Speaker 1: Weird way.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everybody to HP hates me. Now listen, full
Speaker 2: confession here, everybody. We started this show and the idea
Speaker 2: behind it. As you know, so far, it's HP picking
Speaker 2: television or movies that were going to make me angry
Speaker 2: or make my brain shatter into pieces. And so far
Speaker 2: he's done a really good job. This time he did
Speaker 2: too fucking good a job. And I'm not even talking
Speaker 2: about the movie we're talking about today. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the movie he presented initially, which was The Apple. Now, folks,
Speaker 2: have you seen The Apple nineteen eighty I have? Oh,
Speaker 2: I know you have, and you know I have. Now, folks,
Speaker 2: if you have not seen The Apple, why don't you
Speaker 2: take this moment to go to YouTube and type into
Speaker 2: the Apple trailer, watch the trailer, and then come back.
Speaker 2: Now here's the thing, Welcome back. Here, here's the thing.
Speaker 2: But you think that movie looks awesome, like you can't
Speaker 2: believe it, you can't believe that it exists. And there's
Speaker 2: what like ninety minutes to two hours of it. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's going to be fantastic. It's not. It's
Speaker 2: a nightmare. It's a slog. I thought it was camp
Speaker 2: being fun when I saw the trailer too, and then
Speaker 2: I watched the movie and I went, yeah, that is
Speaker 2: really bad. And then I watched it again, and then
Speaker 2: I showed it to friends because this is a movie
Speaker 2: that you pass around. You can't believe this movie. Nobody
Speaker 2: likes this movie. So HB was trying to make me
Speaker 2: watch this movie again, and I put my foot down
Speaker 2: and instead, And I feel guilty actually about it, but
Speaker 2: I could not spend another two hours watching bim time.
Speaker 2: Yeah you've got mister tops.
Speaker 3: You really did put your foot down, and it surprised
Speaker 3: me how forceful that you rejected this first choice. And
Speaker 3: maybe we'll get back to it at some other later date.
Speaker 3: Probably not, but I.
Speaker 2: I hate it so much. I joke every episode like, yeah, yep,
Speaker 2: this is HB hates me, all right, ha ha ha. No,
Speaker 2: maybe he actually does. You would have, actually, if you
Speaker 2: had made me watch that movie.
Speaker 4: It's not for everybody. I'll give you that.
Speaker 3: I like it for a variety of reasons, maybe not
Speaker 3: specifically because.
Speaker 2: It's all irony. You like everything about it ironically. Come on, man,
Speaker 2: this is the problem with our generation Gen xers. You
Speaker 2: understand what I'm saying. We just we don't have to
Speaker 2: marinate in the irony all the time. You know, we
Speaker 2: can just enjoy something as it is, or we can
Speaker 2: say that's garbage, don't watch that.
Speaker 3: Look, there's many reasons why I can't consider myself a
Speaker 3: fan of the Apple. But we don't have to go
Speaker 3: into that year. What we do have to go into
Speaker 3: is the ultimate choice of movie that I picked, that
Speaker 3: you agreed to.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, what is the movie. It's the Father Malone
Speaker 2: movie FM.
Speaker 5: It's that time again, Dugan. In three minutes, I'm gone
Speaker 5: and this place belongs to you, so move it, baby.
Speaker 6: It started with the Crystal age, it moved to the
Speaker 6: Golden Age.
Speaker 7: And now welcome to the solid platinum age. Good morning,
Speaker 7: Los Angeles.
Speaker 8: It's great to be a winner, and aren't we all?
Speaker 7: And this is f M the motion picture that takes
Speaker 7: you inside your radio.
Speaker 3: His mother on ju Ski FM, Los Angeles, Eric Eric Swan.
Speaker 6: What it is is this with the.
Speaker 7: Number two station and the second largest market in the
Speaker 7: United States, and we're not making any money for those
Speaker 7: of you who never knew, for those of you who've
Speaker 7: never forgotten, for those of you really don't give it.
Speaker 6: The competition might be putting on the Ronstick concert, but
Speaker 6: Kiskuy is gonna steal it and Eric live.
Speaker 1: On FM f M.
Speaker 7: Even if the story isn't completely true, it's only because
Speaker 7: you wouldn't believe what really happens.
Speaker 6: We got the best dance station there is.
Speaker 5: That's not the point.
Speaker 2: What do they care about our audience?
Speaker 7: What do they care about music?
Speaker 5: Well, they care about money. The entire staff of q
Speaker 5: SKY Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: They're now going on.
Speaker 7: FM featuring the music of America's hottest rock stars, with
Speaker 7: special concert appearances by Linda Ronstatt and Jimmy Buffett.
Speaker 6: Are you listening to c Sky my Little Darleans?
Speaker 8: FM coming at you soon at the speed of sound.
Speaker 2: I see FM on the dial. Now I think follow
Speaker 2: them alone?
Speaker 3: So FM Father Alone for your edification listeners. It is
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy eight. It was directed by John A.
Speaker 2: Alonso, fantastic cinematographer, a fucking beast of a cinematographer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was written by Ezra Sex and it's excellent writer.
Speaker 2: Actually excellent writer. Later on wrote two of my other
Speaker 2: favorite movies. If there was a version of Father Malone
Speaker 2: Hates You, I would make you watch his second feature,
Speaker 2: A Small Circle of friends.
Speaker 4: Oh, that's not the one with Mini Driver, is it. No,
Speaker 4: that's came later.
Speaker 2: No, it's the movie with young Shelley Long.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm looking at the cast list, Karen Allen. Isn't it, Yes,
Speaker 3: Shelley Loan, I know that's not the same Davis, Brad Davis, Oh,
Speaker 3: from Night Whatever.
Speaker 2: It's a sixties college campus drama where they take everything
Speaker 2: way too seriously, and then Brad Davis's character eventually joined.
Speaker 2: He doesn't join the Weather Underground, but there's a version
Speaker 2: of the Weather Underground where he tries to go talk
Speaker 2: somebody out of it and gets bombed.
Speaker 3: Among the stars of this picture Michael Brandon, Aileen Brennan.
Speaker 4: We love Eileen Brennan.
Speaker 2: My fast so wonderful.
Speaker 3: She's fantastic and she's really brilliant in this. Martin mull
Speaker 3: a precursor to them doing Clue together.
Speaker 2: In a few years, as he did, he not look
Speaker 2: his best in this movie.
Speaker 4: He is.
Speaker 3: He's so impossibly young in this. I think I did
Speaker 3: the math. I think he's like thirty five.
Speaker 2: The way he's manecured, the way he's tailored, the way
Speaker 2: he's styled, he's this is the most attractive i've ever
Speaker 2: seen Martin maull. I thought he was a good looking
Speaker 2: dude in this movie.
Speaker 3: It makes sense because his character, which we'll talk about,
Speaker 3: is supposed to be a really really smooth talking, kind
Speaker 3: of new agey honk of a DJ and I think
Speaker 3: he fills that role really well.
Speaker 2: He's the ladies man in this one.
Speaker 4: He's the ladies man.
Speaker 5: Sign up.
Speaker 3: We also have Alex Carris, who most people might know
Speaker 3: from Webster from.
Speaker 2: The Sporting World. He's a sportsperson.
Speaker 3: He was the defensive tackle for the Lions from nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty eight to nineteen seventy one. Father Malone, and oddly enough,
Speaker 3: in this movie he's in. Honestly, he's only in this
Speaker 3: movie for maybe six minutes. He has third billing. He's
Speaker 3: third build.
Speaker 4: On this movie, ahead of Eileen Brennan and Clevonne Libbel.
Speaker 4: Father Malone. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: How did that happen?
Speaker 3: I thought it was crazy too till I did the math.
Speaker 3: He actually, by this point he had actually done quite
Speaker 3: a number of TV shows and movies. He had done
Speaker 3: Blazing Saddles, Gone Little, he was into the odd couple
Speaker 3: few episodes he was in Mash So it wasn't like
Speaker 3: he was just this jock fresh off the football field.
Speaker 3: He had some experience under his belt, so I'll give
Speaker 3: him a pass there.
Speaker 4: Who else is in this? Norman Lloyd is in this?
Speaker 3: James Keach, Stacy Keach's brother, who I think isn't James
Speaker 3: Keach the one who's in Wildcats?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love him in Wildcats, also written by Ezra Sachs.
