Speaker 1: Hey, this is Rob and I'm Dave from the Totally
Eighties and Nineties podcast. While we check our vector, Victor,
you'll be listening to the Shirley You Can't Be Serious podcast.
And don't worry, Jason and d cannot only fly this
plane if they can also land it. We're about to
finish with five years of doing this and I can't
imagine stopping at any point anytime soon. I want to
keep doing this forever. I hope we never split apart.
Speaker 2: Wherever we go, whatever happens. When I look up to
the stars, I'll know you'll be looking at the same ones.
Speaker 1: Guys, welcome back, Thank you for joining us. If this
is your first time here, welcome in. We'd just like
to have lots of fun here, and if you're one
of our many returning listeners, love you so cool. I
am here with my Elvis glasses and my Hawaiian shirt
and Jason has his Honeybear bong and he has shaved
his head just for this episode. We are here for
the second part of our comparison between the movies True
Romance and Natural Born Killers, both which were Quentin Tarantino's
original script. All together, all one, all one, script. You
can get the full story on that one on our
last episode. But we are here today, we are jumping
back in. We've got you know, we talked a lot
about Tony Scott in our last episode, and we talked
about him a lot when we talked about Beverly Hills
Cop two, and even more when we talked about Top Gun.
Just the craziness that he was so good and so
incredible at what he did and so well regarded and
just decided to end it all what it's crazy. And
then you've got Oliver Stone, which is a far less
beloved guy. Now we can say he has definitely done
some amazing things.
Speaker 2: That's our first time to talk about Oliver Stone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our first time because we I mean we've thrown
around the idea of doing full Metal Jacket versus Platoon. Sure,
and I mean you've got JFK should be compared to something.
I mean, he's got Wall Street all kinds of great things,
but not any movies that we've covered so far. He
enlisted for Vietnam, fought in Vietnam, which of course was
the influence for a trilogy of movies, Platoon being the
first born on the fourth of July, being the second,
and Heaven and Earth was the third one. Did you
see that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: But I know of it because Tommy Lee Jones, right,
which maybe that's how he gets to this one. But
he was coming off of that third, not as well
received movie when he decides to buy in to make
Natural Born Killers, and he had his initial intention was
to make it a movie that was more like the
kind of comedic, romantic, still violent movie that Tarantino had written.
But things started happening that just made him and realize
the world is a crazy place and all that the
media seems to do with it is try to make
it even crazier, and so he kind of jumped on
that idea, and in retrospect, going back and looking at it,
Tarantino wrote the lines for the groupies, the Mickey and
Mallory Groupies well before nineteen ninety one. Right, But as
I'm watching it, I'm thinking, these are the same people
who were latching on to the grunge movement. These are
the same kids who are like, I'm tired of what's
gone on before, I want something more real, And they
kind of took that perspective and what if instead of
idolizing these alternative music, rock stars. They idolize killers, mass murderers.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know Oliver Stone. His movies seem a little
overly serious to me. Yeah, they're interesting, They're just not
very fun for me. Right, I tell you my story
about Door scorn movies. Right, they are not popcorn at all,
and I think Natural Born Killers kind of wants to
be popcorny.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I tell you my Door story, right. We told you
this a couple of podcasts back. But we get to
the part where there's the sex scene, there's the witchcraft,
there's the drugs, and I'm blood the blood, and I'm
happy to watch this to talk about it for a podcast.
And I get to this part, I'm like, what in
the crap am I watching? And at that moment, my
twelve year old son goes, whoa, dad, what are you watching?
Speaker 1: Right? Yes, same actors from a Twilight Zone. Go back
and check that episode out. That's with Amanda Janic. That's right.
Speaker 2: So The Doors has Valkilmer, which of course he's in
true romance. Yes, so yeah, there's some crossover here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you like Wall Street?
Speaker 2: I liked Wall Street better than I liked JFK, like Platoon,
I appreciate Platoon.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I mean these movies are not fun, right,
I mean yeah, I mean I remember watching Born on
the fourth of July just thinking I'd rather get beat up. Yes,
I feel like I'm getting beat up about this. It's
just really long, it's kind of heavy. It's not very fun. Right. So, Gary,
by the way, that's right.
