[00:00:00] Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check My asshole brother bought her back in September 57
[00:00:25] It's when you got your new model year in September Brand new she was, she had the smell of a brand new car It's just about the finest smell in the world Except maybe for podcast They smell so good
[00:00:39] I mean, I knew that was what I was gonna do The variation was obviously, oh man there is nothing finer than being behind the wheel of your own car Except maybe for podcast But I like that that one's more drawn out It's smell, smell is funny
[00:00:54] Smell is funny Robert Splossom, right? That's his name Who we've covered before because he was the dad in what's it called? Citizens Band Correct Handle with care, a.k.a. handle with care, yes But he's also, he's the kind old man who seems scary Right, in Home Alone
[00:01:17] That's how I know him He's the nice old man, old man Marley I believe Old man Marley, correct But a great name, just a great sort of salty old character actor The addition of the back brace in this movie Whatever this thing is that he's wearing
[00:01:35] Yep, it's like a scoliosis brace or whatever Yeah, it really completes the look Robert Splossom, we love him We love him, not as much as we love Of course one of our favorite people to talk about in this podcast Thank God, back in the pocket Robert Praski
[00:01:51] He's your virtual background today for today's recording One of our ultimate dudes Stupid virtual background, I was trying to cup his head He's so, I just, I didn't know His face, I didn't know about his face in this movie He's got sour lemon face the entire movie
[00:02:13] He's so gross One of the finest junkyard actors of our time Yes I do it yourself, Garage Yeah, oh he is just the looks that he is throwing in this are incredible Yeah, oh very quick parallel science engine Before I introduce this podcast or our show
[00:02:39] The premise itself Yeah, or a guess The, when I was rewatching the thing For last week's episode Kurt Russell keeps on saying fuchs over and over again Right, because one of the guys on the base is fuchs And I was like why is this like
[00:03:00] Why am I getting such deja vu from Kurt Russell saying fuchs over and over again What other movie has a character named fuchs that I'm confusing this with I realized it's fucking used cars where both of the Jack Warden characters are named fuchs
[00:03:14] And it's literally Kurt Russell saying fuchs in two different movies over and over again Two different movies, a couple movies, a couple years apart too Yeah, yeah I just something was hitting my ear about Russell saying fuchs In that exasperated tone
[00:03:29] But this isn't a fuchs cast, it's not, it's not We thought about it And Jack Warden is not Robert Prosky They're similar, that's the thing that linked them in my mind I would have loved to see a Prosky vs Warden movie
[00:03:44] Like Freddie vs Jake, they're just two grumpy junkyard owners who won't talk to each other Because of some perceived slight from like 30 I don't like that guy He gave me, I don't know, he gave me a bad look in 82 I don't like that guy
[00:04:01] He gave me what for? No, like was there ever a movie with Robert Prosky and Jack Warden together? It feels like there should have been I don't know, would have been too grumpy, too cranky a movie Too grumpy, yeah Folks, this is Blank Check with Griffin and David
[00:04:18] I'm Griffin I'm David And I did a collaboration search and no Prosky and Warden cross-shoot ever Wow Sad It's a, Dance Saint Germain the comedian had a great bit about Ides of March being Freddie vs Jason for Depressed Men
[00:04:36] Because it had Gia Motti and P.S.H. as rival campaigners People should look it up He has really good impressions of both of those guys Comparing who is more depressed about their life circumstances But this is a podcast about filmographies
[00:04:51] Directors who have massive success early on in their career And are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want And sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby And this is a post bounce
[00:05:05] Have we come up ever with a good term for it? Because the guarantor is the thing that gives you the blank check Right, we have not come up with a post bounce This isn't a bounce I don't know what it is Right, is this a mortgage?
[00:05:18] Is this a messing up term? But you know, it's like Is it a credit report maybe? Rebound, yeah He's like in arrears right now Right, it's a rebound movie I got to prove to them that I can get the thing done again Kind of movie
[00:05:34] Because we're talking about the films of John Carpenter Who certainly fits that description It's a mini series called They Podcast And this is his only Stephen King adaptation Which doesn't sound like an odd stat
[00:05:49] Except for the fact that this is a man who was working in the 70s, 80s and 90s Primarily in the horror genre And it feels like that was 30% of what got produced in the studio system at that point in time Yeah, George Romero hogged all the other ones
[00:06:02] Right It is kind of wild though that it's like Pretty much all the canonical studio horror guys of this era did at least one king You had to do a king at some point And Carpenter almost did Firestarter Right
[00:06:15] It was just like you were going to have to do it at some point And coming off of the thing Which bizarrely the most detested movie of all time At its release in this huge commercial flop For Carpenter taking on a king movie
[00:06:32] Probably was like, well I guess I got to do a Marvel movie just to prove Right Like I just need a surefire Something super popular Right, it was like he was one of the most preeminent genres in film Certainly commercially
[00:06:48] I was reading in the dossier of research prep for this episode that like To put context it was just like Clancy wasn't a thing yet Grissom wasn't a thing yet Like he was the one kind of novelist who was a brand in and of himself
[00:07:05] In a way sort of we talked about the weird Neil Simon mega franchise Of the 70s through 80s, yeah No, I mean there's no question Even with those guys at the height of their power maybe J.K. Rowling It kind of hit the status that Stephen King did
[00:07:20] But like even Michael Crichton or Dean Coont, Alice else King Right Believe it or not But nobody knows who the fuck Dean Coont is You know outside of popular years It does it's a shimmer Yeah, right Yeah It's, yeah
[00:07:35] Stephen King did a really great job of making himself a brand Because I mean he did an American Express commercial in the 80s You know for God's sakes like he was on talk shows and you know
[00:07:46] He's kind of this weird guy with a weird voice and he had thick, you know Coke bottle glasses You know there was just something You know like perfectly fitting He has the perfect name to be a horror icon Right off the top of it
[00:07:59] Stephen King of course he's writing horror Horror books And then he looks like you know especially at the time He kind of looked like a weirdo So you know it's Yeah when he had He had that, yeah he had the enthusiasm and all that stuff
[00:08:11] So he made himself a brand in an era where like That just wasn't done by authors You know Peter Straub wasn't a known face You know by people even though Ghost Story probably sold more than anything that King You know had written up to that point so
[00:08:25] If you folks can already tell we brought in some experts this week Hell yeah This is Christine we're talking about the killer car movie And we have Scott Wampler and Eric Bespie from the King cast To help put this in perspective for us Give us the context
[00:08:39] I won't point out because this was I mean Maybe this is a stat it's hard to double check But I someone I know jokingly referred recently To Maximum Overdrive being one of the only movie posters Featuring the director Primarily Like visually That's Dino de Laurentiis man
[00:08:58] Right but like Hitchcock had done that before Hitchcock was like Yeah Featured on his movie posters But he's not even in it Like I'm just looking at this one here That is Stephen King's masterpiece of terror directed by the master himself
[00:09:12] And the primary image is Stephen King ripping through the truck with a cross To be fair he is in the movie He has a camera Oh he is Yeah right up front He's the guy that gets hit in the beanbag with a
[00:09:24] Like a can of soda out of a machine No he said an ATM He said an ATM remember Oh that's right That's right I'm thinking of the baseball coach Yeah the baseball coach I just think like this poster treats him as if he's Tom Cruise
[00:09:37] Like everyone else on the poster is a centimeter tall Including Emilio Estem as like post Yes it was a big star Have you seen the trailer? The trailer is him just talking to the screen Showing off the truck For like half of the trailer
[00:09:52] Which by the way yes that was like a Hitchcock thing obviously Like Hitchcock had trailers like that where he would just explain his movie to you But it does speak to Hitchcock was also on TV on a weekly basis
[00:10:04] You know his film career had gone on for decades He had directed a best picture winner Like all this shit and Stephen King just within a decade went from being like Novelist to film franchise to kind of the name himself You know? Right
[00:10:19] Yeah and again that's like Dino playing the full huckster thing to the hilt Yeah He knew that I have no doubt that Dino knew that that movie wasn't great But he knew that Stephen King was a star more so than anything else
[00:10:34] And so that's what he sold it on for sure And that trailer is fucking hilarious Like that's just one of the best trailers ever I'm gonna scare the hell out of you Yeah he's not wearing his glasses so he's kind of cross-eyed as he's talking
[00:10:48] Yeah it's iconic I love it It's just always funny when you have the things like Cause I guess I mean what, Shining doesn't have Stephen King's The Shining Right it's not until he remakes it It still gets to primarily be Stanley Kubrick's
[00:11:05] That was definitely Stanley Kubrick's The Shining Yeah he's credited of course but it's not No but he's not like on the poster On the mark That famous poster No it's just a masterpiece of modern horror I'm thinking of like O-Tour directors who have done Stephen King movies
[00:11:19] And like Dead Zone is Stephen King's The Dead Zone But Carpenter gets John Carpenter's Christine Even though the movie is obviously being sold on King as well Well that's a John Carpenter thing It's John Carpenter's everything That's just his thing
[00:11:36] David Cronenberg doesn't have like David Cronenberg's The Fly You know it's like I don't know maybe it's an ego thing Maybe it's a name brand thing I have no idea why that is Oh sure I mean I know it's like Carpenter had just sort of established that
[00:11:50] As the precedent at that point But it's like when you see that the movie is called Stephen King's Dead Zone You're almost surprised when you're like Carpenter directed this And they're not even mentioning that They're still sort of framing it as Stephen King's thing You know
[00:12:05] I'm trying to figure this out Like when the first Yeah we'll see it The Dead Zone is definitely Stephen King's The Dead Zone Yeah I don't know That might be it Yeah that might be it
[00:12:15] I mean there's also the variation in like whether they use that in the title for the movie Or on the poster in the marketing or neither I mean I honestly think that it really just happens to be Because Stephen King and adaptations of his work
[00:12:30] This is why we started a whole podcast about it Are just so intertwined It's the reason why I think he's such a pop culture icon Is because everybody even if they've never read a Stephen King book They ingested a dozen Stephen King stories Just through osmosis
[00:12:45] Everybody's seen misery You know everybody's seen stand by me Everybody's seen Shoshank Redemption Everybody's seen Carrie You know so like people know his work Just through the adaptations So you know the shining If you watch nothing but The Simpsons in Saturn Live
[00:13:00] You would pick up on plenty of King You know material Right there's so much there And it's also just the fact that the guy was so fucking prolific Worked so fucking fast Pumping him out These fucking long ass books Right we're like this one
[00:13:15] Christine is what like 600 pages right Well none of that I just want to be clear That had nothing to do with the mountains of cocaine He was seeing down Oh no I mean well yeah Look I have not read as much Stephen King as you guys
[00:13:27] But yeah sometimes you're reading a book And there's like a whole hundred pages Where you're like was this just like an evening for him Of like just like Bustin you know so much coke And being like yeah and then this happened You know that's how it always feels
[00:13:41] Read the Tommy knockers And you'll feel like you just got out of a three day bender in Vegas It's that novel sweats when you hold it in your hand There are books that he admits to having no memory of writing For sure
[00:13:55] Like the actual act of writing it is a blur for him He just knows that it exists Kujo and the Tommy knockers specifically And Dreamcatcher he was pretty much in a haze on from You know he got hit by that van That's the pain med one
[00:14:07] Right that's post getting hit by the car Yeah he was on oxy He wanted to call that what did you know he wanted to call that book cancer And his wife talked him out of it Wow Yeah I don't know That book in movie very legible
[00:14:22] And very very obvious and you know it's formulaic Yeah it definitely doesn't scream I'm on goofballs And in great pain oh god I need to write anything to distract me From the horrible pain in my bones stitching themselves back together And he wrote that thing longhand
[00:14:38] He wrote that like just on legal pads That book is like 900 pages long or some crazy shit It's kind of wild how much him getting hit by that car was like a news story Considering that it wasn't the kind of thing that often happens now where like
[00:14:52] Someone's injured and all of Twitter is doing like prayer hands and candle circle And going like we can't lose you It was just like everyone thought it was so funny
[00:15:02] And I think it has to do with the idea that he like reads to people as this weird supernatural figure More than a man And then he went to just like yes how goofy he looks and how big he is