Speaker 3: That's why I brought it up. So this movie again
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy eight. It concerns a radio station in
Speaker 3: La called q sky FM.
Speaker 4: It's a movie.
Speaker 3: It's a radio station that can only exist in the movies.
Speaker 3: It's populated by a lot of really interesting and quirky
Speaker 3: and fun DJs among the Martin.
Speaker 2: Mall based on a real station in La though KMAT.
Speaker 3: That's fair, that's fair. It's there's a lot of versimilitude
Speaker 3: to this movie. We'll talk about, which I really one
Speaker 3: of the big selling points of it.
Speaker 2: But what the name of the guy? The guy who
Speaker 2: ran km E T, who is the basis for the
Speaker 2: lead character in this is also the basis for the
Speaker 2: lead character on WKRP in Cincinnati. They're both based on KMET.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you mentioned w krap because one one of
Speaker 3: the things that has been a legend about this ever
Speaker 3: since this movie and WKRP is a lot of people
Speaker 3: believe WKRP was made based off of this, like.
Speaker 2: Happy Days After American Graffiti.
Speaker 3: Exactly, But the fact is the pilot for WKRP was
Speaker 3: already well underway. This movie in no way inspired WKRP
Speaker 3: in Cincinnati, even though that was what I thought coming
Speaker 3: into it initially. It's just another movie about a wacky
Speaker 3: radio station peopled with colorful DJs.
Speaker 4: That's what we have here.
Speaker 3: So q SKYFM is the new number one radio station
Speaker 3: in LA. The corporation that owns q sky build the
Speaker 3: Billings Corporation. They send a sales manager oute to effectively
Speaker 3: sell more commercial time on the radio station, and this
Speaker 3: becomes a bit of a conflict between the station manager,
Speaker 3: this guy Jeff Dugan in the movie, and the forces
Speaker 3: of commerce because he wants this sound to be pure
Speaker 3: and he doesn't want it to be watered down by
Speaker 3: all these ads. The Army is wanting to put all
Speaker 3: these ads on the radio station. So part of the movie,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of moving pieces to this picture,
Speaker 3: probably more than there should be, but effectively, one of
Speaker 3: the main sort of plot threads of this movie is
Speaker 3: how are they going to balance the purity of the
Speaker 3: radio station and the music with the commerce that the
Speaker 3: corporation wants to bring to this radio station. In fact,
Speaker 3: one of the characters says, what good is a popular
Speaker 3: radio station if you can't sell it? So that's, in
Speaker 3: a nutshell, that's the plot of this movie. But there's
Speaker 3: a lot of other things we'll get into.
Speaker 2: It's the snobs versus the slobs.
Speaker 4: Kind of is.
Speaker 3: It's those movies have been around for a long time.
Speaker 3: I think this actually is would probably be one of
Speaker 3: the earliest. The earliest one I can think of in
Speaker 3: terms of slobs versus snobs is Meatballs, and this came
Speaker 3: before Meatballs, so maybe this lays claim to being one.
Speaker 4: Of the first.
Speaker 3: The thing of it is, though the radio station itself,
Speaker 3: these aren't slobs per se. This isn't a bunch of
Speaker 3: na'er do well DJs and other people working for the
Speaker 3: radio station. These they make it very clear that all
Speaker 3: of these people that work for the radio station, including
Speaker 3: the technician and the assistance and everything, they're all at
Speaker 3: the top of their game. These DJs are the best
Speaker 3: of the best. They don't get any better or smoother
Speaker 3: than these DJs. So, for example, Eileen Brennan plays Mother,
Speaker 3: who I think there was She might be based off
Speaker 3: of another DJ around that time who went by the
Speaker 3: name the Nightbird, I believe, who is a very she's
Speaker 3: older and wiser than some of the other DJs, but
Speaker 3: she's very She's got the velvety, smooth voice. She's the DJ,
Speaker 3: she's very smoky. She's the DJ at night, so she's always.
Speaker 2: The mid DJ with.
Speaker 3: Nowadays who listens to radio, like actual terrestrial radio. But
Speaker 3: this was King back then, and DJs weren't just jocks
Speaker 3: who would just put play on a record and then
Speaker 3: go away. DJ's had personality at this point and before that,
Speaker 3: but this was really you. A lot of people listened
Speaker 3: to shows just for the DJ because they love their vibe,
Speaker 3: they love the music that they would play, and that's
Speaker 3: what we're dealing with here. There's Mother, Eileen Brennan. Clevond
Speaker 3: Little plays Prince.
Speaker 2: Whose Prince over Darkness.
Speaker 3: The Prince of Darkness, who's also very smooth and sexy
Speaker 3: and really very very smooth DJ.
Speaker 4: They're all smooth.
Speaker 3: Martin maull As I already said, is Eric Swan, who's
Speaker 3: a hunk and really the lady Killer.
Speaker 2: Everybody think about the character named Swan that you don't like.
Speaker 3: No, actually, if we're talking about Phantom of the Paradise,
Speaker 3: certainly not or the Warriors or the Warriors Swan Michael Beck,
Speaker 3: there you go.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, we forgot to mention on our fucking
Speaker 2: Predator podcast and the Predator podcast, the fact that there's
Speaker 2: a fucking high school. The school is Lawrence Gordon Public School,
Speaker 2: home of the Warriors. Lawrence Gordon produced the original Predator
Speaker 2: and the Warriors.
Speaker 4: I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Sorry, folks who are all here to listen to us
Speaker 2: talk about FM.
Speaker 4: No, that's great stuff. I wish we had thought of it.
Speaker 4: Alex Carris rounds it out. He's not in it much.
Speaker 3: He's he plays the country Djay DJ dot Holiday, who
Speaker 3: is effectively he's not getting the ratings that the other
Speaker 3: DJs are, so their partner.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they fire him pretty unceremoniously.
Speaker 4: They do.
Speaker 3: And it's actually I think it's meant to give a
Speaker 3: little bit of shading to the Jeff Dougan character because
Speaker 3: for the most part he's he leads the.
Speaker 2: Radio station and guy in the fucking world HP is.
Speaker 2: Don't you know that? He fucking rolls out of bed,
Speaker 2: He fucking smokes a joint, fucking housles his hair, He
Speaker 2: calls the station, what I gotta be there in three minutes,
Speaker 2: No problem. I will drive so fucking dangerously down Sunset
Speaker 2: Boulevard that it will make people viewing the movie fifty
Speaker 2: fucking years later terrifyed.
Speaker 3: And he has the look of a young Michael McDonald.
Speaker 3: He's got this bitch and beard, he's got the hair.
Speaker 3: Everybody loves him all He's got a lot of women
Speaker 3: mooning over him too. But he's so charismatic. Everybody in
Speaker 3: the movie loves this guy. They love working for him.
Speaker 3: They'll do anything for Jeff Dugan.
Speaker 4: It's a little.
Speaker 3: Culty, like I said before, but it works. It's the
Speaker 3: vibe of this really coming into it is. I guess
Speaker 3: it could be a hit or miss thing, But for me,
Speaker 3: I love this idea that there's this disparate family of
Speaker 3: characters that work at this radio station, and they all
Speaker 3: are very they're all very good at what they do,
Speaker 3: and they're all have this common goal of making the
Speaker 3: radio station number.
Speaker 4: One, and they all have.
Speaker 3: Their quirks and their little their own personal plot threads
Speaker 3: that you follow. But overall, this is, hey, let's put
Speaker 3: on a show, let's do this, let's it's really the
Speaker 3: vibe of it, I think is what really captured me
Speaker 3: first when I watch this. But then you have the
Speaker 3: music is Awesome.
Speaker 2: List before we get there. Yeah, let's talk about the
Speaker 2: vibe in the station. Everyone hates their job and they
Speaker 2: all want to.
Speaker 4: Leave at the radio station.
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? Everyone doesn't want to be there.
Speaker 2: Everyone's just they all seem like at the end of
Speaker 2: their rope. Mother in particular, they all just seem fuck
Speaker 2: this place.
Speaker 4: You're wrong, You're wrong.
Speaker 3: Mother is the only one who is actively and they
Speaker 3: really play it up. She Aleen Brennan is awesome. We
Speaker 3: know this her thing. She even says that she's been
Speaker 3: doing this for a long time. She's at the top
Speaker 3: of her game, but she still feels like she's missing something.
