Speaker 1: Oh jez, folks, it's showtime. People say, good money to
Speaker 1: see this movie.
Speaker 2: When they go out to a theater.
Speaker 3: They want clothed sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
Speaker 3: the protection booth.
Speaker 1: Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring?
Speaker 4: Don at off.
Speaker 3: Ben Richards thirty five, married one child in medical crisis.
Speaker 5: We need money for a doctor now, Ben, dress up.
Speaker 3: Employment status blacklist. But there's still a way out for you.
Speaker 3: It's the biggest show in the country.
Speaker 1: Is our birthright? Good Fred, Welcome to the running Man.
Speaker 6: People in these games never come back.
Speaker 7: I'm not trying to be myself killed, so kiss my
Speaker 7: ass twice.
Speaker 3: Right. There is why you can win this game. The
Speaker 3: rules are simple, survive thirty days. The entire nation hunting
Speaker 3: me down. I don't get your family had a slumicide
Speaker 3: for good.
Speaker 7: I'm going to come back here and burn this building down.
Speaker 3: I promise. That's the spirit.
Speaker 6: This is America, God damn it, and we don't put
Speaker 6: up with no bulls.
Speaker 5: Yeah hunt.
Speaker 1: Hemn stop bling.
Speaker 7: Have you ever wondered if this game is rigged?
Speaker 1: I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 4: Should I be moving up to Fay Hey, buddy, you're
Speaker 4: all free v.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you better run. I got a good name.
Speaker 2: Backcat h.
Speaker 1: I'm still here, just shiit eaters.
Speaker 6: Beg by.
Speaker 5: Which I'm crazy.
Speaker 7: Welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth at
Speaker 7: Midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Bike, whycho and me? Of
Speaker 7: course is Father Alone?
Speaker 2: Oh hey, I'm running.
Speaker 7: He's definitely running. He's running in place this whole time.
Speaker 7: If he sounds a little winded at the end of
Speaker 7: the recording, now you.
Speaker 2: Know know why I got one of those standing discs.
Speaker 7: On this episode, we're going to be discussing Edgar Wrights's
Speaker 7: The Running Man, the twenty twenty five adaptation of Stephen
Speaker 7: King's dystopian thriller. We will be discussing Wright's kinetic style,
Speaker 7: the film's political edge, and Glenn powell S Cinema's new
Speaker 7: Everyman from a spectacle as entertainment to the eerie familiarity
Speaker 7: of its media circus. We will be spoiling the film,
Speaker 7: the book, and of course the nineteen eighty seven film
Speaker 7: while we're at it. So fatherm Alone can't ask you
Speaker 7: when was the first time you saw it? Because it
Speaker 7: was probably this weekend. What did you think of The
Speaker 7: Running Man?
Speaker 8: I'm a long time Stephen King person. Obviously, I read
Speaker 8: the Bachman book when it came out, and I saw
Speaker 8: the Schwarzenegger movie in the theater and I've seen it
Speaker 8: a couple times since. Then saw this movie two days ago. Now,
Speaker 8: as a fan of sort of the book, first, I
Speaker 8: think this is a much more layered and true version
Speaker 8: or adaptation of that novel, and much more just the
Speaker 8: spirit of it, never mind the sort of plot and everything.
Speaker 2: And I think it was.
Speaker 8: Overall really enjoyable, and I thought, oh, this is a
Speaker 8: step above the Schwarzenegger movie finally, because I was never
Speaker 8: that big a fan of that movie. As an adaptation,
Speaker 8: I liked this movie plenty, but I think the last
Speaker 8: twenty minutes of this movie ruined the whole thing for me.
Speaker 8: So I can't and if someone were to ask me,
Speaker 8: would I recommend the movie. I probably wouldn't based on
Speaker 8: the end, but I kind of liked it.
Speaker 7: That's about my take as well. I really like the
Speaker 7: original Running Man from nineteen eighty seven. We talked about
Speaker 7: it gosh all the way back in twenty seventeen. Simpler
Speaker 7: times twenty.
Speaker 2: Seventeen, less dystopian. I don't know.
Speaker 7: If Edgar Wright was the right person to direct this,
Speaker 7: just because I think he gets so caught up in
Speaker 7: the neon slickness of things that the dystopia part really
Speaker 7: takes a back seat. Sometimes. I've wanted this to be
Speaker 7: set more in a Children of Men type of world
Speaker 7: rather than everything seems to be pretty umpart with where
Speaker 7: we're at today. It doesn't seem to be as desperate
Speaker 7: as the book.
Speaker 8: To be fair, had this movie come out a year ago,
Speaker 8: you would have felt this was a dystopian view of America.
Speaker 7: I think you're right, especially now with the whole idea.
Speaker 7: And it's so funny that they even were doing this
Speaker 7: back in eighty seven, the idea of deep fakes and
Speaker 7: recasting things when it came to showing us how awful
Speaker 7: Ben Richards is. Now it's just people make AI videos
Speaker 7: of other people all the time and have them do
Speaker 7: absolutely awful things. And so now you're watching this on television,
Speaker 7: the television of twenty twenty five, The Running Man, and
Speaker 7: you're like, yeah, I can see that. Of course, that's
Speaker 7: probably not very difficult for them to do it all.
Speaker 7: And there's one point where Richards even says, why didn't
Speaker 7: you fake the whole thing? I guess we do find
Speaker 7: out the answer about Richard's family that we don't know
Speaker 7: in the book, and that the book that ending is
Speaker 7: just it tears the heart out of you. It's amazingly
Speaker 7: just dire. And the way that they have to double
Speaker 7: back on that with this and suddenly becomes a conspiracy
Speaker 7: theory type of thing. And my god, is somebody who
Speaker 7: just saw Bugonia like two weeks ago. I'm like, can
Speaker 7: we quit making conspiracy theorists the hero of these films
Speaker 7: because it's not really a good thing.
Speaker 8: Last night I watched the first three episodes of Vince s.
