Last year we marked 50 years since the screening of Francis Ford Coppola's film - 'The Conversation', starring Gene Hackman, and in retrospect many agree that this film, which at the time achieved fairly modest success – perhaps because it was stuck between two other Coppola films, 'The Godfather 1' and 'The Godfather 2' – is one of his most important works. I will use this film and another Gene Hackman film, Enemy of the State, to say something about the era we live in, an era of technology and sound, an era in which the grim paranoia of the 70s is almost a joke compared to reality, an era in which almost everyone is listening to us and following us: the state, employers, advertisers, ourselves. So whoever suddenly remembers that the most important thing for them to do now is to watch these two films, is welcome to skip this episode because there will be spoilers in it. Spoiler: I can't really ruin ‘The Conversation.’ It's such a good film that no matter how much I talk about it, nothing can replace the experience of watching it; if anything, listening will make you want to see it. The episode is dedicated to the memory of Gene Hackman: one of my favorite film actors in the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.