[00:15:13] I just remember it was like immediately people were making like the fucking late night talk shows Were doing monologue jokes about it That showed no consideration for this guy's pain It was just like what a weird curio This giant scary novelist was hiking through the woods
[00:15:30] In the middle of the night like it's a spooky thing you know Like a chupacabra jumped in front of your car Well and it's a guy that's written about a lot I mean we're talking about one of the stories he's written
[00:15:42] You know about a car that runs people over The gauge creed and pet cemetery gets hit Maximum overdrive is all about cars running people over So there is a weird irony to it It just felt like the beginning of a Stephen King book
[00:15:55] Yeah, yeah, that's the inciting incident Mr. Mercedes another one He's got a weird thing with cars I recently came to the realization that King also has like a weird thing with corn You know we were just talking about this No, no, no
[00:16:12] He's a big freak on the leash guy Producer ban incredible contribution, thank you No but like you know there's Corn on the cob is like a recurring motif in a lot of Stephen King stuff And if I ever get to corner that guy on our show
[00:16:28] One of my first questions is going to be like Alright what's the deal with the corn We're going to talk about the corn now There's children in it, it's used to stab people in a lot of Stephen King stuff
[00:16:38] Sleepwalkers, a cop gets stabbed by an ear of corn Johnny Depp eats corn at the end of secret window While wearing braces I would like to point out What a weird fucking movie See when you obsess over this and you do a podcast about
[00:16:52] A single author you start picking up on really random bullshit And as you'll see as this conversation goes on I'm sure My friend and I interviewed Nicholas Cage once For a magazine that didn't really exist When he was doing Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance Press
[00:17:11] And we had tried to watch all of his movies in like the two weeks leading up to that And I watched like 80% of them right before the Sort of Avi Lerner red box boon of him doing eight movies a month But we were like trying to chart weird
[00:17:27] You know repetitive elements in his movies Sure And see how much of them were conscious Did he, was he attracted to the material because of these things Did he put these things in them And we were like why are there so many wolves in your movies
[00:17:40] And he's like I don't think I've ever done a movie with a wolf And then we were like here are 12 instances of films in which you come face to face With a wolf and have a profound moment And he's like oh yeah I guess uh I don't know
[00:17:54] I guess I just think wolves are cool They are cool But it was like there was no interiority there You know I wonder if King could tell you like My dad used to yell at me to finish my corn
[00:18:05] And so it's like a figure of menace or if you bring it up to him and he'd be like I don't know is there corn in my work I don't know It's gonna be the second version We had Stephen Weber on the show once
[00:18:16] And he was the, he played Jack Torrance in the miniseries version of Shining And unlike the Kubrick one Stephen King was there on set for every minute of that He was super hands-on And like Weber told us a story about how Like there's this turn of phrase right
[00:18:33] In there Scott was talking about some sort of pattern of a carpet It's like a stanza is worth a poetry in the middle of the book Right and he was like oh this is the perfect thing
[00:18:42] And he, and she's like I interpret it because this is the way Jack Torrance is feeling in this moment And all that and he's like I'm gonna go ask King about it since he's right there behind the you know monitor
[00:18:51] And he goes up to King and asks him about it He goes I don't know when I was writing it that's, I just looked down and that was the thing on my carpet That's what my carpet looked like
[00:18:59] I was probably drunk and that was the pattern on the floor Like yeah Also for a guy to write that many books He has to be just existing in some kind of like flow state You know Oh yeah well he regularly brings in people to You know
[00:19:15] Well I don't know about regularly but he has on several occasions People that are basically act as historians for him and will correct You know mistakes that he's made with things that he's written You know he did that on the dark tower to keep the lore clean
[00:19:29] And he also did it His own mythology you're saying Yeah his own mythology Yeah You know He's been piecing that own mythology together since he was in college So it's like 40 years worth of stuff so he'll just forget things yeah That's wild
[00:19:43] I wait I had a point and I forgot Keep talking guys King Corsas I was just saying well I guess my favorite King Book is Path Cemetery Which is an obvious choice And I have not read every King Book by any means There's a lot of them
[00:19:57] Why yeah I don't know if you guys know that I mean why is that my It's just so boring But like you know I read it when I was probably a late Teenager somewhere in there and it's like just
[00:20:10] That you know that early part of the book where he wakes up And he's got the dirt all over his feet Yeah It's just one of those like seminal moments Reading a book where I was like holy shit I can't go to sleep now
[00:20:24] You know what I mean like Yeah I like a lot of I like basically any Stephen King that I pick up I feel like I've read like a dozen of them or whatever But I was just thinking Path Cemetery
[00:20:34] This is right this is a thought from 10 minutes ago But like that has the trucks rumbling down the road He's really freaked out by vehicles That's all that's all And that's what that's the same year as Christine Frank that shit out It's the same year right same knob
[00:20:48] Well I think it was published the same year Yeah Yeah he wrote it much earlier That's one of like a very infamous thing Because that was one he had said he was never going to publish Because it was too disturbing even for him
[00:21:02] Because he was working out as a father Of a bunch of young kids He was working out a lot of his own fears in that And like when you ask Stephen King He gives that question all the time What scares Stephen King and he'll go like the dark
[00:21:14] Vicar spiders or whatever the hell But like when you can when he doesn't answer it With a joke and he answers seriously It is you know it's He's like it is walking in to check on my kids And they're not breathing
[00:21:26] You know it's like that that is the real fear That's the thing Yeah so you know every once in a while Then he'll pull out the serious version Of that but that's what you know That book was disturbing for him It was disturbing for his wife
[00:21:40] It was disturbing for Tabatha He said he was going to shelve it And he talked for years about having Yes that's right I remember the prology Right and he talks about all this Yeah and then like he He essentially had a book deal
[00:21:54] He was trying to get out of Was it he was moving on the Viking I think Or he was leaving Viking one of the two And he owed one more book And he didn't want to give him The new one that he was writing
[00:22:06] So he just pulled Pet Sematary off the shell Said alright you can have this one But he's actually one of his most scary books Like there's not a whole lot Of Stephen King and as somebody who's Read everything he's written Obsessively and examined it
[00:22:20] I'm not really scared that often By Stephen King stuff I love reading it I'm entertained by it I love his characters There's moments in it that really get under my skin There's moments in The shining does it for me Yeah there's a couple of things
[00:22:36] Yeah in the shining specifically But Pet Sematary is almost from Beginning to end just a bleak Dark get under your skin And stay there it feels Meaner than most King stuff does Revivals is a recent one that he Wrote that That kind of hits those same notes
[00:22:56] By the end but even that one It's not as bleak the entire way Through there's like a sense of doom Throughout Pet Sematary that you just You just can't shake there is Like a really easy respite You know to find in that book
[00:23:10] Hell yeah I guess that's part But I have not read Christine And I do think of that as one of those Sort of big hefty ones that I never got around to Well that was right The process of adaptation for this Movie was pretty much just
[00:23:26] We're only gonna make a fourth of this Right there's just Too much this is In this state where he's turning them Out I mean because this The movie comes out like three months After the book comes out or within the same year Certainly it was optioned
[00:23:42] As a manuscript and That and Kujo kind of were presented at the Same time and there was such a feeding frenzy For his movies I mean ironically enough David did you see who the producer is Who put this movie together and brought Carpenter on Well
[00:23:58] Now I'm not sure tell me because I mean we have our dossier obviously Richard Cobrits oh it's Richard Cobrits we were just talking about Yeah yes well We watched someone's watching me guys I don't know if you guys ever seen someone's watching me
[00:24:12] The TV movie John Carpenter made Yeah which is a good Movie Because it's a TV movie it ends on a freeze Frame of the main character's Face and then it just goes executive producer Richard Cobrits you know in this kind of Like kind of jarring
[00:24:28] Right kind of jarring like Next up on NBC it's the local news Like you know and so that's Funny Richard and then I was making fun of Richard Cobrits Clearly TJ Hooker episode Or something yeah exactly but He must be I know he is he's a great
[00:24:44] Producer I looked into it yes he was A Warner Brothers TV guy Then he did the Salem lot miniseries And then he went on his own as an independent producer Because he had the relationship with King from Salem's lot He gets offered Kujo and Christine
[00:24:58] As the next two things he has His new manuscripts He picks Christine and then He knows that Carpenter is a little bit down And outpost thing and that the Fire starter adaptation that he was close to going on Had been Shit canned and so he goes straight
[00:25:14] To Carpenter and offers it to him It's entirely because of his experience On someone's watching me Do you guys like Kujo? Are you Kujo fans? Yeah I've only I've seen the movie I've never read the book I've seen it and the movie
[00:25:29] The movie I think is the most interesting Of the two I hadn't seen it since I was a kid Until we did an episode on it Like sometime within the last year We had fucking who was it Mark Danieluski the guy that
[00:25:43] Wrote House of Leaves he came on and did Kujo And we had D Wallace Oh yeah we interviewed D Wallace about it but Before one of those I revisited it For the first time since I was a kid And my memory of it was that it was
[00:25:57] Just you know two people trapped In a car with a dog but On re-visitation And with a you know a more developed Cinematic palette I found it way more satisfying And now I'm kind of like That movie is undervalued I really Really like it and particularly
[00:26:15] You know in the universe of King adaptations Where Where does Christine rank For you guys Not specifically In the larger canon As dudes who are Such experts on the films and the books Where is Christine in the pack I might Be a little bit Atypical Listen
[00:26:43] Talking just as a I'm a film geek first and foremost That's kind of what I started As I came to King through the movies And I think the people I think did At least in my generation and You know and I'm a huge John Carpenter
[00:26:57] Fan like massive I think the run that He makes between assault on precinct 13 To they live is all-timer Stuff I think this is one Of the weakest of that group And I think that There are moments in this movie that are Fucking great
[00:27:13] The show me moment you know with Keith Gordon you know Kind of in Christine reassembling Yourself is amazing The imagery of the car on fire Chasing people down is really Rad And I also am very nostalgic for that time Period where you can
[00:27:31] Just the film grain of this era And the character actors that pop up And all this stuff like I'm very nostalgic For it but I still I probably Value this less than most people Who Who love King and King's stuff Do I don't think it's a bad movie
[00:27:47] I just think it's To me it's a little Forgettable Yeah I think it's mid-tier overall And it's just not one If I wanted to sit down and pick A random Stephen King movie and watch it Christine would not be One of the first that comes to mind
[00:28:05] You know I would go with Cujo With the shining or I would go with Plenty I would get to before Misery stand by me Shawshank I'm inclined to agree with you Eric But it really is like you look At his 70s 80s run Right he doesn't really
[00:28:23] Miss until the 90s It's like this sort of by default Has to be his weakest movie Yes but the fact that This is the weakest movie in that run A speaks to how much The dude was just on fire for like 16 years And B
[00:28:39] The fact that he hit the ground Running so hard because this feels Like it's maybe like the first movie Of a director who then goes on to Really get his shit down Yeah for sure You can tell that there's a one For them mentality here and we touched
[00:28:55] On that a little bit already And it's fascinating Just as you mentioned this is him Working within the studio Going okay I made This movie I thought it was great nobody liked it Studio didn't like it audiences didn't like it
[00:29:09] It turns out to be like one of the most Long term successful movies of his career But at the time huge flop And this is him going okay I can make A dependable bankable thing And it's really Interesting when you look at Especially when you consider that
[00:29:25] Firestarter was what he was originally Gonna do when he dove into Stephen King's World he wanted to make That a road movie is my understanding Like his script was a father Daughter you know a tale On the road and he it's Funnily enough you look at Starman
[00:29:43] And you go this is This is the amblin version Of Firestarter his version of Firestarter You know it's the nice alien version Of Firestarter It's his road movie you know people on The run being chased by Government agents or what not you know It's uh he was
[00:30:01] Doing interesting things around here But then he was still able to pop off like I think One of Carpenter's most underrated movies Is Prince of Darkness like I love Prince of Darkness I think it's a it's It is both weird And gets bogged down in scientific
