Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, This is Jeff Johnson from a film by podcast,
and you are listening to the wildly popular Surely you
Can't Be Serious podcast. Hello everybody, and welcome back to
the Shirley you Can't Be Serious Podcast where we're by ed.
Speaker 2: That's good, that's good intro.
Speaker 1: Right there, Shirley fans. We are here today to talk
about the Stephen King trifecta from nineteen eighty three, The
Dead Zone, Old Yeller and Herbie Goes Bananas.
Speaker 2: You actually stole that from me. I was gonna drop
that later. So here's the deal. You know, we talk
about storytelling. The thing is is that tell it to me,
Just tell it to me different, all right? So Kujo
so clearly is a retelling of Old Yeller.
Speaker 1: I literally didn't talk to you about this. I know, right,
this is funny that our brains both went there. But
that's funny.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, go ahead, okay, And I know we did
talk about that. Christine is actually a retelling of Herbie
Goes Bananas, right right. And the Dead Zone I actually
have not a retelling, but it has been retold by
Stephen King eleven twenty two sixty three. It's about a
man who knows the future he sets out to change.
Speaker 1: It, right or the past sort of. Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah about that the future past or the past future. Yeah,
that's good future for him, but he's in the past. Yeah,
that's great. That's a great one. Well, you so that's
that's a good topic. Right. So this is these are
Stephen King books first, and then they've obviously made all
of these into movies, and you've got a significant history
with his books. Yeah. So my history is I can
remember not being a big reader for most of the
time I was in school, and then I get to
be a freshman in high school and I'm in study
hall and I'm sitting behind this kid who is a
couple of years older than me, who I think is
one of the coolest guys in school, and he's perusing
this big old book and I'm like, you read it?
He shows me and it's it. I'd ask him about it,
and he just, you know, has nothing but good, powerful
things to say about it. And I'm like, I think,
I think this is on the bookshelf at our house.
I'm going to go try this. And so the first
real book that I ever picked up and read was it.
I mean it's nine hundred and something pages long.
Speaker 2: That's an incredible feat for your first book.
Speaker 1: And loved it. I loved it. But I haven't really
read many Stephen King books beyond that. There was the
book Four Past Midnight that had like four different short
stories in it.
Speaker 2: One of the short stories in four Past Midnight, Yeah,
it's called the Sun Dog, Okay, and it actually involves
the character Ace from Stand By Me. You for Solan's character.
Speaker 1: Okay, as an older man, okay, okay, Yeah, I might
have might have been the one I read. I'm again,
I was in high school, so it's been a while back.
Speaker 2: So basically, he has this pull red camera and in
he's taken pictures and he notices there's this dog in
the pictures. Yeah, and for every picture it takes, it
gets a little closer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I did read that. Yeah. Oh that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a good one.
Speaker 1: Ace finally got his.
Speaker 2: Ace got his.
Speaker 1: By the way, we will probably spoil the books in
case you haven't read those, if you've only seen the movies,
so just be aware of that these maybe books that
you haven't read. I haven't read any of them. I
haven't read any of these books.
Speaker 2: I've read all three and.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to hear how the books vary from the movies.
But the other Stephen King book that I've read from
cover to cover is eleven twenty two sixty three, which
I got from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's my all time favorite Stephen King book.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would love to do a Top five Stephen King
type of episode one of these days.
Speaker 1: So I think they'd be fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually Kujo is what got me started on my Stephen
King journey.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So I'm at a friend's house. It's a sleepover. They've
got HBO and it's like, hey, you guys want to
watch this you know, R rated movie. You know, we're
all eleven, you know we shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1: This, but yeah, are rated. That means boobies, right, well
I hoped, but h it did not mean that, not
in this circumersis.
Speaker 2: But anyway, it captivated me. Man, I was entranced. So
next step, because I love the movie is go check
out the book.
Speaker 1: Right Wow?
Speaker 2: Okay, And as a eleven year old or twelve year
old whatever I was when I read the book, there's
a lot of adult themes in there that I didn't
really understand the affair and sort of the kind of
the nastiness of the breakup of the marriage and a
lot of stuff involved in that that was too much
for an eleven year old, But the storytelling and all
that was captivating, and so I set off on my
journey starting with Kujo. I mean, I've read it. I
read The Stand, which is probably my second favorite book
of all time. Of course, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, all
those little short story collections are awesome. I've read Salem's Lot,
I've read Kerrie, I've read Cemetery. I basically have read
everything he put out until I got to maybe graduate
from college.
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Speaker 1: Great, fantastic deep dive to its steepness.
Speaker 2: The two thousands were a little rough for me to
hang around, right, I didn't like his.
Speaker 1: Well, and now that you say that I had forgotten,
I did. Actually I went through was it different? Seasons?
Is that the name of the book Seasons? Yeah? That
has of course Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption has
stand by Me, which was called The Body has apt Pupil.
Speaker 2: You talk about shook. After I read app Pupil, I
was shook.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's a poignant ending and kind
of similar. Again, it's a heat Sticks with a lot
of the same themes. We just got finished with our
top five seventies movies to watch it Halloween and our
Top five eighties movies to watch it Halloween, And obviously
Stephen King was a big factor in that. I cannot
believe we didn't bring up The Shining. I know, I
like feel guilty, like it's a great movie, but it's
just it's like, you got to watch this when you're
very specifically in the mood for it, because it's so overpowering.
Speaker 2: Well, you know famously, you know, they talk about it
even in Ready Player one. Stephen King does not like
the movie adaptation of The Shining.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also doesn't really care for one of the movies
we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as it turns out, it looked like he
was right about The Shining until I was. With most
Stanley Kubrick movies. It starts off, it's not got a
good reception, it doesn't do very well, and then a
few years go by and suddenly people go, oh, this
is a work of absolute genius. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Interesting. So I'm glad that I actually got you to
read a Stephen King book that you enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I guess maybe The Stand is your next no
thank you. It's you know, twenty five hundred pages.
Speaker 1: Or whatever, crazy long.
Speaker 2: So yeah, but it's amazing, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when the TV movie came out. I
watched the movie as it was coming out, and it
came out right around the same time that it the
TV version came out, right, it was just a couple
of years later.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was nineteen ninety and the Stand was ninety four.
Speaker 1: Okay, So anyway, we've talked to Stephen King in depth. Yep.
We mentioned in our seventies episode that his very first
novel to get published was also immediately made into a movie,
sold it for only twenty five hundred bucks, and the
name of that movie was Carrie. Right. As I mentioned
in that episode, he had actually thrown this thing away
through it in the trash, didn't like way it was going.