Speaker 3: She wants to quit while she still has the ability
Speaker 3: to try and figure out if there's something else in
Speaker 3: life that she wants. She's the only one who is
Speaker 3: it has we about being a DJ, and she's getting
Speaker 3: like these these kind of Masher calls if I can
Speaker 3: say people calling who are obsessed with her heavy breathing
Speaker 3: calls things like that, she just can't take it anymore.
Speaker 3: Eric Swan is looking to make his next big career move,
Speaker 3: and he in fact auditions for a game show host gig.
Speaker 3: He it's not as if he doesn't enjoy being a DJ.
Speaker 3: He just he wants the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood.
Speaker 2: He wants to be elsewhere. He doesn't want to be
Speaker 2: there anymore. He wants to be at a higher plane
Speaker 2: of entertainment existence.
Speaker 4: He's looking for a stepping stone.
Speaker 2: That's two of our several people, what three four DJs
Speaker 2: who want to leave. Doc Holliday will be leaving Forcibly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he doesn't count.
Speaker 2: So what we're left with is the where or left
Speaker 2: is this prince of darkness who seems perfectly at ease
Speaker 2: where he is. He's totally cool. Yeah, he's got a
Speaker 2: great he's got a great lot. He complains about working
Speaker 2: that twelve to six shift, but that's the best shift,
Speaker 2: come on. And so we're left with him, and we're
Speaker 2: left with the fucking in the tech who wants to
Speaker 2: be on the air.
Speaker 4: No, hey, when you listen to my tape. Here's my tape,
Speaker 4: Oh everybody?
Speaker 3: But what I love about that? That that sort of
Speaker 3: arc for that Number one. He is painted as the
Speaker 3: best technician there is because at one point the cart
Speaker 3: machine goes bluey and he says, look, Dugan, if you
Speaker 3: just let me make my own tip tape decks, they'd
Speaker 3: be better than any of this kaka you could find.
Speaker 4: So he is the best at what he does.
Speaker 3: Weirdly, though, he has an assistant who's like Harpo Marx.
Speaker 3: She I don't know if she's just mute or what,
Speaker 3: but she can't. She doesn't speak through the whole movie.
Speaker 3: Did you find that a little peculiar?
Speaker 4: Sound?
Speaker 2: Everything movie peculiar about it?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: No, So this engineer Bobby, he's good at what he does,
Speaker 3: but he really wants to be a DJ. That's his dream.
Speaker 3: This is an aspirational thing. So he's always practicing in
Speaker 3: the bathroom and he's he'll pull Dugan aside and say, hey,
Speaker 3: listen to this, and Hugan, to his credit, Number one,
Speaker 3: takes time to listen to this whack job deliver his piece,
Speaker 3: and he's always encouraging him. He's, look, don't be so flashy,
Speaker 3: just be honest. But guess what, don't stop. I like
Speaker 3: where you're going with this. Don't stop, keep coming. And
Speaker 3: eventually Jeff sees all the hard work this guy's putting
Speaker 3: in and promotes him to newsreader. So good for him,
Speaker 3: good for Bobby, good for Dugan. Another another cab, another
Speaker 3: feather in his cap.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this doing guy, he could do, no prom.
Speaker 3: And you know that he lives in this awesome bitch
Speaker 3: and pad in Laurel Canyon, right because he crawls out
Speaker 3: of bed at in the morning and it's all trees
Speaker 3: and beautiful.
Speaker 2: And let me correct you. He lives in the hills.
Speaker 2: He lives in the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 3: Oh, he lives in the hills. Okay, I figured Laurel
Speaker 3: Canyon for the vibe.
Speaker 2: No, because he would not be getting to his station
Speaker 2: on Sunset Boulevard from Laurel Canyon in five minutes. I
Speaker 2: don't care how fast his little Porsche goes.
Speaker 4: No, for sure.
Speaker 3: But let's talk about I want to start off here
Speaker 3: by we can get into the plot points and some
Speaker 3: of the other finer points of this, But what I
Speaker 3: want to try to get into first is maybe try
Speaker 3: to pull out some of the things you maybe liked
Speaker 3: about this, or that some of the things that people
Speaker 3: coming into this who aren't predisposed of enjoying it might
Speaker 3: like the footage father alone of late seventies LA is fantastic.
Speaker 4: You have to admit that.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know me, I love Los Angeles. I
Speaker 2: love every decade of Los Angeles, this in particular, this
Speaker 2: weirdo version of LA where it hasn't really fallen to
Speaker 2: the ruin of the eighties, but it's still it ain't well,
Speaker 2: let's say, and I love seeing early morning footage of
Speaker 2: all of the places that I eventually haunted and that
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know this just there were
Speaker 2: so many films being made at that time in and
Speaker 2: around those areas that it's just I don't know. It
Speaker 2: always feels like home for some reason to see it,
Speaker 2: let me put it that way. Yes, definitely, That's very
Speaker 2: high on my list of things that I liked about
Speaker 2: the movie.
Speaker 3: There was a look about it, like you said, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of early morning footage of the sun coming
Speaker 3: up over the city. You get to see a lot
Speaker 3: of cool like it felt. Man, I would have loved
Speaker 3: to have lived there at that time, in that place,
Speaker 3: because you see things like the DJs go to a
Speaker 3: record signing for Rio Speedwagon. They go to Tower Records, which
Speaker 3: isn't even really around anymore, but it just looks so
Speaker 3: fucking cool.
Speaker 4: They're all in. They're actually in.
Speaker 3: The real Tower Records. The real band is there signing records.
Speaker 4: And what have you.
Speaker 3: It looks like it's late night. It's got that great
Speaker 3: nighttime texture to it. Man, that looks not that I'm
Speaker 3: a big Rio Speedwagon fan, but man, to be hanging
Speaker 3: out in Tower Records late at night, like with the
Speaker 3: band listening to cool records, and it was records, not CDs,
Speaker 3: not cassettes, records, platters.
Speaker 2: I bought a cassette tape in that Tower Records.
Speaker 4: You've been I was gonna say, I bet you've been
Speaker 4: to that Tower Records.
Speaker 2: I bought Hell's Ditch by the Pogues in that Tower record.
Speaker 3: Did it still kind of look the same as it
Speaker 3: did in this movie?
Speaker 2: Looked exactly the same as it looked in this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was the one that was the one unchanging thing,
Speaker 2: one of the unchanging things. Now it is a transitory town,
Speaker 2: but there are certain landmarks that just seemed to always
Speaker 2: be there, so hopefully will continue to.
Speaker 3: So not to cut to the chase of all of
Speaker 3: the best stuff in this movie, but I think another
Speaker 3: thing that.
Speaker 2: It's Linda Ronstadt. Let me just interrupt. Look when you
Speaker 2: said we're gonna watch FM, I thought, haha, joke's on you.
Speaker 2: I love that movie Linda Ronstats. In that movie. Here
Speaker 2: was something I discovered only within the past five years
Speaker 2: about myself. Evidently I'm a fucking enormous Linda Ronstadt fan.
Speaker 2: If I could look at my final collection right now,
Speaker 2: he's no. Here's how I figured it out. I was
Speaker 2: at a I was at it. I was at Amba
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, and a Linda Ronstadt song came on
Speaker 2: and I thought, oh, let me go look at the
Speaker 2: Linda Ronstadt records. And as I'm flipping through her entire
Speaker 2: fucking catalog, I realized I had every single one of them.
Speaker 2: So I've been collecting them slowly over the years, having
Speaker 2: no idea. So the prospect of watching Linda Ronstat in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight singing two or three of my favorite
Speaker 2: fucking numbers of hers, Yes, yes, please, and not disappointed
Speaker 2: at all. That voice, Man, I can't get over it.
Speaker 2: It's the perfect fucking rock and roll voice.
Speaker 3: She's amazing. This movie actually, if I'm being truthful, made
Speaker 3: me a Linda Ronstadt fan because I grew up like
Speaker 3: you did. Linda Ronstadt was on the radio You'd hear
Speaker 3: Blue by You. She had that Nelson Riddle record, which
Speaker 3: she got pilloried for at the time because.
Speaker 2: Of the album. I liked that album a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, she was ahead of her time period.
Speaker 3: But and I probably first saw FM, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 3: maybe it was I think it was. Maybe I don't
Speaker 3: know if it was on cable or maybe it was
Speaker 3: when it was first released on video because Anchor Bay,
Speaker 3: I think this was an Anchor Bay released. Anchor Bay,
Speaker 3: for those who don't know, was a was a boutique
Speaker 3: producer of DVDs and VHS tapes back in the early
Speaker 3: to mid nineties, and on.