[00:30:15] Gobbattly gook but It's also one of the scariest things he's ever made Like I think that Prince of Darkness is scarier Than Halloween personally Like I just think that the Tony He sets and like you know Almost the cosmic horror that he almost dips
[00:30:29] Into with with that thing is Is just in the madness it's really Really terrifying and You know that was kind of a miss too and big trouble In Little China one of my all time favorites of his Huge it was another big
[00:30:41] Miss but like those are all the ones that seem to survive You know Christine doesn't seem to be Definitely when you talk about Carpenter Christine very rarely gets Brought up you know in front of Escape from New York or You know or big trouble or
[00:30:55] You know it'll pop up before Prince of Darkness For most people but not for me I mean the quote that I think is really telling about this Movie uh let me just Get this directly this was I guess some sort of career retrospective Interview he did for variety
[00:31:09] In 2019 and He said I needed a job after the thing because Nobody would hire me so this came along And I took the job and it turned out Better than it had any right to That's that's the line that I think is really telling
[00:31:21] That like he very much says this was The first time in his career That he was sort of for hire That it wasn't a passion project That it wasn't a thing that he developed And even he is surprised that it's Better than
[00:31:35] The level of passion he had going into it Which I think speaks to the fact that this Guy kind of has Too much Respect for film as a medium And too much contempt For the amount of like lazy Erogynt sloppy Assholes working to ruin
[00:31:53] Shit in the industry at the time That he like cannot shit out a movie At this point you know He's like I just got to show up make my days Get it done have a respectable hit He's like I guess I cared more
[00:32:05] Than I thought I did you know It's just a little bit better in every Sense than it has any right to be Yeah it's a testament to his His ability as a craftsman As you said he this is if this Is him doing something without
[00:32:19] His heart in it it's it's better than most people Who are trying really hard to make Make a good thing yeah Right and the movies it pales in comparison To the films where you're just like I cannot believe how much He put into this like he's just putting
[00:32:31] A herculean amount into every single Aspect well just about Christine it's like what you said about Like now it would be oh geez I guess I make a Marvel superhero movie would Like this is also I have to imagine at the Time kind of an eye rolling
[00:32:45] Project for you know Hoity-toity critics right Which is like oh he's doing a Stephen King movie what's it about oh it's the one About the killer car okay Right like isn't the you know this is probably A movie people look down their nose at A little bit in 1983
[00:33:01] Especially when you consider That 83 is like Kujo And Christine these are The two manuscripts that are up for Grab to make into a king movie and it's like Wait so one's like a car And one's a dog like I guess It writes itself you know
[00:33:17] All I need to hear is Stephen King makes the bad Dog movie Stephen King makes The bad car The bad book you know whatever and then just like Okay one it's about teenagers the other It's a mother son okay yeah sure
[00:33:29] I get it I get it I get it you know It just almost maybe feels like Formula on its face Firestarter he was going to do With Lancaster Who wrote the thing And then in fact ended up never making Another movie ever again
[00:33:48] That was gonna be about 30 million Dollars it was gonna be a bigger budget Thing sort of at the same Level of as the thing And Richard Dreyfus was gonna be He was gonna have a big proven at this point Academy Award winning movie star
[00:34:02] In it and then when the thing Underperforms they bring In what's his name The eventual writer of this movie Bill Phillips because I think their Thing was everyone was freaked out by how Fucking cold and cynical And bleak the thing was Is that Carpenter's tendency
[00:34:20] If we let him go all the way we need to bring Someone in is more cuddly and bill Phillips by his own admission was like a very Cheery kind of blue sky Screenwriter and the studio's Calculation was split the difference End up with something in the middle
[00:34:34] Carpenter can make it scary bill Phillips Can't write scary bill Phillips can put a Motion the thing and Carpenter can't so They assign him to rewrite and Redevelop Firestarter With Dreyfus Carpenter you know Pre the thing had negotiated this deal
[00:34:50] He was given on a big hit run Stephen King's a big deal he's got Richard Dreyfus so universal agrees To pay or play for the movie Which means that whether Or not the film gets made John Carpenter Is going to get his full salary It was
[00:35:06] Arguably the one time in his career where He had that kind of clout Pretty much the only time right right But universal was like Increasingly dubious about making the Film and certainly giving him that much Of freedom so they like slash the budget
[00:35:20] In half they go like you wanted 27 will give you 14 And Carpenter is very known for he Writes to the specific dollar Amount he knows how much everything's going to cost He understands the production logistics He plans out a movie to that scope
[00:35:34] He could not cut his idea in half And it was either I don't Make the movie and I get paid or I make The movie this way and it's going to suck I'd rather just not make the movie So he walks which I think
[00:35:46] Perhaps even fucks up his reputation A little bit more Which then just gets saved By what's his name Cobal It's having the Christine Brights and wanting him The Stat I think he's got to view Christine though in that In that context is kind of a consolation
[00:36:04] Price right? Oh yeah, yeah You know like he's definitely Like we've established he's Working for hire on it But elevating the material in the process Just because of his natural talents as a filmmaker But also if I'm him I'm like
[00:36:18] Well, I really wanted to do this one but I guess this is sort of it It's also a Stephen King and you know I can make it scary and blah blah blah blah You know yeah and I don't think He's like right He's desperate to do just any
[00:36:32] Stephen King thing right like he's interested In Firestarter for specific reasons That's sort of the same zip code Yeah exactly and like Firestarter Is that sort of a movie I don't know if Drew Barrymore was going to be in it When he made it I don't know
[00:36:46] I don't know how much there was anyone attached To it yet but like in Christine it's like Well the movie star is the car and then we'll cast A bunch of you know Smaller names right? Am I crazy Or did I hear that
[00:36:58] We were talking we had a Phil Nobile Junior the editor in chief of Fangoria And he has Like did a deep dive on the Firestarter that almost Was and we had him on the show And I think he said that How was it Heather O'Rourke Carol Ann from
[00:37:14] Poltergeist was supposed to be the main There you go another Right another Child Girl Star Little blonde girl that worked with Steven Spielberg Right When I like find the Quotes about why Carpenter took the movie Aside from just the like I needed a job
[00:37:32] I was unhierable they were the only people Willing to hire me I was tired of not making A movie I was a you know Feeling antsy all that sort of stuff He's just like look I like High school movies I thought that's a fun genre
[00:37:44] I haven't worked in that they showed me the car The car looked nice it was a beautiful car I thought I could do a lot with the car And it's a rock and roll movie and that was cool Like it was like three isolated elements he was like
[00:37:54] The story didn't really appeal to me In the way that Firestarter did I didn't find some thematic depth in it I just like these are fun elements to play around With why not The milieu right of the right The freeser movie with like a rock and roll
[00:38:08] Soundtrack is definitely a big Big way for him to talk himself into it Right He wants to do one of those And he also had the freedom to like cast All these great like old character actors That you can tell he just wanted to work with
[00:38:22] Like Robert Prosky Good ol' Bob Prosky Harry Dean Stanton You mentioned Roberts Blossom Yeah I mean there's all over the This guy named Stuart Charno Who was like A nerd that popped up in every 80's Movie At that time Oh who's he? Who does he play?
[00:38:44] Don Bandenberg is what I am dealing with But if you look at his face it's like Oh yeah he's literally in every high school Movie of that era Well there's also Stephen Tash Who is one of the bully kids With the real angular sideburns
[00:38:58] Is the guy that Bill Murray fucks With at the beginning of Ghostbusters I don't know why he looks so familiar Especially in the scenes where he's scared But it's because he's the guy getting electrocuted When he guesses the wrong card I never put that together Exactly
[00:39:14] Which by the way that's such a great fucking joke Like I know this isn't about Ghostbusters But that opening always cracks me up Every single time I watch it And the cherry on top isn't that he's just Like Venkman's being horny for the Cute college girl
[00:39:28] It's the fact that the other kid is actually Proud of getting it right And he's totally ignoring it for You know There's no reason for him to punish that guy Like they could both be right He's electrocuting the dude Yes able to cast a lot of good actors
[00:39:48] But I think you know The biggest change he makes that feels Very carpenter to me From the book which I admittedly haven't read Is the car is just Bad The car is evil Like the car is like the shape It is a manifestation of evil
[00:40:06] It will always be evil With King he sort of like Strattles the line between Is the car itself the thing Or is the car possessed by bad owners Does it have the spirit Or is it the thing that makes the people bad And this is like
[00:40:22] He adds this prologue which apparently King didn't really like As much as he gave him freedom And he wanted to make those choices Where it's just like the second this car comes off The assembly line it's killing people You look at the poster for this movie
[00:40:34] And the tagline is Huge letters how do you kill something That can't possibly be alive And then smaller font Massive block of text that says She was born bad Plain and simple Somewhere deep on a darkened assembly line Christine Like I just love that
[00:40:54] It's so good but I do love that idea where it's like You know once in a while there's just a car Born bad That's just how it is We don't need to explain this anymore It just wants to chomp you up You guys get it
[00:41:08] You buy a new car and it's evil and your wife chokes In it, you know this happens all the time It happens all the time But yeah you're right the whole marketing on this is great The poster is great the trailer
[00:41:18] I don't know if you've seen the trailer recently But the teaser for it I think it might be Percy Rodriguez or somebody like With a good early 80s trailer voice Is talking about Christine but as if she's a woman And you're just seeing like curves
[00:41:32] Her curves and you don't realize it at the beginning You think it's like a James Bond Kind of you know you're seeing the woman's Hip lying down or something And it ends up being the car Oh I'm watching this this is hilarious
[00:41:44] This is god imagine seeing this in a theater Yeah I have that trailer in 35 I just thought that out About that 35mm Yeah it is a great teaser The marketing is great On this whole thing and you can tell That they had a lot of
[00:42:00] Good trailer good stuff to market I mean I think the movie itself is Is good it's good It's solid it's solid it's good I don't think it's amazing I don't think it's the best king I don't think it's the best carpenter
[00:42:12] I don't think it's even the best of that era But you know the You see why this was very Very moving to him because Added to carpenter because Like look at how easy of a cell it was You know like
[00:42:26] As long as he didn't you know just turn in Just unwatchable garbage Like he had kind of a sure fire hit There It's also a hell of a lot better than the f***ing Fire starter movie they made That's true I'm sure that was satisfying
[00:42:42] Fire starter looks so cheap in comparison And maybe that's why Fire starter is Mark Lester correct Who is the director of F*** what's the terrible movie that he made That I know well now I gotta look it up I can't remember anyway
[00:42:56] I do remember fire starter being boring as sh** It's sort of like one of those classic where you're like I'm in for a Stephen King movie baby Give me the thrills and And being kind of boring And then there's like three minutes at the end where fireballs are
[00:43:08] Destroying people and launching them into trees And you're like why isn't the rest of the movie like this I found this A cobritz quote The producer because you know Like King's tendency is to mythologize things Right and like
[00:43:22] This evil is the stem of a curse of a wrong done Generations ago And it has seeped in and survived You know it's sins of the past sh** And Carpenter just loves this idea that Like some things are just bad There are just actual pure
[00:43:36] Forces of evil in this world They are evil because that's what they were Placed on this earth to do Is all they will ever do Nothing traumatized them Nothing went wrong It's evil going right And cobritz was talking about them Picking like right off the bat
[00:43:54] The car is just bad, that's just what we're doing The car is just bad, it's always been bad There's no backstory And then he said months later after they made that decision King mentioned a comic essay By James Thurber that he's read about
[00:44:06] Objects that had simply been born bad Like a can opener that was just meant to cut your finger In a sense that's what we're saying about this car It's not the ghost of a dead owner It's not a skeleton rattling in the back seat
[00:44:16] It's just that this car has a way of Adopting weak people Capturing their minds and giving them a sense of security And a sense of power In exchange it rules the owner What about that movie The Manger That's Stephen King right The haunted laundry machine Right?
