[00:00:00] Village of the Damned. Village of the Damned. What if there was a village of the Damned? What if? Are you struggling with the quotes here, Griffin? Uh, yeeeeh? It's got a good tagline. It does, but I mean is it a- It's short. Yeah. Um... You got this.
[00:00:28] You got this. I don't know if you got this. Hmm, you might not. I don't know. Uh... Give me one second. Beware the stare that will paralyze the will of the world. That was the tagline for the original. Yeah, I'm just gonna fucking say the thing.
[00:00:50] Just do it. Yeah. Beware the podcast! I don't know. There's no hotlines in this one, right? The quotes are so goddamn bad. It's just a lot of people having sort of reasonable conversations. I mean, there's something creepy the kids say. The janitor, what does he say?
[00:01:13] That's a great little moment. I'll tell you what he says. Yeah, it doesn't fit into the fucking format. My very precise format. Uh... What's his line here? Well, are you gonna do something? You're just gonna cry like all the other little pissants. Do something, goddammit.
[00:01:31] I know your game- He had some energy. I know what you're up to. Ever since he got here, I've been watching. Watching people leave this town. Oh wow. Watching things die. Maybe I do that. Okay, ready? I mean, all this stays in, but I'm just gonna do this.
[00:01:43] Okay. Sure. I know your game. I know what you're up to ever since he got here. I've been podcasting. Podcasting people leave this town. Podcasting things die. You ain't right. None of ya. One of these days, someone's gonna podcast something about it. Okay, so yeah, that was good.
[00:02:24] You kind of- You kind of peppered in some words there. I peppered in some words. I don't know. I love that guy's energy. That guy, you know... Yeah. Because this whole movie, I was just like, why isn't everyone just screaming all the time? Everyone's just kind of like,
[00:02:40] Well, what are you gonna do? You know how on last of the Mohicans, they hired West duty to be an actor? And New World, I know did this too. You hire West duty to be an actor, but you also hire him to be a consultant and a coach.
[00:02:54] And you're like, he's gonna work with everyone and make sure they get the details right? Sure. They should have had the janitor work that way as an energy consultant. Right, just come on. Look at this guy. Hey, Kirstie! Go bigger! I don't think Kirstie can go bigger.
[00:03:10] Put some fucking life into this, Kirstie! You think Kirstie can go bigger? Kirstie chain smokes throughout the entire movie. You know what your right is? She would figure she'd be holding like a gigantic cigar the size of a baby's forearm. You're right, you're right.
[00:03:25] Kirstie's maybe the only other actor in this movie who's giving it the right amount of energy. She just has bad judgment. But that would be fun if she had a cigar the size of a baby's arm. She should!
[00:03:36] And if she lit it and it exploded in her face at one point. Do you guys know this, the fucking jungle cruise thing with Giamatti? David hates when I bring up the movie's jungle cruise. You keep bringing up this movie that no one remembers! It doesn't exist!
[00:03:50] All right, what about Giamatti? $120 million domestic, something like that. One of our only hits. One of our only hits. Um, so they like Giamatti is the fucking best part of that movie. I don't know if you saw that movie. Of course I saw that movie.
[00:04:05] You mean the movie where two thirds of the way through the rock looks at the camera and says, by the way, I'm immortal? Absolutely. Spoilers. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Spoilers. Giamatti is the best part of that movie and you don't understand why he isn't
[00:04:18] the main antagonist and why he doesn't have more to do when considering what he's fucking giving them and how much fun that character is. And it turns out the rock went to Giamatti because I guess they've done two movies together. They did, they did San Andreas.
[00:04:31] He's in San Andreas, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. San Andreas is a worse movie. Yes. Wow. I think that's true. Yes. It's boring. It's very boring. But um, they were like, we have this role. We need like someone to be like the rock impersonates him and he owns
[00:04:46] the boat and it's just like, we don't have anything here. Can you come in? You have carte blanche. You could do anything you want. We like haven't really written a character. You could do anything you want. So Giamatti's like, hmm, let me think it over.
[00:04:57] And his negotiation was he went back to Disney and he was like, I want a monkey that sits on my shoulder and lights my cigars. What you're saying is our movie of the day. If it had a monkey that was lighting at Kiersey Alley's baby four arm
[00:05:15] shaped cigars, right? Five stars is what Griffin is saying. Yeah. Cause that was that was Paul Giamatti's initial instinct for the character and that shows you what a canny actor he is. He understood exactly what that movie needed.
[00:05:28] Of course, Disney said no cigars allowed monkeys are difficult to work with will give you a fucking cockatoo. And that was that was the settlement. I'll give you a fucking cockatoo. I mean, I want to get married and divorced just so my husband
[00:05:39] can say we'll give you a fucking cockatoo. I'll give you a fucking cock. Did you know that Jesse Plemons's character is actually based on a real person on the actual son? Yep. How mean is that? Is that true? Yeah.
[00:05:53] There's a real you could he has a whole Wikipedia page the real guy that Jesse Plemons is playing and they would just like fuck him. He'll just be in our movie. Just like fuck it. Yeah, you were a real guy. You lived and died.
[00:06:06] Your ancestors are probably still here. Whatever your your mean old Nazi we're going to make like pre not see. He's just a mean old member of the German Empire. Pre not what a weird movie but also not weird enough.
[00:06:22] It's in such a weird balance of kind of the exact wrong amount of weirdness should be silly is sometimes silly but not serious not silly enough. This is the problem with all Disney movies now though they all have to be important for some reason, you know, well,
[00:06:39] I've got to teach you about like life lessons and feminism. Right exactly. It all has to be about Stam or whatever she wears pants back in the day. You know, a master of horror could just be like look I'll
[00:06:51] do your remake but can we just shoot it like my house? Yeah, you know and it's okay. No one has to like really bring any energy. It's fine. We'll get it done quickly. Wait, I see what you're doing Sims what you're doing is
[00:07:04] you're trying to put like a magic jungle cruise lasso around Griffin and make him talk about today's film. Correct. Yeah, I am but I mean I more just want us to stop talking about jungle cruise. I think that movie is like infected Griffin's brain or something wrong.
[00:07:16] Yeah, David is acting like Proxima the giant jungle cat creating a distraction refocus attention to the movie at hand. That's a character. Remember that Proxima the giant jungle cat of course. Yeah, okay because the rocks character Frank Frank what
[00:07:36] a guy you said it with a lot of conviction right he keeps on getting cats. He has giant jungle cats and he is immortal and he lives for thousands of years and he keeps on getting new cats when the last cat dies and names of all Proxima
[00:07:49] that's real. That is real. I get it's like Proxima the next one. Okay, all right. Well he does with all the bodies like it's a big I mean that's like a big. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he thinks part of like the rocks high protein diet.
[00:08:05] Yes, that's his cheat day. His cheat day is he eats a Proxima Jaguar normal days he eats like what 30 cod fillets. Yeah, he fucking loves pancakes and tequila right isn't that he always post the picture of him with
[00:08:19] like a stack of 80 but like a fucking forced to make a Neil stack of pancakes. The pancakes are made out of cod they're just refashioned the pounded flat died brown. Just his life seems so joyless. That's what we that's why you're fascinated with him
[00:08:35] here because he seems so tired and unhappy as he's like pancakes. Yeah, whatever. He's our next president. He's probably the only hope we have of stopping whatever Donald Trump or something gonna have to talk myself into the rock someday in the future.
[00:08:50] You're not gonna be able to get elected president unless you've done at least three seasons on NBC. And Trump broke that and the rock was like I got to get on fucking NBC. I got to do a show that's explicitly about me running for president.
[00:09:05] Well, that's great news for Kirstie Ali. Kirstie Ali could be we're going to talk about today today today. Thank you Amy. Thank you. I'm just here being your woman in pants getting shit done swinging it back around because Veronica's closet
[00:09:22] that was that was on NBC to that's out of sure village of the damned. She jumps from the village to the closet. Interesting. Is this sort of the end of her movie? Karita. Well, I mean for Richard. Or it's drop dead gorgeous. Oh sure.
[00:09:42] That's but it's definitely after the fight. Yeah. And that's sort of an ensemble. She came out. She did look who's talking and that was basically I think it really like kind of like rubber stamped her whole movie career. Well, she did the trilogy. She got a trilogy.
[00:09:55] He pulled down a trilogy and then God I forgot she did an Olsen twins movie. That's what I was saying it takes to take two is that before that is 1995. It's the same year as this. Okay. I just remember in for Richard poor there's a scene in
[00:10:11] the middle of the movie where Kirstie Ali's like this is just witness. We're just doing witness and Tim Allen's like yeah, I know like they were like you know what we'll just acknowledge him. We'll just have someone say that out loud.
[00:10:23] Tim Allen's like yeah, that was the pitch. You don't remember you were there at the meeting. I mean listen I have a feeling that today we're going to do some ragging on Kiersey Ali which I believe she deserves but I think we should say that the movie
[00:10:37] we're about to talk about in which she is more or less atrocious does take place between her second and third Emmy. She is an Emmy award-winning actress. She has more Emmys than any of us do even if we all won an Emmy each. That's correct. That's correct.
[00:10:49] She has she has two Emmys, two Emmys. Wow good for her both for Cheers I'm assuming. No, no one's called David's mother. The hell is this that TV movie? Oh it's a single mother raising an autistic boy drama sounds profound Sam. Sam Waterston stalker Channing.
[00:11:09] It was a TV movie right this is not a TV movie. This is a best actress in a limited series or special and then she got a nomination for the last Don. That's one of those sort of that was the what's it called Danny Aiello as God's drama.
[00:11:27] No, no, no, it's just another like mobster thing and then she got an Emmy nomination for Veronica's closet. That was it. Wow. Yeah, that was her last Emmy. No, that's like how many nominations is that total? She got well you got those three plus five for cheer.
[00:11:44] So eight total. Wow, she got five consecutive nominations for every year pretty much. Wow. Wow. How many Emmy nominations do you have David? Oh boy. Ah, let me just plug my name into I'm here. I am I am the top results not seeing any Emmy nom
[00:12:02] for old David. Haven't gotten any noms. No, that's so zero. She's eight oh on me. Yeah, that's embarrassing David because meanwhile I'll type my name into I'm DB and it auto completed negative nominations negative. She also I'm not seeing any Golden Raspberry nomination. So she's avoided the rise.
[00:12:24] Yeah, right. She never got a stinker. I think this movie got razed did it not wait wait. It's saying here I have an Emmy had no idea. Oh, congrats. What for pretty pretty sir Ben? What was your Emmy for? Oh, I'm seeing here.
[00:12:40] It was for the new season of gossip girl. Oh, of course you're on that apparently. What was I going to say? The this movie griff was nominated for a Razzie for worse remake or sequel. Okay. It lost to the Scarlet Letter which I think that's
[00:13:03] a little stupid because I'm sure that had been made before but that wasn't really a remake. No, but that movie was like so hate that's the thing. They were just so excited to jab it. Well, that's the thing about the Razzies.
[00:13:17] The Razzies are a group of real jerks. The Razzies are like the mean kids from theater camp who like invented a way to have power. It was a taste. I'll go I will rag on the Razzies forever. I mean wait, I feel like I've even ragged on the
[00:13:31] Razzies around you. Let's do it again. Probably. Yeah. Let's fucking raz the Razzies. Let's do it. I went to the Razzies. Did you know that you can go to the Razzies? I knew they had a dinner. Yeah, I went to a Razzies ceremony.
[00:13:44] I went like right after yeah, I went right after I went to the Indie spirits. So it was like my day of like high brow low brow. Right because they usually do it the day before the Oscars right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:56] So the Razzies it's really like nine nerds who like get up and do skits in between each each award. And it's just the same nine nerds. It's like a really bad version of like SETV or something where they're like, and now we do a lampoon.
[00:14:13] But their lampoons are all much worse than everything they're already making fun of. And you get the sense they didn't even watch any of them. They're very compelling performers probably right? Yeah. It's just weird. It really feels like people who got pitchforks for
[00:14:26] the first time and they're so excited. Yeah. What year do you remember? Yeah, which which Razzies you attended? What year? I think I was in the Razzies. It was 2016, I believe. So it looks like you're your big movie that you see this
[00:14:42] is the problem with the current Razzies. No, it's one of those like Dinesh D'Souza years. Oh, 2016. No, no, it would have been America. Imagine the world without her. It's Hillary's America secret. Okay, it was a different one. Oh wait, no, wait, maybe I was there in 2017.
[00:15:00] That would be the the emoji movie is worse picture. Tom Cruise, one worst actor for the mummy. I mean, that's kind of deserved. I love him, but he was pretty bad in that. These pics sound actually decent so far.
[00:15:13] But also there was a lot of worse actors than that. That's just mean too. He well, you know, but this is my problem. I think the Razzies now just do not know how to respond to culture at all.
[00:15:24] But whereas back in the day, they were weirdly kind of arbiters of quote unquote stinkers, even if they were often wrong, right? Sure. But they would kind of gravitate towards whatever the sort of classic stinkers of the 90s were like I'm looking
[00:15:38] at the village of the damned year and you've got, you know, showgirls was the big winner that year. Scarlet. But then you've got Scarlett Ladder, Waterworld, you know, Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. Remember that was that was a sort of famously bad movie.
[00:15:53] Yeah, this is the thing though. It feels like so often it's like vanity projects or female sexuality. Yes, exactly. Those are their two least favorite things, right? They they they hate fucking big movie star makes big fucking Vandy projects starring themselves and they hate erotic thrillers and shit.
