Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. The Epic Conclusion Part three et versus
The Thing versus.
Speaker 3: Blade Runner Shirley fans, Jason and I have spent the
day making origami, playing E T on the Atari, and
drinking J and B whiskey.
Speaker 2: That will get us prepared for this epic conclusion and
he won et cheating. That is not true. The FBI
guy got me every time.
Speaker 3: Okay, Before we get roll on this awesome episode, Part three,
Kapper of our epic three part series on these awesome movies,
I got to give a shout out to the thirty
something meter movie podcast guys. They are killing it over there.
They're doing such a good job. This week they came
out with their Encino Man episode, which is one of
my favorites. And it also stars, as you noted in
one of our last episodes, mister Richard Masser, who plays
Clark in The Thing.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: It does, yeah, and it also involves whizzing the juice.
Speaker 2: Hey, weezing the Jews. There'd be the juice. The cheese
is old and moldy. All right, Well, let's dive in, man,
get ready to pass the final.
Speaker 3: Here, you're you're ready to bring up Okay, well, we
are going to talk about some kind of big, amazing
ideas in the movie. Before we jump into that, let's
talk about the fact that these are three special effects
amaze ball movies. Yeah right, I mean the Thing, of course,
because it's a horror movie and so you're going to
have the extra special effects. But the things that are
going on with the scenery, and the blade Runner, and
the animatronics that are going on with et these are
things worth noting. As a matter of fact. They're not
only worth noting, there are things that we could probably
spend an entire episode on for each movie. So I'm sorry, listeners,
we are not going to go as deep and in
depth as we normally would on these things, but we've
got to at least touch base on these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, okay, So.
Speaker 3: Let's start with the thing again, as we it seems
to lead out every time. We've got Rob Boteen, who
we've mentioned before. Now, he just before this had done
the fog, yes, and he had also done.
Speaker 2: The howling, oh, the hewling. That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nineteen eighty one, be sure and check out our
the Howling versus American Werewolf in London episodes.
Speaker 2: Those were great episodes. That was the a movie that
he turned De Wallace into an ewok.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, right, and so he did some incredible, incredible
stuff with this. He had met John Carpenter when he
was like twenty one and wanted to work with him,
ended up getting a part in The Fog. Yes, And
so we're going to talk about those in just a second.
But I also got to mention a couple other guys.
Number One, you got Albert Whitlock. He was the Matt artist.
So those scenes where you're seeing the spaceship and the snow,
those are painted no CGI back in nineteen eighty two,
mind blowing. They would have the guys go stand on
like you know, sheets on the ground out in the grass,
filmed them and then Albert Whitlock would go in and
paint over them. Now, Albert Whitlock is a guy who
was the guy to go to, starting with Alfred Hitchcock,
like Olver Hitchcock Houston for virtually all of his movies.
But let me throw out some others that he was
involved in. Okay, he was involved with Dune, which would
come up just a bit later as Ridley Scott was
almost the.
Speaker 2: Director, almost directed Dune.
Speaker 3: He did Never Ending Story too. I did Grimlins two.
He did Coming to America, which is you know one
we've covered before, but you get those Africa scenes. That's
Albert Whitlock who painted those. Wow. And he did the
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Speaker 2: The movie that had the sign out front that WELLcom
Kurt Russell and John Carpenter to the movie studio when
they were shooting the thing.
Speaker 3: Yes, and if I can tie in just one more
episode of ours. He also did Spaceballs.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he's an icon, Roboteen's icon. And then of
course Roboteen had to have some animatronics involved with his
special effects. And who did they have Stan Winston?
Speaker 2: That's right, they did. I did see that.
Speaker 3: So Stan Winston we talked about him on our Jurassic
Park episode. He is another icon in the field involved
with Star Wars and a million other animatronics style movies
of the eighties.
Speaker 2: The stuff that is done on the monster special effects
and the thing super fascinating.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So there is a scene where the chest cavity opens
up and this little flower like thing comes out. Well,
that flower is made up of dog tongues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you'll remember it, because it looks like the
Little Shop of Horrors Venus like.
Speaker 2: It really does, right, feed me Seymour yeah.
Speaker 3: Or if you're a Stranger Things fan, it kind of
looks like the dog demon things on Stranger Things, right.
John Carpenter had sent Rob botein down. They had a
comic book artist there at the studio. They both work
together designing these things, just in kind of picture format
to start with, and then Rob botem go in and
create these characters. Stan Winston came in and he's like, Okay, well,
you know it's going to be hard to do animatronics
on this, but if you've gotten no real definition on
the way it's formed, if you can just mold around
my arm, I could just work it like a puppet. Yeah.
And so a lot of the dog mouth action that
you see, I mean that's literally a guy's arm in
a puppet making that happen. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the effects that's really stunning to me, and
I still don't really understand how they did it. But
when the thing breaks open and all that like spaghetti
like stuff is started whipping around. That creeped me out
to no end. Man, that stuff is disgusting.
Speaker 3: So in that scene, there are a couple of things
going on. Number One, he was making stuff up as
he went. And so at one point when they're filming
that scene, they've got all these chemicals there that have
been flying around and shooting out and doing all this
other stuff, and suddenly John Carpenter's like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
in this part of the scene, he's just shot a
flame thrower right before this, and the thing's on fire.
So I can't just shoot this with no fire. It's
not going to be consistent. And so they're like okay.
And I mean they've got guys under the table doing
all these mechanics and stuff like that, so they're like, okay, well,
let's set it on fire. Well, those chemicals they had
been using had just been filling the room with flammable gas,
and all of a sudden, it just goes like the
whole room in gulfs and flames and these things that
Rob Boutin had spent weeks and he slept at the studio,
right and I mean he was exhausted. He had spent months.
Speaker 2: He hospitalized at the end of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was. And so he's this monumental
effort and all of a sudden he just sees it
burned to a crisp. Fortunately it wasn't completely destroyed and
he could patch it back up. But yeah, So the
part where the guy's arms get bitten off, you know,
they've got that animatronic thing that opens up his chest, yes,
and clamps stand on it. Well, the way that they
did that is they had a guy who was an
amputee come in and they made him fake arms out
of jello and other stuff like that, so that whenever
the chest clamps shut, he can pull his arms out
of the fake arms. Right. And so, since you know
the actor who's playing this part isn't an amputee, they
were like, well, what do we do there? You're going
to see his face. They made a fake face. They
made like a wax face and put it on the
amputees face, so that when you see him like thrashing
around with no arms, it's the guy is wearing a mask.