[00:44:34] Wait I'm sorry, that's what that movie is about? Yeah that literally folds you like laundry Like that's actually what it does Yeah it's not like a washing machine It's like an industrial laundry Right like a big washer It's like the length of A warehouse floor
[00:44:50] And it looks like something Tim Burton designed when he was Particularly depressed or something It's all like rusted And got these like fanciful swirls on it And gears and shit So he really would just pick a thing The mangler is like So expanded from The source material though
[00:45:10] And that's Just one of those movies that's Like you could sit and talk about the mangler For a couple hours no problem There's a lot to chew on in that movie And it'll be a very fun conversation But the process of actually watching The mangler is
[00:45:26] Real rough as we found out Wow there's a mangler 2 and 3 Mangler 2, yeah mangler 2.0 is Like the Spirit of the mangler is somehow Like uploaded into the computer System at this Like prep school That has been shut down for I don't know the holidays or some shit
[00:45:50] And there's some students that are Remaining on campus I think because they're being punished for something We haven't done that One yet but I've watched it The mangler reborn My buddy Scott Spicer is in from the Tick which was meant to be a hard
[00:46:06] Reboot of the mangler only Three years after mangler 2.0 They just wouldn't let the mangler Lie dormant That mangler franchise That all the public demanded Right it's odd that they were so persistent on the mangler Well you know that's the kind
[00:46:22] Of shit that like was just all over the shelves at Blockbuster and was probably getting You know rented left and right And you know There was enough to justify sort of like Children of the corn you know if there's Enough business in that ancillary market To justify
[00:46:38] Keep making them and they're making them very Cheap you know why not It's like it's a name people recognize and yeah But I defy you to find someone who's Watched all three mangler movies That would be crazy The mangler was one of those movies that
[00:46:52] Like a kid in high school told me about Was like the scariest fucking movie I ever saw Was this movie called the mangler brought To the mangler's main And that's why I watched it and I just Remember it being it's a toby hooper Right like late toby hooper
[00:47:06] It's got Robert Englund in it Like yeah it's like a crazy factory owner Yeah and like the whole thing is very Like It's hard to pinpoint the tone of it It's really strange Eric what's the name of the fucking guy Like the lead guy we love this guy
[00:47:22] In the mangler Ted Levine He's in it and he's like the lead And he is so it's like a rare lead Performance from Ted Levine And he's just like one of his eyeballs Is always bulging out and he's like Wearing this bizarre jacket Through the whole goddamn thing
[00:47:40] It's like he's in a Shane Black movie Like you yeah He'd fit in a kiss kiss bang bang Kind of so he's in Investigating this laundry press but Meanwhile Robert Englund Is like the owner of the laundry factory or whatever the fuck you would call it Sure
[00:47:58] He's like running around like Laundry factory It's a factory space And a laundry is inside of it so it counts But he's running around In like a three piece suit With like a robot leg or some Shit and like sexually harassing Every woman in sight
[00:48:16] He's got like those four scump leg Braces on yeah It's so fucking weird Again this is good shit to talk about But in practice you I don't know maybe we should do the Mangler trilogy on Patreon He might have to Robert Englund delivers every line as if he's
[00:48:34] Yosemite Sam as well Like yes It is the most And he's got like a dead eye Like contact lens and Those 90s Anglin performances where He's like oh I know what people want from me Right you know where he did How come this doesn't work without
[00:48:52] The Freddie makeup yeah Wish master I'm trying to go with Robert Englund He's an urban legend Right that Phantom Did he direct that one Yes I think he did The Phantom of the Opera one Yeah he sure did He also directed a movie called Killer Pad
[00:49:14] I mean anyway that sounds kind of cool Sounds kind of fun right He's in that movie what is it 10,000 Maniacs or something The Eli Roth one yeah Yeah and like he His character in that is sort of Along the lines of The Mangler but more of a
[00:49:32] More of a Colonel Sanders type whereas in You know The Mangler he's just more put together Which is just really weird To see him in that outfit In the midst of this like Dirty ass factory That's you know the center piece of Which is this you know
[00:49:50] House size laundry press that's like Literally folding people in half If they get too close to it It folds people like laundry That's what it does Straight up Again this is the most fun shit to talk about But if you guys do watch that shit for your Patreon
[00:50:06] You are going to be in pain Like it is a real tough To get through but it is super fun to talk about Yeah it looks It's unforgivably long I mean I've been Soon but it's in a long time But it's like 106 minutes
[00:50:20] Like what are we doing here that thing should be 80 minutes long and Christine Christine is kind of surprisingly long too For car because Carpenter is such A 90 minute movie maker And they like killer runnies on And then this and Starman they're a little
[00:50:34] You know they have a little more room to breathe Like I feel like Christine kind of Doesn't get to the scares for a while Like it's a lot of you know scene setting Characterization and stuff like that I just want to quickly correct I was wrong Robert Englund
[00:50:48] Did not direct Phantom of the Opera But I did in trying to confirm that Find the poster for this movie which is incredibly bizarre Because the poster for Phantom of the Opera Is Freddy Krueger And it says Robert Englund Was Freddy now he's the
[00:51:02] Phantom of the Opera and it's Freddy Holding up a little Phantom of the Opera mask What other instances are there Of one character Being used to promote an entirely Different movie that that character Does not appear in This is more egregious than Stephen King appearing on the mask
[00:51:20] This is like the most insane This makes you think that Freddy Krueger Is going to be haunting the opera Right it's like a Deadpool Promoting free guy And then yes the tagline Is an all new nightmare Well that's all they had to work with On that one apparently
[00:51:38] I hope everyone went to jail who was involved in that Christine He gets this manuscript Cobritz brings it to him They write a script They're like great you film in 8 weeks It comes out that year It was also a very very quick Movie
[00:51:56] What like in terms of the shoot Yes and just the entire development Process it was just like The book comes out while they're filming It's blowing up the charts The movies and theaters Like 4 or 5 months later Everyone trying to recapture that Fucking box office gold from Carrie
[00:52:14] Yeah at that point He wants to cast Kevin Bacon very badly I think that repeats itself in Starman Bacon auditioned for this They were going to cast him Correct And then he gets offered footloose And takes that instead I don't either He's been a really good Dennis
[00:52:38] It's a thing I like about Keith Gordon in this movie Is actually a loser At the beginning of the film And yet he pulls off the Transformation to creep at the end The thing that's impressive Is the transformation You're like I don't think I can buy this
[00:52:56] I'm going to be able to buy this guy's anything but A dork Those glasses really do a lot This is the original he's all that Yes That leather vest though is not a great look It's a terrible look That's pretty rough
[00:53:12] But I just feel like most often they will do The Kevin Bacon version of the casting Where it is like the first 45 minutes Kevin Bacon is slouching And using like nasa nex And he has the taped up glasses And you're not buying it and then he becomes
[00:53:26] What you knew he always was meant to be Whereas there's more As you said David you're watching the first half Of this movie you go like well this is just going to be Embarrassing when this guy tries to act tough It's going to be like bully maguire
[00:53:38] And spider-man 3 and it really It works it makes It's one of the more unnerving Aspects of the movie The fact that he actually does become So sociopathic and that He underplays it you know Well it's because he's not trying to play cool
[00:53:54] I think that's where a lot of instinct would be That okay I'm now the cool Guy you know the because the whole Thing is an allegory you know Or you can read it as an allegory anyway Of you know this guy losing his virginity
[00:54:06] Right and he's becoming a man And you know he's not going to be as Nervous in his awkward because he's not nervous About all that stuff and he's found a woman You know the woman just happens to be a car He's horny for that car though
[00:54:18] Love that car he's super horny Or then for his extremely attractive Girlfriend yeah But yeah but like the fact that The turn isn't into a cool Greaser or whatever it is It is a guy that is instantly Creep like he's got Confidence and you can see how that
[00:54:36] Works out for him in certain ways But like it is a legit Like kind of disturbing performance I wouldn't quite put it in the same Category as Nicholson and the shining You know when he's doing like that dead eyes stare
[00:54:48] You know out but it's kind of in that same Ballpark where it's like you This guy you wouldn't trust To be if he was in the same room with you It's like being in the room with a loaded gun I agree and I think Watching all these
[00:55:02] Carpenter movies so close together it is a thing I noticed throughout his Filmography he is really good at Whether it's just that he's good at casting Or he's good at guiding and shaping these Performances but so many of his Movies require a character to
[00:55:16] Have like a fundamental change On sort of like a cellular level Where it is whether It's you know they experience some sort of trauma Or shock and they lose their Their joie de vivre Or they turn evil or whatever it is Something like star man where he's learning
[00:55:32] How to be a person gradually These movies always have these transformations That have to be sold not through Perestetics but by a shift In energy from the actor and they're always Done pretty specifically But also in A believable and understated Manor it is also interesting That this is
[00:55:52] Keith Gordon and John Stockwell both of who go on to become Directors after this. Yeah Keith Gordon did he make the singing Detective remake or wait what The movie version of it yeah And what's it called Waking the Dead Is that the movie? Yeah which is not
[00:56:08] A bad movie I Haven't seen it in 20 years But I remember that being like a pretty Solid moody drama right? And he like directs prestige television Does homeland and Fargo Leftovers yeah And then John Stockwell kind of went in the opposite direction John Stockwell who you know
[00:56:28] Handsome guy did What did he do? Let's see I'm taking that well he's also He did blue crush right and crazy beautiful Fuck! And did he also do I love crazy beautiful. He did blue crush And into the blue black back to back That's he shouldn't have done
[00:56:44] Into the blue that into the blue That was that was you know A hat on a hat Or whatever god Into the blue is truly like these people Look good in swimsuits the movie right I don't even know what the plot of that thing
[00:56:58] Is that's the full plot Alvin Walker they're not wearing a lot Okay yeah Josh Brolin's the villain Josh Brolin sure is Scott cons in that one apparently Who knew blue crush is The one with Kate Bosworth right correct and Michelle Rodriguez and then a third person
[00:57:16] On the poster who never made another movie I have An interesting story about that because I met Kate Bosworth on the set of rules Of attraction I went to I was on rules of attraction for two Days doing set visit for
[00:57:30] Inuit Cool News which I was writing for at the time And Back then she was just that was like one of Her first things and of course I remember Just being struck by you know the different color Dyes and she was super sweet and
[00:57:42] And all that and then I saw her in blue crush And I wrote a review of it and I think I like I don't remember what the review said It's probably super cringy look at it now Because I was like you know 20 writing it
[00:57:52] But I wrote a review for it Then I went to I was invited to the premiere Of rules of attraction and And I get like tackled by Kate Bosworth At the premiere and she gives me a big kiss On the cheek and thanks me for my review
[00:58:04] Of blue crush So that is my blue crush anecdote I don't remember anything about the movie but it did Give me a kiss on the cheek and Kate Bosworth Both of you guys have read the Christine book, correct? Yes, sure. The book there Is like the a
[00:58:20] Presence of the previous owner Right, the Robert Blossom characters brother Roland LeBae Yeah and in the in the movie they Essentially that scene Is Roland seen in the Movie Roland sells the kid the car It's not his brother. Got it So essentially Robert's Blossom is playing
[00:58:38] LeBae. He's playing the guy that dies His brother is in the Book but he kind of he's a normal guy He comes in and essentially Is there to give Arnie Some backs or Arnie and Dennis some back Story on you know the History of the car
[00:58:54] So I don't know why the decision was made Because he is playing the creep old creep That on the car It feels like they're just streamlining it and they're also You know nodding to the fact that Christine is just born bad
[00:59:06] Versus the backstory of the book where it's a little more complicated than that That's what I read was that a they Wanted Christine to have like no Backstory in that sort of Sense more just kind of set up The trail of bodies of other people she's
[00:59:18] You know taken but be That They didn't want I guess this sort of like Ghostly specter of The previous owner because they thought It was too similar to American werewolf In London that was a specific Thing where they were trying to avoid the griffon