[00:16:12] Yeah, it's anything that makes them feel uncomfortable in their pants in a way they can't explain. Right. So as Griff, you were noting right, they eventually turned on the Twilight movies this year. They're turning on the 50 shades movies are all over this. Right.
[00:16:26] They also gave like Tyler Perry worst actress for a Medea movie, which feels like moronic on there. Like who cares? Like and what here's the other thing. He's good in those movies. Like, yeah, he's doing what he's doing as Medea is good. Right. Like I committed.
[00:16:44] He is committed. He has played that character longer than almost anybody has played any character longer than Daniel Craig was Bond. Absolutely. Absolutely. A. A longer number of years. Be eight times the films. That character fits him like a fucking glove. He's done it on theater.
[00:17:00] He's done it on stage. He's done it without a net. The safety net of the screen. It's it's his hand. He knows that he knows Medea. He knows Medea. That's the other thing is like he's good in other people's movies, right?
[00:17:13] He's good as Medea occasionally good and other people's. Yes, he can be good. He certainly has it has it in it. Yeah, I think he's consistently good as Medea. I think Medea. Medea. Okay. Hello. Say Medea. I say Medea. Yeah, which one is the classy way?
[00:17:31] Which one is the Greek one? Is it? Well, it's like it's supposed to be like Mother Dear right? It's like Medea. I don't know. Oh, it's like oh, it's like the lady. Medea. Yeah. Medea. Medea. Look, you can call it whatever you want as
[00:17:44] long as you wish her a good afternoon. The point is that I think he's bad in his own movies when he plays like Joe normal guy. I think he's right. I think he is like Alex Cross or whatever. No, I'm saying in his own movies.
[00:17:59] He'll play like straight man normal dude because he'll do like three roles in movie sometimes or there there will be the ones that where it's just like what's it called good deeds or whatever the fuck it's called. Yeah, or what's the one where he wore a trench coat
[00:18:11] and he was a badass? That's Alex cross. I think you don't want to cross cross cross cross. But but to fucking ding him for playing Medea. Medea dumb dumb. Well, and also Griffin listen to these other worst actress nominees from that from Amy's the year
[00:18:27] Amy attended mostly Catherine Heigl and unforgettable which that's like one of those crazy ex-girlfriend type movies. Right? Yeah. Who cares? Once again, like they hate women's films. Dakota. That's just what I'm saying. Dakota Johnson and 50 shades darker Emma Watson in the circle. Okay. She that's right. That's crazy.
[00:18:45] Emma Watson in the circle. That's the movie is pretty defensible and then Jennifer Lawrence in mother and that's the other thing I hate about the razzies that kind of like, huh, we got you. You were in a flop. Like, you know, that's sort of weird kind of jerky.
[00:18:59] Like, oh, mother didn't do so well. Did it? Like, well, I mean, who cares? Like, you know, I don't know. Anyway, there's probably no good way to do it. Yeah. There's something really punching down about it, even though they're a bunch of nerds punching movie stars.
[00:19:15] They do feel like they kick you on the way down. It's I don't I don't feel like when a bad movie comes out, the razzies are like, hey, let's all go see it and really qualitatively analyze it. You know, I don't think they get excited when they
[00:19:28] hear that there's like a notably bad movie coming. They're not searching for the best of the bad movies. I don't even think they watch what they nominate to be honest. I by and large think they do not right. Yeah. They pick their targets and they'll pick like
[00:19:39] fucking Sandler or Tyler Perry or Stallone for so long, whoever it is. And it's just like automatic nomination every year. You know, anybody who would have given them a wedgie it from Michael Bay. Yes. Correct. I will say this Griffin.
[00:19:53] I do think I might have given Village of the Damned a few more razzies. I would. I'm sorry. I would too. I feel bad back into focus because I will say that this is blank check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. Geez. Wow. We haven't even introduced them.
[00:20:08] Yes. I'm David. It's a carpenter style. The opening credits go on for like 17 minutes and then you go like, oh, we're still we hadn't gotten to directed by yet. Right. That's a carpenter thing. We haven't replicated that in the format of our episodes. Yeah.
[00:20:22] Listen, this is a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce baby.
[00:20:35] And this is a mini series on the films of John Carpenter. It's called They Podcast and we're we're just we're bouncing. We're bouncing to the finish line now, unfortunately. You know, as good a run as we've ever covered on this
[00:20:49] show, the only argument I feel like people have put forward of a more consistent decade plus uninterrupted run of movies that we've covered is Miyazaki. Sure. Sure. But I think there's something. No, no, there's something magical about what he's doing because he's not like Miyazaki where like
[00:21:08] he takes years on every project and it's like, you know, no, he's making a movie a year pretty much for 20 years through the 80s. And he's working in different genres. He's working very limited budget levels. He doesn't have necessarily same sort of like all powerful control.
[00:21:25] It's not his own company. He's going between different studios and dealing with all this, you know, different changing trends in the industry. It's it's kind of just like miraculous what he was able to pull off. And then, you know, there's there's like a
[00:21:39] Dorian Gray painting in his attic that gets hackier and hackier every time he makes another hit. And then somehow the things started catching up with him. I don't know. I mean, this this move this movie is very bizarre. It's called Children. It's called Village of the Damned.
[00:21:55] It's not called Children. I know I get so confused in the Village of the Dammed Children of the Damned Children of the Corn thing. I get right Children of the Damned is the sequel to the original Village of the Damned. I've never seen it.
[00:22:11] They are like they're like good. I've seen the original right. You know, I have not seen the sequel. I watched the original last night in the in the sequel. They're like a force for good. They're like John Travolta and phenomenon or something.
[00:22:22] There's sort of like the X-Men movies. It's like here's all these kids with like wild powers that we've gathered that come from all over the world. Yeah. And we're like putting them together to see like, can you use your powers for good? Very bizarre. Yeah.
[00:22:35] That's Children of the Dammed. But what is corn of the Dammed? Well, no, Children of the Corn of the Dammed I'd like to see. I'd like to see corn of the Dammed. Just believe that some bad corn. This corn is no good. It's cursed. It's blue?
[00:22:52] Here's the thing. Okay, Amy. I wait, wait, wait, introduce our guest. Jesus. Our guest. Introduce me, man. Our guest. From Unswalled and of course from Romento episode five years ago. Amy Nicholson long overdue back on the show. Oh, it's good to be back.
[00:23:12] That was a wonderful day when we did momentum. It was thunderstorming outside and then I left you guys and I immediately went to Coney Island and I ate a big hot dog and went on some rides. I remember you were going right to Coney. That's right.
[00:23:24] Yeah, associate you guys with beautiful memories. That's nice. Sweet. Well, you and I, we've had like great meals at film festivals. That's I associate you with great meals at film festivals as well. Amy, but anyway, I mean, I miss all that.
[00:23:41] But Amy, I know I'm going to cop to the fact that I asked you to be on the show, but by the time I asked you, the carpenter list was a little picked over. I was presenting you with sort of the 90s dregs of carpenter.
[00:23:56] Not that they're all bad movies, obviously, but you know, I was not presenting you with the best of the best because a few people have cleaned movies. Was that a purpose? Are you mad at me? I'm not mad at you. It's furious at you.
[00:24:09] It's just booking a show could be very stressful because yes, people will often just kind of gravitate. You always love the early like you ask someone and they're like, oh, I want like, you know, X movie nobody ever asks
[00:24:22] for, but you know, often people will ask for kind of the big ones. It's it's a it's a weird puzzle and we don't need to go over this a lot. But this is the thing I when people ask us about like
[00:24:33] booking sometimes that I just I want to say publicly. We find ourselves often in a very different dealing with different calculations than most movie shows because we have a set order in which episodes need to release. You know, like if we pick a director like carpenter,
[00:24:50] it's like, well, that's like four and a half months in order, you know? So we're like picking like who do we want? Is there a good match for them? Sometimes it's reverse engineered of like, right this person's overdue. Let's find a place for Amy.
[00:25:04] Sometimes it's we know this person likes this movie. Can we get them? And then sometimes you look and you're like, oh, these five episodes in a row are like this should we have this instead? Right, right. I don't know. We fucked up.
[00:25:15] I want to say when you offered me the Dregs and I was like Village of the Damned, a movie that I have never seen that's really good. Here's the alley and Christopher Reeve and Mark Hamill. How would I not say yes to this movie? Sure.
[00:25:30] And then I mentioned it to my boyfriend that we were going to do Village of the Damned and he was like, that's amazing. You look like one of the children of the Village of the Damned. Wow. Why don't we meet them for Halloween next year? Yeah.
[00:25:41] He's like, you should do this. You look you're blonde and terrifying. Go ahead. I mean, I assume he said this with love. Yes. I mean, you have like white hair. You do not have white hair. No. So I'm only half dammed. Yeah.
[00:25:57] I mean, I will say though that that hair is definitely died. I mean, if I had a superpower, it's I can tell who who dies their blonde hair. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you're when you're a natural blonde, you kind of learn these what you these codes.
[00:26:09] So these guys are definitely bleached. I think that's this the detail I read is that all the children were bleached and then they were sprayed on top of the bleach. So they're not wigs. It's just their hair. I guess right. Correct. I think the children were actually.
[00:26:23] I mean, they look like wigs. Why couldn't they just put wigs on them? That's damaging to do that to do that to your follicles. Damn. The damaged hair follicles. So that's why you picked it, Amy. That's what I was asking. Like, why did you pick it?
[00:26:38] But that makes sense. Yeah. You're just like, come on. Let's roll the dice. I thought I'd watch a film about my ancestors. Sure. Right. Right. You're you're damned on your father's side, right? Damned on my father's and my father's. Yeah. Alas. Yeah.
[00:26:52] No, it there's there's just so many bizarre things about this movie. I think I don't know if this is a controversial take, David. This is the Carpenter I've like the least we've covered so far. I don't think that's that controversial.
[00:27:05] I would agree with that because as much as I don't like memoirs of an invisible man, it's a little more interesting. I find it very interesting way. I have also I have seen the original multiple times, not yeah, like two times. Okay.
[00:27:20] And and I was sort of taken of. I was like, this is going to be different, right? I was taken back where I was like, no, this is just like a very flat, pretty straightforward remake. Like yeah, there's some changes, but yes, there's one big change, right?
[00:27:32] So I had not seen the original until last night. I watched it last night. I watched this movie this morning. The biggest change and what sounds like the biggest impetus for carpenter making this movie and for also the studio is making it with like a invasion of the
[00:27:47] biosensors gets remade Philip Kaufman late 70s. That movie is a hit and is respected, right? And I think that sort of picks start to this trend of like can we take the, you know, not the old one do it up again. The ball right, Griff? Right, right.
[00:28:03] They remade the blob around now. Right. Modern Reagan era post, you know, there was that able Ferrara body snatchers, which I've never seen. Right. Right. And then I guess like the 70s body snatchers is better than the original. So there's a way making it better. That's believe it.
[00:28:19] Y'all covered a little movie called the thing. I was about to say the thing is better than the original, right? Yes. That's the point. I think the breakthrough of invasion of the biosensors is that it was better and they were like, oh fuck, you can
[00:28:32] actually like do something here and you can adjust it for a new political climate and effects and lack of censorship and what you could not totally not just like John Carpenter. I mean, the thing is an example of doing it correctly
[00:28:48] but was obviously hated and a giant flop at the time. They had been developing internally Universal trying to make a children of the damned village of the damned excuse me movie for a while and he had this deal with Universal
[00:29:04] and he was just sort of like, I don't know why not. I like that movie a lot feels like a no brainer. It does. But here's it's like what he's not realizing or maybe not caring about is I just feel like it's kind of a
[00:29:15] movie that needs to be at like British tea drinking level energy. Right. Like is what the first movie gets so goddamn right. Right, because like the kids are not going to be running up the walls or like shooting laser beams at you like so
[00:29:30] it's going to be a fairly chill film and I feel like he just doesn't quite, you know, it's impossible for a 90s horror movie to be that sedate and feel like it's intentional like so now instead of just kind of feels asleep.
[00:29:45] Well, right off the bat, I guess this opinion I'm trying to front load here is that like the biggest difference between this and the original film is that there were such restrictions on what you could talk about in terms of reproduction. You're talking about Schmus Martian. Schmus Martian.
[00:30:00] But also you were not allowed to say the word pregnant in a movie, you know, like beyond abortion, there was just like obviously you can't even like touch that as a subject or allude to it, but you can't really even represent pregnancy on screen or
[00:30:15] delivery or any of those sorts of things. I think you're right. You're right. Like how in psycho you couldn't even show a toilet until literally Hitchcock was like, here's my movie with a toilet. Right. I think internally at Universal that was their big argument
[00:30:26] for why to do Village of the Damned again is just like, well, there's all this shit that's in the book that they couldn't put in the movie that they sort of have to talk around or just like cut forward.
[00:30:36] You don't really see any of that stuff in between the blackout and the kids, right? And that's sort of an interesting period. I think the first 30 minutes of this movie are relatively solid. I think I don't know if it's just because I'm watching
[00:30:50] these two films within 12 hours of each other, but when the first 30 minutes are so different than the original because you're seeing all these things that could not be put on screen. I was kind of into it and then once the kids
[00:31:02] are born, I just was like, well now this just this is the shittier version of the thing I watched. Well, okay, there's so much to talk about what you're saying, you know, because like the original book that you're talking about, you know, the Midwidge Cuckoos. Great title.