Speaker 2: His favorite parts that he's ever played, he named two Lee,
Harvey Oswald, and Drexel Spivey.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the cast four Natural Born Killers.
Speaker 4: Okay, before we.
Speaker 2: Get to the cast of Natural Born Killers, I want
to throw this at you.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Natural Born Killers was named by IMDb as the sixth
most controversial movie of all time.
Speaker 1: So do we want to talk about the copy cat
killers at this point before we get into the cast?
Speaker 2: Well, do you want to know the five other most Oh?
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 4: You like that.
Speaker 2: This is, according to IMDb, the most controversial movies of
all time. I'm going to go through seven because we've
talked about seven. Number one most controversial movie of all time,
The Passion of the Christ.
Speaker 1: Sure, okay?
Speaker 2: Number two a clockwork orange understandable? Yeah, Number three Fahrenheit
nine to one one.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. Number four is JFK really huh? Okay,
just because it's so conspiracy theory based, Yeah, I guess right.
It started up a lot of conversation. Number five is
the Last Temptation of Christ? Wait a minute, what was
the first one? The Passion of the Christ?
Speaker 2: Oh, Passion of the Christ? Mel Gibson, Last Temptation of Christ,
Martin Scorsese.
Speaker 1: Really the Passion was controversial or controversial?
Speaker 2: An R rated movie about the life death resurrection of Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Number six, Natural Born Killers? Okay, Number seven, Last Tango
in Paris. You remember when we talked about that.
Speaker 1: Well, it would have had been our Superman episode. We
started talking about Marlon Brando and the fact that he
could not film in Italy because he was wanted on
pornography eature. That's right, the Last Tango in Paris. By
the way, I think the actress involved in those scenes
actually said that she was raped in those scenes. So
pretty controversial, controversial, right, Okay? Okay, so do the cast.
Speaker 2: Let's dive into the cast of Natural Born Killers.
Speaker 1: Now this is a more like a controversial cast than
we had into Romance. Interesting, like the Trumance, I feel
like they hit it on the head in all respects. Yeah,
do you feel that way for natural boar killers?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, okay, And that you're jumping right out of the
gate with the one that is the controversial question. Right,
you are not going to.
Speaker 2: Find a bigger Cheers fan than me?
Speaker 1: Right, I love Cheers. Right, this is amazing.
Speaker 3: Hundreds of bottles, red and white wine glasses, high grit nogut,
school covers, hot and a brass rail and a big
city bartender with a joe get there ready?
Speaker 1: You from out of town?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll bite Yeah, I'm from out of town.
Speaker 1: Can I help you?
Speaker 3: I went right over my head.
Speaker 1: Excuse me. My name's Woody Boyd.
Speaker 2: See Woody Harrelson as a crazy you know, homicidal killer
was difficult for me to deal with.
Speaker 3: It's just murder, man. All God's creatures do in some
form or another. I mean you look in the forest.
You got species killing other species, our species killing all species,
including the forest, and we just call it industry, not murdered. Right.
Speaker 1: But it's like George Michael coming out with I Want
your sex after being in Wham. Sure he was doing
everything he could to break out of the mold that
he was obviously getting stuck in Yes, because he'd also
played that goofball kind of character in Doc Hollywood as well. Right, yeah,
he did. But if not for a natural born kill
where he comes out and he's playing anything but a goofball,
we wouldn't have had a decent proposal. We wouldn't have
had the people versus Larry Flint, we wouldn't have had
What's the True Detective with him and Matthew McConaughey. I mean,
the fact is is that Woody Harrelson has got some
genuine solid acting chops and Oliver Stone was the one
that decided, I think that this guy can play a killer.
Speaker 2: Well, so Oliver Stone wanted Michael Madison to play this character,
but the studio said, hey, we'll give you twenty million
extra dollars if you hire Woody Harrelson. Right, But Oliver
Stone looked at Woody Harrelson, saw something in his eyes
and he said, and his dad is actually a killer.
