Assault on Precinct 13 with April Wolfe

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't go to nowhere, stop and pay with the show, it's Blank Check You wanna be a podcast your first night out, Lieutenant? Yes, sir. There are no podcasts anymore, Bishop. Just men who follow orders.

[00:00:31] That was worth it. Right, I had to do some digging because IMDb only had the first line, so then I had to scrub through the movie with captions on to figure out getting the lead-in line right. I thought that was worth it.

[00:00:43] This movie has a lot of great lines, but a lot of them don't make sense. It's gotta go a lot of good back and forth. If you cram the word podcast in them. Yes, yes, but like, uh, you look like someone spit in your sock.

[00:00:57] That's a good line, but how do you put podcasts? I'm not gonna say you look like someone spit in your podcast. That doesn't mean anything. You take the specifics out of that line. You've done so many stupid openings to this show.

[00:01:06] I think you're not a bother doing that. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I disagree. I think every opening I've ever done has been very, very smart. That's what I would say. Very smart and very clever and very natural because this is a podcast.

[00:01:22] You see, that's what I, when I put the word podcast in the line from the movie, it was because I wanted people to know that the thing they're listening to is a podcast. It's called Blank Check with Gryphon and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David.

[00:01:33] And it is a podcast about filmographies. Directors who have massive success early on in their careers are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they execute an assault on Pre-Sick 13 baby. Baby.

[00:01:49] And this is a mini series on the films of John Carpenter. It's called... The podcast. It's called They Podcast. Yep. Ben, Ben made the decision. I know Ben made the decision. He swung in. The right decision. It just still hurts me every time.

[00:02:06] It's a little too raw for me to say it, so I let David say it instead. Ben should say it. Define Ben, say it. They podcast. Producer Ben, say it. They podcast. Ben Doosers. No, we're not going to do this for like 10 hours.

[00:02:22] We're talking about his second film today. In some ways sort of his first proper film. But Dark Star counts. I know he's sometimes sort of shrugged it off because it was like, well, it was a short.

[00:02:36] I'm stressed no feature and it never should have been a feature and all that sort of stuff. But this is the movie that becomes a calling card for him. And then the next film makes him a legend.

[00:02:46] It's kind of your standard like one, two, three punch kind of thing. You know where it's like, a lot of directors we cover. Their first movie is like maybe it's a kind of half formed idea. Or just some weird thing they leapt on just to make something right.

[00:03:02] Right. They're trying to be scrappy with very limited resources or you know, you have your Prana twos where someone like has their for hire job that drives them crazy and they like it forms them. They become committed to never making a movie like that ever again.

[00:03:19] But this is kind of your standard like, okay, it's a student film that pops a little bit. He wants to direct. No one is hiring him to direct. So he writes two spec scripts.

[00:03:31] There's this one and there's a film called eyes which John Peters and Barbra Streisand buy for her to star in. That does not happen. It later becomes the eyes of Laura Mars. And then they decide to let him direct this movie with a hundred million dollar budget.

[00:03:48] And this is the thing that hundred thousand dollar budget Jesus Christ. Yes. A hundred thousand. A scrappy hundred million dollar budget. If he spent a hundred million dollars on this money, I might, you know, investigate him. I would criticize it. Right. Okay. Okay.

[00:04:06] Correction department because you know, I got a book for this dang ass mini series. Most sources say 150K but an interview included on second site. Joseph Kaufman is Adam and is somewhere between 200 and 250 grand. But then I saw some carpenter interviews where he disputed that.

[00:04:24] He disputed the fact that now the story has gone up to 200,000. But this is what happens with movies that were made like 40, 50 years ago. It's like no one really remembers anymore. Everyone's like, no, no, it wasn't that much. It was this. There's also the 70s.

[00:04:39] So everybody was probably kind of a little fucked up. Oh yeah. There's another factor this too, which is like when you make a hundred thousand dollar movie and 40 years later, people are still buying it on Blu-ray and droves and streaming rights are still expensive.

[00:04:56] Then they go like, why don't maybe it cost 15 million dollars? Because I don't think they're actually profits to go around. Well, sure. That's like, I think that's a thing too. I guess by the way, just show, so she knows can start talking at any time.

[00:05:08] This show is bad and unstructured. And we love it when people talk before we introduce them. Yeah. Just swing on in. I mean, I think it has more to do with the fact that the post production costs actually probably brought up the budget to 200 and 250,000

[00:05:24] because what will end up happening so often is the posted budget will be what was projected. And then the final budget is your pickups and all of your posts.

[00:05:35] And there was quite a bit of money spent on mixing and effects and things on this that happened post shoot. So I can see it being up to that. And it's like at that point, it's like, we need the money.

[00:05:52] Look, come on, what are you going to do? Not finish the movie? Like, come on, get us more cash. Yeah. I think he probably held them hostage to it because he was like really adamant about making sure that this looked and sounded good for what its budget was.

[00:06:06] So it probably could have started off as 100 to 150 and then got brought up to do it. That this sound was like a huge thing I was reading about that he spent like a disproportionate amount of money in post,

[00:06:19] getting really, really top level sound despite the fact that the film had been so bootstrappy. And it's smart. It makes a difference. I do think that sound is often the element that early filmmakers working on a low budget prioritize the least.

[00:06:35] And it really does give you more production value than a lot of other things like sound can make an OK image more impactful, but the reverse is not true, I would argue. I think sound can cover up for a lot of visual mistakes and sell the legitimate. Autorship.

[00:06:58] So I think that's absolutely true. But that's, I mean, that's the thing with Carpenter is the fact that like he is, you know, a sonic artist as well.

[00:07:06] Like he's working in the sound space and he's really experienced with that and he doesn't have to pay himself for those things. He can just shit out a score and figure it out.

[00:07:20] Although the score for this one, I know that he said it took a pretty long time to create a lot of the sounds that he was looking for just because of their limited equipment.

[00:07:29] So what I was seeing is it sounded like it took him three days to actually write it and it took him a very long time to figure out on like a technical level how to execute it. Yeah. Like I think creatively it was pretty simple.

[00:07:44] He does seem to be one of these guys who as you said can kind of shit these things out and just immediately be like, I don't know, it sounds like this and just put it down.

[00:07:51] And then you just have, you know, like, I mean this movie is probably 15 minutes of music that he repeats over and over and over again. I think he wrote like three different themes, all of which are really impactful.

[00:08:03] But he was kind of revolutionizing some of the technology in terms of at least using this for a film score. Our guest aide knows what she's talking about. Sure does.

[00:08:15] Butting in with very insightful comments because she is a former film critic and a current screenwriter specializing in horror films. This is kind of your Ballywick. This is your world that you love.

[00:08:27] Also previously the host of the Switchblade Sisters podcast, but writer of The Black Christmas remake, April Wolf, thank you so much for being on the show. Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be part of the John Carpenter series. Hell yeah. They podcast.

[00:08:45] Yes, you know, every time we commit to a new director and we look at the list of all the movies we have, and David loves nothing more in the world than scheduling, truly I cannot overstate this.

[00:08:58] It gives me such a rush anytime he's able to type anything into a spreadsheet and feel like he's organized. I mean, John Carpenter won and there were already names like two minutes later in that spread. He hesitates, not even a moment before jumping on that spreadsheet.

[00:09:17] And you know, we look at it and sometimes it's like we know certain people have reached out and said if you ever do this, I'd want to cover this movie.

[00:09:24] Sometimes we have our friends who have been frequent guests on the show and we go let's throw out to them and see.

[00:09:31] But then we always have this space where we look at the list and we go like, who are some fun people to bring in that we've never talked to before? Who would be a good match for this?

[00:09:38] And it was like a big aha moment of just like, oh, April would be excellent. This feels like an exciting time to bring her on. Oh man, fun is like, we'll see. I'm having fun. I'm having fun. I got numbers wrong. I said this movie cost 100 million.

[00:09:55] I'm just, I'm ready to just like get really dark and just sad. That's it. Just so sad. Very into that. I also feel like, I mean, Alex Ross Perry is going to be on Halloween next week, spoiler alert.

[00:10:09] And he has been spending the last couple months writing like a dissertation to try to correct David and I and our limited understanding of like the history of the slasher movie. Because of a wanton comment that we made in some previous episode. Wait, really? What's the wanton?

[00:10:28] It doesn't, well, you know what? He'll tell us. He'll tell us. I just know that he's got like some master document. He's ready to school us. But the original Black Christmas is one of the movies that kind of gets credit for helping to formalize the slasher job. Right?

[00:10:48] Yeah. That's like the original slasher movie. It is. I mean, for North America, but I have a feel like I have a more global sense of what I think a slasher is that isn't necessarily accepted.

[00:11:01] It's just like when the term is coined because we can go back into earlier horror films too and say that they have the markings of a slasher. But I think also that Jollos have slasher roots too. That's what I was going to say. Yes. Right.

[00:11:17] Christmas feels like that's the sort of breakthrough for American slasher. And then like Halloween is the explosion moment. Yeah.

[00:11:26] And, you know, there's like rumors too of the fact that John Carpenter was inspired by Bob Clark and was just like, oh, do you want to do a Halloween version of this? Like you already did a Christmas one. And so he makes a Halloween movie with Deborah.

[00:11:43] It is so funny that like John Carpenter makes Halloween and is like, yep, I'm a master of horror. Here's who I am for the rest of my career for the last 15 years. My movies will all be called John Carpenter's blank because that's the brand name.

[00:11:57] And Bob Clark makes this like breakthrough American slasher movie. And it's like, oh, I'll go do like. I say North American because he's like, he's been drafted into into American culture so deeply. North American slasher film.

[00:12:13] And then the rest of his career is like porkies and baby geniuses and right. He invented a bunch of other genres sort of. Yeah. Rhinestone. I forgot he did rhinestone. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating guy. I mean, we'll talk about Halloween next week.

[00:12:30] But like, yeah, black Christmas is just Carpenter adds a villain like black Christmas. The villain is so is so skewer and like that. He's nebulous. The kind of thing it's that's the Jalow tradition. Yeah. Carpenter makes the avatar right like the, you know, this big guy. The icon.

[00:12:47] Right. But but this yes, this movie is Carpenter working in more of an action thriller vein doing his sort of modern western. But you see, you know, because I mean, Dark Star has the fucking beach ball with claws sequence, right?

[00:13:06] Which almost plays like a parody of a horror sequence. But you can see the bones of a guy who understands how to structure and build a sequence around tension, even if it's kind of done mockingly.

[00:13:17] You can see the bones of escape from New York in this is what I think though. Like that to me those are the that's the line that I that I draw. Hardcore.

[00:13:28] But I but I also think he's doing some really interesting stuff with like tension build and release in this movie. Or even though it is not a horror film, you understand why he was then like able to just totally hit the ground running on Halloween.

[00:13:44] Can I tell you guys a secret? Anything. Any secrets please. When I watched this movie and every time I've watched it, I have I have always imagined that the gang is vampires.

