Speaker 1: Weird.
Speaker 2: We welcome back Midnight.
Speaker 3: You was Father them Alone's weekly round Up. I am
Speaker 3: Father Alone and with me as always, it's a miss
Speaker 3: Ripley jeans. Say hello to everyone. Ripley, that's what you're
Speaker 3: starting with. No, and you're not starting at all. No
Speaker 3: first pick for you. We've gonna We've got a whole
Speaker 3: other guest to deal with here. Listen, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 3: you got to welcome a special guest co host to
Speaker 3: the show. This is technically a crossover Father Maloone's Weekly
Speaker 3: round Up, crossing over with Night Mister Walters, a taxi
Speaker 3: podcast and its host, the the Evervescent. Mister h P.
Speaker 3: Welcome HP.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm just sitting here making my famous sharks Fin soup
Speaker 1: and listening to Shake, Rattle and Roll, and I'm happy
Speaker 1: to be here.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. It's a foretelling. It's a forbearance. It's
Speaker 3: a harbing joke of things. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 4: Trend it around on you.
Speaker 3: Now listen, Rip, you don't get first pick. Technically HP
Speaker 3: is getting first pick here and and I am along
Speaker 3: with him. We are starting with a branded new film.
Speaker 3: We're gonna be talking about this one, probably for the
Speaker 3: majority of the episode. This is probably going to be
Speaker 3: a longer episode than usual. Nevertheless, probably worth it because
Speaker 3: if you hate baby boomers, oh man, you're my people,
Speaker 3: we're gonna be talking about here. From twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright and directed by Robert Zemeckis,
Speaker 3: screenplayed by Eric Roth and Robert Zimchis, from a graphic
Speaker 3: novel of the same name. I think Roger McGuire was
Speaker 3: the original author there anyway, here's the fucking trailer. Hey, Dad,
Speaker 3: like didn't meet Margaret's nice to meet you.
Speaker 2: Margaret, Nice to meet you.
Speaker 3: Mister young.
Speaker 2: Tom sure does find on that.
Speaker 4: Sure does take a straight, too strong a course to
Speaker 4: the corner of.
Speaker 5: Beloved make qun so fast. She hasn't gotten time to
Speaker 5: make you Stop time time we your time business is chch.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Here is where we want to be. You know, if
Speaker 3: you like, you could spend the rest of the night here,
Speaker 3: I could spend the rest of my life here.
Speaker 5: Stop time. Time we do business is couch.
Speaker 3: This was our home. We lived here HP you saw
Speaker 3: here I did, and we're both here.
Speaker 4: You're there and I'm here, I'm.
Speaker 3: Here, You're there.
Speaker 4: Oh well, then either way it's better.
Speaker 3: Than the movie we just saw. What was your opinion
Speaker 3: on the movie? Not to not to bury the lead?
Speaker 1: So I may be in the minority father alone, But
Speaker 1: I really I always loved the movie Forrest.
Speaker 4: Come.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I know that's maybe an unpopular opinion.
Speaker 4: Excuse me these days. So I was actually rather.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to hear and when I saw the trailer,
Speaker 1: I figured I knew.
Speaker 4: What to expect.
Speaker 1: We've talked about Robert Zemeckis and his sort of flights
Speaker 1: of fancy. I don't know how else to describe them.
Speaker 1: His he loves pushing the envelope some.
Speaker 4: Good and bad ends.
Speaker 1: So I was looking forward to it, but I have
Speaker 1: to unfortunately I did not love this movie.
Speaker 4: There were I did think.
Speaker 1: There were some good points and some bad points, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll go into, but if you're looking for
Speaker 1: like a capsule like review from me, it was rather disappointing.
Speaker 3: Rather when I first saw the trailer and we first
Speaker 3: talked about the very first five the Malone's Weekly Round
Speaker 3: of You and I talked about the trailer. I had
Speaker 3: you on the show then, and what I said about
Speaker 3: it then was it looks like the film version of
Speaker 3: Disney's Carousel of Progress, where you would sit in a
Speaker 3: theater and they had a on stage, a rotating stage,
Speaker 3: where they would show you a house from log cabin
Speaker 3: days through the future, but the whole it would the
Speaker 3: sets would rotate from one to the other, and animatronics
Speaker 3: would act out a scene of that time. That's what
Speaker 3: this movie looked like to me now in retrospect having
Speaker 3: seen it, It's not that, not at all. Instead, it's
Speaker 3: what you would see in a museum, like a natural
Speaker 3: history museum or the Museum of Science, where it would
Speaker 3: be this is the life of a home. If you
Speaker 3: chopped it down even further, if you in fact eliminated
Speaker 3: most of the Tom Hanks story, and you can have
Speaker 3: this playing on a loop in a little theater that
Speaker 3: you would probably go sit in just to get away
Speaker 3: from the crowds that are jamming up all the exhibits
Speaker 3: at your local kid friendly museum. You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: this the air conditioned in here, and it's quiet. We
Speaker 3: can just watch this thing. What is this life of
Speaker 3: a House? I guess?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 3: Oh, how coincidental that Benjamin Franklin was dropping by that
Speaker 3: particular bit of property. Well, anyway, I hope the gift
Speaker 3: shops open.
Speaker 1: And I can see in my mind's eye the exhibits
Speaker 1: you're talking about, where you'd go up to it and
Speaker 1: maybe you'd press a button and the button would make
Speaker 1: the lighting inside of this exhibit change, and maybe a
Speaker 1: recorded voice would say, here's to nineteen fifty kids, and
Speaker 1: then maybe they play a little bit of Howdy duty
Speaker 1: and then you know.
Speaker 4: But the karauselo progress thing.
Speaker 1: I kind of had that in the back of my
Speaker 1: mind when I went in to see this movie. But no, I,
Speaker 1: like I said, there were some All the good points
Speaker 1: that I think we're going to go into are all
Speaker 1: technical in nature. There's nothing for me st wise, acting
Speaker 1: wise that I can really recommend this picture, which was
Speaker 1: really disappointing, because these are some fine actors.
Speaker 3: Let's talk Robert Samkis for just a moment, shall we.
Speaker 3: Now you mentioned we've talked about it off air a lot.
Speaker 3: Robertson Mekis has always been a filmmaker, pushing the technological
Speaker 3: envelope of what you can do with filmmaking, what you
Speaker 3: can do with cameras, what you can do with other equipment.
Speaker 3: Let's do this animated film, and we'll make it look
Speaker 3: photo realistic. Let's make a movie about a guy on
Speaker 3: a desert island and he has to get thin, so
Speaker 3: we'll film half of the movie. Then we'll go make
Speaker 3: another movie in the interim while that guy gets thin,
Speaker 3: and then we'll finish that movie. Little things like that.
Speaker 3: And then, of course, as soon as motion capture was
Speaker 3: a possibility, he was off to the races. He didn't
Speaker 3: even want to make live action films anymore. It afforded
Speaker 3: him such a level of control. So it stands to
Speaker 3: reason that he would be the guy to make the
Speaker 3: movie that the camera is locked down for the entirety
Speaker 3: of the motion picture, and him finding interesting ways to
Speaker 3: keep our attention from falling through the floor. Right. But
Speaker 3: here's what I'd like to ask you, HB, what's the
Speaker 3: last good Robert Ziemki's film?
Speaker 1: Ooh, that is a very very good question. Probably Forrest Gump.
Speaker 1: I guess Castaway came after Forrest.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's pretty good. I agree Castaway is a
Speaker 3: good movie. Take that back, and I like what lies
Speaker 3: beneath That movie got me. I responded to everything they
Speaker 3: were doing in that movie speaking of technological innovation, like
Speaker 3: there's so much wonderful like stuff that, you know, like
Speaker 3: the way Hitchcock would innovate with the camera, like Zamecas
Speaker 3: was like really firing as a filmmaker with that film.
Speaker 1: I agree, And actually I can't help but agree with
Speaker 1: you that I'm actually I confess. I pulled up a
Speaker 1: list of his credits and yeah, Castaway for me is
Speaker 1: the last movie that I can say with any assurance
Speaker 1: that I thought was a good movie from Robert Samackis
Speaker 1: Bealo Wolf was that right after that Polar Express, he
Speaker 1: made this movie The Walk, which was a fictionalized telling
Speaker 1: of that that the story. There's a documentary Man on
Speaker 1: Wire about the Frenchman.
Speaker 4: Who oh, yes, World Trade Center.
Speaker 3: I saw that in the theater The Walker or.
Speaker 1: Man on Wire, both Man and Wire was amazing. I
Speaker 1: loved Man on Wire. I did not think The Walk
Speaker 1: was necessary.
Speaker 4: But what have you?
Speaker 1: Welcome to Marwin, which was another fictionalized.
Speaker 3: Version of a fucking fantastic documentary.
Speaker 1: Yes, mar another, Yeah, exactly, another great documentary that they
Speaker 1: made a movie out of. He did Pinocchio, which I
Speaker 1: think was that over COVID whatever, over the pandemic, I.
Speaker 3: Think maybe that sure, And here's the thing. It's completely
Speaker 3: unnecessary film. I didn't really respond to it all that much.
Speaker 3: But the ending is a better ending than Pinocchio, better
Speaker 3: than the centuries old Carlo calode original Fairies. They have
Speaker 3: a better ending in this movie. In that movie, it's
Speaker 3: not good. Don't watch it, but maybe check out the
Speaker 3: last ten minutes.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, so, but that is stunning to
Speaker 1: as you dig into this, the fact that we have
Speaker 1: to reach back some what fifteen years or so to
Speaker 1: his last excellent, you know, agreed upon excellent movie.
Speaker 3: When did he do Contact? I'll count contact.
Speaker 1: Contact would have been nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 4: That's almost thirty years.
Speaker 1: Now. That's a long time, and he's made a lot
Speaker 1: of movies in the interim, and none of them have
Speaker 1: been very good or memorable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I'm gonna I'm going to chalk this one
Speaker 3: up as another beautiful failure from robertszamachas a plus on
Speaker 3: AFT as always.
Speaker 1: But the stunning part for me is the fact that
Speaker 1: the acting was so overly melo dramatic and just didn't
Speaker 1: suit the caliber of actors that were on screen. That
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of that is down to the writing,
Speaker 1: but I think a lot.
