Speaker 1: Oh it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want clothed sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters.
Speaker 4: In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 2: Don at off, WHOOPI Goldberg.
Speaker 5: She's just your average hard working burglar.
Speaker 6: Is anybody hose.
Speaker 5: Trying to turn a little what's behind gusting number one
Speaker 5: this time?
Speaker 4: Oh, this is very nice man.
Speaker 5: Instead of making a killing, she's going to witness one.
Speaker 3: And for an independent woman, she suddenly got quite a following.
Speaker 5: You see that guy out there.
Speaker 2: That's my part.
Speaker 1: I'm going out of the honest.
Speaker 7: So this is really hip like the Brothers do It,
Speaker 7: met It and Father.
Speaker 5: Wood bobwait clear the sidewalk the city of San Francisco.
Speaker 6: Thanks you, And I think it's a burglar.
Speaker 5: Tom a first rate comedy about a second story woman burglar.
Speaker 5: When you carryou to take the very bed, Dad to
Speaker 5: stop doing this stuff.
Speaker 8: Welcome to the projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 8: joined me once again as mister Colin Gallagher had he
Speaker 8: also with me this whole month long? Is mister Kevin Lahane.
Speaker 9: And I get more asked in a toilet seat, olh Mike.
Speaker 8: We continue Whoop Brewery a month looking at some WHOOPI
Speaker 8: Goldberg films with nineteen eighty seven's Burglar, written and directed
Speaker 8: by Hugh Wilson with some writing help by Matthew Weisman
Speaker 8: and Jeff Loeb. The film as an adaptation of Lawrence
Speaker 8: Block's thirteen book series about Burglar Bernie rodenbar Here. Bernie
Speaker 8: is Bernice, also played by Whoopy in another film That's
Speaker 8: a Who's Who, a familiar faces, including her sole confidante,
Speaker 8: Carl Heffler played by Bobcat Goldwaite in full Bobcat mode,
Speaker 8: and Roy Kershman played by g. W. Bailey. We will
Speaker 8: be spoiling the twists and turns of Burglar as we
Speaker 8: go ahead, So if you don't want anything ruined, just
Speaker 8: go ahead and stop the podcast right now. All right,
Speaker 8: if you're still with us, Colin, when was the first
Speaker 8: time you saw Burglar? And what did you think?
Speaker 4: First time was actually a week ago. When I got
Speaker 4: the opportunity, thanks to you, Mike, to join you all
Speaker 4: for this, I was thrilled because I absolutely love Lawrence Block,
Speaker 4: I absolutely love the Bernie books, and I had actually
Speaker 4: forgotten this adaptation existed because no one really seems to
Speaker 4: talk about it if they and I feel like the
Speaker 4: only the few people I had heard talk about it
Speaker 4: kind of like quickly moved the conversation away from it.
Speaker 4: I was delighted to find things that I really liked
Speaker 4: about the movie. I thought Whoopee was great. I really
Speaker 4: like Bobcat. You can get more into it later.
Speaker 10: I thought.
Speaker 4: The weirdest thing for me was as an adaptation, it
Speaker 4: makes a lot of very strange decisions. But I'm coming
Speaker 4: at this from a Block fan. I feel like, if
Speaker 4: you're adapting a Bernie book, the thing that's really difficult
Speaker 4: is you don't have blocks narration, that first person voice.
Speaker 4: And as a reader, when I read blocks books, for me,
Speaker 4: first and foremost, it's for his voice. It's very musical.
Speaker 4: If you read his early sex novels up through his emails,
Speaker 4: they all sound like Bernie or or Scott like. He
Speaker 4: just has a voice that permeates these different characters. For me,
Speaker 4: Block is such a New York writer and one of
Speaker 4: the greatest writers of New York, and so to have
Speaker 4: this taken out of New York was very jarring for me.
Speaker 4: And then of course, I love his characters, and if
Speaker 4: I were reading Block it's for me, it's the voice,
Speaker 4: the characters, New York, and the plot blast and this
Speaker 4: movie like upends that in a weird way, like it
Speaker 4: completely gets rid of his narration, it gets rid of
Speaker 4: New York, it's rid of a lot of details from
Speaker 4: the book and puts the plot first and the foremost.
Speaker 10: So that's it.
Speaker 4: I did enjoy it, just a strange, an unexpected adaptation.
Speaker 8: And Kevin, how about yourself?
Speaker 9: And I also saw it for the first time this week,
Speaker 9: and I'm coming it from a totally different angle to
Speaker 9: yourself because I've never read any Lawrence Block books, so
Speaker 9: I had nothing to judge this against other than the
Speaker 9: film that we watched last week. So I was just
Speaker 9: viewing this purely as a whoopy Goldberg Star vehicle and
Speaker 9: was completely ignorant to the fact that it was even
Speaker 9: racewapped and gender swapped. So I was just looking at
Speaker 9: this totally as a film and judging it on its terms.
Speaker 9: And yeah, I also really enjoyed it. But I have
Speaker 9: to say, just going by what you're saying, it sounds
Speaker 9: like I'm missing a whole character from the film, which
Speaker 9: is interesting. Because I actually wasn't able to track what
Speaker 9: was going on in this film until I read the script.
Speaker 9: So the script massively helped me in understanding it, and
Speaker 9: I watched the film twice. I'm coming at it from
Speaker 9: an ignorant film fans point of view.
Speaker 8: I'm so glad you said that, because so mye with
Speaker 8: this movies. I saw it not at the theater, but
Speaker 8: I probably saw it shortly thereafter, maybe on cable or
Speaker 8: VHS or something, and I've kind of grown up with
Speaker 8: this film. I watch it every few years. It's kind
Speaker 8: of like the other Whoopie films that we're talking about
Speaker 8: this month, with the exception of the last one, which
Speaker 8: was a brand new film for me, but when it
Speaker 8: comes to these first three, with Jump a Jack, Flash, Burglar,
Speaker 8: and Fatal Beauty, they were kind of in a rotation
Speaker 8: for me, and that's why I glombed onto them and
Speaker 8: wanted to do this month, just because I do enjoy
Speaker 8: these films, even though I really shouldn't enjoy Burglar as much, because,
Speaker 8: like you, Kevin, I had no idea what the heck
Speaker 8: was going on throughout so much of it. It was
Speaker 8: just kind of an experience that I just would follow along,
Speaker 8: and I guess this kind of makes sense, and oh,
Speaker 8: here's Roy Kushman again, and I don't know what Bobcat's
Speaker 8: up to, but okay, this is still kind of fun.
Speaker 8: And yeah, until I listened to the books and then
Speaker 8: read the script, I was like, oh, okay, now it
Speaker 8: starts to make a lot more sense. But really it
Speaker 8: is hung together so loosely that it was just like, what,
Speaker 8: what's going on? How does this Work's? She owns a bookstore,
Speaker 8: but we barely ever go back there. I think there's
Speaker 8: like two three scenes in there, and it's you know,
Speaker 8: you barely get that she is the one that runs
Speaker 8: that bookstore. For a while, I was like, is she
Speaker 8: an employee? No, she really runs this place. And then
Speaker 8: what's going on with the counterfeit stuff that comes in
Speaker 8: later in the film. It just feels so loose, And
Speaker 8: I'm really glad now I have only listened to the
Speaker 8: first three Bernie books now, and I really enjoyed those,
Speaker 8: and I look forward to diving into more of those, because,
Speaker 8: like you, Colin, this is a character I think I
Speaker 8: can really get into.
Speaker 4: You have even more great books ahead once and socially,
Speaker 4: once you know the third book hits. I think Block
Speaker 4: really figures out who his characters are, what is the template,
Speaker 4: and it stays golden all the way to the end.
Speaker 4: And the most recent book Burler read, Frederick Brown, is
Speaker 4: a really touching conclusion to the series.
Speaker 10: So no spoilers about that.
Speaker 8: Bernice in this movie is not a very good burglar,
Speaker 8: Like every time she goes into some place, except for
Speaker 8: maybe the last time she breaks into a place, otherwise
Speaker 8: she's constantly being walked in. We see that at the
Speaker 8: very beginning with her going to this kind of ritzy place,
Speaker 8: and again it starts off with like a voiceover of
Speaker 8: Ray Kershman, the GW. Bailey character, calling her, and so
Speaker 8: we don't see him, we don't see her. Luckily, we
Speaker 8: know this is a Whoopie Goldberg movie, so we recognize
Speaker 8: her voice. And it's just the shot of fog covered
Speaker 8: San Francisco and him saying you have to go now.
Speaker 8: And I'm like, what is their relationship because the relationship
Speaker 8: of Ray and Bernice in this movie is I think
Speaker 8: very different than what it is in the books, where
Speaker 8: Ray he does have some power because he's a police
Speaker 8: officer and can help her out, but he's like it's
Speaker 8: kind of like those cops that would come in and
Speaker 8: wake up Sam Spade or something where it's just like
Speaker 8: there's a grudging respect, but there isn't any sort of
Speaker 8: respect here. And in fact, when Ray Kershman comes into
Speaker 8: her bookshop and calls her a peckin any I'm just well,
Speaker 8: that's it, Like this guy's a racist piece of shit,
Speaker 8: Like I don't want him in this movie anymore.
Speaker 9: Basically, but it allows Whoopee to play one of her
Speaker 9: several personas and characters in this film, which he does
Speaker 9: so well. But just as you're saying that, you know,
Speaker 9: going back to having read the script and figuring out
Speaker 9: more of what the story was about, I actually think
Speaker 9: it's a much better written script than it is a
Speaker 9: well directed film, because there's an awful lot of details
Speaker 9: that are dropped in the execution, Like when you talk
Speaker 9: about her owning a bookstore, there's a lovely detail in
Speaker 9: the script which I totally missed in the film, and
Speaker 9: maybe it's, you know, something that's in the books. I'm
Speaker 9: sure it is, but that the bookstore is a front
Speaker 9: for her making keys and burglar locks and alarms, and
Speaker 9: I thought, ah, that's a clever front for a cap
Speaker 9: boarder and you don't really get that. It's it's just
Speaker 9: this master shot where it's a little subtitle on the signage,
Speaker 9: but in the script it spelled up for you, and
Speaker 9: I was like, Ah, never noticed that. Could have directed
Speaker 9: that a little better.
Speaker 4: That's a really great point. That's a good detail to
Speaker 4: pick up on. Whoopy has so much fun with the
Speaker 4: Bernie character, and that's to me what really held the
Speaker 4: movie together is seeing her jump in out of character,
Speaker 4: putting on these different voices and disguises. She's just such
Speaker 4: a pleasure, you know, to watch and perform.
Speaker 9: It's like she's jumping from an Eddie Murphy type persona
Speaker 9: to a Richer Prior type persona, and it's a lot.
Speaker 9: You can tell she's having fun.
Speaker 8: Yeah, she has to do this whole thing where when
Speaker 8: she is caught in certain places, like she's about to
Speaker 8: pick the artist's lock and he opens up the door
Speaker 8: and finds her there, and she has to suddenly become
Speaker 8: almost like this crackhead type character.
Speaker 6: Hey, what's her, nay Man, I'm looking for the apartment
Speaker 6: of Nita Boudet.