Speaker 2: Really, that's cool. Hey, I did see something that was
really funny to me. They used a ton of ky jelly, right,
who doesn't They used a ton of kyjilly and it
makes everything look super slimy and slick and all that stuff. Yeah,
and one of the guys I heard marveling was he's like,
we bought this in fifty five gallon drums. He goes,
who needs fifty five gallon drums of ky jelly? You know,
it's crazy, that's funny.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's jump over to Blade Runner. So in Blade
Runner there's not as many special effects per se. You
don't have a lot of core going on, you don't
have a lot of weird stuff. What you have is
some of the most amazing scenery I've ever seen in
any movie in my life. We talked about how Ridley
Scott wanted to use the Bradberry and they're like, no,
everybody uses the Bradberry. He's like, not the way I'm
going to do it right. Well, the entire thing is
like that, and it all comes from this artist named
Sid Mead, And Dude, I looked at this guy's life.
Holy smokes. I mean, he's just he is a god
among men. I mean, he just He worked for car
design companies, he worked for building design companies. He was
doing movie after movie. He did Tron at the same time,
as he was doing he's designing, like he's drawing these
city scapes, he's doing all of that stuff in his
art work is just amazing. This is what he used
for inspiration. Hong Kong on a very Bad Day and
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. Those were his kind of instegrational points.
And I think that's probably one of the most amazing
features about Blade Runner, is the way that they put
you in this future world and you buy in. I mean,
when I'm watching it, I'm not thinking to myself, well,
that's fake. That wouldn't really it, right. It all is
stuff that you're just like, Oh, I can completely see
this as our dystopian future.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. One of the possible futures that they proposed in
nineteen eighty two was this idea that Los Angeles and
San Francisco would grow together as one giant urban area, huh,
and that you would have this sort of street language
that included like Japanese and English. There's actually some Chinese lettering.
This is how detailed they got.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't speak Chinese, but apparently it says Asian's good,
Americans bad or something like that. All they steered away
from that one big urban area. But Demolition Man picked
that up, idea up and ran with that a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they did a great job of taking Sidmead's
paintings and bringing him to life. And the guys that
did that, that was Douglas Trumbull that I talked about
in our last episode, who was kind of the man
as far as those set designs go. And then we
have et kaya swear.
Speaker 2: It one more time. I have that some absolute power.
Speaker 3: The biggest effect on ET is E T. Right, so
you've got the creature of e T. He was created
by Carlo Rumbaldi. Okay, Carlo Rumbaldi also involved in Doune
and the original Never Ending Story and he before this
movie he did the alien head an alien Yeah, like
the effects where the mouth would come out. That was
Carlo Rumbaldi. And he also did the alien effects on
Close Encounters. Okay. After this movie he did a ton
of movies. But one of them was the Werewolf suit
in Silver Bowl.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 3: Did you see the seventy six version of King Kong?
I have he did that one? He did King Kong
as well. Yeah, he's another icon of the We've got
icon after icon. The Matt paintings for this movie were
done through ILM and as Christopher Evans, who was like
the chief of Matt paintings for them. You get the
spaceship animation and that sort of thing, but really, this
isn't a movie that's super full of these special effects
except for the Et, and the Et creature was something
I was looking at the operators. I counted at least
seven different operators on the and obviously they're doing it
at different times. They had different suits that they used,
but Carlo Rombaldi's design looks very similar to another thing
that we've talked about just a bit before that. I
wanted to get in a little bit more detail about. Okay,
you ready for this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Sure, okay, So here I am. I'm looking at the
biggest special effects science fiction movies of nineteen eighty two
and probably conceivably of all time. And there's a name
that's missing. Okay, it's Rick freakin Baker. Where is Rick Baker?
I can't. I'm like, Okay, Well, he did Ghost Story
before this, and he did some other like Videodrome after this.
What was he doing in nineteen eighty was he on vacation?
I'm looking I can't figure it out. Why wouldn't you
have Rick Baker? Right, why wouldn't you have Rick Baker
involved and in some capacity in one of these movies?
Let me tell you why. Okay, so you talked about
in our first part of this series, Night Skies. Yes, so,
Night Skies was this script that was written by John
Sales that ended up spawning Poulter, Guys, E T and
Grimlin's the movie right.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 3: And so the way it was originally written, instead of
Grimlins being the creatures that were running around creating havoc,
it was little aliens like et running around creating the havoc.
And I think you listed off some names last time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Squid and there's Squirt and Scar yeah something like that, right, yep,
Well here's what happened.
Speaker 3: Okay. Spielberg thinks he's going to be making this movie
called Night Skies, right, and so he goes to the
most logical guy, Rick Baker. Okay, Rick, I'm gonna make
this movie. I've got lots of aliens that I need
and you helped me out, and sir Rick Baker starts
creating aliens, which they end up looking very similar to
what we finally end up with with Et just a
little rougher and tougher, but that same kind of style
for sure. Okay, Well, then the movie changes and Spielberg's like, well,
I'm not going to make one movie called night Skies.
I'm going to make three movies, none of which are
night Skies, right, and so hey, Rick, thanks for your trouble,
but I'm going to not do this right. Well, Rick
had spent seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars of his
own money, not to mention all of the hours that
he put in to build these things. And he's like,
what you're just saying, No, We're just done. And that's
just it. I mean, at the time, you could think, hey,
this is Spielberg telling me he's going to do a movie.
I can feel safe and secure in doing this, right.
So it really pissed him off. Yeah, of course, and
he's like, I'm never going to work with that guy
ever again. And if you look, they have never done
a mill Wow. So there it is. That's the answer
to the question. I couldn't figure out. The reason Rick
Baker wasn't doing this is because he had been spurned
by Spielberg in trying to do something that ultimately was
a precursor.
Speaker 2: I can't believe he stiff team on that, man, I know. Gosh.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, you ready to talk deep questions.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the big issues in these movies. Okay, ready, Yes,
let's start with Blade Runner.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: So before we get to the biggest question, we have
to ask ourselves. Why are there multiple versions of this movie?
Speaker 3: That's a good question. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think you watched I watched the final
You watch the final cut. I watched the director's cut. Okay,
there's some differences between those two movies, right.
Speaker 3: I think the first time that I watched it, I
didn't watch director's cut or final cut. I watched like
the original version.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, just for those of you who are listening,
I mean, there's the work print prototype, there was the
San Diego sneak preview. There's the US theatrical release which
people saw in theaters. There was an international release. There
was of course the TV version. Then we have the
director's cut. So this is the interesting one. The original
theatrical release in nineteen eighty Twoerson Ford did some narration. No,
because when they had screened it, test audiences didn't really
understand what was happening.
Speaker 4: Skin jobs, that's what Bryant called replicants, and.
Speaker 2: So the studio said, you got to clarify for these
dumb people, you got to tell them what's going on.
And Harrison Ford is like, no, this is stupid. I'm
not going to dumb it down and tell these people.
And basically they had to make him. Yeah, and you
can tell by his performance that he does not want
to be there.
Speaker 3: He seems extremely disinterested.
