[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 Welcome to the podcast Oh sure
[00:00:25] Like it's not out of context, but if you've watched this movie that has to be the choice, right? Yeah, sure Last line is the first line Yeah, well yes, and thank you This podcast is a direct sequel to Escape from L.A. It's the finally
[00:00:42] The conclusion to the Snake Plisken trilogy It's Escape from New York, Escape from L.A. and Blank Check's episode on Escape from L.A. What if Carpenter, now, basically semi-retired was like I'm coming out of retirement, Kurt's with me, we're doing an Escape from New York
[00:01:00] The third in the trilogy, this time Snake has a podcast, that's the angle That's what we're doing now I'd play that at about like 49% Yeah, basically I mean in a full circle trilogy way Having two guys from L.A. Two guys from New York Ooh
[00:01:21] And like the Hangover part three when they go back to Vegas Yes Oh, right That spirit That famous scene I told myself I'd never come back here again Is that what they do in the Hangover part three? They must
[00:01:34] I've never seen the Hangover part three, yeah, they gotta go David I can't believe I still haven't gotten you to watch the Hangover part three Like much of America, I tapped out after two I spent like all nine years of our friendship trying to convince you like
[00:01:49] It's not good but it's the only one of the three I like I when the day I could buy it streaming online I did because I broke my heart that I missed it But it came out in theaters because what I was reading in the reviews
[00:02:06] I had to get my eyes on it It's fascinating Why, what am I missing? It is fascinating and if you like the late 80s, early 90s Like action comedy thrillers I do I just want to revisit it maybe from nine years ago Yeah, also
[00:02:26] But if you like the Hangover or the Hangover part two I strongly encourage you to avoid watching it Because it's the way you described it It's pretty mad at the existence of these movies Right Like it's just sort of furious And the audience for liking that Right
[00:02:44] It's like you fucking pigs, you pieces of shit You wanted a third one of these fucking suck on my ass It's a fascinating self-loathing movie And look this is, I feel like today we're talking about a sequel That people have had a hard time trying to figure out
[00:03:01] In various ways Right, I think a giant question with this movie is Has been for years Did Carpenter just totally lose the thread Or is this movie functioning as a form of self-parody Right I don't think those are the only two ways it could be interpreted
[00:03:17] But I feel like that's often the question here Yeah, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive either I agree But I feel like the way I've always heard people talk about this movie is either It fucking sucks It's a mess It's like a disgrace to the original
[00:03:32] He totally lost it Or it's like a very kind of savvy self-aware Sort of kind of sequel Not a sequel about sequelizing But it's almost like a gremlins 2 A quieter gremlins 2 I do too Look, I'd never seen this movie before in fall I like it
[00:03:53] I don't know if it benefits from me hearing people shit on it For fucking 25 years Where my expectations were just in the absolute basement I liked it too I think this movie is fun That's the word I'm gonna use This movie's good This movie is good
[00:04:12] It has Snake Plisken in it I mean, what the fuck else do you want? Right on, right on You gotta give it huge points for that You have to say it in the voice I just said it They were like, I like it
[00:04:23] Yeah, I mean, it's kind of fun I don't know I mean, it lasted an hour and 40 minutes It did a good runtime It had opening credits, a movie and closing credits Stuff happened I guess it's how... Is that how we came out of Phantom Menace
[00:04:40] Talking with it like, I liked it But it's a different vibe than that It's not the sort of questioning vibe It's the sort of like, come on David, also you have to remember As is story lore in our podcast When I walked out of Phantom Menace
[00:04:55] My initial reaction was best one yet Right, you put it right at the top I said absolutely, it's the best one Yeah, it's the best one they made Whereas I think this movie, people walked out of it And there wasn't that Phantom Menace
[00:05:09] Like people trying to understand whether or not they liked it I think people walked out of this and were like, fuck that People were very mad at this movie Introduce our guests, I want to ask them why they picked this one
[00:05:21] Because they had the choice of many carpenters And this is the one they went for You had introduced... I want to ask myself while I pick this one Hey, look, you have about 45 seconds of intro To start asking yourself some deep questions
[00:05:35] Because this is Blank Check with Griffin and David I'm Griffin I'm David Very quick and quiet Yeah, you just slipped in like a snake And I'm snake It is incredible how quiet he is in this entire movie Yeah, and it's a loud movie It's a very loud movie
[00:05:56] In other ways, right That's why he's speaking at the exact same volume As the first movie, but the first movie is a lot quieter Right Yeah Look, it's a podcast about filmographies Directors who have massive success early on in their careers
[00:06:09] And are given a series of blank checks Make whatever crazy passion projects they want Sometimes those checks clear And sometimes they bounce, baby This is a mini-series on the films of John Carpenter It's called They Podcast And today we are escaping from LA
[00:06:25] And joining us are two legends Of the podcast space Of acting, of comedy, of writing, of many other things But two of the best podcasters in the game And two of the best podcast guests in the game as well From Gorley and Rust It's Gorley and Rust
[00:06:44] Paul Rust, Matt Gorley Now, David, as you were queuing up I feel like Gorley and Rust has become your favorite podcast During the pandemic It was the thing I heard you talk about the most And like the one podcast I've ever No fucking backhand to any other podcast
[00:07:02] But it's the only podcast I've ever heard you Talk about Compulsively watching the movies along with That's right I mean, it was one of those Perfect confluence things for me where like I was like You know, I've never seen a lot of those slasher sequels
[00:07:19] So here's an opportunity for me To be a completionist and You know, have an excuse to watch them And listen to 2PAL's chatting But it's also that thing of like people will say to me Oh, I like blank check, you know, once in a while
[00:07:34] I'm not bragging, but it has happened 2PAL's chatting, I watch a lot of the movies I'm one of those people Hey! Matt, get out of here, shut the fuck up Shut the fuck up Not anymore, that was rude No, no, thank you Thank you
[00:07:48] Shut the fuck up, you hangover three loving kids Paul, let's get out of here, Paul No, and I'll always, you know And sometimes they even get like Oh, I wish the episodes were longer, blah blah And I'm like, yeah, what are you talking about? That's crazy
[00:08:02] And that's exactly what I like out of with Gourley and Russ It's just, you know, nice long Convos about a movie I just watched And I want to think about And I want to hear 2Bud's discuss So, yeah Thank you guys, it's good bye guys
[00:08:16] That's very nice of you Thank you Thank you for having us, first of all Sure To Griffin's intro and David's feelings Holy cow, that was so flattering I had a little lump in my throat Hey It's very kind Thank you for having us
[00:08:35] Well, the reason I wind all that up is Like, David watches all of the Halloween movies For, with Gourley and Russ, right? Friday the 13th and the Fridays But I think the Halloween series Happened before Carpenter 1 Our March Madness competition I had to pay for Stitcher
[00:08:55] Look, we're not even going to get into it My point here is timeline wise, right? Yep You've been listening I don't want to bring it up for them I don't want to dig it up for them right now Yes We've heard fucking hours of Paul and Matt
[00:09:10] Talking about Carpenter and Carpenter Adjacent projects So when Carpenter wins And we know we're going to commit to doing Carpenter for five months Like top of the list Let's throw it out to these two guys Any movie they want, right? And we sort of go like
[00:09:26] Assume they won't want to do Halloween Because it's well torn territory for them But no idea what they're going to pick outside of that Now that I've given you three plus minutes to think about it Matt and Paul as well Why was this the selection?
[00:09:41] Well now I'm worried because I don't fully remember Paul It was a long time ago Did I? Yeah, because we set this up like The better part of a year ago Because we were originally supposed to record this in July And then I remember we like scheduled that
[00:09:54] Months in advance So it was early this year But was this my doing that I made this happen For Escape from LA? I can't remember Why didn't I pick the fog? I've never seen the fog and I've been wanting to see the fog Why didn't I suggest that?
[00:10:09] I don't know Well we had a guest who had never seen the fog And then people got upset and that's why we didn't have a guest Who'd already seen the fog Well did the guest watch the fog for the... Yes but I don't know People sometimes
[00:10:22] There are constant new calculus of what a guest should Or shouldn't be on any given episode That's true, well that's not up to the listener Agreed The fog was on the list of options I'll say that, sorry carry on Paul
[00:10:34] For me the appeal to watching Escape from LA Was that I had seen it before So I hope for the people who Hope and wish for that That somebody had seen it previously Because I get it I love when Gordly has like First hand experiences of being
[00:10:56] In a theater opening night And just getting to talk about The response, especially with Yeah horror movies or Escape from LA type stuff Genre stuff But yeah I'd never seen it before Have you seen it Gordly? Yeah I've seen it once before
[00:11:14] But I believe it was a former Me that was Rocky Mountain High I think My buddy Jeremy Carter from Super Ego I had this bedroom That was huge and a living room That was small so my TV was in my bedroom And so we used to...
[00:11:30] I had this light two person couch And we used to... Because I didn't have room for this couch in the bedroom We used to lift it on top of my bed And sit on this couch on top of my bed And get high and we watched
[00:11:43] This movie and so it's As good as I never saw this movie Because I don't remember a thing so I'm just going to quote your email Go ahead And then fall off When you got up off the couch That's a good question, no
[00:11:59] But the couch was really like soft and wildly So I don't know how he really stayed up there In the first place but I did rewatch it For this episode I am as fresh as can be On a couch that was on a bed
[00:12:11] Yeah, on top of a roof Matt, it sounds like What you just described sounds like Maybe possibly the best year Of anyone's life And I think the prime way to watch this movie too Well, that's what I was going to say Ben asking so many follow up questions
[00:12:27] For clarification, Matt Ben has always been a big champion Of the idea that the best way to watch a movie Is on a porch Correct On a TV VCR With an extension cable Running from the porch inside So it can be plugged in with a bong
[00:12:45] That sort of bends ideal Movie viewing experience I think he blew his mind a little bit with Couch on a bed on a roof You're welcome Try it out, try it out Those days are over for me But I would love to pass that mantle
[00:13:01] To someone who could keep it alive I'm honored, yeah, I mean I love the innovation So I'll have to try it out Producer Ben's all about innovation David, you found the email? Yeah, here's, I'm gonna You said if it were me I'd say escape from LA for surmises
[00:13:17] Now my guess is that that is an Auto-correct error and you were trying to Say for surezies Because I don't know why You would say for surmises This is Matthew Corley In correspondence with me I can't remember that And the fact that I had an Auto-correct on there
[00:13:37] This mystery may never be resolved This is the only other thing I want to say This email was sent on April 1st Which I, you know I didn't have my fool's screener On the email, so maybe you were Joking and I just wasn't picking up
[00:13:51] It and I was like escape from LA Throw it on the board, Gorlian Russ That's all there is I was not doing an April Fool's You really wanted the thing But you as a joke said you wanted Escape from LA We do this March Madness thing to pick
[00:14:07] A director will cover Carpenter wins At the end of March April 1st, David is Frantically sending out emails because nothing makes David happier than booking 18 episodes In advance within this kind of One afternoon And we used to be like so banked up
[00:14:25] So far in advance that we reached out to you guys In April, you're like when we record We're like probably around July You're like great I'm having a baby a little bit after that Perfect timing We get way behind And then now this episode is happening
[00:14:39] Yeah cause didn't we also we were going to record Right when the baby was coming So we had to boot it back again or am I making that up Well I had My wife had a baby so it looks like A lot of stuff went on
[00:14:51] You know what the only thing I can think is that I was my logic and this is not sound logic There's so many horror movies that Maybe we try something that wasn't Horror but I don't remember I assume that was your logic which I thought
[00:15:03] Was kind of cool it's like I feel like when people ask me to guess On other movie shows I try to pick movies That I think don't overlap with things We have done or would possibly do Yeah But was there a dialogue between you and me Paul
[00:15:17] Because I hate to think that I was just like answering For the both of us I must have checked in with you You know what I said We were talking about it You said you were going to
[00:15:27] Cause you're saying if it were me I'd pick Escape from LA Let me check with Paul and then you came back Saying Paul's in so Okay I must have because then that would be a bold Move for someone to just answer For someone to escape from LA
[00:15:39] Like wow As a podcast brother you would never You would never do that Also guys as far as all these I know we like scheduled and plan stuff And things didn't work out but You know if you want to make God laugh Make a plan Hey
[00:15:57] He's rolling right now He's laughing The other thing is What matters is that it all worked out And we're here recording the episode And what matters beyond that is we spent 10 minutes Talking about the saga of trying to schedule this episode Which is riveting podcast material
[00:16:13] It's behind the podcast man Yeah But the other thing look I'm picking is this movie's a little silly And sometimes you guys get a little Silly sometimes we do too Maybe you just thought it would be good energy I think that's the case yeah
[00:16:29] You know it's more fun to tackle the silly ones Yeah we try to be as solemn And serious in our analysis of The movies but It's true sometimes We get filled Filled with whimsy Let's keep this serious from here on out
[00:16:45] And give this movie the respect it deserves Sure so this is maybe the silliest Fucking movie I've ever seen That's my serious Certainly for Johnny Carpenter There's no question it's his silliest film It has to be right Yeah and there were like I definitely saw the memes
[00:17:03] And the gifts Of the silly moments before Yes But I didn't know how deep The trove Of the bonkers went I never saw a meme Or a gift Of the basketball scene Like basketball to the death Seed But doesn't that just reek of Like post peak Carpenter
[00:17:29] Who as we know is getting high And playing NBA video games Of him just going Well if I gotta do another movie I might as well just write what you know You know It is like an NBA jam like Side game This film is written by John Carpenter
[00:17:45] Deborah Hill and Kurt Russell I think I was watching And I was like is this something where he kind of farmed out the script He was like ah we should And it's like no they got together Yeah this is the one he chose
[00:17:57] It was a meeting of minds No I better handle this one And he brought back His ex-girlfriend Right who at this point has become Like a major fucking film producer In her own right And the leading man who like Kurt Russell doesn't fucking
[00:18:13] Write movies I mean I guess he was Pretty hands on with Tombstone Right? Yeah I think so That's the only other movie I've heard about him like Getting into the weeds on in that kind of way Well it just sounds like he's some kind of like Prompt to
[00:18:27] Onset script doctor like he was With Tombstone and I believe with this movie He kind of fixed the ending or something like that Fixed I used Well He rustled The ending The ending is actually good I should I like the ending just fine
[00:18:45] Well we can get into some of the context You have how this thing is made Do you guys like Escape from New York Or is that like a totemic movie for you guys Or Something you've seen like a couple times over the years
[00:18:57] How much does that movie matter Oh I super dig it I like it's probably Then Eight or nine years Since I last saw it But I watched it a handful of times Growing up in high school college Moving out to LA, hanging out But yeah
[00:19:17] The last viewing has been a while So like there were certain things that I saw like were I'm sure we'll talk about it but just like Are these Echoes Omages, tips of the hat Or just like boilerplate Home alone too Same glass New drink
[00:19:39] I was trying to pull up the specific quote here Because I think it was from one of our listeners On the Blank Check subreddit and I couldn't find it So I'm gonna Paraphrase it poorly and credit to whoever Made this observation first
[00:19:51] But like this movie almost feels a little bit more Like This is the point this person was making Like a sort of next gen Remake update of a Video game than it does A sequel in certain ways Wow, yeah I love that, that's great
[00:20:09] Because it does function as a sequel obviously But it does kind of go Beat for beat and almost Everything in the first movie has a direct Analog in this movie And not in like in Austin Powers Like second movie has Second beat of the same bit
[00:20:25] This is like It's just like fucking Maps from the stars Eddie is like so similar To the happy, you know Yes, although And the Valera Galeno character so similar To Adrian Barbo And then you have like the basketball The death sequences like his weird boxing Match sequence
[00:20:45] Yeah, but yeah to the Right to the point of the reddit Or the person who the comment Like it is just swapping them out with Kind of bigger What are those called at the end guys That's what my friends did Bosses, bosses, yeah
[00:21:01] It does feel like refillable hit set pieces It reminds me of the album That Oasis did after what's the story Morning Glory Where it's just A masterpiece I love it too, don't get me wrong But you can almost track by track Kind of see what they were trying
[00:21:19] To just do the same kind of Rock to acoustic I found the quote here It's the username Toasted Penguin Of course And the line was very simple But it's just it's more an expansion With reskin map than full blown Sequel That's right, but imagine If Blade Runner 2049
[00:21:43] Like you know where it's like you're alright We're finally making a sequel to the thing everyone The cult object that is hallowed Well they're not making a sequel to the thing Let's be very clear Davey he's making a sequel to Escape from New York Not the thing
[00:21:55] And it's like this time Rick Deckard Is gonna have a surfing adventure Yeah, he's like you know if it was just The goofiest like No, it's just cause Hollywood now All the fan stuff Everything is so serious And everyone's like oh and we want to be absolutely
[00:22:11] Respectful and they go out Comic Con and they act like They're announcing a new pope 300 easter eggs And in the 90s it's kind of like yeah let's Just do another one I don't know It would be like some stupid shit
[00:22:25] And I'm not saying this movie is tossed off This movie is like full of ideas It's not like they Are doing it for a quick buck But it's just I sort of appreciate How little it cares about The sort of tonal Expansion
[00:22:43] Is the kindest way to put it Yeah the full the full of ideas thing Is most appealing Thing about the movie and my favorite after watching the movie. I was just like, oh, it was like packed full of ideas. Like essentially every five, six minutes
[00:22:59] you had a new idea or character through and that sort of like enthusiasm. I mean, the ideas are so huge that a budget could never meet them that there's like a bulletproof helicopter attack above Disneyland. I love that they thought they were going to be able
[00:23:21] to pull that off. I mean, look, the special effects, let's say in particular, the CGI digital effects in this movie are disastrous. They're perhaps the worst in the last 30 years of cinema and we will talk about them more
[00:23:35] but this is far and away his biggest budget ever on a movie. That's crazy. This is ostensibly the closest he ever came to really getting a blank check and being able to do whatever he wanted. And even then, he clearly reached beyond his means
[00:23:53] but after watching so many movies where like to his credit Carpenter is so good at working within his limitations and figuring out a movie to make just the size he can make it and using the power of suggestion and sort of like implications of mythology
[00:24:07] and all that to make things feel bigger. It's nice to see a movie where he's like every idea I have and he's throwing them all out there even the ones he can't afford. Do you guys think this movie would be better
[00:24:17] if it had like say Jurassic Park level CGI at the time where you just didn't question? In fact, you left the movie going, those effects were amazing or would it be worse in a way? It'd be sick of their dinosaurs. Yeah, that's how Ben interprets your question.
