Ghosts of Mars with Dave Schilling & Jonah Ray

[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 neighbors are shouting with Blank Check.

[00:00:19] Let me put it this way, maybe I'd podcast with you if you were the last man on Earth, but we're not on Earth. Burn! Because you see the phrase is usually... They're on Mars!

[00:00:35] Exactly. So the whole last man on Earth thing doesn't really apply here because the planet they are on is Mars. And the wrinkle is that also on this planet with them are ghosts. Ghosts! Also a matriarchal society, Griffin.

[00:00:52] I think this movie rips. I'm just going to say that right off the bat. I support you. Do you think that's a contrarian opinion? Well, I will say that I think this movie is a lot of fun.

[00:01:04] I think it's a lot of fun. That's all I mean by the fact that it rips. I think it's a lot of fun.

[00:01:08] I think that would be a very contrarian opinion 20 years ago, but it does seem this movie has a bit of a cult happening following now. But thanks for throwing down your marker. But do you want to introduce the show and our guests and all that first?

[00:01:22] Sure, sure. No, look, I'm blazing into it because I'm eager to talk about this movie on this podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. You were a little slow that time. You've gotten fast and that time you were a little bit slow.

[00:01:40] It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their career and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce on Mars, baby. Sometimes they take that train to Mars.

[00:01:56] Gotta take that train to Mars, that midnight train to Mars. Choo-choo. Choo-choo? More like boo-boo with these ghosts on Mars. I don't know. That's a fair point. And our guests can weigh in at any time on any of this. I was hoping to get a proper introduction.

[00:02:12] You will, you will. Then I'm going to shut my mouth and I'm going to wait. No, no, because here's the twist, Dave. I'm going to wait my turn. Here's the twist. We like giving proper introductions after people have spoken. So now you can be introduced.

[00:02:28] Oh, thank God. Okay. I don't have to wait anymore. I'm an impatient guy. This is a mini series on the films of John Carpenter. It's called They Podcast. Today we're talking ghosts of Mars. And with us are the hosts of the Polygon podcast, Galaxy Brains.

[00:02:44] One of them is Dave Schilling. The other one hasn't spoken yet, so I can't introduce him. Say something, Jonah Jesus! Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-boo-boo. I love that joke. I'm going to say that from now on. It's good. Jonah Ray is the other guest. Thank you guys both for being here.

[00:03:01] Thank you for having us. I'm going to be the contrarian today, I bet. And I'm going to say I don't like this movie. I think that's the popular opinion. I don't think it is anymore.

[00:03:11] No, I think the people who really care, who are really locked in to the Carpenter canon are like, Oh, this is one of his misunderstood masterpieces. And I'm going to say no, thank you. I will say, I think first of all, he has so many misunderstood masterpieces

[00:03:25] that on the list of misunderstood masterpieces, even the people who defend this one put it at the bottom. We were like, this is his 10th most misunderstood film. And I struggled to even call it a masterpiece.

[00:03:36] But we're of the generation, our ages are I think all kind of on the similar side. We were around when this came. We were aware of him when it came out. Absolutely. And I think it's so for us, it's just like, no, it's not very good.

[00:03:48] But then I'm sure there was fans of his that saw Big Trouble Little China and then maybe didn't pick up on it. If you read reviews of Big Trouble Little China, they say very many of the same things that they said about Ghosts of Mars. That's the thing.

[00:04:01] I mean, we've been doing all of these movies in chronological order. We've been spending months living in Carpenter Valley. And our listeners have been doing the same and some of them go ahead of us. And I've been seeing people on our like Reddit and such saying like,

[00:04:15] I finally watched Ghosts of Mars. I was ready to like this one. Even I can't go with this. Like, I still think people go like, this is a breaking point. This is just too fucking silly.

[00:04:25] And I certainly remember when it came out and I understood John Carpenter must be somebody because his name is at the top of the fucking title. But I probably hadn't seen any of his movies at the time.

[00:04:35] It was just the commonly accepted line was this movie is fucking stupid bullshit. Like everyone was clowning on this fucking movie. For a good reason. I think it's gained a little bit of a defense since then.

[00:04:52] But I still think most people, even most Carpenter fans are like, that's when the guy lost his touch. I was surprised. I mean, it was vampires for me, but which I think David is fucks hard.

[00:05:04] David, I think it's laughs and I think it's got some great gore and stuff like that. I think my take on the Ghost of Mars not being good is because there was a lot. It was a large budget. It was of its time.

[00:05:16] And I think the acting, I think the casting on it was it was terrible. I think it shouldn't have been. I'm glad you brought up the high budget, the large budget for this movie because it looks like a sci fi channel original movie directed by somebody's second cousin.

[00:05:36] I'm sorry, but this is a terrible movie. Look at it like a look at it like a Doctor Who episode. If this was a Doctor Who episode, it would be legendary. It's like a Star Trek episode.

[00:05:45] They go down the planet, there are ghosts and then they got to figure it out. It just looks like a rust colored tumor and I can't see everyone is using CGI. Everyone's using CGI at this time. And this time of year two years after the Matrix. Yeah.

[00:06:00] Two years after the Matrix. And it looks like it came out a decade before the Matrix. And he refused. He was he wanted to have a tactile. He wanted to have practical effects. He wanted models and miniatures.

[00:06:11] And that is like what it all is not at night with no stars in the sky where it looks like they're inside of a warehouse. That's what he chose to do. You're not going to see any stars on Mars. Is there's too dusty in the air.

[00:06:23] How dare you think it was been in Los Angeles. It was pure black dust on that planet. Let's look just like it looked just like the second act motorcycle chase and escape from L.A. That's what it looks like.

[00:06:36] I keep forgetting which one has the bike that pops a wheelie in it and it's escape from L.A. Because it looks like the same set. They're just weird fires everywhere for no reason. What's going on in this movie. Well do you guys know. I assume you might.

[00:06:53] That this movie was intended to be the third snake plus skin. Exactly. It wasn't. I looked it up all last night. I spent hours googling a David common misconception. It is not true.

[00:07:09] It was not intended to be a sequel to escape from New York nor was it reworked from the screenplay titled Escape from Earth. For some reason this has become a whatever Wikipedia level fact that is not true. Oh it's because you know why. You know why.

[00:07:27] It's because there's all these articles that come out that stated as facts because the people who write them don't do any fact checking. They're just like oh I saw it in these five articles in the Guardian and on something awful or whatever.

[00:07:38] And they just say okay that's true. But it's been denied publicly. As JJ puts it in our dossier what seems to have happened is Carpenter fans take the rumors of this escape from Earth movie which was this snake in space movie.

[00:07:54] And combo it with a movie called Ghosts of Mars that John Carpenter ended up making and just figure they must have been related. But they are not interesting at all. It's just except for John Carpenter of course.

[00:08:06] It is fascinating though that Desolation Williams is dressed almost identical to Snake Plissken. Yeah he's got snake vibes. He is but he's got the camo pants. He's like a snake. He's a soft snake. He's got the camo pants.

[00:08:17] He's got the black tank top and then he's got the leather jacket over it. Like he's got the exact same outfit in slightly different colors. But does he have a snake tattoo on his belly that possibly goes down and we don't know. We don't see. We don't know.

[00:08:33] We don't see. There's a big difference though in these two characters in that Snake is never going to show you that he has any emotions.

[00:08:40] He's kind of sad when Valeria Galino dies in Escape from LA when they're like oh maybe we could go off and live on an island together. And she gets shot right after. He's kind of like oh that's too bad. But he's never sad really.

[00:08:56] And Desolation in this movie his brother dies and so he's got like a connection to the world that Snake never had. He didn't really care that much though. He didn't care? I think he cared.

[00:09:07] He had a little monologue where he's like yeah my brother had been through some shit and it was tough for us and it's a shame that he's gone now. But that's more than Snake would ever give you. He cared more about when Trace died. Sure.

[00:09:20] Trace was probably my favorite guy. So let me give you guys a little bit of what this movie actually was. It's supposed to start Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's supposed to start Statham. Statham was who Carpenter wanted. Oh wait.

[00:09:36] Let's by the way I have to get this out right away. Statham in this movie it's sort of a Jeremy Piven thing. He somehow looks younger now. Yeah it was because of the hair.

[00:09:46] Because he just figured out what to do with his hair and that's all he needs. He's barely aged otherwise. He basically just looks like Statham but his hair is kind of dorky. Also he's rich. Transporter's the following year. Is it really that? Jeez. That's how long it's been.

[00:10:03] Jason's been in our lives. Good for him. Right because Transporter is the first time that they're like we present to you leading man Jason Statham. He is the guy in the movie.

[00:10:12] And it's truly the difference is he shaves what little hair he has left in this movie and he becomes a movie star. He becomes a bullet headed man.

[00:10:21] And you look at him in this and you're like do you not see at this point that your skull is perfectly shaped? It's a good skull. That the hair is actually fucking your bone structure up. Right it's like you don't know it until you take the plunge.

[00:10:35] White guys have a hard time shaving their head because it can go totally wrong. There's a lot of white guys that love it. Sure. I don't know any of them Joda do you? No I don't go down to Orange County I don't know them.

[00:10:49] Some of the wrong white guys. But you look at very many of those gentlemen and you're like you do not have the skull shape to be able to rock this style. And Statham it's just it's right there and he looks weird in this.

[00:11:02] This is 2001 too so this is Prime Stone Cold Steve Austin territory. And Goldberg. Yeah Goldberg the rocker. But bald muscle guys were all the rage back then. And Bruce has finally started just letting it be totally bald. Like not every movie but every other movie maybe. Yeah.

[00:11:20] Matt Smith that's an actor that should not shave his head. Sure I don't really. Right his hair is really doing a lot of work for him there yes. He's got a very specific cube head Matt Smith. I love the man. Great actor.

[00:11:33] Jumaadi though bald let that motherfucker be bald. This movie I don't know the generation of it is not as exciting as you know whatever like Snake Plissken Mars movie. Just seeing here he just pitched it.

[00:11:51] He just pitched it a can to some you know Euro producer type who was like yeah you want to make some movie about Mars sounds good. And then he writes it with Larry Sulkis who's the co-writer of this movie.