Speaker 8: The very beginning scene that I was talking about, where
Speaker 8: she's burglarizing this very big estate on RaSE orders basically,
Speaker 8: and she dresses up as like an old maid, as
Speaker 8: in not somebody who's not married, but like a actual servant,
Speaker 8: and she's got the wig on and padded button. She's
Speaker 8: just kind of moseying down the street and that's a
Speaker 8: great cover. And then she gets to use that when
Speaker 8: she accidentally again gets discovered. Yeah, I love that. I
Speaker 8: love that she does get to do this, and it's
Speaker 8: very similar to what we were talking about last week,
Speaker 8: where she gets to go through all of these different
Speaker 8: personas and it's very much you know, like with Jump
Speaker 8: and Jack Flash, it's a kind of another intrigue type thing,
Speaker 8: but with this one, she's more of the anti hero
Speaker 8: or yeah, I guess she's kind of an anti hero
Speaker 8: thief being our main character. But she's so delightful to
Speaker 8: watch in this. But I totally agree with you, Kevin
Speaker 8: the script and the script is interesting because the script
Speaker 8: was dated that I read and that you read, I
Speaker 8: think twenty fourth, nineteen eighty six. It said final draft
Speaker 8: on it.
Speaker 9: There's no, it's definitely a final draft. It's very it's
Speaker 9: very similar.
Speaker 8: To it's so similar, and so I'm like, well, where
Speaker 8: did Weismann and Lobe come in. What did they do? Like?
Speaker 8: Even the voice of the Carl character is very bobcat Goldthwaite,
Speaker 8: and which is I would think really tough to write,
Speaker 8: but that kind of circular logic and kind of comming
Speaker 8: at things from different angles. He seems to capture that.
Speaker 8: Wilson seems to really capture that voice in the script.
Speaker 9: Although one of his best scenes is entirely ad libbed,
Speaker 9: because I was comparing the script to the moment where
Speaker 9: he's trying to get Nabby's signature when they're on this
Speaker 9: whole quest to figure out who's connected to who and
Speaker 9: who leads where Carol is pretending to be like a
Speaker 9: ups guy, I think, and he needs a signature. And
Speaker 9: in the script it's very much like him playing on
Speaker 9: the sympathy, angling like please I need this job and
Speaker 9: you know my wife and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 9: And what he does in the scene and is he
Speaker 9: just plays deranged. He he goes crazy.
Speaker 7: Tagget's delivery just just made it.
Speaker 11: No tickets, you gotta sign point.
Speaker 1: Kin be Knobe? Is that like in the Star Wars?
Speaker 5: No idiot it's Knobby.
Speaker 11: Oh, so it's like a nickname.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think maybe it's something like that. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna need your full name please.
Speaker 10: Sorry, come on, it's the regulations. Hey fuck you, okay.
Speaker 1: Fucking you, thank you very much.
Speaker 11: I come here to give you a fucking package, and
Speaker 11: you decide to blow me ship like like like like
Speaker 11: like like like you're my idea of a dream come true,
Speaker 11: making ship from a build out with as you.
Speaker 1: Know, when I was like five, is to dad, Dad,
Speaker 1: can I get.
Speaker 12: A job where random fucking ship has blow me scrap
Speaker 12: all day?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna break you and fucking happen. Use your head
Speaker 1: as a ballpoint. Now sign the top down right.
Speaker 5: All right, all right, I'll sign a thing. Jesus's pretty name.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I want to see some many pal, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, like get some sort of professional help.
Speaker 5: Okay, thank you very much.
Speaker 9: And it's far more entertaining and funny. But yeah, so
Speaker 9: there was leeway though.
Speaker 4: I also very much liked the scene in the where
Speaker 4: he's being interrogated by John Goodman, which I also feel
Speaker 4: like that's.
Speaker 9: That's not in the script either. That's that's a scene
Speaker 9: that I think they just dropped in there.
Speaker 8: I thought that was in the script, and that he
Speaker 8: licked the window. I thought that was this thing rather
Speaker 8: than sticking his face up and blowing. But I could
Speaker 8: be wrong on that.
Speaker 9: No, it was slightly different.
Speaker 1: Wally Cots falling.
Speaker 7: Apparently there's something a little bit more mysterious about the
Speaker 7: secret Square has ever let them believe?
Speaker 1: And I'm a to cop dude, guy, I'm watching answers
Speaker 1: from product you play.
Speaker 11: How beautiful?
Speaker 1: I'm I'm being fu I come in.
Speaker 11: You signed a release form for that earlier mister held
Speaker 11: so that.
Speaker 1: Such a condiscending fuck book.
Speaker 11: I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: I mean that.
Speaker 1: I hope it was like when I said that, kind
Speaker 1: of smacking a little.
Speaker 4: The dialogue in the script is quite good, but I
Speaker 4: feel like every line reading Bobcat gives a little something extra.
Speaker 8: I mean, a little Bobcat goes a long way for me.
Speaker 8: But I just I always enjoyed that persona that he
Speaker 8: was doing, and for me, he was kind of the
Speaker 8: best parts of the Police Academy films. And it's funny
Speaker 8: that so Hugh Wilson, the writer director of this, he
Speaker 8: wrote and directed the first Police Academy and I forgot
Speaker 8: the Bobcat isn't old? Isn't in that one? That he
Speaker 8: comes in is it two and four? I think it's
Speaker 8: been forever since I've seen that, and then eventually becomes
Speaker 8: part of the police force and everything after. He's a
Speaker 8: villain in the second one, I think. But G. W.
Speaker 8: Biley is in that first one obviously, and I think
Speaker 8: that's where the connection is to have him in here.
Speaker 8: And I love him even though he's a racist jerk
Speaker 8: in this movie and just in it for himself. I
Speaker 8: just I love that actor. I always enjoy him and
Speaker 8: just how how skeazy he can be. And when they
Speaker 8: get in that big fight later on, you know, with
Speaker 8: the where he does call her a name and she
Speaker 8: starts to fight him and everything. I think that whole
Speaker 8: scene is great, especially when it goes crazy and starts
Speaker 8: attacking the screen door after she you know, gets herself
Speaker 8: out of there.
Speaker 9: Was he a disgraced police officer who's no longer on
Speaker 9: the force or is he just double dealing because I
Speaker 9: couldn't I couldn't pass that from the script or from
Speaker 9: the film.
Speaker 5: In the book, he is not.
Speaker 8: He's very much an active member of the police force,
Speaker 8: but he will take a bribe, like when he's caught
Speaker 8: Bernie in the very first book, Bernie's Scott I think
Speaker 8: a thousand dollars what he calls walking away money, and
Speaker 8: he ends up paying that to Ray and his partner,
Speaker 8: and then they he's able to get out there, and
Speaker 8: then unfortunately they find a dead body in another room
Speaker 8: that Bernie wessn't aware of, and then that screws up
Speaker 8: the deal a little bit. But Reza was there to
Speaker 8: be on the take, and he does want a fur
Speaker 8: coat for his wife. That is definitely part of the
Speaker 8: third book book. But I don't think he's really disgraced.
Speaker 8: But yeah, to your point, as far as what the
Speaker 8: movie is, it feels like he might have been disgraced,
Speaker 8: and it feels like those two cops, the one played
Speaker 8: by John Goodman and the other one played by Ann DeSalvo,
Speaker 8: those two cops, it feels like they are looking down
Speaker 8: on him because he might have been a cop at
Speaker 8: one point and had been kicked out of the force.
Speaker 8: At least that's how I feel.
Speaker 4: In the book, Block describes Ray as quote or but dishonest,
Speaker 4: which I think just kind of gives you the idea
Speaker 4: that he's not only a crooked cop, but he's not
Speaker 4: smart about it. And when the two cops are sort
Speaker 4: of going into one of the apartments looking for Bernie.
Speaker 4: Bernie escapes, and Ray is at downstairs waiting as if
Speaker 4: he knows that Bernie's going to elude you know, the
Speaker 4: people he's there with, and he sort of drives away
Speaker 4: to you know, go around the block, and that's where
Speaker 4: he sort of is like, I know you did this.
Speaker 4: All I want on is half and it's just like, man,
Speaker 4: you're a shady cop. You're there with a couple buddies
Speaker 4: and you're you're willing to sell them out just for
Speaker 4: a little bit of stolen loot for yourself.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And the way that he rolls over on her
Speaker 8: and lets cops know where she's going to be kind
Speaker 8: of sets her up. I think he kind of knows
Speaker 8: that she's going to escape when she's like, oh, I
Speaker 8: got to go to the bathroom, and he doesn't do
Speaker 8: anything to stop her. He just lets her go. And
Speaker 8: then when she comes tearing out of this alleyway on
Speaker 8: a motorcycle cop motorcycle, he's like all right, and they're off.
Speaker 8: I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm glad that you are not
Speaker 8: trying to stop her, and then he actively helps her
Speaker 8: at the end of course with the idea of him.
Speaker 8: I love how he's like, oh, yeah, I stopped by
Speaker 8: the guy's car and got all the jewelry out of
Speaker 8: the trunk, and she's like, you did that rather than
Speaker 8: helping me.
Speaker 10: So it's funny.
Speaker 4: I was watching My Blueberry Nights last night of the
Speaker 4: Wangkar Wi film that Lawrence Block wrote, and one of
Speaker 4: the segments is Nora Jones working at a casino and
Speaker 4: Natalie Portman plays a gambler, and of course Natalie Portman
Speaker 4: goes busted and she talks Nora Jones into giving her
Speaker 4: all of her money for another stake. Natalie Portman is like, ah,
Speaker 4: lost that again. He sort of takes her on this
Speaker 4: road trip and at the end, the moral that Natalie
Speaker 4: Portman delivers is don't ever trust a gambler. And I
Speaker 4: feel like that movie is very Wangkar Why. But there's
Speaker 4: a lot of Block and that sort of dynamic reminds
Speaker 4: me of Ray and Bernie. You can't ever fully trust
Speaker 4: Ray because he's a gambler and not literally, but he's
Speaker 4: gonna play whatever side might work for him. And yeah,
Speaker 4: that balance, you know, it is very interesting.
Speaker 9: He's also a bit of a heel in this film,
Speaker 9: he gets his ass kicked multiple times, and it feels
Speaker 9: like that balances things owed a little bit.
Speaker 8: So apparently this was another one that was turned down
Speaker 8: by Bruce Willis, which is funny because that was the
Speaker 8: same thing with Jump and Jack Flash, but with this
Speaker 8: one they swapped it out both race and gender for her,
Speaker 8: but then also swapped out because in the book it's
Speaker 8: the third book, the burglar who quoted Kipling were introduced
Speaker 8: to Caroline, and Caroline now becomes Carl, so they gender
Speaker 8: swap her buddy as well, which is interesting because Caroline
Speaker 8: is a very open lesbian and this being when was
Speaker 8: that book at like seventy nine or something. I mean,
Speaker 8: that was great that they had this very open lesbian character.