[00:13:56] And there's like an extra layer for me that they are these like kind of undead or zombies. Yeah, right. Well, you know, I had a kind of a breakthrough in watching this.

[00:14:07] I had a similar kind of take but I was like, this is like a video where they're like computer generated bad guys that don't like, you know what I mean? That don't really have like a life.

[00:14:18] They just kind of have like their one goal of killing all of them. Do you know what I mean? It really feels like almost like a video game setup.

[00:14:27] It is interesting since of course, Carpenter has, you know, ostensibly retired from directing because he wants to focus on being the best of the world in Xbox.

[00:14:36] That's the thing he talks about a lot that he just plays video games all the time and that's his priority in life. He loves Fortnite. It does feel like video games have sort of become Carpenter movies. Like it's one of those things.

[00:14:49] I mean, I feel like we were talking about this when we were doing like the Star Wars commentary maybe for the original film where you're like, oh, there's so much of the language of video games in like the trench run in the original Star Wars.

[00:15:04] And I feel like there's a lot in modern video games that is taken from the sort of storytelling tropes and the aesthetics and all of that of what Carpenter did and the sort of very primal conflicts, you know?

[00:15:18] I don't play video games so I'm not sure I can speak to it. I don't either. This is why I'm looking for David. I only play games featuring Lego bricks or Mickey Mouse. I need you to tell me whether or not I'm right.

[00:15:29] I feel like games have evolved a little past this, but I mean, like this is a tower defense movie, right? Sure. And there is this seemingly endless horde that's sort of spilling in and you have to write, you know, figure out a way to survive and limited resources.

[00:15:48] And yes, I mean, I do think gaming is gone, but I can't. I need to read more about Carpenter's gaming fixations because I know that he is a gamer and he talks about it now or never.

[00:15:59] But I actually want to dig into what it is that he like, what he likes because I don't apart from seeing once that he likes Fortnite. I have not really gotten into his gaming tastes.

[00:16:12] I would love it if he only played that video game that is just like controlling the paper that blows in the wind. I like. He only plays the game where the duck conks at people or the goose or whatever. Yeah, like that's the kind of shit I love.

[00:16:30] Right. I think he plays like big blockbite. Like he plays like Assassin's Creed and fallout. Hell yeah. So, you know what I mean? Like he likes like, you know, what do you what they call AAA games, which is great. I totally, I totally support.

[00:16:43] There's one I'm forgetting which I'm going to find where he was talking about like just kind of how committed he was to it. He also famously was like a humongous Sonic the Hedgehog fan.

[00:16:55] He was really big on Sonic like from the inception and wanting to make a Sonic movie for a while. It's just what I don't.

[00:17:03] I don't understand about Carpenter sometimes where I'm like, and like with this movie obviously like this movie is so great in how stripped down it is.

[00:17:12] But all all the interviews you read and all the retrospection he does, he's always like, I wanted to make it bigger, you know. And it's like, is he just constantly at war with the fact that he is best doing something like this?

[00:17:25] And like the idea of him doing a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, obviously I'd love to see it. But like, would it be good? Like, is that really would that really be his speed? I don't know. Yeah. Well, it's a very fast speed.

[00:17:37] I don't know if he could run as fast as Sonic. You set me up for that. Yes. No, it is an interesting kind of push and pull with him because he does not have that tension that I feel like.

[00:17:47] A lot of genre directors do where once they're successful, they're like, but I want to be taken seriously. You know, he is he's pretty comfortable and I think like, I don't want to make prestige movies. I don't want to jump over and do like austere dramas.

[00:18:02] I like being in these worlds, but I wish people gave me more money to play in them. That having been said, he's the best at this. And even like to April's point, it's like, well, he saves money by shitting out a score himself.

[00:18:14] But like, would any of these films be improved by him being able to hire a real composer? He always says he wishes he could. But I'm like 25% of the success of this movie is the theme over the opening credits. Like it just sets the tone so incredibly well.

[00:18:29] I cannot imagine him hiring Jerry Goldsmith to do something that would be more impactful than this. Yeah, but the thing is that like, that most of us just constantly overlook the fact that one of the reasons why he doesn't want to

[00:18:41] he doesn't do those big movies is because he hates people. He doesn't want to deal with fucking executives. He's not hiring. He wants to hire another composer, but is he going to get along with that person? Probably not. Right, right. Hey, give me that.

[00:18:56] I'll show you what to do. Yeah, he's just like he famously dislikes people and that's one of the reasons why it's just like, you know, the new Halloween stuff. He's just like, whatever, give me all the money.

[00:19:07] Here's a here's a score, you know, and he like just doesn't care. It's a control thing for him. He doesn't trust anyone else. He doesn't want to have to collaborate with anyone else as much of it as he can do on his own.

[00:19:19] I guess what I'm sort of waiting for and we obviously haven't reached it yet, like what the breaking point is going to be where he is working on a bigger scale and realizes like, oh, I can't fucking. Well, I don't know.

[00:19:33] I mean, it's like the thing is the movie where he gets the money, you know, the thing is the movie where he gets a shot at a bigger scale for the first time and it's arguably his masterpiece and it's a flop in

[00:19:44] Universal's like, well, no more studio films for you. Yeah. April, how do you feel about Carpenter in general? Like is Carpenter one of your guys or like is it more of a mixed bag for you?

[00:19:55] Like is this your this is the movie you picked when I threw his sort of filmography at you. Is this a favorite for you? And we asked you early. So I mean, like the majority of the films were open. Yeah, you had a lot.

[00:20:08] You had a lot of choice. Yeah, no one talks about it. So I was just like, fuck it, you know, like no one's going to talk about this.

[00:20:14] I think for me, I love his kind of scrappy resourcefulness and I sometimes am just like, oh man, you know, Carpenter is overrated or whatever. But the thing is he's not.

[00:20:25] And sometimes the things, you know, when people kind of reach back into horror stuff and they just want to try to imitate, I think that, you know, so often they go for Carpenter.

[00:20:36] And sometimes I think they're just imitating the wrong things from him that like kind of made him so different from other filmmakers. Like it's it's like kind of hard for people to identify and imitate,

[00:20:48] even if they're like trying to do like a score like his or something like that. There's just some kind of piece of him that is partially like his attitude of just like he kind of hates people. His morality is really fucked up because of that.

[00:21:01] And I'm constantly, I love morality tales, which I think is probably one of the reasons why I gravitate towards, you know, horror and genre, because there's just so much of that.

[00:21:12] And it's just really hard to pick apart exactly how he feels about things other than that like you can't really trust people. And like there's going to be a lot of sins in the past.

[00:21:25] And like it's just a lot of kind of random violence that feels fairly realistic, even if it's like in his weird heightened surreal, sensualist kind of tone. I just feel like he has such a great handle on humanity that other filmmakers just miss because they're like,

[00:21:45] they're so obsessed with trying to get like the Halloween killer. And I'm like, that's not what makes him special. It's these other things that people just they don't pay attention to as much.

[00:21:56] So I'm a pretty big fan and in fact Prince of Darkness was a really, really big influence on our Black Christmas remake, which is of course one of the things that like people don't really like talk about Black or Prince of Darkness and they're not really,

[00:22:11] but also like I think it's a great movie, maybe not a lot of other people do. We both have not seen it and it's one of the exciting things about the series is getting to that one. Yeah, it is ridiculous.

[00:22:25] There are so many monologues and so much strange shit happening in this church that like with like this totem kind of thing that is essentially like the anti-Christ that's in a green goo in a church basement, you know? And that's like pleasant as the lead, right?

[00:22:46] Right, that's pleasant going wild too. Like later pleasant. Yes, yeah. Late, later. Yeah, you're so many monologues, you guys. I fucking love it where you just get like actors who know how to act and oh. That's so exciting.

[00:22:58] Is it Halloween 4 or 5 where Daniel Harris was like, he was a really nice man but like he stank of bourbon and like so much of it was him, which is right around the same time as Prince of Darkness.

[00:23:09] Like so much of his performance is him like leading in and yelling at like this little girl. And she's like, he was totally pleasant to me. He just, I realized later like, oh that's like bourbon on his breath. Yeah.

[00:23:23] I'm just thinking about like he had the darkest eyes, the devil's eyes where it's like he had the foulest breath, the bourbons breath. Yeah. Like just staring off into the distance, haunted describing pleasant's breath. We'll have time to talk pleasant as we go on.

[00:23:38] Right, we'll go to pleasant's fill. Two things I want to say off of what you said, April. One is which these are two quotes on the Wikipedia. One is from what's it called Shot Value, the Jason Zidemann book about when Dan O'Bannon saw the film,

[00:23:58] he thought it was disgusting and he told Carpenter that he thought that the kind of coolness through which he depicted the cruelty and the violence of the movie was reflective of his casual disregard for humanity.

[00:24:15] And vice versa, his disregard for humanity had been reflected in how Carpenter had treated O'Bannon during Dark Star. Sure, there's an axis grinding in that criticism. Right.

[00:24:28] And his O'Bannon's quote was, his disdain for human beings would be serviced if he could make a film without people in it. Damn. I think Dan's got, I think Dan's being, because like I feel like Carpenter's answer to most of that would be like, yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:44] I do have a bit of it right, yeah. And then O'Bannon's like, and it's because you're a jerk, give me my, you know, give me my 50% of, you know, like, I don't know, like God love Dan O'Bannon. He's just he's just the crank. But it's two cranks.

[00:24:57] It's too cranks. Right. Too much crank energy when they're together. That's right. That's why they could never work again. And we're not talking about Jason Statham shit. No. No, although it is high voltage when the two of them are in the same room. Yeah. Or were RIP.

[00:25:10] The other thing here was, and I don't direct quote here, but it's apparently in one of the commentary tracks that Carpenter's done for some release of this.

[00:25:18] But he explicitly said like my whole conceptualization for the gang is to code them more as like zombies or vampires or ghouls that I didn't want to behave like humans.

[00:25:31] I wanted them to have a bare minimum of dialogue and even their like very slow, methodical, but kind of stilted movements. I want them to feel weirdly supernatural and whether or not it's to be literally interpreted that way.

[00:25:44] He wants them to make he wants to make them feel inhuman and closer to some sort of mindless horde of monsters that we're used to seeing in these movies. Yeah. It reminded me actually of like that British movie Psychomania of like the motorcycle gang who they kill them.

[00:26:02] They kill themselves to live forever. And they just like they torment the small British village on their motorcycles with their leather jackets. They're just a gang that won't die. And it just reminded me of that.

[00:26:17] So in my head too, I was like they're either vampires or they're like this like psycho gang. Psychomania. Psychomania. Is George Sanders last film? Yeah, I think so. That is bizarre. It's a beautiful film. Wow, I need to see this.

[00:26:34] Do not watch it when you've like gotten far too stoned. I can tell you that. Noted. Noted. Yeah, it's interesting because like talking about Carpenter right and his necessary scrappy resourcefulness, right?