Speaker 8: Guigligan's new series Pluribus, and that's about an alien invasion,
Speaker 8: but it's a viral thing. And early in the pilot
Speaker 8: of the series, our lead characters looking up and she
Speaker 8: sees contrails all through the night sky like patterns of them,
Speaker 8: and she's like, wow, that's interesting, and that's how they're
Speaker 8: spreading it. Had the same exact thought, Yeah, that's clever
Speaker 8: and fun to confirm conspiracy theorists as correct. Nevertheless, stop
Speaker 8: doing it, because apparently we're all doing it and we're
Speaker 8: actually legitimizing it, so knock it off.
Speaker 7: I was a breakfast this morning, and there was a
Speaker 7: guy sitting across for me that had a QAnon shirt on.
Speaker 7: That's okay, you just wear your mental illness on your
Speaker 7: shirt these days. I guess that's how we're doing it.
Speaker 7: And when I watched these characters, like because they don't
Speaker 7: go too into the QAnon or the conspiracy theory type thing.
Speaker 7: And we're supposed to be all appreciative of these guys
Speaker 7: who are making these like zines or basically YouTube videos
Speaker 7: or maybe TikTok type videos. They're the ones who know
Speaker 7: the truth and this is how they're trying to get
Speaker 7: the truth out. It just feels so wrong in twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five to see these videos where you're like, this
Speaker 7: is what's really going on. I'm like, all right, whenever
Speaker 7: anybody tries to tell you that, you know, they're just
Speaker 7: one hundred percent full of shit.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And it's a lazy way to add a narrator nowadays,
Speaker 8: to have the conspiracy nut that's it's the same as
Speaker 8: the tabloid reporter or something the modern day equivalent. And
Speaker 8: it's unnerving at best. As to that powerhouse ending from
Speaker 8: the book, the one that you can't make into a film,
Speaker 8: anymore since the year two thousand and one. It speaks
Speaker 8: to the problem with both films, which is the book
Speaker 8: is about a guy who gets onto a game show
Speaker 8: because he is completely desperate because his daughter is ill
Speaker 8: and he can't get work anywhere because he's basically been
Speaker 8: blacklisted for one event that happened early in his life.
Speaker 8: So he goes up against this sort of corporation that
Speaker 8: is running everything. Like you said, they're controlling the narrative
Speaker 8: with deep fakes and everything. And in the book, at
Speaker 8: the end, he effectively crashes a plane into the network building,
Speaker 8: potentially creating the spark that will ignite a rebellion against
Speaker 8: the corporations that are oppressing everybody. That's the idea. The
Speaker 8: movies want to have both stories playing out simultaneously. They
Speaker 8: want the guy on the run with everyone against him,
Speaker 8: and they want him to be sparking the revolution. It
Speaker 8: ends with a spark, or don't include it, because they
Speaker 8: want the fucking revolution to happen, and they like.
Speaker 2: Want a triumph.
Speaker 8: They want the government to come down and we are
Speaker 8: suspending our disbelief so fucking hard already for this dystopian world,
Speaker 8: and then to dismiss it away it's almost like a
Speaker 8: fairy tale ending.
Speaker 2: Like both films, I.
Speaker 7: Kept seeing headlines about this movie going Edgar Rate's film
Speaker 7: is great until it stumbles, and I'm like, oh boy,
Speaker 7: where's the stumble going to happen? So I knew going
Speaker 7: in that something bad was going to happen. And at
Speaker 7: the same time, I don't necessarily believe headlines because it's
Speaker 7: like what you consider a stumble in a movie. I
Speaker 7: might consider the greatest twist of all times. Watching this,
Speaker 7: I just can say, Okay, what's it going to be?
Speaker 2: What's going to be?
Speaker 7: When Michael Sarah shows up and he's playing this character
Speaker 7: who in the book was basically had no discerning personality.
Speaker 7: All he was was fat, And we know that Stephen
Speaker 7: King does not like fat people. What's whatever? So just hey,
Speaker 7: this guy's fat and his mom's crazy. As mom calls
Speaker 7: the cops and they are on the run and getting
Speaker 7: this big car wreck, and guy drives off as he's
Speaker 7: like bleeding out and coughing up black blood and bile
Speaker 7: and all this stuff, And I'm like, okay, is it
Speaker 7: that Michael Sarah is again the conspiracy theorist and that
Speaker 7: he's got the zine making stuff, and that he's got
Speaker 7: all of these traps in his house. Is that the
Speaker 7: twists that they're talking about, Because up until that point
Speaker 7: it's a fairly good adaptation. It stays pretty true, and
Speaker 7: even after that point they get back to it a
Speaker 7: little bit more, and I was like, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 7: this isn't too bad. What are they talking about? What's
Speaker 7: the stumbling block? Because I just see so much of
Speaker 7: this being such a good adaptation. Again, I would have
Speaker 7: liked it to have been a little bit more dire.
Speaker 7: We're selling tickets here, I understand if you're not going
Speaker 7: to make this a gut punch every single way around.
Speaker 7: But then I saw where the real twist came in,
Speaker 7: and that was Lee Pace playing this mass killer and
Speaker 7: not being Kevin Durant. Why was Kevin Durant? That was
Speaker 7: the whole movie for me. It just got ruined at
Speaker 7: that point.
Speaker 2: The moment that the movie veered.
Speaker 8: Literally off course is when he gets into the car
Speaker 8: with Amelia or whatever her name is at the end.
Speaker 8: As soon as that character opens her mouth, as soon
Speaker 8: as it becomes a polemic about the halves and the
Speaker 8: have nots, who fucking cares? At this point, you are
Speaker 8: on the run. It was so clumsy and stumbling, whereas
Speaker 8: everything seemed really fleet of foot and kind of economical.
Speaker 8: Didn't notice time passing. Was actually interested in these characters,
Speaker 8: was interested in the world they had created.
Speaker 2: And then in one.
Speaker 8: Scene it just completely dissembled it. And then it does.
Speaker 8: It continues to stumble along like I can't believe how
Speaker 8: far it falls when it gets there.
Speaker 7: When she showed up, I was like, oh, yeah, she
Speaker 7: is in the story. I do remember her, but she's
Speaker 7: no Maria kN cheetah Alonzo. I just was not following her.
Speaker 7: I like the Maria and chidah Alonzo character a lot
Speaker 7: because she is the what she writes the music for
Speaker 7: the network, so she's like in that pocket. And then
Speaker 7: she's got ooh, illegal music and illegal clothes and all
Speaker 7: these things, contraband got this. They're all in a sense
Speaker 7: at list and look what we have here.