[00:59:34] Done character of like oh and this Past guy who didn't make it is haunting the kid I Don't mind the idea of the car just being bad I love it and I wanted to ask you guys this earlier like Do you care
[00:59:46] Like I know you haven't read the book but like in general In a movie where it's like if it just It just is that way Or it has a whole back story Like I don't need a whole fucking backstory on everything
[00:59:58] You know I know I think it's bad car Yeah it can depend Case by case but like By and large I kind of prefer If you just go look you're seeing the bad car Movie you've already bought into the
[01:00:10] Idea that this is a movie about a bad car Why do we need to explain it what are we going to gain From that or if it's as simple as Cujo where it's like well it got bit by
[01:00:18] A bat don't worry about it right you know that's it I just think yeah It's usually a waste of time And energy and I Do think there is more mythic power Like I got amped I Had never seen this movie before
[01:00:32] And I got amped at the realization of Oh shit they're starting with The factory line and she's already taken down People like I just I was so all in right And I was just like great great This is exactly how Christine the killer Car movie should start
[01:00:48] I hope they never circle back And dig in deeper and they don't And I was very very pleased Well one thing that I'm curious about Because George LeBae As portrayed in this movie Like he wears the back brace you made mention Of the weird back brace he's wearing
[01:01:04] In the book there's a reason for that Because he dies And then Arnie starts picking up his Maneurisms we have him in the movie where he Starts calling people shitters and all that And he starts You know almost being possessed not just by the car
[01:01:18] But by Roland LeBae himself as old creepy Dude And by the end of it Arnie is Wearing that back brace that he's Becoming a hero in the movie And he's like He's just more physically transforming into Into this you know old Crochety bastard that you could see him
[01:01:36] In some alternate universe You know if he had survived the story Some alternate universe of him like Selling Christine to the next kid Of being that guy I like the thing that Copeland said Of just like the idea Is that the car can identify Weak insecure
[01:01:54] People you know And then becomes this corrupting Force rather than Being about the legacy of One guy and I also Like that like once again Unexplained but you can extrapolate From the blossom thing and the level Of contempt he had for this car
[01:02:12] And trying to get his brother to quit it And watching his like daughter And his niece and his Sister in law both die At the hand of this thing that he at some Point got injured in the car you know Like himself that this is
[01:02:26] You know he fucking tried in vain And he made it out alive But the car still got Something out of him I just I don't know I prefer it not being About any one Person and That's a thing I like a lot about Having the prologue
[01:02:46] On the factory line you know Is just like even if we're mostly Going to be haunted by the most Recent previous owner We also recognize As David said you take two guys out In the very beginning of the movie And creatively creative kills I like both kills yes
[01:03:04] But in both cases you just Go like okay she's just like a homing Bacon you know right Yeah I think that the you're right I buy that and I also think that There is an element to the book Where the book it's really creepy
[01:03:18] Is with the ghost of Roland But you don't really need that For the movie so much But there is a moment towards The end that I really wish Was in the movie and it would Have still spoke to this where The car picks off Arnie's dad
[01:03:36] Like she essentially Tempts Arnie's dad Into the car And kills him and then During the whole finale Trying to run down Dennis and the girlfriend I'm sorry for blinking on Lee, Lee is her name During that whole section The car is trying to kill these guys
[01:03:58] In the movie it's Arnie Is there driving In the book Arnie is not there The matter of fact they set up This whole thing to kill the car While Arnie's out of town Because they're trying to save their friend But there is somebody in the car
[01:04:14] Being rotting corpse of his father Who is dead in that car And there becomes a certain moment And it reminds me a little bit of Anaconda But there comes a certain moment where during the fight It just regurgitates, it spits out The body of the father
[01:04:28] And it is the most Like this fucking Out of left field gross Thing and the way it affects the characters I was just like man I would love to see that maybe Brian Fuller Will do that part when he does the The adaptation
[01:04:44] Fuller's doing it for Blum now In theory Well no, it's Sony But I think Blum's producing it I think Blum is producing it Oh okay He'll do a Sony thing once in a while Is that actually happening? Because Brian Fuller is attached to things That never take off
[01:05:04] It was announced only in June So it's a pretty fresh thing So it's recent, it's recent And it's kind of our show And he kind of kept us up to date on that Last I heard He's working on it Or I think right now
[01:05:22] He's done with it and waiting To hear what happens next But I do know that He told us that He got the personal go ahead from King To do it That King had held off Signing off on any further Christine stuff Since Carpenter did that one That's interesting
[01:05:46] Do you think that's because King thinks This movie is good? Or why? I wonder why Because I know Stephen King can be a little changeable On his opinions On adaptations You know what, if I had to guess I'd say Stephen King's a big Hannibal fan That's probably true
[01:06:06] And knows Fuller Just from that And I don't know We had a big episode with Fuller Where he came on and Basically deconstructed Christine Through the lens of being A trans allegory And that Every time he's on the show He's coming at these things
[01:06:30] From an angle you would never expect And it's really fantastic To listen to how that guy's brain works I don't always understand What he's saying But it's fascinating To listen to You listen to that stuff And you understand why Brian Fuller gets Every job that he wants
[01:06:50] Whether or not it comes to fruition That guy could go into a room And sell anybody anything He could talk you into eating your own hand Like no problem His enthusiasm is infectious His point of view is always Very smart and educated
[01:07:06] And deeper than you'd imagine it being So if it does happen Then I think it could be something special I don't know Anything could happen We're in an industry Where all the surefire hits Can still die on the vine If the right or the wrong person
[01:07:24] Is at the wrong spot in the wrong time And I do think if he does it It will be more faithful to the source material So you're gonna get It's not just going to be a bad car You're gonna get the ghost dad Right I'm fine with that
[01:07:40] I'd love to see that two versions of this exist And we get that version of it And It makes sense if that's the version of the movies That's just not the version of Christine That Carpenter was interested in making I got this quote that our researcher dug up
[01:07:54] That I love from 2014, not from that long ago He asked Carpenter like does Stephen King Like the movie and he said I don't know Stephen King loves everything then he hates it He's a weird ass guy Just weird, started out as a teacher
[01:08:08] What the hell do you want I don't know what that last part was I loved Crotchety John Carpenter It's the best And I do think King often will turn on Adaptations of his work But I have no sense of what he thinks Of this movie
[01:08:24] He probably values that it's a John Carpenter movie That's obviously a major person The impression I've gotten Just talking to Fuller about it Is that he holds it pretty high regard But I Could be reading too much into You know, the anecdotes that he shared
[01:08:40] So I don't know It sounds like he's maybe flipped on and off with it I found some quote somewhere About where he was Carpenter was talking about That King was upset That they had changed a lot of the deaths And how they played out
[01:08:56] Obviously the prologue stuff is invented But then went to get into the main body of the film And Carpenter's Response was like, yeah One of the bullies in the book It's like he chases him down And he runs over him And then it just says in the book
[01:09:12] That he turned into a puddle of grease And I was like, that's not very cinematic I'll have him catch on fire And run over the guy He was thinking visually about stuff Which I think King can sometimes I feel be very Literal minded in his adaptations
[01:09:28] And he goes back and forth on whether Like What is a necessary reinvention For the medium versus when he's like Why didn't they just do it the way I wrote it I wrote it this way The shining being the prime example And Lisi's story being another recent example
[01:09:44] Because that is like, you know, straight up the book He wrote every episode of it And I like that And then the tone of it Just started wearing me down Where it was like so depressing And so just grim Watching Julianne Moore's character You know, just
[01:10:02] Get fucking dog piled by life In this, you know, Dane Dahon No one wants to see anyone get dog piled By Dane Dahon And you know, like And eventually the tone of that one Wore me down and I didn't finish it It was on a technical level
[01:10:18] Beautifully made And other than saying Maybe Clive Owen with a little one note In that role, like Julianne Moore was great in it Dahon, despite being He's just a very slapable looking guy You know He works for that character Yeah, it works for the character
[01:10:36] And he like brings a weird kind of Menace to it that's interesting that I hadn't seen him do before Where it's less reliant on like ticks And shit like that It's more Steady staring and like, you know Holding a gaze and Kind of physically imposing
[01:10:54] A little Keith Gordon creepiness Late Christine Keith Gordon creepiness But again the tone which would I would argue matches the tone of the book It just wasn't a thing I wanted to watch an hour Of every week And it's Going back to what you were saying Griffin
[01:11:10] About the necessities In the art of adaptation And making something cinematic It doesn't Just because it was great on the page Does not mean that it's going to be great Filmed Yeah, and I Carpenter is just a very cinematically minded person And I think for him Fuller doing
[01:11:32] A more drawn out version Of this digging into all the mythology Makes sense for what he does well As a writer And for Carpenter it makes so much more sense To get to the meat and potatoes version of this And just deal with it
[01:11:46] And I like the fact that He's turning it into Also a little bit more of a Like Meek shall inherit thing It speaks to like, here's this guy Who is so put upon at the beginning of his film Right? Like he's got this one friend But otherwise like
[01:12:04] People are fucking stabbing his yogurt You know His parents keep on giving him the business And he just sort of takes it all in the chin Like he's like kind of infuriatingly Refuses to stand up for himself And I say this as a deeply Beta person
[01:12:20] You're looking at this guy and going like come on Push back a little bit Have a little more respect Yeah, you want to just wedgy the shit out of him Right, right He's one of those guys who is just a target Because you're just like come on dude
[01:12:34] Like give me some reason Like a walking swirly basically Yeah, yeah for sure And the second he gets lured into Christine It's like he has such a power trip You know, it's not that he becomes cool It's that he becomes this very dark asshole Because he now has
[01:12:50] Sort of the confidence he last Black before and that immediately Sort of curdles and turns into Something that he points at other people Like even the scenes where it does not feel Like he's directly being controlled By Christine It is clear that he just kind of loves
[01:13:06] Now being able to be a creep You know, and not give a shit in everything You know, and I also like that In so many ways Christine really feels Like she is the main character of this thing Especially because it will jump between The three young leads
[01:13:22] Arnie and Dennis and Lee But you know for long stretches You might not see one of them And a lot of the transformation That Arnie goes through Happens like in between scenes You know You're not seeing a gradual Step by step You're not watching every scene
[01:13:42] He comes into his power a little bit more There'll just sort of be a jump And then everyone goes like, whoa Arnie what happened to you You know And as you also watch Stockwell Like mellow out more and Lee's concern Increase it's
[01:13:56] I like the way it all plays out Right, I mean at the end of the day This is a story about addiction This is, you know You could make the case very easily That Christine's drugs You know, drugs And crime and all that stuff
[01:14:14] And that's why the parents are so adamant That he stays away from it But the more they demand he stay away from it The more appealing it is for him to do And it also for him it represents freedom You know independence that he doesn't have
[01:14:28] And all that stuff is just so rich Stuff to Mine that it can like live in the subtext And I think that's why There are moments in the movie that Really do Like strike you The show, I keep mentioning but the show me moment
[01:14:44] Is like my favorite moment in the movie Because that is the moment That like he just fully embraces Being in control His hornyness for the car but being in control Of his life and you know A demand essentially instead of He's not passive
[01:15:02] You know he's actually stepping up And not blinking in the face Of this unbelievable thing Also that he is fully accepted That the car is magical at that point Like up until that scene people talk about The car like I don't know
[01:15:16] This is going to sound crazy but It's almost like the car has a mind of its own And then like here's a scene where he stands In front of a car and issues a command And the car does the thing And he's surprised at all You know?