Speaker 2: Now, Harrison Ford has said, I didn't nail it in.
I gave it my best.
Speaker 3: Sure you did, right, right, right, Sure you did, Harrison. Okay,
because you're really good at hiding how you feel.
Speaker 2: He's grumpy. And then you had the happy ending at
the end of the US theatrical release.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, for those of you who haven't seen it,
the happy ending is that Deckert and Rachel are driving
off into the sunset, right, They're going to go live together,
and we find out that Rachel doesn't have the four
year limitation, so they could potentially have their happily ever after.
Speaker 2: Here's the interesting thing about the happy ending. Yeah, they're
going off into this mountains and snow and lakes and
you know, beautiful, those were the castaway shots from the Shining.
Speaker 3: No, I know what you're talking about. You've got the
ominous music playing as things are flying.
Speaker 2: Over Jagni Lin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was driving out
to Colorado and that those shots were taken from leftover shots.
Speaker 3: Of the Shining. That's fantastic. I did not. You blew
my mind right there? Cool, Where to go?
Speaker 2: So that's the original release. Well, really, Scott was dissatisfied
with it. Harrison Ford was certainly dissatisfied with it. So
ultimately it didn't help audiences. They still didn't understand it,
they still didn't get it, and it didn't help it
be a success.
Speaker 3: It wasn't. Yeah, it was a failure.
Speaker 2: Okay. So listen to this. In nineteen ninety two, we
get the director's cut, okay, and now listen to how
this came about. In October of nineteen eighty nine, this
guy named Michael Eric was looking for an old cut
of the movie Gypsy. Okay. Now, he worked at the
todd Ao Vaults, which is one of these places that
store old movies and kind of preserve them and keep
them or whatever. So he stumbled upon this version of
Blade Runner. Okay, Okay, Well, it turns out it was
the work print version, which means it did not have
the happy ending and it did not have the narration.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So this theater in La the Cineplex Ordan Fairfax Theater
got wind of this discovery and said, hey, Warner Brothers,
is it okay if we show this version in our theaters?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Well, when they showed it, people were like, oh, this
is so much better, right right, and then it sort
of built up some of them and some of the
people wanted to see this different cut of Blade Runner,
and it caused a surge in popularity. And so Ridley
Scott said he didn't work and he didn't edit it himself,
but he okayed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He I think there was an he was in
the middle of some other movies at the time, Thelma
and Louise, I think if I remember, and I think
that's right. Yeah, And there was somebody else who he
trusted to make the cuts, and he said, here's what
I would do, and that's how you get the title
director's cut. Okay.
Speaker 2: So in the director's cut, you have the removal of
Deckard's voiceovers, right, you have the of the Unicorn dream sequence,
which is huge. It's huge, it's so huig. I can't
believe they took it out. I know, right, it doesn't
make any I mean it, it's crazy. We'll talk about
that more here in just a second. Yeah, and then
they took off the happy ending.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and seven you have the final cut version,
which is actually Ridley Scott sitting down, going through with
a fine tooth comb and making his own version of it.
Speaker 3: And let me just say, George Lucas could learn something
from Ridley Scott, Yes, because you don't have any new
like shiny spaceships coming in that are all cgi' and right,
and you have a genuine effort to make the original
product look better, not different. It was so much better
looking than the originals.
Speaker 2: By the way. Yeah, I don't want to get into
this too much. Yeah, but in two thousand and two,
Steven Spielberg sat down and did a cut of Et,
a twentieth anniversary cut. Whereas in the original theatrical cut
you had ET's heart light when he's running from keys
at the very beginning. Yeah, they're pulling him on a rail,
and so that heartlight just goes evenly and in two
thousand and two, Spielberg added a little bit of CGI
just to make the heartlight jump like it had movement.
Oh okay, And so it's subtle changes like that instead
of Grido getting shot, you know, you know, subtle changes,
Lucas subtle Okay, all right, so that's the multiple versions.
Let's talk about Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott in their battle.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Now, really, Scott has said that the toughest actor he
has ever worked with is Harrison Ford.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, He's probably not alone.
Speaker 2: Harrison Ford was not speaking to Ridley Scott by the
end of this movie, and Alan lad Junior said even
more than that he wanted to beat the crap out
of him, like he was ready to go to fisticuffs
with Ridley Scott. Now here's the interesting thing about it.
It has to do with the big question of whether
or not Deckard is a replicant or not.
Speaker 3: That is the big question.
Speaker 2: That's the big question.
Speaker 3: Okay. Let's talk about some iconic magery in this thing
to lead us down this path.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, okay.
Speaker 3: So let's start with Tyrel's pyramid. Okay, it is not
an Egyptian pyramid. Is in a pyramid like the old
Incas or Aztec type of pyramid, which is important because
in their religion, the god or gods that existed created
man not for loving but for service, as in you
are my workers, my slaves, which is exactly what Tyrell
has created his replicants for. Yes, okay, yep number two. Okay,
the snake. Yes, now we get into the biblical imagery right, Yes,
you've got the snake tattoo on Zora and then of
course she owns the snake, but it's not a real snake. Well,
this of course immediately brings up images of the garden
and the serpent, but also the idea that the animals.
I mean, you're kidding me. I couldn't afford something like
that if it was a real snake because it doesn't
really detail it. But all of the animals have died off,
which brings me to the owl. It was one of
the first animals to die off, which is why you
have that owl as a replicant. Here's the big one
for me. Okay, where we're getting into it. Yes, fake
family pictures. Yeah, so you know that Rachel when she
comes in, she's like, I know I'm real because I
have these memories of when I was a kid, and
he describes the memory to her, and she has this
picture of her sitting on her mom's lap.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But he's like, no, Terrell just put the memories of
his niece into you, and that's why you have these memories.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the idea that you have.
Speaker 3: Memories is directly connected to whether you are real or
not real? Right? Yeah? I mean whenever Roy is talking
to the little Chinese guy who makes the eyes, right,
he's like, Oh, if you could have only seen the
things with your eyes, with my eyes that you made
for me, that's a big deal because Roy, even though
he's a replicant, still has these memories. And so it
seems to be that the memories and the family pictures
are related to that are directly correlated to are you
real or are you not real?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And even says I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have her fake family picture. But you also
just before that scene, you have Deckert sitting at the
piano looking at old photographs, and if you're familiar with
the movie at all, you have to go, Okay, are
these really his old photographs from his past? Or has
he been programmed like all of the other replicants.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's true.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now that brings me to Gaff and the origami. Okay,
so what's the first origami that we see Gaff making?
Speaker 2: First one is a chicken, that's right.
Speaker 3: And when is he making it?
Speaker 2: When he's being a coward?