Speaker 3: This looks like black market clothing.
Speaker 2: And she wrote the network.
Speaker 3: Jingle Come on, everybody does it.
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, that's true. Everybody does do this. But eventually
Speaker 7: you're gonna get punished for it, and you're gonna be
Speaker 7: made an example of. I like her way better than
Speaker 7: this other character. Make her more vapid because they get
Speaker 7: what ten minutes with this character if that, and they
Speaker 7: just she switches like nobody's business.
Speaker 2: It's oh my.
Speaker 7: God, I have this murder in my car to oh sure,
Speaker 7: I'll help you out, and it's within it just a
Speaker 7: few moments. I was like, that doesn't ring true at all.
Speaker 7: And I know you can stretch it out longer in
Speaker 7: a book, but it just does not ring true to me.
Speaker 8: Remember they live where rowdy Roddy Piper kidnaps Meg Foster
Speaker 8: and he gets her from the parking lot all the
Speaker 8: way to her house and she's playing along the entire
Speaker 8: time before she clocks him with the bottle and he
Speaker 8: goes out the window. That would be the mindset of
Speaker 8: anyone being kidnapped by anyone, particularly a character who's basically
Speaker 8: like she's a rich person. In this movie there are
Speaker 8: haves and have nots, and she's basically poor people are
Speaker 8: a piece of shit. And then he says three things
Speaker 8: my daughter was sick, and she's like, oh my god,
Speaker 8: my entire worldview is incorrect. I'm going to help you
Speaker 8: win this game. What the fuck, Edgar?
Speaker 7: You see that scarf? That scarf costs more than my
Speaker 7: daughter's welfare.
Speaker 8: What was that terrible Joel Schumacher movie with Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 8: It was like a John Grisham novel. It was like
Speaker 8: a case where Samuel Jackson was on on trial and
Speaker 8: Matthew McConaughey's big closing statement was and now imagine they
Speaker 8: were white and the jury is like, oh my god,
Speaker 8: we'll let this man free for wantonly killing these people.
Speaker 7: That the yes, I did, And I hope that burn
Speaker 7: in Hell was that one.
Speaker 2: It's the one. Yeah, time to Kill is some name
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 8: I'm so mad, and that the movie's so fresh in
Speaker 8: my mind at that ending that it painted over a
Speaker 8: lot that I liked about the movie, and I did
Speaker 8: like a great portion of it, including Glenn Powell, who
Speaker 8: it's the second time we've gotten a shot at Ben
Speaker 8: Richards as a character, and the second time they've gotten
Speaker 8: it completely wrong. As far as the guy's physique and outlook,
Speaker 8: he's beaten, broken down, described as near tubercular. I read
Speaker 8: the book again yesterday. He's as near tubercular, and here
Speaker 8: we've got this another buff guy. But they leaned into
Speaker 8: the anger portion of it, which I really liked and
Speaker 8: accept it's one of these things where they did this
Speaker 8: in the first film too. Now I thought this was
Speaker 8: just a facet of eighties action movies where they needed
Speaker 8: the hero to be an anti hero, like they had
Speaker 8: to have break there, breaking out of prison or something like.
Speaker 2: There were so many characters, but of course, like the A.
Speaker 8: Team, they were all wrongly convicted, just like Ben Richard's
Speaker 8: in the first film. So they repeat that here where
Speaker 8: his temper has gotten him kicked off of jobs, but
Speaker 8: it's because he's protecting the downtrod in every single time,
Speaker 8: it's basically frame for a crime he didn't commit. Having
Speaker 8: said that, I liked that in the moments where they
Speaker 8: were displaying the anger, that's when Edgar Wright came alive
Speaker 8: as a filmmaker and the film came alive. So for
Speaker 8: some reason, anger in the first portion of this movie
Speaker 8: really clicked with me.
Speaker 7: Howl was an interesting choice for me because I think
Speaker 7: I've critiqued most schort Sen Maker films, especially when it
Speaker 7: comes to something like a total recall as far as
Speaker 7: what if a different person were playing this, What if
Speaker 7: somebody who you wouldn't expect to look like a secret
Speaker 7: agent was playing a secret agent, like Arnold. You look
Speaker 7: at this guy and he's not human. He looks like
Speaker 7: an uber human. He doesn't look like a regular just
Speaker 7: John and Mary Jane walking down the street type of person.
Speaker 7: And you get Powell and I'm like, Okay, that kind
Speaker 7: of makes sense. Like I agree with you that he's
Speaker 7: very jacked in this movie, and like where you're getting
Speaker 7: all that protein from Buddy, like ye right.
Speaker 2: In dystopian land, my god.
Speaker 7: Maybe even swap out with Lee Pace or something who
Speaker 7: looks a lot more normal than that. But yeah, it's
Speaker 7: funny because Glenn Powell, I know, I've seen the guy
Speaker 7: in probably a hundred things, but he just slides into
Speaker 7: the background for me. He doesn't have anything that I
Speaker 7: can latch onto, and I almost think that was a
Speaker 7: good thing for this movie. There was one point, yes,
Speaker 7: he goes into sky and he's got the businessman's suit,
Speaker 7: the veteran suit, and the priest suit. And there was
Speaker 7: one moment in the film where we see the what
Speaker 7: was it called Running for Bucks or whatever the real
Speaker 7: show was that they had, and Sean Hayes shows up
Speaker 7: as a TV host on there, Gary Greenback's and they
Speaker 7: use him for just that one scene. And while I
Speaker 7: was watching it, I kept going, is that Glenn Powell
Speaker 7: just in a different disguise? Like he looks so generic
Speaker 7: that I was like, he could be anybody. But then
Speaker 7: I was like, no, that's Sean Hayes. I can actually
Speaker 7: recognize him. If not that sound mean, but if Glenn
Speaker 7: Powell walked up to my house tomorrow, I'd have no
Speaker 7: idea who this guy is.
Speaker 2: That is true?
Speaker 8: Can I just mention in the actual Running Man television
Speaker 8: show that we get in this movie, during those early
Speaker 8: sequences where they're introducing the runners to us, they do
Speaker 8: one thing where they have each of their faces and
Speaker 8: then a potential costume disguise generator that plays over their faces.