His wife dug it out of the trash, read it
and said keep going. And that's why he is the
guy that we everyone knows today, right true, And so
in the next five years he each earns out book
after book after book.
Speaker 2: Classic after classic.
Speaker 1: Salem's Lot came out in seventy five, The Shining came
out in seventy seven. Also in seventy seven he published
Rage as Richard Bachmann. Then this is no longer buy
that book now? Why because it's about a kid that
brings a gun to a school and kills other kids.
And they are like, wow, yep, And actually Stephen King
endorses the idea that it's no longer available. That's impressive. Okay. Anyway,
on to less depressing topics. The Stand came out in
seventy eight. Yep, The Long Walk came out in seventy nine.
That was another Richard Bachmann, our pseudonym book. And then
in nineteen seventy nine you came out with The Dead Zone.
And despite the fact that you probably have known every
non Richard Bachmann book that I just mentioned, this was
the first time that a book hit the top ten
in the US for him. That's incredible, Right, five years later,
all of these incredible books, and the Dead Zone is
the first one.
Speaker 2: That hits even just four years after this point. So
seventy nine, he's got a best seller in eighty three.
They're buying rights to his novels before they're out. Yeah,
and they're best sellers when they're releasing the movie exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, the Dead Zone is the first novel that takes
place in Castle Rock. Yes, then of course we also
have Kujo, which takes place in Castle Rocks. Correct, And
then we had Stand by Me the Dark Half and
Needful Things. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Needful Things, I think is kind of the death of
Castle Rock.
Speaker 1: The impression that I got was it was this town
that was literally inhabited by all of the characters of
Stephen King's novels. So you've you've got Ace and Gordy
living in the same town with Johnny Smith or whoever.
Speaker 2: You know, it's out of the gate, and I know
we'll get into this, but Sheriff Bannerman, the law enforcement
officer that shows up and gets killed by Kujo. That's
the guy played by Tom Scarrett in the Dead Zone,
the guy that they look for the Castle Rock killer.
And so that character who you see in the Dead
Zone gets killed in Kujo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean and Frank Dodd, the Castle Rock
Killer is also like a supernatural haunting force that's involved
in Kujo.
Speaker 2: Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we've talked about the books a bit. Yep,
you can tell me as we go on, oh hey
this is different or this is something else. But but
let's talk about the movies. All right. Let's start with Kujo.
It was the first one released. So Stephen King actually
specifically picked Lewis Tigue to direct this movie. He had
seen a movie that Lewis Tigue had done called Alligator. Ah, yeah,
have you seen it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And what did you think?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's Is it like fun?
Speaker 1: Is it like piranha? I mean, is it basically like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Because I mean Tigue referred to it as a horror spoof, like,
not as an actual attempt at horror, but a horror spoof.
Speaker 2: Well, you know those urban legends where somebody flushes a
baby alligator down a toilet and then five years later
you've got this massive alligator in the living in the
serial system. That's what it's about. And early HBO man
I was all about it. Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 1: So Stephen King hand picks Lewis Tig. Dan Blatt is
the producer, right, It's with a particular studio that ultimately
it doesn't end up with, and so Dan Blatt is like, Okay, sorry, Lewis,
We're not going to be able to do this. And
then Dan Blatt teams up with Warner Brothers and Lewis
Tig's like, all right, we're back on, and he's like,
they really have somebody else that they would rather use.
And so the guy that they pick is a guy
named Peter Medick. He's the same director who had done
the Changeling just right before this movie came out, which
was had done very well, and the director of photography
was Tony Richmond. Keep in mind, there were multiple versions
of this script written, and this is going to be
a continuing story for all of these and usually Stephen
King takes his swing at it at least once, and
every single time they're like, no.
Speaker 2: I know, right, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: So I mean, the one that Peter Medick is using
is Barbara Turner's script, and she had included the Frank
Dodd part in her story as the supernatural connection that's
haunting the little boy or whatever. So Peter Medick had
had this grand idea for how this thing was going
to begin. He had changed the name of the town
from cas Rock to Mendocino. I don't know what that is,
but that's what that was what it was supposed to be,
and it was supposed to be that you start on
this big kind of crane shot into this stream of
cars and then it like follows the cars and over
to a cemetery where you see a vampire bat who's
going to ultimately be the vampire bat that infects Kujo
with Rabi's okay, okay, And it's such a big, complicated
production and shot that two days into filming, Dan Blatt says,
we're not fricking doing this and he fires Peter Meddick
and Tony Richmond. Ye, now what do you do? You
are you have started production at this point, right, We've
started production. And so he calls up Lewis t because
Lewis t had already kind of had it in his
head that he was going to direct, and he's like,
can you come and direct this movie?
Speaker 2: Hey? Remember when we let you go, we need you back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so he's and Lewis Tig's like, yeah, I'm available,
Let's do it. And he goes, Okay, there's just one thing.
You only have one day to prepare, right, and dan
Blatt said, and I listened to silence for a second,
and then Lewis Tigue says two days, and dan Blad says, okay,
we'll shut down for two days, right. So in that
two days, I can't even imagine Lewis Tigue what he's
got to go through. Because there's a question about the cast,
if the cast stays the same, a question about the script. Obviously,
Barbara Turner's written one. There's been another couple of them
that have been written. Stephen King was involved at some point,
and he's just got to go, Okay, I like some
of the stuff from this script, but I don't like
this other stuff, and we're gonna rearrange all of it
and kind of put it together. But the beautiful thing
for him, he said, was they had cast the perfect cast.
Right now. You kick out a director after two days,
your crew is gonna be I mean, this is an
independent feature, so these are non union guys. The crew
was upset because they really love Tony Richmond, and people
had nothing but nice things to say about Peter Medick.
But there can't right, And so it's interesting the article
that I read, it says Peter medic was devastated by this,
Like he didn't walk away, he didn't quit, and he
was like this was sad. He was true looking forward
to this and this was a depressing moment for him.
And it turns out his son was a production assistant.
His son stayed on and finished as a pious assistant
for the for the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting Aristopher metics stayed the whole time. Yeah, well,
good for him. I mean that shows maturity. And I
was going to tell you, Louis Tige, here's his little catalog. Right,
we talked about Alligator, right when he goes on to
do Kat's Eye, Yeah, with Ju and I both enjoy, Yeah,
very much. Another Stephen King movie. Right, he does Jewel
Denile flash Back to our Worst Sequels of All Time
episode couple.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, disagree with you on that one. Okay.
Speaker 2: Yes, he does a movie called Collision Course with Jay
Leno and Pat Marita.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh. Yeah, and he.
Speaker 2: Does Navy Seals and the Dukes of Hazard Reunion movie.