Speaker 3: Right, it's whenever Deckert is like, I don't want to
go do this. I'm not I am not a Blader
Runner anymore. I don't do that stuff anymore. Well, you're
gonna do this, right, So he makes the chicken. So
that's simplism, very simple symbolism.
Speaker 2: Number one, you are being a chicken, right.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 2: What's the second one? The second one is a match man, right.
Speaker 3: It's little match stick Man, which literally is a human
creating another human, just like the subject of this movie.
And then finally, and this is the big deal because
we talked about the unicorn, right right, Deckert has a
dream about a unicorn, and really that's the whole dream,
Like you just see the unicorn like round in the corner,
and that's it towards him and that's it. At the
very end of the movie, just after Gaff says.
Speaker 2: Too bad, she won't live. But then again, who does.
Speaker 3: Right, perfect, Decker goes back, finds Rachel. We don't know
until he lifts up the blanket whether she's already been
retired or not, right, but lifts it up. She's not retired,
she's alive. But then he finds that orgami sitting there,
which means Gaff has been there and he did not
retire her.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: But then what is the orgamie of It's.
Speaker 2: Of a unicorn, which is Decord's dream.
Speaker 3: Right, So how would Gaff know what Decord was dreaming
unless he was a replicant?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And that brings that brings us to that main question.
Will You talked before about how the replicants could be
identified by the little red glint that's in their eyes, right,
It's correct, And there's just that, I mean, it's less
than a second long whenever Deckert is talking to Rachel
and they both look the same direction at the same time,
and you see a red glint in his.
Speaker 2: Eyes, but it is so brief, it's out of focus.
It's in the background, yeah, but it's definitely there.
Speaker 3: Right, So you were talking to me about how where
they got the you know, the camera magic to make
this work.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that, Okay, So I don't fully understand it.
This is a special effect, like an old school special
effect that Fritz Lange did in the movie Metropolis. And
so he used a light and he sort of shined
it off a mirror at a forty five degree angle
and thus it lit the black part of their eyes
and made it red.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, So the camera would be facing them at
one spot yep, and they would put this mirror that
reflected the red lfe forty five degrees from that.
Speaker 2: Spot, and it caused their eyes to glow red. And
every replicant, including the owl, has red eyes. Yeah, you know,
it comes and goes, but you see it. And like
you said, at one point in the movie, Deckert has
red eyes yea, which definitely hints that he is a replicant.
Right now. Then, when Harrison Ford was signed on to
play the part of Decker, really Scott was hoping to
get somebody who would just come in and play a
part and go home. Well, Harrison Ford's very collaborative, so
he wants to be involved in the whole creation. In
the storyteller at the beginning, he's like, okay, now we
are agreeing that Deckert is not a replicant, right, really
at the very beginning, Okay, So Harrison Ford's like, I
feel like it's super important so that the audience has
a representative in the movie that's human, and so they
need to be able to identify with Deckert as being
a man.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So then really Scott sort of started to kind of
change his mind, right, and in the middle of it,
he wanted to make it sort of ambiguous, and so
Harrison Ford's like, no, that's not true. He is not
a replicant. And Hampton Fancher, the guy who wrote the screenplay,
in his screenplay, Deckard wasn't a replicant, right, And so
when Harrison Ford went and saw the movie, he was
mega pissed because Ridley Scott was doing stuff behind the scenes.
You know, he agreed up front that yeah, he's not
going to be a replicant, and then he would do
stuff like insert the red eyes, right, And that made
Harrison Ford super mad.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think it's I think it's also fascinating
everybody who's a real human is not a really great person, right,
Like they're not they don't seem to value life, and
they're I mean, for lack of a better term. They're ugly,
like they're they have ugly souls and ugly faces, and
the only ones that are beautiful are the replicants. Are
the replicants. I mean, you've got Rachel, you've got Roy,
you've got I wouldn't say that, Leon, Leon, it's beautiful
at all, right, But that wasn't his that wasn't his making, right.
He was supposed to be strong, and he was definitely strong.
And you've got Chris, who's beautiful, Zora who's beautiful, and
then you've got him surrounded by these ugly people. And
it's kind of this idea of fallen angels. Right. They're
the ones who are concerned about their imminent demise. Right.
They want to have a longer life, which is what
all of us want, right, we don't want to have
that death looming over our heads. And so that's their objective.
Find their creator and convince him to give them longer life,
that's right. And so then of course when he says
it can't do that, then they kill them. They kill
the god.
Speaker 2: I'm going to squeeze your head off, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to put my thumbs.
Speaker 2: Through your eye.
Speaker 3: But so that creates as the fallen angels. That creates
this idea that maybe they're demons, right, maybe Roy bat
He's a demon, and he's certainly going after Deckert, knowing
he's about to die, still going after him and breaking
his hand and chasing them around and all of this
other stuff. And then we have this moment where Roy
has a nail pushed through his hand. Yes again, so biblical, right,
And I'm like, wait, is the bad guy supposed to
be Jesus? That doesn't make any sense, right, right? And
then of course later on they're up on the roof
deckerd is not going to make it.
Speaker 2: Decert is falling to his death.
Speaker 3: And he gives this last defiant spit, right, And it's
that moment that Roy Baddy decides to save him instead
of letting him die. But also the same moment that
Roy Baddy himself sees his end happen, yeh, and he
gives this amazing speech about his memories. Right, it's all
these things that are going to be disappearing, like tears
in the rain, which, by the way, that was a
Ruggerhuer improv line, by the way, yes, but it perfectly
sums up the idea that's going on in this movie,
that he's been redeemed, he sacrificed himself to save someone else,
and then at the moment that he dies, what happens.
He lets go of this dove that he's been whole things,
which flies up to heaven as if it is his soul.
Speaker 2: It's really good, it's really good. And that's a great
way to wrap up that story. But I got one
more thing I want to throw in, sort of the
additional information of why deckerd may be a replicant.
Speaker 3: Okay, sure, so just a.
Speaker 2: Couple of things. Rachel asks him in the movie, Well,
how about you, mister big shot? Have you ever take
the void comf test? He doesn't answer, Okay, So again ambiguous.
One of the things that sort of added to the
confusion whether or not Decord is a replicant or not.
So we know that there are six replicants, okay, but
there are five rogue replicants. Okay, so you've got Rachel.
She's not rogue. She's kind of in a category by herself.
Speaker 3: Well, she ran off from Turrill's house.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, but she's not why Deckard is hired. Deckard
is hired to track down these five replicants, okay, Roy
PRIs Leon Zora. Who's the fifth? So Bryant says in
the movie that there are six applicants, okay, okay, And
in the original theatrical cut he said one of them
got fried, one of them.
Speaker 3: I thought that there was two.
Speaker 2: Well in the final cut it's two.
Speaker 3: He's changed it.
Speaker 2: He changes it, okay. So that leads to the confusion.