Speaker 8: And I just thought that was brilliant because that's the
Speaker 8: thing that I felt was really missing from the Schwarzeneger movie.
Speaker 8: And by the way, like you said, when you look
Speaker 8: at Swarzenegger, yes, of course it's going to be a
Speaker 8: gladiatorial combat on live TV and not a cross country
Speaker 8: on the run thing. In all the movies, you have
Speaker 8: a group. In the movies and the book, you have
Speaker 8: a dedicated group of hunters like government assassins chasing them down.
Speaker 8: But what was missing in the first film, and what
Speaker 8: really scared me in the book is that everyone's after you.
Speaker 8: You are never safe, like literally anyone can look at
Speaker 8: you and turn you in instantly, not to mention that
Speaker 8: they're playing dirty pool the government themselves, but like that
Speaker 8: sense of desperation never comes through in the Schwarzenegger movie,
Speaker 8: not that they're going for it, but you get that
Speaker 8: in a few scenes here, and I liked that.
Speaker 7: No, I like that as well. And I do like
Speaker 7: this whole idea of you can't trust anyone at all
Speaker 7: and that you might get turned in, even by somebody
Speaker 7: who is pretending to be your friend. I really like that.
Speaker 7: And I also I know one of my wife's complaints was, oh,
Speaker 7: I would have liked to have seen the other contestants more,
Speaker 7: and I was like, that actually fits more with the adaptation,
Speaker 7: because again it's all from Richards's point of view, like
Speaker 7: we really should not have any scenes that go outside
Speaker 7: of what he knows. And that was one thing I
Speaker 7: really liked about King's book was we only know what
Speaker 7: Ben Richards knows, and there are times where he will
Speaker 7: have dreams and he will dream about things or even
Speaker 7: just like very vivid thoughts as far as they probably
Speaker 7: figured out this and then they probably went here, and
Speaker 7: then they probably went there. So when they break away
Speaker 7: from Glenn Powell in this movie, like occasionally going to
Speaker 7: the wayam H Macy character, I was glad. It felt
Speaker 7: like that was inside of a dream. So it wasn't
Speaker 7: again going away from Ben Richards and it wasn't just
Speaker 7: here's what else is going on. Here's Killy and talking
Speaker 7: about this, and here's this other TV host, and here's
Speaker 7: what happened with these characters after Ben left them. I
Speaker 7: like that we stay with Ben the entire time, and
Speaker 7: that when he sees the fates of his fellow contestants,
Speaker 7: it's us seeing it at the same time, and it's
Speaker 7: us watching it on television at the same time he's
Speaker 7: watching it on free TV, I should say free V.
Speaker 8: It's a clever conceit that we can continue to jump
Speaker 8: outside our lead character's perspective because the rest of it
Speaker 8: is supposed to be on television anyway. And one thing
Speaker 8: that I've really liked that Edgar Wright added were the
Speaker 8: little drone cameras like little vultures, Like you see them coming,
Speaker 8: then you know the actual live team is there, so
Speaker 8: you're fucked. Basically, it's a nice way to ratchet up panic.
Speaker 8: It's like seeing the barrels pop up in Jaws.
Speaker 7: Again, we've got the conspiracy theory about the DNA sniffers
Speaker 7: and that we actually do get to see those being
Speaker 7: used in the way that the drones are being deployed.
Speaker 7: But again, like we get to that the woman that
Speaker 7: he kidnaps, and they can generate the AI image of
Speaker 7: her screaming out the car like immediately, and I'm like,
Speaker 7: all right, that's kind of weird. And also that she
Speaker 7: doesn't freak out about it and go, oh my god,
Speaker 7: I didn't do that. I'm not on TV right now
Speaker 7: because just like everybody else in the world, she's watching
Speaker 7: that weird Americanos show. So you'd think that she so
Speaker 7: bought into what the network selling her that it would
Speaker 7: be a major departure for her to ever think that
Speaker 7: she could be lied to by the free v.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you would think that would be the moment that
Speaker 8: would turn her mind, and not the fact that her
Speaker 8: scarf cost enough to feed a bunch of children.
Speaker 7: And the thing with the way h Macy character Molly
Speaker 7: that he had the uniform ready for Ben and it
Speaker 7: was one of these. If only you had come by earlier,
Speaker 7: we could have been partners. I'm like, yeah, that was
Speaker 7: made up whole cloth, that wasn't part of the book,
Speaker 7: and that was definitely a little like, oh look at
Speaker 7: the irony here. Let me stab you in the side
Speaker 7: with the irony pencil.
Speaker 8: I felt the same way. I thought, oh, you prick Edgar.
Speaker 8: This is bad enough for Ben. Why did you do
Speaker 8: that to him as well?
Speaker 7: I was glad though Edgar Wright seemed to stay his
Speaker 7: hand pretty well. We got a couple needle drops. That's
Speaker 7: what I'm expecting when I see one of his films,
Speaker 7: But it actually felt fairly well put together and not
Speaker 7: nearly as sentimental as some of his other things.
Speaker 8: Way less sentimental, and could have been the most sentimental.
Speaker 8: Given the sick child subplot. I thought he handled that
Speaker 8: with a plumb. I think this is his most restrained
Speaker 8: film because he allowed himself to let the Edgar writ
Speaker 8: aspect of his filmmaking out during the Running Man. Television
Speaker 8: portions of it like so many cutaways to people having
Speaker 8: their heads blown off.
Speaker 7: Yeah, which is funny because just having The Long Walk
Speaker 7: on my television a couple of nights ago, I'm just
Speaker 7: like headshots galore, and then we're back here and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 7: more head shots, all right, hing as Bachman feels like
Speaker 7: he was the angriest of all time between those two
Speaker 7: stories and then Rage and roadwork, And it's funny how
Speaker 7: close the Long Walk and Running Man really are as
Speaker 7: far as the dystopian future story where they have these
Speaker 7: quote unquote game shows to keep people in line. King
Speaker 7: must have just been just a font of rage at
Speaker 7: the time that he was writing these that.