Speaker 1: His dad. If you don't know the story, go check
out the podcast Son of a hit Manah, his dad
is serving time in the pen because he was a
hit man and he murdered allegedly a federal judge. He
did shot him in the back. Yes, the podcast does
call that into question. It doesn't make any bones about
the fact that he killed people. They're just saying, well,
I don't know if he killed that guy, but yeah,
Woody Harrelson's dad is a convicted murderer. It's so fascinating.
Speaker 2: I saw an interview with Robert Kennedy Junior, and he
and Woody Harrelson are good buddies, like they're friends. Okay,
Robert Kennedy is saying, Woody Harrelson's dad definitely had a
role in my uncle's assassination. And if you haven't connected
the DUTs, his uncle is John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy. By the way, how did you feel seeing Woody
as a natural born killer? I didn't like it at all. Yeah,
I thought he was brilliant because we talked about Michael
Madson being in that part, and Michael, to me, Michael
Madson is not somebody the groupies are gonna fall after.
He's not. I mean, he's okay, but he's just not
a blue eyed, good looking, chisel jaw guy. He's a
guy who might cut a CoP's ear off.
Speaker 2: Michael Madson, though, has a level of minus that I
don't think Wood he has.
Speaker 1: I think that's what makes him so great. Okay, born
a natural born killer man. I figured out who I am.
Speaker 2: By the way, since we're talking about Bobby Kennedy, I
can't wait any longer. I've got to tell you this nugget. Okay, Okay,
So we got to switch back to True Romance for
just a second. Okay, since we're talking about Bobby Kennedy.
The hotel shootout scene in True Romance, yes, was shot
in the Ambassador Hotel, which has since been closed down abandoned.
Uh huh, but that is the same hotel where Bobby
Kennedy was shot.
Speaker 1: Wow. As long as we're on that, I'm gonna throw
a tidbit out here. I mentioned earlier, but we talked
about Val Kilmer being cast as not Elvis but the mentor.
But he's obviously Elvis in this movie, right right right.
Quentin Tarantino did act a bit before he hit it
big as a writer and director. This is the Dulph
Lungern thing. No, although that's a good one, and Roger
Avery worked as production assistance on the Dolph Lunger and
Workout video, right, No, no. After that, he played an
Elvis impersonator on the episode called Sophia's Wedding, Part one
of the fourth season of The Golden Girls, which was
broadcast on November nineteenth, nineteen eighty eight, almost exactly thirty
six years ago today.
Speaker 4: News lies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was aired. Now here's the interesting follow up
to that. He only got paid about six hundred and
fifty bucks to do it, but because it was such
a great episode, they kept syndicate and so he ended
up making about three thousand dollars in payments syndication money
syndication which kept him alive while he was in the
process of making Reservoir Dogs.
Speaker 2: The Golden Girls.
Speaker 1: We have the Golden The Elvis impersonator part he played
on The Golden Girls helped him make it through. Wow,
that's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, back to the cast of Natural Born Killers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've got Witdy Harrelson.
Speaker 4: You ain't seen nothing here.
Speaker 2: And then you've got Juliette Lewis.
Speaker 1: Yep, I do.
Speaker 4: For all eternity until you and I die and die
and die in.
Speaker 1: Till death do us part.
Speaker 2: We talked about her because she is the daughter of
Jeffrey Lewis.
Speaker 1: Who was in every which way but loosen any which
way you can. Right to go check out that comparison.
What a great couple of movies, Clint Eastwood's highest box
office success. Figure that out. But that it is, Go
check those episodes out. That's a couple of seasons.
Speaker 2: We love those great right turn client, So Oliver Stone
wanted her to get buff for this movie, right, and
she was kind of pushed back on it. She's like,
I don't really think she's feminine, right right. She's mean
and she's a killer, but she's feminine again.
Speaker 1: It betrays the fact that she's going to beat your
ass if you try to mess with her.
Speaker 2: She actually could do seven pull ups by the time
that the movie was filming.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there you go. How many pull ups can
you do?
Speaker 2: Probably not seven? Okay, she's great in this movie.
Speaker 1: She has that perfect sweet girl next door, not super attractive,
but a little bit crazy behind the eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's the type where she might burn down your house.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, her dance moves paint a different picture. Yeah,
and she had just only I don't think she had
been in much maybe Cape Fear.