Speaker 2: I Stay with twenty one Jump Street collection.
Speaker 3: They would put out like interesting odd off the wall,
Speaker 3: not necessarily Criterion collection level of prestige, but interesting choices,
Speaker 3: and this was one of them. And when I when
Speaker 3: they got to this, it's effectively in the middle of
Speaker 3: the movie. The plot point that we're supposed to follow
Speaker 3: is Jeff Dugan is such a crafty motherfucker. There's a
Speaker 3: rival station that is sponsoring a Linda Ronstadt concert, and
Speaker 3: Jeff Dugan hatches a plot to basically simulcast the whole
Speaker 3: concert on his radio station without this guy even being
Speaker 3: able to do anything about it. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: of hijinks involved there, But for us the viewer, what
Speaker 3: the payoff is. We effectively get to see a mini
Speaker 3: Linda Ronstadt set, and this is an actual live set.
Speaker 3: This isn't her lip syncing, this is her and her
Speaker 3: band performing with Before I even go any further, I
Speaker 3: have to speak the virtues or extole the virtues of
Speaker 3: one of my favorites of all time, mister Watti Wachtell
Speaker 3: on guitar and backing vocals. He's the guy that you see.
Speaker 3: He's He's been on PROB, no doubt. He's probably been
Speaker 3: on many of your favorite songs or co written them.
Speaker 3: He the iconic driving guitar riff on Stevie Nix's Edge
Speaker 3: of seventeen Dog Dog Dog, Dog Dogada, that's.
Speaker 4: Watti wak Tell.
Speaker 3: He co wrote were Wolves of London with Warren Zevon.
Speaker 3: He's played on albums by James Taylor, Carol King, Jackson Brown,
Speaker 3: Randy Newman, Bonnie Rait, Brian Ferry. The man is a legend.
Speaker 3: He is effectively her He does all the backing vocals
Speaker 3: and the guitar, and it looks to me like he's
Speaker 3: a bit of a music director for the band because
Speaker 3: you can see during this concert footage that they're all taking.
Speaker 4: Cues from him. He is so good and so dan.
Speaker 3: I had the pleasure of seeing him with Stevie Nicks
Speaker 3: two years ago they came to They came here to
Speaker 3: Gillette Stadium and it was I couldn't believe it. The
Speaker 3: guy's fantastic. Having said that, we're all here to see
Speaker 3: Linda Ronstad and I know I am, and she performs.
Speaker 3: She kicks things off with cover of Tumbling Dice by
Speaker 3: Baring Stones, which is incredible. And this is a band,
Speaker 3: like I know, it's easy for someone that of our
Speaker 3: vintage to say.
Speaker 4: Ah music nowadays.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you music at back then, and this was
Speaker 3: probably even slightly before my time. This was a band.
Speaker 3: They are listening to each other, they are locked in.
Speaker 3: They are all pro musicians, including the one, the titular head,
Speaker 3: Linda Ronstadt.
Speaker 4: It's magic.
Speaker 3: So they do tumbling dice, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: This is a time when you didn't have to be
Speaker 2: pretty to be a musician. She just she's having no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about Linda ron Set. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the back Linda ni Oh, yeah.
Speaker 4: Gorgeous, that's true. These are the crazy, but these are
Speaker 4: not the best looking.
Speaker 3: I mean, way do you walk tell for all of
Speaker 3: his virtues is kind of a nebush.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about Linda Ronstein right there you.
Speaker 3: Go, But this is but you can see, you can
Speaker 3: tell that they are lists there enjoying each other as
Speaker 3: they play this song.
Speaker 4: It's it's magical to behold.
Speaker 3: So they do tumbling dice, followed by poor, poor pitiful meat,
Speaker 3: which is my favorite.
Speaker 5: God.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Warren, and I think you and I have
Speaker 2: spoken about this off there. It's better than Warren Zevon's.
Speaker 2: That might be sacrilege to Warren zevun fans, but the
Speaker 2: fact is Linda Ronstet was known by musicians as like
Speaker 2: the best and worst thing to happen to them, because
Speaker 2: she would shine a huge spotlight on them if she
Speaker 2: covered one of their songs. But it was accepted that
Speaker 2: once she did that, it was kind of her song
Speaker 2: there's a theory that it's the singer not the song, right,
Speaker 2: which I flat out disagree with, except in the case
Speaker 2: of Linda Ronstat like ninety nine percent of her music
Speaker 2: are all covers of other people's stuff, and for some
Speaker 2: reason that she does make it her own. That's all.
Speaker 4: She's wonderful.
Speaker 3: Her version of poor, poor pitiful me is I'd said
Speaker 3: this to you off the air, is, in my opinion, definitive.
Speaker 3: When I think of that song, I don't think of
Speaker 3: nothing against warren Zevon, he's just I just prefer her
Speaker 3: interpretation of it. There's something about the lyrics and having
Speaker 3: them sung through a female perspective I think works better
Speaker 3: for the song. No offense to warren Zevon rest in peace.
Speaker 2: So it's much more of a torture that a female
Speaker 2: is saying, where warren Zevons saying it's like jokey, all
Speaker 2: these things are happening to me, But for her it's
Speaker 2: like motherfucker, another.
Speaker 7: One of you.
Speaker 4: That's the thing he's singing it. It's a bit of
Speaker 4: a braggadocio. Oh all these women, what am I gonna
Speaker 4: do with myself? Poor me?
Speaker 3: But with her it's just it's got that twist, and
Speaker 3: she's she's so fucking talented that I can't say enough
Speaker 3: good things. The final song that she sings is a
Speaker 3: cover of Love Me Tender by obviously by Elvis Presley,
Speaker 3: and it's actually it matches with a sequence with Mother
Speaker 3: is doing her show as she's singing the song, and
Speaker 3: it's a wonderful match of the song's vibe with this
Speaker 3: late night DJ in this quiet, darkened studio.
Speaker 4: It's just it, man.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit here and pretend that FM
Speaker 3: is an important movie, that it is a movie that
Speaker 3: belongs in the Criterion collection. But when it hits, man,
Speaker 3: it hits fucking hard, and it hits hard with this.
Speaker 3: It really hits an apex with this Linda ronstat bit.
Speaker 3: Despite itself, I think the vibe is great, and plus
Speaker 3: it looks so fucking awesome to be going to a
Speaker 3: rock show in nineteen seventy eight. It just it looks
Speaker 3: like everybody these dream of living like fun and free
Speaker 3: and easy in LA And that's one of the things
Speaker 3: I love about this movie.
Speaker 2: It was the pinnacle for rock and roll right there.
Speaker 2: It was all downhill from there because rock and roll,
Speaker 2: rock and roll splintered so fucking hard at that point,
Speaker 2: like after seventy eight, seventy nine, it was gonna be
Speaker 2: hip hop, it was gonna be new wave, it was
Speaker 2: going to be punk, it was going to be all
Speaker 2: the tributaries speaking of rock and roll.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the soundtrack a little bit.
Speaker 3: The soundtrack, the IRV special it was, and he in fact,
Speaker 3: he actually I think I read somewhere that he asked
Speaker 3: to have his name taken off of this because he
Speaker 3: didn't want it to be seen as his project.
Speaker 2: But in fact, he said he took it off because
Speaker 2: he didn't agree with the treatment of the music industry.
Speaker 2: I don't. I think that's what are you talking about.
Speaker 2: Everyone comes off like gold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the musicians are treated like they're basically shown as
Speaker 3: like this incredible exponent of la rock music at that time.
Speaker 3: But let's talk about the soundtrack a little bit. So
Speaker 3: these this is, as you said, this is probably as
Speaker 3: good as it got at this moment in time, because
Speaker 3: you have FM, the actual song FM, written and performed
Speaker 3: by Steely Dan, one of my big favorites.
Speaker 4: You've got them. It was big.
Speaker 3: I think this actually it won and I want a
Speaker 3: Grammy for Best engineered song or some weird I want
Speaker 3: a Grammy. It wasn't like you were on best song,
Speaker 3: but it was more for the engineering.
Speaker 2: But it's one of my at Irving is all of
Speaker 2: these artist manager by the manager put that in context.
Speaker 2: We don't do that enough. I don't think.
Speaker 4: Should have made that clear. Sorry.