[01:15:30] He's under it, I mean he's so in its way by that point Right, right but he also Right, right That scene is also just on a technical level It's like you know they're just playing footage In reverse But it still feels like such a f**king
[01:15:44] Magical special effect For real It's stunning to watch the car inflate It's just like It's still unreal imagery I really hope Brian When he attacks his version of it Doesn't forget because The one thing you don't want is For Christine to turn into Transformers
[01:16:04] Yes, well that's the thing If you overdo it The simplicity of it Is what makes it work so well here I mean there's a reason why when you like Watch the Lord of the Rings Like the most impressive sh** is how they
[01:16:18] Use force perspective and in camera tricks And stuff That works so much better than Hopping people in And all that stuff which they had to do in the Hobbits and stuff Even that like the amount of compositing That does exist in Lord of the Rings
[01:16:34] Is largely compositing actors Into models Yeah, real elements, yeah You know they were filming two real elements Separately and putting them together I mean this car just f**king looks incredible Which Carbon Harvest said was one of the things That got him on board
[01:16:50] This is the model, this looks great I can shoot the sh** out of this thing Like it looks so f**king cinematic And they bought 14 of them And just like buffed them all up And set them on fire Right, so it's like A
[01:17:04] The level of destruction they do to the car Is so severe I mean there's the scene where he's chasing the guy And the guy runs down the alleyway And the alleyway is too narrow And Christine starts crushing her Yeah and you're just like
[01:17:18] Seeing that actual sort of slow destruction Of the car over and over And over again And then able to see it magically come back To life and just you know The reflective quality of like A really nice vintage sports car From a director who knows how
[01:17:34] To light stuff really well You would have to be trying To make that car look bad Right, I just don't know If there are other things You can do with this material On a story level But I question if you lose
[01:17:50] A lot of power the second you put One iota of CGI Onto that car Or make it a Tesla Well, the scariest car of all The Cybertruck The weird Cybertruck They do run over people Without somebody driving Exactly Yes, perfect update Cars just looked very good
[01:18:14] I wish I knew more about vintage cars Which I truly do not because I see this car And I'm like this isn't a you know unbelievable Looking machine But also you see a lot of cars from the late 50s and you're like this thing looks Like did all
[01:18:28] The cars that everyone was driving around Looked unbelievable Someone explain this to me Yeah, I only know one thing about vintage cars Triples is best That's all I know, Triples is good, Triples is best It's just so good looking I know if you got in like one accident
[01:18:46] In this thing the car would just actually kill you I mean like you know not even a haunted Car but if your body just like Hit the dashboard It would basically just impale you Not non-safety glass everything the whole thing weighs Like 5,000 pounds
[01:19:00] You're gonna get stabbed by the hood Somehow, yeah I'm like very much not a car guy And I feel like when cars jump out to me In movies they usually are very much Movie cars and do not look like anything
[01:19:12] That would ever be driven in the real world Right, like concept cars Right, right, right, like goofball banana Concept, like I like the Homer You know to me I'm like oh that's an elegant classy Car, right? Oh yeah you like that one Yeah, just simple clean
[01:19:26] But like this is an example of me seeing A real world classic car in a movie And going like holy shit that's the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen And my virtual background is like A little like Hot Wheels style set Like I was like a little funny
[01:19:40] Keith Gordon and John Stockwell figures But I was like googling while watching this movie Like what is the best like Hot Wheels scale Die-cast Christine I could get Like I'm just like I want to fucking Christine On my desk What's out there?
[01:19:54] There's a good variety, I mean Hot Wheels Themselves had it at one point And there are two other companies that have had it They're larger scale ones but they also Throughout the years have produced them in the Like junked up for sale version
[01:20:06] The evil version while the windows are blacked out You can find them pretty cheap I think the one I want there's one that comes With a little diorama of the Protsky garage No Protsky but that feels Make me think of Robert
[01:20:18] I saw just like on Twitter just a couple Of weeks ago somebody had made Made One of like exactly what you're talking about It was like it's a cube And around the car was the garage And the car is sitting in the center of it
[01:20:32] But it was gorgeous This little fucking thing this guy had put together I was like God I would love to have that Just I'm not even a big Christine fan And I would love to have that It's just a good looking thing It's bewitching us guys
[01:20:46] This car wants us to run us over We have to be careful I say we do whatever Christine tells us to do It's gonna play an ironic song It's gonna get us The proto bumblebee yeah Yeah no I'm wearing a back brace right now So
[01:21:02] I'm well on my way The Robert's Blossom scene Just like a great version of The Friday the 13th Like Guy at the Gas Station Crazy Ralph Right exactly crazy Ralph I also I love that the car looks So bad It's so bad
[01:21:22] Right it's so bad because you expect that Of course the kids I'm watching them for the first time I'm like how is he gonna fall in love with this Evil car because the car looks so nice Right then you have this massive chime jump
[01:21:32] I'm like oh the eerie thing is that The car is still gonna be in pristine condition No it looks worse than any car has ever looked And it's overpriced Like it's not even like oh he wins the car He doesn't want it
[01:21:44] But it is that siren song thing of Stop the car back up I need to go see this thing And everyone's around him is like What are you talking about What are you doing yeah Right but it's preying on the vulnerability
[01:21:56] Of this guy knowing that he could be corrupted Yeah I also This is this movie is right I mean happy days is still kind of on top Right like yes Are we still talking like are we Still into happy days in 83 or is it kind of
[01:22:10] Uncool at this point it's jump the Shark it's still on the air but It has officially jumped the shark I don't Know just like this because this movie is kind of I know it's not set in the 50s but It's sort of got that sort of interesting
[01:22:22] Repudiation of the whole kind of You know hyper masculine greaser Thing like It's kind of a nasty you know Side of that yeah Bullies are very much greaser Inspired even in a modern day They're like crude and like awful Like they're just like nasty
[01:22:40] They poop on the car And almost to the person Like 35 years old yes Yes yes and also I'm like wait are we In high school here or are we in Like you know industrial college Like what is this like especially the guy
[01:22:54] Like buddy reperton is just like that They pulled that guy out of a gold Gym you know and William Ostrander It is incredible how old he looks I mean the Movie takes this shift in the Last hour where it becomes Like Harry Dean Stanton is the fourth
[01:23:12] Lead and now You know you got this American psycho Style like cat and mouse You know on the trail he's convinced that Keith Gordon's wrong but I do Have the angle of like Keith Gordon is not There for most of us right
[01:23:28] Like he knows the car is evil and he knows That the car has corrupted him but when Harry Dean Stanton is asking about these things He's not covering up for specific Incidents because even though He hates these fucking guys and at this Point he's purely happy that they're
[01:23:42] Dead he also like doesn't know That this happened necessarily Right he is a real alibi the car Is actually doing the murder Right and there's that When Harry Dean Stanton is sniffing around It's not like Harry Dean Stanton is like
[01:23:56] You know I just got a hunch that this car Is unilaterally committing crime But I love that turn because When he's complaining about the guys fucking With him and I think it's when he's yelling At his parents about the car being destroyed Before the show me scene
[01:24:10] And he's like crying about The fact that they shit on the hood Right? Like it's just like The indignity of these people Right the final straw Right they have no humanity this is not something You brush off right and then Like he's gotten his revenge the car
[01:24:26] Has gotten its revenge he's now acting More low-key about everything he's fucking Started big dogging his parents like He doesn't give a shit anymore Harry Dean Stanton comes sniffing around And he's like you know it's interesting Your girlfriend came to me said You were really upset about
[01:24:42] These guys attacking your car You know you're really proud Of your production job you did There's one in a million job where you're able To replace every part without any Color differentiation And like under a week It's weird people usually Report these kinds of things to the police
[01:25:00] And show photos and he's like I don't know it wasn't a big deal I can Forgive those guys and there's just that Really cutting line delivery where Harry Dean Stanton looks in and goes like They defecated on the hood of your car Like the guys gotten over it
[01:25:14] And Harry Dean Stanton is trying to remind him Like they really disrespected you There was poo poo on your hood A guy named Mucci did doodoo's On your car This is not something a man forgives I really love this is what This is the year before repo man
[01:25:34] I love Harry Dean Stanton just playing a pretty normal guy Like when he shows up in a movie And you're like oh what's sinister Sort of like odd or kind of quirky Thing is about to happen it's like
[01:25:44] He's kind of just a detective on the case in this one At the end he's just kind of like Good job getting rid of the car guy That thing was bad Speaking of we should probably Like talk about the button on this Movie as well
[01:25:58] That whole is the car still alive Even though it's crushed into a block Thing The whole final standoff is great Between Christine and the forklift Yes You do get to a point I think which is Necessary for movies like this Building an actual sense of dread of
[01:26:16] How could you possibly stop this thing Is there any way to destroy it Right And the forklift is just like Okay I guess the approach is relentlessness Just attack it from every Angle nonstop until it stops moving Don't let it recharge Don't give it room to re-inflate
[01:26:34] And then you have the hard cut to the block Now it's in the perfect Compact Wally trash block Right And then they give that great fake Out where the oldies start playing And you're like oh my god the guy walks by With a boombox or whatever
[01:26:50] That is so cheesy but I I gotta admit I fucking love it I mean is I hate rock and roll the last Proper line of dialogue in the movie I think so and then there's the It like holds on the thing And then like one of the little
[01:27:04] Metal pieces like plings out right The final shot of the movie Yes Christine's coming back baby Not to spoil but In the book Christine is sort of maybe Still alive right like he is About a car accident and he's like could that be Christine right yeah
[01:27:26] The people that survived this story kind of Scatter and you know I think it's like the one Dude Yeah I think it is I think that the Christine car Itself in the book Is like dead but like Whatever evil spirit is now Maybe going into other cars
[01:27:46] Transferred right right I thought the car that like blows through the wall Of the fucking drive in and takes out the guy I thought that like matched the description Of Christine but I could be Interesting that wasn't my impression But that doesn't mean that uh
[01:28:00] That I read it in any great detail And retain that so you might be right I just read here because I was digging into this That when they do the Show me sequence That was a car they had partially destroyed And then Replace most of the metal
[01:28:16] Shell with a softer plastic And then they had hydraulic pumps Inside sucking it in So that It was able to sort of compress and Retract more cleanly than metal Obviously which would like without leaving like Dense right shatter and everything Obviously played backwards 15% of the budget
[01:28:36] Was just the cars Yeah no shit that is funny though They really shelled out on these cars My god it's the star that's their Tom Cruise Yeah you gotta get that right This and Blues Brothers 2000 Have the biggest you know car budget That is what a waste
[01:28:54] No shit What a waste in general Just all around for everything They only Only two cars remained intact at the end of the movie Which Columbia Requested so that they could Use them for promotional stuff Send them around and things like that And then immediately
[01:29:16] Immediately destroyed them while transporting them By crashing them I was looking for stuff on IMDB Right and I searched for Christine And I mostly get results of actresses Christine is their first name Of course of course a weirdly un-googlable movie Yes it's a problem Christine Taylor messing up
[01:29:36] Search optimization But One of the top results is Christine Movie Car Which has its own credit on IMDB As an actress No shit Born October 31st 1957 so I went oh this is kind of cool Someone took the car in the movie And gave it a performer page No
[01:30:00] Christine Movie Car has zero credits This is not the car that was in the movie This is a fan built car That someone put on IMDB Listed as an actress Bill Gibson's Christine Movie Car Is the most expansive, immersive Christine experience traveling today
[01:30:16] Now with over a decade of thrilling fans Under her wheels Yeah we need to get the Christine car And the Green Goblin truck for maximum overdrive Together I think We need to bring him Get him on the show, interview the cars It's just lots of brooms
[01:30:32] There's events, they'll drive it to you maybe Do you think you can like book Like it's like a children's birthday party Like you can book the movie with the car But I just want to circle back to a key point This car is not an actor
[01:30:44] This car has never been in a movie The car in Christine is an actor She gives a very good performance in the movie Technically it's 14 actors But all of them are good This car has never been in anything This car just goes to fucking birthday parties
[01:30:58] You go fucking around on IMDB Son, and you're gonna find all kinds of weird shit People have done Look at the trivia section Literally any movie on IMDB And you will see like the most useless Fucking knowledge you've ever seen Like just plastered
[01:31:13] 80,000 people found it helpful or some shit I am looking At the slideshows on the Christine The movie car website And here she is at the Playboy mansion My favorite thing though is The pictures say like Stu, Bill and me Dot JPG Me being the car