Speaker 1: His is not as impressive career as the other two
directors that we're going to talk about today, that's okay,
but he does well with what he's got, right, He
did a great job with it, and he brings in
a new cinematographer named Jon DuPont. H Now, I think
we're dropping this episode on October twenty fourth, so two
days ago for those who of you who are listening,
it was Jon Depont's eightieth birthday. He is still with us,
and he's he really didn't. I mean, there's some incredible
things that you don't. I mean, it's great that you
don't think about them, but there are some incredible things
that they did with the camera work on this.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I watched a whole breakdown of like
the Pinto and how they had to do the spinning
shot through the roof of the car and they took
the doors off and the guys were in the car
with him all around complicated shots, and you know, he
used fire to make it look like it was hot
when it was actually freezing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They had a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So the story is supposed to take place
in the hot summer, right, right, but they were actually
filming when it was cold outside, like incredibly cold.
Speaker 2: October, November and December in northern California.
Speaker 1: And Dee Wallace and Danny Peturo are supposed to be
in the heat, but they're not. But they had you know,
there's stripped of most of their clothes, and d Wallace
is finally like, guys, you got to put a heater
inside the car. And then they'd start filming. They're like,
we can't hear over the heater, so they would have
the heater on and then they would turn it off. Yeah. So,
like you were saying, it was supposed to be hot,
so to give the illusion of heat coming up off
of the ground, yonda Pont would start an actual fire
underneath where the eye line was, so that you had
the waves of the.
Speaker 2: Heat coming up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's a scene where Danny is running towards
his bed. I felt like this, like you tried to
get you turned off your light and tried to get
to your bed before it got dark inside. Right, absolutely.
And so the way that they did this is they
had two sets. Fascinating the lights are on and it's
a regular looking bedroom. As soon as they flip the switch,
it turns into like the bed is a football field.
Speaker 2: Right right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Lewis Tigue says to yonda Pont, Okay, here's
what I want to happen. I want us to follow
him and as he jumps, we're gonna flip over and
see it from upside down, like he's jumping into space basically,
and yonda. Pont's like okay, yeah, okay, yeah, And so
they rig up this entire system so that he can
hold the camera and flip upside down as he jumps
into the bed.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really interesting just talking about the movie
to the book. One of the biggest things. They kind
of mention it in the movie. I don't think it's
really emphasized, but this whole thing about the monster in
the closet. Tad little boy is scared of the monster
in his closet and his dad comes in. He says, Tad,
there's no such things as monsters. Kujo is the actual
like the monster from his closet who appears in real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, the whole idea of the movie is
a little bit different than the idea of the book
because in the book you've got supernatural things to be
scared of and real things to be scared of. Right
in this movie, unlike the other two, you don't have
a supernatural element. They took that part out, and so
it becomes imaginary things to be scared of, sure, like
things in the closet and potentially the not really imaginary,
but things that trouble adults like Dee Wallace is worried about,
you know, growing old in a tiny little town and
never making anything of herself. And the husband is worried about,
you know, losing all of the money to take care
of the family, which is all of those kid, mom
and dad. Those are all very identifiable fears.
Speaker 2: In the book. Also, the guy she's having an affair
with is off the range and upset, and you know,
he's willing to trash their house and destroy their life.
And he's a real villain in the in the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you described to me some of the things that
he does in the book to the pillows specifically, and uh, yeah,
I'm glad that did not make it into the movie. Yeah,
they did tone him down a bit, they did. Okay,
so we kind of wandered into production. So let's let's
back up here. Okay, So let's jump back talk about
the Dead Zone, first of the three books that came out,
but second of the movies that came out. Right, So
I'm going to tell you about a guy named Peter Herkos.
Speaker 2: Okay, do you know that name?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I don't, all right.
Speaker 1: Peter Herkos was actually born Pieter vander Hirk in May
of nineteen eleven, and he was a Dutchman who claimed
that he manifested ESP after recovering from a head injury
and a coma caused by a fall from a ladder
when he was thirty years old. Interesting, Yeah, sounds familiar, right.
So he ends up coming to the US. He's got
like this guy who's a financier, wealthy guy who's like,
I want you to come, and he's one of those
guys who will show you the ESP tricks. Fully says,
test me, do whatever you want. I will you know,
I will prove that I have ESP. He goes on
the Johnny Carson Show at like three different times. I mean,
he is a he is a celebrity in the US
in the mid twentieth century.
Speaker 2: Does he shake Johnny's hand and say, you want to
know when you're gonna die? I'm gonna die, You're gonna die.
You want to know why your sister committed Suicide's waiting
for that.
Speaker 1: That's perfect, okay, and so inspired by this guy's story,
Stephen King decides to write a book about a clairvoyant. Yes,
and that book is called The Dead Zone. Yes.
Speaker 2: So one of the cool things about the book, the
Dead Zone, that's not really explained fully in the movie.
Actually thinks it's better explained in eleven twenty two sixty
three that the future, you know, the course of time,
is an entity that will fight back against any changes
that is brought upon it. Oh yeah, right, yeah, we
you know eleven twenty two sixty three, he's trying to
stop the assassination of JFK. And time is an enemy.
It's fighting against him changing that.
Speaker 1: And you have that physical guy when he comes back
each time that he comes back into present times, guy
in the yellow hat, I mean, yeah, right, out of
curious George, right, but yeah, and as the past changes,
the future changes. And this is this guy's kind of
like a timekeeper. That's his job, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so in the Dead Zone, you know Johnny and
Sarah when they go to that little carnival, they go
to a carnival where he writes the roller coaster, you
see that. But there's this whole section in the book
where he he does this roulette will and he starts
to win because he predicts he has the shining Yeah.
So yes, psychic abilities. And of course King touches on
this in a lot of his books. There's a lot
of foreshat, you know, like vision seeing and stuff like that.
And so Johnny begins to win, and the carnival guy
gets really upset and Johnny he makes up with a
couple hundred bucks, but he's kind of the star of
the carnival for a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the way Time fights back against him is it
sends that truck and after him. Okay, and so it's
punishment for altering time.