Speaker 3: A lot of that is down to this was a melodrama.
Speaker 4: But I guess I don't know, it just didn't.
Speaker 1: I guess if this movie were made in the eighties,
Speaker 1: let's say, maybe this style of acting would have suited
Speaker 1: the material a.
Speaker 4: Little bit more. But I was and that's I guess.
Speaker 1: It's part of it is me coming in with my
Speaker 1: own expectations about what I was going to experience. So
Speaker 1: maybe shame on me to a certain degree. But I
Speaker 1: mentioned this to you offline. There's this scene where I
Speaker 1: knew that there was no saving this movie was There's
Speaker 1: a scene where Paul Bettany's character is Tom Hanks's father,
Speaker 1: and he's this bit war veteran who is his dream
Speaker 1: has been thwarted. It's basically like George Bailey and his
Speaker 1: wife has suffered a stroke in the movie, and he
Speaker 1: wakes up one night and he has this anguished monologue
Speaker 1: about how he had a dream about his beloved Rose
Speaker 1: and he couldn't reach Sure. And I was so oh Rose.
Speaker 1: I said to myself, this is Paul Bentany, this is
Speaker 1: gangster number one. This guy is a great actor, and
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing that here. Anyone could have delivered that
Speaker 1: monologue with the same over the top histrionics that he did.
Speaker 4: What did you think?
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree with you more, particularly in the context
Speaker 3: of had this come out in nineteen eighty eight, then
Speaker 3: it would be perfectly in line with how the movie
Speaker 3: would have been acted then, but which makes no excuse
Speaker 3: for how it's acted now. And yes, Paul Bentany is
Speaker 3: terrible here, but guess what, there's a lot of terrible
Speaker 3: to go around. Let's break the whole movie down. If
Speaker 3: you haven't seen it yet, if you don't know anything
Speaker 3: about it, you ought to know that we're going to
Speaker 3: spoil the fuck out of this, So see the movie
Speaker 3: and then get back to us. But I mean, look,
Speaker 3: there's nothing really to spoil. If you've seen the trailer,
Speaker 3: you know what's going to happen. It's effectively one camera
Speaker 3: position from the dawn of Time up until this year,
Speaker 3: and the majority of the story takes place from let's
Speaker 3: say what the twenties, basically the Paul Bettany character that's
Speaker 3: after the war, so that's the forties. So from the
Speaker 3: nineteen forties to twenty twenty four, we get the tale
Speaker 3: of the parents of Tom Hanks, we get Tom Hanks's story,
Speaker 3: he falls in love, has his own family and raises
Speaker 3: them in the place. Before that, we get a very
Speaker 3: conveniently placed camera for the end of Dinosaurs, we have
Speaker 3: the extinction level event happened within what will eventually be
Speaker 3: the bay window of this house. And then here's the thing.
Speaker 3: What you get from the trailer is I thought we
Speaker 3: were going to fast forward through time and then just
Speaker 3: start with Tom Hanks's family. It's not what we get. Instead,
Speaker 3: what we get are snippets of the other people who
Speaker 3: have occupied the house, including the Native Americans that flitted
Speaker 3: about and looked mystical for a while for a period.
Speaker 3: So the way that we go in and out of
Speaker 3: these scenes is that these little rectangles appear that show
Speaker 3: us the other timeline, and then eventually the whole scene
Speaker 3: will fade into the other timeline, right.
Speaker 1: Which is taken directly from the graphic novel. Though that
Speaker 1: has to be said, so I was expecting that, and
Speaker 1: I was anticipating it. But what I will say is, well,
Speaker 1: let me ask you, have you read the graphic novel
Speaker 1: Father alone. I have not, So I did an anticipation
Speaker 1: of seeing this movie, and it's no shock for me
Speaker 1: to tell you that it's much better than what we got.
Speaker 4: It's just because it's easier.
Speaker 1: The form allows you to do some interesting things that
Speaker 1: you can't you just can't convey you have to a movie.
Speaker 1: You can't have such a fractured narrative. It's already pretty
Speaker 1: fractured as it is. But in the book you get
Speaker 1: those little rectangles, and what they do in the book
Speaker 1: that they don't necessarily do as well here is there'll
Speaker 1: be a page where, let's say it's a woman and
Speaker 1: a man dancing in the room, but they will have
Speaker 1: boxes to show in every timeline some sort of frivolity
Speaker 1: along those lines. So you'll see like the Native Americans
Speaker 1: doing a dance, people in the twenties, people in the whatever.
Speaker 1: So it's they're getting to this idea that times may change,
Speaker 1: but people still do the same kind of things. It
Speaker 1: could be nineteen twenty, it could be twenty and twenty
Speaker 1: so forth. But the thing that I loved most about
Speaker 1: what the book, the button the book puts on it
Speaker 1: that they don't get to in the movie, is the
Speaker 1: book actually goes into the far future. We don't get
Speaker 1: any further than let's say, twenty twenty four the modern
Speaker 1: day in the movie, right, But in the book there
Speaker 1: are frames where it's twenty one EE and there's water
Speaker 1: streaming through the bay window. Then they'll cut forward another
Speaker 1: two hundred years and there's nothing but water. This idea
Speaker 1: that eventually, guess what, this.
Speaker 4: House will be no more.
Speaker 1: The polar caps will melt, everything's going to be under water,
Speaker 1: and this will be effectively the end of time. Which
Speaker 1: I actually like that aspect of it because it gives
Speaker 1: you this idea that isn't so well conveyed in the movie,
Speaker 1: that is, this is only an infinitesimal period of time
Speaker 1: that these people are occupying this space and land, and
Speaker 1: eventually none of that's going to matter anyway, because it's
Speaker 1: all going to be water come in the twenty three hundreds.
Speaker 1: Let's say you don't get that, because effectively the movie
Speaker 1: ends with spoiler alert, Tom Hanks's character in Robin White's
Speaker 1: character coming back to the house in their old age,
Speaker 1: having a nice moment. That's the end of the movie,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't go any further than that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not shocked to know that these sort of
Speaker 3: rectangle motif was in comic book. I mean, they're the
Speaker 3: ones who chose to have one single point of view
Speaker 3: for their entire books, so they were obviously going to
Speaker 3: innovate in that regard. It's also the technique in the
Speaker 3: film that made me make the connection of this would
Speaker 3: fit easily into a museum, just as a this is
Speaker 3: how the Life of a house that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: It made me think of that. It also was the
Speaker 3: thing that kept my attention because I thought they were terrific.
Speaker 3: The problem for me was Zamechas only seemed to be
Speaker 3: employing them as transitions from timeline to timeline, whereas I
Speaker 3: wanted something at least what you were describing. I don't
Speaker 3: necessarily need to see all the different timelines celebrating at
Speaker 3: the same time, but I would have enjoyed watching two
Speaker 3: timelines playing at the same time with wholly different things
Speaker 3: going on, or the same thing or something. It doesn't
Speaker 3: ever commit to that it feels like that's going to
Speaker 3: be too much of a gimmick as opposed to the
Speaker 3: fucking whole gimmick of the movie that we're watching.
Speaker 1: This movie could have very easily been a theatrical production.
Speaker 1: It could have been a play with maybe some projections.
Speaker 1: I could see them doing the boxes as projections around
Speaker 1: the actors. But I actually I was like you. When
Speaker 1: I went into this, I was hoping for a lot more.
Speaker 1: I thought all the other stuff would be preamble to
Speaker 1: the story of Tom Hanks's family, and that's what I
Speaker 1: was hoping for, because I knew that it was going
Speaker 1: to be a somewhat of a tear jerker, and I
Speaker 1: was looking I was in the mood for that. I
Speaker 1: was expecting that, and I didn't get that. Sure, there's
Speaker 1: the melodramas high there are moments that are supposed to
Speaker 1: make you to dredge up those kinds of emotions, but
Speaker 1: in the end, it just like I said, the writing
Speaker 1: and the acting were such that I never got to
Speaker 1: that emotional place where I felt like Forrest Gump. Even now,
Speaker 1: when I watch Forrest Gump and it's the end and
Speaker 1: he's at Jenny's grave and he's having that monologue about
Speaker 1: him and little Forest, call me old fashioned, but that
Speaker 1: still gets me. There was not a moment like that
Speaker 1: to be had in this entire film.
Speaker 3: You mentioned you're in the minority likeing Forrest Gump. I
Speaker 3: like Forrest Gump. I'm on record is loving Forrest Gump.
Speaker 3: That's I think it's a perfect Robertsonmenka's film. I think
Speaker 3: it's the perfect baby boomer film. I think this film
Speaker 3: is a pale imitation of that movie.
Speaker 1: From it it was shocking because it's everybody. It was
Speaker 1: billed as a Forrest Gump reunion, and that's not what
Speaker 1: we got at all.
Speaker 4: HP.
Speaker 3: Like you said, did you connect to any character in
Speaker 3: this movie?
Speaker 4: Not really?
Speaker 3: No, Okay, I did. I connected with the couple from
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Connected, meaning I'll say this scratch that. I think they
Speaker 1: gave the movie its only spark. I will agree with you.
Speaker 1: There the movie became bright and fun and lively, and
Speaker 1: it was they That.
Speaker 4: Part of it I actually rather enjoyed.
Speaker 1: But the other stuff, the stuff with Hanks's family in particular,
Speaker 1: was so telegraphed and so obvious that I kind of
Speaker 1: checked out of that. I should have been identifying, excuse me,
Speaker 1: with Tom Hanks's character, because he's this artist who had
Speaker 1: to make other plans in life to support his family
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 4: But I didn't. But I agree with you.
Speaker 1: The lazy boy developer and his wife, they were maybe
Speaker 1: the best part of the whole film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the some plot for the nineteen thirties is the
Speaker 3: sort of bohemian couple and he is an inventor and
Speaker 3: he's slowly working on this marvelous looking chair. I wish
Speaker 3: I had that instead of a lazy boy with dials
Speaker 3: and it spins and little turnstyle type stuff. I agree.
