like a character discovering heroism and more like Costner waiting for the movie to catch up to his self-image.
4. The Abby Problem (a.k.a. Olivia Williams Deserves Better)
- Abby, played by Olivia Williams, is one of the strangest narrative devices in the film.
- Her storyline includes:
- A husband made sterile due to some new kind of Mumps.
- A near-immediate decision to sleep with Costner that’s OK’d by her handsome, but cuck husband because Costner is, I guess, a loner and thus not syphilitic nor mumpy? Plus, kinda hot?
- A communal shrug about the ethics of this arrangement.
- This happens within minutes of Costner arriving.
- Abby exists primarily to:
- Validate Costner’s virility.
- Motivate his moral growth.
- Nurse him back to health.
- The cabin-burning scene:
- Supposed to be quirky and character-defining.
- Lands like narrative coercion played for laughs.
- “You’re weird” is the movie waving off its own bad writing.
- Credit where due:
- Williams brings sincerity to absolute nonsense.
- She later appears in The Sixth Sense and The Crown, proving this was not a ceiling.
5. Will Patton: Miscast Feudal Threat
- Will Patton is asked to play a post-collapse warlord.
- The movie wants him to be:
- Terrifying.
- Charismatic.
- Intellectually dominant.
- What we get:
- Mean.
- Petty.
- Weirdly small-scale.
- The reveal that he was a copy machine salesman pre-collapse is unintentionally perfect… because nothing about him sells “visionary leader.”
- The film toys with interesting ideas:
- Neo-feudalism.
- Serfdom.
- Power through control of violence.
- But Patton lacks the magnetism needed to sell that system.
- Result: the entire political allegory collapses under a weak antagonist.
6. The Missed Opportunity: A Better Movie Is Hiding In Here
- Strip away the romance and ego, and there’s a solid concept:
- A liar invents hope.
- The lie becomes real.
- The symbol outgrows the man.
- The film almost understands this… but refuses to commit to ambiguity or consequence.
- Killing Costner’s character and letting the myth survive him?
- Smarter.
- Braver.
- Less indulgent.
- Instead, we get inevitability stretched to epic length.
7. The Braveheart Envy
- This feels like a response to Braveheart:
- Sweeping landscapes.
- Earnest speeches.
- One man as historical catalyst.
- The difference:
- Braveheart is operatic.
- The Postman is self-serious and beige.
- Costner wants mythic weight without mythic filmmaking instincts.
8. The Craft That Can’t Save It
- Score by James Newton Howard:
- Lush.
- Technically competent.
- Emotionally generic.
- Cinematography by Stephen F. Windon:
- Handsome.
- Empty.
- More postcard than storytelling.
- Everything is trying to make you feel something.
- Nothing earns it.
- Manipulation without conviction.
- It’s everything that was wrong with filmmaking in the 1990’s. Bloated, superficial and manipulative.
9. The Numbers (Because They Matter)
- Budget: ~$80 million
- Worldwide gross: ~$20 million
- One of the biggest box-office bombs of the 1990s.
- Nominated for five Razzie Awards, including:
- Worst Picture
- Worst Actor
- Worst Director
- Costner’s career never fully recovered its prestige-director sheen afterward.
10. Final Takeaway (Your Button)
- The Postman is not misunderstood.
- It is overlong, underthought, and overconfident.
- A movie about belief that believes far too much in itself.
- In better hands—leaner direction, sharper antagonist, less ego—it could’ve been a compelling dystopian fable.
- Instead, it’s three hours of Kevin Costner’s hair gently insisting it knows better than you.
Bottom Five Jobs in Movies
5.) Smile 2 (2024) — Global Pop Megastar
Director: Parker Finn Box Office: ~$138M worldwide (budget ~$28M)
Yeah—being Lady Gaga would really, really suck. She’s not technically Lady Gaga, but Naomi Scott’s character lands uncomfortably close to that mega-celebrity stratosphere. Constant surveillance. Endless pressure. Invasive fans. Parasitic clingers. And the coup de grâce: an unforgiving, hyper-controlling mother who doubles as her manager.
The physical and emotional pain etched across Scott’s performance is visceral and deeply convincing—fame here isn’t glamorous, it’s a prison. Add the Smile curse to the equation and you get something rare: a sequel that arguably surpasses the original by using celebrity itself as a horror engine.
Production / Context Notes:
- Widely noted as a sequel that outperforms the original by sharpening its thematic focus.
- Scott trained extensively for the role’s physical demands, mirroring her character’s exhaustion.
- Finn leaned hard into fame-as-horror, using concert staging and sound design as tools of dread.
- The film weaponizes public adoration as a form of possession.
Why it’s a Bottom Five job: Your suffering is monetized, and stopping means disappearing.