Speaker 1: Well, I showed you I pulled the script that Jeffrey
Boham wrote. I pulled it and read maybe the first
twenty pages of it or so. And it starts off
with Johnny Smith as a kid and he's going ice
skating for the first time, and you know, sees the
cool kids ice skating, sees the older kids playing hockey,
kind of gets distracted by what's going on his first
time on the ice and ends up running into this
big kid who's playing hockey, slams his head against the ice,
and that kind of is the spark that sets him off,
right as they're trying to get resuscitate him. Basically, he
does the he grabs the guy's hand. I don't remember
what the guy's name is. He grabs the guy's hand
and he's like, don't jump it. Don't jump it. The acid,
that's what he says. Yeah. And then just a little
while later, this guy is at his house. He's got
a car battery that's dead, and he gets out and
these teenagers are driving by on the bridge and distracting him,
and he accidentally crosses the cables and so when he
tries to jump it, battery acid splatters all over his
face and he's like, ah, and so that would have
been a fantastic intro for the movie, right right, And
then it jumps forward to Johnny's a teacher, just like
the movie really starts, but unlike the movie, he starts
off as a college professor and his love interest is
one of the students. Now he's a young professor, but
it's still obviously very taboo. So Sarah is a student.
Instead of it being that he has he's driving Herbie
the love Bug and runs into the slowest moving tanker
in the war. Gosh, yes, instead of that it is
he's on it. He's on a motorcycle. Basically, it's it
is a different introduction, but I kind of like the
idea of not going all the way back. But they
give us that hint when they're on the roller coaster
that he did have some sort of childhood trauma because
he's feeling a pain in his head before he ever
has that accident.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so the book that's, you know, Johnny's first
brain trauma is that that ice accident. Yeah, the ice
is gonna break, but it doesn't in this case, so
but comes out.
Speaker 1: In seventy nine, Loria mar Film Entertainment buys the rights
to the book, right, and they hire Jeffrey Boum to
write the script. That's the script that I read, is
the Jeffrey Boham script. Right. Well, yeah, we've talked about
him a couple times. He wrote Last Crusade, he wrote
several other fantastic.
Speaker 2: Guy's really good man.
Speaker 1: Is he's an all star? Wrote The Lethal Weapon Part
two three? Yes, he's good at taking over a franchise,
that's right. They also started off with an entirely different director,
guy named Stanley Donan. Yeah you know this guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, so this is great I can't wait to
throw this at you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So the original director of the Dead Zone. This is
the guy who directed Singing in the Rain, Damn Yankees,
Funny Face.
Speaker 1: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he does Saturn three out, which is you know,
that's science fiction, that's you know, coming into the eighties
right there. Sure, but he directs the Dancing on the
Ceiling video for Lionel Richie.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, my mind is blown. That's not what
I was expecting you to bring up. Well, we talked
about it in our Lionel.
Speaker 2: Richie episode where he meets the girl who then you know,
his wife has to be called and all that stuff. Right,
so that's when he meets her in the Dancing on
the Ceiling video.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: You have something else?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, so we know that he doesn't end up
staying with Right the project. Right. So nineteen eighty four
he has a movie that comes out that we've talked
about multiple times. Okay, blame it on Rio.
Speaker 2: Oh serious.
Speaker 1: One of his very last movies was was Blaming On
and he you know you mentioned Singing the Rain. He
collaborated with Gene Kelly pretty frequently and Eventually they had
a falling out because he felt like gene Kelly wasn't
treating him as an equal despite the fact that he's
freaking directing singing in the rain. And then it also
was not so good that his ex wife ended up
marrying gene Kelly.
Speaker 2: So that'll do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a big she's a big dancing star. But anyway,
So anyway, Stanley Donnan is gone and Laura mar has
a bunch of failures in a row, and they basically
decide to shut their film things down. And then are
you know our go to guy in the eighties for
buying scripts, mister Dino de Laurentis snatches this one up,
but he hates Jeffrey Boem script.
Speaker 2: What hey, Dino de Laurentis has given us a lot
of fun movies. Yeah, we've also made fun of a
lot of his stuff to write. Flashback to our Flash
Gordon episode Flash Gordon.
Speaker 1: Some of the stories on Dino de la Reentis for
that one are great.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've got to give it up to this guy.
We know about the fact that he doesn't speak English
very well, right, but he comes over to American he's
trying to make movies. Yeah, okay. So one of the
things is he, you know, Stephen King writes a script
for the Dead Zone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was his idea. He was like, you know what,
I hate this Jeffrey Boem script. Why don't mister King
you write the script.
Speaker 2: I love your story.
Speaker 1: I read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's not even good.
Speaker 1: Yeah he writes. Yeah, King writes, and he's like, this
is convoluted. Yeah, what right? And so he asks another guy,
a guy named Anders Zolwowski. I mean he's this Polish
art house film guy making movies in France. He writes
the screenplay in Polish. Yeah, they then translate it to English.
But for Dino, they have to translate that to Italian. Yes,
they don't. And they don't translate the Polish to Italian.
They translate the English translation to Italian exactly. Dino's like,
I don't like this at all. Yeah, so he ends
up going back to Boem script. But his stroke of genius,
I mean he's always got one he does. His stroke
of genius is he brings in Deborah Hill. Now we
had talked, we talked about her on our seventies Movies
to watch During Halloween. She was John Carpenter's girlfriend. Yep.
She was obviously heavily involved in movies even before him.
She had helped him with Assault on Precinct thirteen. She
and he wrote Halloween together. It was largely based on
her experience as a babysitter. Right, but I told you
I was watching interviews from back in the eighties when
these movies were about to come out. She's nice looking,
but she's not gorgeous. But when she starts talking, she's
so freaking smart. I fall in love with her. I mean,
I'm like, holy cow, this girl is a genius. She's
and proves it by going on to do so let
me just let me touch this all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she's born in nineteen fifty works in the movies
in various positions, ends up with Assault on Preestcinct thirteen,
works on Halloween in nineteen seventy eight, also The Fog.
But she goes on forms her own independent film company
with a lady named Linda Oapst, and they produced Adventures
in Babysitting, Heartbreak, Hotel, The Fisher King. She also produced
Gross Anatomy and Clue. She worked with James Cameron back
when he was just there special effects she was a
freaking rock star.
Speaker 2: Demra Hill. Yeah, go ahead is to John Carpenter what
gayl Ann heard was to James Cameron, very very fair comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She actually ended up passing away of colon cancer
in two thousand and five, despite the fact that she'd
been fighting colon cancer had both of her legs amputated
because of the cancer. Oh man, she was still working
full tilt on a remake of The Fog with John
Carpenter as well as an Oliver Stone movie called World
Trade Center. Whenever she ended up passing away.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: They've got this script there at least don't hate as
much as they did initially. They've got Deborah Hill on board.
They looked at a couple of different directors. They looked
at Michael Samino, who did The Deer Hunter. So, I
mean he's worked with and done great work with Christopher Walking. Yeah,
but he's he's out. They go to John Batham.
Speaker 2: John Batham, Saturday Night Fever, Saturday Night Fever, and Wargames. Yeah,
how about that?