[00:26:51] Because I you know, he said like I thought Dark Star was going to be a calling card. No one called the only thing I could get hired to do was write spec scripts. I wrote scripts that were small.

[00:27:00] I talked them into letting me direct one, but I was going to get a bare minimum budget. And most of the financing through this was like acquired through like parents of friends.

[00:27:10] Like he was like I got very lucky that I knew rich kids in college and was able to sort of talk them into giving me a very limited amount of money for this movie. But when he started writing this, it was a straight Western.

[00:27:20] He was like, I want to make my hawks Western. I want to make my real Bravo homage. It's going to take place in the old West. This movie would not be as good if it took place in the old West.

[00:27:31] It would feel in my mind more like just an obvious hawks pasties rather than a total remake. Right. Rather than him turning into his own thing in the same way where it's like the fact that he probably not that I'm applying he wanted to,

[00:27:48] but that he probably couldn't have afforded to make this gang literal monsters, but instead has human beings act like zombies gives it so much more power. You know? Well, I mean, I think that's I think he it could have been good and different if it was old West.

[00:28:06] If he kept the kind of like nighttime aspect and made them some kind of monsters. Oh sure. That reminds me of that movie Gargoyle, which is a TV movie that came out in the late 70s.

[00:28:24] And it has some kind of there's like a it's contemporary, but you're in a kind of like Old West desert kind of thing feeling. And there's like these gargoyles that are attacking trying to get the the skeleton of one of their own back from this like roadside museum.

[00:28:44] But that's like 500 percent the thing he was never going to get the budget to do, which is like, oh, it's the old West and it has makeup. Yeah, that would know that's just not possible, unfortunately. But yeah, we can always imagine that their vampires like that's great. Right.

[00:29:00] I like that. The design of Gargoyle's looks insane. Stan Winston did this. Yeah. This is a are you looking at this creature, David? I am. Yeah, it's fun. It's like almost a friendly kid character.

[00:29:16] If you know what I mean, because it's got like these kind of like eyes and this big, big brow. I could almost see liking the Gargoyle. Well, the Gargoyle is played by Bernie Casey. I do like him then. Yeah. He's great.

[00:29:32] He's actually I mean he turns out to be like a kind of character who you're just like, yeah, absolutely give back the skeleton of the gargoyle. Why would you keep that?

[00:29:42] The scripts he writes post-Arx star are eyes, which becomes eyes of Laura Mars, blood river, which almost got made with John Wayne and Elvis Presley. I think we talked about this. But then that movie never comes to fruition.

[00:29:56] Black Moon Rising, which becomes a Tommy Lee Jones vehicle much later, Escape from New York City, which then becomes Escape from New York. And this are sort of that initial burst where he's just really prolific writing stuff, hoping someone will let him direct one of them.

[00:30:16] Yes, this is called Siege. Obviously the movie takes place in Precinct 9, but I guess they just thought 13 sounded cooler. It does. In the movie it's 9. It was Precinct 9 District 13. Right.

[00:30:30] I think they may have tagged that on to be like, I mean, Assault on Precinct 13 is a great title. Like I'm not, I am not, Assault on Precinct 9 sounds like a fucking bag of dog shit. I don't want to watch that movie.

[00:30:42] Can I tell you guys another secret? Please. Of course. So I have a problem like seeing and comprehending numbers sometimes is like I had a hard time writing threes and fives for a long time.

[00:30:55] Like numbers are just like hard for me to comprehend in a way that other people can, like on a page or something or just in my head. So Assault on Precinct I have never not had to look up what number it is. I can't remember numbers.

[00:31:08] I can't like there's like a, it's almost like a blank spot in my head.

[00:31:11] So I've always had to look up which number it is even though I love this movie, which is wild because I'll be like in the middle of like talking to someone like you and just be like Assault on Precinct. And then I just have to pause.

[00:31:22] And then I have to go home. I have a little of that, but I don't know if I have it to that degree. I mean, I like I obsessively remember box office numbers, but then we'll flip basic numbers all the time in anything. Sure.

[00:31:38] Like most times I have my bank account certainly, but also most times I have moved into a new apartment. I sign up for stuff with the wrong apartment number because I can't remember where I live. Like that's an ongoing issue with me.

[00:31:53] You just have to get like write it on your hand I think for a while. Yeah, yeah. I had an apartment I lived in for two years where all my mail went to my next door neighbor and she had to keep on bringing it over to me.

[00:32:05] Very annoying. This is like a real Griffin move. Yeah, it does. And I was also I was very confused because I think I was living in apartment 22 and I was like, well do I live in 22 or 23? Which one is me and which one's the B?

[00:32:20] I'm not joking here. I was genuinely getting confused as to which apartment I lived in as opposed to the B and 23. That's that's how my brain works. I'm reading some quotes here from Carpenter where he's like grumpy about like, look, of course it's real Bravo, but it's not.

[00:32:37] I'm not copying Rio Bravo. The only shot I copy is the shotgun being tossed, which is from Red River, not Bravo. And then but then he's like monoling these quotes that are the JJ and Nick are digging up are so good where where he just kind of monologues.

[00:32:56] And then he's like a lot of directors like, well, DiPoma virtually copy movie. Like, you know, he's like a lot of directors that he clearly is like, you know what I'm just going to say Brian. Yeah. He was ragging on.

[00:33:08] DiPoma is just straight up doing Hitchcock, but Donovitch is doing like Wells and shit, you know, and Hitchcock and John Ford and like, all the, you know, all these guys obviously are the sort of worshiping the old old tours and all that. This is such a brutal quote.

[00:33:24] He says, but Donovitch copies to he wants to make movies about old movies to say, Hey, look at me. I have good taste. I love Hawks. I love Ford. I love Hitchcock. Isn't that great? Look, this is the best thing about covering Carpenter.

[00:33:36] So he's a salty old bitch even in 1978 when he's a salty young bitch, but he kind of hated all of his contemporaries. Right. He's grumpy about everyone and then he's like, why doesn't anyone want to work with me? Give me $40 billion.

[00:33:49] Like, you know, it's like, but I think I agree with you Griffin that like the it's better that this isn't a Western in because it just reflects his view of like late seventies society. Yeah.

[00:34:03] In a way that must have just been insanely resonant even though obviously this movie is so over the top, but this is the same with Halloween. Like Halloween is a movie about like feeling unsafe in the suburbs, right?

[00:34:12] Like how like you think, you know, everything is fine here because here we all are in the suburbs, right? And we all fled here. And then it's like, well, yeah, except anyone can just open the fucking door and like this too just kind of feels like, yeah,

[00:34:24] there's just people out there who are soulless monsters will shoot a child through her ice cream cone. It's the first death. It's so good. It's so good. I mean, it's so bananas.

[00:34:36] And I it's what like the I knew that this movie had a child getting shot before I saw it. Like that was like, I think the first thing I ever knew that's the famous thing.

[00:34:44] That's this movie's legacy is like he shot a girl in the chest and thus John Carpenter's career was made. But it is like it's one of those things where you know it's coming.

[00:34:54] And then when it happens, you're like, like, that's like, God, that's I can't believe he did that. It also you watch it and you're like, I still feel like you're not allowed to do that. Like, no. No, you're not. Right. Drawing embracing and aggressive.

[00:35:10] So something I read about that was that he got an X rating. Yeah. He got an X rating and then the rumor is right. He took it out and then just put it back in. Right. Is that what you're yeah. Yeah. But just so crazy.

[00:35:25] Like, I mean, he pulled it off and I guess at this point, whatever it's fine. Right. Like, well, it feels like nothing was centralized back then. Right. Like movies are still coming out like in drips and drabs and the MPA exists, but

[00:35:39] it's maybe not cracking the whip as much. I don't know. Again, all of this stuff feels, I mean, April, what do you think of the first kill? I mean, I could well, I mean, there's the kill. There's the action. Yeah. The opening sort of assault. Yeah.

[00:35:55] This, this, this crazy sort of death sequence or should we talk about earlier stuff? I don't know. Well, I was just going to say one other thing. I guess before we sort of get into it is like, you know, in his crankiness, he was like, well,

[00:36:05] you know, my vision for this was it was going to cost $5 million and I was going to have big stars in it. And April, you were talking about just sort of like the interplay and the character

[00:36:14] dynamics and how much you want to kind of like live in the interpersonal stuff in a carpenter movie. And it is a thing that I think doesn't make him unique, but is like such an advantage

[00:36:25] he has over a lot of other genre filmmakers where a lot of them you can tell they actually don't really care about the human characters that much. Right? I don't want to paint with a broad brush here, but I feel like there are a lot of

[00:36:38] even well liked and certainly this goes even more so for a lot of the crappier sort of like genre films of the time where it's like, well, what they really want is this, they're thinking about the set pieces, they're thinking about

[00:36:49] the monsters, they're thinking about their clever conceit. And this is like the chaffa killing time, whatever, you know? And you watch a movie like this where he's not dealing with any movie stars, you know, and the actors in this go on to varying levels of success, but it's

[00:37:03] not like he discovers a Jamie Lee Curtis in this cast who then becomes, of course we knew, you know, she was going to be around for decades. But every performance is so good. Every dialogue exchange is interesting.

[00:37:17] You know, it feels like it works just on like a dramatic and comedic level on its own without the sort of like, I don't know, mousetrap construction of this whole thing around it. And he got that like the ultimate production value is having a good

[00:37:34] performance in frame. Like that's going to make your movie feel more expensive than anything else. And likewise, a crappy performance can derail whatever production value you do have on screen behind it. I mean, the thing is like he's not dealing with big movie stars,

[00:37:51] but he is dealing with stage actors. These are like trained stage actors. If you look at the guy who plays Wells, who tries to escape through the tunnel to help them, like the convict, he's played by Tony Burton and Tony Burton was, you know, you can hear it

[00:38:07] in his enunciation. You can hear it in the kind of like projection of his voice in the way that he's like a he's a trained theater actor. He was also just like the perfect person to cast because he had

[00:38:18] actually spent three years in prison prior to this and found acting through that. Right. And he also spends time as a heavyweight boxer. So he's like got that physicality. He famously then becomes Duke in all the Rocky movies. That's like his legacy is right.

[00:38:34] He's Apollo's corner man who then kind of becomes part of Rocky's corner as well. Yeah. But this was like his big break essentially. So it's a really great thing to see. He's also really good. You actually feel his death kind of. Yes. Yeah.

[00:38:48] And so I do think that, you know, there are even though they're not like breakout stars, I do think that there is a kind of showcasing of these actors who didn't get a lot of chance to have much dialogue or screen time

[00:39:04] because they're, you know, they're day players on TV shows and things. And so I just really like that he got to just work with actors who want to act like they're not there to be the starring vehicle, you know.