[00:31:17] Great title. You know, that book was, I mean that book was like, I'll just start by saying like worshiped by Margaret Atwood, you know, like Margaret Atwood was like amazing. Here's a great book that's like chilling and scary and it gets into things about like female choices
[00:31:34] in your life choices that don't really even feel like choices because you're kind of pressured by society to like have these kids, you know, veil talk about like abortion, like a book that was about like gender dynamics, kind of different responses to like women being
[00:31:48] forced to bear these children and then trying to love them. I mean to have like handmade and style be like this is a great scary book. Imagine if that story could be remade today by somebody like like a Jennifer Kent, you know, the Bobbie Duke or something.
[00:32:01] Oh, there is a great story. Fuck this is a good pitch. Sounds better. Oh yeah. That's such a good pitch. Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha But that's what I'm saying. Yeah.
[00:32:14] Have but but Carpenter's not on that vibe, right? He's not. It's an odd fit. I mean the other quote I found that was really fascinating was he said he saw this movie as a little boy. It really stuck with him.
[00:32:27] It scared the shit out of him and he had a big crush on the little girl like she was his he was that age, right? But he was like that was the first time I had a crush on a movie character and I'm
[00:32:37] like is that the only reason he did this? Is that like not that I think he's sexualizing the children but that the film has some weird primal imprint on him and he felt drawn to it. Even though he didn't have anything to say about it really.
[00:32:50] I mean, that's why I still like the movie The Wizard with Fred Savage. Like you know because we love her a crush. Yeah, you imprint well actually my first crush in the movie was like the bad guy with the power glove in the wizard.
[00:33:03] Yeah, in the wizard the bad guy. Yeah. Yeah, don't Google that actor because bad things happen and I regret that crush but I don't know if it was Oh no, is David Googling? Yeah, David's absolutely Googling. Are you kidding me? David was Googling before you finished the send.
[00:33:17] Well luckily it'll take him a while to figure out the guy's name and then come back to name it. No idea who the guy's name is. Oh thank God. No, Karen. Let's just not do it then. We're not going to do it. We're not going to do it.
[00:33:25] My memory I mean maybe there's one before this but my memory is my first like serious movie crush was I feel like this is a thing of me being a couple years younger than everyone else on the show means no one else will have any idea
[00:33:39] what the fuck I'm talking about. There was a wonderful world of Disney TV movie called My Date with the President's Daughter in which Will Friedel from Boy Meets World is like a dork who does magic tricks and he meets a beautiful girl in a mall
[00:33:54] who he's never seen at high school before and he asks her out and she says yes and then he finds out that's the President's daughter who wants to live a normal life and sneak away from the White House so she can pretend to be a normal teenager
[00:34:05] for one night and Dabney Coleman is the President and the fucking Secret Service. Dabney Coleman was your first crush? Dabney Coleman you got there. Hotty. You got there Amy. He was like wearing those tight suits and that red tie. But there's like she's like dressed up
[00:34:19] like a you know fucking Chelsea Clinton or whatever and there's a scene where he takes her she's like let's go somewhere where dangerous and they go to like a pool hall and then she goes into the bathroom and comes out and she's changed into like
[00:34:29] a quote unquote sexy or dress and she walks out of the bathroom and there's like a slow motion hair flip and I just have this very distinct memory as like an eight year old or whatever going Oh, I am looking at the most beautiful woman in the world.
[00:34:45] Like it wasn't even like I'm crush on this but I was like she is she is in our give me it looks like it was Elizabeth Harn was she's on one of the procedural shows now yes Elizabeth harm was she was
[00:34:56] like my first CSI she did a CSI stint look I don't know who my first major crush was I probably said it on this podcast I just don't have any memories anymore. Lydia fucking Lydia. Yeah, Lydia Deese but like I was a kid
[00:35:13] that was more of a I guess that counts. Sure. I mean that's what Carpenter saying about the little little damn girl. Well, but here's the weird thing about him having a crush on the little damned girls which is like they all look alike
[00:35:25] and they've got the same hair. So how do you single one out? I don't know it's very bizarre. I want to find this quote from you think you really kind of liked all of them at once but you don't want to sound crazy.
[00:35:33] Yeah, he was like dipping his toe into polywaters. He was like someday I'm going to grow up and I'm gonna be like Richard Richard plants is a Richard Plant you did addicted to love and all those videos with all the identical girls are yeah.
[00:35:47] Right that we know no addicted to love is Robert Palmer. Robert sorry sorry sorry sorry. I like I like conflated him and like Robert Plant. I was very nervous that I was like talking about somebody cool instead of the guy with all the matching mannequins.
[00:36:00] Anyway John Carpenter that's him. Carpenter saw the original when he was 12 and it stuck in my mind for several reasons. The whole idea of a whole town blacking out was wow that does feel that's a carpenter idea in and of itself. That's a carpenter.
[00:36:11] Did also speaks to why the first 30 minutes are better than the rest of it. Also I somehow got this incredible crush on one of the girls in the original. She was the first love object I had. I wanted her to zap me and take me over.
[00:36:24] It's a good it's good carpenter quote. That's so cute. I mean imagine you're like you're 12 years old and you want the girl to zap you and take you over by which like you have to go take her out for a malted. Right right buy her a candy bar.
[00:36:37] Yeah sweet. I guess right there's there's a little more feeling to the Thomas Decker's characters alienation his lack of partner. Maybe that's coming through but once again it's just sort of like. No what an odd match. But we should talk about those opening 30 minutes because I also thought
[00:36:58] they were pretty good and for a little bit I got a flutter in my heart like oh man am I going to go on blank blank check we're going to talk about a movie that actually maybe is pretty good. That was my hope.
[00:37:06] It's a I want to hold on to those 30 minutes you know we're like fun of like hey guys this movie no one ever talks about you know John carpenter it's not actually that bad right like the sort of I found a diamond in the rough here.
[00:37:18] Right I agree the first 30 minutes are way more basically this movie kind of has me until the kitchen moment it completely lost me kids I think here's the moment where I truly was like wait what like is when here's the allies just like yeah
[00:37:33] they're not having any abortions and it's like why and she's like I don't know and I was just like wait that's it that's the explanation and then the kids arrive and then it's like it's dead like as you say the movie is dead visually once you see the
[00:37:46] kids I think he had to fucking reinvent them in some way but also like the more curious the alley curious the alley is like like a bearer of bad tides in this movie like whenever she comes in a scene goes off the rails there's the moment
[00:38:00] where she's delivering Meredith Salinger's child and she goes like push push oh my god I'm so sorry it's still born and it's like one sentence it's right. Like she's a there's a there's a moment that's like as bizarre as her going like I don't know they're just
[00:38:16] not getting abortions where she's like okay keep keep going push push push I'm so sorry it's still bored and then the cut okay but like isn't isn't the reason why they don't get abortions because is because Kirstie alley bribes them and she's like if
[00:38:30] you decide to have these kids I'm going to give all of you $3,000 a month which is not it. Yeah that's significant I mean today it's definitely significant in 1995. Yeah, you know you're right like six months of having a Dan baby you could get like a Dodge neon
[00:38:47] you know you could you could really amp up your life which is why also they get kind of funny that like they a guest all agree to have babies for the $3,000 and then the next few years of their life that we see like the town looks
[00:39:01] worse like cars seem even more broken everybody's still wearing the same like battered shitty jackets like wherever that $3,000 a month is going which should be a fortune I at least want to see people's houses get nicer like if you made this trade-off for cash that idea
[00:39:16] just gets completely dropped here which I'm very curious about that was I the only one just like $3,000 this town should be nicer the ice cream shop it's like direct cash injections revitalization right yeah where's the trickle down effect from this $3,000 a month well they also have those weird
[00:39:36] dreams I I I read that as part of the thing that that dissuaded that's what I sort of right they're kind of money influenced right by music video. Yeah, right. They're like congratulations. If you're pregnant, you can wear a white robe and your hair will blow
[00:39:53] when you could be on MTV but this is I feel like I know it's again like it's just sort of obeying the plot structure of the story and the original movie but I do kind of agree with Amy almost like yeah maybe the pregnancy should
[00:40:09] be longer oh yeah and then we should just cut straight to them being grown kids. Yeah, I don't know I don't know how you how you approach this because the biggest problem with the movies the kids grow up kind of quickly you know
[00:40:23] in movie time and you're just I was just shouting at the screen where I'm just like how is no one doing anything about this like right like it just sort of feels weird that they are allowed to reach the age of how old are they like 8
[00:40:37] you know whatever whatever sure I mean yeah well that's a question I had for you guys because like I think in the book and in the original they grow faster they're like 9 but they look 16 or something. I mean here are they growing at normal speed like how many
[00:40:52] years have gone by before the kids are like walking and talking. I don't know the children do seem on mass younger in this I think they're pretty young as younger and the actors are also younger so you have sort of like weird child actor
[00:41:10] vibes where whereas in the original maybe the actors the kids are more like well close to teenage yeah exactly yeah I don't know the sense of time is is odd to me. It's also I mean it's one of these things David you you
[00:41:28] pointed out that what makes the original work so well and what is probably the approach you need to this material is the sort of British T sipping energy which I don't know how you know that but it there's something to of the stylization of the kids
[00:41:46] how they look visually but the energy at which their performances are directed and all of that works in that type of movie right that is a little more mannered and stilted and feels like a Twilight Zone episode I mean the original movie really has a Twilight
[00:42:04] Zone vibe and then when you take the exact same look and you put it into a color film in the 1990s with a very different vibe director has his own sensibility it like it really jars where I will accept the theatrical convention
[00:42:22] of this is the way that you're coding me to understand these kids are different and when you watch the carpenter movie you're like why is no one commenting on the fact that the kids look so fucking weird I don't have that question watching the original
[00:42:35] movie where do they get their clothes that's what I kept asking like oh you're mad your kids are only wearing gray who's buying them great clothes. They're all complicit in this right look at their parents and they're like gray gray. Your eyes flashed the parents
[00:42:49] like okay and they call Lance in. They're costuming I think you're exactly honest and think of it like they're costuming to me red is like John Carpenter watch the original saw these creepy gray kids wasn't thinking they're wearing gray because it's a black and white movie
[00:43:06] just thinking like they were gray that's where they are they're just these kids who wear gray so transplanted this look straight away into the 90s without thinking about it at all I mean these kids should be wearing guest jeans these kids should be causing mischief.