Speaker 4: Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course she plays Audrey in Christmas Vacation. But yeah,
Cape Fear where she has that weird thing with Robert. Yeah, yeah, okay,
you also have a completely drugged out Robert Downey Junior
in this movie.
Speaker 1: Why why why why why why? Mickey Miller always leaves
somebody aloft to tell the title we are your camera.
He so he spent time with somebody preparing for this movie.
Did you know this? This is Heraldo Rivera. It wasn't
Heroldo Rivera, although the interview is based on HAROLDO Rivera's
interview of Charles Manson. Yes, but there was a guy
named Steve Dunleavy who was an Australian TV shock jock
guy and he was like Access Hollywood or something like
that shows he was one of those guys, and so
he hung out with him the whole time. And because
he's Australian, that's how Robert and Junior said, I want
Wayne Gailee to have an Australian accent. Okay, you didn't
like the part. I didn't like this movie, but oh
he gave it away. I mean, you know, Robert.
Speaker 2: Downey Junior on drugs is still incredibly talented. I mean,
this is after chaplain. I mean, he's killing it. He's
killing it, but his demons are on the surface.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: Now you've got you got Tom Sizemore, who plays Detective Scagnetti.
Speaker 1: Right cop in One Cop and the Other Yep, yeah,
and he's kind of He takes off his shirt and
tells him that she wants he wants her to squeeze
his nipple as he kisses her in her jail cell.
Speaker 2: When he wakes her up, she like like Juliet Lewis,
actually punches him and breaks his nose in that scene.
And you can hear him say, I think he broke
my nose. That's real.
Speaker 1: She actually broke his nose.
Speaker 2: Yes, according to him, she really really did. Yes, Okay,
that's interesting. Then you have Tommy Lee Jones as the warden.
Speaker 1: Precursor to two Face. By the way, that movie might
be in a What the heck Happened? Not maybe that
movie but the follow up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't wait to talk about that next season.
When he got his haircut for this movie, they said,
how do you want it cut? He said, I want
it to look like a fifty seven Chevy And that's
how his hair looks.
Speaker 1: Does have the kind of ends in the back it does.
Speaker 2: How about Rodney Dangerfield as Juliet Luce's dad.
Speaker 3: Going good No, Jack Nicky's.
Speaker 1: Back disturbing, And I mean again, it's this idea of
taking people's real life tragedy, and this is all all
over Stone in the original script. It just kind of
breezed by the fact that they murdered the parrots, and
there was no talk in the original script of her
being molested or the mom abiding while it happened. That
was all Stone and his producers doing that. But I
thought it was effective in its intent to make you uncomfortable. Well,
it definitely made me uncomfortable. Yeah. I want my Rodney
Dangerfield to be funny and sarcastic, and I want my
Woody to be Goofy exactly.
Speaker 2: I want Whatdy boyd, and I want al Chirvik.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Now, Rodney Dangerfield's wife is Edie McClure. She plays Grace
from Ferris Bueller's Day Off nine. She's also the ticket
lady in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Speaker 1: She was a member of the Groundling.
Speaker 2: She was also back to school with Roddy Dangerfield. Oh
that's right, Yeah, she was taking notes for him. Here's
a couple of names I want to bring up. You
have Stephen Wright, the comedian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which, by the way, throw back to Reservoir Dogs.
He's the DJ who introduces all of the songs, including
Stuck in the Middle with You on Reservoir Dog. You
have Balthazar Geddy. Oh yeah, because when I saw him coming,
I'm like, do we have another young Guns connection here? Yes?
Speaker 3: Too?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the Prince of Pistoliers.
Speaker 1: Do you know who his granddad is? Geddy the Geddy
John Paul Getty is his granddad. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, you also have grand l Bush as a prison
inmate in Natural Bar Killers.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't see John's to know the other one. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, huh no, I missed that. Now the
one of the prisoner that I did see, and this
is only because I just watched Austin Powers with My
boys recently. Okay. The guy who the white guy in
the who's got the shaved head, who eventually like gets
riled up and goes and smashes the TV with the
chair in the prison that starts the riot. He's the
Irish guy who does number two work for like he
leaves his lucky charms wherever he goes. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's the guy from Austin Boer. Okay.