Speaker 3: The movie came alive with those characters, and every time
Speaker 3: they were on screen, I was really happy and connected,
Speaker 3: and every time they were off screen, I was wondering
Speaker 3: where they were because the story that they decided to
Speaker 3: tell is the most baby boomer bullshit I've ever fucking
Speaker 3: seen in my life. And I deal with and ide
Speaker 3: with Twilight Zone eighty five. But you know what, here's
Speaker 3: what the advantage that Twilight Zone eighty five had had
Speaker 3: on it. It was nineteen eighty five and everyone was
Speaker 3: coming to grips with the fact that they all bought
Speaker 3: into a dream that maybe wasn't necessarily theirs. Right, So
Speaker 3: here's the story we're getting. That's the story we're telling
Speaker 3: from this house. There were other stories available. We get
Speaker 3: glimpses of those stories, each one more enjoyable and interesting
Speaker 3: than the same old baby boomer. Oh my god, where
Speaker 3: did my dreams go well, at least I had a kid.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm dead.
Speaker 1: It's sad that the biggest marquee actors in this movie
Speaker 1: are the things that drag it down the most. In
Speaker 1: terms of story, we haven't really gotten into the technical
Speaker 1: aspects of this.
Speaker 4: Obviously.
Speaker 1: The big thing here is that they've deaged Tom Hanks
Speaker 1: and Robin Wright. I will go on record as saying
Speaker 1: I thought that Tom Hanks stuff was fine. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a problem with his daging at all. His voice
Speaker 1: obviously is not young Tom Hanks, but he's okay. He's
Speaker 1: good enough to kind of paper over some of that.
Speaker 1: But Robin Wright, I thought looked really bad. The aged
Speaker 1: It was like this plasticky sheen and a lot of
Speaker 1: the time they brought her into the hard foreground, so
Speaker 1: you can't help but see that shiny forehead. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that took me out of the movie as well. But
Speaker 1: but the Tom Hanks stuff that was good.
Speaker 3: The two white teeth, I'll say that about Robin Wright.
Speaker 3: She's smiling a lot in this movie. And by the way,
Speaker 3: Robin Wright is not a warm human being. She worked
Speaker 3: as Jenny because Jenny was damaged and needed to get
Speaker 3: away from everything here it's supposed to be mom. She's
Speaker 3: not mom. She's mom in a really that character is
Speaker 3: sweet until she's no until she can no longer stand
Speaker 3: being buried in this life, right, and by then she
Speaker 3: should be hard and cold. But I don't buy Robin
Speaker 3: Wright as warm at all. She's always the end character.
Speaker 3: But that's not what we're talking about her. What we're
Speaker 3: talking about is thedaging process. I'll agree with you, the
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks stuff really works. It really works. If we
Speaker 3: started with him at age twenty two, we're supposed to
Speaker 3: believe him at age seventeen, and that's fucking ridiculous. Both
Speaker 3: of them are fucking ridiculous for that, right, Okay, I
Speaker 3: will agree that his is better than hers. I will
Speaker 3: also say not the voice isn't so much the problem
Speaker 3: for me. It's watching sixty year old Tom Hanks stagger
Speaker 3: around as if it's twenty five year old Tom. Eks
Speaker 3: like when he's playing with his child and doing like
Speaker 3: old Tom Hanks Bosom Buddies type moves. You're seeing how
Speaker 3: slow he is in that regard. It's like the same
Speaker 3: problem as the Irishman. It's like, yeah, you can deep
Speaker 3: fake the fuck out of it, make him look like
Speaker 3: he's twenty years old. Ooh, and it's still this old
Speaker 3: man just humping about. They made the right call on
Speaker 3: The Mandalorian. They had a fucking young body double for
Speaker 3: Mark Hamill. He was involved virtually, not at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know why filmmakers haven't figured out that
Speaker 1: that's the way you should do it. You find an
Speaker 1: actor who maybe kind of resembles Tom Hanks or whoever
Speaker 1: we're dealing with, and deage them like they did in
Speaker 1: The Mandalorian, and just put the face on that actor
Speaker 1: and you've got it.
Speaker 4: Because you're right.
Speaker 1: He wasn't moving like bosom buddies Tom Hanks and that
Speaker 1: scene definitely you wanted him to because he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be playing like games.
Speaker 4: With his daughter and what have you.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he was a little bit slow, but it
Speaker 1: was so much more egregious in Robin Wright's case. I
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of unfortunate because it took me
Speaker 1: out of it, and once you see her, you can't
Speaker 1: think of anything but the fact that the deaging is
Speaker 1: just a complete fail. So now you're out of the
Speaker 1: movie completely and now you're just critiquing the effects, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure that wasn't Zemeckis's intention when he made this movie.
Speaker 3: No, And I kept reading reviews saying, well, you settle
Speaker 3: into it very quickly. No, you do not. Not ever,
Speaker 3: not ever, once did I go to just buy it, honestly,
Speaker 3: unless they were deep in the background.
Speaker 1: Well you've got to make you you can, but just
Speaker 1: the fact because I kind of forced myself to bury
Speaker 1: that cynicism about the whole technical aspect of it. But again,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't as a as an audience member, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to bury, you know, my feelings about what's happening
Speaker 1: on screen and kind of knuckle down and say, you know,
Speaker 1: stop at HP.
Speaker 4: You just enjoy the movie, and don't.
Speaker 1: I can't because it's staring me in the face every
Speaker 1: time it moves into the foreground of this movie.
Speaker 4: I can't get over that fact.
Speaker 1: So it was unfortunate that I thought the effects were
Speaker 1: going to be better based on the trailer, but they
Speaker 1: were just marginally.
Speaker 4: So I guess in some cases, HP.
Speaker 3: We're having this conversation standing here, let's instead move to
Speaker 3: the center of the room and look off toward the kitchen,
Speaker 3: because this is going to be an important moment. And
Speaker 3: I really want to be facing the kitchen and not
Speaker 3: that beautiful bay window while we do that. Yeah, contrived
Speaker 3: and contrived, I'll say.
Speaker 4: Very contrived.
Speaker 1: And again I keep returning to this notion that this
Speaker 1: would have probably been just.
Speaker 4: As effective as a stage play, and.
Speaker 1: That actually was one of the things that got me
Speaker 1: kind of excited for the experiment that I was about
Speaker 1: to watch, which is, I don't mind a stagey movie
Speaker 1: once in a while, and one of my favorite movies
Speaker 1: of all time is Twelve Angry Men and that is
Speaker 1: very stage bound by its very nature. But that's the
Speaker 1: point of it. In this case, that should have been
Speaker 1: the point of it. You're in this room and things
Speaker 1: are life is happening around you. Furniture may change, people
Speaker 1: may change, but it's there's this common thread of humanity
Speaker 1: running through it. May I don't know, maybe it would
Speaker 1: have been. Maybe someone should just pick up the mantle
Speaker 1: and make this into a stage production.
Speaker 4: Maybe it would work better.
Speaker 3: Do you think, oh, they're definitely going to do that.
Speaker 3: I guarantee there's there's some college right now mounting a
Speaker 3: production of it. At least in theory, they're they're they're
Speaker 3: plotting it right now, and and good on them, because
Speaker 3: that would be a much more immediate experience and you
Speaker 3: might be able to relate to some of these people,
Speaker 3: whereas I could not. It was it was to call
Speaker 3: this story cliche is just offensive to cliches. It was
Speaker 3: just the most rote you know what it is too.
Speaker 3: It's trying to be working class hero, but it just
Speaker 3: becomes a bunch of stooges to me.
Speaker 1: Well, I knew even from the trailer that the trailer,
Speaker 1: if you remember at climaxes with elderly Tom Hanks and
Speaker 1: Robin Wright coming back to the home and he leans
Speaker 1: over to her and says, this is our home.
Speaker 4: We lived here.
Speaker 1: So I knew just from that little bit that, Okay,
Speaker 1: she's probably going to get Alzheimer's in the course of
Speaker 1: this movie. It just seemed like why else would he
Speaker 1: have said that to her. But in terms of that,
Speaker 1: it's so badly telegraphed. There's at least two or three
Speaker 1: occasions in the movie where they'll be at a Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: dinner or a birthday party, and apropos of nothing, Robin
Speaker 1: Wright will turn to Tom Hanks and say, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a funny thing. I was driving home and I
Speaker 1: was at a stoplight and all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: forgot where I was driving.
Speaker 4: Isn't that funny? And I'm thinking to myself, God, I.
Speaker 3: Know Forrest, listen, I have a disease. They don't know
Speaker 3: what it is yet. Robin Wright must be punished. And here,
Speaker 3: you know what. In there, she's punished for being kind
Speaker 3: of the underground, sort of alternate lifestyle, a liberal kind
Speaker 3: of life that she's leading. And here she's punished because
Speaker 3: she rankles so much at this domestic fucking nightmare that's
Speaker 3: been thrust upon her. That spoiler al everybody. She leaves
Speaker 3: Tom Hanks at a certain point in the movie. It's
Speaker 3: too much for her, and she goes about and finds
Speaker 3: herself elsewhere. And so because of that, fuck you, lady,
Speaker 3: will take your brain away.
Speaker 1: And I actually give them, kind of give them credit
Speaker 1: for the fact that they went for it. You would
Speaker 1: figure a movie where Tom Hanks is the husband and
Speaker 1: she's the wife, they wouldn't have had even the guts
Speaker 1: to say, well, she's actually gonna leave him. You figures
Speaker 1: she'll threaten to leave him and they'll come back together
Speaker 1: and they'll decide to no, she You're right, she leaves
Speaker 1: him and that's it. To my knowledge, they never really reunite.
Speaker 4: He just lives alone.
Speaker 1: His father eventually passes, and they make allusions to the
Speaker 1: fact that he's distant from his daughter. That part I
Speaker 1: actually thought was kind of good. Because it's Tom Hanks.
Speaker 1: Of course you would expect him to be super dad,
Speaker 1: but at least that part of the movie might have
Speaker 1: been somewhat truthful, where you know, maybe the parent isn't
Speaker 1: so close with the daughter, maybe he won't get the
Speaker 1: happy ending with the wife. That part of it, truthfully,
Speaker 1: I thought was probably one of the better aspects of
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 3: They had happy memories there, but maybe they could have
Speaker 3: had happier memories elsewhere, maybe had they gotten an apartment
Speaker 3: together and not lived with his parents and lived their
Speaker 3: life which wasn't even the life that they wanted. We
Speaker 3: kept getting that over and over again, everyone's dissatisfaction with
Speaker 3: this house. Only the bohemians seemed to be enjoying themselves
Speaker 3: in the place, So again I just want to follow
Speaker 3: them and once more about this sort of dementia aspect
Speaker 3: of it. She goes off and she lives a separate life,
Speaker 3: and she seems very happy from all the interactions we have.