[00:43:19] I also think I kept thinking well sure they should like causing deadly mischief they shouldn't be so stiff it's been one of this movie to be like like problem child like what kind of what aliens was to alien this should be Dennis the menace's and it's just all
[00:43:36] of them are menace's but Amy to that point though to it's just like I don't watch the original movie and think while their hair is silver I think this is a black and white movie and what they are trying to code us into understanding is like they are
[00:43:50] fair children right they have these weird yellow white white eyes and this very fair hair and then when you watch them in color and they're all wearing gray and their hair is all like platinum like silver nitrate color it it feels like an odd affectation that is not
[00:44:11] acknowledged enough in the universe around them even more so than their weird powers right because they're just their presentation is so hot I agree because for the British T sipping this of it all what I think makes the kids so unnerving in the original
[00:44:29] is that on one hand they kind of are the perfect British children right they're like polite sort of you know they're not being rowdy they're not hooligans they're dressed in ties they're very well mannered quote unquote to like the standards of 60s parenting day they're proper
[00:44:46] the way that a 60s parent would have wanted but also you know like evil and robotic but they blend in they blend in so well to what a good little kid was supposed to look like back then and that makes them unnerving and now they're just like
[00:45:00] I don't know they're like little matriodes wandering around and they don't fit at all to the 90s it is be funny if they were leading people to their tables at all right this way right this way you you will accept a table away from the window but like
[00:45:15] I'll say this Griffin I don't know if you feel this way I was terrified of the video box for this movie when I was a kid I would look at it every single time I went to the rental store I knew that it was there
[00:45:28] I knew I was never going to rent it because it was a grown-up movie but I would just take it off the shelf and look at the little blond children with their glowing eyes and I would be like this must be the scariest movie ever made that like
[00:45:41] when I was like eight years old or whatever this poster is plagued with the same thing we talked about in the mouth of Madness it's not a great person like horrible early Photoshop like just like what if we were fucking retch right yeah yeah we're
[00:45:55] warping I look it must have scared me it must have scared me but Jesus out of me I was such a I mean you said I wonder if you agree with this because I have talked a lot about being scared by video boxes as a
[00:46:10] kid I don't remember this one specifically but it must have scared me I mean anything that was like evil toys or children I think scared me more for obvious reasons another thing I mean just like the 1960 movie is a 1960 studio horror film no one is naturalistic right the
[00:46:32] entire thing is the radical and the star of the movie is George Sanders who's like one of the most mannered men in the history of American cinema he's great I love him he's amazing but so much to the movie is him sitting back and going like these
[00:46:48] children are quite strange aren't they and it's like yeah that's the vibe in which if the guy who's saying the children is strange is that strange and mannered himself I'm like well this is of a piece Christopher Reeve is going like pretty fucking minimalist in this
[00:47:03] movie like it's he's really doing very very little in a way that doesn't help like you you maybe need someone getting you maybe need the normal people in this movie to be more over the top if you're going to pull this off or or the
[00:47:19] kids are more subtle because I mean that I think both why not both but like I think with George Sanders like I mean the guy who wasn't he was the critic and all about Eve you kind of comes to the screen with your con intimidating oh yes like
[00:47:34] intellectualism you get this vibe in the original film that the kids kind of respect him slightly more than everybody else in the town right they actually want to talk to him kind of they're actually kind of enjoying conversation and that's so much of the
[00:47:47] movie is him being like these children are strange like you do feel like the weight of the strain is strangeness of the children is fully felt in that movie you know yeah exactly and Christopher Reeve I mean well first I want to just start by saying
[00:48:03] is this Christopher Reeve's real hair color because he's so blonde in this movie I I realized like my God I always just picture him with that like Clark Kent like jet blackness I was really surprised that he was kind of more like a weather beaten Redford look
[00:48:16] we should also call it this is his last movie before the accident it's his last movie ever this is the last one the accident the accident happens like a month after this movie is released. Yeah he buys the horse that the accident happens on during
[00:48:30] the making of this movie the horse is named Buck Buck. Yeah and the movie comes out it's it's the this is the last movie where he walks and then he essentially after this what he does the rear window remake for TV he does a couple
[00:48:42] episodes of Smallville he obviously devotes most of his time and energy to research stem cell research right I'm sorry he has two other movies that come out after this that were shot before he has above suspicion and he has a black box know what's it called a
[00:48:59] step toward tomorrow. This is the last one that is released I'm sorry step toward tomorrow he's paralyzed so there's one movie released after this shot before this is the most those are TV movies though no this is his last like film film film film
[00:49:15] this is I mean this is the movie that's still probably clinging barely on into theaters when he's on the cover of people with the accident correct right. I remember his accident being so like I was little I was I'm not in when this movie
[00:49:29] comes out but my parents just trying to impress upon me like how shocking the whole thing was and then remember he was at the Oscars Griffin and everyone yes you know gave me standing ovation and all that you know I remember that I remember finding it's
[00:49:44] so thoroughly upsetting as a child like it was it was obviously everyone talked about it but it was just like the irony of the thing was so sort of like tragic where it was like Superman can't walk like everyone was right. I know that we were what a
[00:50:00] tragedy and he was known to be such a good guy and he was this fucking like sort of I don't know this avatar of like American integrity. Here's my thing on read I feel like when I was a kid the like reputation of
[00:50:15] Reeve that I knew was kind of like well he was Superman and you never really like overcame being Superman like as you know he struggled as a movie star like you you know and then like anytime I see him in another movie I've always
[00:50:27] like I love him in death trap. I love he's kind of a lot of fun and noises off yeah which is again you know kind of a bad movie but like you know he's pretty good. I like him in the remains of the day like I've always
[00:50:39] been kind of like is he kind of an underrated actor. Yeah like you know like in general then obviously also the Superman performance I feel like people have only grown in appreciation for that like as sort of comic book acting has become such a huge quadrant
[00:50:56] of Hollywood where they're kind of like that performance is amazing versus at the time I think people like well he's this handsome guy they just sort of found him on the street looks like Superman he's not acting he's just kind of and then you watch the Clark Kent
[00:51:10] performance is so good right yeah it's and by all kind of me that was not who he what I think he was closer to Clark Kent than he was to Superman in a lot of ways but the he is the one actor in live action who I think
[00:51:25] has convincingly sold that you would not believe that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person. You know he does it through a degree of theatricality but you buy it like you you buy into the flight of fancy there. I mean you're able to buy
[00:51:40] that Margot Kidder would look at Clark Kent and not think he's devastatingly handsome which is crazy you know that he's a little bit of a goober and right and I feel like Christopher Reeves is an actor that we never really got the full expression
[00:51:53] for kind of what kind of what David is talking like there's a lot of Christopher Reeves movies I'll be honest I haven't seen because they sounded like adult and kind of boring when I was little and I've never gone back to them but he is a guy who
[00:52:05] I mean not only is he like the total like classic American like family came over on the Mayflower went to Ivy League schools went to Juilliard like he was a Shakespeare theater guy. He's like this is the guy who's like fluent in French you know what I mean
[00:52:21] this is a guy who was handpicked by Catherine Hepburn to play her grandson on stage and then he's offered Superman and he's like well Marlon Brando is in it and I'm a serious actor so I can do this and he really does just become completely consumed by the
[00:52:38] Superman identity in the public guy like me me included me raising my hand and saying like I'm totally guilty yeah and so I feel like this was a guy who could have been on a channel to be like an Olivier and then instead he's like winds up in
[00:52:52] Village of the Damned in his time that's like pre-nerd revival where he's kind of seen as a loser for being in this movie right is that fair to say yeah I mean it's he's very fascinating to me. I remember I mean whatever it was 2017 2018 having this conversation
[00:53:10] with you David a couple times of like the two people I'm really curious to watch how their careers play out now are Chadwick Bozeman and Gal Gadot because they felt like the two people who more so than any other superhero our actors potentially were stuck in the
[00:53:25] Christopher Reeve crosshair right where it was just like this character has become so iconic and so representational and they did so much work to sort of transform into this thing that seems sort of otherworldly will they ever be able to play anything else and be accepted
[00:53:41] for that and sort of seen as normal for that and then it's like Chadwick dies and Gal Gadot feels like no at this point it feels like she's probably never going to overcome being wonderful. She can kind of give you one thing right
[00:53:54] and that was just a perfect fit and she couldn't even really pull it off the second time. You know she could and I mean I think what makes her so good at Wonder Woman and I say good with like a million air quotes and actresses is that
[00:54:07] Gal Gadot kind of enters that movie really not understanding what it's like to be a human being as God. I don't think Gal Gadot really gets it. She's like what I'm just an effortlessly beautiful woman who has babies and stays this thin and I like I don't know
[00:54:20] I show up when I get these great roles like she doesn't understand what it's like to be a normal mortal at all and I think that that translates in the movies and it's the best actual thing about her casting. I guess I think that first movie
[00:54:32] uses her very well and I think it's clear that what Bozeman did and Black Panther is closer to what Christopher Reeve did where he really built a thing that hits such a nerve and became so much bigger than him. All of this said though my whole thing is
[00:54:47] like with all this said he's kind of bad in this. He seems a little at sea in this movie. I guess the nicest way to put it he just seems to not really know what's expected of him. But but I also think if you look at his career
[00:55:01] up until this point I mean it's like I don't know in certain ways is this more of a strategic I need to be a leading man again sort of play than a lot of the other movies he had done where it feels like he's sort of like
[00:55:17] because I mean Jesus Christ you look at his fucking career right Superman's his second film right he gets that movie because they've cast Brando and Hackman so they've cast like two humongous Oscar winners to money is with those guys right they're going to be first in second bill
[00:55:34] right and also almost everyone in the supporting cast of that movie has an Oscar nomination it's like wild how deep that cast is so they want to cast fucking like Nick Nolte and Robert Redford and all the obvious people and everyone turns it down and they're like
[00:55:48] what if we just save money and find an unknown guy and it's this master stroke because it's like you get to build a guy who then only becomes Superman in people's minds which then fucks his career a little bit but he didn't seriously when he goes in
[00:55:59] for his audition is like a beanpole and they're like how much muscle can you gain you know like he went in looking like Clark Kent and he as you said Amy kind of built himself gave himself to this role and made himself Superman then somewhere in time
[00:56:15] which I feel like is probably his best received non-superman movie right has sort of the largest footprint but even then as a cult film that's the same year Superman to then it's like death trap right he's amazing in death trap but at that point it's four years after
[00:56:33] the first Superman and he's played Superman twice and he's done somewhere in time and then he does a movie called Mon Steward that I have never seen and then he does in your sorry Superman 3 right like it's just Superman swallowing so much of it then merchant ivory movie
[00:56:49] yeah I know but here's the thing he turned down American Jigolo he turned down splash sure turned out fatal attraction he turned down romancing the Sony turned down leaf the weapon he would keep turning down these movies yeah turned down all these sort of like
[00:57:03] movies that became hits and he became this kind of like Hollywood story of like well you know you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take right like look at Christopher Reeve and like I feel like he would always be like
[00:57:15] well I'm not right for that I'm such a golden boy like you know he was too in his head about taking these sort of like slightly scumnier roles and he probably should have tried it maybe he would have embedded it I don't you know maybe those movies
[00:57:26] don't work with Christopher Reeve but also like he does street smart and street smart is a flop and its only legacy is that it's Morgan Freeman's first nomination like the other guy pops in it right like that's the movie that puts Morgan Freeman kind of on the map
[00:57:40] I think to some degree somewhere in this like in this kind of gray zone of his career I think he becomes kind of a curse where people are like oh a Christopher Reeve movie that's not a Superman movie and I mean when when he does
[00:57:54] I mean in Village of the Damned reviewers are calling this movie like they're saying that basically it's like the cast of people who should be in a love boat episode put in this John Carpenter movie like they are mean to the cast because he's in it
[00:58:07] he becomes a punchline in a way he's the original kind of like superhero punchline right like kind of the same thing that happened to Brandon Routh or whoever but like he's the you know original version of it and you have to imagine that like a guy
[00:58:21] with his intellectual background probably really like George Sanders and was like okay I could do a George Sanders part that original movie is so good but I hate to throw Carpenter under the bus a little bit here he's not a guy
[00:58:35] who cares if his actors are any good can we right I disagree with that I disagree with that I think this is when he's losing control this is the first movie where I go like he is not in control of any of these performances Oh, I don't know
[00:58:48] I mean yeah I think he has never I don't think he's had a strong hand in almost any of this performance is I think he either casts really well and they get it or he casts okay but they don't get it and he doesn't correct them
[00:59:01] I don't think he guides them back onto a track I don't think he has a track in mind when he's making this movie I think he kind of hangs his actors out to dry there are a lot of good performances in Carpenter movies
[00:59:11] then there are a lot of performances you don't think about in Carpenter movies I would say yeah sure you know where you're just like oh yeah that's just like some guy I would not give him credit for the good ones
[00:59:22] and I mean this with all love and respect I wouldn't I think he I think he casts well but then it is funny griff how often we've talked about his use of Kurt Russell but almost every time he's using Kurt Russell
[00:59:35] he's kind of like but what if I got a movie star and he ends up with Kurt Russell and he's like well Kurt's good and it's like yeah Kurt's good yet yeah idiot you know you get it right this is like 50% of his movie
[00:59:47] well don't think I just no I was just gonna say I'm just looking at like the Christopher Reeve here thing here in totality right and it does feel like arguably village of the dam why am I saying it weird village of the dam
[01:00:02] because you're struggling to not say children I know I know corn of the dam is arguably you could see it as him in 910 you 5 going ate that damn corn I need to do something commercial right like I need to do something where I am the guy
[01:00:24] whether or not it's a Christopher Reeve vehicle and it's like a commercial picture and it's a normal thing because he's turned down so many hits and I think a lot of the films he made were I think him trying to stretch himself outside of Superman
[01:00:39] and not conform to the boxes that Hollywood probably wanted him to fit into I think probably because he was a serious actor and not someone who is movie star minded that like it was more interesting for him to take on things that were like odd challenges you know
[01:00:53] or projects that may not get made if he wouldn't sign himself to it rather than this thing's going to be a hit do you want to be the guy in the hit or not Oh God oh God you know who he was and I feel bad even bringing
[01:01:07] this person's name up because of dot dot dot dot dot he kind of army hammered himself kind of there's a thing like yeah type of actor where they're really tall and handsome like crazy crazy talk crazy handsome and nobody knows what the hell to do with them.
[01:01:22] This is my it's like how can I be in I'm trying to like leave the weapon it doesn't make sense that someone is good looking and I'm just honestly that's true it's like super true and so they like bind up in these kind of weird roles or they're
[01:01:39] trying to cast against type and if they aren't intellectual if they did go to an Ivy League college like Reeve did they're going to out game themselves which is what he did I think I think he outsmarted himself a little bit.
[01:01:50] I mean it was like the merchant ivory was sort of the only fruitful collaboration he found makes sense in those post Superman and Superman ended up sort of getting like off the rails. This movie just feels to me like he has this sort of tired
[01:02:04] resigned energy of like my agents are going to fucking drop me if I'm not in something that like it's a it's a Billy Bob Thornton thing I've quoted where he says like my agents every four years go like Billy you need to do a bus stop movie again.
[01:02:17] You need to do a movie where the posters will be at bus stops. Yeah, you know like you can do your fucking weird shit but every four years you have to play the heavy in some movie that's going to like the mass public at least knows
[01:02:30] that it came out whether or not it's a hit. But the and the thing with this is it's like no major actor is going to take this movie because the star of this movie is creepy kids right like that's right.
[01:02:41] You're going to sell the movie on it's not going to be like you're on the poster with a gun like pointing at her creepy kids so he's also just probably reached that point in his career where it's like yeah he'll
[01:02:52] do it you know like now we're not going to get X a Lister right. Yeah, yeah and he gets to say like oh I'm working on Village of the Damned now people go like oh I know what that is John Carpenter I recognize that right
[01:03:06] those things make sense me. Curci Alley is in that zone that most sitcom stars found themselves in the 80s and 90s. Christy's in her Emmy streak though so it's not that insulting to be doing a movie with her and
[01:03:16] like I mean if anything to bring to bring to bring the evil Death Star back to Carpenter he's reflecting Carpenter's energy Carpenter's do I think kind of the same reasons Carpenter's like I don't know what I'm doing I don't really want to make
[01:03:29] this movie this is kind of lame like I guess I'll do this like well I guess that's my other point is even if Kurt was the one who was doing much of the crafting it there was this sense of Carpenter knowing how to use leading men in interesting
[01:03:46] ways right and subverting sort of like leading men and there just feels like no craft construction thought put into this Christopher Reeve character this is just sort of like John Normal Guy Dr. John Normal Guy who gets increasingly wary as this thing gets bad.