Speaker 2: You also have Mark Harmon as Mickey Noggs in the
TV version. You have Adrian Brody in this movie as
one of the cameramen.
Speaker 1: Really yes, I did not see him either, yow okay.
Speaker 2: And then just on the cutting room floor, you also
have Ashley Judd and Dennis Leary.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Kind of full of people in this right, Yeah, that
doesn't for the cast. I did want to mention something
about one of the locations in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, when Mickey.
Speaker 2: Allery get married, they're kind of on the edge of
a bridge and this is big overlook. I have been
on that bridge many times. It's just outside of Taos,
New Mexico, and it goes over the Rio gram and
it is a big, beautiful bridge. You actually get a
good look at it in the movie Twins.
Speaker 1: Okay, can we talk soundtrack for just a minute. Am
I going to surprise you with who the guys are
on these two movies? Do you know who they are?
Hans Zimmer? Okay, So, Hans Zimmer is the composer for
True Romance, And let me just play you one song.
It's one song that's his on this one that is
I just thought, this is beautiful and as soon as
the and it starts playing as soon as the movie
comes on, and I immediately paused the movie and I went,
who is the composer on this? Because it's fantastic And
this is Hans Zimmer. He's beginning his career at this point.
He's done a few movies before this. He'd been in
The Buggles too. Yes, yes, but this is one of
his earlier movies that he was composer for. This song
is called You're So Cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that, man, it makes me feel good. Oh yeah,
it's kind of fun. What is it like a xylophone?
Probably it's called You're So Cool and you know, which
comes straight from the line of the movie. But it's
just the movie starts off with that and has that
kind of it's almost like a calming, reassuring thing in
this movie that's packed with violence and chaos. Now, can
you tell me who the composer was for Nature Born Killers?
I think it's is a Trent Reznor. It is Trent Resnor.
That was correct, So Trent Resnor. I said he watched
this movie fifty times, fifty times to get in the
mood to make the soundtrack to this one. He suggested
to Oliver Stone that they try to turn the soundtrack
into a collage of sound, kind of the way the
movie used music, like making all those fast edded cuts
and adding dialogue and making something crazy interesting rather than
just a bunch of old nails music. Right, what they
ended up with it was a song burn by nine
inch Nails or that one for you. Now, Okay, that's
not that so that's cool. Even like the Hans Zimmer version,
this one plays right into that chaotic makes you want
to kill somebody style. And I have to think that
David Fincher was thinking about that whenever he decided to
pull some music for seven. Yeah, what are we going
to talk about seven?
Speaker 2: We need to Okay, I've got just a couple of
tidbits that we haven't covered, Okay, that I want to.
Speaker 1: Drop on you real quick. Yeah sounds good, all right?
Speaker 2: So for Natural Born Killers. Quentin Tarantino has said many
times that he hates the movie. He hadn't watched it
all the way through. He thought that Oliver Stone didn't
do a great job with it. In fact, he got
to that part where it's like the I love Lucy,
I love Mallory, I love Mallory TV show. Right. He
said he bumped into Johnny Cash one time in an
elevator and Johnny Cash is like, hey, I just want
to let you know me and June we love your
your movie. Quin Turney, He's like, oh really what and
he's like Natural Born Killers, we just love that movie.
Quentin Tarantina's like, thank you very much, but he hates it. Also,
the prison scenes were shot at Stateville Correctional Facility where
Bad Boys and the Blues Brothers was shot. According to
Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr. Was very popular with some
of the inmates. They recognize him switching over to True Romance. Okay,
Tony Scott would slap Patricia Arquette to get her ready
to film her scene. Okay, like actually slapping her around
once again?
Speaker 1: Weird acting, my boy? Yeah, right, did she ask him
to slap her?
Speaker 2: It's just how they got ready for it. And then
Senator Bob Dole sided both. Roll Right cited both True
Romance and Natural Born Killers as movies that revel in
the mindless violence and loveless set. Going after both of.
Speaker 1: These movies, well something to it.
Speaker 2: I also read that Oliver Stone wanted Natural Born Killers
to be kind of like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. Yeah,
I don't see that at all.