Speaker 3: Steve Miller Band is on this foreigner Tom Petty. Tom
Speaker 3: Petty makes a little appearance and as an interviewer and
Speaker 3: if ue at the radio station.
Speaker 4: But he's Tom Petty. Let's see the Eagles.
Speaker 3: Of course, bos Skaggs early yacht rock for you Boston
Speaker 3: is on this soundtrack.
Speaker 2: This is seventies rock right here. You know what the
Speaker 2: Irving asoff. Shouldn't have had any guilt at all. He
Speaker 2: should have said, what do you want? This is fucking
Speaker 2: this is I am the music scene.
Speaker 4: It's wall to all music.
Speaker 3: Dan Fogelberg, who you no one ever thinks about now?
Speaker 4: Dan so great.
Speaker 3: His song There's a Place in the World for a
Speaker 3: Gambler is soundtracking basically Mother quitting, finally quitting, just and
Speaker 3: it's just again. It is emotional because the mood of
Speaker 3: the song is so sad and slow moving and you
Speaker 3: really feel it, Billy Joel's on this, Doobie Brothers, of course,
Speaker 3: James Taylor, Queen.
Speaker 4: This was the did you know Father Malone?
Speaker 3: This was the first instance of Queen appearing on a
Speaker 3: movie soundtrack.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be their last.
Speaker 4: It would not be.
Speaker 3: Their last, but I think that's worthy of calling out
Speaker 3: because they I think they've gone on to to offer
Speaker 3: their music something like fifty three movies since this, but
Speaker 3: this was the very first. We Will Rock You, So yeah,
Speaker 3: this the soundtrack is pretty bananas and much more successful
Speaker 3: than the movie could ever hope to be.
Speaker 4: But it's I don't know, man, the mood of the movie.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love the radio station itself. Look, I was a
Speaker 3: I think I've spoken about this on Noise Junkies. I
Speaker 3: was a college DJ and music director, and while I
Speaker 3: would never claim that our radio station looked anything like
Speaker 3: this one, the vibe I thought was just so fucking cool.
Speaker 3: It's like there's texture for days in this radio station.
Speaker 3: It's wall to wall promo posters and pictures like you
Speaker 3: would get from the from the record labels. There's albums
Speaker 3: everywhere you look. His Dugan's office has like a full bar.
Speaker 3: It's all like nicely wood and polished everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The movie's production designer is Lawrence G. Paul. Yeah,
Speaker 2: also the production designer on Blade Runner.
Speaker 3: Then that explains why it's so dense with detail and really.
Speaker 2: And because John Alonso is a director of photography most
Speaker 2: of the time, the movie looks fucking great.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 3: That's These are the things, like I said that I
Speaker 3: think you and I I can agree with. I know
Speaker 3: this isn't one of your favorite movies, not even close.
Speaker 2: But oh it's a fucking terrible movie.
Speaker 3: This movie has its charms, though I'm a sucker for it. Man,
Speaker 3: it feels cozy to me father alone.
Speaker 2: Here's the problem with the movie, HP. This movie wants
Speaker 2: to be the snobs versus the slobs, or the snobs
Speaker 2: versus the slobs. It wants to be an underdog story
Speaker 2: about the most successful people in Los Angeles. They're the
Speaker 2: number one station, all of their DJs are the number
Speaker 2: one at everything, and then they go and steal a
Speaker 2: lesser radio stations broadcast of a thing like I was
Speaker 2: just like, this isn't like hijinks this if they had
Speaker 2: been the least the last rated station in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: if this was this, like underground. Yeah, we're gonna stick
Speaker 2: it to the man thing. Then everything they'd engage in
Speaker 2: from without would make sense. It would also make sense
Speaker 2: to that fighting the army. Here's the thing. The central
Speaker 2: plot in the movie is that the corporate is putting
Speaker 2: more advertising on it. More specifically, it's if they want
Speaker 2: to advertise the army, which it's nineteen seventy eight, that's
Speaker 2: the uncoolest thing in the world. Man, can't do that
Speaker 2: right now whatever, I don't care, like whatever your politics
Speaker 2: are like anyway, point being the conflict is this group
Speaker 2: of misfits and don't want military advertising on their station.
Speaker 2: The corporation has ten stations and they're going to force
Speaker 2: the ads on all ten stations. As the number one station,
Speaker 2: they could just say, fuck you, we're not doing it.
Speaker 2: We're number one, and whatever the army is going to
Speaker 2: pay you, I bet I can get the same amount,
Speaker 2: if not more advertising right now because we're the number
Speaker 2: one station. If we can do that, we don't want
Speaker 2: your advertising. End of that.
Speaker 3: So a couple of things in response to that. First
Speaker 3: of all, you're absolutely right that in a funny way,
Speaker 3: this is a reverse of slop. This is really snobs
Speaker 3: versus slobs, because it's almost like you're seeing the usual
Speaker 3: slobs versus snobs from the other side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like watching the Fuck fraternity and animal
Speaker 2: houses like nied A Meyer and his boys plotting to
Speaker 2: go fuck with the Deltas.
Speaker 4: And that's fine.
Speaker 3: At least you get the sense that this was a
Speaker 3: hard won victory and these are the best DJs in town.
Speaker 3: But you really get the sense that they had to
Speaker 3: work to get to where they were. And I'm okay
Speaker 3: with that. But where maybe it's not quite as accurate
Speaker 3: is that at one point they actually Dugan actually agrees
Speaker 3: to the deal with the army. The problem is it
Speaker 3: problem isn't that it's the army that wants to do
Speaker 3: the advertising. The problem is they want to advertise so
Speaker 3: frequently on the radio station that Indugan's estimation, it would
Speaker 3: just water down everything, like it would make them sound
Speaker 3: like they were owned by the army if they put
Speaker 3: on three ads an hour, seven days a week.
Speaker 4: Whatever it is.
Speaker 3: So Gugen's idea is, let's, first of all, let's have
Speaker 3: the DJs themselves record their own spots for the army.
Speaker 4: And he does this great.
Speaker 3: He does an imitation of Eileen Brennan Clevonne Little doing
Speaker 3: their DJ pitches, which I actually thought was really funny.
Speaker 2: Well, he does impressions of them. I don't know that
Speaker 2: I would say they were great.
Speaker 3: I thought they were the one of Aileen Brennan I
Speaker 3: thought was fantastic.
Speaker 2: But anyway, did I say the main problem with this
Speaker 2: movie is that it's that it's the actual not underdogs.
Speaker 2: It's not the main problem with the movie is the
Speaker 2: lead character. Anyway, go ahead, the lead act.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, what we can get into him in a minute.
Speaker 3: But my point is he tells the sales manager, look,
Speaker 3: this can work. Let's let the let's let the jocks
Speaker 3: through their own ads and we're good. And the sales
Speaker 3: managers yeah, that's great, so we can agree. He said, yeah,
Speaker 3: but I can't do it if we're going to have
Speaker 3: to do it three three ads an hour X amount
Speaker 3: of days a week. And the sales manager says, yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't think the army is going to go for that,
Speaker 3: and then Dugan says, then I guess they're going to
Speaker 3: have to go somewhere else. The problem then becomes the
Speaker 3: sales manager doesn't take no for an answer, and he says, look, I'll.
Speaker 4: Take this all the way to the top if i have.
Speaker 3: To, but we're not going to lose this deal, and
Speaker 3: effectively forces Dugan not to go again to his own
Speaker 3: morals and he quits in protest. So it's not just
Speaker 3: a minor correction. It's not that it's the army wanting
Speaker 3: to do the advertising. That's a little part of it.
Speaker 3: But it's that they were relentless in the number of
Speaker 3: ads they wanted to put on the radio station.
Speaker 2: And that's a number one station. You say, whatever revenue
Speaker 2: that they're going to pull in, I can pull it
Speaker 2: in further. I can do it right now. We can
Speaker 2: make two calls and we'll get that. We'll get the
Speaker 2: exact same amount with a number one station in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 2: The end, Sorry, we're gonna have to come up with
Speaker 2: a different fucking sitcom plot. We're not going to save
Speaker 2: the rec center this time.
Speaker 3: Well, they do, in fact, because what happens is after
Speaker 3: Dugan RESI, I'm.
Speaker 2: Not going to go with them to save the rec center.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. I reject their saving of the
Speaker 2: fucking rec center this time. The kids are going to
Speaker 2: have to find another place to play Zaxon, this is Zaxon.