[00:39:16] And also it doesn't feel like anyone is looking down on this material, you know, because sometimes I find that too is like I'll watch some 70s horror genre movie and there's a performance that feels kind of like sloppy and then you look the person up

[00:39:31] and you're like they were classically trained. Is it just that they didn't give a shit that they think this thing is like a tossed off. Right. Yeah. Right. And I think partly it's it's that Carpenter had more respect for his actors than a lot of those

[00:39:43] directors did and he's giving them better material and I think he's finding there are people and I don't say the fact that no one in this went on to become a movie star in a derisive way because I think you watch this year like everyone in this movie

[00:39:55] should have had a much better career after this like everyone's kind of giving a movie star performance and it's more impressive to see this in a film that didn't have a five million dollar budget where he was able to plug in

[00:40:08] preexisting stars and then would have had to reckon with their personas. He's like taking people who are largely unknown to you and making them feel like iconic stars before your very eyes. But they feel like real people too, which probably is partly that I their faces that

[00:40:24] I mostly associate with this movie. So obviously that's part of it. But like Darwin, Justin, that's a fucking movie star performance. He's so he's right. He's terrific. And I mean, this is also a movie where the last two minutes you almost like tack on an extra

[00:40:41] star because you're like, Holy shit, it ends so perfectly and he's got that line and like, but yeah, but you know what I mean Griff, like it is a movie star performance, but like this, the whole Motley crew element of the plot is very helped by that.

[00:40:56] It really does feel like these are just like a bunch of guys off the street, like who don't have preconceived notions about these people. It's not going to skew your understanding of who wins, who makes out of this movie alive.

[00:41:09] You know, there's no Darwin, Justin was Kurt Russell. I'd be like, OK, OK, so this is the guy I have to lock in with or whatever. Right. Not that no offense to Kurt Russell. No, but I do think it's to this movie is his vantage, especially just because

[00:41:25] this movie is so nasty. And when you get to the Kim Richards currently a housewife, a real housewife, I believe. Do you know this, David? The girl who gets shot is on one of the real housewife shows. The little girl. Yes. That's crazy. Beverly Hills.

[00:41:44] She was on for several seasons of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Jesus Christ. OK. So she was also the kid and escaped to which mountain and returned from which mountain. Oh, that's how I recognize her. OK. Right. And she is half sisters with Kathy Hilton. She is.

[00:42:03] Paris Hilton is her niece. Yes. Bizarre. OK, cool. Yeah. She married a supermarket franchise air. And then I don't know, it looks like she's had a pretty insane life outside of also being shot through an ice cream cone in Assault of Precious 13.

[00:42:23] Look, I don't watch the Housewives show. I just cannot imagine if I were watching episodes being like and this woman is like the source of one of the most transgressive images in 70s Hollywood cinema. Yeah. She's like, hey, this isn't vanilla twist. It's so wild.

[00:42:46] Carpenters take on that seems to just be like I wanted them to be evil. Like, right? You know, like it's it's what let me find the actual line from it's the most absurd death I could think of. I wanted the bad guys to be bad and if they

[00:43:00] could kill that little girl, then you can't sympathize with them like there's they are double day is so good in that role of like he is the white warlord dude. Yeah. He's a warlord, right? That's how he's a credit. He's got the crazy he's in the escape

[00:43:17] from New York. Great. He's got the crazy hair and escape from New York. Love that guy. But yeah, he's he's he's unsettling. Yeah. Did you guys know that there's a documentary about Lori Zimmer and how she disappeared? No. The woman who plays Lee. Right. Who I liked.

[00:43:36] She's very like, you know, frosty in a way when she disappeared. Oh my God. It's called do you remember Lori Zimmer and it's wait, but it seems like the answer is she just fucking like stopped working and married a guy and as a teacher,

[00:43:50] like you just left Hollywood. But I think we don't know why. Okay. I think it's the why she left that might be the drama. I've never seen it, but I remember hearing about it before. I was curious because she to me strikes

[00:44:04] me as like such a large figure in this movie despite the fact that she gets like the least dialogue. Right. He cut a lot of her performance out, which is weird. And I'm not sure he said like she, you know, he didn't like her line deliveries

[00:44:21] or something, but like she is very striking in this movie. I mean, I don't he didn't really do her to service in a way because I do, you know, you know, her performance lingered with me, but it is weird that she's sort of in and out.

[00:44:35] She also weirdly like she has the energy of like a high status dame from like a Howard Hawks comedy, you know, like Lauren McCall is what I was right. I was getting I mean her. Classy broad. Her look is so striking because she has

[00:44:51] these kind of like permanently arched eyebrows and then these very heavy eyes and all this eye shadow. So it kind of just looks like she's constantly like dismissive of everything happening around her. Yeah. She's a little bit of love above it a little looking a little a scans

[00:45:07] at everything. And every time she does talk, it's impactful. Like I like her line readings, but it also there is more power in the fact that she is kind of silent for a lot of the movie. Yeah. You're you're just sort of trying to read her. Yeah.

[00:45:22] She has like three other credits, one of which is a French short film and the last her last acting jobs, 1979. She has like a three year career. Yeah. It's weird. Yeah. So I am curious. I do want to know. I'm curious Lori.

[00:45:38] Well, like Daren Justin, I was like, how did this guy not become at the very least like a cult figure? You know, how was he not in like 20 more movies like this? He largely became a teamster. Hmm. He was working as an actor and then

[00:45:56] he was taking teamster jobs as like Transpo Captain in between jobs to keep getting paid. And then he was like, I don't know this teamster things kind of working out for me. I'm going to turn down acting jobs because this is like steady work and

[00:46:09] they just stopped going up for shit. And he has like scattered credits for the remaining 20 years. He dies in 1998, but he's got like steady credits for two decades just as like Transpo Captain and Driver and shit. He just became a full time teamster who would occasionally moonlight as

[00:46:27] an actor. He's just he's funny, which is crucial without like, you know, trying to be funny or you know, he doesn't feel like sort of arch performance at all, but he's just he's natural. He's earthy. He like he's like he reminds me of like a greaser version

[00:46:44] of Lee Van Cleef. Like he's got that kind of odd steeliness, but there's sort of this like Sardonic humor to him. Yeah, everything is so casual. He's got the sort of like narrow eyes and the pinched face and all of that. Right. He does this.

[00:46:58] He's in a racer head the following year, which is in the fog, famously a long shoot. He's got a small part in the fog. And then it's like he pretty much starts being a transpo guy and does some occasional TV appearances after that. But like he's a driver

[00:47:14] for the Buddy Holly story two years after this movie. And then it's like, oh, he's Transpo Captain for Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Like April, I'm sure you've experienced this as well. His last credit was as a driver for the American president, the Rob Reiner movie.

[00:47:31] April, I'm sure you've experienced this as well. But you work on a movie set. There are actors, there are cool. There are people who are movie stars. But I feel like there's always on every single set some crew person who is somehow more charismatic

[00:47:46] and elusive and movie star-esque than any of the people who've actually been hired to be movie stars. Like there's some old grip with like a leather face who's constantly got a cigarette dangling from his mouth where you're like, this is the most compelling guy I've ever seen.

[00:47:59] I want to know his life story. Can you imagine if you're on the film crew and you're like, this guy is so fucking compelling. Why isn't he a movie star? And then you realize he was the star of John Carpenter's breakout movie. He was.

[00:48:11] He caught a fucking shotgun without flinching and shot in a half second. And now he's fucking driving a net bending around. I mean, honestly, you should always look for the quiet old people on crew. Absolutely. The coolest people I've ever witnessed in my life are quiet

[00:48:30] old people on film crews. I mean, they've seen some shit and they're there to get the paycheck, you know? Yes. Yeah. They're all business. They're like this character where they're like, I don't know, you have a smoke. You need me to shoot my way out

[00:48:43] of this fine as long as the check clears like everything's like it's a living. They have like custom gloves that they've made tattoos that you cannot decipher. That's like the, I mean, when we were talking to our New Zealand crew on Black Christmas,

[00:49:01] like the line producer that we brought in, she's like, she's like retired. But then I like went out to lunch with her and she's like, she's Jane Campion's producer. She literally only comes out of retirement unless she like really needs it or if Jane Campion's making something.

[00:49:16] And then like, that's who she is. And you're just like, oh, OK, and she's like, oh, also I did all of Zena. And I was like, of course he did all of Zena. But you know, she's just like, she's just Jane Campion's right

[00:49:28] hand woman for everything that she does. And I was just like, OK, that's a huge thing. That's very big. And you're doing this movie. Why? What the fuck? This is like my strongest advice for anyone who listens to this show and wants to work in

[00:49:48] like film and TV production. If you are lucky enough to ever find yourself on a set, talk to fucking everybody. Like you just meet the most interesting people and that person who's quiet off in the corner, you're just like, that's what you fucking did.

[00:50:03] Those are your credits or that's what your life was before you suddenly at the age of 50 became this. Like there's this weird high level Carney aspect to film production. And I think especially with movies like this, like sort of weird scrappy genre movies where like just fascinating

[00:50:22] people convene in the middle of the world and make a thing for six weeks. Right. And also there's something sort of ghostly and creepy about how this movie takes place in the middle of nowhere. Where is this? Like what police freezing does just like out, you know,

[00:50:40] sort of beyond civilization or wherever this is supposed to be? Like I love how vague everything is in that regard. Yeah, that's great. It's just so great as a setup to have it be like, here's this guy who fashions himself as some kind of good cop hero.

[00:50:58] He's been on the job for four hours and they're like, here's your promotion. You got to like take the night shift in a place that's closing tomorrow morning. Like it's just the crappiest job but also the perfect setup for this kind of film, you know, like

[00:51:14] the remake which I did not rewatch although it's also on HBO Max right now. And I saw when it came out and I remember liking OK. But I feel like that's very much set up on the there's a snowstorm. They're locked in. The roads are closed.

[00:51:29] Like it's that kind of like, it's almost a cabin in the woods kind of element to like you're lost in the middle of nowhere. This just feels like no one gives a shit. This place is like a void. But that was in Los Angeles.