[00:12:03] And then they look at their screenplay and they're like this is straightforward.

[00:12:07] What if we move it all around and tell it in this weird kind of like nested flashback style with this kind of weird tricky plot where it's sort of like unfold which is I feel like the interesting little gambit of this movie. Right.

[00:12:23] Like you think that the crossfade had just been invented. 700 times. He does this. Guys pin in this pin in this. I'm coming back to it. I got a grand thesis on this movie.

[00:12:34] It's not a full defensive but it's why I think this film is such a weird object and we're going to circle back to this. I think it's important because I think what you're that your perspective whatever it will be and I'm excited. I'm excited to reveal the pin.

[00:12:46] But like I think that's this is a movie that a lot of sort of genre film fans that I know are like it's straight up good. Like I know that movie has a horrible reputation and it doesn't deserve it. David sounds like you didn't like it that much.

[00:12:59] Jonah I'm not sure I totally got your take. Like are you pro or anti ghosts. I know I'm fine with I like it. It was I had a good time watching it in theaters.

[00:13:10] I was confused and then I didn't really think of it much and then I rewatch it before this and I was like I had a good time. Isn't that what you want in a movie like you know. Yeah.

[00:13:19] That's basically how I know to dip into these hot waters but like you know I had a blast at Halloween kills and I had a blast watching Ghost of Mars. Do I need to. Does it need to be super heavy and good all the time.

[00:13:30] No I could just have a good time here and there. I agree with you on that. I am interested in the fact it sounds like Jonah you are the only one of us that saw this in theaters. Did you see it in theaters Dave. I did not.

[00:13:41] Oh no sorry. That I'm not Dave. You're David. OK. Nobody. I know two birds one stone. I'm a blue collar Dave. No I did not see it in theaters but I do remember very well the trailer and seeing it all the time and thinking it looked like garbage.

[00:13:55] It was up its time too. It was the new metal era of horror. Yes. I remember being 12 or 13 in this coming out and I would go see any garbage and my friends and we're like I mean we're obviously not seeing Ghost of Mars right.

[00:14:07] Like it was just there's no consideration towards it.

[00:14:10] I had no like I did not have enough carpenter reverence at the age of like 15 or whatever but be in like Ice Cube and Natasha Hentridge were not enough to grab me like that wasn't going to drag me to the Mars I like I liked Mars.

[00:14:25] But once you put ghosts on there and then you have fucking Ice Cube and Tasha Hendricks do not make sense together almost.

[00:14:34] And then the fact that this is presented as being highfalutin enough that John Carpenter has to take credit above the title I was like what the fuck is this bullshit.

[00:14:43] You know I mean I remember Escape from L.A. and all that stuff so I liked I like John Carpenter so I was fine with the John Carpenter.

[00:14:52] I mean I saw this movie right when I moved to Los Angeles and I was I saw it the same week I saw Wet Hot American Summer. You know I was just I was just excited.

[00:15:01] I mean it was just because it was an exciting time in my life that like I just kind of saw and I was like hey movies get me. Can't wait to get started. Yes. I mean I 2001 is a good time. Nothing bad happened. This is August.

[00:15:17] This is August. Good times. A whole lot more weeks. Good times baby.

[00:15:24] But I just I do think it's funny that John Carpenter pitches you know Mars to some Euro guy who's like yeah I'll pony up the money and he writes the script and he's like it's kind of a Western about like you know sort of unleashing native spirits like he just can't help but.

[00:15:42] This is what we come up against every single week guys. He's like but secretly the movie's a Western. He's the original James Mangold. He's he's selling you Logan and telling you that secretly it's a Western every single film.

[00:15:54] He's just kind of making Assault on Precinct 13 again just with a more complicated structure. Yeah. And it's set on Mars. I think that's why people do like it.

[00:16:03] He added in a lot of the things he likes in his other movies and then kind of all shoved it into this stuff. Yeah it's like it's like a summation of his career.

[00:16:11] In a lot of ways it feels like someone doing a John Carpenter homage more than a John Carpenter film itself.

[00:16:20] And I think part of the problem why this movie like rubs people the wrong way is it doesn't have I don't know the self-knowing quality if someone was making a tribute to Carpenter movies. So if the Waynes brothers made a Carpenter movie this would have been it.

[00:16:37] Allegory movie. This would have been Mel Brooks is high anxiety. Well I even feel like if like if Adam Wingard made this movie people be like I totally get it. I get what he's doing you know. Yeah but you need some distance from that stuff.

[00:16:51] You need some distance from the thing. Look that's the other big thing. It's like he's saying you know at the time of this film like I wanted to make a stripped down sort of 80s action movie.

[00:17:02] And when he is referencing the things that he's trying to follow the model of it's like Predator. He's not quoting his own movies but it's like he's making an homage to the movies at the time that he was making his best films.

[00:17:15] But there isn't enough distance for those to now have this sort of like pastiche charge around them. It just feels kind of antiquated.

[00:17:25] I don't think so though because at the time like in 2000 2001 he was making his last action hero had already come out which was like you know very self-referential. Last Boy Scout all the last movies.

[00:17:38] But like it's like there was already that turn I believe in in pop culture of like the making fun of the 80s action movies. So he might have just been thinking like yeah this is a good time to take a little jab at it. It wasn't really funny.

[00:17:51] Yeah but it was done straight. It was right. It was done straight. If you watch Re-Animator as it like as a you know high drama with a bunch of you know horror in it it's going to seem it's going to seem unfunny. It's going to seem not funny.

[00:18:03] But there are but there are jokes that are clear jokes in Re-Animator.

[00:18:07] There are clear moments where it's like we know we've gone really far and we're doing something outrageous and it kind of brings you back to OK this is this is meant to be camp or Starship Troopers or Robocop.

[00:18:19] I just don't know what people are expecting when they go see a movie called Ghosts of Mars. Carpenter himself agrees with this right.

[00:18:28] I mean first of all a big thing we keep on coming up against as we've been covering all his movies and reading his interviews at the time in his interviews years later recapping them is he had a real distaste for how postmodern everything had become how every genre movie had to be like super self-aware calling out the frame.

[00:18:46] He turned down Scream to do vampires instead and was like kind of resentful. He turned down Halloween H20 but he turned down Kevin Williams. Oh I'm sorry. Yes I'm sorry. He turned out Kevin Williamson because of the distaste for the for the scream thing and all of that.

[00:19:02] And so that's part one of it. And part two is he was like I want this to be sort of tongue in cheek and that it's like a throwback to an era of like sillier drive in movies.

[00:19:15] But he himself agrees with you Dave that he fucked up by not putting more jokes in it.

[00:19:24] So the thing he said was like he wanted to make a commando Rambo to predator style movie where quote the universe allows its characters and plot points to be silly without becoming full fledged comedies.

[00:19:35] Like that was the thing he wanted rather than making something that was like self-parodic. But then he said like people treat it like it was a badly executed serious horror film.

[00:19:45] And and he he himself said I should have made the film more openly comedic and in on the joke. I have no power over what critics say. But when people complained about the movie being campy and not scary the name of the movie is Ghosts of Mars.

[00:19:58] I figured the campiness I have to monologue for one second. It's what you said. He's like I fucked up. I probably should have put more jokes in it. I thought they'd know from the title it was stupid. You can get lost in the parody.

[00:20:11] Let me just say this really quickly and get it out there. I think the reason why he didn't go too far is because one of the complaints of Escape from L.A. is that it was too ridiculous and too silly.

[00:20:23] When you've got snake surfboarding through on Wilshire Boulevard and like all this stuff. Yeah, dude, it's L.A. Yeah. I mean all of that stuff is so far removed from Escape from New York and from other things of that nature.

[00:20:39] And he'd also been burned by Big Trouble and Big Trouble being too funny and too campy and outlandish. So I feel like he might have been a little gun shy about going too far. He's been burned by everything at this point. He's very burnt.

[00:20:54] But I also Griff, I also think it's what you're talking. It's not only the sort of ironic filmmaking but like I was watching this being like this is 2001. This is like the sort of height of like kind of Rob Cohen MTV-esque filmmaking.

[00:21:07] This is sort of my big thesis. Which to be clear, I don't mind that this movie is not like cut into a million pieces and does not have like a super flashy soundtrack and like really, really buzzy visuals.

[00:21:19] But you know like that was the style of the moment. And I do feel like people must have been going to theaters being like, you know, what the hell? Why is this so slow? Why are people having whole conversations? Does that make sense? Absolutely.

[00:21:36] This is my whole take. I think a big thing to consider is that what this movie is August 2001? Yes, correct. And Resident Evil comes out March or April I believe 2002? Absolutely. Yes. Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil. March 2002.

[00:21:57] I think that becomes a big turning point in terms of that is how you execute a John Carpenter style movie in the 2000s that audiences will accept while knowing it's a little bit silly.

[00:22:09] And the whole tone and the visual style becomes very different of how you sell that where it looks like a fucking music video and it's all sort of like cold and antiseptic and super shiny and quick cuts. Turn that contrast up. Crunch those blacks. Right, right.

[00:22:23] Like he's still going a little classical here. For as bug nuts as this movie is down to like, as you said, his biggest effect is the crossfade. Right? Like he uses that like it's a revelation.

[00:22:34] And when David said there was cut, there was all these cuts in the movie, I was like, there was no cuts. There was shitload of cuts. But there's also like there's like an iris wipe and there's like a fucking like swipe at it. Like it's bizarre.

[00:22:47] And you threw out Schilling Matrix in 99. Like you cannot release this movie two years after The Matrix. No.

[00:22:55] That's the other part of this is a certain the types of films that Carpenter made split into two essentially at the exact point in time that his career was really slowing down. Right?

[00:23:06] So one trajectory is like shit like Independence Day and The Matrix and Men in Black become huge A movies. They become movies that now cost so much fucking money are global blockbusters and star actual major stars at the peaks of their careers.

[00:23:24] You know, people coming off of Oscar wins and shit and nominations. And then like the thing that's formalizing that's crystallizing here is the other track of what Screen Gems is going to become with like Paul W.S. Anderson movies.