4.) Blade Runner (1982) — Blade Runner
Director: Ridley Scott Box Office: ~$41.5M worldwide (budget ~$28M)
Being a Blade Runner isn’t cool—it’s spiritually bankrupt. You’re a government-sanctioned executioner tasked with hunting down replicants who are often more emotionally alive than the humans who employ you. The job is conducted in perpetual rain, under flickering neon, in a city that feels like it’s rotting faster than it can be rebuilt.
Deckard’s life is already bleak before the film’s central conflict kicks in: greasy street food dinners, a cramped apartment, no visible friends, no future, and a job that seems to actively hollow him out. Even the terminology—“retirement”—is a bureaucratic euphemism designed to make murder feel procedural.
Production / Context Notes:
- A box-office disappointment on release, partially crushed by E.T. in the same summer.
- Gained legendary status through home video and repertory screenings, leading to multiple competing cuts.
- Harrison Ford openly disliked the voiceover and clashed with Scott, which adds an odd meta-layer to his disengaged performance.
- The film’s legacy only reinforces the misery of the job: no version ever makes it feel worthwhile.
Why it’s a Bottom Five job: You’re paid to erase lives and question your own humanity—without even being sure which side you’re on.
3.) The Grey (2011) — Oil Rig Wolf Hunter
Director: Joe Carnahan Box Office: ~$81M worldwide (on a ~$25M budget)
Before the plane ever crashes, Liam Neeson’s job already qualifies as one of the worst in cinema. He lives in the frozen wilds of Northern Alaska as a professional wolf hunter, tasked with killing predators to protect a pack of hostile, hard-drinking oil workers who barely tolerate him. His days are spent tracking animals, cleaning blood from snow, and returning to lonely motel rooms where the isolation has hollowed him out completely.
The film makes it brutally clear that this life has broken him. In one of the bleakest opening gestures in modern studio cinema, Neeson’s character nearly ends his own life with his rifle—only stopping because of a memory of his late wife. Then the plane crashes, and suddenly a man who was ready to die is forced into the absurd position of fighting to survive.
Production / Context Notes:
- The film was shot largely in British Columbia, standing in for Northern Alaska.
- Neeson made the movie shortly after the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson, and that grief bleeds unmistakably into the performance.
- Marketed misleadingly as a wolf-punching action movie, the film is actually a meditation on despair, endurance, and unwanted survival.
- The ending—and its quiet post-credits audio—cements the film’s refusal to offer heroic release.
Why it’s a Bottom Five job: The job doesn’t just risk your life—it makes you want to give it up before the real nightmare even begins.
2.) The Abyss (1989) — Deep-Sea Oil Rig Worker
Director: James Cameron Box Office: ~$90M worldwide (budget ~$70M)
Working on an oil rig thousands of feet below the Atlantic Ocean already means living under constant pressure—physical and psychological. You’re cut off from the surface, dependent on machines, and one mistake away from catastrophe.
Then your employer informs you that your crew will also be hosting a Navy SEAL team investigating a sunken nuclear submarine—while still submerged. Suddenly your job includes corporate obedience, military escalation, and the looming possibility of nuclear disaster… underwater.
And yes—this was my favorite movie for over 30 years. Growth means finally admitting: this job is a hellscape.
Production / Context Notes:
- One of the most infamously grueling shoots in Hollywood history.
- Cast and crew spent months submerged in massive tanks; Ed Harris nearly drowned and later said he refused to discuss the film for years.
- Cameron himself nearly drowned and was reportedly abusive during production—mirroring the film’s themes of pressure and control.
- Underperformed theatrically but became a home-video juggernaut, especially after the Special Edition restored Cameron’s ending.
Why it’s a Bottom Five job: Corporate indifference, military escalation, crushing water pressure—and then aliens show up.
1.) The Lighthouse (2019) — Lighthouse Keeper
Director: Robert Eggers Box Office: ~$18M worldwide (budget ~$4M)
Poor, poor Robert Pattinson. On paper, lighthouse keeping might sound lonely but manageable. In practice? It’s a claustrophobic black-and-white descent into madness, paired with a completely unhinged Willem Dafoe who smells like farts, brine, and unearned authority.
Now add relentless winter storms, isolation, power struggles, alcohol poisoning, possible sea-god curses, and a creeping Lovecraftian dread that may or may not be real. While watching this movie, you can feel the biting wet cold, the rot, the dampness, the grime—this place is actively hostile to sanity.
Production / Context Notes:
- Shot in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, intensifying claustrophobia.
- Filmed in brutal coastal conditions; Pattinson later described the shoot as physically and mentally punishing.
- Dialogue draws from 19th-century maritime records, lending the abuse a mythic cruelty.
- Sound design—fog horns, wind, creaking wood—functions as psychological warfare.
Why it’s a Bottom Five job: There is no escape, no dignity, and no version of you that leaves intact.