Speaker 1: No, And it was the Waco Nancy Kerrigan, Rodney King,
oj Simpson, all of that stuff about changed his mind
on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we ready to do final judgment.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about We talked about how life
imitates art, that imitates life, that imitates ore. Yeah yeah,
the copycats. Yeah yeah, Okay, so copycat crime number one
right here. In her home state of Oklahoma, Miscogy, Oklahoma.
March fifth, nineteen ninety five, Sarah Edmondson and her boyfriend
Benjamin Darris, both eighteen, spent a night alone together at
her family's cabin in miscog Y, Oklahoma. They watched Natural
Born Killers. Two days later, they left the cabin, packed
everything into his niece on Maxima, and also brought a
thirty eight caliber revolver. They said they were going to
go watch a Grateful Dead concert in Memphis, Tennessee. What
they did instead was they went to Hernando, Mississippi, where
Daris killed a cotton mill manager named William Savage by
shooting him twice in the head at point blank range,
and then took a piece of the bloodstained fabric as
a souvenir, and then later he just talked openly about it.
I don't know, why did you all the trouble to
drive all the way down to Mississippi just to go
ahead and tell everybody about it. Anyway, But then they
went to Panshuatula, sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, Louisiana,
and they shot Patsy Byers, a convenience store cashier. She
survived but was rendered a quadriplegic, and the guy that
they had murdered happened to be a friend of John Grisham,
who then publicly bashed Oliver Stone for being irresponsible in
making the movie. And by July of that year, the
woman and who had become a paraplegic, Buyers sued not
only the people that shot her, but also sued the
Time Warner Company and Oliver Stone. Ultimately, the case initially
got dismissed on First Amendment grounds, and then it got
reinstated by the Louisiana Court of Appeals, and then ultimately
was dismissed not until March of two thousand and one,
on the grounds that there was no evidence that either
Time Warner or Oliver Stone had intended to incite the violence. Okay.
Sarah Edmondson has now been released on parole in Oklahoma
after serving less than twelve years of a thirty year sentence.
Her parole will end next year. Now that was just one.
There was also a nineteen ninety six a school shooting
in Frontier Middle School where the kid was inspired by
national born killers had seen in a bunch of times,
came in like a bandaleero, like guns and straps and
even a duster, and started shooting people. Nineteen ninety seven
another high school, Heath High School shooting in West Pataducah, Kentucky,
and then, of course nineteen ninety nine Columbine High School massacre.
They routinely, in their conversations to each other before they
went and killed their schoolmates, talked about in be kaing
people natural born killers.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there you go, and on that happy note,
let's talk about our final judgment.
Speaker 1: Okay, you ready, I'm ready? Should I go first? You
should go first? All right?
Speaker 2: This is absolutely no contest. This is a complete mismatch.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 2: True romance is a lot of fun. It's interesting, it's violent,
but it's gripping. And thrilling and fun, and it's romantic.
I think it's a very romantic movie. I buy the
love story between Clarence and Alabama. I love them as
a couple. I'm glad that they survive. I feel happy
at the end of this movie. Okay, natural Born Killers. However,
I don't like any of these characters. I despise all
of them. I don't care who survives at the end
of this movie. Uh huh, it doesn't. I'm not cheering
for anybody. When Robert Downey Junior gets blown away, I
don't care. I don't like any of these people. Natural
Born Killers didn't do it for me. Jeff Johnson has
tried to talk me into liking this movie. For me,
this is absolutely one percent true romance, not even close.
Speaker 1: When you got done watching this movie, you texted me
and said, please don't ever make me watch this pile
of crap again. Yes, that's it. So I was like, Okay, well,
it's been thirty years since I've seen this movie. Really,
so I guess I need to check again. And so
I've watched it since you described it as a heaping
dung heap or whatever. But I didn't hate it as
much as you did. I could see the point that
Stone was trying to make because I don't think he
has any desire to have people enjoy his movies, Like,
I don't think that's on his to do list. He
could care less about it, right, Ye, Like he's wanting
to make you feel something. Right, Like you watch the
end of Platoon. If you're happy at the end of that,
there's something wrong with you. Sure. Same thing for Born
on the fourth of July. Same thing for Wall Street.