Speaker 3: Okay, yep, right, yes.
Speaker 2: So when people in the original who saw the original
movie or saw the director's cut, they're like, well, what
do we what?
Speaker 3: Who's number five?
Speaker 2: Who's number five? So who can it be? Well, most
people are like, it's gotta be Decker, right right, Well,
apparently there was a character of Marv.
Speaker 3: Marv, Marv, Marv, what are you doing Marv?
Speaker 2: Hey Marv? Yeah, the web bandit Marv. But that character
was written out, So that led to the confusion and
the question of who is number five? And then of course,
really Scott being as ambiguous as possible on whether or
not it's it's Decker or not.
Speaker 3: Okay, have you seen later On.
Speaker 2: Of twenty forty nine, I've not seen it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to, but I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker 2: Man, I saw it, but I don't remember it very well,
and so I don't remember what kind of I.
Speaker 3: Don't know what resolution. But it's a different director, different writer,
different everything except for Deckert and the idea, right right, right,
So what do you say?
Speaker 2: I say Decert is not a replicant because I think
it's important to the story at the very end that
it's man versus machine, that it's creator versus creation for
that to be that poignant. Plus Deckert, every replicant kicks
his butt, so he doesn't appear to have any superhuman
powers in any way.
Speaker 3: Okay, what do you think? I think he's a replicant. Okay,
and I think it's he's a replicant because in this movie,
the replicants are the real human like they're the ones
that we should identify with. We don't really identify with
any of the other humans. We identify with the replicants
who don't want to die, the replicants who have memories
that are going to be lost. I mean, if the
main character is a guy should be a with that
means he needs to be a replicant too. Plus he's
one of the pretty people.
Speaker 2: Well, and the real question is is Baddie a good
guy or a bad guy.
Speaker 3: I think that it's important. I think that it's important
that you that he has changed. We have to have
a character arc. So he's bad at the beginning, right,
or at least self serving at the beginning, only to
become sacrificial at the end. That's huge. That's very important
the story. I also think it's important to the story
that the question of whether Deckert is a replicant or
not isn't answered. I agree with that. It's the reason
we're talking about that's exactly right. So it is supposed
to be ambiguous. I'm glad it's ambiguous. I like talking
about the different pots of.
Speaker 2: It's really cool. Yeah, I mean there are people out
there that nerd out to this question. Okay, we're done
talking about the big issues with Blade Runner.
Speaker 3: They're literally again, there are podcasts that the entire podcast
week after week is about Blade Runner. So we can't
give as much attention as this needs. But yeah, I
think we probably done at this point.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go to the thing. Okay, I got two
big questions from the thing. Okay, all right, my first
biggish question to you is the beast the thing? The alien.
Was it the pilot of that spacecraft or was it
a parasite that that alien craft got taken over by
and crash landed on Earth?
Speaker 3: Wow? So I don't think there's any way that it was.
I don't think it was a parasite. I think it
was the alien.
Speaker 2: Do you think it was flying that spacecraft?
Speaker 3: Because we have the scene where they follow the hole
that goes down out of where they've been keeping Blair
captive the whole time. It goes underneath the snow and
they follow it back and they find a spaceship that
is being built by Blair the alien. I mean, if
it was just a parasite on the ship, he wouldn't
be building another ship.
Speaker 2: What if they take your brain and your memories or
something like that.
Speaker 3: They do, so you're saying that he's taken the memory
of the Aliens from the original ship. And yeah, but
why why do we have that as a Why is
that a concern?
Speaker 2: It's just interesting? Why did that UFO crash land on Earth?
What happened?
Speaker 3: I don't know. It was before I was born, nice.
Speaker 2: See, I think years before. I think that that alien
spacecraft was overtaken by this animal.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: And therefore caused it to crash, and therefore Earth is
now contaminated. Okay, all right, yeah, all right, I'd be
interested to hear what people think.
Speaker 3: It's just a thought, okay, Okay.
Speaker 2: Now, then the real question is which one of the
guys or both or neither at the end of the
movie is the thing?
Speaker 3: Well, the question throughout the movie is which one of
the guys that's the true that's true? Right, And so
that I'm gonna I promise I won't go on as
long about the thing as I did about That's.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's it.
Speaker 3: But there's just so many So this, of these three movies,
this is the horror movie, right, yes, So can I
talk about for just a second the elements that trigger
our fear response. So, number one, climate, They're in the
middle of the harshest weather in the world, right, I mean,
this is the place where it's going to be more
than one hundred degrees below zero. I mean, it's just
absurd how cold it can get. And that's something that
we as humans fear. The other thing isolation. Sure, they
are stuck where they can't communicate with anybody despite windows
best efforts, right, I mean, the nearest camp is still
they say, like two hours away or something like that.
That couldn't get beer all the way up there, It
could get fear. That is an isolation that I truly fear.
And then you've got this claustrophobic element because with that
outside weather, you're stuck inside these close quarters with all
of these other guys, which then brings us to the paranoia.
And that's the key element, the key fear element that
goes on with this. So fear is confronting a threat. Right,
You've got a threat in front of you, and you're afraid.
That's fear, right right, You're going to get anxiety if
you're anticipating that feared threat. But paranoia is where you
believe that the threat is all around you, including people
who you should trust as friends that might ultimately be
bad guys conspiring against you. And that paranoia is what
bills this movie and what makes it great. Right, that's
special effects, Yeah, I'm with you. It's yeah.
Speaker 2: Unlike like say Aliens, where it's just a threat and fear, Yeah,
paranoia adds that added element.
Speaker 3: Because it's the unknown. It's my brother might be the monster.
And then I love, I love what they do on
the very first change. I mean the changes that we have,
we have different monsters. Each time that we see a
creature change happen is a completely different looking thing. But
the very first time when the dog changes, yes, is
so impactful. So we've I just want to I want
to list some stuff that you see as that first creature, right, Yeah,
you see blood yep, you see slime, Yes, you see dogs,
vicious dogs, snakes, spiders, insects. All of these attributes are
connected to this creature. Well, those are all the most
commonly feared things that we have. Blood, slime, vicious dogs, snakes, spiders, insects.
I mean, the only thing they're missing is sharks, that's true.
So again, they've got the storyline that captures are paranoia
and fear, and they've got the special effects that tap
into all of those primal fears.
Speaker 2: That we have. When that one guy's head falls off
the body and the tongue like anchors it to a
chair and he grows spider legs, and when I saw
that for the first time, my eyeballs almost fell out
of my head.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So our friend David Wright was asking about before
he saw Maverick. He likes there, you know, taking a
kid anything to be concerned about. I said, there's one
F bomb, right, but it's earned right, like it's a
it's an F bomb that if I was in the situation,
I probably would be saying the same thing, right, same
is true for that scene, right. You watch that thing
crawl out the door, and you're gonna say, you gotta
be fing kidding me.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 3: So ultimately we've got this paranoia the whole time, and
still we managed to end with the same paranoia. We've
got Child's and we got mccredy. Yeah, which one is
the alien or either of them? Are both of them?