[00:24:33] Well, the LeBray at Tarpits. I think ideally Matt, the effects are like 15% better than they are. Like I don't think this movie works if it's state of the art photo realistic even for its day, right? Like even if it felt dodging now, like watching this movie,
[00:24:53] you're like, did this come out the same year as The Last Starfighter? Like it feels like 10 years past even from when it came out. Coincidentally, I was just going down a YouTube rabbit hole and up comes like a watch mojo, the 20 worst CGI in films
[00:25:12] and I just put it on. I was bottle feeding my daughter and here's Escape from LA with the little submarine sequence flying over Universal Studios. The problem is it's almost which do you pick? Is it the submarine? Is it the surfing? Like where do you even go?
[00:25:30] It almost always gets included though in any list like that. And we should also say this is a weird example of like, we've obviously talked a lot, excuse me, about our friend Kurt over the last four or five months, Kurt Russell.
[00:25:44] And how sort of A-list stardom kind of eluded him for a very long time. He spends the 80s making these movies with Carpenter, that fucking rule that all kind of underperform upon release in one way or another. Escape from New York was the most successful
[00:26:02] in its moment but certainly it's legacy only grew and grew and grew and grew. And then as the late 80s turn into the early 90s, he finally sort of makes it to being like the guy above the title, right?
[00:26:15] We talked about there was a lot of him being the second guy in Tango and Cash, you know? Or doing a movie like Tombstone that's more of an ensemble or whatever. He finally got to the point. The late 90s are this weird moment
[00:26:26] where he finally gets to be like, Kurt Russell is the star of this action movie above the title. He's not having to share it with Steven Seagal anymore. It's Kurt. And Kurt has that cache and he caches it all in on I'm bringing Snake back, right?
[00:26:40] It's somewhat similar to like what we're seeing Keanu do now, which is like John Wick gives him this unexpected boost later than anyone could have guessed. And he's like, great, going back to the matrix, going back to Bill and Ted. I'm bringing the original people back.
[00:26:56] We're making the later statements on these characters, you know? And yeah, you know, Russell extends that to Carpenter and his very hands on he wants to do it. You know, he kind of wills this into being. But I think especially if you're someone who's like
[00:27:15] lived with Escape from New York as this kind of like cult gem for 15 plus years in your mind's eye, whether you saw it at the time or you were someone who grew up watching on a cable or VHS later. And then Kurt Russell has really kind of like
[00:27:28] grown into his like, you know, populist accessible badass mode by the mid 90s. And then this movie shows up and it's like goofballs McGillicuddy. You're just like, what the fuck is anyone doing here? I wish that was the title. Goofballs McGillicuddy snake is back.
[00:27:49] I think you're right that the budget is really what's to blame for this movie if you're looking for something to blame because when you look at Escape from New York, it's just got that Carpenter limitation grittiness. And when you get to this movie and all the production values,
[00:28:05] you start to literally see the seams, not just in the set, but the CGI. And you realize that, you know, if we all adore a carpenter here, but his strength is kind of his, there's that like DIY feel to his stuff.
[00:28:19] And when you get a full studio behind him like in this movie or memoirs and Invisible Man, the magic somehow falls out. I've said this before on, I think on one of our podcasts, so I apologize. But like Halloween was kind of like lightning
[00:28:32] in a bottle where, yeah, they did all this, but how much of it was actually planned and how much of it was just benefit of timing where like Spielberg and Kubrick are building a ship in a bottle. Carpenter got in a way lucky
[00:28:48] even though he had a lot of resources and talent. But then when you get to something like this where he has all the resources in the world, it doesn't mean a thing. If anything, it exposes a light on some of the shortcomings of Carpenter.
[00:29:00] That can be entertaining in their own right, but they're not necessarily purposeful. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Alex, I mean, brought this up in our Halloween episode, which I'd never noticed before, but like the lack of extras in that movie, which was purely a budgetary limitation
[00:29:19] gives it this weird. It's creepy and haunted. There's no one on the streets. Ever. Right, there's no kids. It's just trick or treating. Yeah. I never thought about it. There's by Halloween too, there's kids everywhere. Like suddenly they have a budget. It looks like real Halloween.
[00:29:33] Right, and then Halloween kills has maybe the most people I've ever seen in a film. Halloween kills reveals that Haddonfield actually has a population of 10 million. Yeah, and they're all living in the hospital. Yes. It's a hotel. It's the Haddonfield Memorial Hotel.
[00:29:49] And it takes them like half an hour to walk up the stairs. It just takes them so long in Halloween kills. Oh, well. That's a 30 story hospital. Yeah. That's a very fascinating movie. I used to I used to make the joke that like when in the early 2000s
[00:30:04] all the canonical horror franchises were getting remade, I was like, if your horror remake is successful enough that you get to make a sequel, you can't make a sequel to the remake. You have to remake the original sequel. Yes. Wait, let's say that again.
[00:30:20] It was always my stupid bit. So like Rob Zombie shouldn't make Rob Zombie's Halloween too and sequelize his first Halloween. Oh right. And then I do Rob Zombie's quote, Halloween too. And he has to just take that film and remake it. It was always my stupid joke.
[00:30:37] And then I watch Halloween kills and I'm like this kind of is a remake of Halloween too. I know it's not one for one. Oh boy, big time. Oh, so Halloween ends is going to be about Silver Shamrock? Maybe, but like, do you know what I'm saying?
[00:30:49] Like Halloween kills feels like him being like I made my successful tribute to the first Halloween and now I'm making my tribute to Halloween too. Yeah. How do I stretch out a sequel that starts 30 minutes after the first movie ends? Oh, total.
[00:31:02] I mean spoilers if somebody hasn't seen it but like when it picked back up in the Home Alone 2 1981 world or the end of 78, I had such a flutter of excitement seeing that. And I hoped because it went a little bit longer
[00:31:25] than just a scene or a single flashback. I told Matt this, I thought it was going to go into like a Godfather part two parallel storylines of the night after Halloween 78 and the night after Halloween 2018. Paul that's such a goddamn good idea. It would have rolled.
[00:31:45] It kills me that that didn't happen because when you first said that I thought about that after and then hearing you say that again, I'm so sad I want that movie. But you couldn't include Laurie and the recreation stuff without it being dodgy and weird.
[00:31:58] So that would be the drawback. Right, I guess right. And then you read that's the thing when I was watching and I realized like, oh right they need to clarify the continuity of their Halloween world because there's not Halloween too. So they need to now explain
[00:32:12] how Michael Myers went to jail. Like, I actually kind of like Halloween kills or I really hate that movie. And I thought it was sort of a weird, flawed interesting thing. Yeah, I listen to your part. I listen to the part. Paul was positive.
[00:32:29] But it is funny that like the original Halloween too it starts off right after, tries to figure out how to extend a thing for a couple more hours. And then also with the 1978 flashback stuff is trying to retcon stuff into the previous movie
[00:32:45] and go like actually this was this the entire time. Your perception of relationships were wrong. People you thought were dead are actually still alive. Right, and even using a footage from the 81 sequel when they zip up Annie in the body bag
[00:33:01] they still had to go back to the supposedly not part of the canon. I mean this is the most important stuff in the world to me. Well, I agree. And the logo for the hospital is the same. The HMH. Well the masks were in it.
[00:33:15] They put in the shamrock mask. Yeah, yeah. I love it. It feels like they're doing it for the fans. I love it. You gotta give it back to the fans at the end of the day. You gotta give it back to the fans.
[00:33:25] Which this movie maybe doesn't do. I mean that's- Right, that's the thing. This movie is not, it doesn't know that the fans exist or if it does, it does not care. No, it's like a cut rate. The thing that I noticed
[00:33:39] when you look at Snake Plisken in Escape from New York he looks like the coolest GI Joe ever. And in this film, his like fatigues are all creased and ironed and everything's generic and flat. Even his hair is a little bit more feathered and long
[00:33:55] and he looks like a knockoff GI Joe that you would find in like a 99 cent store. Corpse or whatever. Yeah. I mean it's so weird because he shows up looking perfect. You're like that snake exactly as I remember him and Russell's maybe only gotten more handsome with time.
[00:34:15] I fucking love it. And there are like 45 in this. He looks amazing. Insane. The two jaw dropping facts I found out after I watched this that it was a 50 million budget and that Kurt Russell was 45. Yeah, yeah, insane. Insane. But he shows up and he looks fucking immaculate
[00:34:32] and then immediately Stacey Keats just like take that shit off. We have some new dumb costume for you to wear. Yeah. And you're like no, get the brown jacket. Like it's this shitty like, I don't know. I think we next week will get into Ghost of Mars.
[00:34:48] But a thing that I found fascinating about watching that movie is just like he's making that like two years before like the textbook of how those movies are supposed to look grimy, unpretentious genre movies are supposed to look.
[00:35:06] And there's a very slick, cool kind of like post MTV music video aesthetic that takes over these things that he does not know how to tap into. And the snake's outfit in this feels like a bad attempt at that kind of thing, right?
[00:35:22] It's like, this is like a shitty test run for Neo in the matrix. Like he's just wearing up worse version of what Neo wears. And it's like, no, to give him the camo pants and the fucking brown jacket and the black tank top,
[00:35:35] like don't make this look all techie. And as yes, it's like, it's creasing weirdly. I mean, I think it's very notable that like, I think the rights for Escape from New York were complicated for a while because it was independently produced. And this was a big Paramount movie.
[00:35:53] And they made McFarlane toys, early episode merchandise spotlight, made a snake, Pliskin action figure in the late 90s, like 99 maybe even 2000. And the only one they could get the rights for was Escape from LA. They had to do LA. Interesting. That's hilarious.
[00:36:12] That's like, here's your Michael Corleone action figure. It's the part three one with the gray flat top. Yes. Yeah, he's got a cardigan. Yeah, enjoy. But what they did was they... Glass of orange juice, sorry. They made an action figure of Snake Pliskin
[00:36:28] in the like Escape from New York outfit with the tank top and the camo pants. And then they put the shitty jacket on top of him and they were like, the jacket's removable. But they like had to put the jacket in the packaging.
[00:36:43] That sums up this whole movie. Right. And they were just like, like pretend the jacket's not there. We admit this was a mistake. There's a good point about the like, sort of him maybe being kind of behind
[00:36:59] whatever was going on with MTV and trying to play catch up. Because this does feel maybe like the first time Carpenter or around this time it feels like it's the first time he's like behind the curve with culture. Yes. Sometimes it seems like he's got an eye ahead
[00:37:13] of where things are going. Right. And I partly, this is like too easy of a way to put it. But just even with Buscemi in there, this is like the first movie Carpenter made post Tarantino post independent world. And I wonder if that has to be a sum...