Speaker 8: He treated her with a lot of respect, which I
Speaker 8: was very happy about. A block that is, so they
Speaker 8: gender swapped Bernice from Bernie to Bernice. They go from
Speaker 8: Caroline to Carl, but then doctor Sheldrakes also gender swapped
Speaker 8: the Leslie and Horn character and she comes in through
Speaker 8: kind of again a side channel where it's not that
Speaker 8: she is Bernice's dentist, that she knows the guy who
Speaker 8: Bernice is fencing some jewelry too. But then otherwise it's
Speaker 8: kind of the same story as the burglar in the
Speaker 8: closet the second book, where it's this hole, all right,
Speaker 8: she's stuck in the closet, she hears what's going on,
Speaker 8: she has a briefcase. The briefcase gets stolen. The briefcase
Speaker 8: had all the jewelry that she was stealing. And that's
Speaker 8: another thing too, where she's going into the apartment and
Speaker 8: taking all this stuff, and then she has to just
Speaker 8: start kind of riffing again.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 8: I talked last week with jump a Jackflash how she
Speaker 8: has to constantly talk to herself. But otherwise I think
Speaker 8: it would be pretty boring if we're just watching what
Speaker 8: you go around and steal things without talking about stuff,
Speaker 8: without joking around about fashion and critiquing the guy's clothes
Speaker 8: and all these things. I really enjoy what she's doing
Speaker 8: with those burglary scenes, even though I think it's pretty
Speaker 8: stupid with the first one that she goes in and
Speaker 8: lights a cigarette and is sitting there. She smokes so
Speaker 8: often in this movie. It's just it's a weird choice,
Speaker 8: and especially to just stop everything in the middle of
Speaker 8: a burglary to have a cigarette.
Speaker 9: My favorite part about that opening though. My first big
Speaker 9: laugh was that the UPS guy turns up the package
Speaker 9: and she has to think on the flight, and she
Speaker 9: accepts the package and then steals that as well. With
Speaker 9: what's like it, I thought, Okay, I like this character.
Speaker 9: That's nice. She's a complete croak in the Thief. Did
Speaker 9: you notice as well that when they introduce Whoopy, her
Speaker 9: title character goes over her padded ass when she's scratching it.
Speaker 9: I thought it is that a subliminal message? Did they
Speaker 9: get on? Was just another one of the jumping jack
Speaker 9: flash situations of tension on set? But no good? Can
Speaker 9: I ask you then? Was the bisexual bad Guys a
Speaker 9: part of the original novels or is that something quite
Speaker 9: progressive for this film.
Speaker 10: That was not in the book?
Speaker 8: That was not in the book. No, it was a
Speaker 8: woman who was killed. So it's doctor Sheldrake's wife in
Speaker 8: the book, and she brought together the three guys Knobby, Gray,
Speaker 8: Bow and Carson or Johnny the lawyer is what they
Speaker 8: go by, because that's same twist Christopher. Christopher is a
Speaker 8: woman in the book. It's the wife character instead of
Speaker 8: a husband character. So she brings together the three bad
Speaker 8: guys and they're the ones that kind of come up
Speaker 8: with the whole counterfeiting thing that they're doing. So yeah,
Speaker 8: there is like there is sex that's going on between them,
Speaker 8: but there's no sex between a male doctor Shell Drake
Speaker 8: and a male lawyer in the book.
Speaker 9: So it's like Beverly Hills Cop where they ended up
Speaker 9: switching oats of us as still one for Eddie Murphy
Speaker 9: and inadvertently became quite progressive in a romantic relationship between
Speaker 9: him and the girl. And in this it's like by
Speaker 9: gender swapping and all that they've ended up being accidentally progressive.
Speaker 9: But I thought that was ahead of its time for
Speaker 9: the eighties.
Speaker 8: It wasn't a way. But then at the same time
Speaker 8: that the guy becomes so jealous and is a murderer,
Speaker 8: you know, and that he starts to really enjoy murdering people,
Speaker 8: and he is like, he didn't really have to murder.
Speaker 9: Frank killing with a phallic symbol.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, definitely p Falex. I mean, he's very what's
Speaker 8: her name, Catherine from the basic instances against yet another
Speaker 8: gay killer. But I agree with you that there is
Speaker 8: some progressive thought in there, But I just wish that
Speaker 8: he hadn't been a crazy murderer at the end of it.
Speaker 4: To go back to something you were talking about earlier,
Speaker 4: both of you all about how loosely strung together the
Speaker 4: plot seems in the movie. I think part of that
Speaker 4: is that, I mean, the challenge of this book is
Speaker 4: so much of it is through Lawrence, through the Bernie's
Speaker 4: first person narration, and a lot of it happens between
Speaker 4: he's sort of hiding out at the Dennis's assistance home
Speaker 4: of Jillian in the book and they're sort of having
Speaker 4: a bit of a fling, and so so much of
Speaker 4: it is dialogue based, and the movie doesn't have the
Speaker 4: Jillian character, and so they had to figure out, how
Speaker 4: do we convey all this information between two characters that
Speaker 4: isn't one of the characters is missing, and how do
Speaker 4: we convey all this information that's normally filtered. You have
Speaker 4: direct access to Bernie's thoughts, and so I think Whoopy
Speaker 4: did a really terrific job of giving us access to
Speaker 4: the character through her actions, through these, you know, spontaneous
Speaker 4: responses to what's happening around her. I think that was
Speaker 4: a big challenge for writing this script and making the movie.
Speaker 10: She could have used.
Speaker 8: Carl as that sounding board. But I don't think that
Speaker 8: Carl played by Bobcat Goldthwaite as much of a sounding board,
Speaker 8: you know. It feels like he's living in another dimension,
Speaker 8: so her using him to help solve the crime. And
Speaker 8: that's the thing with these female characters like Gillian, and
Speaker 8: I hope that this gets better as I read more
Speaker 8: of these block books, especially with Gillian and then I
Speaker 8: can't remember Ruth I think is the fake name of
Speaker 8: the woman in the first book, and then even a
Speaker 8: little bit with Carolyn in the third book, where it's like, oh,
Speaker 8: you're here with me, so I'm just going to talk
Speaker 8: to you, and you're and you're going to ask me
Speaker 8: questions and then I'm going to give you theories, you know,
Speaker 8: like that's how they're dial Especially with Gillian, she just
Speaker 8: seemed like, well, what are you going to do about
Speaker 8: a Bernie?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 11: What about this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: And it's like okay, yeah, I would really like you
Speaker 8: to have your own agency, but she doesn't. Jillian doesn't
Speaker 8: for me, like and I'm glad though that she has
Speaker 8: as much agency to be like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 8: really going to go with this dentist because he's much
Speaker 8: more rich and much better off than you'll ever be
Speaker 8: as a burglar, Bernie, so you know, she's very out
Speaker 8: for number one. I was like, okay, good, good for you, Jillian,
Speaker 8: I'm glad for that. You know, you go girl.
Speaker 4: One of the other big differences between the character and
Speaker 4: the book and the movie is that in the book
Speaker 4: Bernie loves to steal. She is also good about it,
Speaker 4: and part of the narration is him waxing poetic about
Speaker 4: the different locks. He has these discussions in his head
Speaker 4: about alcohol and cocktails and wine and other points. He'll
Speaker 4: just go on and on about literature and authors, and
Speaker 4: you can tell that he's someone that is going to
Speaker 4: run a bookstore. In the movie, Woopy has to steal
Speaker 4: because she's being blackmailed by Ray and she actively wants
Speaker 4: to get out of that life. That's a big difference
Speaker 4: in motivation.
Speaker 9: It was expanded upon in the script as well. There's
Speaker 9: a whole other half of the scene, the first scene
Speaker 9: with her and Ray in the bookstore, where she says
Speaker 9: that the reason she has a bookstore she wants a
Speaker 9: quiet life and she doesn't want to do this anymore,
Speaker 9: and she's a reluctant thief, and you know, it gets
Speaker 9: expressed when she says she only from those who have
Speaker 9: a coming.
Speaker 11: What are you doing?
Speaker 9: What do you what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Put it back?
Speaker 11: No, you can't put it back.
Speaker 8: You already opened, and now we have to pay for it.
Speaker 1: I don't understand you.
Speaker 13: You'd like to steal a Chrysler building, but now I'm
Speaker 13: gonna pay for a bottle of olive.
Speaker 6: It's not where you steal, it's who you steal it from.
Speaker 9: But yeah, she seems very different from the character in
Speaker 9: the books and not regard.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 8: The thing I like too about that's that scene of
Speaker 8: the shoplifter coming in and taking all those books. Is
Speaker 8: that she in the book, and I think in the
Speaker 8: script as well, basically ends up getting the guy to
Speaker 8: pay her ten dollars.
Speaker 4: So that's in book three, and in the in the novel,
Speaker 4: it's he has extra books in the backpack. She charges
Speaker 4: him sixty bucks. He says he doesn't have the money,
Speaker 4: and then she gets his wallet out and takes the
Speaker 4: money and forces him to take the books. And then
Speaker 4: he's like, well, what am I going to do with
Speaker 4: these books? And she's like, well, what is your intention?
Speaker 4: I was going to sell them? And she's like, well,
Speaker 4: I buy them. These are the types of books that
Speaker 4: I would sell. They're worth ten dollars. So she didn't
Speaker 4: gives him back ten dollars of his own money, and
Speaker 4: so she still winds up fifty dollars ahead and with
Speaker 4: all the books.
Speaker 8: Thank you. Yeah, I knew it was very clever the
Speaker 8: way that she worked that operation.
Speaker 4: Here's such a patience. So the way that Lawrence Block
Speaker 4: writes scenes like that, and he's such a musical writer
Speaker 4: with his pros, like I could and do read him
Speaker 4: whenever I get the chance.
Speaker 8: That whole idea of the narration, the what we're hearing
Speaker 8: through his brain. It reminds me of some of my
Speaker 8: favorite books where it's like, you know, Travis McGee, like
Speaker 8: the Adventures of Travis McGee. They're pretty repetitive sometimes, you know,
Speaker 8: and it's like, Okay, here's another broken woman that he
Speaker 8: has to take care of, and here's another time that
Speaker 8: he's going to fight some huge muscleman. He's going to
Speaker 8: get the shit kicked out of him, and then he's
Speaker 8: going to have to take you know, three or four
Speaker 8: chapters the heels kind of thing. But the thing that
Speaker 8: I like about Travis McGee is his thoughts about the
Speaker 8: world and hearing him his narration of everything that's happening,
Speaker 8: like in his corner of Florida or wherever he ends up.
Speaker 8: And that's kind of what I like about these Bernie
Speaker 8: books too, as far as like I like Bernie, I
Speaker 8: like being on these adventures with him, and I do
Speaker 8: like the vicarious thrill of him picking these locks and
Speaker 8: going into places not knowing everything that's going to be
Speaker 8: in there. The way that he is so cautious about
Speaker 8: calling first, and you know, this is definitely an era
Speaker 8: of you know, phones that are in people's houses rather
Speaker 8: than cell phones, so I don't know how this would
Speaker 8: play today, but calling the house, making sure there's nobody there,
Speaker 8: trying to get past the doorman, all of these things,
Speaker 8: and the doorman thing. You know, you're talking about the
Speaker 8: difference between New York and San Francisco. It's such a
Speaker 8: different feel when it comes to what we're doing in
Speaker 8: San Francisco versus New York. And especially like hearing about
Speaker 8: all the places that he's going and he doesn't need
Speaker 8: a car, He doesn't need anything. You just take the
Speaker 8: subway or the bus or whatever, oriel steal a car
Speaker 8: if he needs to go out to the Burroughs. You know,
Speaker 8: I really like that, and I like that in New
Speaker 8: York setting. San Francisco definitely changes it. It gives us,
Speaker 8: of course, the chase scene where you're going over the
Speaker 8: hills and all those kinds of things, which we've seen
Speaker 8: a bunch of times. But yeah, it's a different place,
Speaker 8: and I guess maybe that's where the whole Carson Christopher
Speaker 8: thing might come from as well, with it being such
Speaker 8: a progressive city. Not to say that New York City
Speaker 8: is not progressive. I mean, I've been to the village.