Could one be and the other one's not? Who is it? Okay?
Speaker 2: So here's the thing. Carpenter has sort of gone back
and forth on this. He's done the Ridley Scott game
here right, where yes they are yes, one is, no,
they're both not. They even shot a happy ending, right,
they shot a happy ending where both McCready and childs
were rescued and everybody gets to go home. Well, instead,
they chop that off and you're left wondering. The interesting
thing to me, there's a there's an eye theory in
the thing as well as Bladeerner okay. And this goes
back to when they're testing the blood, which is maybe
the best scene in the entire movie. They draw everybody's
blood and they're going to burn the blood because McCready
theorizes that the thing is made up of everything, and
so we'll react when it's burned. And when he burns
Palmer's blood and that Petri dish and that thing leaps
out of the dish, it scares the heck out of
everybody in the audience, and Kurt Russell jumps out of
his skin, and then everybody's tied to the couch with
that guy. He starts shaking.
Speaker 3: Didn't see that as a problem.
Speaker 2: Good timing. Right before that happens, they actually changed the
positioning so that there will be no light, no what
they call it the eye gleam r reflection, no reflection
of light in his eyes, and if you look closely
at it, it's not there, and that that is the
indicator that it's the thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the thing has no eyeling, the thing has
no igling, gotcha? Okay, But upon further review, that theory
doesn't hold up. Okay, because like the dog, when it's changing,
it has igling. Okay, and other people when they're changing,
they have igling, right, But it's a really cool thing,
and it definitely when Palmer changes, they did that intentionally.
So at the end, Child's and McCready both have iyegling.
Okay they did, yeah, okay, Okay.
Speaker 2: However, John Carpenter points out that Child's has no breath.
Speaker 3: This is true. I watched this one with Brock, and
Brock is like, why can't you see his breath?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Like, he wasn't. It wasn't tuning in that you can't
see his breath because it's he's the alien. It was
just it seems weird that I'm watching this guy huff
and puff and there's steam coming out of his mouth
and there's no steam coming out of Child's mouth.
Speaker 2: Yes, here's the other theory. Yeah, there is a the
Molotov cocktail theory. Have you heard this?
Speaker 3: Tell me?
Speaker 2: Okay, So, right before the end the final McCready is
using his jamb whiskey bottles to throw Molotov cocktails all
over the place. Well, at the end, when it's just McCready,
he's got a bottle of jamb whiskey, Child comes and
sits down, and it's theorized that maybe McCready is testing
Child's and offers him a drink from the whiskey bottle,
that maybe gasoline, oh okay, right, yeah, and that the
thing wouldn't react adversely to drinking gasoline, and so McCready
would then know and he kind of laughs knowingly after
he drinks, right, he kind of smiles, and so some
people have speculated that he served him gasoline to drink
and the thing did and was fine, didn't react bad.
The only problem is when McCready's by himself and Child's
is behind him and he doesn't know he's there, McCready
is getting ready to take a drink and then Childs
walks in, So that theory doesn't really hold up for
me either.
Speaker 3: Well, unless he knew that he was done for anyway,
and he was looking for a quicker way out than
freezing to.
Speaker 2: Death drinking gasoline. Sure, okay, well, I mean you have
a gun. Yeah, And our buddy James Buckley did send
us a picture, like a comic book picture. There is
a Child's thing monster that showed up in the comics
and it was pretty cool. It was just this big
scary beast that was made.
Speaker 3: Of child's nice Okay, time for ET.
Speaker 2: Let's go to ET. I've been waiting to talk about
this one.
Speaker 3: I'm excited. You lead the way, my friend.
Speaker 2: All right, So before we get to the big, big question, Yeah,
I want to know what happened when Eat died and resurrected.
Let's back it up. Let's back it up, because when
they set up the transmitter, Elliott goes to sleep. When
he wakes up, ET's being you know, chewed on by
a raccoon, which as a kid, I was like, get
that raccoon away from e tea right right? And he
looks like powder dump. Yeah, and he's not doing well.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He went from being fine phoning home to being lost
in what's going on?
Speaker 3: Worst hangover ever?
Speaker 2: Right, and they can't find Elliott doesn't know where he is.
I mean, he wanders off and raccoons are carrying him off. Right,
So what happened? Why does he get sick? Why has
he died?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: So is this a question that you're asking you? It's
not rhetorical? Well, I mean, okay, what's going on? Well,
he's an alien. He is a stranger in a strange land,
Yes he is, and so he can probably handle our
air for a while, but he can't handle it indefinitely. Right, Okay,
So I mean the fact that he's not not able
to live forever on our world doesn't bother me too much, right.
I think the most interesting question is how does he
come back to life? And what all that really means? Right?
We talked about the biblical similarities to the Christ story
in this and so what you have in this situation,
you have E t who has become connected to humanity,
but in order to save humanity must become disconnected with humanity,
which is strong on the biblical Christ image of dying
on the cross, right, right, And then we don't get
a how did Christ rise again other than he just
did right? He just did right? And so for Edi
to come back, the why is he?
Speaker 2: Who's e?
Speaker 3: For Et to come back? The why isn't the big question.
It is just a part of his relationship and a
part of what has to happen for him to be
able to leave, because just like Jesus is like, don't
try to hold on to me. If I stayed here,
you wouldn't have the counselor inside of you. I must
go for you to have him, which is exactly the
same as Et going, I'll be right here. That's good.
Speaker 2: And you know Steven Spielberg, who was born and raised
as a Jewish person, he rejects that idea. Of course.
Of course, he said his mom would be very upset
if it was a Christian allegory. But it is an
interesting question. As soon as Et disconnects from Eliot, he
then resurrects, which as a kid, I bawled my eyes
out in that scene, and actually I was already. There
are about five times as a grown man where Et
I'm watching it and I have to choke back tears.
When they're doing the defibrillator on Et and Gardi's there
watching and tears are flowing. The lump is prominent.
Speaker 3: I understand, you know what I mean. I understand.
Speaker 2: And then when Elliott notices the red light and he's back,
Oh my gosh, et vone home, and I'm like, ah, he's.
Speaker 3: Back, I mean phone home, e d vone.
Speaker 2: Home, and it's just the lump is there many times. Okay,
But here's the real question. Okay, the real question is
is Et a Jedi?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 2: What is Et a Jedi?
Speaker 3: Okay, so you asked this at the end of our
at the end of last episode, and you're just gonna
have to elaborate, my friend.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna give you the case for yes, Et
is a Jedi. Okay, right, yeah, okay. First of all,
uses the force through the entire movie fifteen thousand times.