[00:51:41] Like Los Angeles at a certain time was like still just like the Wild West that was under, undeveloped or like places where it was pretty easy to dump dead bodies just all over. I read this book about like Los Angeles's geography based upon like where you could dump

[00:52:00] dead bodies because of like certain things like neighborhoods were just better for it because there was just so there was so much space. There are tar pits like there were just places you could utilize. Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff around here where God, even when

[00:52:18] I first moved out here in 2004, I just remember being like there's still just a lot of open space here. Now it's all developed. Like it was it's very different even just from like 2004. But like I just can't imagine in the 1970s just like how much

[00:52:37] desolation there was within the city, which made this place extremely special of like you could be alone with yourself and your thoughts and like kind of scary, but also inside one of the biggest major cities of the world. Well, LA is also just so fucking big that

[00:52:55] it's like kind of a misnomer treating it as a city because it's really like 20 different cities. Yeah, that we've swallowed up. Yeah, right, right. There's just been this sort of acquisitions and mergers where it's like each neighborhood in LA is kind of a city on

[00:53:13] its own that you're just like, no, it's just part of the same thing here. But you also think about like the time this movie is made and New Hollywood is rising and you've had decades of well, LA is where most of the American films

[00:53:29] are made but they're made on sound stages. And if they're shooting exteriors there are very set places where exteriors happen. You know, you're either controlled in a built set or you're going to Monument Valley or whatever it is, but it's like in this

[00:53:45] period of time filmmakers are growing like why don't we just shoot on that block that's not a block that anyone has filmed before and the fact that it is underdeveloped does give it some weird cinematic quality not because we're not trying

[00:53:57] to dress it up as something else or use it as a generic backdrop that can fill in for anything. Yeah, you're kind of owning the eeriness of what is or isn't there. And showing it he carpenter I think showed a lot of what LA does in this weird

[00:54:13] way. And in the bus scene for instance when they're transporting the bus is driving it's not being towed and you can tell because of the patching of the sound when they cut to a close up from from a mid two shot the bus is driving

[00:54:31] they have no control of the sound or the background or anything and you know like when the guy is driving the car like the cop in the beginning there's like someone who keeps looking over like a like this person that keeps catching up

[00:54:43] with him on the street and she keeps looking over into the window like being like are they shooting a movie? Like you can tell like that's not controlled. There's like I can't there's like not permits happening here is what I'm saying. They're just

[00:54:55] showing people driving around in Los Angeles and the streets and all of that. Well, again, there's another thing from the comment here where he said like my philosophy for this movie which I believe I'm paraphrasing here is like my philosophy for assault which I believe

[00:55:09] you can apply to any low budget film is to shoot as little footage as possible and extend the scenes for as long as you can and there is sort of that weird power to like you're watching this movie and for a lot of those sequences

[00:55:21] like the bus thing you were saying you're like he maybe had one take of this. You know, like maybe two these scenes do not have complicated coverage even when you're getting into like the bigger shootouts with a lot of characters there's he's so good at sort of like

[00:55:39] and part of this is resourcefulness but I also think it is that he like considers himself a classicist, you know in terms of filmmaking and he was thinking that all these guys like the Palmar were too flashy we're doing too much we're cutting too quick

[00:55:53] that like the sequence that I find eeriest in this movie is when it's the gang just very quietly in the car all loading their guns while the theme plays and it goes on for like a minute but all those

[00:56:07] weird scene like the blood scene right at the start to where you're like yes so much is like what like that is the most blood oh I've ever seen drop no it's a bowl yeah and they have this nice crystal ball of blood but even before

[00:56:23] the ball comes out grandma's bull they're like let's use this I guess I love that they like never talk right right but that's like even before they take the bull out I feel like there is a full minute of just a master shot of four guys sitting

[00:56:39] around a room sticking knives into their arms and you're like what's happening why is this not being explained to me why are they not acknowledging each other it's on the poster right it says like the gang that swore a blood oath to destroy like every

[00:56:53] cop in precinct 13 or like you know that's that's part of the cell is that these guys are going to do whatever they can the other tagline this movie yeah what is it the other tagline on this movie which is incredible is a white hot night of hate hey

[00:57:07] that is pretty good but yeah I mean the opening of this movie is like a classic kind of drawn out carpenter credit sequence where it's just kind of very striking big colorful letters with this ominous score that the longer it goes on the more unsettling

[00:57:23] it becomes it just kind of incredibly repetitive and quietly building and increasingly unnerving and then right from there you go to the first sort of ambush right like it's like pitch black so dark hard to make out anything that's happening another thing I appreciated watching all these carpenter

[00:57:49] movies is like now I feel like things are fucked with digitally so much there's such a heavy digital intermediate on most movies and I think to some degree now even more so they like well often a color time films and such so that they play okay on phones

[00:58:11] and shittier devices and then you watch the thing like this and you're like this has like actual blacks in it it doesn't have sort of like milky grays like there's just like darkness in the shadows of the movie like a real density there

[00:58:27] and the soaping sequence you just get hard to orient yourself around what's going on but not because it's sloppy because it's sort of I don't know mysterious yeah it was processed correctly right which is something that he knew from the beginning is that you spend the

[00:58:45] money on the camera and the processing again the same thing with sound and that's what you get when you like certain things like when I watch the fog again the fog has the best kind of black same thing with Halloween the best blacks he just knew

[00:58:59] how to do that and very few people and especially when you're working with digital very few people actually know how to shoot these things correctly which is really frustrating if you're in the horror genre we recorded our episode of the fog

[00:59:15] already but I want to bring this up here because I forgot to say it in that episode the thing that blows my mind about the cinematography in the fog is that he has these really really dark pure blacks he's using shadows a lot right but

[00:59:31] every actor's face is always incredibly well lit and it somehow doesn't come off as some overly stylized like Morticia Adams oh we put a key light here but the rest of it's in shadow there's something somehow organic about I mean it's Dean Cundy who's

[00:59:47] like a genius and arguably had a greater influence on the next 30 years of popular cinema and their look than anyone else but it's like a magic trick that movie where you're like every face is perfectly lit so you're seeing the expressiveness of the actor

[01:00:01] and the rest of the shot is cloaked in mystery I mean some of it is a magic trick like when the priest kind of comes out of the shadows that's like yes that's actually like plate you know like that's like you know editing technique of just

[01:00:13] like they couldn't hide them so they made their own blacks you know like they had their own you know effects on it but you know Dean Cundy's work on that God I kind of wish that he was shooting this you know what I mean

[01:00:27] yeah I wish he'd done like 10 movies with carpenter but whatever I mean he obviously he's like a see is so extraordinary even like his work going back to like I'm obsessed with the witch who came from the sea partially he's because he's like this uncredited D.P.

[01:00:41] on it but it's like you know you start to see like his genius pretty early on of like his framing and sense of light and darkness that is just you know unmatched I'm seeing here in his IMDb and who knows if this is true or not that he's

[01:00:59] shooting the Boba Fett TV show it does say that I don't know I mean he has come very exciting for me it would be exciting he's in this weird kind of like still works but mostly on things you kind of never heard of like and his last two

[01:01:17] major movies were home again and Jack and Jill and home again yeah it's just odd that he's found himself in this weird like kind of mild comedy corridor and he like did a couple West Wing so you know what I mean

[01:01:31] like it feels like right just like what do you want like I'll do it which is crazy because the first half of his career so loaded maybe he just doesn't want to do anything though yeah he might just want to vibe we were talking about

[01:01:45] vibing earlier but he does so work a lot like he has credits every year a lot of them are short films though or it's things you haven't heard of I also think there's this thing I mean it's like typecasting is such an issue throughout the industry even

[01:02:01] when you get to people behind the camera you know and above the line crew where you look at him and you're like oh he shoots who framed Roger Rabbit right and that's this like absolutely astonishing masterwork of cinematography and he's like redefining all of these

[01:02:18] sort of tricks and tools for how you integrate two different elements in the same shot and then like after that obviously he does the Back to the Future sequels he does hook like he's doing other things but then it's sort of like oh

[01:02:31] he's become the default guy if you want to put an animated character in a movie so interspersed with like Apollo 13 and shit death becomes her then it's like well Jurassic Park of course Spielberg's bringing him on because he's going to be sort of pioneering all this new CGI

[01:02:45] stuff and then he does Casper then he does Flubber then he does Looney Tunes Back in Action and Garfield you know and now you're at this point where he's made Garfield and it's like well I don't know he's the guy who made

[01:02:57] Garfield why would he hire him to make our big movie because he's fucking Jurassic Park yeah he's a big movie but that's I'm talking about the stupidity of this industry where they're like well what's he done lately if he did

[01:03:09] Garfield then I guess we should hire him to do Jack and Jill and it's like no he did Garfield because he did Jurassic Park you lunatics well who knows right I don't know I mean then maybe that's why John Fevro or whoever is like what's

[01:03:23] Dean Cundey doing you know call him up I don't know right but you're like 2010 he's doing a Scooby-Doo made for TV movie Jesus I'm gonna try to hire him for my next thing what are you doing Dean? Scooby-Doo Curse of the Lake Monster

[01:03:39] you just have to imagine they're like oh there's this guy who's good at filming movies with CGI characters you mean Dean Cundey he seems like I don't know he looks like a friendly fella he looks really friendly I find him kind of adorable yeah he's got kind of

[01:03:55] a sort of lovable uncle vibe big white beard he seems nice though like he actually does seem nice interviews with him he seems like a very kind unpretentious man he's not like a son in Feld you know what I mean like yes right

[01:04:09] he's not like a show boat this film is well shot though yeah this is it's shot by Douglas Snap who's we talked about on the Dark Star episode this is basically right who was sort of early guy yeah yeah there's the only two

[01:04:21] he also did the first nudie musical that's it those are the only movies he worked on and then as we mentioned he weirdly has like a bunch of Star Trek major credits and stuff like that he's a camera operator for most of his movies

[01:04:33] good for him just like make the paycheck you know like not deal with asshole shit yeah yeah um but this movie is great I mean like I watched the Shout Factory you know the nice Blu-ray that they have and it looks fantastic

[01:04:49] obviously but you know so it's emphasizing it but this is a great looking movie I would like to see it in a theater you know on like a grimy old like it does feel like that would be fun but you know their their restoration is very nice

[01:05:01] it's also one of those movies where you feel like if you saw this at a rep theater it would still get gasps at several moments you know you're not watching it as like a curio or like oh this interesting time capsule

[01:05:13] of an early career it's a movie that still feels very visceral I mean you go from right the opening sort of ambush right to then I think right after that is the weird blood scene the blood scene so then when you get to the first

[01:05:27] scene with um what's his name our main hero uh the good lieutenant uh with Austin Stoker Ethan Bishop is the character yeah that's right and that's in daylight he's driving a car at that point you're unnerved by that like you've gotten so used to the darkness

[01:05:43] and the silence and the eeriness of this movie to see like a normal guy being like yeah I think I'm a hero you're like something's gonna go horribly wrong here um it's sort of a slow build after that I mean

[01:05:55] apart from the ice cream scene like it's sort of I like it it's a sort of contemplative 45 minutes until the siege really kicks off but that also is I think I mean Halloween's different because it's relentless right um once it really gets going but I feel

[01:06:11] like a carpenter thing that you'll read like reviews of the time sometimes people stupidly are dismissive of him because of this where it's like well he got like a million dollars or a hundred thousand dollars to shoot the movie and he puts like 25%

[01:06:25] of the budget into one sequence and the movie is 75% build up to that one sequence you know but I think he is kind of a master of the slow build he doesn't make you feel like he's stalling or delaying everything feels cumulative you know

[01:06:41] and at the point where that money does end up on screen and things break you get to a massive shoot out whatever it is it's such a release valve you know he's he's built it up he's blown everything up so successfully

[01:06:57] to a breaking point you guys got to see Prince of Darkness because it is like the I can't wait like everything that you're saying is just kind of like the apotheosis of that um that kind of type of filmmaking just like there's so much talking and so much