Speaker 9: There is only really two moments in the whole film
Speaker 9: where she does actually any breaking in. It's picking the
Speaker 9: locks at the first mansion, and then it's cutting the
Speaker 9: alarm system at the pentos. In order to that she
Speaker 9: sort of inadvertently gains access or she's leaping across roofs
Speaker 9: and I'm blood force breaking in. But she's she's not
Speaker 9: a very stealthy cat burglar. This is much more of
Speaker 9: a detective story really than a cat burglar story.
Speaker 8: I mean, really, if she wasn't a burglar, you could
Speaker 8: just say, oh, she's Philip mar Sam Spade or any
Speaker 8: of these detectives where it's like they kind of know
Speaker 8: that the you know, the law might actually come after
Speaker 8: them at some point and be like, oh, looks like
Speaker 8: you know more than you are telling us, Sam Spade,
Speaker 8: so we're gonna run you down to the station. We
Speaker 8: might even arrest you. So it's a whole like cat
Speaker 8: and mouse kind of thing of going around and trying
Speaker 8: to avoid the police. Very much the same thing here.
Speaker 8: I do love that. I think this is completely wholesale
Speaker 8: to the movie versus the books. The whole thing of
Speaker 8: the cops trying to break in and then she's got
Speaker 8: this the second wall behind the closet. She's just there
Speaker 8: making the sandwich, and then she disappears, and you're like,
Speaker 8: where the hell is she? And you see the cops
Speaker 8: and they're going through everything and burning down the door
Speaker 8: with the torches and everything, and then finally she comes
Speaker 8: out and you're like, oh, Okay, she just had this
Speaker 8: hidden wall that the cops were never going to find.
Speaker 4: The books seem more out of like the Raffles tradition
Speaker 4: of the gentleman burglar, and even a little bit of
Speaker 4: you know, sort of the classic Golden age of detective fiction,
Speaker 4: like you know, Rex Stout and that's part of Block's
Speaker 4: charm is he knows how to do that sort of
Speaker 4: kind of gentlemanly, you know, genial, light hearted mystery where
Speaker 4: there's not a lot of violence or action, but then
Speaker 4: working that intol late seventies New York City and the movies.
Speaker 4: To your point, it's a little bit more gritty, it's
Speaker 4: more action. It almost seems like a different sort of genre,
Speaker 4: like more emphasis on the s spence than the clever wordplay.
Speaker 4: But again, like the clever wordplay is going to work
Speaker 4: so much better on the page than in a movie
Speaker 4: where things have to be you know, visual. It didn't
Speaker 4: click the first time I saw, but this was shot
Speaker 4: by William Fraker, who shot Bullet, which makes sense. I
Speaker 4: kept thinking, like, wow, that card, Yeah, the card chase
Speaker 4: with I'm like, this is very bullet And I'm like
Speaker 4: they're having a really great time sort of mimicking this
Speaker 4: sort of hard boiled thrills a bullet And I'm like,
Speaker 4: that's because this is literally the same photographer. And I
Speaker 4: think that's actually a smart decision, Like it's it is
Speaker 4: sort of shock kind of serious, like it doesn't play
Speaker 4: like a farce or a spoof.
Speaker 9: They call it a comedy, but I wouldn't classic as
Speaker 9: a comedy. It's definitely much more of an action comedy
Speaker 9: with action being the emphasis, even though there's not that
Speaker 9: much action in it, but it's taking itself seriously and
Speaker 9: it's much more ground it other than the Bobcat Goldthwaite stuff,
Speaker 9: which is completely crazy. And he's describing the script actually
Speaker 9: is a dangerous screwball, and I think he nailed that.
Speaker 4: I kept turning to point my finger, like, who, how
Speaker 4: would I describe Bobcat to.
Speaker 10: Somebody who's never seen him? It's very difficult.
Speaker 4: But I'm like kind of like an even more unhinged
Speaker 4: Jerry Lewis. The way he speaks in circles. I'm sort
Speaker 4: of starting and stopping, like going off in a direction
Speaker 4: where he's ranting at John Goodman and then very quickly
Speaker 4: slamming on the brakes and apologizing. And I hope you
Speaker 4: saw that I had a little bit of a glint
Speaker 4: in my eye and I was sort of smiling when
Speaker 4: I was insulting you. And as if he's being covertly recorded,
Speaker 4: I'm being bugged, but there's a giant recording device and
Speaker 4: microphone right next to him. And then Jean Goodman's like,
Speaker 4: you know you're signed off on that.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he's delightful presence.
Speaker 9: The thing that I appreciated most about this film, though,
Speaker 9: I have to say, is that the energy of all
Speaker 9: the characters is very unique and I've not seen it
Speaker 9: overdone in other films. So the Bobcat character, of the
Speaker 9: Whoopee character, even the detectives with John Goodman and I
Speaker 9: can't think of that other actress's name, and the Salvo
Speaker 9: Todders and Niceander that's dynamic, that's sort of and avuncular
Speaker 9: and an ant like Detective Jewel when they are like
Speaker 9: an old married couple. Even pickering about who gets to
Speaker 9: kick in the door and it should have been me,
Speaker 9: I should have done it. There's a nice energy to it.
Speaker 9: It's a frivolity with it being fast.
Speaker 8: I'm surprised she didn't kill herself after kicking in the
Speaker 8: door and then falling down the staircase.
Speaker 9: That was so stupid.
Speaker 4: I loved seeing that police lock. I mean it brought
Speaker 4: back a memory which has nothing to do with the
Speaker 4: actual movie. But I used to hat sit for a
Speaker 4: friend who lived on fifty six between fifth and sixth Avenues,
Speaker 4: and he got that apartment in like nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 4: or nineteen seventy had never been renovated, and it had
Speaker 4: one of those iron bars coming out of the floor,
Speaker 4: and he taught me how to, you know, lock that in.
Speaker 4: As I was leaving the apartment for the first time
Speaker 4: after feeding the cats, the doorknob just falls off, and
Speaker 4: I'm like, Jesus Christ, I'm having a heart attack.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 4: I know my friend's away. What am I gonna do?
Speaker 4: I don't want the cats? How is he going to
Speaker 4: get back into his apartment? And I remember pushing against
Speaker 4: the door, and I'm like, this police lock is no joke, Like,
Speaker 4: you can't break this door down. And eventually I did
Speaker 4: get in touch with him and he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: the door numb falls off all the time. All I
Speaker 4: do is just use the police lock. Yeah, so those
Speaker 4: things are absolutely no joke.
Speaker 9: I thought that that was just something that she had herself.
Speaker 9: I didn't know that wasn't a thing that people use.
Speaker 9: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: I don't see them in new apartments, and I would
Speaker 4: feel much more secure if my New York apartment had
Speaker 4: one of those things. But they also take up real estate,
Speaker 4: which in New York is no joke, that's part of
Speaker 4: your floor. And do you really want to give that
Speaker 4: to a we're did on the building? Probably don't.
Speaker 9: Can I ask you a question as well? It said
Speaker 9: in the script that when they were describing the Bernie
Speaker 9: character that she was a black woman with blue oise
Speaker 9: and then in the next scene when she's out of
Speaker 9: her disguise, she has bronis. And the only reason I
Speaker 9: registered it was because at the pivotal moment where she
Speaker 9: puts all the clues together and she gets that sort
Speaker 9: of epiphany moment where the here's Johnny advert plays and
Speaker 9: she goes, oh, of course it's going to be Carson.
Speaker 9: Here's Johnny. That's his nickname. They push in one's face
Speaker 9: and she's got blue contact lenses in, and I was
Speaker 9: just wondering, what was the character had blue contacts and
Speaker 9: she put in burn contacts when she was not on
Speaker 9: the job, or what that was all about, because they
Speaker 9: specifically pointed out in the script and in the film
Speaker 9: she's got blue contacts and it's really disconcerting. It's like
Speaker 9: these pale eyes. It looks strange. So I don't know
Speaker 9: what the significance of that would be, but I guess
Speaker 9: is it in the books.
Speaker 8: No, No, it's definitely not in the books. And yeah,
Speaker 8: I was very curious about that choice as well, and
Speaker 8: I picked up on that, like you said, with the
Speaker 8: book or with the script, where I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: she does have blue eyes in there, and then I'm
Speaker 8: watching throughout the rest of the movie, I'm like, no,
Speaker 8: she's got blue eyes in almost every single scene. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 8: I don't know why they made that choice to have
Speaker 8: her have blue eyes unless she had been exposed to
Speaker 8: the spice Millange and you know, the spice of guy
Speaker 8: into her veins and now she's about to get the
Speaker 8: blue within blue eyes of the Fremen it's all connected. Well, yeah, no,
Speaker 8: I don't know why they made that choice. And there
Speaker 8: really wasn't a whole lot of behind the scenes stuff
Speaker 8: that I could find. Like we were talking last week
Speaker 8: with Jump to Jack Flash and how there's a lot
Speaker 8: of tension on set. I don't know if there was
Speaker 8: tension on this set or if this worked pretty well,
Speaker 8: or what happened with this. I really couldn't find any
Speaker 8: behind the scenes stories nor why did they decide to
Speaker 8: have her have blue eyes to this whole thing, at
Speaker 8: least these contacts, I'm hoping weren't the real painful ones
Speaker 8: that the actors had to wear before. I hope that
Speaker 8: these were soft contacts and that, you know, the whole
Speaker 8: glass thing.
Speaker 9: There was one other thing that I noticed that you know,
Speaker 9: you read into these things and you think putting Whoopees
Speaker 9: credit over her bomb is that subliminal message or is
Speaker 9: it just a gag whatever. But at the very end
Speaker 9: they credit the actress Elizabeth Roussio. I think her name
Speaker 9: is pronounced twice, so she gets that highlight reel that
Speaker 9: all the main cast get, you know, with a flashing
Speaker 9: of everybody smiling, like a sitcom ending, and then when
Speaker 9: they go to the end credits scroll, he goes also
Speaker 9: starring Elizabeth Russio. It was like a pretty obvious mistake
Speaker 9: that nobody picked up on. And I reading through things
Speaker 9: and think, were they at a rush? Were they sloppy?
Speaker 9: Were they not paying attention? Or what was the behind
Speaker 9: the scenes like? But I guess there's not much out there.
Speaker 8: There was one clip and Entertainment Tonight clip that I
Speaker 8: found where it was love was it Whoopee, Bobcat and
Speaker 8: I can't remember who else it was that were kind
Speaker 8: of you know, vamping it up for here comes this
Speaker 8: new movie Burglar. Check it out kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Comedian Whoopi Goldberg has been given the license to steal
Speaker 4: every scene in her new movie Merrily Beck has more.