Speaker 8: This was written in one week, a snowbound week, and
Speaker 8: his double winde trailer on break from his teaching job,
Speaker 8: with his wife and child trapped in that trailer, and
Speaker 8: most of the Bachman books I think were written in
Speaker 8: this near fugue state of young desperation and anger at
Speaker 8: his station in life, and those really and it's that
Speaker 8: part of the writing that sends them apart. And I
Speaker 8: think if some loser hadn't tried to blackmail King by
Speaker 8: uncovering Bachman, I think Bachman could have continued to have
Speaker 8: a healthy career, allowing King to burn off that bit
Speaker 8: of anger and steam.
Speaker 7: Missed the Bachman of old. Because when I read those books,
Speaker 7: and when I read thinner. I was just like, wow,
Speaker 7: this is amazing those four things in the Bachmann books.
Speaker 7: I mean, they can't even publish Rage anymore, is from
Speaker 7: what I understand. And then did they come back and
Speaker 7: try to write like another Bachmann book?
Speaker 8: He did when he was writing Desperation, he rethought about
Speaker 8: the whole thing, like the same characters in a different
Speaker 8: configuration and a much meaner configuration, and thought Richard Bachman
Speaker 8: would have written that.
Speaker 2: So that's the last Bachmann book.
Speaker 8: It's not as good as the early stuff, obviously, because
Speaker 8: it's too measured and it's too thoughtful, and the early
Speaker 8: Bachman books do feel like they were written in a week.
Speaker 8: He can't get the fucking words out of his fingers
Speaker 8: onto the typewriter carousel fast enough.
Speaker 7: I love the use of the forty nine in counting,
Speaker 7: like the countdown through the entire book for each chapter
Speaker 7: that you have, and you're just like, fuck, what's going
Speaker 7: to happen when it hit zero?
Speaker 8: I thought that was going to get old, And it's
Speaker 8: like almost halfway through, I'm like, oh no, watching the
Speaker 8: numbers slowly click.
Speaker 7: They still don't do a great job when it comes
Speaker 7: to telling you how many days have passed, and you
Speaker 7: would think that they would have done that every new
Speaker 7: day there would have been the title on screen, because
Speaker 7: they do a pretty good job with that machine that's
Speaker 7: on his arm to say, Okay, you just got this
Speaker 7: much bonus money, here's the new day. You have this
Speaker 7: many hours until you have to start submitting your tapes
Speaker 7: and all those things. But after a while, I was
Speaker 7: just like, you're on day thirteen. How did that happen?
Speaker 7: When did that take place?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was quite a leap there.
Speaker 8: The Michael Sarah character when he pumps up, I actually
Speaker 8: really liked that character because that was the character who
Speaker 8: it's in the book. It's his mom freaks out and
Speaker 8: calls the police, and here's actually Michael Sarah because he's
Speaker 8: so delighted because he wants to take on the police.
Speaker 8: I thought that was really funny, and the entire contraption house,
Speaker 8: I know, it was very Edgar right and very not
Speaker 8: the book. Nevertheless, like I thought it was in keeping
Speaker 8: with the action up until that point.
Speaker 7: Once it happened, I had no problem with it. And
Speaker 7: I liked Michael Sarah and I liked him so much
Speaker 7: more in this than I did Scott Pilgrim, where I
Speaker 7: wish I could have shot him.
Speaker 2: In the head.
Speaker 8: Scott Pilgrim is a prick of a character. This kid
Speaker 8: is just a freak you mentioned earlier, like the DNA sniffers,
Speaker 8: And they make a point to show that they're actually
Speaker 8: tracking him through the mail when they claim they're not
Speaker 8: going to do that. So the character in the book,
Speaker 8: in the movie, he has to send in videotapes of
Speaker 8: himself every single day. It's basically, so you don't get
Speaker 8: on a boat and go out in the middle of
Speaker 8: the ocean for thirty days and come back. You have
Speaker 8: to stay in the United States and you have to
Speaker 8: stay on the ground and in cities or close enough civilization.
Speaker 8: They claim they're not going to track you. That's how
Speaker 8: they're tracking him. And then they mentioned DNA snippers and
Speaker 8: we see one come out. Here's the thing. They didn't
Speaker 8: just put a fucking subcutaneous GPS tracker into him. They
Speaker 8: think of so many cool and clever innovations with technology,
Speaker 8: and yet the most basic one that my fucking dog
Speaker 8: has right now.
Speaker 2: Nobody thought of that when they were writing the screenplay.
Speaker 7: And then how he keeps talking about, oh yeah, there's
Speaker 7: a bomb shelter and you're going to go in this
Speaker 7: bomb shelter. I guess they do explain away the whole
Speaker 7: pre record all the tapes kind of thing, but at
Speaker 7: the same time, I'm like, okay, yeah, like I need
Speaker 7: a little bit more of that. I do appreciate in
Speaker 7: the book this whole like, you're going to drop these
Speaker 7: tapes and they're going to be sent to the guy
Speaker 7: in Brooklyn, and then he's going to mail this stuff out.
Speaker 7: And then at one point when he meets the character
Speaker 7: who's basically the Michael Sarah character, is no more sending
Speaker 7: those tapes there. You're going to send them to Cleveland
Speaker 7: and what happened to the guy from Brooklyn? And it's like,
Speaker 7: we're not going to talk about that. So you're just
Speaker 7: like again and a fantasy a sequence where they're torturing
Speaker 7: that poor kid, and you're like, Okay, that probably is
Speaker 7: what happened. Again, we don't know because we can't know
Speaker 7: outside of what Ben Richard snows.
Speaker 2: God damn, Mike, this movie was so good for so long.
Speaker 7: It was just takes us a weird turn and yeah,
Speaker 7: just goes so far the other way. So are we
Speaker 7: to believe then that his wife sorry total spoiler territory.
Speaker 7: His wife ends up getting the money.