Speaker 1: And they asked Cronenberg. They asked David Cronenberg to do it,
and he says, nah, right, And then they're like we
got Deborah Hill. He's like, Okay, I'm in, Yeah, come in.
That's I mean, that's it. That turned him.
Speaker 2: So David Cronenberg we talked about in our Halloween Movies
of the eighties. Yeah, I mean, this is this Guy's
directed The Brude in nineteen eighty Scanners in nineteen eighty one.
Video Drome. Have you ever seen video Drune?
Speaker 1: I have not seen video Drome.
Speaker 2: No, these are very odd. They call him bodygre Yeah.
The first scene in the entire movie is when the
killer commits suicide, and you only see that for a flash.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really see him right before and then the results.
That's about all you see. You don't see the actual.
Speaker 2: You don't see his face peel back like in the
fly right.
Speaker 1: And he mentions, you know, clairvoyance and the movie Scanners,
talking about that whole idea of having an effect on
somebody with just your mind. But this was the first
movie that he hadn't had at least some sort of
partial writing involvement with the script. He worked with Jeffrey
Bohm and revised the script and condensed it about four
different times before they finally ended up with the final
draft November eighth, nineteen eighty two. By the way, his
original Jeffrey Boum's original script finished on the day that
Ron Reagan got elected, So really a few years later
that they end up with their their final We're going
to use this shooting script that was done, like I said,
November eighth, they start shooting January of eighty three.
Speaker 2: This movie really is in three sections of screenplay. They
call it a trip Tyke, which I thought was interesting. Yeah,
so you have john his accident.
Speaker 1: By the way, trip tyke, it's a religious symbol that
has three parts. Just thought I throw that out.
Speaker 2: But so you've got Johnny and his accident. Yep, You've
got the serial killer thread, and then you've got still
Sin's a three part story.
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, okay, so we've got two three
out of the way. Let's talk about Christine. Yes, So
you mentioned in our Best Movies for Halloween in the
seventies that you saw a TV adaptation movie. Yeah, a
TV movie of Stephen King's book called Salem's Lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, super creepy. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of the producers on that was a
guy named Richard Corbett's and so Stephen King actually really
loved the adaptation that he did. Stephen King says, I
really love what you've done. I've got some things that
I'm working on now that are not going to be
books until later. Would you like to see those before
they become books?
Speaker 2: Yes? Please, I'll take it whatever it is. Wow.
Speaker 1: And so, of course the first two opportunities that he
gets to see you book number one Kujo, I know
number two Christine. Yeah. Both he and John Carpenter, who
ends up being the director on this, both were like,
I can't figure out how Kujo becomes a movie, right,
I just don't. I don't see how that becomes a
scary movie. Sure. John Carpenter actually felt the same way
about Christine. He was like, I mean I've.
Speaker 2: Seen Herbie goes bananas? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is is that what? He said?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's me, But I mean that's that was kind
of his That was kind of his take. He said,
this is his quote. It just wasn't very frightening. It's
a cute little car. Yeah. The reason that Stephen King,
by the way, used this plymouth fury is that he
felt like it had been under used in cinema and literature.
He's like, this is a really cool car. Then nobody
seems to mention.
Speaker 2: The giant fins in the back.
Speaker 1: This is the biggest fins for the smallest car. But
it was a sweet little ride.
Speaker 2: I did hear John Carpenter say that he had seen
Dual Yeah, by Steven Spielberg, and he's like, now, those
trucks were scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got a big monster truck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But this cool little cherry red convertible thing right
here not that scary, right, But he gave it his best, Sean,
and I thought he did make it scary.
Speaker 1: It'd be like trying to make a like a baby
doll scarier. Wait a minute, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so the interesting thing I think John Carpenter takes
this movie as a paycheck.
Speaker 1: Guys, please go back last season and check out o
comparison of Blade Runner, Et and The Thing. And one
of the key stories that most people know from that
is that The Thing was a box office failure and
probably would not have been but for.
Speaker 2: Et come out two weeks before the same thing happened
a Blade Runner.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you talk about three movies that are revered from
the eighties, Yeah, we talked about it. The Thing maybe
the best horror movie of the nineteen eighties. Yeah, Blade
Runner the best science fiction movie of the eighties and
et maybe the best family movie the eighties.
Speaker 1: So have you seen Video Drum? Yes, okay, did you
like it? No, it hasn't got that cult status.
Speaker 2: Seat Now I did like seeing Deborah Harry vamping it
up a little bit.
Speaker 1: But so Cronenberg had done Videodrome and had already gotten
signed on to do The Dead Zone before it came out,
and so it gets released while he's in the midst
of directing The Dead Zone and is a dismal failure.
Now Carpenter had said, okay, I want to do Firestarter.
He had another movie that he was working as well,
but he's right, I'm going to go do Firestarter. But
then the thing comes out and it is this box
office bomb, and so they're like, maybe we don't do
that with John Carpenter right now, and so DeLay's well skepticism. Well,
here's the thing with fire Starter with John Carpenter.
Speaker 2: They said, we'll keep you, but we're cutting your budget
in half, and he's like, no, yeah, no, I can't
do that.
Speaker 1: So Richard Corbett's the producer of Salem's Lot who has
Christine and is wanting to make it a movie comes
back to him again and he's like, hey, I've still
got this property. They had worked together on a Tea
TV movie called Someone's Watching Me. But Carpenter is like,
I'm stuck. I have to have a job. I can't.
You know, I've got a family to feed, you know,
I got to do something. And so he's like, Okay,
I'll do it.
Speaker 2: He's to be married to Adrian Barbo, by the way,
at this point or ever ever, yes, he was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they weren't married, they were very I think
probably at this point they were probably married because remember
she was the sole female cast member of the thing.
She was the voice on the computer.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's exactly right. Yeah, I've got Adrian Barbo.
You think those boob are gonna hang around?
Speaker 1: I got Burt Reynolds staring down.
Speaker 2: Her shirt all day long.
Speaker 1: I gotta to bring home the Captain. Chaos is hanging
around a little bit. So Carpenter says, Okay, I'll do it.
I don't like the script. Let's bring on Bill Phillips.
And so Bill Phillips is the one that gives us
this script. So if you're if you're hearing Bill Phillips,
and you're like, who is that again? It's not Lawrence Casten,
It's not right. It's a big name that you recognized.
The only movie that he had done before this movie
was a movie called Summer Solstice, which was a TV movie. Yeah, yeah,
I have no idea what that is. So why did
Carpenter pick him?
Speaker 2: Because he had worked with him on Firestarter?