[01:07:13] build up but then like the scene that happens you're just like oh my god she went through a mirror it's like fucking yeah the times when it hits you're like oh thank god I waited for this you know

[01:07:27] well our friend uh friend of the podcast J.D. Amato was telling me that when he was a child and he would obsessively watch like making of specials on TV or I'm forgetting the names but there were like some shows I feel like they were often like syndicated

[01:07:41] weekend shows that were just like the magic of movies and every episode would just have like we went to this effects house and they showed us how they built this robot or this makeup as a kid you maybe haven't heard of most of these movies they're not

[01:07:53] doing segments on the biggest films they're doing segments on movies that didn't really pan out you know uh where they got that much uh uh freedom to cover this thing behind the scenes and then the movie sort of doesn't make an impact and he

[01:08:09] had this visceral memory as a child of watching one of these and seeing like these incredibly bizarre giant incredibly detailed gory animatronics and going like what is this and he didn't remember the name as a kid and he spent like 25 years trying

[01:08:25] to you know every couple of months be like what can I try googling for to figure out what this is and then someone posted it on like social media that the photo of it and he was like what is this and he realized it was

[01:08:37] in the mouth of madness and the characters are on screen for like five seconds like he couldn't find any paper trail of this because the footage of this behind the scenes is so much more comprehensive than anything you see these creatures do

[01:08:51] in the movie and he was just kind of astounded of like how much money did John Carpenter spend to build these humongous like 20 foot incredibly detailed expressive animatronics that appear largely in shadow for one shot but he just picks where to put the money I think fairly wisely

[01:09:11] Yes, yes, I agree with that Yeah and he also I mean like he'll just kind of ask his friends to do double duty on certain things like even though Deborah Hill is uncredited as a producer she was certainly producing this movie

[01:09:25] and she is credited as the assistant editor she was editing this movie It's sort of all hands on deck early on right? Like that's kind of the vibe Yeah, I mean like she was shooting second unit for the fog you know like she was doing second

[01:09:43] unit on most everything that he was doing in those early days when they were working together because it was just so like running gun but For how much Carpenter is a known crank I do think there's something telling in the fact that like he and Deborah Hill

[01:09:57] dated and then remained such close collaborators for years after that Yeah until she was like you know what I don't need this Right, but it was like he was married you know like and they were still working together and very sort of creatively sympathico Yeah, I'm just happy

[01:10:15] they found each other at that point in time in their lives you know developing their own skills individually Isn't it right partly it's like eventually being in the Carpenter world it's just it's a lot of crankiness and a lot of like elbow grease even after

[01:10:31] great success right it's a lot of like you're never you're never comfortable I feel like in Carpenter world. Yeah, it kind of felt like she wanted to get the budgets she wanted to get right right she was like come on

[01:10:43] She doesn't want to shoot second unit anymore she wants to produce Right and a lot of these people like right like Dean Cundy go on to that it's like oh Carpenter is a springboard to him getting to work with Spielberg and make like the biggest movies

[01:10:55] you know with unlimited resources but this is that I guess this is the thing we're going to keep going back to and it's I already am sort of repeating myself but right like but is that just part of the magic

[01:11:07] and I'm like I'm sorry you guys didn't get your proper budget but it kind of worked out for the best that you had to you know earn every second of film like I don't know I also think in terms of Carpenter like getting so few opportunities

[01:11:21] to paint on that bigger canvas we were talking about like well that's probably tied to him being a crank but I think it's the two prong thing of like a he probably doesn't kiss enough ass he doesn't know how to sort of like schmooze his

[01:11:37] way into assuring the executives that he's not going to burn their money he's not going to mince words he's such a straight shooter he's so unsanimental about this shit but I also think it's that there is that kind of innate nastiness to his films

[01:11:51] that you can only get away with under a certain budget level because above that people start to go like can someone be more likeable can something funnier happen here can they have a really earnest romance you know I love how unlikable everyone is I love it

[01:12:09] not very nice to each other either grudging respect is about as good as it gets here and he's so unconcerned with backstory he doesn't over explain things he doesn't give people these obvious sort of arcs and payoffs you know these things that

[01:12:25] a studio has to be like come on give us the razzle but like he was like and the villains I don't want you to be going on about like oh well they're poor there's some societal leasing no no no I don't

[01:12:39] want this to be a message about how they've been forced into villainy or whatever they're just villains they're cool they're like a cosmic evil he talked a lot about how much night the living dead was an influence for him and obviously even the setup of this of like

[01:12:53] the night living dead in the house this is notable along with night the living dead for being one of the only like non-black exploitation films to have a black lead in this era you know and you know there are like metatextual powers that come from that

[01:13:09] but he's not overtly making any big statement by it much like night living dead it's like hire a good actor put him in there it's something different than what you've seen before and the gang feels very Romero-ish I mean I think I read a quote where Romero

[01:13:25] was at con with Martin the same year as this and he knew that this guy was like influenced by his work and he went to see the assault on precinct 13 screening and then when Kim Richards gets shot he was like well I'm fucked

[01:13:41] this guy's he's the dude now like he just went so much further than I ever thought you could then that's the story of carpenter so often is he makes Halloween and then he's like watches some new movie and he's like wait they can do this now

[01:13:53] I gotta beat this like yeah there's a sort of one upsmanship in horror in particular that I find really fun you know I think that it can become meaningless at some point yeah I think yes it has to be done with meaning and intent

[01:14:11] I don't think it's just the gore the scale or the shock factor because then it becomes white noise but I think guys like Romero and carpenter obviously understand the semiotics of what they're doing and when that gets one up and they're playing with the

[01:14:25] form and audience expectations in that kind of way not just sort of how many gallons of blood you can dump that is exciting to kind of chart although if we're talking about Sam Raimi I do think because I will defend him

[01:14:37] till the day I die and every single movie that he's made the gallons of blood can be a great one upsmanship move if done correctly yes he's smart he knows what he's doing it's not being done wantonly yeah it's like

[01:14:53] as a kid when I was obsessed with movies and I would read about scary movies and I would imagine usually I imagined worse than what's in the movie right usually the movies actually have a lot more restraint when you actually watch Halloween

[01:15:05] and sit there you know you're like oh this is not the gore fest I imagine when I was 10 years old you talked about right as a kid that you thought these movies were literally just 90 minutes of stabbing like there was no plot

[01:15:15] no dialogue it was just blood for an entire running time but then there is the occasional like you see Day of the Dead or whatever and you're like oh my god I didn't actually like Sam Raimi is probably

[01:15:27] a good example to write you like I didn't actually know it was gonna go this hard like there there is the occasional reversal of that where it's actually worse than you imagine not usually but this is kind of one I mean that's that's the fucking little girl shop

[01:15:39] moment is this movie like throwing down the gauntlet and going like we're going harder than you expect like it's not gonna be gory but it's going to be more intense and more ruthless than you expect yes I mean we're not talking about plot much here

[01:15:53] but I mean the plot in so far much as there is one threads you know unite at this precinct and then they have to fight everyone off I mean this gang wants revenge for their members killed in the opening ambush they're gonna take it out on this precinct

[01:16:11] where this new cop is stuck manning it for its final night of operation well that what's there led there because the father of the daughter shoots one of the gang members and leads them sort of there so which and his character it's weird because I kind of understand

[01:16:31] that he is just fainted or as in some kind of state but it is weird the whole time that he's like not passed out but like what a like I guess emotionally he is just like he's so overwhelmed that he's just like

[01:16:45] had a tonic now more or less yeah it's like just outright trauma yeah and then I guess the oh sorry go no I was just gonna say the moment of him reacting to his daughter getting killed I think as an example of like carpenter's

[01:17:01] steady hand with performance versus a lot of other directors in this genre where like you're kind of taken aback by the stillness of gets off the phone he looks over he sees this bizarre image in a wide shot here's a

[01:17:17] truck there's a body next to it what that other body is that my daughter and you sort of just hold on his face as like the recognition takes over versus a lot of movies like this I think it's the second the gunshot goes off

[01:17:29] the guy whips his head around and then falls to his knees and screams and then he's like he's like a real hero and this is that thing where at first he's not even upset he just looks confused you know and then it's like denial

[01:17:43] and getting slowly closer into it realizing it's real and then he's just sort of silently heaving on top of her body you know he's not whaling it's not guttural it's not like yelling at the gods it is just like he's his brain is short circuiting

[01:17:59] it feels like a more realistic representation not to as a father daughter here but as a father daughter this scene freaked me out a lot even though my daughter is a baby not a child well I have good advice for you David never let your

[01:18:13] daughter get ice cream I won't of course not I'll show her this movie yeah no never she can and that will make her really psychologically healthy she'll be really strong and good and normal that way and anytime she complains I'll just show her assault up precinct

[01:18:29] 13 that'll be a good idea right and then other kids will ask her like and ask her of course through like a tin can radio or paper notes because she doesn't leave her home they'll ask her what's your favorite movie and she goes movie I thought there was only

[01:18:43] one movie it's assault on precinct 13 and I've seen it 800 times right yeah no it's it's a freaky scene obviously the shock of her her getting shot but also what you're talking about just that the he doesn't let the aftermath he doesn't

[01:18:59] cheap on that he he he lingers in it it's cheaper though it's cheaper to shoot it's cheaper to shoot the actor doing all the work you know you don't have to move the camera you don't have to do setups you don't have to do

[01:19:11] anything else is just like if you just keep that shot wide for a little bit longer and then hold on this actor like yeah you're good to go it's it's his advice it's like the key to low budget filmmaking I also think always letting these scenes

[01:19:27] or the shots are both play out a little bit longer than you're used to does create this odd sense of dread you're watching everything going like anyone else would have cut 15 seconds ago right I've seen enough movies that I feel like this should

[01:19:43] we should be moving on and we're not yes definitely that's yeah any studio would have forced you to get coverage so that you could cut 10 times within that space we cut too much honestly I wait we cut too much it drives

[01:19:57] me and saying you can't stop it feels like unless you do independent film and just kind of keep in tight control of it but yeah we cut far too much in this country he doesn't seem to entirely regret the scene but like he does

[01:20:11] say like look I was young and stupid I probably wouldn't which is like exactly how Spielberg talks about the kid dying in jaws where there are these young filmmakers where they're like yeah I mean I thought I was being a smart ass almost

[01:20:23] like killing a kid in act one like you know how are you going to top that and now I watch it and I'm like alright you know you sort of win set it but I think it's super crucial this movie like I don't think

[01:20:35] I don't think it's this it is this movie is the fact that they did that it's the mission state and then the fact that they're using silencers which is so obviously there's like plot reason for it obviously but it's so eerie to the people are just

[01:20:49] like silently essentially like toppling over like exploding in blood is I is yeah that the bizarre imagery in that shootout sequence is where like you know you're hearing the silencer shots everyone sort of ducked or has already been shot or died and you're mostly looking at this barren