Speaker 4: Whoopy Goldberg has come home back to the Bay Area
Speaker 4: to make Burglar with comedian Bob Goldway.
Speaker 6: One of the reasons I wanted to be here, aside
Speaker 6: from having not been home in months, was that there's
Speaker 6: a lot of real good actors up here, a lot
Speaker 6: of real good people that people and who can movies
Speaker 6: rarely come and see.
Speaker 5: This is a comedy pairing literally made in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: Both Woopy and the Bobcat made their names as stand
Speaker 5: up comedians here and now return as movie stars.
Speaker 1: It's the best places where the.
Speaker 11: Conducive to lunaticks.
Speaker 1: They enjoy you when they respect you.
Speaker 6: Here if you're bizarre, Burglar takes over the streets of
Speaker 6: San Francisco this week Merrily Beck Entertainment Tonight.
Speaker 8: That was about it. I really didn't find anything else,
Speaker 8: and yeah, I don't know where. So I have a
Speaker 8: copy of this film that I've been watching for years now,
Speaker 8: and it's always confused me because at the very end
Speaker 8: of it, it's this very somber music that plays over
Speaker 8: the credits, and I'm just like, what the hell, this
Speaker 8: is the weirdest musical choice of all to have somber
Speaker 8: music playing over these credits, because they're supposed to be
Speaker 8: light and fluffy. And I was talking to my wife
Speaker 8: yesterday and I'm like, no, no, you need like a saxophone.
Speaker 8: There's got to be a saxophone playing somewhere in here
Speaker 8: and just make it all and see and stuff. And
Speaker 8: so I was so confused. So I went out and
Speaker 8: I was doing some looking at some potentially illegal sites
Speaker 8: on the Internet and looking at different versions of this movie.
Speaker 8: Mine is the only one that has that somber music.
Speaker 8: Every other copy that I looked at had like kind
Speaker 8: of music at the end. I'm like, yeah, this is
Speaker 8: the song. This is the right music. So I don't
Speaker 8: know where Mine came from. And then when I was
Speaker 8: watching it again yesterday, I noticed that the credits played
Speaker 8: for just a few minutes and then faded out. So
Speaker 8: I'm like, was this a made for TV? Like a
Speaker 8: But no other copies that I found they all had regular,
Speaker 8: real credits, So it's so strange.
Speaker 9: I have to say though I loved the soundtrack in
Speaker 9: this film. I thought it was cracking, all the different
Speaker 9: needle drops and just the interstitial score as well. I
Speaker 9: thought it was brilliant. It was exactly what I wanted,
Speaker 9: and I missed that in modern films. The other thing
Speaker 9: which I loved, and it's something which you don't really
Speaker 9: see anymore, is that when a film in the eighties,
Speaker 9: these kind of films especially take a turn at the
Speaker 9: end of second act, when things start to get a
Speaker 9: little bit more difficult for the protagonist, it starts raining
Speaker 9: and all the scene like at night with the rain
Speaker 9: and the'ing the phone book, making these tense phone calls
Speaker 9: and say, oh yeah, bring back weather as a foreboarding
Speaker 9: force in movies. I love it.
Speaker 11: Well.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and the beautiful use of the fog in the
Speaker 8: end scene, I that was really loved.
Speaker 11: Great.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that was really nice.
Speaker 4: In the book, it's in an office building and setting
Speaker 4: it outdoors with that little chase is terrific.
Speaker 10: I thought that was a nice change.
Speaker 9: I wonder know whether they made that change to San
Speaker 9: Francisco because of what was in that Entertainment Tonight episode
Speaker 9: which you showed me where they spoke about WHOOPI Goldberg
Speaker 9: and Bobcat Goldthwaite making their bones as comedians in San Francisco,
Speaker 9: and they're happy to be back and starring in a movie,
Speaker 9: and whether she had any sway at the time of
Speaker 9: saying I'd like to shoot in San Francisco.
Speaker 8: The thing that really comes through in the books is
Speaker 8: since Bernie is a burglar, he can go wherever he wants.
Speaker 8: There is no limit, and it's just it's a matter
Speaker 8: of him being clever enough to get into a place
Speaker 8: mostly you know, going past security, going past doorman, those
Speaker 8: types of things. That's the heart. I think the harder
Speaker 8: part than him picking a lock, like lock picking is
Speaker 8: second nature to him, and he's talking about like, oh,
Speaker 8: I can break into this within five minutes, you know,
Speaker 8: as long as I have my tools, or even at
Speaker 8: one point he doesn't have his burglar tools and he
Speaker 8: goes to like a five and diamond buys like nail
Speaker 8: files and things, he's still able. He's like, well, it
Speaker 8: took me ten minutes, so it would normally take me five.
Speaker 8: But the thing with him being able to go wherever
Speaker 8: he wants is he plants evidence wherever he wants. And
Speaker 8: this whole thing of the once he finds out that
Speaker 8: counterfeiting is part of it. He goes into Knobby's apartment,
Speaker 8: he finds this whole huge briefcase filled with all of
Speaker 8: this bake money, so he starts planting some of that
Speaker 8: money around now apartment. Then he goes over to Graybo's
Speaker 8: house and he's still after he stashes the briefcase, he
Speaker 8: still has some of that fake money, so he starts
Speaker 8: planting that where he needs it. And there's always a moment.
Speaker 8: Now I've only read three of these books, and Colin,
Speaker 8: I know you've read a lot more, but there's always
Speaker 8: a moment in these books where he will stop telling
Speaker 8: the reader what's going on in order to have like
Speaker 8: that last minute surprise kind of thing. He's just like,
Speaker 8: I had a few things to take care of, and
Speaker 8: he won't tell us what it is, and he'll you
Speaker 8: have like that big almost like a I swear in
Speaker 8: the third book, it's like a parlor room scene, but
Speaker 8: it's all taking place at the bookstore. You know, it's
Speaker 8: like all of the players that are here and we're
Speaker 8: going to figure out who was where or when, And
Speaker 8: with every single one of those things, he's just like, oh, well,
Speaker 8: I'm sure they're going to find this book or this
Speaker 8: money or whatever it is, whatever evidence it is. I'm
Speaker 8: sure they're going to find that over at your apartment. Oh,
Speaker 8: they're going to find a gun in your drawer at
Speaker 8: your place of business, like these kind of things. Because
Speaker 8: he can do whatever he wants, he can walk through walls.
Speaker 9: Basically, that's a totally different character to who's on screen.
Speaker 4: I would love to have seen more Whoopee Burglar movies
Speaker 4: because I think they created, you know, she created a
Speaker 4: really wonderful character that was unique from the book, and
Speaker 4: like that would have liked more. I would also love
Speaker 4: to see an actual, you know, New York City Bernie
Speaker 4: as well, and Mike. To your point, this sort of
Speaker 4: parlor revelation is very much a part of the Bernie books.
Speaker 4: Block is such a great reader. You know, he got
Speaker 4: his start at the Scott Meredith Agency reading manuscripts and
Speaker 4: dropped out of college for super professional writing. But he
Speaker 4: knows the history of mystery literature and just literature and
Speaker 4: channel so well. And he has so much fun working
Speaker 4: with these tropes, these beats and rhythms and structures that
Speaker 4: are at the heart of miss story literature, and I
Speaker 4: think that's part of why the Bernie books, to me
Speaker 4: are so much fun. He really understands how to write
Speaker 4: an entertaining and fun mystery novel.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I was very excited to be able to talk with him,
Speaker 8: except that I'm talking with him about something he didn't
Speaker 8: want to talk about. He doesn't like this Burglar film.
Speaker 8: He doesn't like what they did with the Bernie character.
Speaker 8: And unfortunately, yeah, that came through in our interview. But
Speaker 8: let's go ahead. We're going to take a break and
Speaker 8: play that interview with Lawrence Block right after these brief messages.
Speaker 14: Hello, this is Mark Bigley, the host of Wake Up
Speaker 14: Heavy recollections of horror. Wake Up Heavy is a show
Speaker 14: where I talk about movies that blew my mind as
Speaker 14: a kid, things like Phantasm, this Morning Shuns are bullshit,
Speaker 14: tourist trap, You're so pretty Dead and buried, Welcome to
Speaker 14: Potter's Blood and Halloween. Three Guests have included friend of
Speaker 14: the show and host of the Projection Booth podcast, Mike White,
Speaker 14: genre film journalists Anya Stanley, Jerry Smith, Sam Panico, and
Speaker 14: Simon FitzJohn. Every once in a while, I even convinced
Speaker 14: my own daughter Cleo to join me.
Speaker 5: That's me.
Speaker 14: Usually though, it's just me, a Mike and my memories
Speaker 14: of some really wonderful horror films. So come check us
Speaker 14: out wakeupheavy dot com, SoundCloud dot com, slash wake Up Heavy,
Speaker 14: or your favorite podcast platform, and don't.
Speaker 5: Forget anything can happen when you wake up Heavy.
Speaker 8: When did you first start writing? And when did you
Speaker 8: first start working with television, movies any outside media like that.
Speaker 11: As far as films like Burglar or any of the films, really,
Speaker 11: I haven't worked with them. They producer or a studio
Speaker 11: requires the rights and they make a film. My relationship
Speaker 11: is minimalist.
Speaker 8: Now, it was Nightmare Honeymoon. Was that the first time
Speaker 8: that you had been adapted or had you been adapted
Speaker 8: before that?
Speaker 11: I believe that was the first.
Speaker 8: And then have you ever been approached to actually adapt
Speaker 8: your own work?
Speaker 11: Yeah? I did a screenplay for what would have been
Speaker 11: a film called Keller a couple of decades ago, but
Speaker 11: it never got done. You know a signal difference between
Speaker 11: writing books and writing of anything in the film TV industry,
Speaker 11: and that is that with books, you write the book
Speaker 11: and the book is published. I have a lot of
Speaker 11: screenwriter friends who made a very good living over the
Speaker 11: years writing for the shelf. As they say, virtually nothing
Speaker 11: gets done, and I would have found that enormously frustrating.
Speaker 11: I haven't done much work for the screen I did.
Speaker 11: The one thing that was produced is I did the
Speaker 11: screenplay such as it was for long Car Wise film
Speaker 11: My Blueberry Nights. But that's the only real credit that
Speaker 11: I have of something that got done. Oh and I
Speaker 11: did a couple of scripts for an ESPN dramatic series
Speaker 11: called Tilt About Poker. But aside from that, I did
Speaker 11: some work over the years that I got paid for
Speaker 11: so that I did enough screenwriting so that I get
Speaker 11: a very small Writers' Guild pension. But aside from that,
Speaker 11: I haven't been much of a screenwriter.
Speaker 8: Have they ever adapted your work such that you actually
Speaker 8: enjoyed it? Or is it always just a little bit
Speaker 8: painful to see what they do with your stuff?
Speaker 11: Well, what they do is they make a film, and
Speaker 11: that's their business. If you're not prepared for that to happen,
Speaker 11: you don't sell the rights. And some friends of mine
Speaker 11: have made the decision not to sell the rights of
Speaker 11: their work. So Graft and Bob Crace both refused to
Speaker 11: sell any of their work to license filming of any
Speaker 11: of it, and I think it's probably not coincidental that
Speaker 11: both of them had had considerable experience as screenwriters beforehand.