Speaker 1: Right, they had been working together on Firestarter, and so
he was like, Okay, that's not that project is not
moving forward. I have another Stephen King. He's done good
work with Stephen King. Let's bring this guy on it.
See what he does.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I don't think the dialogue is bad in this. I
don't think the writing is bad. I think it's it's
kind of where it needs to be. So I'm a
little surprised that Bill Phillips has really done. I mean,
he's got a large body of work, but it's like
all TV movies and teleplays.
Speaker 2: Honest, not a lot of stuff I recognized.
Speaker 1: So Bill Phillips produces a decent script. Carpenter's onto direct
so that he can rehabilitate his reputation. And there's just
one more key ingredient that needs to happen, and that
is special effects. Unfortunately, he had just finished a movie
called The Thing with a guy named Roy arbur cost
Close encounters are the third kind the Thing, and now
we're about to see what he can do with a car.
Speaker 2: They do some amazing things with this car.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Okay, so you're ready to talk casting.
Speaker 2: Let's talk casting. Okay, Yeah, let's let's look back over
to Kujo. Okay, when we talk about Kujo, you got
to start with d Wallace d Walls Stone, right, right,
So she had just played Elliott's mother from E T. Yeah,
she's really the mom of the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Right for me for sure, Like I totally totally identify
her with a mother figure in my head for sure.
Speaker 2: And et yep, Kujo secret admirer. One of my favorites
The Howling, The Howling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not that she's a mom in that, but right
memorable carrying part. Yeah, critters, critters, I can't believe.
Speaker 2: Of course I did. And so she's in it to
play Donna Tritton. Now in the book, you know, she's
slumming around with this guy. She's having this affair and
it's kind of this.
Speaker 1: He was the guy who was in the howling with her.
Speaker 2: I know, well that's it's her real life husband. Ah right, Yeah,
that's right. I thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker 1: By the way, he passed away at only fifty five
when he died.
Speaker 2: She does a great job as the mother. I just
don't see her as the sex kitten.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's not the way that she plays it.
I mean she's got a long, not form fitting red nightgown.
Speaker 2: I mean, buttoned up all.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really like June Cleaver having an affair,
is what it was? What it seems like, right, it
is right, And you don't even really completely realize what's
going on until she puts her panties on, that's right,
which you don't see because the nightgown goes all the
way to her ankles.
Speaker 2: They actually do a pretty cool job of like slow
revealing that you're like, wait a minute, what she's getting
out of bed with that guy? Yeah, she's holding her panties.
What the heck is going on here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I'm offended for Vic, right, and so Vic Vic Trentton,
her husband, the guy who is driving around the nice
car while she has the piece of crap pinto which takes.
Speaker 1: Any this week I'm watching this movie, and I'm like,
she's having an affair. And then I'm like, he's driving
a Jag and she's driving a Pinto, and I'm like,
I'm looking these things up right now, Ladies and gentlemen,
from the same dealership, you can get a nineteen seventies
model Jag for one hundred and nineteen thousand dollars, or
you can get a nineteen seventies Pinto for eighty five
hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: No wonder if she's having an affair.
Speaker 1: Exactly having an affair too.
Speaker 2: So Vic Trenton is played by Daniel Hugh Kelly. He
was from soap operas and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I pointed out to you that he was later
after this in Hardcastle and McCormick.
Speaker 2: That's right. Dee Wallace said he was really nervous. He
saw this as his big break and so he really
wanted to be good and so he kind of leaned
on her, and you know, she's a movie star.
Speaker 1: So he did a good job in this, and I mean,
he's an interesting looking guy. He's a handsome guy. I'm
really surprised that he kind of just went back into
TV after and maybe that's was his choice. I don't know,
but I'm surprised he didn't have a bigger movie career
after this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did a good job. Then, of course you've
got Danny Pintero, which we talked about, who plays Tad. Now,
Tad in this movie is a six year old boy. Yeah,
who's incredibly annoying the entire time.
Speaker 1: See you say that, and he's supposed to be.
Speaker 2: He is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: He's supposed to be. I mean, I genuinely think that
for a six year old, this kid gave the performance
of a life. Did I mean it is because at
no point am I thinking this is just an actor
fake in this. I'm thinking this is exactly what a
six year old. This is exactly how they would react
if all of this was going on, no doubt, And
just I didn't mention this before. I didn't see any
of these movies at the time they came out. I
saw Christine I Believe in the nineties, and I saw
Kujo and The Dead Zone. Within the last two weeks,
I was looking, you know, I looked up Danny Peturo
to see I was like, oh, who's the boss kid?
Of course, right yea? And I looked at how old
he was. He was literally, he's literally likes than six
months younger than I am. At the time that Kujo
came out, I was the same age as this kid,
and you were incredibly annoying, probably so whining and fussing
and watch your daddy. Yeah right, by the way. I
know that we're not there yet, but that scene, Lewis
Tigue talked about cutting. They saw it and it was
such a you know, uh whoa we don't want to
hate the yeah, we don't character, And Dee Wallace was like, no,
this is this is exactly how a parent would react
because at some point, even though you love these kids,
you're in a situation where the stress builds and builds
and builds in it just comes out like a volcano. Yeah, yep,
she erupted, Yep, she erupted. Okay, And then you've got
I mean, you've got some side characters. But you know,
Christopher Stone we talked about he is Steve. That's the
guy she's having an affair with. Huh.
Speaker 2: He's vised tennis buddy, backstabbing tennis buddy, kind of handyman
around town, the sheriff. And Kujo that's killed. His name's
George Bannerman. Okay, so Sandy Ward plays George Bannerman I
mentioned earlier. Kujo actually kills him when he goes out
to check on a lead to find Donna and Tad
finds them. Of course there he also finds a disgusty, nasty,
crazy dog and gets killed. That's the same guy from
the Dead Zone.
Speaker 1: He's oh, the character is the same character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the character is played by Tom Scarrett in the
Dead Zone. Yeah, and he and Johnny Smith are walking
around trying to find the serial killer. But you have
thirteen different Saint Bernard dogs.
Speaker 1: Well, you had Billy Jacoby as Brett Camber, the kid
who's he's been in quite a few things.
Speaker 2: He had, he's the brother in just one of the
guys about that.
Speaker 1: The pervy little that's a great part for him. I know,
right that he was in Parker Lewis, Can't Lose and
a ton of other stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're right, he was speckled throughout the eighties. But
then you have thirteen different dogs who play Kujo. Well, yeah,
And that's the funny thing is that nobody can tell
you exactly how many dogs, Like everybody remembers a different
number of dogs, right, and you had real dogs at
least five of those.
Speaker 1: You had mechanical dogs. You had a guy in a
dog suit.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right.