[01:21:09] wide shot of the precinct and like letters and papers are just flying up like you're just seeing kind of the ricochet of things like propelling into the air but it's just sort of this like sound of someone blowing through a straw it's very odd way

[01:21:27] I just found this quote from carpenter about Frank Doubleday where he said I discussed the character with the actor and he gave me the best explanation he said I don't want to play this as a man with a gun I want it to play

[01:21:39] as a man who is a gun day so he was like that's it out that's I wanted these people to be like just trigger gone like that's all they are they're just killing machines literally it's pretty cool yeah that rules actors are fun yeah actors are what especially

[01:21:57] like I mean I'm Griffin you're the actor like just like you're coming in and it's like you know what's your role and you know you've read the script and you're like yeah well I kill a kid and now you have to sit there and think about like okay

[01:22:11] what do I want it like how do I want to be like I'm the action is here but like how am I going to convey a person who would do this it's a weird job grip I will say when I when I think about whether I

[01:22:25] ever want to act again if that's like or at least act on camera like when I go back and forth on the idea now coming out of a pandemic I have no career ambitions anymore there's nothing like I'd like to be this

[01:22:39] or have this level of success I just think about experiential shit like that where I'm just like that might be a cool thing to do on camera not that I'm saying killing a girl on camera is cool but I'm just like that's a weird scene that's a weird

[01:22:53] day to spend what's that like to spend a day figuring out how to do that that's sort of the appeal to me what's going to want to say the appeal to me is not specifically the idea of killing girls it is just an example of a bizarre scene

[01:23:09] but you could even you could spend a day learning how to whip a chain and tied around a guy's legs and pull him out from underneath them that seems like that for me that's a big day yeah that's cool well now you're just pitching ghost writer

[01:23:25] three that would be the best to hear there's like a chain expert on set like he's you know giving you tips I do like April as you said like everyone in this movie is kind of unpleasant nasty right and Ethan Bishop is the the closest we have

[01:23:43] to like a hero in this movie but the movie kind of mocks the idea that he wants to be seen as a hero there's a very cynical view of law enforcement and his sort of defining move as a hero in a way at least in terms of moral

[01:23:59] integrity is just that he refuses to give up Lawson that Nancy Lumis' character has the moment where she's like well it's just him right we can give him up and this is over like it's a trolley card problem let them kill the one guy so eight of us

[01:24:17] don't die and he's just like not gonna happen not gonna happen he came here he's having a really bad day I told him he'd be safe I'm gonna do it yeah that's I mean they could have just given him up honestly what is the case more live

[01:24:33] right but it's just like this is his moral code which is like this guy came to me he asked me for help and I said yes I'm not gonna go back on that and then also obviously the ending is so fantastic where he's

[01:24:47] you know he's you know walk out with me to Wilson Bishop and Wilson walking out together in this spoke and stuff and then really just that fucking is so cool yeah wow it's so cool and so quiet and over the time this is weirdly not

[01:25:05] no part of this movie is over the top even though a child gets shot is does that make sense like am I out of line saying that like there's no melodrama to it no and Wilson has all these weirdly profound lines

[01:25:17] but all of them are like tossed off under his breath I mean wait so in my situation days are like women each one's so damn precious but they all end up leaving you and you're like 99 out of 100 actors would have put too much mustard

[01:25:29] on that they would have been too aware of the fact that they are saying cool guy dialogue right and we gotta smoke obviously him saying that over and over again but like he says everything like he's annoyed that he even has to say it

[01:25:41] you know okay but wait that when he finally gets a cigarette that scene that scene as someone who's been in the smoker and I feel like carpenter too right is a smoker that yeah oh yeah that scene is so like full of just sexual tension

[01:25:59] like I felt like I like my tongue was gonna roll out and steam was gonna come out of my ears and my eyes are gonna bug out of my head like it was just so charged whoo man it really got me I'm just looking at other

[01:26:13] Napoleon Wilson which also what a fucking good name but looking at other lines of his we're like all of these on paper read so purple and he makes everyone sound like the coolest fucking thing you've ever heard when Lee says the very

[01:26:25] least of our problems is that we're out of time and he says it's an old story with me I was born at a time like that rules it's very hoxy I mean you can tell what he's sort of inspired by right

[01:26:37] I did think of one over the top scene when they play potato right that was a little that was a little fun I don't know if I'm using the right phrase when I say over the top I I guess it's more what Griff saying where it's

[01:26:53] like it could be so goofy and not in a bad way like I enjoy goofy I enjoy pulpy like I love goofy and good to griff they call me great for a very goofy griff yes but like but it doesn't it and it's the same thing with it

[01:27:09] you know not being a western and instead just being set in this kind of like concrete dusty ass building like you know it the realism in heavy quotes is part of what makes it feel spookier it's good this is a good movie yeah I'm just

[01:27:27] taking a fucking warm bath in this quotes page Ben the chain moment you talk about right yeah the warden says you know Wilson I'm gonna miss you Wilson says that's not the truth warden you should always tell the truth even a little

[01:27:39] like and sometimes trip a man up then he trips him with a chain I know and his comeback is he don't stand up as good as he used to because yeah because he came out of his chair earlier so he gets back oh man yeah yeah I don't

[01:27:55] sit in chairs as well as I used to is also just an incredible statement in a vacuum it's so cool is there anything else we want to talk about before we do the box office game just you know it's obviously that the final sequences very dense and involving

[01:28:13] it's I mean one of the things that I like is the the kind of quietness of the end because it's weird because it's intense but there's he's his control again his mastery of sound is more master of sound than horror honestly he's just he can

[01:28:29] John Carpenter master of sound yes he just knows when to the twisted ears of John Carpenter because you can hear like them stepping on like the kind of like spent shells and and just like stuff and it's just like it's just really eerie and quiet and then

[01:28:47] there's also the scenes of you can you can make out the shadows or sense of the gangs and in the kind of alley and there there's just kind of smoke filling the air so it's just like this fog and I was just like ah shit

[01:29:03] conquistador is this is going to be like the fog this is like that right we're gonna have cutlery yeah so yeah that's just something I really like it's really fucking great and it's also interesting that like this movie came out and didn't really

[01:29:21] make much of an impression critics weren't really standing for it didn't get much of an audience and then it goes to Europe and people lose their fucking minds and then I feel like it was very shortly there after kind of reclaimed by an American genre audience

[01:29:35] I think Carpenter's thing is like in America they sold it as like a blood and guts movie which it's not good enough on regard right like it's not that's not really what that's not the way he was like it should have been sold as like suspense

[01:29:49] film like it's not really going for for hyper gore and so maybe that was part of the problem but I don't know obviously it's a low budget movie it was sort of being distributed that way but but yeah I mean it you know it went to calm

[01:30:03] and then UK critics really started championing it and championing the idea of like this is a filmmaker here what's his big quote you know come on here I'm going to look it up the famous one in France I'm an Oter in Germany I'm a filmmaker in Britain

[01:30:17] I'm a genre film director and in the US I'm a bum right like that's his big joke is like about you know how Europe always sort of took him more seriously five comedy points yeah are you guys seeing the remake I saw the remake in theaters

[01:30:31] and I remember it being like solid I don't remember it very well I do too and I will say I think it is probably the most successful of the carpenter remix because it is the one that kind of just uses his movie as a starting point

[01:30:47] like the characters are entirely different in that the setup is pretty fundamentally changed it really just is the idea of like here's the worst precinct that's about to shut down right and a standoff happening there but like because from what I remember Lawrence Fishburne

[01:31:03] is sort of taking the Wilson role but he's like a crime boss and obviously Fishburne is going to give you a very different performance but the character as written is also entirely different Ethan Hawke is kind of the squirrely former undercover cop who's sort of haunted

[01:31:19] and trying to like get over an accidental death I think that he was responsible for it's a very different movie and so it stands better on its own because it's not just a shittier version of carpenter with more money felled into it which a lot of the other

[01:31:33] remakes are April have you seen it do you care about Jean Francois Richet I haven't seen it but it doesn't mean that I don't want to because I love that cast I think the basic yeah and the basic premise is something that can obviously be retooled

[01:31:47] again and again for you know like starting off with Rio Bravo or whatever it was yeah you know I just think that it's one of those timeless things so I'd be interested in it that's the other thing like John Hawks himself remade Rio Bravo

[01:32:03] you know like we used to be a lot less precious with these concepts and whether they were literal remakes or kind of spiritual remakes or inspired by or whatever it's better to approach things that way than be we have to go beep by beep sorry Howard Hawks

[01:32:19] what did I say Howard Hughes said John Hawks I think he's a fine actor you know we like him yeah we do like stinks right I have seen the the remix the one with Dean Martin and John yes I have not seen the remake yes it's stinky

[01:32:33] yeah what's called Rio it's Rio Bravo no no no right but no there's another movie that's almost identical to Rio Bravo that Hawks made that I'm forgetting now I mean most filmmakers just remake the same movie again and again this is my point yes I just

[01:32:55] know there's like an explicit because I love the original yeah I'm trying to remember now but anyway anyway beyond that it's like as you as you guys said it's it's a you can always you can transmute this to anyway you could do it in space you could do

[01:33:11] it under the sea I don't know like you know like it would be hard it's a tower defense movie good good movie good director well it's gonna be like that with these early carpenters we're gonna be like you know what it's like a lot of

[01:33:23] these are like yeah it fucking works Halloween delivers escape from New York a lot of fun Howard Hawks did El Dorado with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum and then he remated a third time with John Wayne called real Lobo that's what

[01:33:39] yes that's the shitty one I think right Dean Mark once the good one yeah we'll say okay this is a wild box office and you know which is part of the fun of these old box offices mm-hmm you know before the day of opening weekend sorry so

[01:33:53] this is this movie came out November 1976 can number one at the box office is a rare Woody Allen movie that he did not direct played against him nope the front the front is number one at the box office is how is this world weird

[01:34:15] it's especially weird because none of the movies he directed were especially huge hits at this time like that's bigger than most of his films like the next three movies are what you would consider you know big hits of the year or whatever and I was just like

[01:34:31] what is the front doing number one it like you know in November it like a pretty big deal time anyway zero micelle is great in that movie zero micelle has like an incredible support I've never seen the front it's Martin Ritt right sort of like a yeah

[01:34:45] it's a blacklist movie you know it's an intelligent sober drama right no it's it's like a sad comedy I would say about a difficult subject but but Woody Allen plays the guy who's serving as the front for zero micelle who's like the trombo s screenwriter

[01:35:05] who can no longer work and and micelle is pretty heartbreaking and he's really fucking good alright so the front number one number two it's by the way April we're guessing the top five I forgot we didn't you made a video about what I was talking about I remember

[01:35:21] these number I mean I don't remember these ones I don't have this memorized but very often I remember every box office weekend I've lived through because my brain is broken number two it's it's a big hit thriller of the year it's an adaptation

[01:35:35] of a big book by a heavyweight screenwriter pretty heavyweight director big star above the title and then a big star below the title getting an yeah yeah yeah yeah great great tagline what's the tagline Griffin this is why I don't like going to the dentist the tagline is