Speaker 2: What else suppls we pull out of that defender? Of course.
Speaker 3: Galax In maybe some elevator action one of my favorites anyway,
Speaker 3: So what where it goes off the rails plot wise
Speaker 3: for me at least, is after Dugan resigns the rest
Speaker 3: of the DJs.
Speaker 2: That's where it goes off. Goes off the rails in
Speaker 2: the fucking opening scene.
Speaker 3: So he resigns, the rest of the DJ's decided that
Speaker 3: this is not good, so they effectively go on strike
Speaker 3: and they take over the radio station. And it gets
Speaker 3: a little it's strains credulity at this point because they
Speaker 3: literally barricade themselves inside of this radio station. The cops
Speaker 3: are there with no I guess they have some thought
Speaker 3: as to maybe losing their jobs and or their careers,
Speaker 3: but everything comes out at the end. Because Norman Lloyd
Speaker 3: is the head of the corporation that owns the station,
Speaker 3: he eventually is disturbed by this kerfuffle. He flies out
Speaker 3: from Texas and he admires Dugan's moxie and the fact
Speaker 3: that all of his employ he's love him so much
Speaker 3: that he fires the sales manager who wanted to foist
Speaker 3: these ads upon him and to the strains of the
Speaker 3: FM reprise by Steely.
Speaker 4: Dan all as well with the world Baby.
Speaker 2: As you frown, listen, It's terrible. This is a terrible movie.
Speaker 2: The characters are terrible, the dialogue is terrible. Everything's terrible.
Speaker 2: I enjoy it as a snapshot of a time and
Speaker 2: a place, and I enjoy some of the musical performances.
Speaker 2: And yes, I enjoy watching Martin mull and Eileen Brennan
Speaker 2: and Clevond Little.
Speaker 1: That is all.
Speaker 2: The lead guy is so unappealing.
Speaker 4: Michael Brandon.
Speaker 2: You didn't like him. I did not like him, and
Speaker 2: I do not like his character for some reason. It's
Speaker 2: you know what it is like watching Niedemeyer. It's just
Speaker 2: just because he has long hair and he listens to
Speaker 2: fucking Steely Dan. Like I'm supposed to think he's cool.
Speaker 2: He's not. He just seems like a dick.
Speaker 3: Did you know that Michael Brandon was in Captain America
Speaker 3: The First Avenger?
Speaker 4: Yes, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: I did my due diligence. I know he's a working actor.
Speaker 2: If he's a Johnyman, he's been fucking humping it ever since.
Speaker 2: God bless him. I just don't like him as the
Speaker 2: character who should have as this character, the character who
Speaker 2: should have been played by Bill Murray now, but he.
Speaker 4: Bill Murray would have had too much of a.
Speaker 2: A Bill Murray type, someone who's loose and fun. This
Speaker 2: guy just seems like a prick to me. I don't
Speaker 2: know how else to say it. I know I should
Speaker 2: be more descriptive as a man on the radio, but
Speaker 2: let me tell you, there's just something I don't like
Speaker 2: about him. Like all, it just seemed so hipstery. It
Speaker 2: seems like, you know who. It seems like. It seems
Speaker 2: like the guy who shows up at the punk show
Speaker 2: to sign the punks and he's like, what's going on
Speaker 2: down here? That's who he seemed like to me.
Speaker 4: Wow, you really didn't like him.
Speaker 2: Not at all. And I don't think i've realized the dip.
Speaker 2: I you know what, that's not true. I knew from
Speaker 2: even before the rewatch that I did not like him,
Speaker 2: and I was not going to enjoy his character. So
Speaker 2: I was going to try to luxuriate in all of
Speaker 2: the other aspects of it. But this fucking movie is
Speaker 2: wall to wall of this fucking guy in Beard, and
Speaker 2: I just couldn't take.
Speaker 4: It him in a stupid beard.
Speaker 2: It's stupid. He looks dumb.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to tell you. This is This
Speaker 4: is a movie that I just it's.
Speaker 2: All about with this weirdo thing where Martin Moule's character,
Speaker 2: this new artist shows up and basically fucks him on air,
Speaker 2: and he accidentally leaves the microphone on, so the record
Speaker 2: is playing and you're hearing them having sex. So the
Speaker 2: big joke is that when they come in that he's,
Speaker 2: oh no, it was a new thing. I was doing
Speaker 2: this sound effects record of love making And that actually
Speaker 2: kind of makes sense because people were doing shit like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that's not my point. My point is everyone rushes
Speaker 2: to get to the room to get him off the air,
Speaker 2: and the door is locked. Who's got the keys? The
Speaker 2: guy from the fucking corporation who just walked in, who
Speaker 2: gave him the keys to the fucking what is happening?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: See the thing of it is, ultimately one of the things.
Speaker 2: About was that a long story for a quibble.
Speaker 3: That was a little bit, but you reminded me of
Speaker 3: something I wanted to bring up, actually, so thank you
Speaker 3: for that. One of the things I find charming about
Speaker 3: this movie is that it is rather episodic. There is
Speaker 3: a basic through line of this commerce versus art thing
Speaker 3: that's happening, but really things just happen here and I'm
Speaker 3: along for the ride. Like I said, there's at one
Speaker 3: point there's a Save the Whales concert that c Sky
Speaker 3: is sponsoring featuring Jimmy Buffett, actually Jimmy Buffett, and he
Speaker 3: sings living in Saturday Night.
Speaker 2: That happens at one point. Can all be great performances everybody.
Speaker 4: At one I don't.
Speaker 3: I'm no fan of Jimmy Buffett, but I dig the
Speaker 3: fact that it's a little bit of a time capsule
Speaker 3: of the kind of artist that he was at that time.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I liked the song. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: I like him, but it was pretty cool because the
Speaker 3: concert stuff is we've already said is the best part
Speaker 3: of this movie, and this is just another example of that.
Speaker 2: Blew out my flip flapp guard.
Speaker 3: And at one point Swan has a crisis where he
Speaker 3: loses the game show hosting gig. His agent drops him
Speaker 3: and actually takes his girlfriend as a client. So there's
Speaker 3: a whole sequence where he his ego takes such a
Speaker 3: massive blow that he barricades himself in the air studio
Speaker 3: and they got to try to get him out, and
Speaker 3: all of these women that are swooning over him come
Speaker 3: to the station to.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and he lays it all out on the air,
Speaker 2: right like, oh, man, can't why can't I just find somebody?
Speaker 2: So why can't I be loved? And all the women
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, sensitive man, because it's the late nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies and allan all, there's a sex symbol.
Speaker 3: But as you said, Martin mul is really handsome in
Speaker 3: this fucking.
Speaker 4: He just he.
Speaker 3: If nothing else, not if nothing else. But you can
Speaker 3: also agree that this movie is maybe with the exception
Speaker 3: in your case of Jeff Dugan, Michael Brandon's pretty we cast.
Speaker 4: There's some real heavy hitters here.
Speaker 3: You can fuck with the Aileen Brenn and Martin Maull,
Speaker 3: Clevan Little, all these people are really really good and
Speaker 3: they bring a lot to their performances. But I was
Speaker 3: just it's cozy to me. This is a movie I
Speaker 3: can just put on and the music, even if not
Speaker 3: paying attention to it really specifically, the music's cool and
Speaker 3: I can check in and out of it and then
Speaker 3: I just go with it.
Speaker 4: It's fun.
Speaker 2: I don't know, background noise is what you just said,
Speaker 2: Just put the fucking soundtrack on. No, but I'd love
Speaker 2: the put the soundtrack on. I'll send you a viewmaster
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles in the late nineteen seventies and you
Speaker 2: can like listen to boz skags and go click aty click,
Speaker 2: oh my god, sunset over clickity click. Well, the Hollywood
Speaker 2: Sign looks in disrepair.
Speaker 3: I love seeing, like I said, tower records. I don't
Speaker 3: know where they performed. I did try to figure out
Speaker 3: where Linda Ronstadt recorded her concert bits could not do that,
Speaker 3: but I imagine it's.
Speaker 2: Just the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. That's where everything seemed
Speaker 2: to be recorded.
Speaker 3: It could have been, wasn't Maybe the forum, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It was one of those places, obviously, But it's so
Speaker 3: beautifully shot, those sequences.
Speaker 4: LA looks awesome.