Speaker 3: He certainly can make things float with the wave of
his hand.
Speaker 2: She makes objects levitate.
Speaker 3: He has mind control over Elliott.
Speaker 2: There is something going like Jedi mind trick.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, similar in their features. Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 2: In episode one, the Phantom Menace, Oh no, yes, I'm
going there. Yes, no, no, no, I am going there
in the Galactic Council meeting. If you weren't asleep during
all the politics going on in Phantom Menace, there you.
Speaker 3: Locked it out of your mind.
Speaker 2: Like the rest of the world. Our man Terence Stamp
is given a vote of no confidence and the council
goes crazy, and there is very clearly at least three Assogians.
Now that is ET's race. I bet you didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I did not know that.
Speaker 2: Assogians in Star Wars the Phantom Mena, so clearly the
Asogian Et is in the Star Wars universe. We've established
that with the Phantom menace. Yeah, okay, yeah, now that
he also force heels Elliott's finger. True, Okay, yeah, he
wears a white Jedi rope, the blanket.
Speaker 3: He was dressed up like a ghost.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no, that's my big one. That's
the one on cut. That's my uppercut right here, okay,
my little jab Here is the the little white blanket
Jedi rope. Okay, all right, here's the uppercut. You're ready
for this. When e T is dressed as a ghost
on Halloween and they're dragging him around the neighborhood. Yes,
And the kid dressed up as Yoda, who is actually
I think dever Winger.
Speaker 3: No, dever Winger is dressed up as a zombie carrying
a dog. Okay, she's just the voice. Okay.
Speaker 2: So somebody is dressed up as Yoda.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And he walks right up to Et and Et recognizes him. Yeah, buddy,
I freaking know this guy. And he even says home. Yeah,
and you get the cool little musical cue from John Williams.
There you get yogastin eat back at his planet. He
recognizes Joda.
Speaker 3: Good bam, thinking that's the Jedi.
Speaker 2: Huh, listen.
Speaker 3: I like the idea, okay, the fact that it relies
on episode one.
Speaker 2: You're not liking that?
Speaker 3: Du not like that idea?
Speaker 2: Okay? The case, here's the case against already. Where's his lightsaber?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: No Jedi leaves without his lightsaber?
Speaker 3: Right? He's he's a lowly worker picking up plants. He
is not a Jedi master, no.
Speaker 2: Our buddy, Jeff Mazukah, Yeah, he came at me pretty strong.
That can't we just let these two movies be separate
and enjoy them without trying to crossming a limit.
Speaker 3: No, this is what we do, sorry, Jeff.
Speaker 2: So I'm going with yes, Absolutely, Et is a Jedi.
Speaker 3: Okay, what do you say? No, he is not a Jedi?
Speaker 2: Why not?
Speaker 3: You can't just say no, Well he did because he
is not a He does not have a lightsaber. He
is not a member of some large organization that is
empowered with protecting the universe.
Speaker 2: How do you know that?
Speaker 3: Because he wouldn't have gotten left behind it. Okay, they
wouldn't have left Yoda behind, they wouldn't have left Luke behind,
they wouldn't have left Darth Vader behind. No way, not
a Jedi.
Speaker 5: All right, sounds good. Okay, all right, are we ready
to move on to composers. Yeah, let's talk composers real quick.
And again I'll try to fly pass this as quickly
as I can. Okay, right, ready, So again the thing
our composer Ineo Morricone man and icon right, no.
Speaker 3: Man, the guy who did all of the uh Sergio leone.
Speaker 2: Esde matt and the ugly the one that we know
so well, fistful of dollars, ecstasy of gold and icon
right right.
Speaker 3: So, and he does what he's the composer for the thing.
Speaker 2: The thing.
Speaker 3: Now, what's interesting is this music isn't really like his
style of music. It's really much more like the style
of John Carpenter's music. So John Carpenter is a musician,
like he's still doing live stage performances and stuff. And
he composed one of the most iconic musical pieces in
film history from Halloween.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And so I had to think that they, I mean,
all of the all directors talked to their composer about
what their thoughts and ideas are for the music sound
But there is a clear similarity to what Anniomorcone's soundtrack
sounds like and what John Carpenter's music sound like, sounds
like sure, so say this real quick, okay. Twenty sixteen,
he won the Oscar for the Hateful eighty when he
gave a speech. I mean he just passed away, not
too long ago, like a couple of years ago, and
I think he was ninety one. He lived a long
time because in his eighties when he gets the Oscar, right,
he gives special thanks to John Williams, who is also
nominated that year for the music in Force Awake.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Also in twenty sixteen, John Carpenter was performing Morriconi's The
Thing live on stage.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by the way, the Thing score, Yeah, won a
Razzie for Worst Score. It's terrible.
Speaker 3: It's terrible that that that has happened. The main theme.
I mean, we can't we can't possibly go through all
of them, but the main theme, if you just listen
to it, you've got this pulsing, heartbeat like thing going on,
and then you've got these dissonant chords that are overlapping
with each other just I mean, they just create anxiety
just to listen to the music, which is exactly what
you want if you've got a horror movie going on, right,
So it's perfect. It is perfect music for this movie. Now,
I could go on for days and days about Anyo Morriconi,
but I'm not going to. Okay, but I will say
one fascinating tidbit I found out. Yeah, nineteen eighty seven,
he co wrote a song called it Couldn't Happen Here
with the Pet Shop Boys, which was on their album. Actually, man,
I got it.
Speaker 2: We got to hear that. That's cool, Mutch, there you go. Okay,
now to play run? Yes we have ours?
Speaker 3: Yes? Who just passed away less than a month ago,
like May nineteenth, I think, Yeah, not very long ago
at all, just a couple of weeks ago. But here's
a guy who's done some amazing film scores that you
just don't ever hear about. He's really a very private guy.
He just I did get to see one interview where he,
if I could sum up, he basically said, I don't
operate the way that people want me to operate because
I don't want what they want. I don't want fame,
I don't want this other stuff. The only reason I
really did the things that are big that I did,
that I kind of operated in that system, was because
it allowed me to do all of the other things.
That I wanted to do, which was creating music. Ineo
Morriconi born in Rome Begallis was Greek. He was a
member of a couple of rock bands, none of which
are super important. But another interesting bit that I found
from seventy nine to eighty six, he was in a
duo group with Joby Close a John that spells his
name Jon.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: Okay, but it's John Anderson of the group. Yes, they're
in a group called John and Van Gallis.
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, you want to hear a quick tie into Yes, Yes,
I'm gonna throw this in real quick. Do that?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: Everybody, listen up. We are doing a exclusive Patreon episode
every month. Now We're going to pick one song from
the eighties or nineties or whatever, and we're gonna deep
dive into that song. One of the things I found
out about the guys from the Buggles because we're getting
ready to do video killed the Radio Star. You know
two of those guys were in the band.