Speaker 1: And there's a great picture, like behind the scenes picture
of d Wallace and I think it was Lewis Tigue
and the guy and the dogs doing like a but
you know, like.
Speaker 2: A high kick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the chorus girl kick. It's it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny. One of the issues they actually had
on set is that Saint Bernard's are super friendly dogs, right,
super friendly. They're like dealing with the labor retrouver. Now,
they'll do what you take, you say, but they'll wag
their tail to the entire time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: They had to tie down his tail so it would wag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then.
Speaker 2: You know, getting them to bark, and you know they're
they're teasing it with a toy and he's trying to
get the toy through the window. And they had to
put this egg white and sugar, you know, concoction all
over the dog's face and you had to film quick
because the dog would spend the next ten minutes licking
it all off their face.
Speaker 1: Right. The animal control guy is named Gary Morgan. When
he got the job, he was like a Saint Bernard,
you mean, the ones that rescue people in the Alps
with a little whiskey barrel underneath their gin. The sweet, kind, lovable, fuzzy.
By the way, Tad has a Saint Bernard doll in
his room, you can see it. But he's like, they
don't really train those dogs. How about we do it Doberman.
Doberman's are mean and easily trained, and they're like, it's
going to be a Saint Bernard.
Speaker 2: And she's already made the man in the costume over.
Speaker 1: Here, and so yeah, so he had to he had
to figure out how to train half a dozen or
so real dogs that they had. But they said he
was just a genius about it. His daughter, I think,
is doing animal stuff in movies now, Teresa Morgan, you.
Speaker 2: Know I told you I watched some videos on rabies. Yeah,
and so it's a it's a neurological disease. One of
the things I learned about is that there's this barrier
that some viruses can get into your brain, and once
it gets in there, your body's immune system can't fight it.
I saw raccoons with rabies and I could not stop
laughing because they're trying to capture him in a trash
dumpster and stuff, and they are going bananas and they're
foaming at the mouth and they're aggressive and they're attacking it.
But I saw a skunk. He couldn't stand up, he
was falling over, and Kujo looks nothing like any of
these animals.
Speaker 1: So well, you and you would talk to me about
how in the book you actually get you get the
Saint Bernard's get Kujo's perspective on it, like you're he's
he is lovable. Like they start the movie with a
very lovable Disney esque kind of scene where he's chasing
this rabbit around in the green field and it's all
pretty and warm. But you said in the book, like
you see his mental deterioration as he kind of narrates
his perspectives.
Speaker 2: True, It's true. He looks at the man and the
boy and he recognizes them and loves them, and he
wants to be a good boy. And the real villain
of this story is the virus. Okay, So let's talk
about casting for The Dead Zone. Okay. So on The
Dead Zone they hire the amazing Christopher Walking to play
Johnny Smith. Do you know who Stephen King wanted to
play this role.
Speaker 1: Now, Bill Murray, I could see that. How about that?
I could see that. I mean, Christopher Walking has got
a creepiness that Bill doesn't have. I think that baby
Bill would have probably been a little too lovable. But no,
I could see him. I could see him doing that.
Speaker 2: Hey, you know when we talk about the alternate video store,
we could go rent these movies and the alternate universe.
This is one of those. At the top of my list.
I want to see Bill Murray as Johnny Smith. And
you know, the whole premise of this book came about
from Stephen King's question, could I make an assassin a
good guy? And he does? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he does.
Speaker 2: And who is more lovable than Bill Murray, asked Chevy Chase.
I mean, he'll tell you. But David Cronenberg he wanted
Nicholas Campbell to be the lead to play with Johnny Smith.
Nicholas Campbell was the lead from the movie The Brood,
which was a David Cronenberg movie. Uh huh, And so
they had worked together before and He's like, how about
this guy? And they're like, we don't know who that is, right,
And so he hired him. He's the guy who plays
Frank Dot Oh yeah, okay, I got you. Yeah, that's right.
Brook Adams plays Sarah in this so pretty.
Speaker 1: I think she's just got a very genuinely pretty face,
great cheekbones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's pretty and lovable and you can see her
as the motherly character and she vamps it up a
little bit for Johnny and sure.
Speaker 1: You know I go with that. Yeah, she was an
invasion of the Body Snatchers with Donald Sutherland. Yeah, but
she's married to Tony Shaw. You know that is the
guy monk Yeah, monks wings. Yes, Oh my gosh, she's
been married to him since nineteen ninety two, so they're
thirty one years in.
Speaker 2: Now, apparently there's a WWF wrestler name Brook Adams major
hot too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then you've got Tom Scarett, who plays George Bannerman.
We talked about him already. That's Viper from Top Gun. Yes, right, Yes,
they originally wanted hal Holbrook to play that character, right,
which I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how Holbrook had just finished up with Creep Show
from that's righting, right.
Speaker 2: That's right. This is one of the ones that I
find really interesting. Herbert Lohm plays Sam Weezak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the doctor.
Speaker 2: He's Johnny's friend, he's Johnny's doctor.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: He is so lovable in this. And he is the
bumbling nothing goes right inspector from the Pink Panther movies.
Speaker 1: Right, and he's the inspector or commissioner.
Speaker 2: He's chief Inspector Dreyfuss. He is so frickin funny in
the Pink Panther movies and in this he's just totally
just a lovable doctor. Yeah, he's the one that goes crazy.
He's always trying to kill clues out.
Speaker 1: You can't get rid of him. Got to kill him,
that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: And then of course you've got Martin Sheen who plays
Greg Stilson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Sheen had come off he he had played
JFK I think earlier in his career in something Okay.
He's good as this as the slam politician. And then
of course he goes on to be the president in
the West Wing, which goes years and years. It's he's
good in that in that spot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw an interview with Stephen King and he
was comparing Greg Stillson to Donald Trump in the interview
that I watched. He takes a lot of credit for
forecasting this sort of snake oil salesman who rises to
the White House, you know, right, kind of interesting. All right,
So that about wraps up the cast for the Dead Zone. Yep, okay,
let's flip over to Christine.
Speaker 1: Sounds good, started up? Her name is Christine? Okay.
Speaker 2: So the main actor in Christine is a guy named
Keith Gordon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he plays Ernie Cunningham or Cuntingham if you're a
school bully.
Speaker 2: That's right. If you'll remember we talked about this in
our Footloose episode. They had originally hired Kevin Bacon to
play this character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and then he had to go. Guys, I'm sorry,
but he had.
Speaker 2: To make a decision. He was our already hired to
play Arnie for Christine when Footloots came knocking.
Speaker 1: How different a movie would this have been had you
had Kevin Bacon in the Ernie Cunningham position'd be different?