Speaker 3: This is why, like I said, it's not just a
Speaker 3: matter of putting the soundtrack on, because I like to
Speaker 3: see LA in nineteen seventy eight. It makes me happy,
Speaker 3: even though I've only ever been to LA once, and
Speaker 3: that was frankly, it was just a few months ago.
Speaker 3: Never been to La before that, But I'm in a
Speaker 3: way it's almost being homesick for a place that you've
Speaker 3: never been to.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: I would have loved to have been in that La
Speaker 3: environment back in nineteen seventy eight as an adult.
Speaker 2: I don't know that's fun for me. So much of
Speaker 2: our entertainment around this time was television shows. Hundreds of
Speaker 2: television shows and movies and stuff, all being filmed in
Speaker 2: and around what thirty mile radius in Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 2: no doubt that. It all feels like home. It's an
Speaker 2: odd experience to go somewhere you've been looking at your
Speaker 2: whole life and you just go, I know where everything is.
Speaker 2: First time I went to Chicago, it was like, take
Speaker 2: me to Daily Plaza, I must see the Picasso they
Speaker 2: got there, you know, like rounding a corner, Yep, I
Speaker 2: know where this is? Okay?
Speaker 6: That? Yeah?
Speaker 2: There is that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Chicago's one of the best places, just because The
Speaker 3: Blues Brothers, The Fugitive, these movies, a lot of them,
Speaker 3: are the fabric of our childhood.
Speaker 2: And so now it's Gotham City for an entire generation.
Speaker 4: Is that right? They filmed Gotham there.
Speaker 2: No, they filmed The Christopher Nolan films were all filmed
Speaker 2: in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, I'm sorry, you're right. I thought you meant
Speaker 3: the television show Gotham.
Speaker 2: No, they filmed that in New York. They actually filmed
Speaker 2: New York for Gotham. For Gotham, that was crazy. What
Speaker 2: an idea?
Speaker 4: I know what an idea exactly, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you one last question, not specifically about FM,
Speaker 3: but this notion of cozy comfort food movies that maybe
Speaker 3: aren't the most well made movie, just something that hits
Speaker 3: those buttons for you. What's your comfort food movie if
Speaker 3: you had to pick one up out on the spot.
Speaker 2: Fallen Alone Fails from the Crypt from nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: the Emicus production with Joan Collins and Peter Cushing and
Speaker 2: Freddy Francis. That is a movie, or you know what,
Speaker 2: I take that back, because that's a decent movie that
Speaker 2: I could recommend out of hand. Somebody said an anthology movie,
Speaker 2: I would recommend that one. One I would not recommend
Speaker 2: out of hand, but does exactly what this movie does
Speaker 2: for you. Is The Monster Club from nineteen eighty, which
Speaker 2: is the end of Amicus Films. In fact, Amicus has
Speaker 2: already done it's not technically that that movie is fucking terrible,
Speaker 2: but I love every frame of it.
Speaker 4: And what is it about that movie that hits you
Speaker 4: just right?
Speaker 2: I saw it young enough and it was formative enough
Speaker 2: for me that even though the stories being told are
Speaker 2: really super simple, they were complex to me and my
Speaker 2: young brain. So there, I guess it's based on nostalgia
Speaker 2: in some way, but I still appreciate those stories the
Speaker 2: way I did when I was a kid, even though
Speaker 2: I can recognize as an adult. If I were to
Speaker 2: see this today, I would go, this is a mediocre
Speaker 2: effort by a bunch of people who don't care. But
Speaker 2: I didn't know that then. And it's got a it's
Speaker 2: a fucking nightclub with monsters dancing for whole portions of it.
Speaker 2: And it's got some really good songs in it, And
Speaker 2: which is what I'm saying, is the relation here to
Speaker 2: FM those songs. I do have the soundtrack album and
Speaker 2: I can listen to them, but I want to see
Speaker 2: them dancing in the club with monsters, Like that's it
Speaker 2: does it for? The visual is part of it, So
Speaker 2: I get that.
Speaker 3: And that's a great comparison for me. The unique thing
Speaker 3: for me about this is that I didn't see this
Speaker 3: in my youth, so I can't lean on the fact
Speaker 3: of like youthful nostalgia for me, A movie like you
Speaker 3: describe is more like Heavy Metal, right, the animated movie,
Speaker 3: because that's one that I've tried watching that in with
Speaker 3: people who never saw it as a kid, that it's
Speaker 3: a new effectively a new movie to them, and I've
Speaker 3: been embarrassed because with modern eyes when you try to
Speaker 3: watch Heavy Metal, it's not necessarily the cool movie that
Speaker 3: I remember from my youth. But it will never not
Speaker 3: be that for me because I saw it when I
Speaker 3: was eight, nine, ten years old or whatever, so it's
Speaker 3: always got that cachet. And the soundtrack is awesome. I
Speaker 3: can listen to the soundtrack and it takes me back
Speaker 3: to the movie. But the odd thing about FM is
Speaker 3: I can't lean on that youthful nostalgia to take me
Speaker 3: through it. I saw this when I was effectively already
Speaker 3: an adult, so it just grabbed a hold of me
Speaker 3: in it for whatever reason, it never let go. It's weird.
Speaker 3: I can't quite explain it, but.
Speaker 2: It's look, it is a trifling entertainment. I'm being really
Speaker 2: hard on it because I fucking hate that guy. And
Speaker 2: there's so much about it that I like that I
Speaker 2: want it to just be. I want it to be
Speaker 2: the movie it wants to be, which is just a
Speaker 2: hangout movie where we spend two hours with these characters.
Speaker 2: This movie wants to be car washed for white people,
Speaker 2: but it's not. They have to tack this fucking stupid
Speaker 2: we got to save the rec Center subplot going on,
Speaker 2: and it's so lopside, like every little plot thread is dumb,
Speaker 2: and there's so much of them that I fucking hate it.
Speaker 2: And I just want them to be on the air
Speaker 2: and have radio station problems and then go do a
Speaker 2: concert and hang out, man.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly it. I was gonna use that term,
Speaker 3: but I didn't. There's almost too much plot for it
Speaker 3: to be considered a hangout movie. To me, a hangout
Speaker 3: movie is something like Dazed and Confused, where you're just
Speaker 3: there for the experience. The plot is somehow secondary to
Speaker 3: just hanging out with these kids in the last day
Speaker 3: of school nineteen seventy eight or whatever it was seventy nine.
Speaker 2: But or American Graffiti, what's the plot in American Graffiti?
Speaker 2: There is no fucking plot. It's everyone just hanging out
Speaker 2: for one night. Some people are going to be leaving
Speaker 2: the next day. That's it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to spend time with mother and prints
Speaker 3: and hang out at this radio station. You are absolutely
Speaker 3: right there. And maybe that's why I like rewatching it
Speaker 3: so much, is I feel like I'm back there with
Speaker 3: them somehow.
Speaker 2: And you can totally do that, and I can see
Speaker 2: that the movie can be experienced that way. It's just
Speaker 2: that it's so plotty, too plotty. Keep your goddamn plot
Speaker 2: mister Sachs. That's all I have to say about that.
Speaker 4: I think we've talked it out. I think we can agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was not worse than Corey Ham.
Speaker 3: No, that might be the low water mark for this
Speaker 3: whole series, I have to admit.
Speaker 2: I mean, but that's unfair, because that's it's that's a
Speaker 2: real special case. As far as somebody sat down and
Speaker 2: wrote words for other people to speak in front of
Speaker 2: a camera, this is still better than Billy Crystal. Don't
Speaker 2: get me started. This is technically the high point so
Speaker 2: far FM because look, man, it has Linda Ronstadt in it, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to say it's a terible movie. Don't watch
Speaker 2: it if you like Linda Ronstadt. Why haven't you watched
Speaker 2: it already? Go watch it immediately. In fact, if you
Speaker 2: have seen Linda Ronstat the documentary they made about her,
Speaker 2: oh my god, watch that documentary. I'm telling you she's
Speaker 2: the best. She's just awesome. She lived her life the
Speaker 2: way she fucking wanted to, and now she's at a
Speaker 2: point where she can't really sing because she also has ms.
Speaker 2: We were talking off air about David Lander, but in
Speaker 2: the documentary she's like, no, I don't want to sing
Speaker 2: anymore because I can't sing like I do. But she
Speaker 2: does sing in it, like with her family, like at
Speaker 2: some sort of Sunday get together or something, and what
Speaker 2: she considers to be a wretched version of her voice
Speaker 2: is still better than ninety percent of people out there.