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 7: Because she's shopping at what looks like a very nice
Speaker 7: shopping place, not scrounging for food, not selling herself, which
Speaker 7: is like they make a big deal in the movie
Speaker 7: to be like, no, I don't even let these guys
Speaker 7: touch my ass, whereas in the book it's just oh, yeah,
Speaker 7: she's turned her tricks to make money to buy that
Speaker 7: kid medicine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's up the urgency of joining the running man
Speaker 8: in the book. Here it's like she's doing double shit,
Speaker 8: set the club just to endure these leering men and
Speaker 8: come on, yeah, either go for it or don't. And yes,
Speaker 8: the thing is he is winning money along the way,
Speaker 8: like he wins money per day, so it's an accumulation
Speaker 8: and then he gets a sort of a big prize
Speaker 8: at the end, and everyone he kills along the way
Speaker 8: he tries to stop him, he gets a bonus for
Speaker 8: including the hunters, even if he doesn't kill them. So
Speaker 8: I assume that money is funneled directly to her, like
Speaker 8: they claim that they went and pulled her out and
Speaker 8: brought her into witness protection immediately, So I assume if
Speaker 8: she's actually still alive, which, by the way, was a
Speaker 8: huge mistake because I know that they said it in
Speaker 8: the book and they didn't really deal with it at
Speaker 8: all in the Schwartzenegger movie here. But when Killian played
Speaker 8: by Josh Brolin here says, oh, sorry to break it
Speaker 8: to you, I was like, oh, man, they did it.
Speaker 8: They killed his family, and they should have justified the
Speaker 8: rollicking sort of fun we've been having for a little while.
Speaker 8: Maybe papered over the horrible text. Some text is text
Speaker 8: conversation in the car on the way to the plane
Speaker 8: with that thing, but it just ends up we want
Speaker 8: a crowd pleaser at the end.
Speaker 7: I don't know, man, Yeah, I thought it was as
Speaker 7: made up as the three previous winners of The Running Man, Whitman, Price,
Speaker 7: and Hadad. That was always my favorite thing from the
Speaker 7: eighty seven film was this whole Oh yeah, look at
Speaker 7: these guys. They're down in sunny Florida out in Hawaii
Speaker 7: and they're drinking drinks with funny umbrellas in them and everything,
Speaker 7: and then they find their skeleton. So I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't believe at all that they were going to
Speaker 7: give her any money. So when she shows up at
Speaker 7: the end, it seems like she's living on Easy Street.
Speaker 7: I'm like, really, And then they have that whole thing
Speaker 7: of almost like a walled city. It's almost a little
Speaker 7: Land of the Dead esque where they've got the nicer
Speaker 7: city outside of the rest of the city. Here's where
Speaker 7: the slum people live, and then here's uptown basically, and
Speaker 7: it takes a lot to get into uptown. And I
Speaker 7: guess apparently all you have to say is that you're
Speaker 7: trying out for the game. So he gets into the
Speaker 7: uptown and I'm guessing that's where the wife is. But
Speaker 7: then that there's graffiti behind him that says Richard's lives.
Speaker 7: I'm like, okay, yeah, that's a great way to reintroduce
Speaker 7: the character back to the narrative. But I don't think
Speaker 7: that's going to happen in the nice part of town.
Speaker 7: I can see that being the rallying cry and the
Speaker 7: thing that is all over the slums.
Speaker 8: If it were more like Land of the Dead, the
Speaker 8: original script for Land of the Dead, where there was
Speaker 8: no wall, there's no separation. You can't have the revolution
Speaker 8: if you can't get at the oppressors. And he takes
Speaker 8: pains to show us how separated. This city is again.
Speaker 8: I know, I just keep saying the same shit, man,
Speaker 8: But you can't show us the entire revolution at the
Speaker 8: end of this movie. You could potentially show the people
Speaker 8: are starting to fucking wake up and revolt, but he
Speaker 8: fucking walks through fire at the end of this movie
Speaker 8: to just dispatch Killian, the.
Speaker 2: Head of the network. What planet have we jumped on
Speaker 2: to it? I don't know. Did you stay to the end?
Speaker 8: Was there a post credit scene where Richards wakes up
Speaker 8: and this last portion was a dream and he's still
Speaker 8: in Michael Sarah's house and then they kill him.
Speaker 7: I did actually stay till the very end of the
Speaker 7: credits because I was amazed. Now this is going to
Speaker 7: be a weird thing to say, but I was amazed
Speaker 7: that they allowed them to do unstandard credits through the
Speaker 7: entire end credits scene. I thought for sure as soon
Speaker 7: as the outro song ended that they would switch from
Speaker 7: the zine credits that they were doing to regular scrolling credits,
Speaker 7: because I was like, these are flashing by so fast,
Speaker 7: I cannot read anything things, And I thought that was
Speaker 7: part of the rule of Hollywood. It was like, Okay,
Speaker 7: you can do your funny credits. You can do your
Speaker 7: outro to all the Spider Man movies and these kind
Speaker 7: of things, but at some point we're going to end
Speaker 7: that first song. We're we're going to come back with
Speaker 7: the second song, and that's where we have to have
Speaker 7: the real credits start. So I was just shocked that
Speaker 7: we went through the whole darn thing with those zene credits.
Speaker 8: I think that the rule is that it has to
Speaker 8: be on screen for a certain length and that's it. Like,
Speaker 8: how you presented is entirely up to you, as long
Speaker 8: as you can prove it was there.
Speaker 7: It was like three seconds for some of those. And
Speaker 7: I'm trying to read the cast list, I'm like, who
Speaker 7: was playing the Oh, okay, it's gone, Like who is
Speaker 7: the guy who I just see flashes of in some
Speaker 7: of the trailers? I'm like, was that is there any
Speaker 7: way that there? That was Simon Peg or is this
Speaker 7: somebody else? It was somebody else? It was that little guy.
Speaker 7: He ends up not murdering him, and he comes back
Speaker 7: towards the end.
Speaker 2: Oh, the blonde guy with the blond guy smoking guy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he ends up. I know for sure he's not
Speaker 7: there at the very end, but he doesn't murder him
Speaker 7: in cold blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he's a decent start at this anti hero.
Speaker 7: I can't see the hero of King's work actually sparing
Speaker 7: his life. I could just see him just putting a
Speaker 7: bullet between his eyes.
Speaker 8: That man has tried to murder him multiple time, had
Speaker 8: tried to murder him moments ago, had bragged that he
Speaker 8: was going to cut his achilles tendon and then drag
Speaker 8: him out and then execute him. On television. He can go, you're.
Speaker 7: Free to leave, sir. You might have a limp now
Speaker 7: because I cut your achilles tendon. But yeah, well that
Speaker 7: was turnabout.
Speaker 2: I like that though.