Speaker 11: But that's a decision and it's legitimate. Another decision is
Speaker 11: to sell the work and let go of the result,
Speaker 11: which is what I have done. I have not been
Speaker 11: happy with most There haven't been that many things made.
Speaker 11: Let's let's be clear on that. So the picture that
Speaker 11: I think is a good, good film. It could have
Speaker 11: been better, but anything could be better. Was a Walk
Speaker 11: among the Tombstones, Scott Frank's filmed with Liam Neeson, and
Speaker 11: that I thought was was quite good. I liked a
Speaker 11: lot of it. There were some decisions and respect to
Speaker 11: plot that Scott made that I thought were a mistake,
Speaker 11: but one always has a reaction of that sort of
Speaker 11: one way or another. But I thought it was a
Speaker 11: good film. The other things Nightmare, Honeymoon, Burglar, and Eight
Speaker 11: Million Ways to Die I thought were not good films.
Speaker 8: Well, I know you were adapted for television as well,
Speaker 8: with like Alfred Ditchcock Presents. I was wondering if TV
Speaker 8: treated you any better than film did.
Speaker 11: I'm not saying that TV or film treated me badly.
Speaker 11: I really want to make that point that their object
Speaker 11: is not to please the writer of the original material.
Speaker 11: It shouldn't be. Their objective is not to necessarily reflect
Speaker 11: and be true to the original work. They're buying it
Speaker 11: because there's a film they want to make, and that's
Speaker 11: that's how they're going to do it. And the three
Speaker 11: pictures that we mentioned Nightmare, Honeymoon, Burglar, and Eight Million
Speaker 11: Ways to Die. My feeling about the films were simply
Speaker 11: that they were not very good. And this was a
Speaker 11: view that was shared in three instances by all the
Speaker 11: critics and most of the audience. So it's not it's
Speaker 11: not an author's complaint.
Speaker 8: Yeah. No, I'm not trying to antagonize you or anything.
Speaker 11: I just know that, I know that. I just I'm
Speaker 11: just trying to explain.
Speaker 8: Tell me a little bit more about Bernie Rodent bar
Speaker 8: And well, I know you've written about how he kind
Speaker 8: of came to be. I mean, he's a fascinating character
Speaker 8: and such an interesting way to have a investigator who
Speaker 8: was also criminal at the same time. I love that
Speaker 8: combination of those two things.
Speaker 11: Uh huh.
Speaker 8: So I was curious when they ended up buying the
Speaker 8: rights for Burglar. Did they buy just the one book
Speaker 8: or did they buy the rights for the whole character?
Speaker 11: Unfortunately, the I had my literary agent decided he was
Speaker 11: he didn't need a film agent to share the work
Speaker 11: with him on this one, and the contract was terrible
Speaker 11: and as a result, they wound up having a hold
Speaker 11: on everything. And that's the reason there hasn't been another Burglar.
Speaker 8: So that's still not in your control, line or back
Speaker 8: in your control. No, So can you walk me through
Speaker 8: kind of the process of when they bought that? I mean,
Speaker 8: how involved were you with that or did you see
Speaker 8: how the changes were made from what you wrote to
Speaker 8: what we ended up seeing on screen.
Speaker 11: Well as I think is generally known as that. Originally
Speaker 11: they were looking to for Bruce Willis to play Bernie
Speaker 11: and he decided he didn't want to one way or another,
Speaker 11: and Whoopi Goldberg was going to play the Caroline character. Initially,
Speaker 11: somebody had a multi picture deal with whoob and she
Speaker 11: said that she could play the lead, and they shoehorned
Speaker 11: her into that in order to get a picture in
Speaker 11: between Jumping Jack, Flash and whatever the hell the other
Speaker 11: one was. And that's how that the casting came about.
Speaker 11: It was certainly not how I had envisioned the character.
Speaker 11: But that's kind of beside the point. She It still
Speaker 11: could have been a bearable film. It could have been
Speaker 11: a successful film, and it would not have been a
Speaker 11: reflection of the book. But as I said, that's not
Speaker 11: the point of filmmaking. But it was to my mind
Speaker 11: just such a bad film and so many other respects
Speaker 11: that it didn't work. I mean, nobody went to.
Speaker 8: It, so I don't imagine there was any talk of
Speaker 8: a sequel bringing back Bernie for another outing.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 8: I know you right about this a little bit in
Speaker 8: the Writer for Paris, But can you talk a little
Speaker 8: bit about the process that you have, especially when it
Speaker 8: comes to you know, when you're coming up with the
Speaker 8: ideas for things, do you think, oh, this will be
Speaker 8: a good Bernie story, or this would be a good
Speaker 8: Michael Scudder or do you just come up with the
Speaker 8: idea first and then kind of figure out what it's
Speaker 8: going to be as you go along.
Speaker 11: I don't want to get into that.
Speaker 8: No, Okay, that's absolutely fine. I'm just amazed at how
Speaker 8: prolific you are when it comes to your writing. I mean,
Speaker 8: is this like, are you nine to five when it
Speaker 8: comes to writing.
Speaker 11: And then actually, Mike, I retired a couple of years, go,
Speaker 11: I haven't anything in a couple of years.
Speaker 8: Yeah, oh okay, I think what I'm getting confused by
Speaker 8: some of the collections because I love that collection of
Speaker 8: Bernie stories. That was amazing.
Speaker 11: Thank you.
Speaker 8: What is keeping you busy these days?
Speaker 11: Well, I spent a lot of time at the gym
Speaker 11: and read and sit around and be retired.
Speaker 8: Well, mister Black, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 8: I love talking with you.
Speaker 11: Terrific. Mike, thanks very much.
Speaker 9: I listened to that interview, Mike, and I really felt
Speaker 9: for you because he was giving you nothing. It was
Speaker 9: a polite way of saying, I don't give a fuck
Speaker 9: fuck off. But just listening to you guys talk about
Speaker 9: the books. I kind of understand it, though, because this
Speaker 9: is nothing at all like what he created. It's just
Speaker 9: taking some elements, just taking like the bookstores, taking the
Speaker 9: character's name. He seems like a totally different personality. And
Speaker 9: you understand it though, Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're totally right, Kevin.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: What I kept thinking about is it's as based off
Speaker 4: of the books of Lawrence Block, and I'm like, they
Speaker 4: must have licensed and paid for all of these books.
Speaker 8: Did yeah, and then they just shoved them into one movie.
Speaker 4: And I'm like, you're basically making it impossible to have
Speaker 4: a series because you're taking from all these different things.
Speaker 4: It's like, well, why don't you just pay for one
Speaker 4: novel and adapt that, or if you're paying for multiple novels,
Speaker 4: you would think that they would want to set up
Speaker 4: something so that you could potentially have sequels.
Speaker 8: It's so much the Burglar in the Closet and then
Speaker 8: there's just Caroline and the dog grooming stuff from the
Speaker 8: burglar who liked to quote kiplaying. You could have made
Speaker 8: another character. You could have made it a character named Carl,
Speaker 8: could have had him do something other than dogwashing, because
Speaker 8: that's it, you know, there's nothing else really from that
Speaker 8: second book. And then the idea of steal a stamp
Speaker 8: at the beginning, I'm like, I don't see Bernie stealing
Speaker 8: stamps really, just because they're so hard to fence. Bernie
Speaker 8: loves coin collections, right, he absolutely loves stealing coin collections,
Speaker 8: And I understand, like Ray set him up to go
Speaker 8: in and steal this stamp, but he would think that
Speaker 8: Ray would have the fence for that if he's so determined,
Speaker 8: and then the way that they she lifts the stamp,
Speaker 8: puts it on his head, he gets blood all over it.
Speaker 8: I'm like, well, so much for that. It's not gonna
Speaker 8: be worth anything.
Speaker 4: Now the book Bernie character would never do that, but
Speaker 4: that Fence character, Abel Crowe is in other novels. I
Speaker 4: really need to reread all of the books. But I
Speaker 4: think this ll right, Yeah, he's dead. He has like
Speaker 4: a cornery, they say, but he's in other books. And
Speaker 4: I swear there is a stamp subplot in one of
Speaker 4: the novels. But don't quote me because I can't remember
Speaker 4: exactly which book.
Speaker 8: You mean, you can't remember We're out of thirteen novels
Speaker 8: which one it is? Like that?
Speaker 4: Come on, yeah, I wish I couldn't. I was trying
Speaker 4: to like pull all the Bernie books and get as
Speaker 4: much as I could. I reread the novel twice for this,
Speaker 4: because I'm either blessed or cursed with the fact that
Speaker 4: I always forget plots. So even when I watch or
Speaker 4: read a book again that I love, there's always things
Speaker 4: that I don't remember. As of this morning, I was like,
Speaker 4: what's from the book? What's from the movie? So I
Speaker 4: did them both again.
Speaker 9: Well, I have to say, going back to what I
Speaker 9: was saying at the beginning, the film for me was
Speaker 9: much harder to track than the script, just because of
Speaker 9: how it was directed. All the eyes are dotted and
Speaker 9: all the tea's are crossed. In the script, there's nothing
Speaker 9: that's extraneous. There's no sort of like loose ends, which
Speaker 9: when you watch the film it can kind of feel
Speaker 9: a bit random, and it's like they're bouncing from here
Speaker 9: today and who's Frankie and that seems a bit random.
Speaker 9: But Frankie is introduced on the voice machine when she
Speaker 9: breaks into Christopher's apartment and she's on there, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 9: so it's all set up, but they're obfiscating in how
Speaker 9: they're directing it. It helped me an awful lot to
Speaker 9: be able to read it on paper and go, oh,
Speaker 9: I get it there. You should have shown us that.
Speaker 9: And for exposition especially, you want to be able to
Speaker 9: see exposition, not be told that. It's very hard to
Speaker 9: remember things you've been told because you don't know where
Speaker 9: to put the emphasis. You don't know what's important and
Speaker 9: what's just background information.
Speaker 8: Come on, Kevin, that's a screenwriter. You know that it's
Speaker 8: all about telling and not showing. And that's the golden rule, right.
Speaker 9: It is today with Netflix, tell everybody so they can
Speaker 9: second screen it. I am sitting down at a table now,
Speaker 9: I am angry with you.
Speaker 2: You know that?
Speaker 4: Is that what it's called second screening?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I'd never heard the trays, but I love.
Speaker 9: That Netflix explode all the characters to explain what it
Speaker 9: is they're doing and what they're feeling. And if they
Speaker 9: love somebody, they have to tell that person that they
Speaker 9: love them. It can't be employed by looks or through
Speaker 9: the usual things of like actions. It has to be
Speaker 9: said a load so that people second screening it. I
Speaker 9: can follow on the story without actually watching it.
Speaker 8: Finally, my screenwriting career is going to blossom.
Speaker 9: Just make audio books at this stage. Fooks sake.
Speaker 8: It's funny that this is yet another movie where she
Speaker 8: goes into a place and listens to the answering machine.
Speaker 8: That's exactly what happened last week with Jumping Jack Flash,
Speaker 8: and we get to hear in that case it's you know,
Speaker 8: Jonathan Price's voice, and we don't see Jonathan Price until
Speaker 8: the very end of it, And in this one, we
Speaker 8: don't see Christopher at all other than like his bare
Speaker 8: ass and that's it. You know, Well do we see
Speaker 8: him with the see him the hotel chest?