[01:31:33] So the car is like As if the car has uploaded these photos herself Like from her digital camera Like when somebody sets up an account For their dog on Twitter Yes exactly I just love going to Colorado this weekend Let me ask you this
[01:31:49] When I was first thinking about You know this Traveling living car Who is an actor that was not actually in Christine I'm thinking Like Thrilling fans, like what is it doing It's just sitting there surely in a showroom I don't think people get to drive it
[01:32:07] I can't imagine they do unless they pay extra But if you had the opportunity Like if you knew within a 20 minute drive Or something You could go like take a picture with a 58 Plymouth You know I think I might do that
[01:32:19] I'd like to see one though I've never seen one in person So I don't know if I would be thrilled By it per se but I would I would spend a couple hours doing that I think I would go to a movie car show
[01:32:29] I think if there was specifically a car show That was like here are like 10 Fan made recreations They don't even have to be the original screen used Right but if it was like here's the Ecto1 And the V8 Interceptor and Christine And I get to see all of
[01:32:43] I would make the trip for several I also want to quickly refute something you said Scott That uh I need to be trivious filled with useless information That no one finds interesting If not for I need to be I would not have known that
[01:32:55] Quote Keith Gordon was nervous About kissing Alexandra Paul So he asked her to practice first And 81 out of 86 People find that interesting That's the oldest trick in the book Keith Jesus Christ We've all heard about that one Very nervous just as an actor
[01:33:13] Is there no follow up there? Did she say yes? No further information I don't know I just know that he asked Weirdly Robert Proskey had tried the same thing With her But he said Keith Keith's really worried about kissing you But you know
[01:33:31] He said I could give it a shot I want to make sure you're ready He told me to report back For my boy Keith We're slandering Robert Proskey here Absolutely That was the one time he didn't have lemon face On that set
[01:33:47] The only other interesting thing here on the I need to be trivia Is that The movie was not Violent enough to get an R But because there was no PG-13 at this time They were very worried about being caught In PG territory
[01:34:01] Because especially with a premise as potentially goofy as Kid with an evil car They thought it would Get written off so they put Bucks in there just to get the R rating Yeah because it's not a gory movie at all Really It's not, yeah The scares are not
[01:34:19] Too intense in Christine No, it's really more just fun It's unnerving and it's fun Yeah, yeah But like it's walking that goofy line Especially with the radio you know The radio gag is always going I mean Ebert put it perfectly His review he gave it 3 out of 4 stars
[01:34:37] And his review was by the end of the movie Christine has developed such a formidable personality That we are actually taking sides During its duel with a bulldozer This is the kind of movie where you Walk out with a silly grin
[01:34:49] Get in your car and lay rubber halfway down The Eisenhower Yeah I kind of agree with that You're kind of on Christine's side She's just so beautiful You know so you're just And also like I guess so many of the bad guys She's taken out are such
[01:35:05] Dickheads that you're right There's some collateral damage of course And we have to forgive Christine for that But we can because she's pretty And also because you know Yeah he's killing all those other The lead choking on a hamburger scene is really good Just to go backwards
[01:35:21] But I just think that's The movie the moment where I think the movie Is playing with the most sort of like interesting Super natural vibes Because it's not the violence Inflicted by the car It's the level of control of like Her body Right it's locking him out
[01:35:39] It's turning the lights on Blaring the music just for spite And then somehow it's able to make her choke It is such a great Moment For her as a character Christine as a character Like so much of the success of this movie
[01:35:55] And you know and I'm still saying this Is somebody who thinks it's pretty good You know not all-timer Is the personality that carpenter Is able to give that car You feel the vengefulness The vindictiveness the jealousy Of an inanimate object Which is you know kind of
[01:36:13] Bad shit to hear me actually say that And hear those words coming out of my mouth Watching the movie there were multiple moments Where I could feel myself Projecting facial expressions Onto Christine Like Christine looks angry And it's like I'm adding
[01:36:29] Like I'm fucking Pixar car eyes to it or whatever But it is just A he knows how to Shoot it and B that he's developed the story beats Of it enough that you actually do Start sensing intent Yeah well and so like you said
[01:36:41] It really is I think the most of it Is in how carpenter shoots it It's the angles he's picking It's the editing choices he's making In those moments where in the Lee choking scene it becomes frantic It becomes a fight scene Right he starts shit with the guy
[01:36:57] Like on her like yeah Right so like he's possessed The car is evil This guy's a good Samaritan Lee has somehow lost control Of her autonomy like there's so many things going on at once And it's all underscored by Classic rock music
[01:37:13] I mean that's another thing this movie has in its favor Is just I will always find bad to the bone Funny Yeah impossible to take that song serious But this is the exact correct use Of it you know Absolutely and Isn't that what they kind of like sold
[01:37:29] A carpenter on The whole idea with was with that song Because that song is Um Well let's see Yeah but that song is New right like at the time Right yeah that's like And here wait there's let me I think we found
[01:37:47] It I think it's in the um dossier Their pitch to carpenter was we have the rights To bad for the bone Bill Phillips basically Was like like I just found this Song and he sang it he did the Bad and they were like
[01:38:01] Yeah that sounds good and they bought the song That was what it is he sang The saying that this sort of The chorus to them and they were like perfect Yeah wow that's amazing Yeah um but then but Yeah the carpenter score is really good though
[01:38:15] I like the carpenter score I mean Unsurprited with with with uh Alan Howard obviously but also I mean it's Fistled in between two movies that he famously Didn't score Yeah with with really Different you know with of course The star man and uh The thing you know
[01:38:33] Have these wonderful scores but they're Well the thing is I guess a little more Carpentry it's more moody but uh But the star man score is so expansive which I love Yeah that's definitely more more Coni doing yeah doing carpenter But it's more it's more
[01:38:47] orchestral and then the star man Score is a lot more emotional than he usually goes Right Let's talk box office This movie when did this movie come out Griffin This movie came out do you know November December Ninth 1983 Christmas movie of course
[01:39:05] Of course yeah that's the thing it's not exactly Where I'd be but I would either put this in the summer You know in Halloween like the summer I could almost it's a summer movie I think yeah cause exactly It's got the back to school thing going on
[01:39:17] You know it's not actually that dark A movie in like you know Aesthetically but whatever they put They chunked it out in Christmas against Two big movies so it's opening number Four uh to three Million dollars and it's making How much total it's making twenty one Domestic like
[01:39:35] Ironically kind of made the things Final right like what did the thing End up with you know as much as Like the thing was a huge bomb for him and this Was kind of a recovery like another thing Like 13 I guess that was pretty bad
[01:39:47] Okay do you have it in front of you what it opened Against oh yeah we're About to play the box office game my friends Alright so Number one of the box office griff Is okay and this is one of those
[01:39:59] Things where I always have to look this movie up because I don't remember it's it's in it's the fourth In a series Of popular films Okay but the fact that you have to look up That it's fourth tells me No numbers The fourth this is the movie
[01:40:15] That has the second most Famous catchphrase Of this character and everyone Always remembers that it's like thinks That it's in the first movie but it's actually in the fourth It's so it's dirty Harry it's right and this Is the movie that's directed by Clint Eastwood
[01:40:29] But what's it called the enforcer I always get this wrong Is it Magnum force exactly that's why I always like this one nope that's the second one You now name the third and second okay And then Deadpool's the last one It's not the Deadpool so now you are
[01:40:43] You are out of Sudden impact It's sudden impact This is the movie where he says go ahead make my day Yeah It's the one Clint made I've never seen Sudden impact it's actually sort of on my watch list
[01:40:57] What do you guys do you guys have dirty Harry takes You guys care about dirty Harry I've seen the first one and I And like a little chunk Of the Deadpool but Yeah that's about the extent Of my knowledge on that I watch the later ones a lot
[01:41:13] As a kid because they were always on HBO right So I probably have seen the fourth one The Deadpool is the one with like Sandra Locke in it right like there's I know this is the one with Okay then I've seen this one this one the most
[01:41:27] Yeah and there's like a shoot out like On a boardwalk or like an amusement Park boardwalk or something Yes like there's a carousel scene I think a big carousel set piece Yeah so now is this one then that I Must have watched over and over again
[01:41:41] I really like the first one because of the Just we're gonna take the zodiac You know or whatever And make that the bad guy They're all pretty good yeah it's like I do remember Really liking that yeah there's like Good stupid movies
[01:41:55] It is wild that the first ones The zodiac movie and they were like huh what if This is a franchise I mean I think the first one was Not even like the kind we think it Was so it was a huge hit obviously
[01:42:07] Right it's like you know it made 36 million it's not like one of these things Where it demands four seasons Sure it wasn't rocky right But I think it became just such this cultural Touchpoint you know I mean that the First one is 71 and this is what 83
[01:42:21] So I guess just once in a while Clint would be Like let's do another one I think that's the other Thing I think Clint was obviously such a big Star and the western was going Increasingly out of fashion and he was Like I should figure out another thing
[01:42:33] Like I should stick up and put down whenever I want Another tough ass character with a gun What can I do cop right Right just stick with it why not Make them all the same guy yeah Now number two the box office Is a seismic movie
[01:42:47] Very big deal movie I think it's sort of Greeded with some kind of like With some critical gears But it's a big hit It's a major star Is it footloose No footloose is the same year Starman right okay right it's a crime Movie
[01:43:07] It's sort of the moment this Star is switching from Acclaimed brilliant Theater guy who's like The master of 70s acting to The guy he The more over the top actor that he becomes This is kind of the hinge point This is a Pacino movie
[01:43:25] It's an Al Pacino movie of course It's a big one Oh oh oh it is The movie entitled Scarface another Christmas classic I'm right Right like that's kind of That's the moment where he's Unlocked the new thing right yeah That you see like even like
[01:43:43] Bobby dearfield like those movies He made before this that weren't hits like he's still doing He's doing the brooding internal kind of You know and then Scarface He's just yeah he never Quite it was it's Pringles He couldn't stop he popped
[01:43:57] Turns into walking right this becomes his thing Yeah Scarface grift do you have a start Do you care about Scarface feel like we never Talks Scarface yeah I Kind of I mean it's like It's one of those movies where I Feel like people are either evangelical
[01:44:13] About it or they're like that movie is garbage Everyone is insane for liking it And I kind of respect both Opinions It's kind of undeniable when You watch it you know it's Hard to right now have a little fun with it Absolutely but there is that
[01:44:29] Thing of just like I've seen to Palma movies and I've seen Pacino movies And I know what these guys can do Right do you guys Like Scarface I think My my big issue with Scarface is that I tend to associate Scarface with People like dudes who had
[01:44:45] Scarface posters in the It's a Lebowski issue It's a fight club issue Sains issue well that's the biggest Issue it is it is that's all fair Right and so we need some distance From that like I've come back Around as some of those movies not the
[01:45:01] I think I've only seen Scarface Like twice I saw it as a teenager And then a few years ago I revisited it and it's Like I'm kind of like that's That's fine I can't imagine being fanatical About that movie I think It's a good movie but I'm also
[01:45:15] Imagining now Like an Italian actor being Like I'm Cupid can you tell Like you know if that happened today How furious Everyone would get Definitely not my favorite flavor of De Palma like I blow out Is like one of my all time favorite movies
[01:45:33] And well that's my favorite and you know Phantom of the Paradise and And Carrie and Untouchables You know that is that is my De Palma Like I think Scarface I'm glad people love it but it's not mine Quadagnino is still Supposed to do that right in theory
[01:45:49] He is but he was addicted to Announcing that he was going to remake Iconic movies for a while He was always attaching himself To these remakes of movies We were like Luca Wasn't the Scarface we didn't one of the Coens write the Scarface
[01:46:05] Both of them did it was maybe one of the last Scripts that both of them worked on yeah I mean that alone that alone sells a ticket To me and I think it's supposed to be Diego Luna I He was supposed to do it with Anton Fiqua
[01:46:17] I don't know if he's still on board but there were They were competing Scarface projects There was ones that were like Supposed to be an updated version Of the De Palma like cheese fest one And then there were other ones that were supposed to be
[01:46:29] Like more of an adaptation of the old The Paul Mooney gangster Howard Hawks movie right yeah Right and then I also think they're At times it seemed like their approach has been Like just do another one It's like it's Star is born Just what is the new Scarface
[01:46:45] That just needs to have a scar in a space That you can do what you want Anything else from the two previous movies As long as there's a mountain of cocaine Somewhere we're gonna be happy Number three griff okay number three Is the best picture winner for 1983
[01:46:59] It's a film we've covered on this podcast It's a huge uh terms of endearment It's terms of endearment right the Number two movie at the box office for that Year behind return of the Jedi Jedi that's correct I just I will Always call out that kind