I mean he's taller, he's better looking. I don't know
that he would pull off nerd like Ernie Cunningham does.
I'm with you, man, I don't know how that like
Keith Gordon does yep.
Speaker 2: Then you've got John Stockwell, who plays Arnie's best friend,
Dennis Yep, Cougar from Top Gun.
Speaker 1: Cougar from Top Gun.
Speaker 2: Right, and he's been in some stuff. He was in
my science project. I saw an interview with him. He's
playing the jock, the football player, the cool kai in school. Yeah,
he's like all that fabricated, nothing like me, totally knew
nothing about that world.
Speaker 1: But I thought he pulled it off perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he looks like the cool high school guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean. And the other thing is he had
just graduated from college, so he's he's four years older.
A lot of times, the reason the guys are popular
is because they're bigger and more mature, and so now
he's got that going for him. But it's interesting, both
of these guys don't really do much acting at all anymore.
They both become writer, producer, directors. That's right.
Speaker 2: I saw Keith Gordon when they were asking him about
this character. Yeah, he initially took it. He's like, oh,
this is my chance to play doctor Jackyll and mister Ryde.
Yeah that was really cool, you know, a great way
of looking at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he goes through a major transformation and he and
he is, I mean, he to me is more goof
more goofy looking, more nerdy looking, but he still kind
of pulls off the cool kid when he does start
you know, when he makes his change. Yeah, when he
becomes Doctor Jekyll, he kind of he kind of pulls
off the coolness.
Speaker 2: By the way. Keith Gordon Thornton Millen's son and back
to school, yes, Jason, Yeah, the guy who is wants
to be on the diving team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: And then you've got the beautiful Alexandra Paul Yes, who
is nineteen when she was hired to do this.
Speaker 1: This is her first kind of big deal. Was not
significantly trained as an actress, said she'd never read, never
read a Stephen King book before, but read this one
when she got the part so that she could get
a kind of deeper understanding of the character.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She's so beautiful that I struggled to see Arnie
and her together, and I know that's part of the Well, just.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind she was kind of the homely one
on Baywatch, so there's a maybe there.
Speaker 2: She's homely then you know, well, I.
Speaker 1: Mean when you're standing next to and they're running. I
like to watch it when they're running.
Speaker 2: He is thinking about the running.
Speaker 1: Yes, mean oh man, yeah.
Speaker 2: Donnaderico, Oh gosh, Cameron or common Electra and yeah, so anyway, yes,
but but for this, for nineteen year o, yes, she
is stunning.
Speaker 1: However, you got Kelly freaking Preston knocking on your door
begging you, right, and and you're like whatever, what what?
Speaker 2: I I she is totally wasted in this.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, she's so well But I I think
that that was their intent because I know, I mean,
I know looking back that there were girls in high
school who were gorgeous who I just didn't look at
because of some reason that I can't explain at this point.
Who Now, I'm like, ah, she was so unto me
and I was such an idiot back.
Speaker 2: It's probably because she's a sophomore and you're a senior
or something dumb like.
Speaker 1: That, right, right, And so I think you're the idea
was You're you're feeling the same way where you're like
you want to grab you want to grab Dennis by
the by his letterman jacket and go, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 2: She's begging you to ask her out? Yeah, So she's Roseanne.
She's a friend of Dennis, and she like makes googly
eyes at him, and then we leave her. We never
see her again, nothing ever happens.
Speaker 1: Well, you see her on the sideline as a cheerleader,
and even though she is in rather a bulky kind
of sweater thing, she still looks amazing. Kelly Preston, Happy
birthday today. By the way, we're recording on the October thirteenth,
her birthday.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear us, goat got a little
more about Kelly Preston. Go back to our tw episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the last thing about that movie.
Speaker 2: You also have Robert Prosky, who plays Will the garage owner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we just got done talking about Last Action Hero.
He was the movie operator.
Speaker 2: Ticket taker, and he's also the one of the guys
in the Great Outdoors and he's also like the TV
production guy and missus doubtfire.
Speaker 1: I don't think you want those kids kissing him? Why not?
He's just old. He's been dead for an hour.
Speaker 2: And then you've got Harry Dean Stanton.
Speaker 1: Oh, good old Harry Dean Stanton from Alien and a
million other things where he's a bad guy but he
hit John Carpenter up and he was like, I don't
want to play a bad guy King.
Speaker 2: He's awesome, man.
Speaker 1: He does a great job as a cop in this one.
Very good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You might remember him from Red Dawn where he's telling
the boys to avenge me. Okay, a couple of guys
I want to mention before we leave this. But you
have William Ostrander, who plays Buddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We talked about how he looks exactly like a seventies
era bully.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, there was a guy who lived next door
who is one of those guys for me, you know,
always leaned over his hood of his I can't remember.
I think it was a Camaro blue Camaro, seventies model
Camaro and just was a piece of crap, just an
absolute had the pube stash until he was nineteen, right,
just a crud hoole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all know guys like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We also want to mention a guy named Stephen Tash. Okay,
he's one of Buddy's minions. He plays a guy named Richie.
Speaker 1: Why are we mentioning Steven Tash?
Speaker 2: You might remember him from a little movie called Ghostbusters.
He's the guy at the beginning he's chewing the gum
he's like a couple of wavy lines and he's like, Oh,
I'm studying the effect of the effect. I'll tell you
what the effect is. It's pissy me off. He's great
in this as one of the little toadies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't forget about Roberts Blossom.
Speaker 2: Man, Oh, I know, right, how did I miss him?
Speaker 1: All right? So Roberts Blossom we all know from Home
Alone as the guy next door, scary neighbor with a
shovel who saves him at the end. So he plays
the brother of Roland Lebay, George Lebay, who's selling the
car right and is very creepy. He says he's stone dead.
That's why.
Speaker 2: He's got that weird, dirty like backbrace that he.
Speaker 1: Wears, and he doesn't give an explanation for that.
Speaker 2: He is scary in this.
Speaker 1: That character is actually his brother's character is the one
that's supposed to be possessing the car, but they changed
that feature and so there are a ton of things
like that that are different from the book to the movie.
But we will get into all of that on our
next episode. Okay, guys, that does it for casting. Be
sure to come back next week. Where are going to
talk about the distinction and differences between the books and
the movies a little bit. We're going to talk about
the stories that led to them, We're going to talk
about the stories of production reception, and then we're going
to give you our final judgment. And in addition to that,
we've got a question, what are your three favorite Stephen
King works that have become movies or TV series?
Speaker 2: Fantastic, I can't wait for you to show me. Come
back next week.