I mean, none of his movies. So if you're walking
into an Oliver Stone movie expecting a you know, driving
off into the sunset, and you're win a bago with
a happy, married couple and two little kids, well you
get that in this movie, you do. It's just that
they happen to be mass murderers who you should not
be rooting for, right. But I thought that his idea
was effective on this kind of juxtaposition of the media
covering these horrific things but doing it in such a
way that they're trying to entice people to listen. And
what spawned from that is true crime is the most
popular podcast format in the world. People love it. I
don't get it. I've never been. I guess I do
kind of to get it, because yes, it has some
interesting me but for people to just be fascinated and
listen to, like I said, that would rip away my soul. Right,
So watching this movie once every thirty years is about
right for me. Right. I enjoyed it For what he
was trying to do. He's trying to make a point.
I think the point was well made. I think he
went too far and did a bit too much with
all of the weird you know them behind a screen
where other things are going on and TV shows playing
in the window. Is there in a hotel room? And
this random headless corpse standing up every few minutes or so.
I just was like, what is that? Why is that
in here? Other than for shock value? Right like? And
I just felt like he was like pushing that too hard?
What can I do to shock you? And so, yeah,
I can see it as a monumental movie. Pulp fiction
changed the face of movies at that time, and everything
seemed to start imitating those kinds of movies from there
on out until we hit the twenty first century. But
compare that to True Romance, where you have Tony Scott,
a guy who made his fortune by making rock video movies,
right yeah, And so he took his same bag of
trips and he combined it with a script by Tarantino
where Tarantino's writing himself. And you put all of these
lovable characters together, I mean, even the crappy Tom Sizemore
Cop and Crispin Cop, as slimy as those guys are,
even Christopher Walking blowing away poor Dennis Hopper, there's something
enticing about all of them. And as you've pointed out,
unlike Natural Born Killers, where you're like, I don't really
care if the shark eats them. I'm happy for them
to die, right, I don't care about these people. In
True Romance, he absolutely makes you care about everybody, everybody,
and it's not some sort of I want to punch
you in the gut kind of movie. It's a movie
that makes you want to enjoy the movie. And I
can't even figure out how it was a box office
bomb and Natural Born Killers was a financial success. But
in retrospect, I have to agree with you, True Romance
holds out as the better movie. If I'm going to
sit down and watch a movie over and over again,
it's going to be true Romance. If you want to
make me think every thirty years, then Natural Born Killer
is sure. True Romance is definitely the winner. Definitely the winner. Yeah,
I do want to tell you thank you. I had
not seen either one of these movies.
Speaker 2: I had kind of a general idea what they were about.
But discovering True Romance would be kind of like the
equivalent of discovering like Beverly Hills Cop. I mean, it's
just a movie that I really liked. I thought it
was really well done. I thought I had kind of
seen everything there was to see at that time period.
So for me, this was a big discovery of a
movie that I really enjoyed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there you go. So, guys, tell us what
you think. Jeff Johnson's going to be hitting us up
telling us why National Born Killers is so good, and
now I'm excited to hear his opinion on it. But
tell us what you think. Have you seen True Romance?
Most people have. If you haven't, go watch it. It
is worth the rewatch. I got one little tidbit for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ted Dance and Woody Harrelson have a podcast out
right now, okay, and it's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name?
It's great man together, Sam and Woody.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of fun. Great you like podcasts, check
it out, love it well, guys, it was It's been fun.
Catch us next week.
Speaker 2: Next week we're diving into the seventies d super Tramp
Breakfast in America.
Speaker 1: This is an underrated gym and the reason that we're
covering this one, we're going to be comparing it to Yes,
I Know one, thank you. I always want to say
nine O two one of them. But these are two bands,
especially super Tramp, that just absolutely fly under the radar,
Like nobody talks about super Tramp, but you will routinely
hear songs specifically off of this album to this day
on the radio and they just go by and you
just like, oh, I love that song. Right, nobody could
lose in that. Hey, this is super Tramped. At least
that's the way it was for me. And so I'm
excited to cover what I consider these two supremely underrated
bands and underrated albums. Should be fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see you next week.