[01:47:13] Of fact that like it used to be The best picture winner Was the highest grossing film of the year And if it wasn't it was because there was A Star Wars and the best picture winner Was still number two It's the only other movie in 83
[01:47:27] To crack a hundo yeah well Return of Jedi is like makes 250 million Dollars over terms of endearment makes 108 um Number four is Christine Opening to three million dollars On a thousand screens and number Five is a musical Um I feel like we're gonna
[01:47:45] Cover it on this podcast one day It's a director Barbra Streisand's Yentl I know you want to cover Yentl You can't slip that one by me She's an easy Three movie we probably might have To do her Star is Born I guess cause that's
[01:48:01] You know there's a couple movies with her Where she didn't direct them but you kind of Have to toss them in I feel like But I feel like yes didn't you also Bring up Prince of Tides the other day In a very similar way where you were like
[01:48:13] Prince of Tides which we will of course someday cover On this podcast we gotta We gotta do Streisand why not Yeah that's what the people demand Let's uh we could do Streisand And as you said it's like it's only
[01:48:25] Really three movies but we could also do a bonus Episode on her basement mall Can you explain that That's the weirdest shit ever It's one of the greatest blank checks in history Do you not know this No tell me tell me I don't know what you're talking about
[01:48:39] Her huge uh uh mansion Compound that she lives in with James Brolin She's like I love shopping more than Anything but I'm so famous I can't go to normal people stores anymore More so her entire basement Is like a shopping mall With stores and
[01:48:55] Employees who work at cash Registers and she walks into like Her fake banana republic And looks at the stack of seven Sweaters and goes like Do you have one in small And they're like we'll check in the back It's role play She's already bought all the inventory
[01:49:13] They buy things in the wrong size So that she has to look for the right I swear to you maybe someone else wants To go maybe like what if I wanted To go she'd be like oh maybe they have Your size I don't know when I
[01:49:25] I forget where I read about that But I got the distinct impression that Only Bar is allowed to shop You don't think I could knock on the door And be like hey I heard you have a banana Republic is there a sale going on this
[01:49:37] Again? She comes in And finds you sitting in her rain forest Cafe and is like what the fuck That was the there was the Off-Broadway play bought Buyer and seller which was about An employee in Barbra Streisand Seller waiting all day for her to come
[01:49:53] In and buy something I don't think anyone Else goes in there I get it That's funny Imagine clocking In every morning and thinking I might just Be here for nine hours Yeah it's a fascinating Idea Yeah like We would have to go we'd have to try
[01:50:07] And go we'd have to go That'd be The best fucking job ever you kidding Me you'd just be sitting there Fucking watching TV and shit all day And then there'd be like a motion sensor Activated or the ding of an elevator Or something and then suddenly you
[01:50:21] But like what if what what if like one Of the stores though is like everyone has You know I'm sure we all do has like a Problem store where every time you go in There's something that goes horribly wrong
[01:50:31] But you still have to go in there from time to time Absolutely Yeah so maybe Streisand has the equivalent of that So imagine being the employee at that Store where it's like not only May you be sitting around all day but if
[01:50:43] You know Barbara is coming in she's looking For something to get mad about because That's her imaginary problems That's That's the store where she carins out Yes Right exactly to the manager She's the worst customer What do you mean there you're at a
[01:50:57] Like and they're like you told us To order all mediums and she's like Why do you mean you're at a small like play along You can't break the fourth wall You're not allowed I'm trying to find Pictures of this but it is like a main street
[01:51:09] It's like a fake cobble street That then has different store fronts That sell different items So it's like an outlet mall Yes It's like one main hallway In a like a shopping mall that you would do To if you had You know, stri sand level I would absolutely
[01:51:29] Do this I would do this are you kidding me I would do well my question is like is there Something like would you like rebuild Mars 2112 in your hole you know like Is there some like closed theme Restaurant or store That you would resurrect like is there
[01:51:43] Something like that that's a good idea Mars like the rainforest cafe Maybe think of it might be It would be cool to have a sun coast That would be a whole thing To poke around something that doesn't exist anymore Yeah, right Like my version of this would probably
[01:51:59] Be a virgin mega store here That'd be neat I would like like a Sega world maybe I don't think there are any Sega worlds anymore But I used to go to Sega world all the time You know what I would love love to Imagine exists and
[01:52:13] Barbra Streisand's little mall is A shoe store with Al Bundy As the shoe salesman Like just married that's what Fucking Ed O'Neill just does now When he's not Ed O'Neill just does like one shift a week Yeah, he comes in and shares her as Al Bundy
[01:52:28] Yeah, as Al Bundy and I mean Yeah, that's like the ultimate rich guy thing Is I'm gonna hire somebody To play their fucking role all the time I posted the link in the chat but there's Like a bizarre magazine Slide show of this
[01:52:43] And one of them is like One store has a gift wrapping table So she can make employees Wrap gifts that she just bought From her own inventory Of her own store It's so fucking bizarre It's so bizarre as well that this is in
[01:53:00] Harper's Bazaar and is being presented as like You know Barbra Streisand's fashionable life And not like Barbra Streisand's insanity further confirmed By her insane fake store Right, Barbra Streisand had a disassociated episode And built them all Do you think the employees are hourly Do you think they're salary
[01:53:19] I don't know and I wonder this constantly I would pay money to have just a Like just sitting to have a beer with someone That works at Barbra's mall I don't know how much it was based on reality Because I think a lot of this is like
[01:53:35] Secretive, right? To some degree Like even her doing this bizarre photo shoot Was kind of a big deal Ten years ago because she had sort of like Kept it a little bit low key for a while But that play Absolutely I wouldn't tell anybody about this shit No
[01:53:52] I think that play is about like He's like a struggling actor who worked at Disneyland And when he gets fired he picks up the job here Like it's like that kind of circuit of like She wants to hire performers Because they have to play their role You know
[01:54:06] I like how this photo thing is all Like this sub, not subtext But like the whole thing's built around like Oh it's not real stores This is just how I display my stuff But it's stores and there's also I might add a nightmare photo
[01:54:20] Of her cradling a porcelain doll Yes, yes, true nightmare shit Outside Bee's doll shop? Where do you think the line of weirdness begins Because for me the demarcation line is The employees If she just had like a play mall to set up
[01:54:35] Like set up that she could walk around in And pull shit off shelves That's one level of psychosis But like to actually go to the effort Of hiring human beings and having them work there That's where it crosses into like You need to talk to somebody about this
[01:54:50] And it's like Michael Jackson, you know Neverland Ranch Obviously there's a bunch of Stuff about Neverland Ranch that We don't want to talk about But like just even on the surface Even if it was all good clean fun He just decided I'm going to build an amusement park
[01:55:05] You know in my thing and have You know fucking This is different because even right Even though it was for salacious ends Part of it was like I want other people To be able to ride Yes exactly he was bringing like
[01:55:18] Scores of children through there and their parents And who fucking knows who else But this is just Barbara It's just it's I want to be able To shop without anyone recognizing me It's like right This is all evidence of why We should do Barbara Streisand on the podcast
[01:55:34] So it's gotta happen sometime Yeah I guess so And speaking of Michael Jackson He would just shut stores down And go in and shop by himself And she just wouldn't do that And point at things That was his thing right he would just be like
[01:55:48] That that that right and then Yeah people are just running around Backing everything The last photo I posted in the chat is The underground main street mall Made over for Christmas Hey look at festive Now do you think Do you think that she organizes this
[01:56:07] Or it's someone's job to To redecorate everything for Christmas To surprise her Here's my question Maybe it's just happening all by itself And no one knows what's going on right It's got a life of its own We got a night at the museum situation Going on here
[01:56:25] I think it's somewhere up the middle Gryff I think it's like She has someone who's job Is to redecorate them all For Christmas every year But she doesn't know what it will look like So that part is the surprise That she knows it's coming
[01:56:40] There is that nice feeling of like New York City in November Oh the Christmas decorations have gone up Like it just happens overnight one day And you're a little surprised by it You know I'm sure she wants to replicate That feeling of being like Already Pods of cast
[01:56:58] Mini series coming 2022 I guess Yeah it's gonna happen Just go store by store Y'all need to Drank into that mall and record an episode In there before she finds out That would be sick To wrap up we would all get arrested Some of the other things
[01:57:18] By her own fake police She has a mall police And we would be dragged in front of Driesand Court You know is it going to Driesand prison Does she have Barbara Bucks you think Instead of like using regular currency Probably Gutenberg is playing Mahoney
[01:57:36] And he's the security guard in the mall A Christmas story You got the big chill You got the James Bond knockoff Never seen ever again You got all the right moves with Tom Cruise The other one is The Smurfs and the Magic Flute Which is apparently
[01:57:54] Some sort of Belgian Smurf movie That came out in The states like many years after That had premiered in Europe And though the Smurfs play a major part They do not appear until 35 minutes Into the film and the film is 74 minutes Long. Wow. Sounds pretty bad
[01:58:14] That's the jaws of Smurfs movies Because okay because this This movie was made by Payo who is the creator of the Smurfs And then in the 80s Hannah Barbera get the rights to the Smurfs And make the American cartoon And this has no association with that cartoon
[01:58:30] But was released then In theaters to capitalize on The cartoon show that kids knew Weird. Is that just That's the only reason I mentioned it It just seemed like a weird little Made a few million bucks. They did that a lot in the 80s
[01:58:44] By the way, I know it's an old another Topic but like I remember they put like trick children Well yeah well they put like the He-Man they like put two He-Man episodes together And release those. Secret of the sword baby Yeah I remember that
[01:58:56] Very vividly as a big He-Man kid This is bizarre though Hey me too This is bizarre because it's not It's like if you went to the theater It was different than the thing you were watching Gargamel's not in this Smurfet's not in this No gargamel
[01:59:14] That was an American creation Yeah so it was Smurfet right I know huge problem Anyway we're done. Christine We did a great job guys I think we talked more about Barbara Streisand's mall By the end of it But you know that's how frankly it's more fascinating than Christine
[01:59:30] And scarier That picture of her with the porcelain doll is scarier Than anything John Carpenter's ever done And not saying something Absolutely Guys King cast obviously people should listen to We agree You've certainly done a good job of selling the fuller episodes Trying to queue up now
[01:59:50] I want to dig deep into all The things he was teasing about his Christine And I hear some indications Of kind of what drives him About the story And so what I think that His ankle and I was very clearly He wanted to give us
[02:00:06] A queer reading of Christine I don't know if that's necessarily Going to be what the movie is But it just kind of shows What's appealing to him on a character level And on like a subtext level with that With that story
[02:00:20] So I think you'll have a really good understanding Of the material listening to that episode That sounds good Anything else you guys want to plug Not really just our show We've got When is this airing This is dropping October 16 October No September 19 Oh this is recent
[02:00:44] More this is closer September 19 Okay well right after this airs We've got some amazing Guests lined up between now and the end of the year And of course we've got the Patreon It's pagerown.com Backslash the Kingcast And We just got some surprises up our sleeves
[02:01:02] It's a fun show And if you're even remotely a Stephen King fan I would recommend it New episodes drop every Wednesday And you can find us on putter at Kingcast 19 Awesome thank you guys so much for coming on Extending your knowledge
[02:01:16] No we need to get you guys on for something I love Stephen King I'm just a dork I'm just a I'm no expert but I love the guy Griffin where are you at and you're Stephen Have you read a lot of King I have not I don't think
[02:01:30] I've read a single King I've seen a good number of the movies But now that I may be like the idea of reading something Specifically to come on The show using that as an example That would be fun to do Yeah let's talk
[02:01:44] Well thank you so much for having us Hey thank you so much for coming on And thank you all For listening And please remember Listening Please remember to rate, review and Subscribe Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media
[02:02:02] Thank you to Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song And people should check out their new album Extremely loud and incredibly On line You can find it wherever music's found Apple Music Band Camp Spotify What have you? Thank you too
[02:02:18] Joe Bonaparte Browns for our Artwork JJ Birch, Nicolareano for our Research 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 Where we are Trekking into The tombs of the mummy That's right
[02:02:40] We're getting wrapped up in the mummy As I would call it It's mummy in the bank Thank you for that Joe Keohan remake several times over the next couple months Yep I will not quit it And tune in next week For our episode On Starman
[02:03:00] With returning guest Katie Rich That's right And as always My fundamental question is Does Barbara Streisand's mall have a food court? It's just a sparo And do they give out samples?