[01:04:03] I mean the most interesting thing about his character about Christopher's character is his house right because that first little shot of his house on the cliff this like ridiculous town by the way like mid-witch it's like it's like kind of comically
[01:04:18] it's like you assembled it from nine postcards from Iraq you're like here's some cliffs here's some deer here's some lakes here's our western saloon and then you go inside Christopher Reeves his house and it's like covered in dried flowers
[01:04:32] right it's like a witch's house yeah I mean did anybody else notice that because it weirded me out it's like here's Christopher Reeves this house he's walking around and it's like covered in dead flowers it's weird but like what is he
[01:04:44] doing with all that stuff makes you go like who the fuck is this guy and not a way we're interested trying to figure him out I'm like did anyone make any decisions here. Well that's I don't think they did be no put like
[01:04:55] his performance next to Mark Hamill's performance next to Kirstie Ali's performance and there's nobody saying let's make sure these three people are in the same movie. No I I think there's one good adult performance in this movie and I'm curious if we all agree on it.
[01:05:09] Is it Mark Hamill. I think it's Lita Kozolowski is pretty good. Yeah she's pretty. She's pretty good too and we've covered the fucking crocodile Dundee trilogy and this is one of her only non-croc Dundee movies. This is essentially the end of her career. She does this.
[01:05:26] She hasn't been away for six years until Dundee in Los Angeles and that's your final film role. It's pretty much one of like only only movie she made without Paul Hogan in it now I'll save this Paul Hogan might be fun in this movie.
[01:05:38] I would have liked to see Paul Hogan. Paul Hogan maybe walks into this movie gives it 10% more juice but I was I was gonna say because he Hamill is kind of just doing his 90s Hamill thing. He's hammy. He's he's not bad almost not hammy enough.
[01:05:54] I mean it's yeah well I think they don't give him the room to do it. I think there's only like two Hamilton's he shows up he's freaking about about like finger paints or ever some people have finger paints and he's just like
[01:06:07] nervous and then that's kind of it. He gives like a speech where he's like I don't know some science doesn't make sense. What about God and then he goes crazy like he doesn't there's not enough there's not enough Hamill in
[01:06:18] interiority in this movie I feel like like I want to know what's happening with him. No and I think this is the period of time where he got very cartoony but if you're going to hire him then
[01:06:28] let him go huge you know like I yeah it's he's an odd every performance in this is in a different movie. And I'm gonna blame carpenter for that. I know I think absolutely fair. I don't know if I agree at large with your takes on him
[01:06:42] as an actor's director but in this movie absolutely David I'm sorry what we're gonna say. Well I rarely say this but this movie should probably be longer like he almost could benefit from just a little more time spent on developing things and instead like we
[01:06:59] say it got that first half hour that's sort of compelling and then once the kids around were just kind of interspersing the kinds of scenes you're talking about like Hamill gives a speech and I'm like what was that and then the kids march into some room and stare
[01:07:11] at someone and they're like you know and they like you know poor acid on themselves or whatever and just sort of repeat that ping-pong you know back and forth for you know an hour. Yeah but what you're not getting is like what leads to
[01:07:26] the most interesting part of the movie that this is a group of this is a group of kids whose parents don't love them. Yeah you're like I mean I mean Sims you became a parent like the time that goes into what waiting for
[01:07:40] the birth preparing all the anticipation and then to go through and you have a kid who freaks you out and is disappointing like that's interesting David as someone disappointed by your daughter what do you think of this she's not somebody whose daughter could possibly kill
[01:07:55] all of us with her stare. No this is the whole thing she doesn't have big Amy is that big Amy Amy you have not met Sims's daughter I don't know if you call the absolutely absolutely looks like someone who could kill people with her stare.
[01:08:09] You should follow the Grammys. I'm going to send you a picture right now Amy Amy it is wild we were hanging out with with two other friends who have small children and so there were six parents sitting around and the other four parents just kept
[01:08:23] on going Jesus fucking Christ her eyes. She does have intense eyes but I will that that's what I'm what I will say Amy is what you're like I kept having questions stuff like the fact they have like clothes right like where I'm like the parent bought them clothes.
[01:08:40] Do they go to school like what's a night like with these kids does the parent go like eat your chicken nuggets and the kids like no I am part of a hive mind like what's that conversation I have a partner we have
[01:08:52] been printed upon each other so much of parenting so far you know it's just a lot of daily grind stuff you know it's all enchanting and wonderful but it's also kind of like all right you got to eat you got
[01:09:03] to sleep you got to you know and like is that is that how it is with these guys or are they just sort of going home and like pouring themselves a martini and their parents for like yeah I don't I don't know what's going on with my
[01:09:13] kids I don't really have a relationship with them. Yeah there's none of that take a shower brush your teeth like do they did they change their diapers when they were a little and also in the original there's at least
[01:09:26] like siblings like all of these guys seem to be only kids so there's no other kid kind of stuck in a house with them being like you freak me out there's there's really no human point of view on these kids besides like get away
[01:09:37] like they treat them like cockroaches. It does feel like we're like fucking five seconds away from a 10 part prestige village of the damn miniseries right we're like here's how you stretch it out and someone at you know who Lou is listening and they're
[01:09:53] like hmm I will say it's actually already green lit in England they're making it as a TV fucking they are actually true the midway doing a midwit but um this movie has a has the the plot device of right they kind of pair off
[01:10:10] when not with siblings but they just sort of their tube they're bonded pairs the kids and so then you have the one kid David played by Thomas Decker Griffin yes who went on to be in stuff right he was in heroes and shit
[01:10:25] Sarah Connor Chronicles and all that he was John Connor he was a the Zelensky boy and honey I shrunk the TV series right and so he's like supposed to be the sort of like not quite evil one because he never he never I guess
[01:10:42] on his partner is his yeah exact so like if he had a girlfriend he'd be more evil exactly then she keeps him on the straight and narrow everything I learned on it. Amy you have to stop going to that.
[01:10:59] It also feels like that's a weird carpenter thing seeping through of just like what's the most horrifying reality I can imagine not having a little children of the damned girl to date. So it's worse than death. I mean we haven't acknowledged this is the other thing
[01:11:16] I mean we have to acknowledge carpenter this is the quote I knew exactly where to shoot it shoot it. I live up there you know like this whole thing is shot near Inverness, California where he shot the fog yeah and it's
[01:11:28] just like he's just like it's great because you just point the camera anywhere and there's like a beautiful Vista but he's not saying like yeah I'll make village of the damned if you know you make it at my house basically like that's
[01:11:39] what he ended up doing they made like a twenty two million dollar movie in his backyard like there's no that's the it's testifies the lack of effort here like the fog he's looking out at the fog and he's like I've got an idea
[01:11:50] this is just like yeah I don't know what if the village of the damned was my village. His alive pictures deal fell apart and there was a lawsuit and the settlement was the deal sort of transferred over to
[01:12:04] Universal and he was like this is great the universal terms are great. I have bigger budgets more freedom they really trust me like he seemed very happy with like I've never had a better time working with the studio this was perfect
[01:12:15] they gave me a lot of room it was nice to work with a budget over ten million dollars again but it also just feels like it it feels like some degree of passion is gone now. Yeah, I mean I'm I'm just speculating here and I'm not
[01:12:33] his therapist but like it feels to me that carpenter was trying to make a bad movie as though he was saying hey Hollywood give me your money and I will prove that you have no good ideas like if you want me to remake this movie to
[01:12:51] fulfill a contractual obligation fine like I will show you that I can that remake suck like it's kind of like he's putting a twenty two million dollar gun to their head and saying either give me freedom and money or I'm just
[01:13:03] going to take your money and give you guys the finger. But he's also a guy who's done good remakes up until this point even if they didn't play well at the time and and he in interviews at the time of his movies
[01:13:14] coming out would not mince any words and for this one he was like this is great. This is the best relationship I've ever had with the studio. Well, I mean there's this interview from 2011 where I think it's for the ward where the interviewer asks like
[01:13:28] what's a project you didn't like catch on with audiences and he's like well there's the thing which bombed but I think it's one of my best films and then he says I'm really not passionate about Village of the Damned. I was getting rid of a contractual assignment
[01:13:42] although I will say it has a very good performance and Christopher Reeve. So there's some value in that nice to toss Chris a bone but he does kind of basically there just take this movie out back and shoot it.
[01:13:53] He's like whatever that was just kind of a you know filling to the weirdest thing Griff is this movie came out two months after Mountain of Madness. That's so fucking weird because they held over that movie for so long.
[01:14:05] Yeah, he basically had two movies back to back this year. I mean this is the other court from him. It was fun to do a drama like Village as opposed to in the mouth of Madness which has a little edge to it. This is more straight.
[01:14:16] This is more a baby boomer middle class kind of movie. There's nothing wrong with that. I just hadn't done one of those in a long time. If you make a movie or 10 million you got try to reach out to the broadest audience you can find you make it
[01:14:27] under 10 million. You're able to make it more quirky more daring more subversive if you want to use that word like it's just him sort of saying like I don't know I'm making one of these. Yeah, he like doesn't seem to care. Okay, I have a quote then fine.
[01:14:39] Here's my government a quote that I found he said at the time you know he's like that's a pretty easy little movie to make you don't have to do much the original. You just got to bring it up to date humanize it a little
[01:14:49] and make the characters rich and I will say he did none of those things like he didn't bring it up today. He didn't humanize it and he didn't make the characters rich so it's really like he didn't try even with the low stakes.
[01:15:01] He said he had to try. Well, I'll I'll one up you with yet another quote. Okay, so this is from starla but this is when he's promoting escape from LA. The easiness of the production. As as JJ our researcher pointed out seemed to be the main
[01:15:17] appeal he goes people sneak up on me occasionally and say boy I loved invisible man. That film was a difficult experience for me that was as close as I've ever had to a why am I doing this situation. I thought at that point life was miserable.
[01:15:30] I felt why live this way maybe I should be doing something else for a living but I did a couple good films after that now I'm having pretty good time for an old guy. It does sound a little bit like here's this guy who's
[01:15:40] been fighting so fucking hard for all his movies for like 20 years and most of them are shit on at the time and he was just like I don't know can I do this the way other people seem to do it other people seem to not
[01:15:51] be fucking just don't care losing their minds all the time right there's that attitude. He's tired. It feels like he settled. He's like you're fine we'll go to Applebee's I'll marry you I don't care. I'm done right. I'm 32.
[01:16:06] Yeah we I've done the thing I had my hot and fast loves of my life early on like here we go and now what I think the irony is because he didn't I believe and I say this again it pains me you know I love
[01:16:19] carbon or I don't have a podcast on car I was gonna ask you yeah but like so it pains me to to throw him under the bus and like shoot him with my village of the damn laser eyes but by not I believe fighting harder for his career
[01:16:35] in whatever form that would have taken either like fighting harder to make studio movies like maybe actually trying to humanize this movie a little bit and make the characters rich whatever version of fighting he didn't bother to do it set him up to
[01:16:47] now become the guy whose own movies are just getting these kind of mediocre room remakes. Yeah he has become the guy that he was now he's just like whatever I'll do the score who cares. Yeah like his cynicism really breaks my heart
[01:17:01] because they don't feel like it had to be that way but I guess he was kind of always like a cynical weird guy to begin with before even made a movie. And is it just like he just it all went to that incredible
[01:17:11] sort of 1015 year run right he just pours all the energy in and I guess memoirs of invisible man that would be the one where he's like I'm fine you broke me I'm done I know I've made a lot of good movies I can't fight anymore so yeah I'll
[01:17:26] just we'll see. I was gonna say that that's the other factor you cannot underrate Chevy Chase's capacity to break a man. Right. I'm just gonna snap him in half. We can talk around this and there are other factors at play but like what's wrong with this movie.
[01:17:45] I don't know it's a guy coming off of a Chevy Chase picture. I know mouth of madness is in between but like maybe the chase takes a little while to catch up you know. But that's I mean that's what I now I think of him
[01:17:57] and I do want to ask you and me about doing your Halloween pocket which is incredible and people should listen to it if they haven't already. It was from when was it from it was for the 2018 movie right yeah yeah yeah yeah 2018.