Speaker 3: She goes to Paris right with friends and stuff with
Speaker 3: the daughter. They're making it an annual thing, and then
Speaker 3: fuck you take your mind away, and now all you're
Speaker 3: left with is this was a good place for you,
Speaker 3: this fucking nightmare you wanted to escape your entire life.
Speaker 3: Now now I'm supposed to cry that she recognizes that
Speaker 3: she had a good time here occasionally.
Speaker 1: That is such a good point, Father Malone, because she's
Speaker 1: railing throughout the movie. She really is kind of the
Speaker 1: George Bailey of the picture. Forget about Tom Hanks. She's
Speaker 1: the one who wants.
Speaker 4: To get out of that house.
Speaker 1: She keeps getting dragged back in because the father has
Speaker 1: surgery and has to live with them, and he leaves
Speaker 1: them the house and she doesn't even have the possibility
Speaker 1: of getting her own house. And the final indignity through
Speaker 1: all of this is that she gets dragged back into
Speaker 1: the house like a child at the end when she
Speaker 1: doesn't have any her memory is gone, and that's when
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks's character, I think his name is Richard, I
Speaker 1: keep saying Tom Hanks's character is it Richard? Is that
Speaker 1: his name Dick, which is kind of appropriate. He brings
Speaker 1: her back to the house. The house is being sold.
Speaker 1: He makes an arrangement that they can come in, and
Speaker 1: it's almost like he's kind of, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: give her this false memory that she was happy in
Speaker 1: this house and that she loved the house.
Speaker 3: It's for him where we live, it's not for her.
Speaker 3: For him, she's demented. I bet if I take her there,
Speaker 3: she'll remember something and tell me that it was all
Speaker 3: worth it, because otherwise it wasn't. And I'm going to
Speaker 3: die lonely and broken. And here's the thing. I'm all
Speaker 3: for that ending, but that's not at the ending they're
Speaker 3: giving us. They're giving us the forest gump ending with
Speaker 3: the tinkling Alan Silvestrie's score, and now the camera's moving.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, we're panning back for the first time.
Speaker 3: We're taking in this dillmicile that meant so much to them,
Speaker 3: and therefore us get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 1: What they should have done is as they pick, because
Speaker 1: they pan out and you see the house, and you
Speaker 1: see the house is the neighborhood of the house, and
Speaker 1: it keeps panning. What they should have done is what
Speaker 1: I described earlier, which is, as they're panning back, you
Speaker 1: see the tidal wave from the melting polar ice caps
Speaker 1: approaching the house, and you know that they don't have
Speaker 1: much time left. It's about to be wiped off the
Speaker 1: face of the earth. Maybe that's the final message of
Speaker 1: the movie.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It might have worked better, you know, he should have
Speaker 3: directed this movie. Who do you think, Darren Aronofsky. Obviously
Speaker 3: it would have been brutal.
Speaker 1: It would have been bruising. Yes, it would have been
Speaker 1: a searing.
Speaker 3: You would come staggering out of it. You would, you
Speaker 3: would be you'd be crying for the halcyon days of
Speaker 3: the bohemian hipsters.
Speaker 1: Would have had it, I would have been crying for
Speaker 1: another reason. It would have been crying for a life
Speaker 1: lived and loved. It would have been crying because we're
Speaker 1: all in this alone and there's just no meaning to
Speaker 1: any of this. Maybe that's the message of the should
Speaker 1: take away from the movie.
Speaker 3: If not within one they were peddling. I would be
Speaker 3: one hundred percent endorsing this. That is the message they're peddling.
Speaker 3: It's just that they're once again gussying it up in
Speaker 3: some sugar coated falsehood.
Speaker 1: I think, and I think that's maybe the final triumph
Speaker 1: of the graphic novel over the movie is the graphic
Speaker 1: novel doesn't traffic in sentimentality.
Speaker 4: It's really just showing you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you kind of bring a little bit of
Speaker 1: that to the book, but ultimately it's not you. You're
Speaker 1: not so greatly attached to any one family, and you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to root for them. It's just, hey, this
Speaker 1: is history, good, bad and everything in between.
Speaker 4: And I didn't get that from the movie.
Speaker 3: Clearly, maybe they could have see that. Everyone keeps talking
Speaker 3: about how experimental the movie is, and all I keep
Speaker 3: thinking is, well, it's just based on the comic book,
Speaker 3: so they're not really innovating there. The one innovation that
Speaker 3: I thought was an innovation these panels within the frame
Speaker 3: that are showing us the other timelines. That's not even
Speaker 3: an innovation from the movie. So what was the innovation
Speaker 3: in the movie. It didn't go far enough. How about
Speaker 3: give us Robin Wright and Tom hankson every timeline, playing
Speaker 3: every part in heavy makeup, digitally changed them into other
Speaker 3: actors like go nuts, this is Robert semechiz No. I
Speaker 3: just want to tell once again the story of my
Speaker 3: family and my parents and blah blah, blah like this
Speaker 3: is a story from eighty five.
Speaker 5: Yo.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's a mechas back to the future.
Speaker 1: We've talked about all the other movies, so I will
Speaker 1: continue to hope for the next movie that it'll be
Speaker 1: the one that returns him back to greatness.
Speaker 4: But this wasn't it.
Speaker 3: No, I'll never count him out. Yeah, but you know
Speaker 3: who does count HP? And thank god you're here in
Speaker 3: the studio because it's time for Ribs picks. Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 3: HB once again got you in studio performing Ribs picks.
Speaker 3: So thank you for that. Rip, thanks you as well.
Speaker 4: Awesome. I love thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy to be here with RIP. I'm such
Speaker 1: a fan RIP. I love her picks. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to hear what pick she gives us.
Speaker 4: The Screek.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a doozy. It's a fan favorite. It's a
Speaker 3: favorite of yours and mine. I'm assuming it's from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five by Jonathan Lynn. It is a the very
Speaker 3: first adaptation of a board game into a feature film.
Speaker 3: We're talking about clue. Every person in this rule as
Speaker 3: the motive stand back, So murder.
Speaker 4: Who do you mean?
Speaker 5: Murder?
Speaker 3: But only one of these suspects. Is the murderer? Is
Speaker 3: it the timid mister Green?
Speaker 4: Why are you screaming? Because I'm not screaming?
Speaker 3: Or the militant Colonel Mustard? Why was the killer?
Speaker 4: I would kill you? Next, said deaf Missus White, who
Speaker 4: helped her husband on his way.
Speaker 5: What's a matter of.
Speaker 2: Life after death?
Speaker 5: Now that he's dead?
Speaker 4: I have a lie, Missus Garlett, who's helped many men
Speaker 4: along the way. Practice makes perfect hun.
Speaker 3: Professor Plumb, who's looking for a way. I'm lucky.
Speaker 4: I'm lucky.
Speaker 3: Missus Peacock.
Speaker 4: I have absolutely no idea what we're doing here.
Speaker 1: But I am determined to enjoy myself.
Speaker 3: Or did the butler do it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: How Amount Pictures invite you to an evening of misstery.
Speaker 5: Murder?
Speaker 3: This is getting quite soon and mad in the movie
Speaker 3: that makes a scene of the crime. Clue, it's not
Speaker 3: just a game anymore.
Speaker 2: Clue.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're talking about gimmicks, I guess, aren't we here? Rip?
Speaker 3: That was the That was the brief for this week,
Speaker 3: and you picked one of the best. We're talking about
Speaker 3: a movie that had three potential endings. Depending on what
Speaker 3: movie theater you went to, you would have three potential outcomes.
Speaker 3: I remember I went in nineteen eighty five. I went
Speaker 3: to the Revere Showcase Cinemas to see this. I got number,
Speaker 3: I got B, I got the second ending. HP. What
Speaker 3: was your first encounter with Clue?
Speaker 1: So I am, well, my first encounter with Clue wasn't
Speaker 1: really even the movie. Now this is going back aways.
Speaker 1: My mom was an avid reader of People magazine back
Speaker 1: in the eighties, and occasionally they would have a a
Speaker 1: movie preview and I would look at it because I was,
Speaker 1: you know, eighty five was I was just getting into
Speaker 1: movies around that time, and I remember they had articles
Speaker 1: about all the different movies coming. I think actually Top
Speaker 1: Gun might have been featured in the same article, and
Speaker 1: they mentioned there's gonna be an adaptation of Clue.
Speaker 4: They had a picture of.
Speaker 1: Tim Curry as Wadsworth, and I was super excited because
Speaker 1: I knew Clue. I thought it sounded like an interesting idea.
Speaker 1: But having said that, I regret to inform you that
Speaker 1: I did not see it in the theater at the time.
Speaker 1: I think the reviews, honestly at that time were not
Speaker 1: very kind to the movie, and I just couldn't I
Speaker 1: couldn't muster the enthusiasm at that time. And I'm not
Speaker 1: happy about this attitude because I since I discovered the
Speaker 1: movie on in home video and on cable after the fact,
Speaker 1: so I'm not as.
Speaker 4: Cool as you as usual.
Speaker 1: But that's where I first probably Cable, I think probably
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it to be and I understand your
Speaker 3: attitude of the movie at the time, my pick at
Speaker 3: the end of the at the end of the program,
Speaker 3: I had the same sort of attitude about that movie.
Speaker 3: So I understand where you're coming from. And I also
Speaker 3: remember at the time seeing the trailer in the theater
Speaker 3: and people laughing, not because it was a funny comedy,
Speaker 3: but because it was such a fucking ridiculous concept that
Speaker 3: they made a movie out of a fucking board game.
Speaker 3: Can you believe it? They've run out of ideas at Hollywood.
Speaker 3: They're making board games into movies. And so that was
Speaker 3: the initial reaction, just to the idea of it, and
Speaker 3: then the critics all kind of borne that out, what
Speaker 3: are they doing? What the hell is going on here?