[00:37:34] I mean, all of those independent filmmakers are half of them. Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino, whoever are like influenced by him and now making the movies. I wonder with your guys, this previous filmmakers, it is like does somebody's work change when the younger culture who they're influenced by
[00:37:54] now is caught up by them and making movies like them but differently in the independent world like Carpenter was. Can't you see Carpenter seeing that happen and like watching Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez and going, I don't like it. I'm just gonna do loud.
[00:38:09] Yeah, I'm gonna do my thing. And then that's when he's left behind. I think you're right. I also feel sometimes you hear with guys like that. They're like, all these young filmmakers, they like this thing I did. They're wrong. It wasn't supposed to be that way.
[00:38:23] That was a mistake. Like there's sort of the George Lucas-y thing of like you fell in love with the wrong thing. In my mind's eye, I wish I'd been making movies like this the entire time. And this is what I could make with the resources I had.
[00:38:35] It's funny you bring up Rodriguez because during the worst of the special effects in this movie, I was like, what does this look like? Like as you said, Matt, this always shows up on lists and supercuts of the worst special effects ever, right?
[00:38:48] Is never ever safe from any of these compilations. And so I'd seen some of the big sequences but then like they're interstitial things. They're little things that like, you're just like everything looks so fucking bad. Anytime there's any CGI, even if it's just the compositing,
[00:39:06] it looks like the magic screen sequences from Pee Wee's Playhouse. Like I've never seen less integration between elements in a film and I was like, does anything else look like this? And the only answer I could come up with weirdly and now I wonder if it's,
[00:39:23] I don't want to say it's a conscious homage and I think he kind of owned it as his aesthetic. Like he made it more of a choice but the era of Robert Rodriguez making his movies like all himself. When he had his run of like the Spy Kids
[00:39:36] and Sin City and Shark Boy and Lava Girl and shit where he was like, I do the special effects myself. We shoot the movie in my garage, like my studio is in my house. Everything feels handmade, right? I agree.
[00:39:48] There was a point where I forget who's in the car and someone's surfing behind him. It's Buscemi. Yeah, and I'm going. And he's like driving like this, right? I'm watching Sin City unintentionally and it looks so much like Sin City
[00:40:02] where Robert Rodriguez is at least like color desaturating and making it a choice. It did feel like Rodriguez saw this and went, I like that but I'm going to do it on purpose. Right, that's because like Spy Kids 3
[00:40:15] and Shark Boy and Lava Girl and some of the other ones they have that thing where it's like, it looks like color forms. Yeah. I'm not trying to make it realistic. I'm just, I have silly ideas. There's no way I'd ever have the budget
[00:40:26] to execute these ideas realistically. So just everything is going to be stylized. What was the deal with the company that was doing the CGI like they'd never done CGI before and I don't know how they got the work or something?
[00:40:38] I made David watch a special feature about this. I saw that I was looking at reviews of the Shout Factory escape from LA Blu-ray, which I didn't own and that there was listed a 20 minute special feature called Render Man with the guy who was in charge
[00:40:53] of visual effects on this movie that was described as something of an apology. And I said, David, do you have this disc? You have to watch this. I hope this is where Slender Man came from. It is where Slender Man came from.
[00:41:04] He actually invented Slender Man by mistake trying to do the... Just CGI this movie. He was trying to put me on hand glider. An authentic looking human and he came up with Slender Man. Right, yeah. Momo also came out as a movie. Why is he 10 feet tall?
[00:41:18] I don't know. Like he's like dragging the ball. Millimeters to inches. I don't know what to, oh God. It's actually a very sweet feature because he's a nice sort of portly British guy with a beard. He's absolutely like sort of chill and a vun killer.
[00:41:38] And mostly is sort of proud of the movie even though he knows the CGI is bad and is very upfront about what a failure that was. And it's a lot of the stuff that you guys have sort of already been talking about
[00:41:52] which is basically like even with a huge budget, huge budget by carpenter standards but a pretty huge budget in general for 1996. They just reached way too far. They just had these sort of kind of bold and big story ideas.
[00:42:13] And because it was this sort of dawn of CGI age there was a lot of like, and we'll figure it out in post. Like there was a lot of that. Like apparently with the submarine, they built a submarine like a 26 foot physical thing
[00:42:29] and carpenter thought it looked bad. And so they were like, okay, well we'll just fix it in post. And then you just see in this interview he's like, and I mean, I thought, I'd been working and rendering and I thought I had a grasp on it
[00:42:43] but even though it's this very simple object it's kind of, it was very difficult. And then he kind of starts tailing off. Like it's a lot of that. Apparently the company that they, whatever the software that they use the company started sending its own engineers
[00:42:59] to the post production studio because the stuff they were trying had just not been tried on this software before. They had like a special computer that they were doing this on and it was like the only computer you could do this work on, right?
[00:43:11] It was built by a specific company. Oh my gosh. And they would essentially eventually start calling the company and being like, so we're trying to do this and we don't know how and the company would be like, we're gonna send the inventor of the computer
[00:43:25] you know, basic, you know, like to work on that with you because we don't really know either. And like it's, he's a sweet guy but his whole thing is like, I just, we overreached badly, you know? We were trying to make things photo real
[00:43:43] and it was absolutely not ready. Like we were just, the technology was just not there for it. And that's why the submarine sequence looks so bad. That's why the surfing looks so bad. And I worked on it for seven months and then obviously everyone was mad. Go on.
[00:44:00] The surfing? The surfing with CGI? Well, David you check your facts on that. Hold on. I believe there is some physical element like he is on some sort of wave machine thing. I don't know. Wait, so No the physical element is he's on the water in the ocean.
[00:44:19] It's Los Angeles. Pacific I assume. Right, right. Obviously, right they just summoned to tsunami and Peter and Kurt said hang 10 and then they were ready to go and we're gonna make sure this tsunami goes. They just had sea driving alongside.
[00:44:36] Wait, so how did they even get hooked up with this company? And then my follow up comment on that is this was what year 97, right? This is 96. It's the same year as Independence Day. If you want to do like a direct comparison. For three years. Yeah, okay.
[00:44:52] So American, Peter Fonda and Kurt Russell on these surfboards going, don't worry we're gonna Jurassic Park this. And everybody's going like after Jurassic Park I bet everybody is thinking like it's a done deal. Don't even worry about it. And thinking like we've got it made.
[00:45:10] Just surf buddy, just surf. Do you guys know who was Peter Fonda's stunt double? Surf double on this movie? Jane Fonda. Henry obviously he's already been on Golden Bond. He knows water. Tony Hawk. What? Oh that kind of works actually. Yeah, that's good. Yeah.
[00:45:34] I mean he's our generations Peter Fonda. It's one of those things where they made like one of those indoor sort of like wave rider things. Right, that's what they're matching right. Right, certainly. And then right for when it's actually them surfing
[00:45:54] it's Tony Hawk and I believe another skateboarder whose name escapes me. I think Jurassic Park you hear all the stories about how it was like we're doing stuff that has never even been attempted before. They had to put so much thought, preparation and R and D
[00:46:10] and like TLC into executing every single moment. And you know it's that stat that gets thrown around where it's like there are only like 10 minutes of dinosaurs in that movie but they're so judiciously placed and chosen and executed the presence feels really large
[00:46:27] but they bit off exactly as much as they could chew and that was Steven Spielberg at the height of his powers with all the best special effects people in the world. Not some people who had never worked on a movie before
[00:46:37] in a computer that even the people who made it didn't know could pull this off. That's the thing, right? I think this, the technology was so exciting. There were so many opportunities presented by it but people were still figuring out the limits
[00:46:53] like and this is just a classic this movie went up to the limits and. I always, yeah to put it like, yeah three years after Jurassic Park it does feel like in CGI years this was like awkward puberty years. Yes. Mm-hmm.
[00:47:11] But also like Independence Day uses like a lot of models and the other thing that Roland Emmerich used to always brag about is like 60% of my movie cost nothing. Like I make these movies that have these ensemble casts where 60 to 70% of them are people in rooms having conversations
[00:47:30] and then I make the money shots really count. There was like no shot in this movie that is cheap. Right? Like you compare it to Escape from New York where he gets a lot of production value out of just like a deserted street.
[00:47:42] And yet they all look cheap though that's what kind of impressive and it's because he's like so overreaching but every single shot of it has like a bigger set than you've seen before. A thousand extras or costumes or props or CGI or models are something.
[00:47:56] You know there's like always a lot of stuff on screen but I mean and we can dive into this. I agree with Paul. I'm pretty fucking won over just by how many goddamn ideas this movie has both in this like silly little boy
[00:48:13] on a playground like imagining wild scenarios kind of way but also like it's got some pretty interesting. I love my carpenter fuck the world cynicism so bright I'm gonna tell you why everyone's full of shit stuff. And I think in a certain way this movie has some
[00:48:34] of his more interesting social commentary. Perhaps it is not executed as cleanly and successfully within its narrative but it's got some ideas I find really compelling. I also think there's the much discussed carpenter apocalypse trilogy, right? Where he talks about what it's thing
[00:48:55] about the madness and Prince of Darkness. And for me I love the thing but like this feels more like the apocalypse movie to me. I mean this movie literally ends with Snake Plisken being like I'm fucking shutting down society. Have fun.
[00:49:09] Yeah, I did think it was yeah it also had yeah the look of post apocalypse. But yeah when I think about it it's not until it all gets shut down that it would be a true apocalypse. Right, it's like what we think of
[00:49:27] as a post apocalyptic society and then Snake's like no there's still too much shit going on here I'm fucking blowing out the light. It's such a funny way for a movie with terrible CGI to end as well which is like carpenter's sort of grumpy avatar being like
[00:49:43] I'm pulling the plug on all this shit. Like enough. And like I think that's not the CGI response but like it is kind of intentional. Carpenter's getting old although we have all these quotes in our research where he's like I'm an old foggy
[00:49:58] like you know I'm over the hill I better wrap it up soon and it's like he was like 49 he's not that old at all. I feel like you can feel that though and it almost feels like the ending of this movie is him going like I don't understand
[00:50:10] we're transitioning into CGI. Just pull the plug if I can't do it no one can. He wanted to pull the plug on that weird computer so that couldn't like do the effects. So he's like he got so frustrated they went back
[00:50:23] and reshot curve muscles and shut it all down. Just imagine, John Carpenter's scary. Imagine hey you wanna come to the screening room and see the latest submarine sequence. Yeah sure and then you show him that. Like what do you expect him to do? I don't know.
[00:50:38] I think that's my- It would be so scared. Issue with this movie. I liked it don't get me wrong but I don't feel like I feel carpenter having fun with this movie. And so his cynicism is present in every movie he makes but in Halloween and the thing
[00:50:53] he's still bringing like his desire to craft. This one feels a little phoned in and that coupled with the cynicism it makes me feel a little bit like mommy and daddy are fighting even though I like to watch this movie for what it is.
[00:51:04] There's something off-putting to it that doesn't feel right. It does feel like when carpenter turns like or when Chevy Chase went sour Bert Reynolds went bitter. There's a moment that you just kind of go like I'm seeing vestiges of my old friend but it's not fully there
[00:51:20] and it just makes me sad more than anything. I mean we've been talking about as we've been doing these episodes in order that carpenter may be a victim of a thing that has happened to many great artists in Hollywood which is just a Chevy Chase irreparably breaks them.
[00:51:36] Like it does feel like something is gone after he works with Chevy. Yeah. Yeah. But the fun- Geez. Did they do it to each other? Yeah, a little bit. Chevy was already kind of damaged by that point I would say but yeah, perhaps a little bit.
[00:51:56] The fun for me where I feel in carpenter is more like can you fucking believe they're letting me make this thing? Like this just feels like it's like every idea written on a scrap of paper that he had for 25 years that he never had the budget to execute.
[00:52:10] Not literally but just it's like this movie is a collection of all the shit he had to cut out of other movies. And when we've been doing these episodes, you know, JJ and Nick are researchers often pulled things about like originally his idea was this
[00:52:23] and then the only budget he could get was this so they scaled it back to this. And this is like the one time he gets to work with this kind of crazy canvas. Even if the canvas is not as big as what he actually needs to execute
[00:52:34] it's the one time he lets himself sort of like write that unencumbered. We should sort of just say quickly he in the early 80s signs his or mid days his alive pictures deal right where he's gonna make these small budget films for four of them for under $5 million.
[00:52:49] And from that point it was like carve out I get to make one big studio film outside of this alive deal because I want to make an escape from New York sequel. So this is in like the 80s. This is like five years after escape
[00:53:03] from New York when a big trouble in little China is getting ready to be released and everyone assumes that thing's going to be a big hit. They're like we're gonna fucking use this momentum. Finally make the snake Plisken sequel when people are asking Kurt Russell
[00:53:18] on the press tour. So this feels like it could be a franchise for you. You got plans for where Jack Burton goes next. He's like I want to do another fucking Jack Burton movie. Snake Plisken baby. I'm going back to Snake Plisken.
[00:53:28] Like it's like so long they keep on going like and if the next one hits then we finally get to make the snake Plisken sequel. Yeah, I had heard that like the script started getting written right mid to late 80s. So that's right around the time
[00:53:43] and it does feel like it has remains of a Reagan era like script, which that's like why they live excels. But Cliff Robertson's president president character feels very Reagan-y. Yeah, yes. Absolutely. And the fact that the movie's about celebrity and movie stars that Reagan would be
[00:54:14] a person who could also be exist as a hologram as a president, you know. But there was a sadness watching to it because I mean, I love when I watch they live I'm just like right on. This is so cool. He's like the only person saying this
[00:54:29] at the time who has a strong enough voice to be heard making movies, right? Yeah. And then. Watching the sort of like. Reagan-y thing reminded me of like 15 years ago, Harry Shearer did like a limited series where he was like Nixon. Yeah.
[00:54:53] And it made me think like also maybe like 10 years somebody from our generation, a filmmaker makes a movie and it's still and it's OK if it was, but like hung up on Trump. There's like a Trump figure. You're like, yes, yes. Right. But Dick Cheney biopic in 2017.