[01:18:11] Halloween season's almost over right but but like I do feel like now I imagine like David Gordon Green sitting down with him being like yeah so what I'm thinking for Halloween kills is like this and this and like this what do you think and Carpenter's like huh
[01:18:26] yeah whatever you know cool I'm just gonna do like some synths that's what I'm thinking you know like yeah he just let me back here. You know and greens like what I'm trying to pay homage to you and he's like I just feel like he's completely
[01:18:40] over all of it right. And what's the vibe you got from him what I got like he was the first interview I did for that podcast so I was absolutely nervous like it was like whatever we got from him had to be kind of the skeleton
[01:18:54] we hung the rest of the show on so I mean I prep for that like I was gonna be like Katie Kirk at the presidential debates I was like freaked out and I was like I have exactly this amount of time and I'm
[01:19:04] gonna like waste three minutes tactically to talk to him about NBA basketball at the beginning going that he likes basketball and I like basketball maybe that'll get him to like relax me a little bit. You're cool right totally worked totally worked
[01:19:16] I will say that but what I got from him is I'm gonna call it like big cat energy which is a thing I've been thinking about a lot watching like the new season of secession because like Brian Cox plays like
[01:19:30] his character on secession with I also believe big cat energy you know I don't know if you guys are cat people. I'm a Brian person yes association like if a cat doesn't want to care about something it just absolutely won't if you're like hey cat look at me
[01:19:44] and the cat continues to stare at nothing in the corner like to me that is very carpenter really you will he will be roused only for what he wants to be roused and if you put a leash on him
[01:19:53] he'll play dead like he will only do what he wants to do winning of his own freedom and accord the sense of being free I think is really important to him absolutely yeah playing dead on the outside playing apathetic on the outside is like a superpower
[01:20:09] and it enables him to live this creative weird life of like noodling around and creating his own grateful dead cover band or whatever he does like in his own home like I also think that I I I want to make it clear this is not my
[01:20:24] opinion this is an unfortunate reality that I've come to accept I think caring too much is a liability in the entertainment industry I think it is a thing that people will almost always interpret as a weakness or a vulnerability that they can manipulate to their own ends
[01:20:42] and I do think there was a strategic nature to as much as I do believe he is a pretty brutally cynical man on some basic level at least in terms of his worldview or his judgment of other people or whatever I do think there is that couching of
[01:21:01] it hurts so much to fucking care and everyone else is gonna fucking if they know there's a spot they're going to poke that bruise you know I think that's very true he dealt with that pain he had those those wounds right and he's just
[01:21:16] right I sympathize with what he's like yeah you know I just don't want to have the knockdown drag out I don't want to write have my baby get suffocated in the editing room right or what you know like whatever it is whatever he's I get it and then
[01:21:30] he also made a bunch of good movies so he's allowed yeah I mean especially when you like put your name on the title of your movie still like John Carpenter's this for it to not feel like yours for people to fuck with you and have it get smothered
[01:21:43] like that's painful as anything and I mean to me the biggest mystery of people who work in Hollywood and get these big blank check paydays is why they just keep keep making movies like to me if I was like an actress or director and I had
[01:22:00] walking sunset right yeah if I had enough in the bank at a certain point after like my tenth film or something enough to like drink wine and no I don't even like wine enough to drink whiskey and
[01:22:11] read books for the rest of my life with like a cat at my ankles why would I keep getting plastic surgery and going out there and like him in struggling for respect I don't know why they do it I mean
[01:22:21] this is like we David and I talk about this with Bruce Willis all the time he is but one example but that's one where you're just like he does not have Nick Page style notorious tax troubles or whatever you know where you're just
[01:22:35] like why are you doing these things you seem to hate you know that are only sort of like diminishing your legacy and there is this lost thing of like oh James Cagney just like wouldn't make a movie for 25 years and then was like I guess I'll do
[01:22:51] ragtime you know like Greta Garbo doesn't work the last 40 years of her life 50 like there there was several eras of movie stars where the majority of them even the biggest ones would just at some point be like yeah. Yeah starting with Mary Pickford the first movie
[01:23:11] star she was like oh gosh I'm nearly 40 by going to be a pick ferce y'all later and maybe you're able to like coax them out of retirement going to do one thing a decade or whatever once every 20 years or whatever but it's like a lot
[01:23:23] of just never did it again and people feel so unwilling to let go these days that it makes Jean Hackman seem like a curio and there's a selfishness where you're like man and be fucking rad to see Jean Hackman show up
[01:23:36] in a movie tomorrow and have his fastball but also I'm just like I don't know the guy fucking retired he writes historical novels it goes to diners gets accidentally filmed by Guy Fieri sounds like a perfect life. I will also say in Carpenter's defense
[01:23:50] I've never heard a good thing about the war but the next three movies escape from LA vampires go submars all kind of have their defenders and maybe a little from LA right you know like those having fun like they disappointed a little on release but now
[01:24:05] people like right exactly like those are fun and those are cute you know or what you know so this one and the ward I mean memoirs and it's very obvious what happened there like that that's sure that's a star problem
[01:24:17] as you say but like this one in the ward of the only two where I feel like the the breed is still like was Carpenter just kind of checked out he just didn't really give a shit like it's sort of surprising considering
[01:24:29] his his filmography I'll say this to the like I was always fucking pulled as an actor like you care too much about this shit you overthink this stuff too much you need to fucking calm down and just treat this like a job right and I would always resent
[01:24:44] people telling me that that was a liability you know that that was a hindrance for me getting jobs or being able to cure jobs or gotten the way of me doing the job when I'm like fucking caring about this is the whole point and there are times
[01:24:58] where I've been like I don't know what if I try not caring about this you know and my God you guys griffin what that's that's the whole point of the movie the kids are saying over and over again empathy is a problem why do you have empathy
[01:25:11] why do you have emotions caring too much about this is going to destroy you all why bother caring and oh my God that's exactly what he that's exactly Carpenter's argument oh my God because I was gonna say this feels like him try me maybe this feels like him
[01:25:29] going like what if I try one movie where I don't give a shit right and for whatever you want to throw at vampires that go Samara's escape from LA no one's gonna say like that feels like that is made apathetically
[01:25:41] but this is a movie about him trying to be like I don't let me do what other people do which is they just show up and they do their job and they cash their check and they go home and they don't fucking
[01:25:49] start World War three over like their little like genre movie and and it's it's evil it's bad not giving a shit's bad but but giving a shit is bad because that's how the end okay okay but like think about this like the whole last third of the movie
[01:26:05] is about like are we going to rescue David David's a little bit better than the rest of them like we should take care of well let's not pump Sims up too much yeah he's smart well we did you're you're fine David
[01:26:16] when I was a little bond boy I also spelled my name in blocks but like speaking of creepy David who's who to be clear creepy David is the movie David speaking of creepy David like there is this big push for empathy and like maybe this boy can be
[01:26:33] saved and maybe it's okay to have a heart after all but the way the movie ends is like probably not like you saved a guy who's going to kill people like yeah I think the movie does say it like it to me that's like one
[01:26:44] of the frustrating things about the build-up to the climax is like you're watching Christopher Reeve and Linda kind of like sweat and try to save David from not having to die in the giant fireball so many fireballs in this movie that they feel like that's where
[01:26:57] most of the budget went is fireball and everything yeah but like I was watching that stretch and being like why do you want David to live he's still also probably evil and like yeah maybe they're like hiding his face when other
[01:27:09] people glow their eyes and murder people so we can't tell whether or not he's like murdering with his eyes as well they just hide that from us but like don't have empathy for David and they do and that's going to wind up
[01:27:20] really badly for all of humanity right yeah like David does not look like he's going to be nice to us no matter no matter the fact that he was safe from the fireball because like also all his friends just got killed so
[01:27:34] it's so weird that this is a movie where just like in the original late in the film Kyrie see Ali gets the news that society is nuking basically towns to kill these kids she delivers it with like mild surprise and the movie kind of just moves on like
[01:27:53] why isn't that so chilling like I should watch that and be so freaked out and instead I'm I don't know it's the same like what you said Griffin with the stillbirth yeah where like that scene should be so weird and instead
[01:28:06] she treats it like she's like stealing some apples from the grocery store she kind of just is like I'm sorry it's still born and then like sneaks out it's a run-on sense like she does not play the moment where she observes that the baby is stillborn
[01:28:18] no and then you see the baby later and it's supposed to be like this horrifying shocking image and it just looks like the alien from Mac and me but with a really prominent vagina and he's usually so good at the fucking rubber shit like and this movie
[01:28:32] had a big budget I know for him I know it's so weird no I think you cracked it Amy and that is the angle through which this film becomes interesting only as a piece of his narrative it still is not a compelling
[01:28:45] movie on its own but I do think you're right I think that is what's going on here can you do me a favor quickly and click the file I placed into the chat of the zoom Amy oh my God yes there is okay one second Oh
[01:29:06] Griffin you love to send a picture of my child as a as a sort of a you know surprise moment for the podcast yes he has it on his desktop now like it's the same expression as when you sent me a picture of her earlier
[01:29:20] David and I was like your baby just looks like she has a secret she doesn't want to tell me that's secret I mean she might she might be damn no well I know I'll tell you he's not she's not she's not I'm joking I'm joking of course
[01:29:35] mean joke Amy she does have a secret I'm gonna share another picture here quickly here if you want to just look at it's very sweet that you collect these of course if you want to just click this quickly it's a link
[01:29:51] you just this is just your favorite new bit she looks like the boss baby uh-huh actually she does look like thank you I know I know she looks like the boss baby we all know that's a great thing the boss
[01:30:01] baby is the boss the boss is a movie star to charge she's a fucking movie star boss baby boss baby that fucking 20 million dollar opening weekend how many people can say that shit David runs shit what if we made the boss baby of the damned
[01:30:17] that's the thing what if the third boss baby is that they think their eyes start making people kill themselves the suicides are so the guy jumping off the roof and then like the feeling himself on the bro and then it's like such an obvious like dummy
[01:30:36] like it's so weird the gags none of this lobby is right no it's not scary at all the only one that kind of got me was the guy who falls asleep on his grill and I was like that was one fucking compelling image
[01:30:51] and it's like yeah you're only seeing the aftermath of it he really looks like a sausage man like yeah it's so well done he looks a little tasty yeah but that was like that was like a punk joke like that was not
[01:31:03] that was a nasty mean punk joke I appreciated that yeah I also appreciated that we kill off Linda Linda Linda's husband so early like a parent dies like immediately immediately I don't I'm not that familiar with the work of him but I
[01:31:17] was like watching him and I was like okay this guy looks like if Jason Friessley and Luke Perry had a baby he is one of these guys where I every time he's in a movie I go who is this guy oh that's Michael
[01:31:27] Paray like he just never sticks in my head streets of fire is his big thing and Eddie in the cruisers but I never am able to remember it's the same guy I'm just one of those guys who kind of just he looks
[01:31:41] like a guy like you know in his in the 80s especially looked like you know a movie star but he didn't whatever he was always kind of knockoff yeah and I guess that's that's just how it is I like the music that his character listens here
[01:31:55] as he drives around his like Canadian Tuxedo to prove that he's like the cool guy that like it's like that bluesy sort of noodling rock he's like do do do do do do do do and then he crashes in his tank explodes and that to me surprise me
[01:32:06] I wasn't expecting that because he looked generic handsome enough I thought he'd be around longer and then I wound up googling like does helium explode helium doesn't explode he is high billing but this movie apart from I guess the kids yeah doesn't have a lot of characters
[01:32:23] who do much really kind of the problem that's another moment I kind of like is when they they're like border outside of the town when the blackout happens and they're sending people in and all the cops are passing out
[01:32:38] that moment where they put the guy in the road yeah like the first 30 minutes there's a lot of good shit like that the fucking the barbecue guy is in that I think seeing all the collapsed dogs is really creepy like all of those dogs just collapsed
[01:32:51] in the road like how did they get the dogs that collapse like that all that blackout stuff feels to me like a better execution of what M. Night was trying to do in the happening where it's just like this is weird why is
[01:33:06] everyone behaving strangely why is society just sort of like slowing down you know it gets that kind of eeriness right even aside from just like the big shocks and scares and stuff just just the oddness of it it's true but in then Kirstie Ali shows up
[01:33:25] and introduces herself as Dr. Susan Verner like Turner with a V like Turner with a V like you couldn't just say like that like Dr. Susan Verner you know like the soda Turner with a V I think is the most complicated
[01:33:38] way to introduce that last night so weird in this I mean she's I know right we talked about her a little but we would do it's a very very atonal performance she is quite bad in this movie Emmy streak or no it is not good work from
[01:33:54] Kirstie Ali I was wondering I mean you know and I don't really like picking on people because of their religion at all but I do think it's interesting that Kirstie Ali is like what a level seven she's high up there yeah in Scientology and she is playing
[01:34:09] kind of a fouchiest figure in this movie it does feel like she's channeling a little bit of her aggression towards smarty pants government people who think they can tell you what to do yeah scientists to know what's up like I mean
[01:34:24] she's like playing this movie like she's agent Hobbs like she's like simultaneously doing like fucking like Tommy Lee Jones in the fugitive and doing like his girl Friday right and she's not doing either one well no and I don't think governor is helping
[01:34:41] him he's like okay sure why don't we shoot you in an all black room for some reason right like let's just do that to like let's just have this film turned into a noir for some scene like here it's gonna be like a TV movie with
[01:34:51] a pumpkin patch and the opening scenes and like a film noir for three minutes later on sometimes it feels like she's playing like brassie screwball lady and other times it feels like she's eating playing like a government agent who literally eats
[01:35:02] nails yeah I mean I kind of want to switch the costumes between like her and the virgin girl who gets pregnant because like Chris DeAllea that's Mara Salinger yeah Mara Salinger because like Chris DeAllea shows up wearing like all black for just
[01:35:17] sort of no reason but meanwhile then you have this like really goth girl who seems like goth in mentality you know she's like been forced to have this alien baby she was a virgin all things are like breaking like she has a more interesting arc