[00:23:38] Paul W.S. Anderson has just come off of like doing Soldier, which was his Kurt Russell Carpenter riff that cost way too much fucking money and bombed really hard. And the next thing you know, he drops down to like a much smaller budget and finds his zone.

[00:23:53] And then as we said, the next year is also Transporter like the Luc Besson produced Europa Corp thing is starting to formalize.

[00:24:00] And there's this whole new like how do you make a movie like this for under 20 million dollars starring someone who's kind of a movie star but not really? That's a little bit ridiculous, but you play it totally straight.

[00:24:13] And it's just putting badass shit on screen and all of them have a pretty fucking similar tone and look that this movie is like the last film holding onto the vestiges of how these things used to be.

[00:24:25] And so when you watch it now, the thing this feels like is, as you said, sci-fi channel original movies, asylum mockbusters, like any of these things that we now see where you're just like does anyone know that this thing's ridiculous?

[00:24:37] You know, because the lack of self-awareness is just palpable. It doesn't have that, the whatchamacallit, the sort of like slick showmanship gloss kind of like badass vibe to it. And I do think the fundamental problem with this movie, I'm getting ding anything is the casting is wrong.

[00:24:56] Like he did not find actors who knew how to toe the lines in the way like you compare this cast to the cast of Escape from New York, which obviously it's going to suffer in comparison.

[00:25:07] But I think that's a similar one of just like varied character actors playing different flashy people who pop up and you immediately know that's who they are. This is right. Yeah.

[00:25:18] And David, I don't know if you know this, but if you've never donated to GiveWell's recommended charities before, you can have your donation matched up to $1,000 before the end of the year or as long as you're matching funds last.

[00:25:33] Wow. So to claim that match, go to GiveWell.org and pick podcast and enter blank check at checkout. That's two words, blank check. Make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from blank check to get your donation matched up to $1,000. That's pretty cool.

[00:25:50] So I just want to remind people they go to GiveWell.org, then you pick your favorite character from Ghostbusters Afterlife and you enter your favorite 90s Disney comedy in which a little boy makes out with a government agent woman. Blank check.

[00:26:08] I think the only actor in this movie who's actually totally keyed into what the film is, is Joanna Cassidy. I think Joanna Cassidy has it down. Yes, she does. But every time she's done it, she's been doing it for decades. She just gets it.

[00:26:21] But it hurts to see Pam Grier wasted when she rules. You know what I mean? And I like Ice Cube in lots of movies. I enjoy Ice Cube as an actor, but it's sort of what we talked about with Village of the Damned Griffor.

[00:26:35] It does kind of feel like Carpenter's like, you know what you're doing, right? And maybe there needs to be a little more like, no, you should be bigger here or you should be tapping into this part of the personality.

[00:26:46] Well, he definitely isn't the kind of director that's going to go, okay, I think we're not hitting the emotional moment here. Right. It doesn't seem like that kind of director. No. Yeah. He's very much like a blue collar, get it done guy. Do your thing.

[00:26:59] You know what you're doing. I read something about why it's set at night is because he didn't want to be filming during the day and he wanted to go home and watch sports or smoke weed or something. He's just like, I don't need this right now.

[00:27:11] I'll get up and sing. Especially late in his career like this. And as much as he pitched – these quotes about Griffor, about Mission to Mars. So Mission to Mars, the De Palma movie had come out the year before and flopped. Red Planet had flopped. Right.

[00:27:26] And Ghost of Mars and – excuse me. Red Planet. Red Planet both had been delayed for a while, had big stars, cost too much money, come out, and both flop really hard. And Ghost of Mars goes into production right after they had been released.

[00:27:44] Carpenter's got this great quote, which is the studio is probably worried about it, but what are you going to have? Ghosts of Pluto? People know Mars. But then he talks about it. He's like, I'd always wanted to film Mars, but I didn't have a story.

[00:27:59] And after Vampires came out, I went and thought about Mars again. I thought I could do something with it and make it different. But then he also says the primary reason that it's set on Mars is that the color is red. Like, I thought that was cool.

[00:28:11] I don't know that he actually has a big Mars take here. He's just kind of doing a sci-fi Western thing. Well, he was doing – I mean, Vampires is a vampires Western. It's a vampire. And it also takes place in a lot of desert-y kind of stuff.

[00:28:23] So maybe he was kind of tinkering around in his head like, oh, this desert climate could look like Mars. Yeah. He also, as sort of pointed out, he said Mars is really not a red planet. During the daylight hours, it's pink.

[00:28:38] I didn't think I could do a horror movie on a pink set. That's why the film takes place at night. So he wanted to be scientifically accurate. So he's like, it'll be nighttime. There's only one great Mars movie, and it's Total Recall. And that is the –

[00:28:53] Mars needs moms? What the fuck are you going on about, dude? Oh, sorry, bud. Sorry, I forgot your favorite movie of all time. That's the tone that this movie should have hit is Verhoeven, outrageous violence, and comedic circumstances that remind you, oh, I know, there's a joke here.

[00:29:13] There are some moments that really do hit that though. Every single time someone gets decapitated, I laugh because it's always like a medium shot, and you see their face, and they make like a grimace, and then the head just goes flying in exactly the right way.

[00:29:26] Those were great. I love all the kids. The limbs coming off and the heads coming off were great. Yes. It's not the kills. It is just the tone of 90% of the movie and the fact that it looks like garbage.

[00:29:39] For me, the thing that threw me off the most was the crossfades. Because as someone that's had arguments and edit bays with people, I go, eh, maybe a crossfade here, and then a guy goes, no, no cross – every editor hates a crossfade.

[00:29:50] So I'm wondering who was in there doing that because every editor I've ever known hates crossfades. I just think that's a Carpenter thing. I do. That's all John. I think like – where was it here?

[00:30:00] Ice Cube had this quote where he's like – he said this in Hustler Magazine in 2008, okay? I remember this. I remember this. Yeah, I have that one still under my bed. Absolutely. He said, I mean, I don't think I should have done Ghosts of Mars.

[00:30:15] I don't like that movie. I'm a big fan of John Carpenter. The only reason I did it was because John Carpenter directed it, but they really didn't have the money to pull the special effects off. It was a movie that should have been done in 1979.

[00:30:26] So like you look at the crossfades in this movie and you're like, this feels like something I would discover in a busted VHS from 1979. And like the crossfades would be part of the charm in it.

[00:30:38] And there's a cognitive dissonance to watching it with actors who you know that's that person in 2001. Like even now, 20 years on, the movie is locked into the time it came out and you're like, that's the wrong editing style for this era. Yeah.

[00:30:53] I will say though, this is interesting. Apparently Ice Cube turned John Carpenter onto using Pro Tools, using this griffin. And then Carpenter's excitedly like, yeah, you can see the waveforms and you can chop them up. Like he's just describing Pro Tools. I got a movie all at home.

[00:31:09] Fuck that. Ice Cube got Carpenter into like a new level of synthesizing. I mean, I guess that's why Carpenter keeps making music to this day is thanks to Ice Cube. That's fun. And then Courtney Love Griffin was supposed to be the female lead of this movie.

[00:31:27] I don't know if that's better. I like Courtney Love in some movies, but Natasha Hintzsch is not good in this. Natasha Hintzsch is not good in this. I mean, that's like a fundamental thing for me. His three top choices were apparently Michelle Yeoh, Franco Patente, and Flamke Jensen.

[00:31:50] Sure, sure. She could do the action, but like... All three of those make a lot of sense. And then they cast Courtney Love.

[00:31:57] And what I read here is that—I'm just going to read this verbatim as it says on the Wikipedia, so who knows if this is accurate or not. She left the project after her then boyfriend's ex-wife ran over her foot in her car while she was in training.

[00:32:13] I read that too. That is accurate. She ran over Courtney Love's foot with a Volvo. So Natasha Hintzschridge. How do you say her last name? Hintzschridge? Hintzschridge. Hintzschridge. Yeah, I watched Species a lot as a kid, so I know how to say her name.

[00:32:27] Well, I don't want to be mean about her because she's— You can be mean about her. I'm sure she's not. But with Ice Cube, I'm like, look, if you use that guy right, he can actually be a terrific actor. He's a really fun movie presence.

[00:32:40] I don't think there's anything Natasha Hintzschridge has done where I'm like, that stands out. She's just sort of like a C-list kind of ice queen type. I was going to say. I swear it's not just horniness talking, but she is very effective in Species.

[00:32:58] But it's one of those things where it's like this is the exact thing you can hire her to do. Well, Species is also just like glorious 90s trash. It's a very lovable, stupid thing. She is who you go to if you cannot get Sharon Stone. That's a fact.

[00:33:14] Yeah, she's got sort of a Sharon Stone thing. Yeah, absolutely. And also Species, you're surrounding her with like five of the best actors alive at that point. It is wild how stacked the Species cast is. Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, Michelle Williams plays the young Natasha Hintzschridge.

[00:33:33] She does. Species is fun. I guess, but like it's a last minute thing. Carpenter is clearly, he speaks very highly of her. He says she's my kind of actor. She's in the vein of Kurt Russell, Sam Neill, and Jeff Bridges, which apparently that's Carpenter's top three collaborator list.

[00:33:51] Wow. That's fair. That's fair. And then, you know, like she's fine. They did the Blu-ray commentary together. They had the commentary together for the home video release. They clearly like each other. She's fine is about as strong as I could possibly be about her in this movie.

[00:34:07] She's bad to find. She's fine, but you need someone who's like electric in this. And she's sort of doing the bare minimum to pull this movie off, which it needs a really kind of like firecracker star performance, I think.

[00:34:21] Or at least someone very steady because in theory, Desolation Jones is going to be your sort of like wild card character. And he's not sort of going big enough. He's got a real steady hand. Yeah. He's whispering a lot of the movie.

[00:34:36] I want to see Ice Cube scream at somebody with a lot of expletives or something, but he goes, he's doing Snake. He's doing Snake Plissken. He kind of is. I want to see are we there yet Ice Cube yelling like he yells at kids. That's what you want.