Speaker 4: And that was forty years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean this, it seems every year there's somebody.
Speaker 4: Else who says, well, Hollywood has run out of ideas.
Speaker 1: They've been running out of ideas for hundreds of years
Speaker 1: at this point. But I think for me, if I'm
Speaker 1: thinking back, it was probably the gimmick of it that
Speaker 1: probably turned me off at the time, because that was
Speaker 1: the heavily trafficked idea in the commercials was you could
Speaker 1: get one of those three endings depending on where you
Speaker 1: saw it, and it just didn't really it didn't tick
Speaker 1: any boxes for me at the time.
Speaker 4: I wish I did, because I didn't know what I
Speaker 4: was missing.
Speaker 3: Well, there was nothing that was going to stop me
Speaker 3: from seeing this movie because Tim Curry was in this movie.
Speaker 3: You know that very same year he was Darkness in
Speaker 3: the Legend. He was the guy from Rocky Horror. He
Speaker 3: was the guy from that worst Witch special that we watched.
Speaker 3: Not to mention, Lenny from Lenny and Squiggy was among
Speaker 3: the cast, and Madeline Kahn Lilly van Stoop. In fact,
Speaker 3: I at nothing could keep me from seeing anything Madeline
Speaker 3: Cohn was in because Madeline Kahn was a hometown girl.
Speaker 3: Madeline Kahn was born in Revere, Massachusetts, which is the
Speaker 3: town I grew up in down on Shirley Avenue. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I had to go and I was also pissed that
Speaker 3: they did the multiple endings. Not because there were multiple
Speaker 3: endings and I would have to attend the movie multiple
Speaker 3: times in order to see it, but because I only
Speaker 3: really had access to one theater and the only other
Speaker 3: closest theater was also showing the same ending.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was kind of wondering. I would assume they
Speaker 1: just had one print per theater, so there's no way
Speaker 1: you could see Clue in the same theater and hope
Speaker 1: to get more than one ending.
Speaker 3: Oh no, shame your theater was getting that ending.
Speaker 4: Was maybe not as well thought out as it should
Speaker 4: have been.
Speaker 1: It would have been nice to have that random aspects.
Speaker 3: What's crazy is this was the time of multiplexus. Like
Speaker 3: the theater I saw it and was like at least
Speaker 3: a ten screen, So three of those houses could have
Speaker 3: been Clue and you could just decide which one you
Speaker 3: were gonna go see. I mean, that makes no sense
Speaker 3: financially at all split your split it that way, but
Speaker 3: you could just do Yeah, I don't know, it would
Speaker 3: be cross prohibitive. I guess to give multiple prints and
Speaker 3: you just play them at different times during the day.
Speaker 1: I remember when Clue finally came out on DVD. I
Speaker 1: think sometime in the late nineties they had Knops and where.
Speaker 1: Because it was this DVD this technology, you could have
Speaker 1: it randomly select an ending for you as you're watching
Speaker 1: the movie, and it would, you know, seamlessly. I thought
Speaker 1: that was kind of neat, although by that point I
Speaker 1: was so used to the ending that was on the vhs,
Speaker 1: which is they just go through all three of them
Speaker 1: and say it could have happened this way, but here's
Speaker 1: how it really happened.
Speaker 4: But I appreciate. Yeah, how could you not be happy?
Speaker 1: The music, everything? It makes me smile just thinking about it. Actually,
Speaker 1: fun fact, I have several fun facts about Clue, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, Father Malone. My first fun fact that
Speaker 1: I'm going to present to you is so famously Clue
Speaker 1: was a hard movie to crack for screenwriters. I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you make a movie out of this silly
Speaker 1: kids game?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: One of the many writers that took a stab at
Speaker 1: writing the screenplay. I only recently found this out, the
Speaker 1: team of Anthony Perkins and Steven Sondheim.
Speaker 4: Did you know this? They took a stab at writing it.
Speaker 3: It only makes sense because they wrote the last of Shila,
Speaker 3: which is a fucking great.
Speaker 4: The Last of Shila.
Speaker 1: The problem with them was, I as I understand it,
Speaker 1: they wanted a lot of money to write the movie.
Speaker 1: And John Landis, who was at a certain point he
Speaker 1: was supposed to direct the movie and he was putting
Speaker 1: all the pieces together, he said, no, we can't do that.
Speaker 1: I think Tom Stoppard also was one of the people
Speaker 1: that took a stab at writing. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people for Jonathan Lynn, who eventually was the writer,
Speaker 1: but Tom Stoppard. What I understand with him is he
Speaker 1: tried to write it. He then wrote a letter back
Speaker 1: to John Landis and said, I'm sorry, I tried. I
Speaker 1: can't get this thing to work at all. And he
Speaker 1: sent back to check his payment for the movie because
Speaker 1: he said, I can't do it. So why am I
Speaker 1: going to take the money for this screenwriting gig? That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think maybe I think there were maybe five or
Speaker 1: six that took passes at it before Jonathan Lynn ultimately took.
Speaker 4: On the gig.
Speaker 3: That's fascinating. You didn't know that about it, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I knew. Tom Stoppard was honestly the guy for rewrites.
Speaker 3: Basically he would from my understanding from people I knew
Speaker 3: at the time, Tom Staffer would fly into Los Angeles
Speaker 3: for two weeks once a year and he would just
Speaker 3: have stacks of scripts and he would just go through
Speaker 3: and fix everything and then hand it off. And he
Speaker 3: never got credit and everything. So he's like the biggest ghostwriter,
Speaker 3: like more so than the Goldman. So it doesn't surprise
Speaker 3: me that, having not been able to give them a script,
Speaker 3: that he gave them their money back. He wasn't hurting
Speaker 3: for cash like those ghostwriting gigs pay a lot.
Speaker 1: One of the stories that I had heard about was
Speaker 1: it was actually going to be not strictly clue related,
Speaker 1: but it was going to be this I think it
Speaker 1: was a cop and he was going to start receiving
Speaker 1: these clue cards in the mail, like one might say
Speaker 1: it was Mustard in the study with the wrench, and
Speaker 1: then there'd be a murder that would be someone named
Speaker 1: mister Mustard in the study with the wrench, and it
Speaker 1: was a serial killer who was basically providing these clues
Speaker 1: to this detective or this.
Speaker 4: Cop or whatever.
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, I'm so glad we got what
Speaker 1: we got, I guess, is my point. I think that
Speaker 1: just a wonderful script, you could.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I understand is they've been trying
Speaker 1: to get a a remake of Clue off the ground
Speaker 1: for several years now.
Speaker 3: Were you aware of that too, Well, not specifically, but
Speaker 3: I'm not in any way surprised because they're just trying
Speaker 3: to remake anything that they can.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think Brian Reynolds is attached.
Speaker 3: Of course, because he is, but I don't. The thing
Speaker 3: about this movie, the reason that we're talking about it
Speaker 3: as fondly as we are, is there's some sort of
Speaker 3: alchemical reaction going on here. It's this script, it's this setting.
Speaker 3: Making this a throwback to the old dark House trope
Speaker 3: was the best thing that they could have done with this,
Speaker 3: and getting all of our characters there immediately. There doesn't
Speaker 3: need to be a rambling story of that anywhere.
Speaker 1: Right, And the fact that's it ended up as a farce,
Speaker 1: which is I think it's one of the most wonderful
Speaker 1: aspect Because as a I was eighty five, so I
Speaker 1: was about twelve years old. I didn't know what farce
Speaker 1: really was at that point, but I knew that I
Speaker 1: love the rhythm and the speed of the acting.
Speaker 3: And the cast. That's the other sort of part of
Speaker 3: this brew is that not only do you have this
Speaker 3: right director and this right setting and all of the
Speaker 3: right crews giving that, but then this cast of disparate
Speaker 3: powerhouse character actors, how can you go wrong?
Speaker 1: Did you know here's another fun fact. Did you know
Speaker 1: who was originally supposed to play Miss Scarlett?
Speaker 3: I bet you know she's you know what I think
Speaker 3: I did at one point, But please tell me so
Speaker 3: I can bemoan her not being in it, because the
Speaker 3: one problem in this movie is Leslie Anne Warren.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly rights it was.
Speaker 1: Carrie Fisher was a right Oh my god.
Speaker 3: She would have fucking been awesome.
Speaker 1: She would have been fantastic. She would have had that
Speaker 1: that that droll attitude that's been there seeing everything the
Speaker 1: problem with And I've seen interviews where Jonathan Lynne tells
Speaker 1: a story many many times.
Speaker 4: Where he hired her.
Speaker 1: They when he told people that he was going to
Speaker 1: be hiring Carrie Fisher at the time, she was she
Speaker 1: had a very serious drug problem. It's no secret. She's
Speaker 1: written about it many many times. She was an open book.
Speaker 1: But he got this warning, you got beat to watch out.
Speaker 1: She's got a drug problem, he said.
Speaker 4: Whatever. He says.
Speaker 1: He met with her and as she was walking to
Speaker 1: the table, she fell. He said, this is a little weird.
Speaker 1: It's an accident. She was he as he says, puts it.
Speaker 1: She was sniffling through the whole lunch, and he's, that's
Speaker 1: a little weird. And so he went to go talk
Speaker 1: to Deborah Hill and say, what do you think about
Speaker 1: Carrie Fisher. I think she's on Is this a good casting?
Speaker 1: And then he says, well, I think everybody that I
Speaker 1: talked to had a care of hay fever. Because Deborah
Speaker 1: Hill was sniffling as well, and she said, it's not
Speaker 1: a problem. So I think what he's saying is everybody
Speaker 1: I think at that point was probably on cocaine. The
Speaker 1: problem was to long story, short story, long is everybody
Speaker 1: was fine with her doing this role.
Speaker 4: The studio.
Speaker 1: She could not get insured was the problem because her
Speaker 1: problem was so severe with drugs she could not get
Speaker 1: And this was only I want to say, three or
Speaker 1: four days before they would start they were supposed to
Speaker 1: start shooting the movie. She had to drop out because
Speaker 1: she went to rehab. So enter Leslie and Warren, who
Speaker 1: I'm actually surprised to say that you didn't like her.
Speaker 4: I thought she was fine in this I.