Speaker 7: It's very funny that we end up in Derry, Maine.
Speaker 7: At one point thought that was pretty nice. I kept
Speaker 7: waiting for Pennywise to pop out and be one of
Speaker 7: the hunters as well, but that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: You know what's funny.
Speaker 8: I saw the movie Friday and noticed that they were
Speaker 8: going to the Dairy Airport on the little GPS thing
Speaker 8: and thought, oh, that's clever. I'm glad they added that.
Speaker 8: And then when I re read the book, I was like, no,
Speaker 8: they were going to Dairy anyway.
Speaker 7: Sure enough, Yeah, if it was the Lengelers. It would
Speaker 7: have been the bangor Airport.
Speaker 8: Future Boston looks a lot like Czechoslovakia, but.
Speaker 7: I think it was Bulgaria. I think yeah, because we
Speaker 7: kept seeing all of the Slavic names and the credits,
Speaker 7: and my wife was like, where they shoot this Ukraine.
Speaker 7: I was like, I don't think they're shooting anything in
Speaker 7: Ukraine except for people. Right now, let's move past that
Speaker 7: and we'll see where it actually was shot. And yeah, Bulgaria.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I didn't remember the streets looking quite like that,
Speaker 8: and I'm happy to be away if that's what it's
Speaker 8: gonna look like. However, my currency, Las Vegas is looking
Speaker 8: fucking spectacular in the futures. I liked all the cutaways.
Speaker 8: I want to watch an episode of The Running Man,
Speaker 8: to be honest, I hope they give us one of
Speaker 8: those as an extra or something, because that'd be pretty good.
Speaker 8: Edgar Wright started on television and a lot of his
Speaker 8: televisions was really good, so his television instincts are fantastic.
Speaker 8: I want to see a full episode of The Running.
Speaker 7: Man in the meantime. I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 7: seen Series seven The Contenders, but that's another great people
Speaker 7: Hunting People movie, and it was right at the beginning
Speaker 7: of reality television, and they shot this whole thing like
Speaker 7: reality TV. It is so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that movie.
Speaker 8: Battle Royale came in around the same time and everything
Speaker 8: became reality after that, and everyone kept talking about the
Speaker 8: Running Man, that.
Speaker 7: Whole thing with the Americas. I was hoping that would
Speaker 7: have been a better show within the show type of thing.
Speaker 7: Instead it was just so Kardashian, and I was like,
Speaker 7: this could have been more biting satire. They really could
Speaker 7: have had more with this, and they didn't go for it.
Speaker 8: Given where we are, it could have been the royal family,
Speaker 8: it could have been the presidential family is just as
Speaker 8: a reality show. That's how ridiculous everything has become instead
Speaker 8: of socialites.
Speaker 7: That was the one thing I really liked about the
Speaker 7: eighty seven movie is when Killian is get me the
Speaker 7: President's agent on the phone, this whole idea of everything
Speaker 7: is just play acting, which is so what it is
Speaker 7: today and just what's going to make the best SoundBite.
Speaker 7: Those kind of things. Kind of wish that they had
Speaker 7: leaned into that a little bit more as well, because
Speaker 7: they don't really talk about too many of the political things.
Speaker 7: That are going on in the world.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 8: At a certain point he comes across a family who
Speaker 8: it's the Boss sequence actually, where they end up smuggling
Speaker 8: him to Manchester, but they have a younger sister who
Speaker 8: is dying of cancer. That's a huge portion of the book.
Speaker 8: It sends Ben Richards off on this fact finding mission.
Speaker 8: The book in the movie takes place in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 8: but the government stopped releasing information about pollution in two
Speaker 8: thousand and three. Everyone has these scrubbers they wear in
Speaker 8: their noses. Rich people have them and poor people don't.
Speaker 8: Everyone has cancer, and he spends a good portion of
Speaker 8: the book preaching about the perils of pollution. None of
Speaker 8: that plays here.
Speaker 2: Some of it.
Speaker 8: We get the little girl who's sick and has cancer,
Speaker 8: and we have some lip serves to it. But why
Speaker 8: bring that up if you're not going to bring the
Speaker 8: other part up?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 8: It just makes me admire the fucking Schwarzenegger movie and
Speaker 8: that it jennisoned everything and just went here's what they
Speaker 8: were talking about, game show and revolution.
Speaker 7: Yeah, instead to say, oh, my sister has cancer. Because
Speaker 7: there was a nuclear disaster Rhode Island that nobody talks about.
Speaker 7: I was like, no, I think it's much more hard
Speaker 7: hitting that everybody in the world is basically dying of
Speaker 7: lung cancer, emphysema, horrible asthma. He asked them, do you
Speaker 7: have asthma? He said, well, yeah, yeah, actually I do
Speaker 7: have a little bit of asthma. What about this person?
Speaker 7: That part is, Oh, yeah, so many people I know
Speaker 7: have asthma. And yeah, those nose filters become this major
Speaker 7: thing and how expensive those are. But then you know,
Speaker 7: the guy and his friends ended up going to the
Speaker 7: library and they built them. I love that whole thing.
Speaker 7: How they have one suit and they rotate the suit
Speaker 7: through them and they all go to the library and
Speaker 7: read stuff. That's the underground is going to the library,
Speaker 7: which I found to be wonderful. And yeah, instead of
Speaker 7: being like an environmental message in twenty twenty five in
Speaker 7: a mainstream movie about how the quality of the air sucks,
Speaker 7: instead we're going to be like, no, it was this
Speaker 7: isolated incident in Rhode Island that was really just ballless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just don't even bring it up.
Speaker 8: Just don't mint don't write the fucking daughter character into
Speaker 8: the story. I'm not the daughter, but I'm talking about
Speaker 8: the younger sister who has the cancer that brings up
Speaker 8: this conversation. Just as easy to leave her out, don't
Speaker 8: even go home with those two guys, just have them
Speaker 8: immediately get on the road.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that felt very easy, the way that he made
Speaker 7: friends with them. And I'd like that whole idea too,
Speaker 7: of how the character is really putting on an act
Speaker 7: as far as again, Stephen King this kind of shucking
Speaker 7: and driving thing that he does for a lot of
Speaker 7: black characters, but then he can just turn it off
Speaker 7: in an instant and become much more erudite and just
Speaker 7: basically that's for the kids, that's for the people on
Speaker 7: the street. This is who I really am.