[00:34:50] To Jump Street. But no, but that was my exact thought. If he was in this movie with 21 Jump Street energy, it would work. Like he hadn't totally figured out how to harness everything in his power. And obviously he has good performances before 21 Jump Street. Many of them.

[00:35:03] Like Three Kings or whatever. And then fucking Friday. And Friday and all that. But like, do you think it's just Boys in the Hood obviously? But do you think it's just that he's in a Carpenter movie and he's like, I should be serious.

[00:35:14] Like this is the master of horror. Like I should not be goofy. I should go for serious. I just. I don't know. Yeah. I think styles of acting had changed. And I think you're dealing with. Sure. Your two main characters are people who don't have formal acting backgrounds.

[00:35:29] Right? Like a rapper turned actor and a model turned actor. Yeah. Think of Jeff Bridges and Kurt Russell were both child actors. Right. Both people who knew everything inside. Right. And we're very savvy and canny. Like he had people who understood that control the dial.

[00:35:43] I think the key thing with Carpenter actors is people need to know exactly what movie they're in. Because I think you're right, Jonah. He probably is not someone who's getting particularly granular in his direction with acting. Right?

[00:35:57] It's like he's casting and he's giving the basic outline of like, this is the kind of guy I want here. But he might not be finessing it take by take. And I think Ice Cube and Henceforth just are still a little bit too green.

[00:36:10] And I think the movies in which both of them have been good up until this point are like perfect fits working with good directors or things that a fucking Ice Cube wrote himself. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and also let's not forget.

[00:36:23] I mean, this is Statham's basically his first non-Guy Ritchie movie. Like he's pretty green. You know, this is not. He gets it enough though. Like he does his thing. I think he's fine. He's fine. He doesn't have much to do.

[00:36:35] Pam Breer obviously gets it in her limited screen time. But then their damn head's on a spike. Yeah. I also feel like. Goddamnit. Because watching this you're like, the second she shows up you're like fucking yes. Like fucking Ghosts of Mars, Matriarchy. And she's the boss.

[00:36:51] She's the boss. Absolutely. Not only does she die disappointingly fast, but I also think there's a little bit of energy to her performance of like, really? I'm back to doing this shit again? Like Tarantino just saved me. I was a legitimate lead actress.

[00:37:07] No one knew what to do with me. And now she's in 2001 doing the type of movie she would have done in 1979. You know? I'm also a little bit bothered by these at least two most memorable performances that she has in Carpenter movies from my perspective.

[00:37:23] In Escape from LA he makes her a trans woman who we're supposed to laugh at. Like isn't it funny that she was a guy? Like okay. Bummer. And then this, the joke is she's a lesbian.

[00:37:39] And so he's doing this weird thing where he takes maybe the sexiest woman ever to live. And he both de-sexualizes her in contemporary 2001 ways of like, oh she's trans. She can't be a sex object because she's trans.

[00:37:58] Or he makes her a lesbian and turns that into a joke. And it's just odd to me. And I don't like it. I don't like it in both cases. I think that is an incredibly good call Dave.

[00:38:09] I do think, I mean Escape from LA is the year before Jackie Brown, right? And then this now comes four years after Jackie Brown. And you look at the other stuff that happens in that time and it's like, you know, Jane Campion puts her in Holy Smoke.

[00:38:27] You know she's in Into Deep, Jawbreaker. But then by like 2000 she's already playing like Chevy Chase's boss at the news station in Snow Day. And then this year is Ghosts of Mars. No offense to producer Ben. Also Bones, a movie he's currently wearing a t-shirt from. Hell yeah.

[00:38:50] You know the year after that's Adventures of Pluto Nash. Like the thing that Tarantino tapped into I think in terms of figuring out how to use her dramatic actress outside of genre movies is like this is the fucking toughest woman in the world. Right?

[00:39:07] And he turned that into like emotional fortitude in Jackie Brown. And most people just turn that into she's a badass. And I think Carpenter unfortunately turned too literally into she's like a man. You know? Exactly.

[00:39:21] Like both of the things you describe are just like well the joke is she acts like a man. And one of them it's because she was assigned male at birth and the other one's because she wants to fuck women.

[00:39:29] But like no one knew how to use her the way that Tarantino did where it's like she is fundamentally a woman and she is like so much tougher than anyone else on screen just in terms of her like emotional strength.

[00:39:42] I will say that she speaks very highly both of this experience and of Carpenter. She I like this quote from her where she's basically like I have no aversions to doing movies like Ghost of Mars.

[00:39:53] It's the type of movie that put food on my table 30 years ago and I'm lucky to still be able to do action films. I mean she seems like a fairly unpretentious in terms of her career because like whatever she's kind of done it all over the years.

[00:40:06] Let me just say one thing from a perspective of a black person because I think it's important to note that when you have been marginalized in a career field you are going to be grateful. Naturally. Do I think that she loved doing these? Probably not.

[00:40:25] But maybe she did. Maybe she did. Maybe she did. Either way like it is incumbent upon you to never do anything to possibly risk your livelihood because it can so easily be taken from you. And you think about her career and what you just described Griffin. Yeah.

[00:40:45] Her career and her choices. What she had to do after that huge success where somebody from the top of the Hollywood food chain says you have talent, you have ability, I'm going to write a movie for you to do. And then after that nothing. Why is that?

[00:41:01] Well it's because we don't get those opportunities. We never will unless we are willing to take the shit that people throw at us. And I think on top of that Dave there are other black actors like Samuel Jackson who's like I'm so grateful that I get to work.

[00:41:17] I don't turn my nose down at anything right. Like I'll take any job you know I like movies. I have no pretension about it. And then there are other black actors who are maybe in a Pam Grier position where it's like I got the big role.

[00:41:30] I worked with the big director. I got an Oscar nomination or a win or I had the Oscar buzz and then like no one gave me the good parts. Why didn't this happen? And they openly talk about that and they very quickly get pegged as difficult and unhireable.

[00:41:43] Monique. Monique is a perfect example. Monique is a great example. Lou Gossett Jr. is another one who always talks about like why the fuck did I not get the parts I should have gotten. Why was I doing Iron Eagles after I won an Oscar. You know.

[00:41:56] And then right quickly Hollywood's like okay Mr. Okay Lou. Yeah. Yeah. All true. I mean also I mean how old is Pam. I'm trying to I'm trying to just track. Pam Grier is 72 now so she's 50. Early 50s. Yeah. The funniest thing about these quotes I mean she.

[00:42:14] JJ I can't read all these quotes because they're so long but they're so good. She's a very very very entertaining public speaker is how I will put it. But she clearly kind of pumped Carpenter on the like matriarchy stuff because she's like what's going on.

[00:42:30] I love this idea but what are you talking about. Like how has it evolved this way. Like why is Mars a matriarchy. Is it because women were sent there away from Earth for some specific reason. And he wouldn't really commit to an answer.

[00:42:47] But she was just sort of like I need more to understand for my character. Like you know so she just kind of comes up with ideas for herself. But I do. It's something that I want to know more. I'm like Pam Grier.

[00:43:00] I'd like to know more about what is going on in his wider universe here. And I don't know if he is that interested or just doesn't have the time because he's making a very specific tale. I don't really know.

[00:43:13] I read a quote where he said that the reason why he did a matriarchal society in this movie is so he didn't have to explain why women were tough. Which is an interesting thing. Sure. I'm not blaming him for how weird that sounds because it was 2001.

[00:43:34] And there were still a lot of people who found a reason to object to women being tough in movies. But it doesn't really – it seems like a completely unnecessary world building detail. It's just odd to flash it on screen. Yeah.

[00:43:52] It's one of the reasons why people come back to the movie though I think. Well if he's got the script, it's a lot of tough female leads and it's like notes start coming in from the studio. I don't understand why all these women are tough.

[00:44:01] He's like, I don't know. It's a matriarchal society. That's why they're tough. They're like, oh, wow, yes, yes, yes. And so it's like you never know the process getting it to you. That's exactly what it feels like to me too, Jonah. Good survival technique. Absolutely.

[00:44:14] It does end up being – I mean I kind of am inclined to believe that he sort of fell into it not by accident but as like a way to absorb the notes as you're saying, Jonah.

[00:44:24] But it is this rare example of like – I feel like most Carpenter films, a thing we have been lauding about them, David, is – or lauding them for is like, man, he just keeps it so basic and stripped down. You don't need to explain stuff more.

[00:44:39] Here's all you need to get the setup of the movie out of the way, right?

[00:44:43] And this is one of the only movies, if not the only movie, where he accidentally made a world where you keep on wanting to go like, wait, can we circle back to that thing? What's going on there? That's maybe more interesting than what this movie is about.

[00:44:55] I mean I just want to read like verbatim because it's maybe why I was just jazzed on this movie because it's hard for me to lose faith in a movie that starts this strongly. But you have your like fucking opening credits, right?

[00:45:10] Then the narrator says, for weeks rumors have spread across Mars, which is for me a perfect opening line. That's exactly how I want every movie to open. Also reading what's on the screen and also listening to the VO almost simultaneously was a hit trip. Absolutely, right.

[00:45:25] And then the title cards on screen are Mars 2176 AD, terraforming 84% complete, Earth-like atmosphere, population 640,000 colonists, society colon matriarchal. I love all of this. Earth law enforced by Mars police force. Like just incredible, incredible. That's just how all movies should begin.

[00:45:49] There's a line at the end after the hearing has concluded where someone says something like, the cartel won't believe this. And I'm like, what cartel? Cartel of what? What are they cartelling here? Drugs or money or what is happening? Mars dust. Jesus. Delicious Mars dust.

[00:46:06] The spice must flow. Yes. The irony is like when Zack Snyder does Army of the Dead, right? Which I like, like a fair amount and had certain issues with.

[00:46:18] And most of my issues were tied to this sort of front loading of expanded universe shit where it's like that for me should be a lean ass 90 to 100 minute Carpenter style movie where you just get maximum fucking impact out of that premise and those characters.