[00:55:12] Yes. Yes. I mean, it is weird. It seems like they don't start writing this script in earnest until 1993. Like that's when they sit down and finally commit to what this movie becomes. I think it's notably post Chevy. Apparently the thing that Carpenter
[00:55:28] that pushed him was like, I want to have fun. I want to work with my friends again. Right. Like I think that I think that really was the impotence. He wanted to work with a big movie star so badly
[00:55:37] and it burned him so badly that he was like, let me get my friend back and my ex-girlfriend creative partner back and let's just make something that we think is fun. So like 1993 and the germ of the idea, as Carpenter says,
[00:55:51] L.A. has just been through riots, mudslides, fires and earthquakes. Kurt had a great idea. He said, all these disasters happen and we all sit around in denial. We all say, why should I leave? It's great. That was the germ of it,
[00:56:02] a combination of having a good plot with a little subversive juice and having some fun. In L.A., the four seasons came to be known as flood, fire, earthquake and riots at Debra Hill. Sometimes you feel like you live in a disaster movie. What's next, Lotus?
[00:56:16] Jesus, I mean, I was born and raised here. I don't remember any of this. Those things were. I think that's a little bit of a chronocentrism. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God, this is the worst time we've ever lived in.
[00:56:29] I also happen to be in my mid to late 40s right now. And I've gone through like a divorce or something. I mean, I will say this, Tripp, in the research, Kurt Russell's idea was to, quote, set the film in an even more lethal Los Angeles
[00:56:45] where in a future where danger has become an emotional aphrodisiac. That sounds bananas, but that sounds bunny. Like I was sort of like, I almost like the more sci-fi approach versus this sort of, you know, kind of scatter shot social commentary stuff. I don't mind the president stuff.
[00:57:07] I think that's a good update. Like I think it's a worthy update. Right. And let me say too, like I would, I love it too because it's like, yeah, you can still like think about what Reagan was and kick him down.
[00:57:21] You don't have to just make it George HW Bush or I mean, I was thinking it could be worse where it's like the president is like a clintonian figure who it's not about like morality. It's like everybody should get their dicks.
[00:57:38] I really love the idea of like a culture that says or a government that says like enforces morality. Yes, I love that. That whole speech Cliff Robertson does at the end talking about like red meat, you know, smoking, drinking, women unless you're married,
[00:57:57] you know, all the things that are banned. Right. And it's like meanwhile the world is on fire. Like I love this balance of this guy being like we have to keep up appearances. This is a civil moral country that is decaying. I'm surprised he didn't do more satire
[00:58:15] on the entertainment industry because there's just kind of a throwaway line. Like it's done now. It doesn't exist in Hollywood anymore. But I felt like there's an opportunity for a roving gang of movie execs that have kind of banded together and like warrior style. That would be good.
[00:58:31] I mean, then there's such a this is the thing. Movie stuff wasn't represented. This is what's good about Escape from New York obviously is that it's vague enough that you can read a lot into the whatever the future is. Right? This movie is not big.
[00:58:43] Like we don't really know. This movie is very black. When you when you have the surgeon general of LA and it's Bruce Campbell and Carpenter is going like bigger, bigger. Yes. So there's stuff like that. Right. Whereas that's the political stuff I think
[00:58:57] is like fun on target broad satire. Some of the other stuff could use some finessing maybe or you know and it's the same. My question is this is sort of my philosophical questions like if John Carpenter had $50 million for Escape from New York
[00:59:13] would that movie also be goofy? Like is it good that he had no money? I think I definitely I think that we lessen we've learned with Carpenter is he has to have limitations and find shortcuts and stuff.
[00:59:27] It's not like Escape from New York doesn't have goofy little touches like and I love those touches, but it's nice that they are sort of sprinkled in and I like a lot of the goofiness in Escape from LA, but it is you know, it's a very sugary cookie.
[00:59:41] It's just it's a little and it's got M&M's and Sprinkles. They like that like when we're like meeting Pam Grier's character like 20 minutes before the end of the movie like Carpenter's like I think we need one more sort of complete like curveball secrets.
[00:59:59] Like you know what I mean? Like why isn't that happening 20 minutes in like that's it's just a lot that he keeps throwing at the audience. It's a lot of characters in this thing. Yes, I was watching I was like, I remember that you think
[01:00:13] isn't Pam Grier supposed to be in this movie? And then it was like 15 minutes later after that that she showed up. Yeah, big cast that's an ensemble. It's a who's who. I love that because that's my favorite element of Escape from New York
[01:00:30] is just having this deep bench of character actors and having all these like fun colorful characters coming in for little pops and little sequences and dipping in and out. But it's a lot. It's a lot. I missed because wasn't Donald Pleasant supposed to be in this
[01:00:47] and then he died? Wasn't he going to play the president or did I? That would be good. Not that I know of but I mean that would be I mean I would I love Donald Pleasants in anything and it would be fun if he was still.
[01:01:04] Yeah, yeah, that is at least that's rumored that that was definitely true. It would be fun if it was the same guy and he's just swerved to the Christian right to just kind of like keep up with the electorate or whatever.
[01:01:15] And the twist is that yeah he's oh god. And also that late stage Donald Pleasants was just he was unchecked and it would have been incredible. Yeah, because that was Halloween six time right? And he died that movie's 95 or what is it?
[01:01:33] It comes out after he died, right? Yeah. Yeah, so they might have even a fate. Fate was like no Donald don't be an escape from LA. I mean I'm just I'm just looking here the budget on this as we said was 50.
[01:01:47] So 96 the same year independence day is 75 mission possible is 80. Those are like the two biggest films of that year. I mean there's the two films that look the biggest and still hold up and all of that.
[01:02:01] And all that money a lot of that money is going to those stars in those movies too which is not happening in escape from LA. Well other than Kurt yeah. How much did he get? I don't know how much he got.
[01:02:11] I mean right after this he does 10 million or so. Oh wow. Right after this he does soldier where he gets 15 and it was like a big deal that he got that big of a paycheck and the movie flopped so hard.
[01:02:22] But he's coming off of Stargate and Tombstone where apparently the two specific things that boosted his stardom that made him finally seem like bankable at a higher budget like this. But neither of those movies he is the sole guy. Right like both of those films have a team.
[01:02:41] And that was the thing yeah they like wanted him and Russell obviously had wanted to do this forever but also went to Carpenter and was like I want to get while the getting's good. Like they're finally letting me be the guy in 50 million dollar movies.
[01:02:56] I'm in my late 40s. I want to run this as far as I can. And they go to Paramount because they write the script independently they go to Paramount and they're just like yeah. And he's like no rewrites that they're like no no no this is fine.
[01:03:11] And it's like how much are you going to give me 15? No 50. The blank check perhaps huh boys. Yeah I know is this is that the most like our classic example of a blank check.
[01:03:24] Yeah yeah he was like a astonished that they didn't give him any fucking pushback on anything. And he was like they paid me a lot they paid Deborah a lot they paid Kurt a lot. We had top of the line everything they didn't want me to rewrite anything.
[01:03:39] It was like if not the most expensive at least at the tier of the most expensive things that Paramount made that year. And it was like an incredibly bad year for Paramount. Well the year before it they had virtuosity jade vampire in Brooklyn and then Braveheart which
[01:03:58] lost money. What? Because they sold international rights on Braveheart. They fucked up on Braveheart because they did not realize it was going to crush in Europe like foolishly. In America and it was like one of those George Lucas situations where they didn't sign off the merch for kilts.
[01:04:17] Yes yes they gave up the kilts right. So Mel was making those kilts billions. I do think and again I am basically positive on this movie because it's sort of the thing with Carpenter where like the worst shit he makes for one he still basically knows where
[01:04:35] to put the camera better than anybody and all that which is huge. I do think in this miniseries we have always come back to the time like he just functions so well when he has to stretch every dollar and seems to struggle when like you say Griffin
[01:04:55] the studio is just kind of like yeah thumbs up to this script it's about what an invisible man wrote some memoirs I love it like get to work you know and maybe it's just so crucial
[01:05:04] to his creative process to have to think about every single element to death like have to like really really put it through the sort of mental crunch. You know I think John Carpenter is the man and Kurt Russell is the man and so the fact that
[01:05:23] those two the mans like made movies together is just like bliss movie bliss. So happy that happened with the bigger budget though like what you say David like I partly like and how he gets out of his hands when it's bigger budget
[01:05:42] this gets into armchair psychology like we're guilty of sometimes it happens. But if he gets I feel like he has a healthy fuck you attitude towards Hollywood and I'm not going
[01:05:57] to say it's like self sabotage but if he gets a budget and he is in the behind the driver's seat I do with I say this with love but I do think John Carpenter's like relationship with Hollywood
[01:06:13] has always been like if somebody didn't get asked to go to the prom and then the attitude is well I don't want to go to prom anyway. That feels like a lot of times you can't fire me I
[01:06:25] quit mentality yes yeah so maybe when the boss says hey you can do whatever you want there's no beast or whatever to like fight and then creatively something loses juice I don't know.
[01:06:39] I think yeah I think he works off of friction. I think so too and I think this movie is a case of him throwing the prom and realizing like oh I'm way better in a garage band on prom night
[01:06:51] with my buddies than I am going to my own prom. I guess this is what I like about this movie and then we should dip in the plow of two quotes I want to read and what I like
[01:07:00] about this movie is if he's going to throw the prom one time I just want to see what that's like yeah you know you guys yes it's just fun to see maybe it's not a functional prom I'd go to this
[01:07:13] prom are you kidding I go to it be an interesting experience you know and then he still gets his carpenter ideas in there but I do I do think he's someone who like we've been reading these
[01:07:25] sort of ornery like fuck them this place is full of scoundrels quotes for the last five months but it's so clear he cares so much and a lot of that I think is not even self-defensive but self-protective
[01:07:38] but it's also him trying to like stay hungry and on edge you know and I think in the 90s he got just a little tired like I think he just got so run down by the whole thing that either he
[01:07:51] wanted to take the things that he thought would give him the path of least resistance whereas resistance had always given him the juice or he just was like I don't know maybe it's something like
[01:08:01] this I don't know here are two quotes I want to read about what we've been talking about one the numbers are Kurt Russell got 10 million dollars John Carpenter got five million dollars and Deborah Hill got two million dollars the three of them would split 20 percent of
[01:08:19] the film's box office profits so 17 of the 50 million dollars goes to the three of them sort of cashing in off half of you know 25 years of making movies that were undersung at the time
[01:08:31] for which they were underpaid wow I mean doesn't it feel like we've all probably paid five million dollars for a carpenter okay but the other quote I want to read here in opposition everything we're saying this is a Deborah Hill quote from Fangoria when the movie comes out
[01:08:50] she said we've had to make many compromises in shooting this movie for the amount of money we had JJ our researcher put this in bold it's not like somebody suddenly handed us a blank check
[01:09:02] yes he does he does clarify it is amazing this is Deborah I believe said this but I think we're delivering a film that's way beyond the budget and it's going to look even more
[01:09:12] expensive on the screen that's where they fucked up well that's why this movie should be his best movie ever because he's they still thought they were working beyond their means at such a high
[01:09:21] budget you want this to be mad max fury wrote like you want this to be like finally the culture has caught up with him he can do the fever dream that only existed in his mind's eye before
[01:09:33] but it's like you watch movies like this and it's it's shit that like the more and more we go back to it it's not the best movie we've ever heard on the show necessarily but it is like
[01:09:45] if your road is kind of the fundamental blank check movie in the sense that like it absolutely should not fucking work every other example of that happening has been like a guilty pleasure at
[01:09:58] best and a disaster at worst and it's like the filmmaker waiting 20 years to make a movie that seems so ill advised and somehow pulling it off perfectly can I ask you guys as far as
[01:10:10] blank check films go like if every director has their blank check what's the percentage of good ones versus bad ones you're the experts sort of a 5050 proposition that's interesting though yeah what is the blankest check of any of each filmography and did it
[01:10:29] cash versus did it clear versus bounce baby I mean I love all of the film brat late 70s early 80s they all got huge bloated budgets and made insane movies that most of them didn't work right like for scorsese it's new york new york
[01:10:53] which is absolutely a bounce at its time right and 1941 right yeah yeah uh um I mean a couple is just like five of them in a row yeah one from the heart is like a big one then yes uh apocalypse now
[01:11:11] I not to make it like a generational thing but I thought like it's interesting that none of the generation after that and I don't know if it's just growing up in a the late 70s economy where you
[01:11:26] had to like tighten your belt a bit but none of the stalwarts of that have ever come close to making a huge budget movie that doesn't make it is just a colossal failure that
[01:11:42] because the budget was bloated and they made a visionary uh uh piece of shit no it is interesting that I feel like the movies that have that kind of reputation are not made by um
[01:11:55] oturs in the same kind of way you know when you look at shit like waterworld or whatever you know it's like oh like Kevin Reynolds directed that you know and it's like well costner kind
[01:12:06] ghost director or whatever but like if we look back I'm just running in my head through like directors we've covered to try to figure out what the ratio is and it's like Cameron clears right uh uh George Lucas essentially bounces when he comes back
[01:12:23] Shyamalan largely bounces Nolan clears you know like the the modern people even their disasters are not as disastrous as the thing that you're talking about yeah um but yeah none of the like a
[01:12:42] Soderbergs or like Soderbergs biggest disaster is Solaris which is not on the same scale as the things that we're talking about that's true yeah yeah I mean for one it's just right it's harder to trick Hollywood into letting you do whatever you want for whatever amount of money
[01:12:58] you know like in the 70s and 80s people you know things were a little looser and now the blank check movies that we obsess over are things like Lady in the Water like those sort of rare
[01:13:10] circumstances yeah where Hollywood was like I guess that you've only had hit I mean okay right you know like even though the pitch is so straightforwardly ridiculous right that there I oh here we go we're
[01:13:23] gonna do it um or it's like a sequel like the matrix sequels where the Hollywood is like Matrix 2 sounds good like and the Wachowskis are like yeah sure we got a lot of ideas though
[01:13:35] you know like that's often how you sneak a blank check by these days I don't know we don't think about the core concept of our podcast enough I kind of ignore it sometimes yeah I mean I just it's what you guys are saying
[01:13:52] it doesn't scale like carpenter making a five million dollar movie look like a 40 million dollar movie does not mean that he can make a 50 million dollar movie look like a 200 million dollar movie and it's partly just CGI if he's making this at like total recall time right just
[01:14:07] like five years earlier where you're gonna do more matte paintings more practical stuff you're not gonna have much if any CGI maybe it's a different kettle of fish maybe it is just think about what you're saying how much would you love to see that