Speaker 1: Thought she's supposed to be a little bit older, a
Speaker 1: little bit wiser, a little bit more street wise.
Speaker 4: I thought she was fine. What didn't you like about her?
Speaker 3: Her performance? It's terrible. It's she's the most actorly of
Speaker 3: the bunch. When I say that, it's this is peopled
Speaker 3: with hard hitting character actors, not her. She's outclassed by
Speaker 3: every single person in this movie. She's outclassed by Jane Weedland,
Speaker 3: who doesn't have an actual line of dialogue.
Speaker 1: I you're singing, that's like the best That part of
Speaker 1: the movie is great.
Speaker 3: That's that was the best joke in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's almost like at that point the movie
Speaker 1: kind of stops and you kind of take a breath
Speaker 1: because they go room to room looking at all the
Speaker 1: new the fresh corpses that have appeared.
Speaker 3: And they were right to have that much air in
Speaker 3: the room. It's all silent for that because I remember
Speaker 3: in the theater when Jane Whedland gets shot, I hate saying, man.
Speaker 5: I are you're singing? Tarletgren.
Speaker 3: The laughter lasted basically until the dialogue started again.
Speaker 4: Smart but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I don't disagree with you that
Speaker 1: Leslian Warren isn't of the caliber of certainly not a
Speaker 1: Madeline Khan or an Eileen Brennan.
Speaker 4: I mean, how could she be? She was fine. I
Speaker 4: didn't she didn't affect the movie negatively. For me. I'm
Speaker 4: fine with her.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I'm a little surprised that you
Speaker 1: didn't like her performance at all.
Speaker 3: She's over acting in every way, and you know, who knows.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's that she feels like she's up against it, like,
Speaker 3: if not powerhouse character actors, powerhouse comedians, they're all fucking
Speaker 3: hilarious people. It's Martin Maull, Michael McKean, Tim Curry.
Speaker 1: I don't blame her for feeling probably outclassed by everybody,
Speaker 1: because it is.
Speaker 4: It's a murderer's row of like.
Speaker 1: You said, all timer comedians and comic actors. It's so
Speaker 1: it's funny to me that this movie just became this
Speaker 1: little cult movie, because by all rights, this should have
Speaker 1: been like boffo box office because these are amazing players
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she doesn't add up to them. She doesn't
Speaker 3: get their level at all. She's very pretty. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's very sexy. I like looking at her certainly, but
Speaker 3: she's not my favorite part of this movie at all.
Speaker 4: What is your favorite? Who is your favorite?
Speaker 1: I think I know mine, obviously, I think I know yours.
Speaker 1: But who's your favorite player in this movie?
Speaker 3: Michael McKean is my favorite player in this movie. He's
Speaker 3: so fucking subtle. All yes, all, every line reading of
Speaker 3: his just sticks out in my head because it's so nuanced,
Speaker 3: like every Here's the thing what Lesley and Warren isn't
Speaker 3: getting is that these people aren't being funny by overplaying anything.
Speaker 3: Everyone is playing it deadly, seriously, and no more than
Speaker 3: Michael McKean.
Speaker 4: That's very good. Mind.
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit generic, But my favorite has always
Speaker 1: been Tim Curry. I think he's like a force of
Speaker 1: nature in this movie. That the fact that when he
Speaker 1: goes and has to explain how the murders happened, and
Speaker 1: it's ten minutes of breathless exposition and running from room
Speaker 1: to room picking people up, slapping them, pushing them down.
Speaker 1: He's I don't know how you compete with that. He's
Speaker 1: tremendous in this movie. In a career filled with tremendous roles.
Speaker 3: This is Sorry Sudden, Hello Sudden, a cameo of by
Speaker 3: producer Foxy Brown.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, I call me.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an obvious choice, but I adore Tim Curry
Speaker 1: in this I think he's fabulous.
Speaker 3: Everyone's fabulous in it. I was about to say this
Speaker 3: movie only works because Tim Curry is in it, but
Speaker 3: and that's true. If you didn't have him inte, this
Speaker 3: movie wouldn't work. But then if you didn't have modelincon
Speaker 3: it wouldn't work either. If it didn't have Michae McKain,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't work. If you didn't have lee Ving with
Speaker 3: somebody else's voice, it wouldn't work.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 1: I have to give you credit because in last week's roundup,
Speaker 1: you casually threw out the idea that Leeving's voice was
Speaker 1: re dubbed in this movie. I've been watching this movie
Speaker 1: for close to forty years.
Speaker 4: I never knew that.
Speaker 1: And now I can't stop thinking about it. Every time
Speaker 1: I want to go back and rewatch it. That's how
Speaker 1: where did you learn this?
Speaker 3: I don't even remember, honestly, But but what's funny is
Speaker 3: once you once that knowledge entered your mind, it made sense.
Speaker 3: Right then when you started thinking about mister Body and
Speaker 3: how he was talking. You're like, yeah, that is that guy.
Speaker 1: Tell the listeners father, m alone, who that voice belongs to?
Speaker 3: Oh, Rennie Santoni. I think most people know him as
Speaker 3: Poppy from Seinfeld. He's the He's the gentleman who leaves
Speaker 3: the embarrassing stain on the couch. And I said it
Speaker 3: in the last round of I'll say it here again.
Speaker 3: It's a fucking crime that that's the only thing people
Speaker 3: are going to probably recognize him from. But it's the
Speaker 3: easiest sign and signifier of who that man was. I
Speaker 3: remember him from the Dirty Harry movie. He was Harry
Speaker 3: Callahan's partner there for one movie, and he certainly had
Speaker 3: a big career. But yeah, once you want, because you
Speaker 3: know that guy's voice, and once you hear that it
Speaker 3: was his voice coming out of Leaving's mouth, it's, oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: How did I think it was anything? But it doesn't
Speaker 3: sound anything like Leaving.
Speaker 1: No, And I actually in doing a little more legwork,
Speaker 1: I actually so it's interesting to learn that.
Speaker 4: Did you know why Leaving.
Speaker 1: Was cast as mister Body? Have you ever chased that
Speaker 1: information up? No, enlighten me, what's fascinating is the studio
Speaker 1: wanted Leaving. The studio pushed for him to play mister
Speaker 1: Body because knowing that he was this musical icon, they
Speaker 1: figured that that would actually bring people to the theater
Speaker 1: that Leaving. I just think that's I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: say that at twelve years old, or however old they was,
Speaker 1: I would have even known who Leaving was, but they
Speaker 1: were counting on the fact that he would have name
Speaker 1: recognition as mister Body.
Speaker 3: They did that plan work for Universal with Streets of
Speaker 3: Fire because he's the number two guy to Willem Dafoe
Speaker 3: in that movie.
Speaker 4: That's right, he was in Streets of Fire?
Speaker 3: Did it work in nineteen about that? Did it work
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty three and Get Crazy? Alan Arkish's comedic masterpiece?
Speaker 3: Did it work then? Who was thinking Leaving was a
Speaker 3: bankable star? Did it work in Dudes?
Speaker 1: Well, like Jonathan Lynn said, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: hay fever going around Hollywood at the time, so maybe
Speaker 1: they were a little clouded by their medication to know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's fascinating because I didn't. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: much later that I even knew who Leaving was.
Speaker 4: As a kid.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking this is just some actor who's in
Speaker 1: this movie. Then come to find out later seeing him
Speaker 1: on SNL, the famous you Know Fear episode of SNL,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a mind blower to me that
Speaker 1: this guy was a punk rock icon.
Speaker 4: I thought it was cool.
Speaker 3: You know, New York's all right if you like Saxophones,
Speaker 3: I love I love that song.
Speaker 1: Oh I love it so so yeah, there's all right
Speaker 1: if you want to freeze to death. So I found
Speaker 1: a quote attributed to Michael McKean that he basically said
Speaker 1: that Forrest is what happens on your worst day, something
Speaker 1: to that effect, and I and just thinking about that's
Speaker 1: kind of that's the key to this whole movie, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's you can't say that any one of
Speaker 1: these characters this is their worst day ever. All of
Speaker 1: them are being blackmailed, all of them are involved in
Speaker 1: this web of murder and suspicion, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's what That's where Farrest begins, right, It's the comedic
Speaker 1: expression of that. And I just I think it just
Speaker 1: moves at such a brisk pace. It's just by the way,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that Jonathan Lynn directed My cousin Vinnie.
Speaker 1: Did you know that?
Speaker 3: I did know that.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Sorry to switch topics very quickly, but that was another thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're not going to switch topics. I don't like
Speaker 3: that movie.
Speaker 4: Let me ask you this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we're far enough into this yet,
Speaker 1: but let me ask you what your favorite ending is.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's the one where they all did it.
Speaker 4: Me too.
Speaker 1: I was pulling for the one where Wadsworth is the
Speaker 1: hero because I like I said, I like the fact.
Speaker 1: I just like that he's a good at least you
Speaker 1: think he's a good person.
Speaker 4: Did you know?
Speaker 1: Here's my final fun fact of the of the episode.
Speaker 1: Did you know there was a fourth ending?
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 4: You did not know this.
Speaker 1: In fact, this ending was obviously he not never I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was shot, but it was certainly
Speaker 1: never produced. It was in the novelization by Michael McDowell.
Speaker 1: Did you know there was a novelization to Clue?
Speaker 3: No, And it's by Michael McDowell.
Speaker 4: It is by Michael McDowell.
Speaker 3: Said by Michael McDowell or Michael Cube McDowell.
Speaker 4: The book just said Michael McDowell.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, The creator of Bubble Juice.
Speaker 1: There's no bio. It just says Michael McDowell. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's the same Michael McDowell's beetlejuice, but
Speaker 1: take that for what it is.
Speaker 3: So this fourth ending, what is the fourth ending? What
Speaker 3: is the miss four? The mystery of Clue?
Speaker 1: So the fourth ending is Wadsworth. He just basically Wadsworth
Speaker 1: did it all, okay? He he wanted to be the
Speaker 1: perfect husband, but his wife killed herself. He wanted to
Speaker 1: be the perfect butler because but he was driven to
Speaker 1: kill his employer because he was being blackmailed. So in
Speaker 1: an effort to attain perfection, he decided to try to
Speaker 1: commit the perfect crime by killing his boss, to which
Speaker 1: all of the other players say, well, how is this
Speaker 1: the perfect crime? Because we're all we know what you did.