[00:46:36] And instead he's setting up all these other tendrils because it's like, well, they're doing a Netflix anime series and there's going to be comic books and there's a prequel movie coming out next month and all this sort of shit.

[00:46:46] And I'm like, just give me the fucking Army of the Dead bank heist casino heist zombie movie. And then this one I'm like, I want fucking 15 spin offs. I want to know about all these. What was the cartel? Tell me about that.

[00:46:58] Give me the adventures of young desolation Williams. That's the thing about like with the Army of the Dead thing. Just real quick. It's like, yeah, he has all this like world building stuff that you don't really need.

[00:47:07] But like Train to Busan, that which also has a has a manga and an anime prequel and all this stuff. It's like you didn't know. You don't you don't know. You don't need that shit. And it's like in Carpenter so good at doing that.

[00:47:22] But then like when he gives you a little hint and you're like, but what about over there? What's through that door? Don't mind that door. It's just you just have to know that that does it all the time. Escape from New York and escape from L.A.

[00:47:31] Do this constantly where it's like Fresno Bob did this thing or what happened in Cleveland or, you know, what happened to the U.S. government? Why are they crazy Christian fascists now?

[00:47:41] Like all of that stuff is cool in the in the context of a very tight, clear narrative. It's fun to get the world building when you know I am going from point A to point C by the end of this thing.

[00:47:54] I think a good example of like like world building just established without just like you get little hints of how it's a Daybreakers, that vampire movie. Oh, yeah, I think it's like, you know, it's like it's like it's like did they take time to go?

[00:48:05] And this is how we built the sub walks so people could be walking around during the day and not get hurt because they're vampires. It's like, no, you just go. It's like, hey, take the sub walk over.

[00:48:14] It's like you just know it's that's that's how it should be. Yeah, right. I like the Mars has to choose trains. David loves trains. We should acknowledge here that David is a big train fan.

[00:48:25] I almost wanted the whole movie to take place on a train, which feels like what happens if this movie has a ten million dollar budget or whatever, where they're like, we're on Mars, the Mars train. Right.

[00:48:35] And then you just sort of see Mars going by in the windows or whatever. I worry that it is a budget thing with Carpenter, where the more money he has, the more he is able to do things that are outside of his comfort zone.

[00:48:47] And if if this movie was as stripped down as you said, where it was like it's just on the train or it's just in a building or whatever, then I think he'd be forced to tell a really tight narrative.

[00:48:58] But when he's got all this money and he's like, well, I guess I could just do these like weird flashbacks and stuff and we can have fire and all these crossfades even within people walking down a hallway. Because he won't give up his bag of tricks.

[00:49:10] I mean, his whole thing is he's like, I'm a classicist. Even when he was at his peak in the 70s and 80s, he was like, people don't like me because I'm still doing things the way Howard Hawks did them.

[00:49:19] I don't care about the tricks these kids are doing. And so not only is he like not catching up with his contemporaries, but he's staying back at his previous throwback style that he's doubling down. Right.

[00:49:32] He is doubling down, I think, to sort of like make a statement there. It also is this weird like we're saying like, oh, he has too much money for this movie, but too much money for him is $28 million.

[00:49:43] Which I think it might be his third highest budget ever. I think so, too. Escape from L.A. is obviously number one. I think Invisible Man is probably number two. And this is right behind those two. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:55] And I think it's like he's in this zone now where Carpenter style movies are frequently costing over $100 million. So you're watching this and you're like, this needs to either cost over $70 or under $15.

[00:50:08] Like either it needs to be really contained and low stakes and sort of like bootstrappy or it needs to be like Carpenter's finally getting all the tools in the toolbox.

[00:50:18] Although if Escape from L.A. proves us anything, Carpenter seems very ill at ease with CGI and more modern special effects.

[00:50:27] Well, I think that we should dub this the Carpenter zone, this budget range where someone who doesn't have the grasp on technology can make a tight, taut thriller, a fun genre movie. And he simply can't do it any higher than what that zone is.

[00:50:46] If you look at the movies he made that were real studio pictures, like big budget studio pictures, at least for the time, they just don't click the way that a story, even Big Trouble is a story that even though it's got a lot of hoo-hahs and dickety-doos on top of it, is linear.

[00:51:06] Like they have to go into the palace. They have to go underground. They have to rescue Kim Cattrall and they have to leave. Like that's perfect. This is what John Carpenter does so well, is tell a classic story in a classical fashion.

[00:51:21] And unfortunately you can't tell a wild story with a bunch of wide shots and a bunch of guys in goofy costumes. And also like the times he does choose to go into close-ups during conversations was very off-putting as well. Yeah.

[00:51:37] It happens I think three different conversations where you're like, wow, now all of a sudden we're just right up on their face. Yeah, leave me alone. Get off me. Natasha Henstridge, good grief. All right. I just reverse engineered a way for me to be okay with the crossfades.

[00:51:51] So the whole movie takes place with Natasha Henstridge's character telling the story of what happened. Right. We haven't even talked about the weird nesting doll structure. And she's on some sort of narcotic too. And she's on some sort of narcotic.

[00:52:04] So this is like, so what we're seeing is her point of view and memory is a bit wibbly-wobbly.

[00:52:10] And so that's like, so when she's thinking about it, remembering it, we're seeing it from her brain's perspective, which is a bit crossfade-y, like kind of combining times and sliding around and stuff like that. Therefore, I think the crossfading is a great use in this film.

[00:52:25] I love you film schooled your way into this being a good movie. You don't see the crossfades at the thing when they're just talking to the board. Touche. It's more bizarre than that because it's like, okay, she's under questioning. Right. She's like drugged up.

[00:52:40] Then she's telling you her interpretation or her memory. You don't know how reliable it is of what happened. And then so often in that story, she says to someone, what happened here? And you get the flashback of their perception of what happened.

[00:52:54] So it's like he's not going full Rashomon with it. But it is interesting how much this movie foregoes narrative propulsion for this sort of like, I don't know what's happening here. Kind of like diffusion of truth.

[00:53:12] Just even the idea too of like since it is her memory and they're like, did the did the ghosts of Mars speak? She's like, yes, I couldn't really hear him. It was really loud, but it sounded like something like that. Or something like that. I don't know.

[00:53:26] It was another kind of language. I'm pretty sure it was something Martian like that. That voice was a choice as well. This is another thing we literally have not even touched on once yet this episode, which is the hook of this movie is that there are ghosts.

[00:53:40] I don't think they're ghosts. They're ghosts. They're called ghosts of Mars. They were the original, the natives of Mars who died and their souls got trapped in the planet. Yep. After we colonized it, they discovered the sort of abandoned. We mine too deep. It's a classic.

[00:53:58] We mined too deep type thing. Open the door we shouldn't have opened. Perhaps ghost is the best way for our feeble human minds to interpret them. What if that was that? What if those are the Martians?

[00:54:10] They're not going to have human bodies or any kind of physical body like that. They're just these almost like an invasion of the body snatchers. They're just these things that float. Jonah, did they say that in the movie? Did they say that in the movie? Jonah?

[00:54:24] No, they did not. They're ghosts. I like asking these questions. They call them ghosts. But you're saying what if they never had a physical form? This is always the state they existed in. Yeah. Right.

[00:54:35] Because they do have a sort of evolutionary survival thing where like if you kill the body there and they can just move to another body. It does almost could they be like symbiotic creatures? That's what I'm thinking. That's how they live.

[00:54:49] We're going to have Dan Aykroyd on our podcast in a couple weeks. So we'll just ask Dan what he thinks. Perfect. Well, here's my question then. Okay. So there's – what's his name? Big Daddy Mars? Big Daddy Mars, yeah.

[00:55:01] Big Daddy Mars who's sort of the character looming over the poster. The Glenn Danzig of it all. Like this. Right. Very Danzig-like. I interpreted him to be like what the pure Martian form was once. Because once these people become possessed with the quote-unquote ghost of Mars.

[00:55:20] They kind of just like scar their faces up and go crazy. Carve up their faces and they make weapons and it sort of looks like they're doing it in tribute to this guy whereas his weird ridges on his face seem to be baked into his physical form.

[00:55:34] It's not a scarring. It's his actual skin texture. I don't know. I mean I just – I do like the premise of there are these things floating around and they possess your body. And if you kill the possessed person, then they jump into a different body.

[00:55:49] Like I think that's a fun carpenter problem. They kill so many of them. How often does that even – that possession even happen? They kill hundreds of these guys. There's only maybe three or four possessions.

[00:56:03] And the first one we see is the one where they kill the prisoner and then Natasha Hinstridge gets possessed. She spits it out because she's on that drug. It happens like an hour and 15 minutes into the movie. Yes. I was unclear about the rules of the ghost.

[00:56:20] Wait, but I kind of love that. Like I think there's something to that. Like the idea of being possessed but then you trip on acid and it fucks with the ghost. And I really feel like – It's a pro-drug movie. Well, kind of.

[00:56:37] But I feel like I wanted to see them all sort of have to take the drugs in order to not be possessed. Like there's something there. I think that's an interesting idea I've never seen before. Yeah. Yeah. And there's – I mean who is it?

[00:56:53] I think it's Mr. Trace who starts huffing that inhaler. Oh, right. And he cuts his own thumb off. Oh, the one that cuts his hand off. Yeah. Right. He's just doing whippets. Right. And that was a super funny moment. That's a great joke. That's a great bit.

[00:57:06] It is fun. Yeah. It's just – there is something interesting in this movie's argument that like the most effective way to combat these ghosts are to fuck with your own brain. I almost wish there was more of that.

[00:57:19] It's a little bit of a problem that the movie has to kind of turn into a shootout at the end when we're like, we kind of know that doesn't work. Like we maybe should just throw the guns away at a certain point.

[00:57:30] Like if they just started eating spicy food or something. You know what I mean? Like extreme heartburn knocks them right out. Right. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:57:40] I guess I'm confused if this is a metaphor for colonization, how the drug thing then fits into that elaborate metaphor about destroying a native culture. I don't get that part. Yeah. I don't know.

[00:57:56] I mean Carpenter has never been one to get too worked up about those kinds of deep – right? You know what I mean? Like he's like, well, that's where the story goes. I don't know. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. I don't know. That's cool. That is this part.