[01:14:21] sci-fi world of matte paintings of this film and models and preach heavy so good and preach and yeah well yeah the spirit wouldn't be broken but I also think it's like a very specific language of
[01:14:34] knowing how to direct digital effects you know yeah I mean I talk about them way too much but my beloved quarter crew digital guys who do those VFX artists react videos and they are really
[01:14:47] good at breaking down and they've done like the surfing sequence for this movie right and they're like why does this look bad you know they really like get into it and they talk about
[01:14:56] like the number of different things you have to consider when you're doing digital effects that cause your brain to just reject the images on screen you know and it is about the light diffusion or
[01:15:09] the physics being off or like the spatial relations you know or whatever it is there are a lot of like scientific things that go into it whereas I think when you're dealing with things like
[01:15:17] matte paintings and models and optical effects and stuff like that you can get away with being more painterly about it and just going like that's an image and it's a static shot or like just a slow
[01:15:29] zoom so your mind is not being asked anything but to look at a landscape and it's way different than fully functioning interweaving things you know so should we uh Matt you have to take off should
[01:15:44] we just kind of sorry about that guys no no it's fine oh good all good do you have final notes that you want to leave us with Matt as we continue on for another four hours probably in
[01:15:57] your absence no not four hours wait a second here three and a half three and a half that's okay with you paul three and a half sure yeah cool um no it come in two vhs taste right yeah exactly
[01:16:13] nothing specific other than this was a blast I'm so glad to finally get to do this podcast and I hope to another time when I don't have to leave early but what fun right here yeah I understand
[01:16:26] buddy we understand yeah hey hello your baby it's not about my baby I just want to go take a bath say hello to your bath okay yeah also don't don't throw out the baby with the bath water that's
[01:16:38] a common mistake I just thought it was cute that we were gonna say the same thing about about such an old idiom that's a good idiom though and you're both wearing gray t-shirts wow look at
[01:16:50] you too yeah we are I almost were like I pretty much the same glasses and I swapped glasses when I saw that you were wearing these ones see now we're wearing like the same glass yeah oh wow well griffin
[01:17:03] you tell me have you I had this experience and tell me I've had this experience I was once in New York and uh somebody walked up to me and whispered in my they held grab my arm a guy and whispered
[01:17:14] in my ear like I'm cool and we're in the know he was like I love you in Silicon Valley I was like no yeah different different guy I want to be with you in Silicon Valley that's where I love you
[01:17:31] my goal is to love you in Silicon Valley uh yes no I've done that before I've also gotten people on the street going hey Big Bang Theory oh yes yep it's another one where it's uh oh it's so
[01:17:43] insulting what I but this is like a valid one you you just want to go with those cases you want to go like which one or are you are you just saying I look like a human embodiment of that show are
[01:17:52] you just reminding me I auditioned for that show and didn't get it yeah I just agree I agree yeah yeah uh then I uh say uh write me over for a titter Matt thank you so much thank you guys
[01:18:09] it was my pleasure it was really really fun it was lovely to meet bye bye Matt sorry the last thing you heard me say was the weird it might be over for dinner thing I will bye I love I love you
[01:18:21] in Silicon Valley and every other territory of these United States and thank you you too say bye guys bye bye okay now let's get into it let's really fucking I'm still here I'm still here I'm
[01:18:37] that was a little quick that was a little quick all right I'm leaving now hi my daughter over here it's just like it's so good to be off that dumb podcast Matt no Matt you didn't disconnect
[01:18:49] you've got a press leave meeting it's a two step process is it just me or is Matt getting more and more handsome oh he's already logged on I was I was hoping he was gonna hear that I'll never hear
[01:19:05] it there's no way for him to ever hear this okay Paul time to really fuck cut loose what do you really think of this movie hot seat time if Matt like called me up and FaceTimed with me before
[01:19:21] I hadn't been like you gotta have my back about liking this movie man I'm like okay okay they're gonna be coming at us like buzz saw us okay we've got to be united front here we're representing
[01:19:34] Los Angeles for this escape from LA uh no no uh yeah my feelings uh continue to be the same I do not mean to be anti-LA when I say this and I think I sort of made this complaint before but
[01:19:47] well I remember at the time even as a kid like I was I think I was 10 when this movie came out being like escape from LA really that's like what they came up with and it's the same way I feel
[01:19:58] every time they announce a spin-off of a crime show where they're like you love NCIS and I'm like yeah I love NCIS they're like what if they were in Los Angeles like it's like I always am surprised
[01:20:11] that they just brazenly do an LA spin-off yeah where you see everything already uh in every show all the all the shows are in LA where do we need that? Crocodile Dundee got brought to Los Angeles. That was important and we did that on the Patreon
[01:20:28] we did cover the Crocodile Dundee franchise on our Patreon the trilogy and it I will say it's an improvement to Croc 2. I don't know if you've seen it. I actually think it's the second best
[01:20:41] Crocodile Dundee movie I don't know if that's a controversial opinion but for me of the CD3 oh my god we should we should go through some of the plot a little bit or just at least run down
[01:20:54] the segments of this movie. Yeah definitely this is a plotty movie although it has that escape from New York thing of like it's just little vignettes it's like right and then he goes here and he
[01:21:04] meets this guy and then he goes here and he meets this guy. Dude like character by character which I think would be fun to do but I just want to read this carpenter thing from Starlog
[01:21:12] where he's talking about how much women have had told him over the years how much they love Snake Plisken. It's like one of the things that women have said to me over the years about this
[01:21:24] movie is that what got them really attracted to this character was the fact that he's inaccessible to them and didn't try to get them. Snake doesn't care about anything but staying alive for another 60 seconds. He doesn't care about hurting you, he doesn't care about helping you,
[01:21:38] he doesn't care about taking you to bed, all he cares about is moving on. Wow he's the ultimate bad boy. And I do think that is a thing this film retains right like I
[01:21:51] think a lot of times this you know decades later sequel when the the filmmaker and the star in very different places in their career they kind of sometimes can misidentify what the
[01:22:02] core defining aspect of the character is and I do think that's what works in this movie's favor is it is still this thing of Snake Plisken being like fuck you. Or he didn't try to soften him by
[01:22:14] like he's got a daughter or a son or yeah yeah yeah. Right and you find out a little more about him than you did in the first movie but barely he's still pretty much a mystery and he's just
[01:22:27] he's like he just has to keep moving he's like a shark you know and that his motives are always very unclear other than the fact that you know that he doesn't trust anybody. Right.
[01:22:36] Is Snake still cool in this movie? Or is it just that Snake is so cool in Escape from New York and Kurt Russell is cool so there's enough residual coolness? Is he like newly cool in this movie?
[01:22:50] I think he's still cool in this movie. I think the difference is that Escape from New York the movie is as cool as he is. And in this it's a little bit of a like if you're so cool why are
[01:23:00] you at this party? Sure. You know? I asked myself that question a couple of times watching the movie last night of like is Snake cool right now? Like when I saw the now in that year 1996 seeing the
[01:23:18] Snake tattoo on his stomach I kind of thought like is that that's a little dorky that'd be like if a guy's you know nickname was tugboat and then he gets a tattoo of a tugboat you're
[01:23:30] like yep that is your nickname dude. It's almost like the framing of this being the movie that he's in turns him into Wooderson you know where you're like why are you hanging out with high schoolers?
[01:23:41] You keep on telling me how cool you are. And he's wearing that kind of like long black duster there's points where I was like just complete the ensemble Snake and put on a goddamn
[01:23:52] fedora if you want to look and hang out in a certain corner of the library. Well even the music it's bad rock music that like corny people listen to. Yes. You know like the fashion is so
[01:24:09] corny like he's so out of touch he really is. It's when those drive by those people driving those gang members driving by in a car shooting at each other yeah and I was like this is 2013 at
[01:24:25] it's worst the cutting-edge music they're listening to is like late era grunge. Yeah I mean it's like it's the problem of I actually think the score to this movie rips and you have Carpenter bringing
[01:24:37] back his original theme and then working again with Shirley Walker who did Memoirs and Visual Man is able to give it the sort of like full orchestral sweep and majesty but then anytime
[01:24:48] they do a needle drop it's like a fucking like Ozfest reject. Yes that really sticks out like a sore thumb yeah. Yeah and is it cool to answer David's aggressively uncool. Really uncool. Paul you
[01:25:02] have you have to weigh in on the thing we talked about in the escape from New York episode which is where do you think the snake tattoo ends very important. Do you think it covers his whole
[01:25:11] penis some is it coiled around it. Does it not touch the penis is it just kind of you know cut off and I'm so glad that Matt's gone because this but this is the kind of thing we couldn't ask Matt.
[01:25:27] But Matt has his like amazing HR Geiger impression so I feel like this is a Geiger area would be like this snake tail wraps around I think it yeah goes from midsection down past the genitals
[01:25:47] across the tank. It wraps underneath. Oh all the way. Wow. And then completes with a final like stardust sparkle on his asshole. Wow well that's good now here's the thing did you guys
[01:26:02] notice in the beginning when what's his name is reading through all the info on Pliskin right you're kind of getting like a key. Yeah exactly yeah you're getting like an update on like kind of where he's
[01:26:14] been at since the last movie and his full name is listed as SD Bob Pliskin yeah which I'm assuming is short for Snake Dick Bob Pliskin. So he's got definite snake dick energy yeah I think it's in the
[01:26:33] name yeah it's right there it's right there how silly of us to even you can just tell from how he walks into a room that he has big snake dick energy. You can hear the rattle on this man
[01:26:45] a mile away. So right that's the I mean what it is Jamie Lee Curtis doing the narration again right at the beginning yes which I think they do a really good job of setting up yeah yeah she's
[01:26:57] uncredited narrator in both of these you set up this sort of like moralistic America LA has become what disconnected from the United States it's a hell zone and then you have Cliff Robertson
[01:27:10] as this Reagan S president and his daughter Utopia played by AJ Langer a legend a legend right honorable countess of Devin is that true previous yeah she married the Earl of Devin in 2004 so if you go to AJ Langer's Wikipedia page it correctly identifies her as the right
[01:27:33] honorable countess of Devin wait the Earl what's an Earl it's like a kind of lore you know it's a fancy British it's a lando aristocrat well he's above a lord it's better than a lord
[01:27:46] yes she is the the the countess of Devin so just congratulations to AJ Langer Ryan from my so-called life obviously yes and I know her mainly from because I was in a so-called life head but
[01:28:01] people under the people under the stairs is what I know yes yes that was sort of her debut right she does this she does meet the Deedles I believe she's the female lead in
[01:28:14] meet the Deedles I think she plays a park ranger or something and then and then she takes like a 14 year break from acting and then did private practice a Grey's Anatomy huh but I guess I guess
[01:28:27] she she had the business of the manner to take care of right yeah she's the freaking countess of Devin okay I have to say she's not the actor I would have predicted had buried into royalty
[01:28:39] but I guess I wouldn't put money down a megan markle either it's just funny when someone who's like the fourth lead on a TV show is like oh they're royalty now yep yeah it ain't no grace Kelly
[01:28:51] was it Casper van D and also married into royalty he's royal and so he's like dutch royalty or something isn't I don't know anyway look griffin take us through the plot for crying out loud I'm sorry he's he was married to Catherine oxenberg who is the daughter
[01:29:08] of princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia all right but they're divorced and remarried okay so the the movie opens with this jamie lee kurat's intro setting up the rules of this fucking broken society earthquake shatters Los Angeles turns into an island he declares the present declares
[01:29:31] Los Angeles to be sinful and punished by God and then he's elected president for the rest of his life he relocates the capital to his hometown of Lynchburg Virginia why could I not get the
[01:29:44] word Virginia out there but his daughter falls for querovo jones who is the sort of che Guevara figure of this world I guess there's also a little bit of a sort of patty hearst idea going on here
[01:30:02] right because she makes the video where she's like I'm with them now and all that and so they've stolen a weapon like a satellite weapon that knocks out technology snakes job is to get
[01:30:15] that it's not to rescue the president's daughter right that's the subversion is you think it's like I have to save my daughter she's been brainwashed by these terrible people and the president's like
[01:30:24] find my daughter so you could take this fucking weapon from her and then shoot her point blank she's a fucking hassle yeah yeah that's his mission wow now snake of course doesn't want to
[01:30:34] do it he is least for everything in the world is being called out to go on missions this guy hates that uh and he knows the trick they bring you in for the meeting you say you don't want to
[01:30:43] do it then they inject a thing in your neck so he's like too bad I'm not going to let you hit me in the neck again and they were like actually too bad for you we scratched you five minutes ago
[01:30:52] I have to admit that's infinitely less cool the flashback to just a nail scratch on the back of his hand yeah although I do appreciate the they're they're trying with this sequel
[01:31:05] they're not just gonna yeah you know I I like I like that it's it's not as good as the last idea but I like that it's a virus to do something different I like that's a virus and I like that it
[01:31:16] it's like too late it's already in there yes yep that was right and here's the antidote you got 48 hours whatever it is 10 hours she's got 10 hours you're paired up with Eddie Murphy and I always think people only have 48 hours to do anything it is the best ticking clock
[01:31:35] he's got 10 hours I apologize you got two two nights two days sure yeah perfect you get one night to compare to the other night to see how the characters have grown and changed right exactly
[01:31:46] you can have ability to compare and contrast and you can have two kind of like before bed sort of quiet conversation scenes that way you know it's like you know it's on it's
[01:31:54] getting real low two rise and shines what's two rise and shines yes that reminds me of uh when I guess when um Owen Wilson did i spy uh and read the script he was like I I love the script
[01:32:11] but where's the bathtub scene and everybody's like what's the bathtub seat it's like in Shanghai noon when they have the bathtub seat that they they bond before they go into the final act as buddies
[01:32:25] I was like that's how he thinks I it is a really when I watch movies I go they didn't have a like a satisfying enough bathtub scene or they ignored the bathtub also the bathtub scene in Shanghai
[01:32:38] noon fucking rules it's the highlight of the movie it's like the thing that clicks the the whole film into next year um it's the Shanghai light it is the Shanghai I like this opening sort of cat mouse thing of snake thinking like I've been through one
[01:32:56] of these escape from movies I know how to fucking end this thing shooting them and Stacy Keech being like we gave you a clip full of blanks we fucking we've watched that movie
[01:33:05] as well we know the snake pliskin rules you know he drops down into the sewer the people there have the guns pointed at him uh the holograms I like the hologram trick the hologram thing is fun
[01:33:17] they use it the right amount of times yes yes right because you use it a lot at the beginning and then you let it like dip out of your mind for fucking 80 minutes so when it comes back in the
[01:33:26] end it's it's slipped away there've been so many other ideas since then and beyond that uh griff we have to mention Stacy Keech uh who's sort of playing the Lee Van Cleef role in this