Speaker 1: He says, ahh, I've poisoned the champagne and you all
Speaker 1: have a very little time left. So what I'm going
Speaker 1: to do is I'm going to lock.
Speaker 4: You all into this mansion.
Speaker 1: You will all die here, and I will leave having
Speaker 1: committed the perfect crime. So he goes to the door.
Speaker 1: He opens the door, the Howard Hessman evangelist character is there.
Speaker 1: He bursts in all the g men come in, they
Speaker 1: take control of the situation.
Speaker 3: We hear that one more time, right.
Speaker 1: So they then they say to him, well, what how
Speaker 1: did this all happen? How did this all come to be?
Speaker 1: And he starts to reenact. Wadsworth starts to reenact the
Speaker 1: crime or the sequence of events again. When he gets
Speaker 1: the part where he opens the door for Colonel Mustard,
Speaker 1: he opens the door and dashes out of the house. Okay,
Speaker 1: he steals a police car and starts driving away, thinking
Speaker 1: that he's gotten off Scott free. He hears a snarling sound.
Speaker 1: He looks in the rear in the backseat the three
Speaker 1: there's three doberman's there snarling and waiting to leap on him.
Speaker 4: And that's the end.
Speaker 1: It's a terrible, terrible Don't get me wrong, this is
Speaker 1: a terrible ending. Jonathan Lynn said as much.
Speaker 3: Huh, I don't like that ending.
Speaker 4: It's bad. It's bad.
Speaker 1: And that's precisely why Jonathan Lynn didn't actually produce it
Speaker 1: for the movie. But anyone who can find a copy
Speaker 1: of this Michael McDowell book, it is one of the
Speaker 1: endings in the book, So technically it's cannon. I guess
Speaker 1: if you're gonna be particular, HP.
Speaker 3: I'm going to describe my favorite moment in the movie
Speaker 3: please do. And it is a movie filled with favorite moments,
Speaker 3: but the favoritest of the favorites is when early on
Speaker 3: they've they're all in the drawing room for the first
Speaker 3: time and wants Worth has to correct they had to
Speaker 3: kill me in public?
Speaker 1: Want kell you in public?
Speaker 3: I think he's threatened in public to kill her. And
Speaker 3: then he rolls his eyes, and that eye roll is everything.
Speaker 3: It makes me laugh every single time. That is what
Speaker 3: I aspire to if I ever roll my eyes, it's
Speaker 3: to be as perfect as that ideal that Tim Curry
Speaker 3: presents in this movie.
Speaker 4: During that scene, he's amazing. He's in it. I mean
Speaker 4: he has for sure.
Speaker 1: He probably has twice as many lines as some of
Speaker 1: these other actors in this movie. But he it's so
Speaker 1: breathlessly delivered, but it's so cleanly delivered. And he's funny,
Speaker 1: he's slapstick, he's energetic, he's everything that you want him
Speaker 1: to be to He's the glue that holds this movie together.
Speaker 1: As you said, despite the fact that this movie's filled
Speaker 1: with ringers that are just knocking it out of the park.
Speaker 1: It would not have worked nearly as well if you
Speaker 1: didn't have Tim Curry there.
Speaker 4: It's tremendous, and it maybe well.
Speaker 1: Obviously Rocky Horror is iconic and there's no getting around that,
Speaker 1: but this may be my favorite of his other movies.
Speaker 1: I think this performance, I think it's just it's remarkable.
Speaker 1: Every time I watch it, I'm just I'm transported. It's awesome,
Speaker 1: and I've The thing is, I took my family to
Speaker 1: see a stage production of Clue. I know, was it
Speaker 1: maybe two or three months ago. It came to Boston,
Speaker 1: and it was a wonderful production. But it's hard, in
Speaker 1: Wadsworth's case in particular, not to hold up that performance
Speaker 1: right up against Tim Curry's because it's indelible. He's he
Speaker 1: created that role as far as I'm concerned. But it
Speaker 1: also has to be said my seventeen year old son,
Speaker 1: who had never seen Clue before. I never we never
Speaker 1: watched together, and I didn't know how he was going
Speaker 1: to really.
Speaker 4: React to Clue. He loved it.
Speaker 1: He could not this is your typical seventeen year old
Speaker 1: kid who's video games online everything. He loved the farce
Speaker 1: aspect of it, he loved how fast everything worked. He
Speaker 1: loved the physical comedy. He's probably watched Clue the movie
Speaker 1: now another three or four times since then, and that
Speaker 1: says something I think this is it's timeless when you
Speaker 1: think about it, because it is. It's that his Girl
Speaker 1: Friday feel to it. It doesn't date it as much
Speaker 1: as a straight narrative might have from that period.
Speaker 3: No, the film got piled on because it felt old
Speaker 3: fashioned and gentle in its comedy, and then, as it
Speaker 3: turns out, that's what gave it its longevity exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And I might have, to a certain degree, I might
Speaker 1: have been reprogrammed to really enjoy Clue because I was
Speaker 1: already a big fan of a movie called.
Speaker 4: Murder by Death.
Speaker 1: It was a Neil Simon picture with Truman Capoti, and
Speaker 1: it's another murderer's row. It's not the same movie as Clue,
Speaker 1: not nearly, but it is a wonderful tweak of the
Speaker 1: mystery genre.
Speaker 4: And there's some amazing actors.
Speaker 1: James Coke goes in that and Peter Fowk plays like
Speaker 1: a Humphrey Bogart type.
Speaker 4: That's the closest analog I can think of.
Speaker 1: And I could watch those two as as a double
Speaker 1: feature I think they'd work beautifully.
Speaker 3: Triple feature with Murder Can Hurt You, the television version
Speaker 3: of Murder by Death, the television ripoff of Murder by
Speaker 3: Death where it was act television actors playing famous television detectives,
Speaker 3: but not the people who played it initially, so it
Speaker 3: was other just like Murder by Death, where it was
Speaker 3: other actors playing the old famous screen screen detectives. This
Speaker 3: was a terrible, horrible television special.
Speaker 4: Was that the one with Telly Savalis? Was he in that?
Speaker 3: Probably because the name.
Speaker 1: Is familiar, But I can't say that I've actually watched it.
Speaker 4: I want the Cheap I have to chase it up now.
Speaker 1: There was also a picture that Peter Fowk did called
Speaker 1: The Cheap Detective, which I've heard is it swims in
Speaker 1: the same waters as Clue in all these other great pictures.
Speaker 3: Now, speaking of Rocky Horror Picture Show, this movie has
Speaker 3: a Frankenfurter moment. I've noticed in every other role that
Speaker 3: Tim Curry has played. If he has a Frankenfurter moment,
Speaker 3: then that movie is going to be really good. And here,
Speaker 3: during one of his explanations of the crime, he starts
Speaker 3: off in the far side of the room where the
Speaker 3: chandelier has crashed, and as he's describing what happened, he
Speaker 3: stalks across the room, and the way he's moving is
Speaker 3: fucking frank and furd. In the film Legend, same year
Speaker 3: as Darkness, at one point he's standing at the end
Speaker 3: of a table and Mia Sara's at the other end,
Speaker 3: and she pisses him off, and he goes at her
Speaker 3: and stalks across the thing. It's all in the move,
Speaker 3: It's all the way he walks. It's a Frankenfurter walk,
Speaker 3: and it signifies beauty and a great movie.
Speaker 1: I know the scene you're talking about it, but I
Speaker 1: never thought in those terms.
Speaker 4: But I'll have to check that out. I guess.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that once again, Ripley has
Speaker 1: proven her infinite wisdom and picking a movie that she
Speaker 1: couldn't have picked a better movie for me, for for
Speaker 1: anyone really, this is anyone who hasn't seen Clue.
Speaker 4: Yes it is the theme of this show is gimmicks. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this is a Yes, this.
Speaker 1: Is gimmicky, but it works because the sheer force of
Speaker 1: the talent involved in the creativity involved in making this.
Speaker 1: So if maybe you've heard yeah, it's clue. It's a
Speaker 1: stupid kids king. Why would I no go see this?
Speaker 4: You will laugh? I promise you will enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Well, Ripley is a smart dog. She always seems to
Speaker 3: pick the most interesting potential theme related that choice very easily.
Speaker 3: I could have chosen Wicked Wicked as a gimmick film.
Speaker 3: Do you remember that movie from the nineteen seventies. It's
Speaker 3: a movie that's entire it's entirely in split screen.
Speaker 4: Oh, like a DiPalma thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, like a to Palma thing. In fact, if
Speaker 3: de Palma could have sued I think and one. It's
Speaker 3: like a thriller set in and around that Coronado Hotel
Speaker 3: in San Diego, that old, that rambling, Floridian looking thing.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, the entire film takes place from two
Speaker 3: points of view at the same time. It's maddening.
Speaker 4: But is it a good movie?
Speaker 3: Oh no, it's a terrible movie.
Speaker 1: It could be maddening and maybe that's the point of it.
Speaker 1: But if it's no good, then it's not good, I guess.
Speaker 3: But comparatively, if you were to say, do you want
Speaker 3: to watch here or Wicked Wicked, I'm going with Wicked
Speaker 3: Wicked just for the audacity of a two hour split
Speaker 3: screen film.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, I'm not a again, maybe I'm just a
Speaker 1: chump for gimmicks. I don't mind a gimmick if it's
Speaker 1: pulled off well, and if it's in service to a
Speaker 1: good story and a fun time at the movies.
Speaker 4: And these two couldn't need more polar opposites.
Speaker 1: Here is just a failure on so many levels. But
Speaker 1: Clue transcends the gimmickry of its theme, and it's it's genesis,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's it's a marvelous time. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you can't get any better. It's funny, it's great.
Speaker 1: So create Oh there is Ripley.
Speaker 3: Here, she is in the flesh. Yes, good choice Ripley. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well no, you couldn't get in on here. You don't.
Speaker 3: You're only one. You don't have any life experience. You
Speaker 3: don't have enough hatred for the baby boomers.