[00:58:10] But yeah, I mean it's what Griffin's saying. Like I don't object to anything about the sort of like fringy details of this movie. I just want more. And I understand that that can't fit into a 90-minute genre movie. That's fine.

[00:58:26] But it is one of those movies where I'm like, well, I'd like to think about all of these ideas you're throwing at me. Yeah. I almost want everyone to calm down a little bit. But there's no time to calm down. It's like the fight that goes to Mars.

[00:58:39] Like, you know, so it goes. But I do think a failing of his – I mean, yes, there's the thing with him where it's like almost always these movies start from him having some kind of vaguely sociopolitical idea. Right?

[00:58:51] And then from there he just comes up with what he thinks is an entertaining genre film.

[00:58:56] And he doesn't really worry about tracking whatever the starting metaphor was onto every beat of it because he's like – his whole attitude has been like I'm not here to yell at people or teach them anything. I want them entertained.

[00:59:08] But maybe there's a germ of the thing that makes them think a little bit.

[00:59:12] I do think he hasn't solved some of the basic how to make this movie entertaining questions where it's like you do get into that problem in the last half hour that it's like, so wait, how do they stop these things?

[00:59:25] Well, here's an action sequence where they all load up on guns and bombs and go in and try to fight them in a way that you know is futile. And that whole sequence just feels like a waste of 10 minutes. The nuke thing was like, come on.

[00:59:37] What's with the nuke? There's no way you can nuke a ghost. What is this? Right. You just know that this is a waste of time. But they're not ghosts, Dave, so you can nuke them. They're organisms. All right. We're going to have a fight about this.

[00:59:50] You're taking the title literally. We are humans. They call them ghosts. They call them ghosts because they're humans. They don't know their – Oh, brother.

[00:59:58] Did you notice that those people when the things go inside of them, the ghosts as you call them, they do not speak any kind of English? Maybe it's just our human brains all we know are like, this seems like possession. It seems like ghosts.

[01:00:08] That's what we're calling them. They just float out of that fucking place and then just start going inside of everybody? I don't know. They're just organisms.

[01:00:15] All I'm saying is that I'm going based on the text and you are extrapolating based on your own desire for these not to be ghosts. And I don't know why you're so anti-ghost. At any point, does any of those people go, we are the ghosts of Mars?

[01:00:27] None of them fucking dare. Oh, boy. They don't self-identify as ghosts. We'll be cool. Okay. It's up to me to identify them as ghosts. Fine. You win, Jonah. Hooray! How many points do I get now? I'm not sure how this show works. Hashtag points. You get 10 ghost points.

[01:00:43] That's cool. Yeah. They were trapped beyond like a cursed door. I'd like to see the movie where you have to corral these spirits and somehow kind of like drive them back beyond some ancient door and then close the door behind them. That'd be fun. I don't know.

[01:01:03] There's got to be rules to supernatural stuff in any movie, but especially in a horror where you have to win. This was hard sci-fi. Yeah. Again, I enjoyed this movie.

[01:01:16] My wife's sitting next to me while I'm watching it and every five minutes, she would just look up and be like, wait, what did they just say? Like if you just kind of like glancingly observe this movie, it just throws a lot of ideas out there. That's all.

[01:01:28] That's my thing. I'm like, this movie has a thousand problems. I think it's a weird curio. It's stuck in between like a lot of different phases of film culture. It's sort of neither fish nor fowl. I find it entertaining.

[01:01:42] I just find it enjoyable to watch and I sort of would love to see more movies be this thoroughly silly, like films of this ill. Malignant is the new Ghosts of Mars. Absolutely. Yes.

[01:01:56] I think that's the sad thing about this film and about Carpenter and where he is now in his life and his career is that if he was going 110% right now making movies, people would eat that shit up because we do have this hankering for camp.

[01:02:14] We've talked about this. We have silliness. And just solid filmmaking. Yeah. If he just churned out what for him are six out of 10 movies, he's old, but he's not like ancient. We would all be hooting and hollering for them. And instead he's just kind of like whatever.

[01:02:30] Lynch could make Twin Peaks season three and he's old. There's still people working. God, Clint Eastwood is 90 years old and he's acting. Also, Carpenter does go on tour. He does a lot on tours. He's doing stuff. I don't begrudge that.

[01:02:43] It does seem as Griff, we've been covering these new 90s movies in every interview. He's a little more embittered. He's a little more like, I don't know why I keep doing this. You can feel it piling up with him.

[01:02:56] I'm looking forward to see what you guys find when you find interviews of the ward when he's promoting that one. We'll get there. I mean, he said after this movie, he was like, I think this is it. I think I'm retired.

[01:03:07] He came out of this movie, especially after it bombed and was trashed so hard being like, yeah, I'm done. I'm done. He does a couple TV episodes of Masters of Horror as we know. And then the ward is the one where I'm like, why did he do that?

[01:03:19] I don't know. We'll find out. We'll find out. Do you know, Griff? I don't know. I don't. Hopefully our guests will have some insight. I don't really know. But yeah, this is the one. I mean, there was a good quote that JJ pulled up here.

[01:03:35] I mean, he's like, you know, talking about just where was it? They asked him in 2001 his thoughts about retiring. Right. And he said, I've been trying to do that for years. Sure. I'd love to retire.

[01:03:50] I think there's a time when you just have to lay down when it becomes too hard. It's just fighting the same problem over and over. If you make the films I want to make, I'm just stubborn, I guess.

[01:03:57] But there may come a time where I'll think, yeah, it's just not worth it anymore. And he says that in September 2001. And then like a couple months after that, he's like, yeah, no, I think that's right. What's wild about that 2001 interview was it was September 12th.

[01:04:10] I mean, why was he even talking about it? He called them up. You got to cancel. Show some respect. I have some things to say. I have some things to get off my chest. And this is an interview he does with the AV Club in 2011.

[01:04:25] He said, it hit me when I was looking at the extras for the DVD of Ghosts of Mars. It showed me at the beginning of the process on the set. I looked OK. And then it showed me at the very end of the process doing the music.

[01:04:35] I was like a dead man. Dead man walking. And I thought, OK. It's like being president or whatever. You just like age 10 years in a year. OK. All right. I can't do this for a while. I just can't. I thought it was a good time to stop. Wow.

[01:04:48] Yeah. So I saw a bloody disgusting piece he did, or an interview he did, where he says, the word script came to him at the right time, right after Masters of Horror, where he was kind of like jazzed again.

[01:05:01] So I feel like he's one of those people sort of similar to when you get divorced and you see your ex-wife in the right light. And you're like, well, maybe. What if? What if? And then something horrible happens where you're like, oh, we hate each other. That's right.

[01:05:15] I mean, you are the only divorced man on this episode right now. But that sounds like a very good analogy. And it's certainly a thing we found in covering these movies week to week is like everyone

[01:05:24] he's like, and I decide I'm never making a studio movie ever again. Life's too short. I'm never working with these fuckers ever again. And then the next episode is, Universal came back around to me and I thought, it's been a little while. I should give it another shot.

[01:05:36] Right. I should make a movie. Why not? Oh my god. And you were like, it's been 18 months? Like, he just feels like- We've both grown since then. Right. He flips between this steadfast, like, I don't care. I can walk away. Life's too short.

[01:05:47] I don't want to do this. And being like, I don't know. I want to see if I could make it work this time. Well, I think there are some people like a David Lynch or a John Carpenter who have other passions.

[01:05:57] You know, David Lynch is a painter and he made music and all that stuff that he does. And Carpenter is a very talented musician himself and has other interests. Loves playing video games. Yeah, loves playing video games. Basketball.

[01:06:10] There's the rare director who's struggled in Hollywood, who can walk away without having another passion. Like, Albert Brooks. I don't know if you guys have done an Albert Brooks one yet. There's not a ton of movies, but- We've not, but he did his first one. He just-

[01:06:28] But we never made it. We should do a Brooks. Yeah. He just walked away after looking for comedy in the Muslim world and he didn't do anything else. He wrote one book and he's like, okay, I'm good. I'm done. See ya.

[01:06:39] I'm going back to my house in the Palisades and you're not going to see or hear from me unless I do drive or something. That was because he's from a time in showbiz where you got residuals and he could just

[01:06:51] kind of look at what's going to come in and speculate on that and then just go, all right, I'm good. I can walk away. But then no ego either. Like, there's still the ego and I'm sure every single person on this podcast right now has one.

[01:07:04] I certainly do. When you're sitting around at home and you're watching TV or baseball or whatever and you say, I just saw this commercial for this movie that looks like crap. I could do a better job than that. I should win an Oscar.

[01:07:17] I'm the most talented person of all time. That drive, that feeling doesn't just go away. I'm not surprised that Carpenter looks at the world of filmmaking and says, I can still do it. But at some point he is able to walk away because he does have other passions.

[01:07:36] Yeah, I do think it's also just like every movie was a fucking battle for him and most of them flopped and were disliked when they came out. And I think he's enjoying his victory lap of how much he is beloved and how much almost

[01:07:49] every single one of his films has been reclaimed, save for very few at this point in time. You know, when he does interviews now, he's like, I'm old. I want to stay home. I want to play video games. I don't care. I don't want to make another movie.

[01:08:02] And then this thing we keep on coming back to is there was this point where there was a rumor going around that he had pitched a new movie to Blumhouse and then it didn't happen.

[01:08:12] And he's producer on all the David Gordon Green Halloween movies, which is slightly more than an honorific title, but I don't think he's deeply creatively involved. He's making music for it too. He's making music for them and he sort of has like godfather status over the things.

[01:08:27] But you do question like, why aren't they just saying, here's your $10 million? Like write a premise that can fit into $10 million or 15 or whatever it is. Right. The old deal he had in the 80s. Yeah. Why not just let Carpey work? But he may not want to.