Speaker 8: That's not a lot, doesn't he doesn't It remind you
Speaker 8: of Robin Williams and every black character he ever performed.
Speaker 2: A Yo, blah, what's going so?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 7: He gotta make you shit in your boot it eat it? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I was glad that didn't come up ten times like
Speaker 7: it does in the book.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's the other the King ism, Like he finds
Speaker 8: a phrase and he repeats it into the fucking ground.
Speaker 2: Los.
Speaker 7: Yes, I think I agree with you. I don't think
Speaker 7: I would necessarily recommend this to other people to check out,
Speaker 7: unless they just redid the ending to make it the
Speaker 7: true ending in the book. I hate to be such
Speaker 7: a purist, but that ending hits a lot harder than
Speaker 7: this bullshit that they ended up giving us.
Speaker 8: A good ending is an inevitable ending. The inevitable ending
Speaker 8: of this story that they're trying to tell based on
Speaker 8: that book is Ben Richards killing himself and taking the
Speaker 8: network with him. Obviously, we don't want our hero flying
Speaker 8: a plane into a building as an act of heroism. Nevertheless,
Speaker 8: there are other ways he could have done it besides
Speaker 8: striding in like a fucking Marlborough man and the last
Speaker 8: scene based on nothing at all and smacking around our villain.
Speaker 8: I couldn't believe the fucking end of this movie, man.
Speaker 7: I thought for sure, since they set us up with
Speaker 7: that shot of that explosive, the black Irish that does
Speaker 7: come back in the movie later on with the whole Oh,
Speaker 7: I've got all this explosives in this purse and I'm
Speaker 7: gonna blow up the whole place. And of wish that
Speaker 7: maybe he actually had grabbed some of that black Irish
Speaker 7: or was able to get back to Molly's place at
Speaker 7: some time, maybe Molly didn't get caught or I don't
Speaker 7: know how it would have worked, but something better to
Speaker 7: bring that back in a better way, because yeah, he
Speaker 7: doesn't have to fly a plane into the building. Still
Speaker 7: would have been pretty cool. And as soon as I
Speaker 7: saw that stuff in the trailer, I was like, good,
Speaker 7: we're finally going to get the ending that the Running
Speaker 7: Man deserves, only to have the rug ripped out from
Speaker 7: under us. And to your point, yeah, he still could
Speaker 7: have blown up that building. Still could have destroyed the
Speaker 7: network somehow going back to where they live, could have
Speaker 7: found a way to block those satellites somehow and shown
Speaker 7: us that all of these aliens live. Oh wait, no,
Speaker 7: that's a different thing. But could have blown up the transmission,
Speaker 7: which is again what they're trying to do in the
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty seven Running Man.
Speaker 8: If you're going to bring up that they're suppressing us
Speaker 8: in some way, don't have it that they're keeping the
Speaker 8: information of the Rhode Island thing. They're keeping all information.
Speaker 8: There's no means and have him destroy a transmitter that
Speaker 8: allows them to unite and now a revolution can occur.
Speaker 7: Hooray, it's the cure for that. Disease from Johnny Mamonic
Speaker 7: that they beam out at the end. We always have
Speaker 7: to have the beaming of the truth out at the end,
Speaker 7: whether it's that or how the reavers were made in serenity.
Speaker 7: Something has to be let go at the end. But
Speaker 7: instead they're just like, yeah, we all like Ben Richards,
Speaker 7: even though they won't let us hear what his message is.
Speaker 8: Maybe it's like we sent it the beginning of this
Speaker 8: MC a year ago, this wouldn't have seened, or this
Speaker 8: would have seemed more dystopian, and maybe at the end
Speaker 8: we would have been a little more lenient with this
Speaker 8: ending had we known that just telling people the truth
Speaker 8: doesn't do a fucking thing.
Speaker 7: It's like argue with people on the internet. Basically, thank
Speaker 7: you so much, Father Malone for coming on and talk
Speaker 7: to me about this. Had a great conversation. So where
Speaker 7: can people find out more about you and the things
Speaker 7: that you do.
Speaker 8: Come over to Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast on
Speaker 8: twice a week Mondays. It's Father Malone's Weekly round Up Fridays.
Speaker 8: It is a rotating show where we're either looking at
Speaker 8: a series of movies or a horror anthology television series.
Speaker 8: And that I do with mister Mike White here, so
Speaker 8: come check us out.
Speaker 7: And as for me, everything that I do is available
Speaker 7: over at Wordingweightmedia dot com as well. I just have
Speaker 7: the one show that I put out the one time
Speaker 7: a week, so I'm not nearly as ambitious as father.
Speaker 4: I'm alone here, teenage Mayor said, on the day I
Speaker 4: saw my soul must be saved, gonna.
Speaker 9: Take a walk, man, you just square. You never know
Speaker 9: where you're gonna find here.
Speaker 10: You gotta run, run, run, run right, take the jagger too, run, run, run,
Speaker 10: run right, Jez you hey.
Speaker 6: What to do? Marguerite a passion.
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Speaker 5: getting said, went so soul. She wouldn't fight. Didn't know
Speaker 5: I think she could fire, and she.
Speaker 1: Would run, run, run, run, run.
Speaker 5: Take the jagger too, run, run right right?
Speaker 6: Rid did to death for you?
Speaker 5: Say what to s sick?
Speaker 9: Sarah had a golden noise our their boot rap around
Speaker 9: her toes when she turned.
Speaker 5: To oh Angel three.
Speaker 6: They didn't know.
Speaker 5: They couldn't make a see. You had a run, run, run, run,
Speaker 5: rin take a dag.
Speaker 6: Or two.
Speaker 5: A run, run, run, run rids.
Speaker 6: The dad and you there were two bid, but Harry's wood.
Speaker 5: Away couldn't even get say.
Speaker 9: Small town take road the trolley down at forty seven
Speaker 9: bigg and Jeep was good.
Speaker 5: You get us other heavy.
Speaker 9: Goud that our run ride, run ride rn Jago dagger too,
Speaker 9: a run.
Speaker 4: Ride, ride and ride ride
Speaker 5: Jeems and that to you tell me what to do