[01:35:57] literally a thriller well that is a great tagline and maybe we should bring that back movies are saying too much just tell me what you are it's a thriller alright yeah marathon man is half a good movie

[01:36:09] it's one of those things you watch it you're like right this could do with a little tightening this could do with a little more sexiness honestly like it's it's a little too sober but it is pretty good I don't know Olivia is having fun

[01:36:19] April do you care about marathon man I think it's okay I don't remember it much yeah I mean apart from the dentist scene it's got a good ending to them in that weird like they're in like a dam or something right there

[01:36:31] anyway David do you know what time of day is best to watch marathon man mmm no what time of day 2 30 why 30 okay because the dentist scene yeah alright April has flipped over her computer getting her microphone on fire number three at the box office a comedy

[01:36:59] one of my dad's favorite comedies really movie so I owned it on VHS or he did already like it was in the house sort of an ensemble movie it's like a musical that's not actually a musical sure um it's got you know a bunch of sort of

[01:37:19] character actors and stars it's the cast is mostly black it's got a famous screenwriter is it car wash it's car wash car wash was one of your dad's favorite movies he fucking loved car wash written by Joe Schumacher as you were alluding to yeah right

[01:37:35] my dad was a big Richard Pryor guy in general that's probably why Richard Pryor doesn't have a huge part in car wash he kind of no yeah but so I don't know I mean it's like it's that early era where they would like bring

[01:37:47] Richard Pryor and for three scenes and advertise the movie as Richard Pryor finally bustin loose on the screen and you're like he's in for 10 minutes and there's some boring plot I don't care about the rest of the time right him sitting me

[01:37:59] down being like we got to watch car wash it rules and me being like this is okay like you know I don't think I get half of it but you know anyway I saw blue collar has been playing at

[01:38:11] film forum recently I went to see it I had seen it before but I hadn't seen on a big screen I wish Pryor had done like 10 of those right like I'm not saying I wish he did less comedies but I wish he had done more dramas

[01:38:21] he was such a fucking good actor and just compelling just the camera and one of those people where it's a little bit like Sandler where you could put him in a drama with like a heavy duty director and he wouldn't dull himself

[01:38:35] like he'll still be very funny in a drama he's just tapping into more of a darkness and an anger that was always underneath the surface with him number fourth box office Griffin knew this week a definitive horror film of the 70s made by a man that

[01:38:53] John Carpenter thinks is a Hitchcock copying hack so it's a diploma yeah 76 it would be Kerry? It's Kerry yeah well good movie whatever Carpenter wants to say I enjoy Kerry April Kerry fan? I'm a huge diploma fan I love all the me too I love bright Nepalm

[01:39:19] just like make it make it sicker and weirder and I love I love all of his stuff holy mackerel holy mackerel but Kerry rules Kerry is one of those things where you're knowing the eight things about Kerry right like as you can escape you know hearing

[01:39:35] about all the but the stuff in between is so good yeah it's so fucking good it's so banana I love Kerry all right Kerry's great but that's new this week so if we ever do the Palma griff will have done this box office well

[01:39:45] we'll come back to this and I'll run the table all right number five is a movie I do not know so I'm gonna look it up let's see it is a British American comedy farce based on a play well how would

[01:39:59] you know that he just looked it up okay one of those posters that's like drawn by Al Hirschfeld you know what I mean like oh this is classy yeah you got Jack Weston Rita Moreno Jerry Stiller F. Murray Abraham it's a madcap farce it's directed

[01:40:19] by Richard Lester of Hard Days Night fuck its title is is that of an April if you know please also you know jump in it this title is out of a hotel I think it's one of those things where it's like we're moving

[01:40:33] oh wow it's set in a gay bath house in 1976 huh what we're like moving from room to room and there's like sort of various gets it's it's based on a Terence McNally play I don't think I know what it's not how to albalto

[01:40:49] Baltimore right no it's called the Ritz Jesus I never even heard it the cast that cast it's a good cast house okay fuck and this poster I think it's like a wild sort of you know screwball comedy kind of thing with this right with

[01:41:07] this sort of transgressive again Terence McNally so there I mean this is what I love about these old box office games you're like these you know these sort of forgotten movies I mean I say forgotten someone will probably yell at me yeah some

[01:41:19] other like there's a movie number six the the red fox movie Norman is that you oh yeah the one way I think which we talked about right which is just him grumbling about how his whole family is uh you know he's like well women's live and everyone's

[01:41:35] gay or whatever like it that's that he's that he's the grumpy dad yeah not seen it it's called at mentions the movie there's a movie called shout at the devil which is like a big war movie starring Lee Marvin set in like Zanzibar in the turn of the

[01:41:55] century okay yeah okay is it the thing I'm sorry I'm just trying to remember why Norman is that you came up in a previous episode was in one of our old box office games I know but wasn't the thing

[01:42:07] with the weird thing with it that it the play was about a Jewish family or something there was like yes the version changes locale from New York City Los Angeles and substitutes an African-American family for a Jewish family in the original play

[01:42:19] and Dennis Dugan plays the third lead everything about this is weird okay sorry I was just trying to remember why this was in my brain okay uh yeah that's it I mean we're done wait with that you know there's that Allison there's that

[01:42:31] horny Allison Wonderland movie remember that when we talked about that too like I could ever forget right title that now haunts me yeah lingering down there uh and another one something called the slipper and the rose I want to look up is this also no this is

[01:42:47] just a this is a classic uh retelling of the Cinderella tale starring Richard Chamberlain okay hmm Chamberlain looks pretty but it's like a musical it's got it's got lots and lots of songs it's based on Cinderella Cinderella it's it's one of those things I

[01:43:05] feel like whenever we do an earlier box office game by earlier I mean anything before 1980 right and sometimes this is a thing in the 80s as well but I feel like people talk about this and not enough that every time we have switched to a different

[01:43:19] home media format more movies get lost right where they were like there will never be as many movies released on DVD as there were on VHS and less so on blu-ray and less so on 4k and now it feels like in the streaming

[01:43:31] era less and less of these films are getting remastered and put up on streaming services other than you know some of these boutique things that curate and thank god HBO max seems to have a little bit of a cultural history to it but you're just like oh right

[01:43:45] Norman is that you is there any way to watch that movie you know what your question is is it in any sort of like public consciousness I'm not saying that's the film that needs to be preserved but also all movies should be

[01:43:57] preserved no but the real problem with streaming is more like maybe it is available but like would Amazon even bother to tell you no but you can rent Norman is that you on Apple for two dollars if you really want to so

[01:44:09] yeah I want to and I'm gonna do it I'm not canceling my plans I'm staying home tonight and asking the key question the big question Norman is that you like Slipper in the Rose it doesn't that just feel weird that there's some big live action

[01:44:23] Cinderella musical that all of us are like huh really um yeah it's available to watch on hoopla with subs hoopla there's a lot of stuff that I just don't even know about these like streaming things yeah I refuse to know what hoopla

[01:44:39] is I won't find out I'm gonna force you David David I'm gonna I'm gonna sneak into your home in the middle of the night and wake you up with an iPad in front of your face and hoopla is going to be playing you're

[01:44:49] gonna be looking at the fucking hoopla main page the interface and there's nothing there's nothing you can do stop me David it's gonna be when you least expect I'm gonna make you look at hoopla you can't I won't do it all right we're done thank you so much

[01:45:01] April oh thank you for having me no no I want to thank April you rule long overdue but I think this was a great one to have you on for I hope so um I really appreciate it's great to fun to talk about

[01:45:17] John Carpenter and his is lesser known or lesser loved works that are all still good and you were talking facetiously before we start recording about how you're working on stuff that you can't talk about yet so it just seems like all you're doing is chilling on Twitter yeah

[01:45:33] just assume that I get paid to be on Twitter right right your game paid to be on Twitter uh you're part of the blue checkmark agenda yeah pushing brigade being paid by big government to perpetuate lies oh yeah absolutely yeah there's

[01:45:47] like a lot of hippies who are paying me right now along with sorrows yes so I'm actually doing quite well um on that front and um yeah I never have to work again so yeah that's it well congratulations on that you've cracked the code

[01:46:01] you're a great follow people should follow you and I look forward to uh you having a new work that we can see in theaters or on screens soon but at a wolf full on twitter yeah I made it difficult well thanks guys thank you our pleasure and thank

[01:46:23] you all for listening see I shifted the you I'm thinking you did the you now the people listening I tried to give that to you because I liked it when people would say that and I could be like and thank you for listening I appreciate it and the

[01:46:37] thing with me is I'm so clumsy that I never take a straight slide like that when someone gives me the runway I then have to stop and explain exactly what I was doing because I lack confidence in all areas but thank you all for listening uh please

[01:46:51] remember to rate review and subscribe thank you to Marie Barty for our social media thank you to JJ Borsch and Nick Larianne for our research Lane Montgomery and the great American Alfa our theme song Pat Bowen and Joe Reynolds for our artwork did I yeah you flipped that

[01:47:11] I said yeah Jesus Christ I've been we we're not recording that much because David had a baby and I was sick and Ben rode a dang horse and since then I got out of the loop of having to repeat the intro and outro every week and I have

[01:47:25] not been able to get back into the flow of things you know something up and no I never will all right fine thank you to Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen for our artwork well I really I think the next group of names are editors

[01:47:39] would like it if you did in fact get it together Gripen uh no here's the challenge I'm gonna do I'm gonna say their names backwards and they have to edit it wow thank you to AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for such an asshole come on

[01:48:03] go to blankies.red.com for some real nerdy shit and you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features we do commentaries and we're currently deep in the tomb with the fucking mummy we're hanging out with MOTAP right I can't remember probably yeah

[01:48:21] or we're doing Riddick I don't know either way we're doing one of those two things whatever we may not solve it we're doing Riddick right now we're doing Riddick right now okay we're chilling in the dark with Riddick so put on your goggles and and join our patreon

[01:48:35] tune in next week for as I already spoiled Halloween with Alex Ross Perry where he apparently choose us a new one I got that wrong it tears us a new one what is choose us a new one I guess I guess it's

[01:48:49] he's just chewing on your asshole yeah chewing on our asshole chewing out an asshole into another part of your body for you tune in next week when a claim filmmaker Alex Ross Perry comes on the show and with his teeth creates a new asshole on a different

[01:49:05] part of my body as we discuss the landmark film Halloween and as always I want to end this episode by just reading a couple more Napoleon Wilson quotes Lieutenant Ethan Bishop says looks pretty good to me Napoleon Wilson says looks like hell it's all we got that's cool

[01:49:27] Napoleon Wilson chains is all I've got to look forward to that's a Ben quote yeah I mean that's a fucking delightful quote I get it Lieutenant Ethan Bishop here final lines I'll end with this is final lines pretty fancy Wilson Napoleon Wilson I have moments it's fucking cool

[01:49:47] it's such a good ending