[01:08:42] He might not want to. I do imagine that if he wanted to, he could probably make it happen. Yeah. I think he's better off than Terry Gilliam. He's way better off than Terry Gilliam, who will scramble to make money from 700 European

[01:08:57] arms dealers and then make a terrible movie. And then say something about cancel culture that makes everybody hate him again. Like I would rather what we're getting from Carpenter where he says, this is my filmography. This is my canon.

[01:09:10] I made some really troubling movies at a time when people didn't want to see those. And now I'm loved. Terry Gilliam could have walked away. No, I got to make my stupid Don Quixote movie. Hey, I like that movie. All right. I'm sure you did.

[01:09:24] But for the most part, people found it not good. The thing of, I didn't even hate the Don Quixote movie. The thing about that movie was like, oh my God, after 20 years, he finally made it. I watched and I was like, that was okay.

[01:09:35] That's my exact stance as well. The weirdest thing about that movie is that it's neither a disaster nor a masterpiece. The fact that it's okay somehow is the most disappointing result of all. We would have done Gilliam. Obviously, he's a sort of classic blank check guy.

[01:09:51] I feel like Griffin, you and I are probably both less interested in doing him these days because he's become such a pain in the ass. But it's also that he, like Dave was saying, kind of made this run of 10 fascinating movies.

[01:10:04] And he was like, and four more that are diminishing returns. Zero Theorem? No Zero Theorem fans in the house? Nah. That's the thing for, like even if his career ended in 2005, right? And you have like Brothers Grimm is this horrible studio filmmaking compromised experience.

[01:10:22] And then Tideland is this passion project that's like fucking demented. That would be sort of an interesting series. And then Parnassus, Zero Theorem and Quixote are all three like, no, I'm going to come back and do the kind of movie you loved from me.

[01:10:38] And there's three more at bats where he's like, I got one more Brazil in me. And we keep on going like, do you? You don't. Yeah, you have sold your soul to these sleazy people that you constantly have to sue over profits

[01:10:52] because you can't just say, I'm not going to make it. It's not the right situation. I'm not going to make it. And Carpenter, to his credit, says, I'm good. I'm good. That's the thing. It is simultaneously both depressing and frustrating

[01:11:07] that there have only been two John Carpenter movies in the 21st century, period. Like he makes this film in 2001 and he makes The Ward in 2011 and he's done. Right. On the other hand, I do think it has been great for his reputation.

[01:11:23] It has frozen everything he made before the year 2000 in amber. And it makes it makes it so there is not sort of like, well, but then, of course, obviously, diminishing returns fall off.

[01:11:34] It's like the diminishing return fall off for him was arguably only five movies after such a stellar run. And of those five, most people have like a soft spot for at least one or two of them. Yeah. It's been great for his legacy.

[01:11:49] But not a lot of directors are thinking about that. They're thinking about how do I get back to Cannes? How do I get that Oscar? How do I get that next big check? How do I get back into magazines and how do I compete with my peers?

[01:12:01] Like you have to you have to retire at some point. You have to say enough is enough, I think, in any profession, but especially in an artistic one where your fastball does get slower every single year. It's true.

[01:12:15] That's another thing with him, too, is that like I don't think he ever has had that itch of like I'd love to fucking finally win an Oscar and be taken seriously.

[01:12:24] Like he seems to be somewhat resentful and constantly in interviews like throw shade at David Cronenberg kind of selling out by going legitimate. Like he's like, I don't know why David Cronenberg tries to disown the fact that he was a horror filmmaker.

[01:12:37] Now he wants to make intellectual movies.

[01:12:40] I think also I read this one fucking I wouldn't even read it was a video I watched some interview with him where he talked about that all the horror directors used to have like a regular dinner that they would do a couple times a year.

[01:12:52] The Masters and that. Right. And then Cronenberg stopped going to them and then he ran into him at some other thing and Cronenberg kind of gave him the brush off. And he felt that Cronenberg was kind of like going like, no, I make like Freud movies.

[01:13:05] Yeah, go fuck a car, dude. Yeah, but Cronenberg, man, I'm like, he's still doing wild stuff. His his new movie sounds bonkers. I love Cronenberg and I think it's fine that he swerved that he pivoted. Yeah, me too. And he's pivoted.

[01:13:23] Well, it wasn't just like a hollow attempt for, you know, legitimacy or hardware or whatever. But he he did shift and I think Carpenter doesn't have that shift in him.

[01:13:34] I think if he were to come back and make another movie, his goal would be I'd like to fucking scare people or I'd like to make something that's just really fun. But the shift is what allows you to prolong your career.

[01:13:45] And I'm sure you guys have seen it a hundred times as you've been doing this podcast, that there is a point where there is either a tonal shift or an attempt to go to the next level or raise the bar, do something wacky.

[01:13:58] And or there isn't, you know, or the director is just like, I'm good. I'm going to keep making the same movie. Dario Argento had, you know, maybe two phases of his career and then circled back to the end, you know, before before the end of his life.

[01:14:13] But most people don't have any shifts and they just are workmen or work people. Like I think you need to have that desire to continue pushing the envelope and doing new stuff because that's what allows you to evolve and grow as an artist and have a longer career.

[01:14:31] Also, you know, Dario Argento is still alive, right? I thought he died. No, no. Dario Nicolode is dead. OK. Dario Argento is still alive. OK, good for him. I hope he never makes another movie because he hasn't made a good one in a long time.

[01:14:47] That is a great full circle point, though, Schilling, because that's what this movie is. This movie is an odd object of a guy who fundamentally refuses to adapt to the times. Right.

[01:14:58] As you said, you cannot make this film at this budget level with this cast two years after The Matrix. You can't do it. And he's just like, why would I do anything differently? I don't care what the fucking kids want. Right.

[01:15:08] And his his greatest respect was always for the filmmakers in like the 40 studio system where it's like, I know you just make four movies a year. Like, it's a job. It's a job. Get the movies done. Right.

[01:15:21] Rather than needing to sort of evolve and push himself in that way. A lot of it was sort of like traveling showman, like what will get the people into the tent this week?

[01:15:28] And I think partly the reaction to this movie, but also like the last four movies leading up to this point being increasingly out of favor. He's just like they don't want what I'm selling anymore. I don't necessarily want to make something else. It's fine.

[01:15:43] We can part ways here. A guy you look at who for me is a great example of what I would love to see Carpenter do is Verhoeven, where it's like he backed away for a while. He felt fucking burnout on Hollywood, you know?

[01:15:58] And then he came back really fucking strong. Now, the way he's come back is making three European arthouse movies, each spaced about 10 years apart. I just saw the latest one at Beyond Fest. I can't fucking wait. Yeah, me too. Benedetta. Yeah. Yes.

[01:16:17] But I don't know if like that felt like he took enough time away that people came back and appreciated him.

[01:16:23] And then he found a way to evolve a little bit as an artist and do something that's very much in his wheelhouse, but something he could not have made in his younger days. But that's how his career started.

[01:16:34] Like he's going back to square one in a weird way. His big Hollywood films were the sidetrack from that. Absolutely. Whereas Carpenter doesn't have a sidetrack. Carpenter always was just making movies like this. Griffin, are you saying that millennials are killing the John Carpenter industry?

[01:16:51] I think millennials are maybe willing to bring the John Carpenter industry back. I think the two things millennials will pay for are Avocado on Toast and John Carpenter movies. There's just a John Carpenter shortage.

[01:17:06] You could own a home if you didn't want to have John Carpenter keep on making movies. You got to go see. If you stopped buying the special Colorway John Carpenter soundtrack vinyl releases. I simply can't. I am addicted. Another anthology. Come on, you don't need that on vinyl.

[01:17:22] Lost themes part three. But yeah, man, he's got one pitch. He's a pitcher with one pitch and it's a great pitch. And I love to watch him throw it, but he might not be able to throw it so hard anymore. And you're right.

[01:17:41] If he doesn't want to make another movie, then I'd rather he doesn't come back and make something. Make something tired or whatever. Yeah, like those kids that made Argento finish his trilogy. Like, no, just leave him alone.

[01:17:52] What if he was to just smoke cigarettes and drink, you know, Rosé all day in Italy? Like, leave this man alone. It's so nice. Let's leave Carpenter alone. And neither of us have seen The Word yet.

[01:18:04] We will watch it for next week's episode as we finish this out. But I have not heard a single person ever defend that movie. And that feels like, well, everyone spent nine years after Ghosts of Mars going like, John, come on.

[01:18:18] And then he did this movie and then it wasn't what they wanted it to be. John, we were wrong. Right, right. It's like. What if we like The Word? You don't know. Maybe we love The Word. Who's on the show next week?

[01:18:29] We're going to have to reveal that. It's top secret. Oh, I didn't realize it was a secret even though you guys released an entire calendar with all the. I guess you didn't release the guest. We don't release the guest.

[01:18:40] And the other thing is that we have made the mistake in the past of announcing a guest and then having a major scheduling kerfuffle. That's the reason we don't say it. It's happened a couple times. I wouldn't know what that was like. Absolutely not.

[01:18:53] We have a guest next week. Super easy. Yes, go ahead. We have a guest next week. We have a guest next week who is great and is very excited to do it and I think is a perfect person and the Carpenter series on.

[01:19:04] And I find it unlikely that anything will go awry in making the episode happen. You never know. But you never know. You never know because M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening with James Urbaniak is an episode that fundamentally does not exist despite the fact that we promised it.

[01:19:18] Yeah, I shouldn't have said a word about Ackroyd on this podcast. Now he's going to disappear like a ghost. That guy's available. You can get him. I don't know. We have tried so hard to get him for George Lucas talk show and we can't. Really? I know.

[01:19:34] And our pitch has been John. John. Our pitch has been Dan. That's where you're fucking up. You keep calling him John. I named him not John. His best friend, you fucking idiot. Belushi, listen to me. Yes. No, our pitch has been Dan.

[01:19:51] You come on and talk about whatever the fuck you want for however long you want. You're the only guest. You said how long it is. We'll talk to you about ghosts and UFOs and whatever you want. The floor is yours.

[01:20:03] The other pitch is that Connor Ratliff, who plays George Lucas, does not drink, has drank like three times in his entire life.