Speaker 4: She's fantastic.
Speaker 3: But to see her in her absolute prime, like I said,
Speaker 3: enjoying herself, grooving to the music, listening to the band
Speaker 3: as she's performing, and really just there's just such a
Speaker 3: such fun to be had, and watching Linda Ronstad do
Speaker 3: her thing, it almost makes me. It doesn't almost it
Speaker 3: makes me hope or wish that they had an actual
Speaker 3: Linda Ronstad Live DVD that we could get of just
Speaker 3: her doing songs at the LA Forum or wherever it was,
Speaker 3: because it's just that good. It sounds great. The musicians
Speaker 3: are a top.
Speaker 2: Notch man's great. I haven't checked out the Blu ray
Speaker 2: or anything. We don't do that. We're not so techy
Speaker 2: nerdy here. But is there? Does extra footage exist?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: I had.
Speaker 3: I eventually upgraded to the DVD. I don't think they
Speaker 3: ever put it out on Blu Ray. I could be
Speaker 3: wrong about that. Maybe I bought it and forgot about it,
Speaker 3: because that's happened.
Speaker 4: But the DVD.
Speaker 3: I think that this is one of those DVDs where
Speaker 3: just the fact that it was released at all is
Speaker 3: an achievement in and of itself. The only extra you
Speaker 3: get on those kinds of movies are maybe the trailer,
Speaker 3: and I think that maybe it might have been the
Speaker 3: only extra. No commentary, just widescreen and a trailer.
Speaker 2: I do love a trailer, but come on, there's so
Speaker 2: many people involved in this, then you got to figure
Speaker 2: somebody wants to talk about it. I'd like to. I
Speaker 2: would enjoy hearing a commentary by anyone involved with this movie.
Speaker 3: Honestly, sure I would too, because there's got to be
Speaker 3: stories that came out of this because they were immersed
Speaker 3: in that culture of radio stations. At that time, terrestrial
Speaker 3: radio was everything. It's impossible for quote unquote kids nowadays
Speaker 3: to understand that that's how you consumed music. Most often,
Speaker 3: you went to the record store, you got records, actual
Speaker 3: records before they were a hipster thing. Or you listened
Speaker 3: to the radio in your car. When's the last time
Speaker 3: you listened to the radio in your car? I actually
Speaker 3: put a radio station on father belone listen to music.
Speaker 2: I drive a bike, so I don't really have a car.
Speaker 2: But when was the last time I just listened to
Speaker 2: music for music sank?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just pop on the radio to some FM radio
Speaker 3: station and.
Speaker 2: Listen yesterday and the day before that. But that was
Speaker 2: not my choice.
Speaker 4: It was at work to listen to podcasts at work.
Speaker 2: I listened to podcasts at work. If people I don't know,
Speaker 2: if you know I work in the cannabis industry, I
Speaker 2: work in cultivation. So there are many stages of marijuana cultivation.
Speaker 2: One of them is a harvest, and when we're harvesting,
Speaker 2: it isn't as intensely individual. We do it as a group.
Speaker 2: During that time, we usually just have a radio on,
Speaker 2: so we're listening to whatever station, in this case a
Speaker 2: station that plays nothing but nineties classics that everyone seems
Speaker 2: to like love, and I'm just like, this was terrible.
Speaker 2: I hated this whole era of music. But they're all
Speaker 2: so young that they think it's really good.
Speaker 4: That's classic rock to them.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: At some point someone.
Speaker 3: Told me that we were talking about Weezer, the band Weezer.
Speaker 2: I don't hate Weezer, let me just put that out there.
Speaker 3: I don't hate them, but my point was that they
Speaker 3: said Weezer is classic rock for the next generation after us,
Speaker 3: and it blew me away because they're one of those
Speaker 3: bands that to me now they still feel like a
Speaker 3: new band even though they've been around for twenty five years,
Speaker 3: thirty years.
Speaker 4: Or something like that. Ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, so but I more than thirty.
Speaker 4: It's insane.
Speaker 3: But I guess my point is to me, listening to
Speaker 3: terrestrial radio that isn't some talk show or like something
Speaker 3: like that is a last resort for me, because it's
Speaker 3: not fun to listen to the radio now, even if
Speaker 3: it's a station with music that I would normally like,
Speaker 3: it's just so sterile. And pre programmed and a regimented
Speaker 3: It's part of the fun of FM is seeing this
Speaker 3: era of free form DJs with real personality and real
Speaker 3: autonomy as far as what songs that were going to
Speaker 3: play and how to conduct their show that moment. Not
Speaker 3: only is it gone, it's been gone for decades, so
Speaker 3: this might be the only way that somebody can really
Speaker 3: get a taste of.
Speaker 2: That you missed Charles Lockwooderra don't you.
Speaker 4: Maddie in the Morning?
Speaker 2: Maddie in the Morning. These are regional DJs of the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies in the Boston area. Folks Dale Dale Dorman.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Uncle Dale, Uncle Dale. It should be
Speaker 2: pointed out the local DJ, Uncle Dale Dorman or Uncle
Speaker 2: Dale as we knew him, because he also in addition
Speaker 2: to the morning DJ where he'd play disco. Basically he
Speaker 2: was on Kiss so that was a fucking disco station, right,
Speaker 2: So he was the disco DJ. By the way, the
Speaker 2: better version of this movie is Thank God It's Friday.
Speaker 2: That's a movie that is a hangout movie about this
Speaker 2: time period in Los Angeles, except it's about disco and
Speaker 2: it accomplishes what this movie fails at anyway. In addition
Speaker 2: to being a DJ, also was the voiceover guy for
Speaker 2: TV channel fifty six, and on fifty six on Sundays
Speaker 2: was Creature Double Feature. So Dale Dorman was the announcer
Speaker 2: for Creature Double Feature, which is where I used to
Speaker 2: watch The Monster Club. In fact, I remember listening. I
Speaker 2: was riding in a van, we were going back home,
Speaker 2: and on the radio, Dale Dorman announced that today The
Speaker 2: Monster Club was going to be on Creature Feature, and
Speaker 2: I could not make them make the van go fast
Speaker 2: enough to get home.
Speaker 3: Because this was before DVRs, before VCRs. You missed that movie.
Speaker 2: You missed it for a whole year, yep, and there
Speaker 2: was no guarantee it was coming back.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep. Good times.
Speaker 2: All right, listen, I don't know what is planned next
Speaker 2: this he springs these things on me, and clearly I've
Speaker 2: already burned through my veto. But until next time, HP,
Speaker 2: Where can people find you when they're looking for you?
Speaker 3: All right, you can find me. I co host the
Speaker 3: Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with my esteem colleague here,
Speaker 3: my man father Malone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on that show. You should go check that
Speaker 2: show out if you haven't listened to it. The Night
Speaker 2: mister Walker. Even if you don't like Taxi, we're funny.
Speaker 4: It's good stuff.
Speaker 3: We I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast when
Speaker 3: the mood strikes. I am an occasional guest also on
Speaker 3: the Culture Cast with Christashu and I have a band
Speaker 3: camp site HP music Place dot band camp.
Speaker 2: As for me, you're listening to it here, folks, patrons,
Speaker 2: you're listening to it wave before anybody else. So thank
Speaker 2: you very much for your patronage. It is more than appreciated.
Speaker 2: We've got fests going on everybody. We're still working through
Speaker 2: our Predator Fest, our Yahoucha Fest as it were. Another
Speaker 2: one should be up on the Patreon channel as well
Speaker 2: right now. And we're starting a Moranus Fest, starting a
Speaker 2: Books of Blood Fest. We've got a lot of fests
Speaker 2: coming up, folks, in addition to the Weekly round Up,
Speaker 2: which is on every Monday. Thank you everybody for tuning
Speaker 2: into Weekly round Up and keep your letters coming, and
Speaker 2: I hope to hear from you again soon. And I
Speaker 2: guess we're gonna leave with a Oh, We're gonna leave
Speaker 2: with something really fucking cool from FM, or we might
Speaker 2: just put some Lindaranstadt on here.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't decided yet.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't want to copyright Striker now, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Here we go.
Speaker 1: No, isn't that just so so hot? Yeah?
Speaker 6: This is mother telling you if you find it, oh
Speaker 6: you got it, then you just better keep that.
Speaker 2: Now, what you think about that?