[01:33:37] movie he has the hair that he has in body bags basically and and you very briefly bring back uh Robert Carradine as well he brings back like his two body bags leading men Paul have you ever seen
[01:33:50] body bags though like Twilight Zoni rip off that uh Carpenter Bade for Showtime in the 90s yeah that's sort of his like uh throwing his hat the ring uh Tales to the Crip right for Showtime where he
[01:34:03] plays a corpse who also works at a morgue I saw it once and it was on its premiere night in a hotel room with my family and my uh parents are into thriller horror suspense stuff and so it's like
[01:34:24] this might be a little too intense but let's sit and watch it and the thing I haven't seen it since I remember the car lowering on the guy oh yeah and splattering him and his like blood shooting out of
[01:34:36] like an overhead shot of blood spraying out of his mouth um and I like John Carpenter as the like Cripkeeper I remember he was like that performance is great but but the reason David brought it up
[01:34:48] is Stacy Keech's segment in that which Carpenter directed as well is he's a bald man who cannot get over his baldness keeps on looking for solutions he finally finds a radical miracle treatment being
[01:35:00] advertised on tv that ends up being like an alien transplant they put alien worms into your skull and they take over your head and then Stacy Keech in this movie essentially has the exact same to pay
[01:35:17] except tied back and he's got a ponytail and all that yes but good casting like Lee van Cleef gone you need a modern analog Stacy Keech is a fun choice he does the job well um also speaking of
[01:35:31] the outside I uh the the outside his theatrical release stuff like body bags um a couple weeks ago I watched uh because I was jonesed for a halloween fix but not halloween I watched that uh
[01:35:46] Lauren Hutton yeah someone's watching a movie yeah holy oh my gosh I loved it I mean I had uh I bought it on like a box set with like other Warner Brothers horror 80s releases watched it then but
[01:36:01] then rewatched it yeah a couple weeks ago holy moly it's really strong it's really strong halloween hitch cocky kind of thriller just really watchable it also goes back to like everything
[01:36:11] that uh Matt was saying which is just like Jesus Christ that guy did that with like fucking 14 days of filming on like a tv movie budget in three sets you know like that's where carpenter's amazing where
[01:36:23] it's like how could you possibly make a compelling movie out of that and then this is at the exact opposite end of the spectrum not in terms of quality but in terms of like what if you let
[01:36:34] the guy do anything he wanted whether or not he had the ability to pull it off um yeah okay so then the first proper person he meets when he gets into the la of it all is uh peter fonda
[01:36:48] really right yes who's just because he his submarine watch is unsure peter fonda's just there being like hey man what's up welcome to la yeah uh peter fonda of course playing character named pipeline
[01:37:02] yeah sick who's a who's a a surf dog name with christian name john pipeline um uh he's of course a year before yulie's gold before you come back yeah uh he's uh covered in acid rain burns on his face
[01:37:25] uh yes but he's just always looking for a tasty wave yeah i like i like peter fonda showing up and stuff in general uh i like i like a little dash of fonda well i'm glad you i'm glad you like
[01:37:39] because it's never gonna happen again david unfortunately why is he's dead i yeah this is i'm just saying i mean you put present tense i like him showing up on things i'm just thinking of
[01:37:50] like the like post this like the limey 310 to yuma oh i'm trying to there's another one i'm thinking where it's just like just a little fonda nothing crazy wild hogs yeah wild hogs sure that's definitely
[01:38:04] the other thing i was thinking of does he do like an easy rider wink i've never seen 2007 is ghost rider and wild hogs like it's like two different bites at the apple of like oh i'm commenting on
[01:38:16] the fact that i'm the easy rider guy and one it's wild hogs and he's like presented as like the platonic ideal of what these guys are trying to be and then ghost rider he's like i'm the devil
[01:38:28] on a bicycle he's messes mesistopheles or whatever right he is the devil uh anyway yeah so he meets peter fonda but really just to say hello i feel like the first person he really meets
[01:38:41] is mapped to the stars eddie right yes which is much like cabbie it's sort of like a quick meeting a little color from a guy who's going to keep on popping up again every 15 minutes or so
[01:38:52] yeah and who is uh just i guess on a meta level or whatever uh i'm not using that word right but whoever does uh but like he's like uh mark zuckerberg he's the one guy who uses that correctly
[01:39:04] no we don't it's our caron he uses the word meta correctly a character uh like a character a very beloved character actor like it's also slotting a right actor for an actress harry dean stan
[01:39:18] ernes borogne nine who are the equivalents of the 90s yeah yeah that's the thing he's sort of a combo of cabbie and brains because obviously he's a little more of a bad guy uh or whatever
[01:39:31] he's a little more slimy than cabbie is because cabbie's just like i'm the cabbie i love this i live with the apocalypse it's great look at my head i masturbate a lot right um and so right so he's
[01:39:46] kind yeah he's kind of a combo of those two things he sells he sells i don't know he sells like audio guides right he sells audio maps to the stars his gimmick yeah this is also when
[01:39:56] they're starting the whole like everyone knows snake and kind of recognizes him right and also it was kind of tracking his career as a criminal like he was an athlete kind of and they're all
[01:40:08] referencing cleveland all the time i felt like that um was a funny riff on hollywood in los angeles like it's focused on celebrities so it's like i know that guy who's that up even including the joke of
[01:40:25] twice somebody says you're shorter than i thought you would be which is like the classic thing kurt russell and stillone has to hear right like yeah i don't know if that was just i liked it because
[01:40:36] it added lore to snake but it also seemed like a funny uh ribbon hollywood i agree i agree bushemi also is just like this is when he's just like every cruising right so many yeah everyone
[01:40:53] wants a little bit shemmy in there yeah i mean uh this is fargo this is same year as fargo same year as fargo right and then treas lounge he makes his like directing debut the same year
[01:41:05] kansas city is the same year this is coming after the year of billy mass and living in oblivion things to do in denver when you're dead desperado what a career year before that hudsucker proxy
[01:41:16] airheads pulp fiction like he's just kind of unstoppable right now yeah and the year after that this is khan air but it's the thing with con him being in khan air is the year after
[01:41:28] is when he goes from being the guy you see in every art movie the every american indie movie to the guy you suddenly see in every blockbuster to you know do a little comedy
[01:41:37] like that that's that's the big the big jumpy makes there is the guy who right when it becomes not just film fans movie lovers recognize this person like when you know my parents are movie
[01:41:52] lovers but like a steve bushemi is somebody who when they come on screen they love the scene now because they love steve bushemi i mean it is just like such a great magic trick
[01:42:04] someone in our blank check reddit was talking that someone started thread going like can you define what the differences between character actor and movie star and they were getting sort of confused about the way we use those two terms and when we sometimes say like someone like collin
[01:42:16] ferrell is a character actor who is misinterpreted as a movie star or someone else's vice versa or whatever and they're like what are these distinctions and like who gets to be an a-list movie star based on bankability when there are other people like steve bushemi
[01:42:29] who like everyone knows and loves but isn't considered a leading man in that kind of way outside of boardwalk empire and someone in the comments said like i used to work for like
[01:42:40] you know like a a a test focus company or like a market research company and we would like chart q ratings of different actors and stuff and steve bushemi always ranked as high as anybody
[01:42:53] like it was kind of incredible where you'd go like well like tom cruise of course you know like harris and for whatever and it was like steve bushemi everyone knows steve bushemi he transcends all ages all races all socioeconomic classes everyone loves him everyone has a good
[01:43:08] association and not just a that guy everyone's like oh steve bushemi they know him by name and as i said paul like he shows up everyone gets excited and whether it's in a fucking collin brothers movie or a sandler comedy or a brockheimer action film you're like
[01:43:23] we're getting a bushemi bump i mean he got a song with the remember the she likes me for me yeah not because i look like leonardo or the guy who played in fargo i think his name was steve
[01:43:37] he knows he knows he's just looking for a ride i know it's actually root do the work to rhyme with bushemi yeah you could have figured it out and david i loved when you're like a dash of
[01:43:50] bushemi or a dash of fonda yeah i imagine like a sprico like somebody getting like a cheese grater and just having like a block of bushemi they just kind of like you don't want too much
[01:44:08] he was okay that's enough that's enough bushemi thank you like early 2000s gun to my head steve bushemi is my favorite actor no hesitation sort of ghost world steve bushemi i just think at that moment when i'm like you know like really coming into my like
[01:44:23] film nerd boy shit i'm just like this guy's the best he's like the best through line between every type of movie i like and he's always good i'll uh only uh do this because we're
[01:44:36] celebrating the man and talking about him uh he did a directed episode of uh love so i got to work with him for like a week to like 10 days and he um was amazing because yeah when you think
[01:44:51] about all the directors he worked with you do have sort of a moment where you're like well what he's doing in some ways is the sum total of all of his experiences working with these
[01:45:01] directors and knowing what works for him but also what he sees works for others and the thing i notice and this isn't like a uh and everybody else is bad because they don't do this it was just the
[01:45:13] unique thing he would do when he would direct he would walk over and just like have such a soft spoken conversation with the actors that only the actors could possibly hear right it was very
[01:45:27] cool he actually knew the frequency right to speak at yeah he did the magic castle episode i'm look i looked it up that's such a good episode oh yeah thank you yeah but uh i just i just going back
[01:45:39] down to his work and acting like i do think that sort of like gentleness is something that's like he's not just cast as the creep scumbag well he's filled with contradictions that's the thing
[01:45:53] it's like when you cast into play sweet there's something a little creepy about him when he cast him play creepy there's something kind of sweet about him you know he's simultaneously scary and
[01:46:01] funny i mean it's like that thing of just being like right he was like a fireman you know like there are all these things about him that are like hard to reconcile i mean it's also i'm just looking at
[01:46:11] his fucking imdb here as a director but you forget like oh right he directed leap day williams like maybe my favorite episode of 30 rock right he did pinebear and so try haven't seen yet but i
[01:46:23] know is the one that everyone cites as being like the best episode oh sopranos yeah it's the it's the best sort of it's one of the best made episodes of pranos beyond anything else
[01:46:31] right like not only has he directed on so many big shows but like in many of the cases he arguably did the best episode ever wow good point yeah uh he fucking rules he's the best and i love this
[01:46:43] character and my fucking zoom background which we spent five minutes talking about before he recorded is a model which i wish there was more of this in the movie a physical model bushemi and the hand glider that looks somehow both exactly like stibbushemi and like buster keith
[01:47:00] with his little pork by hat but um yeah i'm all in on maps the star eddie i think he's like a fun character and i think it's a good what we're saying like good analog stibbushemi is like the
[01:47:09] orc erinist borgnine you know harridine stan like he occupies that same sort of legendary tier and then he he also meets teslima played by valeria galeno the heart of the who is she's the
[01:47:24] heart of the fuck uh who right in the interviews they really talk about her as being a really crucial character and it's not like she's good yeah but she does die you know before the third
[01:47:35] act even begins really um yes look it's similar to the adrian barbo character but she makes even less of an impact i would argue and it's not galeno's fault at all it's a little um uh
[01:47:50] gorly talks about this on his james bonding podcast that with every post 71 bond film the press and promotion for the bond girl always is but i'm a different bond right my bond girl is blank
[01:48:06] and uh it sounds like that's what they were trying to do a little bit of trickery in the promotion there too of like she is the heart of this movie as brevin said right but like as we
[01:48:16] pronounce like snake doesn't fuck right snake doesn't have time to fuck uh and it's the same kind of thing of like finding someone who's a little more vulnerable who he's maybe starting to open up to
[01:48:26] a little bit or at least seem to show some level of if not affection appreciation and respect for who then gets like killed off pretty unseratmoniously she's goodness i mean there's that wild
[01:48:38] stat with uh velary galeno who i incorrectly in a previous episode said was uh i believe the girl from better off dead i always get her and diane franklin confused who's one of the medieval babes
[01:48:54] in bill and ted uh because velary galeno is is hot shots and big top hee we but do you know that she's one of only rain man sure do you know that she is one of only three actresses to have
[01:49:06] one best actress from the venice film festival twice holy whoa yes absolutely uh that's cool i i want i want to get the three here it is uh this is what's wild about it uh what should we call it uh it's
[01:49:26] betty davis won for two movies in the same year marked woman and kid gala had those wait no am i i would need a count that because that just means they had betty davis
[01:49:38] fever i'm sorry the three the three that count are surely mcclain isabel upair and valeria galena whoa and the galeno movies are because they're not uh uh they're italian movies yeah a tale of love and per amore vostro
[01:49:57] yeah some movie called ana which has a different name in italian right and tail look but she was just in portia of aladion fire and she killed it yeah uh i feel like i just saw her
[01:50:07] in something else maybe it was escape from la is the thing i just saw her in all right she's in the morning show she plays really uh yeah she plays like the new girlfriend of steve correll
[01:50:17] when he like moves to europe uh in the morning show season two check it out apple tv plus dot com um whatever however it is you check that out uh she is also playing a muslim in this movie
[01:50:31] she's like i was a the only muslim in south dakota or whatever like that's kind of her line you know it's all weird everything about her in this movie you're like i have so many questions and the
[01:50:41] movie's like too bad she's dead snakes got a movie's got to play basketball i was i i really uh love her as an actor and like uh i think she's really great as a comic actor because
[01:50:53] especially in those hot shots movies but big top pee wee as well just like playing something so straight and genuine uh like there's no winking when she it's like really spectacular and
[01:51:07] my heart broke because i never knew she was in a movie around this era i would have watched it like so i saw her name go by on the screen at the beginning i was like wait was that really
[01:51:17] and then when she popped up in this like jone jet hairdo uh as this like uh yeah i guess it was like a two and a half three scene character there was something strange too about how she would like
[01:51:29] she was kind of like following him like a feral cat that was falling in love no it is like after this she almost exclusively goes back to italian films like she'll make like one english
[01:51:40] language film every five years maybe that's where i lost touch yeah you know i'm going to a multiplex in susan ila what the fuck am i gonna see this um but we should not gloss over i know we've we've
[01:51:54] referenced it but bruce cambal as the search in general of everly hills in sort of uh frightening makeup right because valergalino is with him for that uh tonight she's a part of that right
[01:52:07] that's sort of what matt was talking about about wanting more like la shit in in the movie like the roaming band of executives i like that sequence because of this idea of like what happens if society
[01:52:19] has collapsed and people are still they're not going to be able to kick their addiction to plastic surgery so they essentially become zombies needing to harvest new parts for new surgeries i love that sequence and then like i thought there was some real like gross grotesque stuff