[01:35:31] I would say not not not heavily but she just shows up and she's wearing like buttery yellows and then she immediately kills herself and I think that character could have been really cool yeah especially because every single thing about this character is the shit you couldn't do in
[01:35:45] 1960 like this is all untouched you know it's like here's a character who is only defined by the subjects we could not discuss when the last movie was made yes but then they don't actually do much with that no she's just fucking haunted and the kid kind of fucks
[01:36:02] with her she does offer the kid booze that that was an interesting choice yeah that was great yeah yeah I wanted more of that yeah I wanted to see maybe the kid get a little drunk and then laying up yeah that'd be good one of
[01:36:17] the one of the damned kids gets drunk and then you know whatever does the powers to do tricks you know what I mean with his head I don't know I mean did none of the parents ever realize the thing with the glowing eyes do
[01:36:32] they ever just be like why don't we wear sunglasses or like why don't we not look at them like but this is the whole thing why are they not all just throwing these kids off a cliff I guess it's because the kids can like you know
[01:36:43] control their minds or whatever but it is still like no one's just like hey I noticed that ten of the kids at school are complete freak shows so is anyone does anyone want to deal with this like if they just kind of let it
[01:36:57] happen for a while and then they're like you know what there's been too many creepy suicides in mid-witch maybe like you know someone should actually start dealing with this but like this is I mean me I've been the fucking doing unformed versions of
[01:37:12] this rant in multiple episodes this series but like you know subtlety being overrated and realism and be more interested in things where you can sort of like deal with a more elastic tone you know but you get away with it when you clearly are
[01:37:30] able to project to the audience that you have a consistent sense of what the rules of this universe are and like in the original film largely because they cannot show pregnancies and deliveries and things like that you have these sort of time jumps
[01:37:48] and then you just end up in a state where it's like the kids are like this now and everyone is sort of freaked out by the kids and the whole movie is at such a specific pitch and wavelength that you just
[01:37:57] go like I accept that these are the rules of how this universe operates right like I will buy into a weird movie logic as long as you convey it to me with a sense of integrity and specificity of like this is what we
[01:38:16] do or don't talk about right and this is a movie that just never gets over the hump of why isn't everyone freaking out about this all the time you know like why aren't they constantly screaming yeah or why aren't they at least just putting a bag over
[01:38:31] the kids heads if it's like the eyes of the problem like do they sleep and if so it seems like you could solve this and also it seems like they figure out pretty quickly that the kids can read your mind and then they do
[01:38:41] absolutely nothing with that the brick wall thing is so bizarre well that's in the original I guess they just wanted to do it again right just so poorly I feel like realized in this one visually yeah I mean it looks like he's doing stand-up
[01:38:57] yes well especially because it does brick wall background wait that's amazing God that's funny that would be that's really funny what is the deal with empathy but like imagine he could think of like worse stuff like I always have songs running through my head that are so annoying
[01:39:18] like if the kids can read your mind why aren't they just thinking about the most annoying like done done done done just drive the kids crazy right just do fucking moves like Jagger in your head until they run off a cliff
[01:39:28] yeah I feel like in the in the in the original when he does the brick wall you're like oh this is like an inventive way for a cheap oh our movie from you know 60 years ago to sort of rub this
[01:39:38] is this must be from the book and it's interesting right and this just kind of feels like they were like what should he what did he do last time brick wall that's fine well it's easy to shoot a brick wall point a camera at
[01:39:48] it and the shots of the brick wall are like this is this is the fucking money shot as if it's like the nightmare imagery from the end of Prince of Darkness or whatever and you're like like there's a weird and not a screen saver yeah and also like
[01:40:05] if they know that they can read their minds have you know did you notice that twice Kirstie Ali goes up to Christopher Reeve right before he has to be around the kids and tells him a dark secret that the kids can't know
[01:40:17] she is like you're about to go into like the sharks den of kids who can read your mind this is the perfect time to tell you that the government hasn't been blowing up all of the other children don't let them find that out in your head what but
[01:40:29] keep that at the back of your brain though keep that you know put that on a back burner baby it's it's so bizarre whatever it's not a very good movie I mean that's you know we're coming at this from a lot of angles but
[01:40:43] that's how to diagnose it yes Amy what I just I just have to say one last thing of course like when the villagers finally get mad at the end and finally go crazy like right after him or like is forced to commit suicide and his wife starts screaming
[01:40:57] all of the villagers finally decide to do something about this and they are straight up out there in the street holding flaming torches like this is Frankenstein movie like where did they even get the torches this is just one of those things I'm
[01:41:09] like to carpenter not he was like making a schlocky movie don't even bother giving them flashlights or whatever people would have in the 90s they're all going to go to like the hardware store and get flaming torches for the scene yeah they went to the torch store
[01:41:25] it went to the they went to the local mob store yeah it just like the final kind of like fuck you like I have I will not think about updating this in the slightest there is nothing I will do to bring this
[01:41:36] movie into the 90s except for Linda's ponytail she has a really great 80s ponytail 80s 90s ponytail and we're done here I didn't see pitch forks coated down with they are those flaming he was saving those I mean he updated in that way he's like who uses
[01:41:50] pitchforks anymore just dust torches that's true although this time could use a pitchfork I mean there is a lot of hay barrels yeah maybe maybe they could move some hay around just sort of keep themselves occupied here's the thing I want to read
[01:42:08] I don't know why not on set here's from our dossier thank you for our researchers on set Hamel and Ali kept things loose breaking into bella Lagoce impressions between takes Edward had just been released Hamel we couldn't stop talking like bella Lagoce it's spelled phonetically
[01:42:28] like that we filmed one scene where I came to Christie and say where did you take the baby and I couldn't help myself I said where did you take the baby and she bounced right back practically shouting now I took it to Z pathology
[01:42:44] lab kind of wish Hamel had just done that for the whole movie right yeah he should just leaned into that this needs like a gonzo performance and like it needs someone doing like a fucking Jeffrey combs and when you were excited about
[01:42:59] the crazy guy that you started the episode off with just because he's got a little juice what's his name the flower guy right but he's got like one fucking scene like you know that Hamel is like crazy raving preacher with a bizarre accent George Buckflower that's his
[01:43:12] name he's in like a million things million dollars right good name yeah yeah well you know sure I'm glad they had a good time I hope everyone was well paid yeah it's kind of one of those movies where you start kind of just grasping it like look I
[01:43:26] hope the catering was good right maybe they they saw a good movie one night they all like the whole crew got together and like went into town and saw whatever was out well maybe maybe the days were short they actually gave crew proper turnaround
[01:43:42] exactly carbon I hope sort of like didn't what would you want to say Ben maybe the kids still get together you know every year you know how about annual hang catch up do you think carpenter let anybody into his house that they're basically sure
[01:43:59] yeah backyard do you think he had anyone over for dinner or was he like no my castle is my castle yeah it's a fair point I don't I don't know if I would certainly want to go that feels like Carson inviting over to the couch right one night
[01:44:11] Carpenter's like hey I'll make you dinner come to one two three Carpenter there's a quote here I mean Hamel met carpenter at Halloween party the carpenter had at his house in the early 90s and he said I was struck by how easy
[01:44:29] going he was his house is covered in lobby cards he grew up reading Castle of Frankenstein famous sponsors of film land and I realized we were cut from exactly the same cloth we spent half an hour talking about creature friend the black looking I mean that's cool
[01:44:41] that Carpenter's house is all fucking monster movie memorabilia and chat and also like the idea of those two having a you know a nerdy chat is also it's just kind of tickling like as much as we sort of worship these sort of nerd heroes now look at that
[01:44:56] they both seem like pretty good guys carpenter and Hamel I mean Hamel is such a notorious dork like the one of the things about him is that he apparently I don't know at what point it ended but I believe for at least the original run of David
[01:45:14] Letterman doing late night pre-moving to CBS he had like every episode recorded on VHS and he still might like he was a guy who would like record it every single night and this is after Star Wars had come out after he had done the trilogy and he's
[01:45:30] just like setting his VCR record Letterman so he can rewatch episodes and shit he has obviously been our number one dream guest on the George Lucas talk show forever of course and our whole bit was always if we ever get Hamel we will not bring up Star Wars
[01:45:47] once that will be the bit we will ask him about anything and everything else he can dictate the conversation but we will agree that Star Wars will not be discussed once and we will not discuss the fact that we're not discussing Star Wars
[01:46:00] right do you think he'll want to talk Village of the Dam well can I tell you what I can I tell you what our pitch has been okay and I don't know if it's ever gotten to him directly I'm saying this on air
[01:46:12] because we I want fucking people to tweet at him and see if we get his attention with this I don't want this you're trying to mind control the listener that's my hope I don't have this ever gotten to him directly or it's just like his fucking publicist or
[01:46:24] manager like shutting us down our whole thing is can we do a live stream called Hamel Barbera where we let Mark Hamel cure at a playlist of his favorite Hanabar Barbera cartoons and we just watch them and talk about that I think that's lovely
[01:46:45] is the idea behind that just the pun or is he a acknowledged Hanabar Barbera I think he is an acknowledged Hanabar Barber right and the pun is good and also I believe maybe his first credit ever if not it was one of his earliest was he was
[01:47:01] in Jeannie which was the I dream of Jeannie cartoon show spin off that was her as a teen and he played the teen boy who discovers Jeannie and has some other Hanabar Barbera credits as well so at first we were like what if we do
[01:47:14] we watch every episode of Jeannie and we have him on the whole time we only talk about Jeannie we never talked about Star Wars and we're like what if we do all of his Hanabar Barbera stuff and then it became what if we just let him pick
[01:47:25] but it has to be about Hanabar Barbera and we raise money for charity. I mean that sounds good I would watch I tune in that's also came up with that one was that you I think it was I think it was my good.
[01:47:39] I mean the idea beyond that which I believe Conor Rowlett came up with was if we could book Mark Hamill what's her name Shannon Percer and Michael Sarah in the same episode and we do Hamill Barb Sarah. Okay box office game let's play the box office
[01:47:59] game which might be interesting. April 28th 1995 David was just turned nine years old Humblebird that's me not not David from the movie. Number one at the box so well for first Village of the Damned opened number five three million dollars and made eight so you know
[01:48:20] eight is not very good it cost 20 but number one of the box office is an I would say underrated rom-com one of those rom-coms that has like an objectively creepy premise but the star kind of just carries it off from 1995 kind of the
[01:48:38] she had been in a couple action movies which had launched her career but this is her rom-com launch I think this is her first big run and then does she have a bit of a rom-com run after that she's a rom-com legend she's a rom-com legend huh
[01:48:55] this is its second week at number one. It's doing great second week in number one 95 as creepy premise with the stars make it sing she had mostly done action movies you know what the male lead is pretty cuteness. Okay, but she's the one who's really pulling it off.
[01:49:15] Do you have any inclination? I mean, I'm pretty sure I know the actresses but I don't know what the film is. The actress. Oh, Sandra Bullock. Yes. Oh, it's while you were sleeping. It's while you were sleeping. John Turtle, Tav's master piece of
[01:49:31] of sort of like passive stalking or whatever it is. I mean, I've said this so many times on the podcast, but when people say like any movie like that where they're like the premise is actually pretty fucked up when you think about it. And I'm like, yes.
[01:49:44] And that is a compliment to the movie that while you're watching it, you don't think about it. If you don't think about how fucked up the premise is when you're watching it because the stars are charming, then the movie is doing something right. Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman,
[01:49:56] Peter Gallagher as the the guy she had a crush on who's in coma. Looking at the billing here with Peter Gallagher's left eyebrow and Peter Gallagher's right eyebrow. Such rich, rich bushy brows got the width and I deserved. Yeah. Peter Boyle plays a character called
[01:50:14] ox to late Jack Warden film. It's a great movie and by great, I mean, you know, pretty watchable. Yeah. Number two is a cult classic Griffin that had sequels. It's sort of a yeah, sort of a kind of a masterpiece. Kind of a great. Well, kind of.
[01:50:34] I mean, is it no, but like it's kind of a great film. It's kind of a cononical film of the 90s. Okay. It had theatrical comedy. It's sort of a buddy Hangout comedy. It's a very sort of low plot movie. It's had two sequels made,
[01:50:50] I think that were both theatrical. Yes, but only one of the stars coming back. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. I wish you hadn't given me the extra hand because I got there. It's Friday. It's Friday. Kind of, you know, a huge movie. I think it's been canonized.
[01:51:06] Hey, me that is a movie you could cover on unspoken. It wouldn't feel absurd to be discussing whether or not it belongs in a canon. No, and in fact, that's a great idea. That's one of those. You're right. It's one of those kind of movies
[01:51:19] on school covers in its way of like, yes, this would never be on the AFI list, I guess. Yeah, with those movies, I always compare it to like, well, Shane made it on. So all bets are Shane. Shane really does stink though. Fucking Shane. He's so boring.
[01:51:35] Shane Shane. F. Gary Grace first film Griffin. Yeah, while while and he follows it up with set it off and then the negotiator and the thing that's just always so well to me is that Ice Cube wrote that. Yeah, with DJ poo. It's not like I forget it,
[01:51:52] but every time I think about it, I go like, wow. Bye Felicia. Isn't there a scene of him writing that in straight out of Compton? Yeah, and he's like, oh man, this script is funny. It's literally like you see the computer screen says like Friday
[01:52:06] by Ice Cube and then the camera tilts over and his wife goes like, what are you doing? He's like writing this screenplay. I think people are going to laugh a lot. He's like giggling. It'd be funny if he was literally writing by Felicia like you see him
[01:52:21] type it out. Anyway, Friday. Okay. Number three at the box office Griffin. It's a major action hit. Bit of a surprise hit another debut film from a canonical filmmaker. It has had three sequels. No, two sequels, but the third is on the way.
[01:52:39] So it's had a two and a three, but the three was recent. So long delay. Three was recent and now four is coming. I think four is being made because three was such a huge hit. Two major stars. Such a huge hit.
[01:52:56] Kind of a career launcher for both of them. Like one of them is one of them is more famous than the other, but the other one's about to be way more famous than the first after this you're saying I would say, I mean, you know what?
[01:53:07] Maybe he's already more famous. They're both sitcom stars. They're in an action movie. Okay. And and one of them is about to be, you know, when a Hollywood's biggest stars. What is this about to be when a Hollywood's biggest star? Is it bad boys? It's bad boys.