[01:20:09] And if he came on the show, we would make the entire thing an hour plus devoted to solely promoting Crystal Skull vodka and we would each drink. So it would be drunk, fake George Lucas talking to real Dan Ackroyd about ghosts and aliens.

[01:20:26] And every time we reach out there, like he's not promoting anything right now. Well, he's promoting Ghostbusters right now. That's why we got him. I know. And remember, it's Crystal Head Vodka. Crystal Skull. I know. It's the kingdom. Crystal Skull is the another. Yeah, just try again, guys.

[01:20:42] I really have faith. We'll try again. Box office game. I do want to take us through. Yes, the opening weekend of Ghosts of Mars, August 24th, 2001. Not a hot time at the box office. And it's opening number nine with three million dollars. Horrible. Grossing eight total domestically.

[01:21:05] I would sort of argue that the two worst box office weekends are the first week of September and the first week of January. But last week of August is pretty fucking close. And now Shang-Chi has opened first week of September and made a bazillion dollars.

[01:21:21] So last week of August might be less desirable than first week of September. What else came out that day, though? Well, I'm going to tell you some of the movies that came out this day. There's a lot. One of them is going to guess it.

[01:21:34] But some of the movies that are opening new that are not in the top five. You've got Freddie Prinze Jr. Baseball movie, Summer Catch. You've got The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Woody Allen burning up the box office opening at number 11. Jake Gyllenhaal, cult comedy Bubble Boy.

[01:21:54] Yeah, pretty good. Opening at number 13. He's great in that movie. And then you have what's the movie is called Tortilla Soup. Isn't it a remake? Am I crazy? It's a remake of In Drink Man Woman. In Drink Man Woman. That's right. Yes. Opening at number 20.

[01:22:14] But Griffin, number one of the box office is a sequel. It's in its third week at number one. It's a comedy. It's Rush Hour 2. Comedy's ruling this box office. It's Rush Hour 2. No! It's American Pie 2. It's American Pie 2. Thank you.

[01:22:26] The two twos at the top of the box office. Crushing. Both of them are crushing. American Pie 2 and Rush Hour 2. Back in August, stupid comedies ruled the roost. I've said this before and I got the specifics wrong.

[01:22:39] But Rush Hour 2 at the time of its release was like one of the five highest grossing opening weekends of all time. Highest groping? You might be talking about the director of that movie. It also unfortunately was also one of the highest groping.

[01:22:50] It was about the Jade Scorpion there. Yeah. There's a lot of high groping movies at the box office this weekend. I'll tell you this. I've never seen a Rush Hour. They're okay. Never seen any of them. The first one's good. I have only seen one.

[01:23:02] I've only seen the first one. I have never seen two or three. It's the pastiche is like all the movies that I like. But it's not the – some of the parts is not enough for me to enjoy it. Yeah, I think two and three are bad.

[01:23:15] I think one is dysfunctional. It's like satisfying. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think seeing the two of them together, the chemistry between the two leads carried that movie. Right. Number three at the box office is the other new entry this week.

[01:23:29] It's also a comedy sequel but in kind of a different way. Very nerdy movie from someone you've collaborated with, Griffin Neumann. Oh, oh, oh, oh. It's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. What's the film? You know, it's funny to think about this as the pre-911 weekend practically.

[01:23:47] You know what I mean? American Pie 2, Rush Hour 2, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. America is just like, this is fine. Let's just be stupid, sit around giggling. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back opening at number three to $11 million.

[01:24:01] I feel like that was seen as an underperformance but in retrospect, I'm like, that's pretty good for a very niche movie. But comedies were so hot back then. That's the other thing. You had to get them 100 million. And it was R-rated, raunchy comedy.

[01:24:15] It had so many stars in it, even if they were mostly cameos. And it comes out after Dogma. And Dogma, despite all the controversy, was like four in a way his highest grossing movie.

[01:24:24] So I think people thought that this one might break out a little because they were like, well, it's like a stoner movie. It's like two sex-obsessed stoners. Isn't that similar to the types of movies that do well?

[01:24:35] But it's an incredibly niche film that is almost entirely made up of fan service and callbacks to four other fairly niche films. That's what I hated about it so much. And thank God he's doing those again. Hey, Message to the Universe, Revelation Part 2 coming out November 2021.

[01:24:53] He tried a lot of different stuff, Kevin Smith. He did. And I think that's why he's still floating around. Red State? He could have just kind of clicked into doing stuff like that. Steady hand directing Red State. Yeah, agreed. I don't mind Red State, actually.

[01:25:09] I have not seen it since it came out. Number four at the box office, speaking of Red State, is a horror film. A pretty good one. Kind of a slow burn hit. Is it The Others? It's The Others. Good, non-jumpy, super atmospheric.

[01:25:25] Haven't thought about that in a long time. Good movie. Good movie. I like that movie. So there are like six movies getting dumped into wide release this one weekend? And they're all tanking. Because number five, Griffin, is another madcap comedy with an all-star cast. Rat Race?

[01:25:43] It's Rat Race. Rat Race! The race is on. Guys! The race is on! Join the race! I'm realizing how many movies can be said about that, Griffin, but I still was blown away by that. Thank you. I remember this weekend vividly. After that, it's like Summer Catch.

[01:26:03] That's another comedy. Summer Catch is like a rom-com. I've never seen it. You've got The Princess Diaries at number seven. That's cleaning up. Sure. But it's, well, whatever. Number eight, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, a famous bomb of the year. Huge bomb. Great book, terrible movie. Basically everyone is miscast.

[01:26:25] Why the hell did they release it in the summer too? I guess it's because it's Greek Island or whatever. I think that movie was filmed on Oahu. Am I wrong about that? That's interesting. I don't know. I wasn't there. You always have a soft spot for movies.

[01:26:39] You're like, it was filmed up the street. Bella Bobina, Two O'Clock, and then Ghosts of Mars, Planet of the Apes at number ten. I was going to ask. Wow. That's crazy. Planet of the Apes came out in July, right? It was the last weekend? Yes.

[01:26:56] It was the last week of July. This is like week four for it. It was around my birthday, that's right. It's dropped pretty fucking hard. You've also got Jurassic Park 3. These are the other sort of lingering blockbusters. And Legally Blonde. Those are the other big boys.

[01:27:12] I have a soft spot for Planet of the Apes. I kind of like that movie. Have you rewatched it? I have rewatched it, yes. Wahlberg is so poorly cast in that movie. But you've got Helen of Monom Carter, a truly wild performance. Paul Giamatti! From Giamatti, exactly.

[01:27:30] What's his name? Lingo? Limbo. I just love Giamatti doing any sort of Carnival Barker or Slave owner. Or what he does in Jungle Cruise. I'm a fan. He should be the lead character in Jungle Cruise. I agree. I wanted more of Giamatti and The Rock in that.

[01:27:50] Hopefully sequel. But yeah, just to underline, this movie massively underperformed. It was given poor reviews. It kind of felt like this weird sort of damp ending to his career. And now people have come around on it so Carpenter was like, Alright, I'll give you a real damp ending.

[01:28:09] Don't worry, I'll make one more. But that's for next time. Comes around with a wet towel, threatens to throw it on top of you. Yeah, Ghost of Mars. I like it too, Griff. I own the DVD. It's a six. It's a gentleman's six for me.

[01:28:25] It's a six and a half maybe. I'm gonna go five. I mean, it's definitely not above average. Jonah, now you have to give a number. I'm sorry. I lost track of the conversation because it turns out it was in Captain Corelli's Mandolin

[01:28:41] and I thought it might have been Tears of the Sun by Bruce Willis. Was it Windtalkers? Windtalkers! Windtalkers, yeah! I was gonna say it was a Tigerland. I had a lot of options lined up. But it was the other sort of prestigy Nicolas Cage attempt.

[01:29:00] Nicolas Cage World War II movie. Historical, yeah. And that came out in 2002 so yeah. He should not have made back-to-back World War II movies. That was a mistake. There's a lot of things that Cage should and should have done. They were hot though.

[01:29:15] World War II movies were hot as hell back then. It was John Madden and John Woo. It's true. They were prestige projects. I can't deny it. Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a great book, I will say. But he's such insane casting for that role when you read the book.

[01:29:30] It's crazy. We don't need to talk about Captain Corelli's Mandolin. We do need to send our guests on their way because they have a hard out. Oh shit, yeah. We did have a hard out ten minutes ago. Exactly! Jiminy Christmas.

[01:29:44] I don't really know what was happening but I'll say five? Yeah, there you go. Good. Nailed it. Jonah, Dave, thank you guys so much for being here. Obviously people should listen to Galaxy Brains. Where our podcasts are found.

[01:29:58] Is there anything else the two of you want to plug? Absolutely not. Jonah has a thing at the, oh it's probably gone by the time this airs, right? I don't know. The Metta Works screening? Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

[01:30:12] But this January, a new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 coming out. It's going to be independently produced thanks to a Kickstarter. It's going to be out on our own website. But really funny movies and there's going to be like a new movie on the site every month.

[01:30:29] New riffs, all the bots are there, stuff like that so stay tuned for that. Very, very exciting. Thank you guys so much for doing this. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. Tick for tack.

[01:30:44] Thank you for taking the midnight train to Mars with us and thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media, AJ McKeon, and Alex Barron for our editing,

[01:30:57] JJ Birch, Nick Loreano for our research, Joe Bowen, Pat Rellins for artwork, Leigh Montgomery and The Great American Novel for our theme song. You can listen to their new album Extremely Loud and Crowdly Online wherever you find it. Where do you find albums? I don't know.

[01:31:14] Go to blankies.rad.com for some real nerdy shit and go to patreon.com slash blankcheck for Blank Check special features where we do franchises on commentaries and of course, obviously, are ending out the year with Tim Allen's Santa Claus trilogy. Amazing.

[01:31:33] Tune in next week for The End of Carpenter. It's been a wild run. Da Ward. Da Ward. I think Ghosts of Mars was meant to be the third Snake Liskin movie. Is that right, David? But with Rowdy Roddy instead of Pete Russell in the role of Snake Liskin.

[01:31:52] It was going to be a gender-flipped Snake Ash.