Speaker 6: Yi?
Speaker 8: Thank you, But yeah, it's it's so funny that both
Speaker 8: of these movies have answering machines as critical parts.
Speaker 9: There's another thing as well which both films have, which
Speaker 9: is in Jumping Jack Flash she bites a guy on
Speaker 9: the dick, and in this one she punches a guy
Speaker 9: in the dick. So having a dick in a Whoopie
Speaker 9: Godberg film is a liability.
Speaker 8: Well that was our old friend Vito ruganess back in
Speaker 8: this one as.
Speaker 9: Agreable the painter, the Terrible Artist.
Speaker 8: I really like in the book how she finds him
Speaker 8: and how she tracks him down, and especially the art
Speaker 8: dealer that she has a long conversation, Well he be
Speaker 8: Bernie has a long conversation with I thought that was
Speaker 8: a great scene in the book as well. But you know, again,
Speaker 8: that's a telephone conversation that they're having, and it works
Speaker 8: for a book but probably not for a movie. So
Speaker 8: I'm glad she finds them faster in this one.
Speaker 4: Correct me if I'm wrong, y'all. But isn't the art
Speaker 4: conversation different in the script than in the movie.
Speaker 9: It's much longer. There's a lot of scenes where there's
Speaker 9: a lot more conversation happening, like the scenes expand, but
Speaker 9: you can see, like with the jeweler, the guy that
Speaker 9: she is going to be howking the watches too and
Speaker 9: stuff like that, there's a big build up with him
Speaker 9: where she's obviously been going to him a long time
Speaker 9: and that all gets cut right down to the quick
Speaker 9: where he's a blink and you miss a type character.
Speaker 9: So same thing happens with the art dealer. I think
Speaker 9: her name's Vernata or something like that, where yeah, it's
Speaker 9: a pretty long scene and then it gets something with
Speaker 9: her just having a gag abit like I'm looking for
Speaker 9: something to go over my bed. So she wants this
Speaker 9: huge wallpiece.
Speaker 4: And it's a man in the script because I think
Speaker 4: there's a little bit of sort of sexual attraction where
Speaker 4: she says i'd like a you know, a rain check,
Speaker 4: and then the art Dealer's like, I can't even do
Speaker 4: that same thing, but she's like no, no, no, for real,
Speaker 4: like i'll call you later.
Speaker 8: Well, it's like we cannot have her have any sort
Speaker 8: of relationship like romantic relationship in this movie. It was
Speaker 8: so strange that it just felt like, no, no, keep
Speaker 8: any flirtation and stuff out of this. I was like, okay,
Speaker 8: because I liked that idea in the script of Oh,
Speaker 8: she finds this person attractive and vice versa, this is
Speaker 8: going to be good, Like they might go out for
Speaker 8: a date afterwards, or in the next movie they would say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 8: I tried to have a relationship with his art dealer,
Speaker 8: but it didn't work out. I didn't know enough about
Speaker 8: cubism or something like that, but yeah, that would have
Speaker 8: been nice. So I was I forgot that. I was
Speaker 8: talking about how this was originally a Bruce Willis thing,
Speaker 8: and apparently when it was Bruce Willis supposed to be Bernie.
Speaker 8: It was supposed to be Whoopee as his neighbor. And
Speaker 8: so I don't know if she would have played the
Speaker 8: Caroline character, but then that would have been this whole
Speaker 8: thing of like, oh, is she a lesbian because she's
Speaker 8: a lesbian in the book, and I don't think we're
Speaker 8: ready for that with Whoopee, you know, being anything other
Speaker 8: than a sexless, relatively sexless black woman, you know in
Speaker 8: our movies, because again it's very odd to have a
Speaker 8: female lead and a female lead who's black.
Speaker 9: She does get to have a dick stuck in her face,
Speaker 9: and in the scripts she says wow, but she doesn't
Speaker 9: say WHOA. In the film she kind of just mouses
Speaker 9: as if it's almost like wow, that just happened to me,
Speaker 9: rather than in the script where it's like wow, what
Speaker 9: a big dick. They play it slightly differently.
Speaker 4: She does say like, why don't I have this guy's number?
Speaker 4: So I found it there was at an LA Times article.
Speaker 4: I found it was like a retraction where they said,
Speaker 4: like an earlier piece mentioned that the Whoope Goldberg character
Speaker 4: is going to be gay. In fact, it's her friend
Speaker 4: Carl played by Golf.
Speaker 9: Really he's flirting with all the women in the bar.
Speaker 8: Yeah, exactly. I didn't get Karl as being gay at all.
Speaker 4: He seemed like non sexual to me because like he
Speaker 4: just seems so incompetent at hitting on them, and I'm like,
Speaker 4: and it didn't seem to me that it's that because
Speaker 4: he didn't like when it was just like, you just
Speaker 4: seem to have no sexuality at all. You are just
Speaker 4: this force of nature that defies categorization.
Speaker 9: I did get a huge laughter from him screaming at
Speaker 9: the and like, what do you guys do for fun?
Speaker 9: When you're not like blowing guys away? But it's the
Speaker 9: way that he screams, it's where he's just so incompetent.
Speaker 9: He can't even hold the conversation. But he always comes
Speaker 9: off like like a manic meth adult eight year old.
Speaker 9: To me, he's very boyish Bobcat, like a feral child.
Speaker 8: I'm very curious because there is a song on the
Speaker 8: soundtrack which is called Bobcat's Rap, I believe, and I
Speaker 8: think I'm probably gonna end this episode with that song.
Speaker 8: I mean that was the thing, right to have weird
Speaker 8: raps in the eighties, like Rodney's rap or the Honeymooner's
Speaker 8: rap speaking of Eddie Murphy, you know. So I'm very
Speaker 8: curious what Bobcat's rap is going to be. I have
Speaker 8: a feeling it's just going to be quotes from the
Speaker 8: movie with him screaming in between or something like that.
Speaker 8: So Fingers Crossed.
Speaker 9: Got that to look forward to. But again, a great soundtrack,
Speaker 9: the Jackson's I was listening to it in the pad.
Speaker 8: I like that opening theme, I like the closing theme.
Speaker 8: Once I finally found the real one.
Speaker 4: I like movies with custom themes, like I think it's
Speaker 4: It's wonderful.
Speaker 10: There should be more of than I. It's catchy. I
Speaker 10: sing along when I'm watching it.
Speaker 8: Last time I heard that was in the Deadpool movie.
Speaker 9: I enjoyed this film though, I really did enjoy it.
Speaker 9: It was a throwback, and it's nice to discover these
Speaker 9: films which are time capsules and so much of the era,
Speaker 9: and to have no exposure to them whatsoever. Like I
Speaker 9: didn't even notice From existed until it was put on
Speaker 9: this watch list, and it was a trait for me.
Speaker 9: I really dug it. I prefer it much more to
Speaker 9: Jump a Jack Flash. It felt more cohesive.
Speaker 8: I imagine I should just continue on with the Burglar
Speaker 8: books and read or listen to all of them. You
Speaker 8: mentioned Scudder before. I haven't read or listened to any
Speaker 8: of the Scudder books. How are those so?
Speaker 4: The Scudders are very different? And that those are Lawrence
Speaker 4: Block's noir books. It's about an ex cop named Matt Scudder, who,
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the series just does favors for
Speaker 4: people and sometimes they pay him. At the beginning, he
Speaker 4: is an alcoholic a few books in he starts going
Speaker 4: to AA and I believe Block, I mean Block also
Speaker 4: went through AA and it's a really harrowing part of
Speaker 4: that series, and it really touches a lot of people
Speaker 4: to actually see, you know, the effects of alcoholism and
Speaker 4: what it means to try and go through that recovery process.
Speaker 4: It's it's devastating. So totally just totally different, but they're
Speaker 4: wonderfully written books. They are a lot more violent, sturbing
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, but also to such incredible
Speaker 4: time collapse of New York City because he goes parts
Speaker 4: of neighborhood to parts of neighborhood and as he wrote
Speaker 4: from the mid seventies through, you know, he read him
Speaker 4: for almost forty years, so you really see all of
Speaker 4: New York City and the different bureaus change. I read
Speaker 4: those all in order a few years ago, and it's
Speaker 4: it is worth doing it that way. There was an
Speaker 4: adaptation in the eighties of one of them, called eight
Speaker 4: Million Ways to Die, which is a great title. The
Speaker 4: book is great, the movie is I just thought dreadful.
Speaker 4: They move it from LA to Sorry, they moved from
Speaker 4: New York to LA. Jeff Bridges isn't the lead. It's
Speaker 4: not only the loss of New York that is a shame,
Speaker 4: but really loses that sort of tragic sense of an
Speaker 4: alcoholic trying to recover. Even though Jeff Bridges goes to
Speaker 4: a couple meetings, that seems kind of willy nilly. Al Ashby,
Speaker 4: who had his own addiction issues, directed or didn't direct
Speaker 4: that movie, and it really feels like, well, I know
Speaker 4: for a fact it was an Oliver Stone script from
Speaker 4: the Earth, and then by the time they made it
Speaker 4: in the mid eighties, he was directing Salvador, so they
Speaker 4: brought Robert town on to do uncredited rewrites, and then
Speaker 4: during the editing process they hired yet another writer to
Speaker 4: write more dialogue into adr and so clotwise, it's just
Speaker 4: such a mess to watch. It makes no sense. There
Speaker 4: was an adaptation a few years ago by Scott Frank
Speaker 4: with Liam Neeson.
Speaker 9: Walk Among the Tombstones.
Speaker 4: I pulled out the book this morning because I watched
Speaker 4: the movie last night. That's a terrific movie and much
Speaker 4: closer in tone to the novels. If you haven't seen it,
Speaker 4: it's not I love the recent Liam niss in action
Speaker 4: movie Renaissance. I enjoy all those but this is very
Speaker 4: different to me than those. There's really only one shootout
Speaker 4: at the end, and it's a lot more solemn, and
Speaker 4: it is shot in New York, so it really has
Speaker 4: the flavor of those books.
Speaker 9: It seems, based on the interview that you did when
Speaker 9: it was like that that was his favorite adaptation of
Speaker 9: his work.
Speaker 8: I haven't seen that one yet, but Scott frank Is
Speaker 8: it feels like it's such a kindred spirit when it
Speaker 8: comes to his adaptations and just the stuff that he
Speaker 8: writes on his own. I need to check that one out.
Speaker 8: I have recently watched Eight Million Ways to Die. There's that.
Speaker 8: I have this fascination with Jeff Bridges in the eighties
Speaker 8: and just some of the weird choices that he made,
Speaker 8: some of the things that he was in. I mean,
Speaker 8: there's like the whole Jagged Edge against all Odds morning
Speaker 8: after some strange things that he was doing, and some
Speaker 8: of them work really well.
Speaker 4: Isn't Against All Odds? Is that out of the past remake? Yes,
Speaker 4: it is, which has built My Gallows High by Jeffrey
Speaker 4: Holmes if I remember correctly.
Speaker 8: Though I want to say that they're not it's not
Speaker 8: credited as a remake I'm trying to remember, it's been
Speaker 8: so long since I've seen it. I mean, Rachel Ward,
Speaker 8: Jeff Bridges, and James Woods altogether at that time that
Speaker 8: was an amazing combination.