[01:52:33] that just like was going by quickly on screen i was like hey respect that's awesome you're just like you know this thing holds up and is weird and gross uh yeah thinking about it though with that being
[01:52:44] like the soul sort of like high culture correct me if i'm wrong but that might be the only target high culture target about los angeles not saying yeah is filled with high culture it's
[01:52:58] just it shots are kind of coming at um uh street gangs i i'm not saying john carpenter is a toxic bad at whatsoever i'm just saying like the targets in this movie are like oh you could do
[01:53:15] um i i guess you have the big baddie president but you could do like what is kind of the like questionable sources of power in los angeles yeah yes this movie could do more la specifics especially
[01:53:29] being directed by a guy who's gotten so burned out on the industry you imagine he has more sort of like pointed barbs he could have thrown at the culture the the story i just
[01:53:40] want to say very quickly is that uh they both uh carpenter but even more so kurt russell wanted bruce cambell for this because they loved the evil dead movies they were like fans and they were like
[01:53:53] he'd be like a fun addition to this world and as bruce cambell tells it uh when uh bruce cambell stood up on set the first thing kyrusl ever said to him was hey bruce say workshed
[01:54:07] and he was like what and it's there's this weird cut in evil dead 2 a movie we'll never talk about on this podcast where because of the edit he says workshed weirdly and why it russell
[01:54:20] now movie star apparently was like an evil dead fanatic as a kid and got his dad really into the movie and i think why russell was on set with him and kurt was like i'm gonna get him to say
[01:54:32] workshed for you but bruce cambell was like blown away that he not only was like that big of a fan of his work but that he knew sort of like the esoteric of the fan the sort of like sort of
[01:54:43] like a little love it it was like a meme right an early meme was that that word delivery yeah you know i will say this about early meme you made me think of like um one thing about this
[01:54:55] movie is it's good to remember that people probably well i guess bhs existed but like fans wouldn't wouldn't have been as deep no with you know like this the whole thing about the movies now is like the fans just rewatch things it's so everything's on youtube
[01:55:08] it's easy to like see clips and have this total recall for so much stuff and back then it was sort of like people remembered the vibes of escape from new york and the vibes of snake
[01:55:17] but they don't need i guess all of the crazy callbacks that like a legacy sequel would do now and i wonder if it's because it's from the maker himself so you're a little you're maybe put
[01:55:30] the brakes more on the self-referential stuff whereas a ju-ju abrum's like feels like he has to do fan servicey thing because he's not the holder the keeper of the well the jedi scroll texts yeah
[01:55:45] but i also feel like nowadays the guys fall into it sometimes you know still where they're just like i guess i gotta play the hits that's the expectation i mean i i see so much weird like
[01:55:57] language around that of like oh this filmmaker proved that they're a real fan they put the things in to show us the real fans that they too are a real fan and they get it and it's like movies
[01:56:07] are trying to pass this test with like the the fans who have appointed themselves guardians of of the property or whatever i mean there's this whole thing that like jj dug up about how
[01:56:19] badly isaac haze wanted to be in the movie and carpenter and deborahill were like you died and he's like i don't care i want to be back and they're like no you're dead there's no way around
[01:56:31] it we say you got shot by the president you're done and he was like well maybe didn't have to die he comes back from the dead they they nursed his wounds he comes back in a dream sequence
[01:56:43] and like helik ourt are both like no and it's like it would have been so easy to just go like he got a lot better you know and bring back Isaac haze and get a cheap pop from it
[01:56:54] a year later they'd be bring rippley back in alien resurrection with some cloning right right and it's just like he had no interest in playing that game i'll come up with new characters who are fun
[01:57:02] in their own ways which the equivalent to him in this really is the pamp greer character which we can talk about is the least successful aspect of this whole movie even more so than the special effects he wanted to play this character he lobbied to play car jack
[01:57:19] okay which would have been wait even worse yeah that wouldn't work yeah i don't think that would be he wanted to he wanted to fucking play or her shea lapamas with a wig on or whatever well
[01:57:32] i'm glad that didn't happen like uh yeah like i'm trying to think of what's a sequel where they're like we love this character so much this actor so much we're gonna have him play a second character
[01:57:46] in the city slickers too oh sure where you play example that immediately comes to life right or the brother i could that's how you do it right i rewatch city slickers two uh our city stickers
[01:57:59] one recently okay okay all right i'm sorry david just gave me the most disgusted face i was i was you rewatch city slickers two decade of friendship i've rewatched city slickers one recently jack
[01:58:11] pons is in like nine minutes of that movie i had forgotten that he dies within the first hour of the film and that he's introduced late and that he essentially has three scenes like he has the
[01:58:23] one big monologue i forgot how little of it he's the one the one big monologue it's like the one thing the one big but it is it's that one scene and that scene happens at like minute 42
[01:58:35] and then like five minutes later he's dead and then the main plot kicks in i always remember his death being like the big act three thing yeah same it's i haven't watched that in a maybe i
[01:58:47] should die very very early in that film anyway the pampere things a fucking disaster uh it is just like you know it's look i love pampere i like watching her any movie it's it's the whole
[01:58:59] fuck and we don't need to go down this rabbit hole but it's like so much of the stupid alarmist fucking shit that happens from transphobes still to this day i think is rooted in how trans people
[01:59:12] were depicted uh in the 90s more so than ever i feel like where they're always treated as like con artists and tricksters you know when people go tie themselves as in knots over this idea of like
[01:59:25] a guy's putting on a wig so he can sneak into a woman's bathroom and see them peeing and shit which is like not a real life thing i think it's always because these comedies in these action
[01:59:34] movies always present it as like some comedic device some dishonesty you know someone trying to like it's their sort of own version of like that's a good witness protection or whatever uh you know they're often villainous uh i mean even something like the crying game which has you
[01:59:51] know comparatively a far more sympathetic portrayal it still is a movie that is hung on the twist you won't believe this fucking twist the twist is the misrepresentation of this person you know
[02:00:05] so it's like you know fucking obviously judging it through the modern prism it's not like this movie is solely responsible for this entire phenomenon but it's like it's one of those things
[02:00:16] that just like i'm watching this movie i'm vibing on a pair of silly as it is bums me out we get to that fucking sequence especially when he's like feeling up her legs and making dick jokes
[02:00:24] and stuff it fucking sucks it sucks no good and also like i think a sophisticated audience member in 1996 watched that would have been like this sucks yeah obviously there's a zillion
[02:00:39] movies from the serah that have that kind of like the the move of the sort of like whoa wait a second you know but yeah i do i do think as much as it's easy to say like hey you know it was like 30 years
[02:00:52] ago 20 you know yeah at the time there were plenty of people who saw that and rolled their eyes like it's sort of worth noting you know what and i was i'm sorry i wasn't saying griffin uh wasn't
[02:01:03] saying no i know i just i know it wasn't like i'm just yeah yeah yeah i'm just saying like the defense that a lot of people and it's it's not untrue obviously that moors change in the way the
[02:01:14] movies and culture deals with things change obviously that is true but like this the whole sequence the voice you know like the whole way everything is executed it's just it sucks
[02:01:25] and just like it's i i no and i think you're making good point david which is like you know aside from the the the social ugliness of it it also i think by 1996 was pretty fucking hacky
[02:01:39] like this isn't an interesting thing a move for a movie to play you know and if you go to like the 70s you have more interesting portrayals of trans people in doug afternoon and shit
[02:01:51] by the 90s you're in this corridor of like ace ventura and this movie yeah i mean there's movies like flawless like not that they're like entirely you know there's movies that are trying
[02:02:00] flawless comes after this but yes flawless is an example i thought of as one of the few movies in the 90s that feels like it makes a real effort they know like there's an
[02:02:08] episode of er that's sort of famous that like you watch it now and you're like this is 80% of the way to basically you know like you know there's things like that but flawless is like
[02:02:17] a 70% movie yeah sure i do think that this movie it's just like lla future la is crazy man we've got you know x we've got that you know and then this is just trying to sort of be on
[02:02:31] that energy and it's and it's a bit silly oh yeah the attitude of like los angeles is a city full of fruits and nuts exactly that's like the final punctuation mark of that idea is that scene
[02:02:46] right you got you know what if valeria galina was a a muslim and uh pamp creer was uh transgendered you know uh super spy or whatever from the mind of john carpet right but yeah i mean
[02:03:00] this this the fucking uh pamp creer uh sort of pat down sequence is sandwiched in between the surf boarding and the hand gliding uh yes uh yeah oh right that's like when the
[02:03:17] movies can be in the basket really yeah it can be really strange is when they're in relief to some just like truly bonkers stuff like that because the movie i feel like is maybe that's why
[02:03:30] it felt like the brakes kind of got hit there because it was it's such a i mean it's a it's an anti-authority movie but it's pretty giddy and it's like anti-authoritarianism like it's
[02:03:42] having fun yeah you have three kind of like roller coaster sequences there regardless of how well they are or are not executed you know it's like yeah do you guys notice that funny like pg-13 i's version
[02:03:58] of the line from the thing when the head walks away and he says you got to be fucking kidding me which is amazing so funny in this when they're like surfing down the ravine buchemi drives by and he goes
[02:04:14] you gotta be kidding me it's like oh yeah brought it back and made it worse it is weird that buchemi is just casually driving in that scene when there's a tsunami like he doesn't notice he doesn't
[02:04:28] look behind him until uh snake serves us like you'd think you'd be like oh shit there's a column of water coming towards the spatial relations make like no sense but i just i just like that he keeps on
[02:04:42] like like he's a little bit like fucking benny in the mummy where he just like keeps on showing up again and you don't know whether he's gonna fuck you over or help you right but he's indestructible
[02:04:52] he's like a cockroach um the only sequence we haven't really talked about is the basketball not that there's like a ton to talk about there it's just it's just a funny little like moment for the
[02:05:02] movie to slow down in a way right you know what i mean like did you know yeah did you know that like during that like because that's obviously like a the coliseum gladiator fighting i didn't know this
[02:05:14] but apparently that basketball gladiator kind of in the round or the coliseum scene is what inspired ridley scott to make gladiator really he saw that and he was like no i'm kidding i'm
[02:05:26] kidding we took you at fucking face value it's like really all over again no but it is it's like you're doing the the slag fight again right it's like you need another the equivalent of this
[02:05:38] but it's just weird that it's like ha ha ha ha you're doomed now here are the rules you have 10 seconds per shot like right like that it's just weirdly specific even though there's like machine guns trained at him the rules are really funny it's like
[02:05:55] you do want somebody at that like at every uh you know cocktail party or a friend gathering where you're playing a party you want somebody who's like okay here are the steps and directions
[02:06:07] because he really does uh command authority um so but yeah i do like that i just i i like that it's sort of hard in a mundane way that i guess that's what the problem you know it also i just
[02:06:20] realized i love the comparison you made earlier about that that it is like a video game where you have the 10 second you get the hand and as long as it leaves the hand but uh it also reminds me
[02:06:30] of like a basket uh a kid a group of kids come up with the back in the backyard where they're okay you get 10 seconds uh the ball can leave the hand on the 10 second but then you have to run back
[02:06:46] like uh yes it feels like a basketball rules uh i also i think russell plays really well without betraying the thing that carpenter talked about of like st. plisken only cares about making it
[02:06:58] through the next 60 seconds the scene where he finally like comes face to face with utopia and he she realizes that not only was he not sent there to save her but that he was sent to kill her
[02:07:12] there's like sort of the silent exchange where you see snake doing the calculation of like well i don't believe in this person getting killed and i cannot believe how cold is the president wants his daughter assassinate but i also don't want to die
[02:07:26] and there's this little like glimpse of humanity in him in the fact that i like that he sort of lets her survive yeah yeah i admired that moment a lot because i did think like it helped me understand
[02:07:39] how much restraint there had come before it that i wasn't necessarily clocking like i i said earlier like oh they didn't give him a son or a daughter or like an ex-wife who's you've got to get his
[02:07:49] marriage back on track by the end but being like pretty decisive with that one moment uh yeah felt good it felt good to see snake just be a little kinder gentler anyway he uh blows up a quervo with a rocket from his helicopter
[02:08:10] in this kind of what disneyland-esque um uh is it there were so many which i guess is a little bit of the late 90s thing and to this day like the multiple
[02:08:23] climaxes but i just i kept thinking like well this has to be the moment they top out uh they top out at disneyland and that it kept going right uh the happy kingdom is what they call it oh i'm sorry
[02:08:36] happy king gets the sequence which is like well he's bringing it all back around to like the same ending as escape from new york right like now we're just down to the like last few players
[02:08:47] he's he's completed his mission they revealed that they fucking punked them pretty goddamn hard that blue toxin seven was just a minor head cold it's right it's a minor flu yeah right yeah
[02:09:01] sounds sounds a lot like what we've been doing with two years something fake right exactly put in us intentionally just telling us about to make us mad the news trying to make us angry
[02:09:19] um but but yes i'm just warming you up for next week's guest uh jim ruder he's coming on you know we had to i i mean i i i said no until i saw that clip of him on stage and i was like
[02:09:32] oh well this is an operator we gotta have this on well look i always believed in science i was always someone who thought we should listen to our scientists but then i saw jim bro do a savage takedown of
[02:09:44] people who listen to scientists by making them sound like parrots and doing the little parrot walk on stage i mean i think he might have played like a lab scientist in some monkey boy
[02:09:58] sketches the chris katan was and goat boy himself goat boy himself a scientific experiment on a rye he understands the evils the ills of science the slippery slipper than anyone he was goat boy
[02:10:12] guys we're we're literally bigger than jim bro now do we have to do we have to like we're actually giving him a platform right i'm trying to be rude to yeah exactly does this actually
[02:10:21] count as punching down is that how bad it's gotten for jim bro have we crossed the threshold that's so funny 10 10 years ago i think it was around like 2011 10 i remember somebody checking
[02:10:35] my jib bro or punching down really down wasn't the word yet but somebody was kind of like i think uh you don't have to be thinking about drip bro i wrote a jim bro tweet last night and
[02:10:47] then i screen capped it and i sent it to david and our friends the doe boys and i said i'm just sending this so i don't tweet it out yeah i have a very mean jim bro thing i want to
[02:10:55] tweet and i don't want jim bro fans in my mention so i'm just posting this for you three and then thank you for letting me get it on my system anyway this final sequence of the movie
[02:11:06] you're like what's the snake double triple cross reverse he's gonna pull right because we've seen him swipe out the tapes in the first movie destroy the other one after the present passes his moral test they do like six fake outs here right he gives the wrong remote