[01:53:26] Because Griff, I mean, is Martin Lawrence obviously famously Martin Lawrence's build above Will Smith and bad boys. Is he more famous though? But at that point, Fresh Prince is a big deal, but Martin is sort of Martin is a slightly bigger brand. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:53:41] But anyway, bad boys. A movie, of course, written for John Lovitz and Dana Carvey. The baddest boys. It just what they hosted the empty movie awards together or they did like a fucking parody skit on the show or whatever. And Hollywood was like,
[01:53:59] we got to fucking bottle this. These guys not playing characters using their default personas need to have an action comedy built around them. And they write this whole script and then they were like, Jesus Christ, love it's such a pain in the ass. This is fucking worth it.
[01:54:15] What if we just get two people who aren't going to drive us crazy? Like that was actually the evolution of the thing was they designed it for them. Carvey was kind of like getting, you know, increasingly reluctant about being a star and they were like,
[01:54:29] love it's just so fucking high maintenance. What if we get two guys who are actually going to want to work and show up and do their days? Well, they picked well, I guess. Do you think Lovitz ever regrets it in the middle of the night?
[01:54:42] I mean, imagine a bad boys with Lovitz and Carvey where they made a third one this year. They're back. You know, like, Yeah. I can't imagine either one of them running. No, it's tough to imagine either one of them walking faster than a job. Yeah.
[01:55:01] They're at the mall and they be catching up to like shoplifting speed walkers. What's also funny because it's like they were both entrapped in Paradise, right? Which is written directed by George Gallo who then wrote the original draft of Bad Boys for them. Like that was the idea.
[01:55:15] They play like fucking Goofy's and Gallant in entrapped in Paradise. Like there's no part of you that goes like put these guys in leather jackets, give them sidearms and have them run. And then if you try to imagine like they would have been in the Gallo version
[01:55:29] of the movie, but imagining them in a Bay version of the movie is it's a really fun mind game. And then we never get the giant Will Smith because he doesn't do Independence Day. Yeah. Oh wait, no, is that Roland Emmerich?
[01:55:40] I always get them confused in the night. It is Roland Emmerich, but still maybe he doesn't get it because no bad boys. I don't. Right. He doesn't get Independence Day if he's not in Bad Boys and if Independence Day doesn't start with Smith, I think it doesn't work.
[01:55:52] Maybe not. Look, look, is this a better world? We don't know. I don't know. It might be. Number four at the box office is a rip snorting costume drama. Sort of a war, war movie set up in Scotland, Bonnie Scotland. Oh, in the 18th century. Braveheart is Braveheart.
[01:56:15] It's Rob Roy Griffin. You were right the first time you were right. Because they're the same year, right? They are the same year. It speaks to how, you know, people had a real heart on first Scottish Warriors right then. Braveheart comes out to a month later, a month.
[01:56:33] Wow. And yeah, Rob Roy was like that was the odds on favorite and sure Braveheart was seen as a folly, I think. Right. And Rob Roy out gross Braveheart. No, originally, originally it didn't out gross Braveheart because it didn't do that well. We break what you are implying.
[01:56:53] I think is the Braveheart didn't actually do amazing. It didn't. I know it did. Okay. You know, right? Rob Roy made $30 million dollars the box up and then Braveheart made 75 worldwide domestic, domestic, but you know, maybe that was partly a release situation after the Oscars or something.
[01:57:12] I don't know. I was gonna say, I think it also played for like a full year. Like it wins Best Picture a year later, but like it did not do great when it came out. Yeah. Right. I mean, you know, I don't know. Do you like Rob Roy?
[01:57:23] Have you ever seen Rob Roy, Amy? Never seen Rob Roy. Anyone ever seen Rob Roy? Both of those in my living room, my mom was like really into Scottish folk dancing. So I know that those are both rented from Blockbuster.
[01:57:35] And I know that she took great issue with the historical inaccuracies in both. Yes, Rob. Braveheart is wildly inaccurate. I do not remember if Rob Roy's inaccurate. I do remember that Tim Roth is the villain and he was Oscar
[01:57:48] nominated and he has a great sword fight with Liam Neeson at the end. That's all I really remember. Jessica Lange is the love interest. I remember my family had a gateway computer. We probably bought it like a year or two after this. Cal print. A humble brag. Absolutely.
[01:58:02] And it had preloaded onto it like three quick time videos and one of them was the Rob Roy trailer. I think it was like to show you look at how amazing this video, the majesty of Scotland, in this gateway.
[01:58:16] The Rob Roy trailer, the Buddy Holly music video and I can't remember what the third was. But I remember being like, well, I'll watch this Buddy Holly music video 8000 times. I'll never watch the Rob Roy trailer again. But Buddy Holly means Buddy Holly music video. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[01:58:31] The weasr griff was preloaded. I also had that. I bought some Windows computer that had the weasr. Right. Maybe it was it was a it was a Windows. It wasn't a gateway thing. Yeah, right. I don't know why that was picked as the you think, but
[01:58:44] it was some other of course. Number five is is you know, a philots of the dam some other movies at the top of the box up the script in a goofy movie number six. Yeah. I mean now fucking the most canonized film in America
[01:59:01] right kids act like it's a man. You know, citizen cane level masterpiece. I remember it being okay. Kiss of death. I think it's good. But yeah, it's it's reputation is odd kiss of death is odd the Barbette Schroeder. Yeah. Cage Caruso Sam Jackson never seen. Yeah.
[01:59:17] You never seen that? No. That's a pretty good movie with a really interesting cage performance. Caruso is maybe the weak link of it. Um, this is a carousel's bad leading man phase. Yeah. Don Juan de Marco the sort of Johnny Depp breakout movie
[01:59:32] with Marlon Brando and fade on away. What if people wanted to fuck Johnny Depp? That was the what if in that movie. You've got circle of friends. One of those movies when I was a kid where I was like, is this like the most boring movie ever made?
[01:59:47] It's just the posters just Chris O'Donnell and Minnie Driver like holding hands. Do you remember that? No. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then the other movie top dog a Chuck Norris buddy movie with a dog. Nice. Has anyone ever heard of this?
[02:00:03] No, no, but I'm interested. I'm going to read you the tagline poster is Chuck Norris has a gun and then there's a dog wearing a police hat and the poster tagline is one's tough one's smart. I guess the implication being like Chuck Norris is fucking dumb. Don't worry.
[02:00:24] This toggle handle the brain side of the police work. It was Chuck Norris's last theatrical film directed by his brother Aaron Norris and the Wikipedia here says the film received mainly negative reviews and its box office was negatively impacted by the timing
[02:00:43] it's release only nine days after the Oklahoma Oklahoma City bombing. I don't know if that's why yeah, I don't want to say I don't think you can lay the plane in excursion. I'm going to go on a limb and say that the dog bombed the Oklahoma City building.
[02:00:58] Absolutely. They'd have a reason to why his big starring role fly like you can't what I'm going to say to Chuck Norris top dog and he's like, yeah, well, I mean that thing would have crushed. It wasn't for the damn Oklahoma City bombing
[02:01:10] because the film's plot deals with terrorism. The poor timing of the film's release was noted multiple views and articles once again. I think that's an easy passing of here's the other thing people here's also the Wikipedia. The film was criticized for being too similar to K9
[02:01:25] and Turner and Hooch. Yes, sure. It sure sounds like Chuck Norris was like, I should just do one of those yet six years later, K9 and Turner and Hooch both come out in 89. He waited six years 95. He called up his brother in the middle of the night
[02:01:39] and went, we have to do the dog movie now. I mean listen, I went to college in Oklahoma and I never heard anybody once say that they were traumatized by their too soon release of top dog. I went to the theater and man, I just couldn't deal
[02:01:55] with that movie. All the time how dare he how dare he I don't know. I am reading. I will say I'm reading the plot description of this movie. It does sound like it's very intense. There's the white national area nations church in the creator. I don't know.
[02:02:12] I hope Chuck and the dog get as the neo Nazi hitman are practicing for their attack. The leaders are revealed to not be just one white supremacist group, but an alliance of several, including the Klu Klux Klan the area nations in the church of the creek.
[02:02:27] This movie is about like a Voltron of fucking fascists who only can be stopped by the top dog. What kind of dog are we talking? Is it like a German Shepherd? No, he looks like a kind of shaggy dog. I don't know. Yeah, I'm seeing here.
[02:02:41] Yeah, he's a shaggy Reno. Yeah, what kind of dog is it? A mutt. We're trusting a mutt with this or is a mutt exactly the thing that the area nation would get mad at. I like the only dog like a like a German Shepherd would
[02:02:53] be like embraced by the all I'm going to say is that Reno attacks the neo Nazi leader like so. That doesn't look scary at all. He doesn't. That dog looks like Chewbacca. No, but he's funny looking. Oh, come on.
[02:03:09] He's got like a beard almost looking kind of like fur. It's hair is too long. I mean, you can't see there's a hair in his face. You're like you're like cut your hair hippie. You're in the LAPD for crying out.
[02:03:23] I just I'm looking at the voodoo by a like summary plot summary. Okay. Because I this wording Maverick Cobb Jake Wilder Chuck Norris has convinced his career has gone to the dogs when he meets his new partner a mischievous high IQ canine named Reno.
[02:03:42] So it's not just like a joke about him being dumb. The idea is that this dog supposed to be a specially intelligent. This is a high IQ dog and then are you ready for just the quickest fucking like pin turn of all time.
[02:03:55] His career has gone to the dogs when he meets his new partner mischievous high IQ canine named Reno. But when a brutal white supremacist plot is uncovered no, you cannot you cannot. What is going to deal with it? He's gonna take care of it.
[02:04:10] The rubber you just burned on the road doing that fucking U-turn. One stuff one smart but when a brutal white supremacist. I mean, I will say I just found Reno on the IMDB page which took a little bit of time.
[02:04:24] I was like wondering who the dog was who played Reno and it was listed under uncredited. Reno is actually named Betty and Betty had one other starring role in the Dennis the menace movie two years earlier. Good movie. Oh my gosh, Nick Castle. Hello, bringing it all around.
[02:04:44] Nick Castle who plays the Halloween who plays yeah, who plays Michael Myers in the original Halloween directed the Dennis the menace movie. So we're bringing this all full backs are full circle which is what Ben wishes this film had been. Yes, absolutely right. These kids are menaces.
[02:05:02] Yeah, I also just sent a picture of the dog in disguise as a lady with the fruit hat. Oh, okay. That's the photo I was responding to. I was yes, that's the Dennis the menace. There you go. Thank you. Hey, let's just say conclusively.
[02:05:19] I believe this has been discussed before. Nick Castle's Dennis the menace is scarier than John Carpenter's Village of the Dam. I mean Christopher Lloyd alone. Yeah, Christopher Lloyd alone. There's nothing in this movie that is spookier than Christopher. That's a really bad to fucking reboot right there.
[02:05:37] But just about that Dennis back. Oh, so what you're saying is you want to sweep you want to swap directors and see John Carpenter's Dennis the menace and Nick Castle's Village of the Dam. Correct. I think that's what I want to say. Amy you roll.
[02:05:53] I'm sorry it took five years to get you back on the show. We'll have you on sooner. Yeah, I can't wait 2026 baby. I'll be here. No sooner. All right. Well make sure the movie is as as as intellectually complicated and sophisticated as this one please.
[02:06:11] Look, you got my mental last time. You got a big one last time. I know. Yeah. No, no, you'll do you'll do good. Well, I have some good ones. They'll do it. I don't know if I want to do a good one. This has been great.
[02:06:21] Well, I mean we'll give you a real stick. All I do is talk about good movies. I'm like the inverse of Paul. Let me talk about these. So let's let's confirm then any Nicholson will be our guest on Top Dog as part of our series coming 2036.
[02:06:36] If you do a series on movies with dogs, which actually is an idea that now we should do for unspoiled. Yes, I commit fantastic and people should listen to unspoiled. They can obviously they not they can they should they must
[02:06:52] they must and thank you all for listening to this show. Please remember to rate review and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media lane Montgomery great American novel for a theme song extremely loud and incredibly online. Their new album is out wherever you get albums.
[02:07:13] JJ Birch, Necloriano for our research, Alex Barron and Asia McKinnon for our editing job on Pat rounds for our artwork. Go to blankies dot right dot com for some real nerdy shit. And you can go to patreon dot com slash blank check
[02:07:32] where now I believe officially Santa Claus has come to town right or is about to. Yeah, I always should. I should have this loaded up about no we still got a couple of weeks till Santa Claus comes to town.
[02:07:45] Okay, so Santa Claus will be coming to town at the end of November. Of course, we're talking Tim Claus's Santa Claus trilogy Tim Allen's not Tim Claus. But in a few days we have an episode coming out and it's
[02:07:58] do we know if there was the Scorpion King or if it was body bags? What's the final result? Should we look at the final result? Well, the problem here Griffin is and I can go look but like Scorpion King seem to be winning but everyone in the
[02:08:12] comments was like why is Scorpion King winning? Yeah, Scorpion King. Yeah, Scorpion King won by a healthy 58 to 42 margin, but maybe we just do body bags anyway. I don't know. Maybe we disregard it. I don't know. We'll see what happened.
[02:08:26] I don't know something's coming out in the other one for that. Yes, maybe we do two top dog now for this week. We do top dog. Yeah, maybe we do top dog. Were there any top dog sequels? No, Griffin. There were not. There are three K9 movies.
[02:08:39] We could do K9. Yeah, let's do K9. K9 11. I don't know. Well, that was the episode tune in next week on this feed of course for escape from LA. Plissken's back baby. And as always, here's the alley should have had a monkey lighting her cigarette.
[02:09:04] Yes, her big giant cigar.