Speaker 4: I think the problem with Jeff Bridges as Scudder's not
Speaker 4: Jeff Bridges as a performer's fault. I think it's the
Speaker 4: opening and closing seem like Oliver Stone writing Scarface. It
Speaker 4: really just feels like someone the title and just decided to,
Speaker 4: you know, take a couple of big plot points and
Speaker 4: then just eliminated everything that made Lawrence block.
Speaker 9: Lawrence Block with Bruce Willis have been a better Bernie
Speaker 9: based on who else could have conceived it being cast
Speaker 9: at the time, Not Whoop you Go, but who was
Speaker 9: out there.
Speaker 4: Because this would have been moonlighting air Bruce Willis right, yeah,
Speaker 4: pre Diehard even and.
Speaker 8: Definitely pre Hudson Hawk, where he also played a cat burglar.
Speaker 9: Which I like and I know if people hate that film,
Speaker 9: I'd like it.
Speaker 4: I think he could have worked. And I do like
Speaker 4: Whoopee as Bernie as well. I want to I feel
Speaker 4: like I have to keep, you know, I want to
Speaker 4: keep senecause I really like her version of that character.
Speaker 4: I think Bruce Willis would have also done a especially
Speaker 4: if he you know, with the script. I think he
Speaker 4: could have done a really good job.
Speaker 9: I need to read these books.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you definitely do.
Speaker 4: I don't give up plugs. I hadn't seen it until
Speaker 4: last night, but my Blueberry Nights I thought was terrific.
Speaker 10: I don't know why.
Speaker 4: I sort of slept on that because I love wonk
Speaker 4: or Why. Maybe it's because the poster looked like cotton candy.
Speaker 4: I don't some reason that no one really seemed to
Speaker 4: talk about it, but watching it, I was It's a
Speaker 4: really natural blend of Wong in Block. And I know
Speaker 4: wank or Why had been a fan of Blocks writing,
Speaker 4: and I think he sort of came up with the
Speaker 4: concept of these two people meeting at a cassee in
Speaker 4: New York, and you know they had both sort of
Speaker 4: just experienced a break up. And it's Jude Law who
Speaker 4: runs the cafe, and Norah Jones, who is the is visiting.
Speaker 4: And then she goes on a road trip around the
Speaker 4: country and keeps sending letters back to Jude Law. And
Speaker 4: so you get that sense of conversation because most of
Speaker 4: the movies these characters just talking with other people. And
Speaker 4: Block has such a good feel for interactions with human beings,
Speaker 4: especially in places like bars and casinos, you know, sort
Speaker 4: of on the street. And I according to Block himself,
Speaker 4: it sounds like Wankhar Wai just sort of took the
Speaker 4: script and did what he wanted and there so I
Speaker 4: don't know how much was improvised. I don't know how
Speaker 4: much was changed, but it still felt like it had
Speaker 4: a lot of Block's flavor. Like one of the segments,
Speaker 4: David Strasaron plays a top who keeps going to a
Speaker 4: bar and every night he says, this is my last
Speaker 4: night of drinking, and he has a good full of
Speaker 4: chips from AA and then in the day he goes
Speaker 4: to a diner and it's the Norah Jones works the
Speaker 4: diner by day, the bar by night, and Rachel Weiss's
Speaker 4: is soon to be x y. It gets really uncomfortable
Speaker 4: and sad, and you see you see the darker side
Speaker 4: of Block come out between them, and that's like, this
Speaker 4: is something that could happen in a Matt Scutter book.
Speaker 4: I thought that was a really wonderful movie and just
Speaker 4: was a surprise to me.
Speaker 9: It looks really vibrant and colorful.
Speaker 4: It looks one hundred percent like a Wan Car Wi movie.
Speaker 10: It has that.
Speaker 4: This is a little like hazy and surreal as you
Speaker 4: put out the colors. It really just seemed like a
Speaker 4: really nice blend of both of their stunnils, and I
Speaker 4: liked all the performers.
Speaker 8: I have to say, Wonkar Whi is a major blind
Speaker 8: spot for me. I still just have not if I've
Speaker 8: seen any of his stuff. I don't remember. I think
Speaker 8: maybe I saw twenty forty six and that's it. I
Speaker 8: really need to see more of his stuff.
Speaker 4: Twenty forty six I really like, but it's a it
Speaker 4: seems like a strange one to start with, having I
Speaker 4: say that just from having started with his earlier work
Speaker 4: Days of Being Wild that was my favorites. That and
Speaker 4: Chunking Express are great early works.
Speaker 9: Yeah, which feels like the most familiar.
Speaker 8: I wonder I might have seen Days Being Wild just
Speaker 8: because that title is very familiar, and that was still
Speaker 8: back in what nineteen ninety when I would have just
Speaker 8: gotten into more Hong Kong films or in.
Speaker 4: Early One feels a lot more sort of post John
Speaker 4: Wu because it kind of has this prime element to it,
Speaker 4: but it's very much not a you know John Wu
Speaker 4: type of movie, but it seems like, oh yeah, you
Speaker 4: know John Wu's selling well, yeah, you can get a
Speaker 4: shot doing this as Tears go By, which is wonderful
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 8: He worked with some of my favorite actors. I mean,
Speaker 8: I know there's a lot of Maggie Chung in here
Speaker 8: and Andy Lao and Leslie Chung was held. Yeah, I
Speaker 8: don't know why I haven't watched these sounds like something
Speaker 8: I need to. Maybe I'll do a one car Why month.
Speaker 8: You know here I am Woopy Goldberg month and Victor
Speaker 8: Bono this year, but maybe one car Why in my future?
Speaker 8: Who knows you can't go one.
Speaker 11: All?
Speaker 8: Right, on that note, we're going to take another break
Speaker 8: and play a preview for next week's show right after
Speaker 8: these brief messages.
Speaker 3: An earthquake. Just get La and her name is Detective
Speaker 3: Reader Whoopy Goldberg. Fatal Beauty Read it all starts funny
Speaker 3: at a theater here you check newspapers for showtimes.
Speaker 8: That's right, we are still in Whooprary and we are
Speaker 8: going to be back next week to discuss Fatal Beauty.
Speaker 8: Until then, I want to thank my co hosts Kevin
Speaker 8: and Collins. So, Colin, what is the latest with.
Speaker 5: You, sir.
Speaker 4: I doing a lot more musically then I have done
Speaker 4: the passage I'm excited about and I am for once
Speaker 4: keeping my website updated. It's www dot Colin Gallagher dot com.
Speaker 4: It has links to my label, which is Bad Channels Records.
Speaker 4: I've been doing a lot more with my instrumental project,
Speaker 4: Modern Silent Cinema. I just got masters back for another
Speaker 4: solo piano album that should be out in February. And
Speaker 4: closing one four, I was excited to get a few
Speaker 4: books out. I had one I wrote with Tevin Storer
Speaker 4: on King Vidor that McFarlane put out, and then I
Speaker 4: put out to myself about David Goodis's pulp work. One
Speaker 4: was sort of a little monograph about researching his pseudonyms,
Speaker 4: and then the second volume was actually tracking down all
Speaker 4: but five or six of the stories and you know,
Speaker 4: sort of synopsis, and then there is a sort of
Speaker 4: an introductory essay contextualizing that period of his career with
Speaker 4: the more famous novels and Kevin.
Speaker 8: For folks who may not be listening to this all month,
Speaker 8: what is up with you, sir?
Speaker 9: I'm still podcasting with my pole will Over on the
Speaker 9: Best Bits, where we just talk about favorite film scenes,
Speaker 9: different one each episode. And I'm still working as a
Speaker 9: screenwriter for my sins, So not much of a renaissance
Speaker 9: man like Colin, but getting boy.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much guys for being on the show.
Speaker 8: Thanks everybody for listening. If you want to hear more
Speaker 8: of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of
Speaker 8: the other shows that I work on. They are all
Speaker 8: available at winning Waymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 8: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 8: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
Speaker 8: helps the projection Booth take over the world.
Speaker 7: No, no, let me get a little bit about my
Speaker 7: silk name, Karl Tadler.
Speaker 1: I'm a Gemini. I rebox me.
Speaker 13: I never miss family time and I.
Speaker 1: Caught my fil grand you busy up. I like to
Speaker 1: frown a bas of you, and I hope along my
Speaker 1: own suit.
Speaker 2: I have a good.
Speaker 7: American I'm alive in southa Rambo and the American Way,
Speaker 7: and you.
Speaker 2: Know what.
Speaker 1: My lot let you I'm not like you. I am
Speaker 1: every past dream. I am a living example.
Speaker 5: I'm dying at it.
Speaker 1: I have very may good job. I run a beauty
Speaker 1: slick but a beauty cli. It's a doggy slot.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 12: I can contract. I clean them and I pushed them
Speaker 12: and I love him. Mostly I can throw out the laptops.
Speaker 12: Sometimes the more the mores make us much better watch stops.
Speaker 1: I get brooming my dogs and little Cosmo.
Speaker 12: Sometimes I stare at the press to the I just
Speaker 12: gon shoe on him.
Speaker 13: Like a dog.
Speaker 8: And I am a lot like him.
Speaker 7: I am a mother like you.
Speaker 1: I want to live another fall. I just want to
Speaker 1: hang out, you know, shoot the great. I want to
Speaker 1: say your daughter, I am a nat you you know
Speaker 1: what I'm about? Anything from us? Really? I at ansters.
Speaker 12: You know, there's a lot of men answer you just
Speaker 12: got a lot of It's just an all big thing.
Speaker 12: Some people I want to rock a counsel and put
Speaker 12: him in my well to me and I want to
Speaker 12: hit a crock.
Speaker 1: Don't need a doctor.
Speaker 13: Some people like the doctor IM and you gives me
Speaker 13: a cash.
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 1: That a one honey flocked one?
Speaker 10: Do you like that?
Speaker 1: Michael K.
Speaker 14: Mo is real cheek.
Speaker 5: And I am a lot like you.
Speaker 2: I have you.
Speaker 1: I cried for Captain your brother.
Speaker 7: And you don't like when other guy Caeremiah Heart I'm
Speaker 7: with Amo, I.
Speaker 1: So much like him. It's just chous me.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for Rocky anymore. I guess that was good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ever played that?
Speaker 11: Wake up?
Speaker 1: I look at my class and see all his eyes
Speaker 1: out cloth, and.
Speaker 13: I said, what I can I read it?
Speaker 1: Certainly not to the office. I'm never really into soft men.
Speaker 1: I know I don't fly, I wrote down way, I.
Speaker 6: Haven't you know.
Speaker 1: I'll live a change. I'll live a change when I over.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, because I'm that lets you doesn't
Speaker 1: doing a crang up job. A lot of you.
Speaker 9: I'm a lot like you.
Speaker 4: I want to bother you.
Speaker 7: You say you don't know what yesterday do.
Speaker 13: Let me come on, let me call your mother in law.
Speaker 13: I want to day daughter, not that I'm getting to
Speaker 13: come on the mind.
Speaker 5: You know we're I a bee fall around.
Speaker 1: Why did they fa Quinn? Why did they fire my queen?
Speaker 1: She was my favorite vision. I'm sorry, I gotta go,
Speaker 1: but can't be shown