[02:11:22] he's a hologram yes yes there's been a switcheroo right yes um yeah he uh he just maybe had a big list of switcheroo's and he wanted to get get through and then there's that moment that most
[02:11:34] these movies build up to where like the present goes like shoot my daughter shoot her right now and they go like sir you're still on camera and you assume that's going to be the thing
[02:11:44] like cocoa style it takes him down and he's like i don't care everyone in america should watch me shoot my daughter on camera like it's such a good choice for just what the level of rot is here
[02:11:55] and his whole argument about like i'm holding morality together with my bare hands snake if you don't listen to me this whole society will fall apart and this is where i just got so amped and
[02:12:06] i was like are they gonna fucking do it are they gonna fucking do it and snake's like yeah good everything sucks bye yeah boom exactly yeah that's the whole thing of like things have gotten
[02:12:15] bad enough to like come on snake you wouldn't end all technology i would like i think we should i mean doesn't say it like that and they just do like snake do you understand what will happen if
[02:12:24] you push the button he's like yeah gotta push it it's so good and then fucking welcome to humanity welcome to the human race welcome to the human race final line snake pliskin
[02:12:37] fucking finds a cigarette lights it up that's the only light on the planet and he says look into the camera i love the finding the cigarette pack and point it up i think i probably grade this
[02:12:49] movie on a curve because i like the ending so much but it reminds me of the terminator three thing where you spend this whole movie being like how do you get around the unavoidable cynicism
[02:13:00] and inevitability of doom it bakes into this premise and you just go like you don't you end the movie with i guess we fucked up everything has to be ruined like that ending of terminator
[02:13:12] three where they're like get no it's impossible the robots are going to take over no matter what anyway enjoy the next 20 years in this bomb shelter it's like my mind was blown when i saw that and i
[02:13:22] couldn't believe even after spending months watching carpenter that the this movie just fucking ends this strong truly truly it's okay it's a great ending i don't know carpenter's like it's 10 times better than escape from new york which i do appreciate he's rough he's rough
[02:13:38] it's a it's a fun silly absurd movie with a great ending yet i i think that chase through the market was my favorite of the middle of the movie uh because that was one of the one i felt like the
[02:13:54] ideas did coalesce a little better that it wasn't seem like what it was getting most at like what is like los angeles which is it wasn't just two things in opposition with each other two time periods
[02:14:09] or two lifestyles it was just like that marketplace and the chase through it with like motorcycles horses cars it did seem just like this cool like collapsing of eras and time that i was like oh that
[02:14:24] would have been a really cool thing to explore that this island is almost just like centuries of pop culture crap just getting like dumped onto this island and that's like what snake
[02:14:36] has to wait for me more maryland monroe murals james dean statues um there was a video game announced for like pretty much every system that was never released it was announced for sega saturn
[02:14:49] sony playstation panasonic m2 n pc and was not released for any of them there was a comic book can i just read this very quickly they released one issue a one shot marvel comics in 1997 called
[02:15:04] the adventures of snake pliskin i'm just going to read exactly what it says here on the wikipedia the story takes place sometime between escape from new york and his famous cleveland escape mentioned escape from la snake has robbed at lana's centers for disease control of some engineered
[02:15:18] metaviruses and is looking for buyers in chicago finding himself in a deal that's really a setup he makes his getaway an exact revenge on the buyer for ratting him out to the united states police
[02:15:29] force in the meantime a government lab has built a robot called atas autonomous tracking and combat system that can catch criminals by imprinting their personalities upon its program order protect and anticipate a specific criminals every move the robot's first test subject is snake after a
[02:15:46] brief battle atas copy snake to the point of fully becoming his personality now recognizing the government is the enemy atas sides with snake snake punches the machine destroys it reasoning i don't need the competition yeah snake my man that sounds fucking bananas uh i yeah the when
[02:16:09] you were saying the center of the disease control stuff i was thinking like oh this stuff this movie and i don't care like if a movie that takes place in the future predicts things or not it's
[02:16:19] just maybe a fun question to ask later when you watch it but uh the thing i thought like that they got totally wrong was that like disney would be bankrupt as opposed to the thing that owns everything
[02:16:33] also i thought with that disney stuff um is it interesting that kurt russell was a disney kid yeah disney factory like the ultimate disney boy yeah that's true on walt disney's
[02:16:45] the last thing walt disney wrote kurt russell's name is on the list that was next to his bed when he died you know i just god that that's more interesting than rosebud so he's biting the hand
[02:17:01] it is why do you write that down walt disney had to like sit up in bed with kurt russell and then like lay back down i said more interesting than rosebud i just like i can't crack that one i think
[02:17:11] about it a lot i'm like what was the implication there right now a little like uh eight-year-old um kurt russell is getting thrown into a like an oven bead burt all right i'm saying we play a la rosebud
[02:17:26] i got it no we're with you we're with you i know okay the other one other thing i just a factoid i really would have quickly shared about they live because i would have i had gorely and i did a
[02:17:38] commentary about it and i had a couple hunches uh one i couldn't remember uh uh the title but later guys do you know they live came out the same month october 88 as gnome com skis manufacturing consent
[02:17:56] that movie is about manufacturing that is pretty i can't it's mind blowing to me the other thing uh um about they live i'm now just thinking of you this whole episode just sitting i gotta get that out
[02:18:10] believe me i was trying to find an opening and i never could uh uh so i just uh yeah i needed to oh oh and the other thing about they live um was
[02:18:24] i think you know he used to work with dean cundy's of course the dp there is a guy uh the guy who plays red in the back to the future movies yes who's like the turncoat
[02:18:40] he looks like cundy and and that exact same time kind of cundy made the jump to the hollywood machine and that whole character is about just come to our side it's so much easier
[02:18:53] anyway just something to chew on i i i think he's sub tweeting jim dean cundy basically i this is george buck flower you're talking about right because he also plays the guy a lot of
[02:19:07] he kills himself with the broom and village of the dam yeah yeah very interesting many carpenters very very interesting observation paul thank you so much for doing the show no what are you doing
[02:19:20] box office game yeah you can't take us out of the show i wasn't trying to play the game but my brain is just burnt let's play the box office game just gotta play the box and then we're done this movie uh came out on august ninth 1996
[02:19:36] griffin summer release okay opened to eight million dollars number three at the box office not very good nope would this have been the release paramount subsequent release to mission impossible yes i guess this was like their number two summer movie yeah yeah let's see what
[02:19:52] else do they have even in the they've got uh harry the spy mission impossible and primal fear it kind of a light summer for them yeah primal fear a classic summer blockbuster yeah people love it
[02:20:06] you so number it's not number three griffin number one is i believe your least favorite film of all time opening this week jesus it's uh francis for copulus jack it's jack it's my go-to
[02:20:17] answer for my least favorite film yeah this movie got housed at the box office by jack i know jack is one of those movies though where like they really sold the premise of like it's like big but with
[02:20:28] robin williams and then you watch it and it's like no it's like bill cosby telling him he's gonna die i mean he is gonna die they sold the comedy really hard which there's not much of right i wonder
[02:20:40] like somebody could do like a like a mark harris style book that's like reverse of pictures at a revolution where it's like in 1996 every film brat like death in the 70s yeah all their death
[02:21:00] rattles came in that six months that is an interesting like to to weigh their relative like 96 you have like da palm was making his biggest most successful movie ever copal is making his worst yeah uh spielberg took that year off he's working on the next year
[02:21:21] right i'm a stod and casino is 95 does scorsese not have a 96 isn't kundin 96 maybe it's not let's see kundin 97 it's 97 he took that year off yeah he's taking but the lost world i mean if you
[02:21:34] just did calendar year whatever you call it the 12 month span of 96 to 97 you could make an argument i think spielberg might feel it that like the lost world is like a you could have an argument for
[02:21:47] that being a low and almost on because it's almost that's the same year yeah um yeah okay number two at the box office it's a good idea paul number two at the box office is a uh courthouse thriller
[02:22:03] hmm it's not primal fear new primal fear is lower at the box office um sort of a star maker is it the time to kill it's a time to kill yeah mccon matty mack one of the one of the
[02:22:20] sweatiest movies ever made like not in terms of it's working hard to convince you something just everyone is sweating so much in that movie uh in the literal sense a time to kill yes he deserved
[02:22:32] to die and i hope he burns in hell um not a good movie but very watchable yes yeah because you you did a big i watched all the grishams and that's a lower one for you they're all middling well
[02:22:46] the firm rules except of the firm is so good um i mean david you have referred to those types of movies as quote like drugs for me yes like you don't like them you're like that's just like
[02:22:59] drugs for me right i would say the rain maker still good time which is actually cope copal is follow up to jack is very underrated and basically excellent the others are all middling to bad i mean
[02:23:12] the pelican brief is like denzel and julia so it's like yeah it's pretty fun but it's kind of over long uh a time to kill is like it's joel schumacher and uh john grisham and akiva goldsman
[02:23:24] trying to grapple with you know racism in the south it's just like they're over right it's i mean we've joked about doing the grisham mini series right it's like a right yeah it lists do like five
[02:23:36] pick and choose i mean the run is firm pelican brief client time to kill the chamber doesn't exist the rain maker yeah altman's gingerbread man which isn't the worst thing in the world i mean
[02:23:49] it all all those kind of do pick at your filmmakers though it's like every two hours like gotta bite at the grisham out right uh they're two schumacher's copala and altman runaway jury
[02:24:03] which would step on our gary fleeter mini series yeah that'd be tough go ahead into our fleeter and then and then it's like oh he does a fucking there's a baseball drama called mickey
[02:24:15] with harry connick jr and then of course we all remember that john grisham wrote the novel that christmas with the cranks was based off of he sure did um who directed that that was produced
[02:24:27] joe roth directed that chris columbus and chris columbus wrote it yeah and produced it yeah so that's uh joe roth uh one of the few exec slash filmmakers somebody who bounces back
[02:24:39] before i think that's a nice let me make another movie please man he does and you're like this is bad and he's like i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry and the next one's gonna be better i promise
[02:24:51] just make us another coop de vil you asshole freedom land uh yes okay uh now time to kill number uh two escape from l.a number three number four griffin is the summer's biggest hit
[02:25:04] of 1996 it's not mission impossible or is no what am i for oh it's independent independent stay of course today we celebrate yeah of course because it's late august that thing is made 256 million dollars number five a children's book adaptation very good harry at the helm
[02:25:23] no although that is that is in the i'm trying to go for the easy guesses of movies you've just already literally names no it's better than harry at the spy matilda matilda dandy davidos matilda
[02:25:36] good movie harry the spy is very good though matilda is kind of great yeah harry the spy remember being totally solid yeah it's very good those are all very much on the cusp of a second
[02:25:48] clinton presidency and we got the wind at our back and the sun on our fingers so yeah uh some other movies phenomenon the travolta film chain reaction the akyanu morgan freeman chemical reaction trauma courage under fire with denzel and matt daemon and mac ryan um the nutty professor
[02:26:14] griffin hey buddy love kingpin kingpin kingpin's a good movie well two comedies two very funny comedies that summer have i ever said that uh when i was a kid the classic muppet show sketch uh
[02:26:27] manamana which was obviously uh a major text for me uh in my in my growth as a person i thought he was saying phenomenon and so when i saw the movie phenomenon i was like why are they naming a movie
[02:26:45] after that muppet show sketch i think my parents told me that like i think i was like what's he saying in manamana and they were like i don't know it sounds like he's saying phenomenon and i was
[02:26:56] like what's phenomenon they were like a bizarre occurrence and then when that movie came out it's like a movie it's coming out in 10 years yeah right i was like why is this very serious movie
[02:27:05] sharing a title with the funniest muppet show sketch ever phenomenon that's now i wish that john trippolta movie was called monomona that's that's the the swap i'd like to do the sketch is phenomenon
[02:27:19] the movie's called monomona um hey i said it before i'm gonna say it again paul thank you so much for doing the show oh thank you guys thanks for having me and mad on no thanks to matt
[02:27:31] so much fun bailed early and he didn't survive he's the best and you uh i know it was so much fun i really thank you so much for having me so uh so happy we couldn't do this me as far as that you
[02:27:44] guys it was never was top of our list and uh we we fucked up with scheduling and then didn't weren't able to record until after matt and his wife had welcomed a baby so we're
[02:27:54] appreciative of any amount of time that he was able to give us no it all worked out yeah uh um and then so what's what's next for you got oh you said uh ghost of mars ghost of mars is the
[02:28:06] next episode right that's this next movie wait is there no yes oh vampires vampires that's right okay vampires with uh david urlich that's right episode hey um yep uh everyone should listen to uh from gorlian rost with gorlian rost and subscribe to their patreon why did i say
[02:28:32] relax it's okay it's okay griffin they're both from griffin here comes a recommendation listen to with gorlian rost yeah that's right that's right uh yeah no uh and uh hey guys hey stay cool hey yeah
[02:28:46] definitely do that hey love still on netflix oh that's right that's right yep yep hashtag love on netflix i'm a big believer in continuing to plug uh ended shows that are still on streaming services
[02:29:00] yes yes and not in any sort of effort to bring them back or anything just they're still there they're still there um and thank you all for listening please remember to rate review and
[02:29:13] subscribe thank you to marie barty for our social media pat randals and joe bone for artwork jj birch and nicloriano for our research a j mckian and alex barron for our editing lame Montgomery
[02:29:29] and the great american novel four hour theme song you can listen to their new album extremely loud and incredibly online wherever you find music online i don't know what your kids do these days
[02:29:39] next week vampires with urlich as we said you can go to patreon.com slash blank check blank check special features where you franchise commentaries like obviously the santa claus trilogy the trilogy of films about tim allen murdering santa claus and uh living to to rue the day
[02:29:59] right they keep on finding new clauses to fucking get him all mucked up in the works um uh what else to say i don't go to go to black is that right the com for some real uh nerdy
[02:30:13] shit uh and as always i do think we should now canonically accept as our inner blank check lore that snakes tattoo goes all the way up into his black wall good thank you thank you paul
[02:30:31] thank you um unimportant to this record but just because i was talking about it uh matt and paul this is the current state of the animatronic baby from star man i put it in
[02:30:50] the chat if you want to look at that oh my god it's one of the best things i've ever seen oh my god it looks just like my newborn daughter oh my dear it's incredible my dear oh my dear there's
[02:31:09] there's no better way to say it than my dear okay