Speaker 1: Sorry, irony is I know we're talking a lot about
Speaker 1: boomers and how Forrest Gump is. Let me be very clear,
Speaker 1: neither Father Malone or myself are boomers. We are firmly
Speaker 1: gen X. So I've seen some things online that people
Speaker 1: lump the boomers in with gen X.
Speaker 4: Don't do that, Please, don't do that.
Speaker 3: Are people lumping us in with fucking boomers?
Speaker 1: I think I've seen stuff online about yemy.
Speaker 3: What are they talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, but I think when you cross a certain threshold
Speaker 1: and age, I think it's just natural that.
Speaker 4: Oh now you're just an old dude. I don't really
Speaker 4: buy that. I mean both very distinct.
Speaker 3: I'm out here fighting the fight, baby, don't don't give
Speaker 3: me that. I'm fighting them and the younger generation. I'll
Speaker 3: take on all comers. HP. Thank you so much for
Speaker 3: joining us here from midnight. Doing the Final Choices is
Speaker 3: one that you cannot comment on as you have not
Speaker 3: seen it. But thanks for joining us. And where can
Speaker 3: people find you they want to get a hold of you.
Speaker 1: Oh well, when I'm not when I'm not repping for Ripley,
Speaker 1: you can find me on the Night. Mister Walter is
Speaker 1: a taxi podcast along side my erstwhile.
Speaker 4: Co host You're Father Alone.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm an occasional guest on the Culture Cast
Speaker 1: with Chris Dashu and I have a band camp site
Speaker 1: hpmusicplace dot band camp dot com.
Speaker 4: You can feel free to check that out.
Speaker 1: But thanks so much, Father, Malone. I always it's always
Speaker 1: great to talk to you and chop it up a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 3: My pleasure. And you heard him, you heard his website there.
Speaker 3: If you are a listener who seems interested in HP
Speaker 3: and his work, head on over alone at last. Yes,
Speaker 3: he's very nice. But we're not about being nice right now, rip,
Speaker 3: We're about being edgy and in your face and mortal combat. No,
Speaker 3: not quite that far. Instead, we're taking a look at
Speaker 3: another gimmicky modern masterpiece. When HP and I started our
Speaker 3: discussion on Clue, he mentioned that at the time of
Speaker 3: the film's release he couldn't muster the enthusiasm to see
Speaker 3: it in the theater, and I mentioned that I too,
Speaker 3: have been guilty of that cinematic crime from twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: This is hardcore.
Speaker 1: Henry, Hello, Henry, do you remember how you got here?
Speaker 5: This next part might her.
Speaker 3: Squeeze you and I were We still are, husband and wife.
Speaker 5: I love you, Henry.
Speaker 1: Henry?
Speaker 5: Do you want your technology? I you my bad. You're
Speaker 5: capable lot more than you think. It's all right, I'm
Speaker 5: here to help you. Is your speech module installed? But
Speaker 5: at least we know you're not death?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 4: What the good news is that you're going to live
Speaker 4: a wife.
Speaker 5: The bad news is there's an army standing between you
Speaker 5: and your wife. So let's go get up. Not gonna
Speaker 5: have myself whoa whoa.
Speaker 4: Through the sky.
Speaker 3: And by the low rather.
Speaker 5: The stopping me.
Speaker 2: I'm sting.
Speaker 3: You lad, blood your mouth.
Speaker 5: You gonna stand up and go spill this? I want
Speaker 5: to stop.
Speaker 3: I actually have less of an excuse than HP for
Speaker 3: not seeing this flick. He was twelve when Klue came out.
Speaker 3: Even if he had been interested, he'd have had to
Speaker 3: finagel some ticket money and some candy money and negotiate
Speaker 3: a ride to the theater. When Hardcore Henry came out,
Speaker 3: I was still a movie theater projectionist, and yes I
Speaker 3: showed this movie. But in my defense, by the time
Speaker 3: of release, we'd been through the masculinity ringer on screen
Speaker 3: for about sixteen years. That's right. Fight Club left a
Speaker 3: long and bloody and completely ignorant of the point wake
Speaker 3: of imitators and all around agro flicks, your wanteds, your machinists,
Speaker 3: your entire career of Guy Ritchie's. How did anyone fall
Speaker 3: for that shit? So when we had yet another super
Speaker 3: Testosterony extravaganza, thrust out into the world. I could not
Speaker 3: have given a fuck less no matter the gimmick, and
Speaker 3: in a way, I'm kind of glad I didn't see
Speaker 3: this theatrically, I get the idea. On a twenty foot screen,
Speaker 3: I'd most likely have gotten motion sickness from this film,
Speaker 3: because the gimmick here is that you are the main character.
Speaker 3: You are hardcore Henry. The entire film is a continuous
Speaker 3: first person POV shot after the onslaught of found footage horror.
Speaker 3: This wasn't the worst idea ever. Moreover, they fucking pull
Speaker 3: it off. The problem here is all of the footage
Speaker 3: was shot using GoPros attached to a heavy rig that
Speaker 3: ended up causing the production to go through nearly a
Speaker 3: dozen hardcore Henrys. Hardcore Henry was to cameramen what turn
Speaker 3: off the Dark was to spider men. Here, a cameraman
Speaker 3: would take over and after a week or so of
Speaker 3: shooting they'd developed back problems so severe they had to quit.
Speaker 3: And these aren't static shots of nature as you can imagine.
Speaker 3: These are constantly moving, constantly jumping and driving and falling
Speaker 3: thousands of feet and parkouring up the sides of skyscrapers.
Speaker 3: It's really exhilarating, and it is full on shaky cam.
Speaker 3: The filmmakers are doing their absolute best to minimize it, though.
Speaker 3: They're like the opposite of Michael Bay. Remember that trolley
Speaker 3: car chase and the rock that big car chase. It's
Speaker 3: like Michael Bay tossed out the rig and instead attached
Speaker 3: the camera to his most powerful vibrator. Have you ever
Speaker 3: seen that footage of him at some big tech demonstration.
Speaker 3: It's on YouTube. I highly encourage you to pull it up.
Speaker 3: While I'm talking, he starts his speech and the monitor
Speaker 3: goes off, and instead of acting like a human being
Speaker 3: and saying, hey, we've got technical difficulties ad libbing a little,
Speaker 3: how you doing you want to know anything about Sean Connery,
Speaker 3: Instead he turns into this embarrassed seventh grader forgot his
Speaker 3: lines at the Christmas pageant and all but runs off
Speaker 3: the stage in a manner that had it been done
Speaker 3: by an actor on one of his sets, I'm sure
Speaker 3: he would have chased them down while screaming through a
Speaker 3: megaphone that they'd never work in this town again. Fuck
Speaker 3: that guy, Okay, I don't want to get spoilery here
Speaker 3: with hardcore Henry I just saw the film and was
Speaker 3: so fucking delighted by it that if there's eight chance
Speaker 3: you'll be going in as cold as I was, I
Speaker 3: do not want to fuck that up for you. But
Speaker 3: the story is Henry wakes up in a lab. He's
Speaker 3: undergone a lot of bionic procedures. He's got a robot
Speaker 3: arm and a leg. He can't remember anything, but the
Speaker 3: doctor treating him is his wife, and she assures him
Speaker 3: that his memory will return. Then all hell breaks loose,
Speaker 3: bad guys to send and Henry has to figure out
Speaker 3: what the hell's going on, who he is, and how
Speaker 3: he can save his wife. All the while he's got
Speaker 3: a friendly contact in the form of Charloto Copley. All
Speaker 3: the while, he's got a friendly contact in the form
Speaker 3: of Charloto Copley from District nine in the eighteen He
Speaker 3: is fucking great here in what must have been an
Speaker 3: absolute actor's dream role. You'll see what I mean. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like Peter Seller's in Strange Love, but not
Speaker 3: at all like that did I mentioned. There's action, it's
Speaker 3: fucking mental. Any one of the set pieces here could
Speaker 3: service the finale to any number of other subpar actioners.
Speaker 3: Pound for pound. This one's hard to beat. I mean,
Speaker 3: as of twenty fifteen, we now live in a world
Speaker 3: of John Wick. Speaking of John Wick, the author of
Speaker 3: those films, he penned that Bob Odenkirk action flick Nobody
Speaker 3: from a couple of years ago. That is Ilia Nischeler's
Speaker 3: next film after Hardcore Henry. In the filmmaking is way
Speaker 3: more refined there. But that's more of a refined film,
Speaker 3: I mean, refined in the face of the expendables. By
Speaker 3: the way, my point is Nobody came out in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. Hardcore Henry came out in twenty fifteen. So
Speaker 3: while I don't regret sitting in the theater and potentially
Speaker 3: becoming sick from the shakiness of the camera, I do
Speaker 3: regret not dropping my money down. Maybe if I did,
Speaker 3: maybe if a lot of us did, we wouldn't have
Speaker 3: had to wait seven years for his next film, and
Speaker 3: it might have been a more personal film, as personal
Speaker 3: as Hardcore Henry seemed to have been. Oh well, I'm
Speaker 3: not crying for him, because he's crying all the way
Speaker 3: to the action bank. Do you want to go to
Speaker 3: the action bank? Rip? I knew you would all the tellers.
Speaker 3: There are former mi I six operatives, and the guy
Speaker 3: chicking you in at the lobby, Kurt Russell. That's right,
Speaker 3: Snake Piskin. All right, midnight viewers, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for indulging me in this overstuffed episode of the Roundup.
Speaker 3: If you want to support us, you can give us
Speaker 3: a five star review on your preferred pod catcher, maybe
Speaker 3: write a few words of praise, maybe shareed with a friend,
Speaker 3: or if you've got the bucks, No, I'm talking about skrills.
Speaker 3: I'm talking about dead presidents. If you got those, you
Speaker 3: can head over to patreon dot com slash fathom alone.
Speaker 3: Patrons receive episodes early, sometimes ridiculously early, and always add free,
Speaker 3: and there's plenty of Patreon only bonus content on the way.
Speaker 3: We shared a little taste of it just this weekend.
Speaker 3: We've got links in the description to get a hold
Speaker 3: of me to check out HP's fine works. Until next time,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna leave you with a little bit of.
Speaker 1: I killed it.
Speaker 2: I hated her so much.
Speaker 5: Flame flames, flames on the side of my face, breathing breath,
Speaker 5: heaving breaths, s