Speaker 3: Yes, very good, nicely done. Do you want to hear
the rest of that episode? Go to patreon dot com.
Slash Shirley Podcast. Okay, so we know that Vangelis won
the Oscar for Chariots of Fire, which also hit number
one on the Hot one hundred. I mean, that's pretty
impressive for a music scorer song.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that for just a second. Okay, okay,
because people who weren't born early enough to remember how
big the Chariots of Fire theme song was. It was everywhere,
absolutely and it I mean was in the movie Vacation
when Chivi and Chase runs towards Wally World.
Speaker 3: Right, Yep.
Speaker 2: It was huge.
Speaker 3: So he didn't read music. He was very musical from
a young age, very musical, like was playing their piano
when he was four. He would experiment with it and
put nails and kitchen pans in there and play it
to make different sounds, which is I mean, you could
tell from the way that he writes music he's got
a taste for a different sound than everybody.
Speaker 2: Else wants, right, kind of like Nick Rhoades in when
we talked about our Rio episode where he banged the
chords of the piano.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. When it was time for him to
score Blade Runner, he got videotapes and so he would
watch the videotapes and he wasn't writing down music. I mean,
it's not John Williams writing down a sketch on notebook
paper because he doesn't read or write music. He would
just sit there on his keyboard, which was a Yamaha
CS eighty. He'd used a whole bunch of stuff, but
that was the primary one. That's the recognizable sound that
you hear there. And he would just improvise based on
what he was watching on those videos.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. That's the talent I don't have.
Speaker 3: Well. This soundtrack was called the best film score of
all time by Pitchfork in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are multiple sources that say this is,
if not the best soundtrack, it's the best synth soundtrack
of all time.
Speaker 2: Here's the interesting thing about this soundtrack from Blade Runner. Okay, Yeah,
the release of the official soundtrack recording was delayed for
over a decade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with and there have been three or four different
soundtracks that have come out in the meantime, and none
of them had all of his music. They would have
things that were in the film that weren't on the soundtrack.
They would have things on the soundtrack that weren't in
the film. There's been a huge mishmash of songs. As
far as the Blade Runner soundtrack goes. Wow, the one
that I listened to has little sound clips from the
movie in it, like the little dialogue parts, which I
think is pretty innovative for the early eighties. I don't
remember any movie doing that that early.
Speaker 2: On, but Queen did it in Flash Gordon.
Speaker 3: Right right, which was eighty right yep, same time that
he's recording this stuff. So yeah, it's pretty impressive. When
Hans Zimmer and Ben Walfish did the score for Blade
Runner twenty forty nine, they use the Yamaha C S
eighty to capture that same feeling, and they were largely
inspired by Van Gelis's soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 3: It's got components of those film noir sounds in parts,
but then obviously very futuristic, very dystopian, saw teasingly mystical.
I thought that's pretty spot on. Okay, yeah, I'll go
with that. Yeah, So there you go. There is the
soundtrack for Blade Runner, arguably one of the best soundtracks
of all time.
Speaker 2: Wow, blow muscart up about that one. Finally, we ready
to talk about the goat here.
Speaker 3: Who's the composer for e T I don't think I
remember his name?
Speaker 2: Mister Johnny Williams.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Johnny.
Speaker 2: So he won the Oscar for this score. Okay, he
won it het well well deserved.
Speaker 3: Right, as you mentioned just a second ago, there's a
song on the soundtrack called The Magic Falloween, and he
puts a little sound cue from Yoda's.
Speaker 2: Theme from The Empire Strikes Back, The.
Speaker 3: Empire Strikes Back, which, of course he also wrote that right.
And then, of course, as you also mentioned, George Lucas
springs at full circle by having the little et neogens
or whatever you call Themsojians. Yes, sure has them in
that horrible, horrible movie.
Speaker 2: Hey, don't forget that. Johnny Williams was friends with the
guys in Toto.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right. The Toto guys used to hang out
of his house all the time, and his son became
their lead singer. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: If you want some more in depth John Williams info,
go check out our Jaws versus Jurassic Park episode as
well as our Indiana Jones versus The Future Future episodes. Okay,
last bit, he was having trouble timing the music right
to the chase sequence. Yes, and so Steven Spielberg was
sitting there and he said, turn off the projector. Yeah,
turns off the projector. He says, just do it the
way you want to do it. Yeah, And so John
Williams that last bit, which is the best, the best
cinematic experience because of that music. He did it his
own way. And then Spielberg went back and he edited
the chase scene to match what John Williams had composed.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not ready to spike the football on et
being the best John Williams composition good because it's not well,
it's in the conversation.
Speaker 3: It's it is in the conversation. I told you it
wasn't before and listened off about seven.
Speaker 2: Well, that's it. It's like talking about Michael Jordan's best game, right,
because you're like, oh, well, the Jaws.
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, Jaws, right, right?
Speaker 2: And then I'm like, well, I mean Raiders of the
Lost Arc man he kills it. I mean, Indy has
a theme, Marion has a theme, The Arc has a theme,
the Nazis. And then you're like, well, crap, what about
Star Wars?
Speaker 3: Right? What about Superman?
Speaker 2: What about Superman? What about Close Encounters? What about Jurassic Park.
Speaker 3: What about Harry Potter.
Speaker 2: He's the best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's the best. Yeah.
Speaker 2: ET is phenomenal. The music carries me emotionally through the movie.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: If the music isn't in this movie, it's not good.
Speaker 2: It might be Mac and me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right. It might be some sort of
schleppy nothing.
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree, I agree. It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Okay, that is all I have for the composers. We've
talked already about the reception. Obviously, E T was the
number one movie for weeks and weeks until it got
bumped by Zapped right, and then it was like Officer
and a Gentleman, and then it was ET again for
weeks and weeks.
Speaker 2: Curiously, the Empire Strikes Back reached the number one spot
during a re release in nineteen eighty two There You Go,
and then E T. Retouching ran with it.
Speaker 3: All right, So obviously, as far as box office concerned,
ET is the clear winner for best of these three,
clear winner. But as we mentioned before, financial failures, Blade
Runner and The Thing.
Speaker 2: Right all right, d it's almost time for final judgment.
I've got one last item of discussion. Okay, we briefly
mentioned it in our last episode, I feel like we
should talk briefly about the et Atari game. Okay, did
you play the et Atari game?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 2: I played it, Okay, I played it. It was created
by the same guy who made the Riders of the
Lost Art game. Both these games were maddening to me.
They were sort of those journey games where we had
to go and collect items and try to do this
and that and figure it out. And I just wanted
to see the completion of the game for Raiders of
Lost Ark and ET and I could never do it.
And it was freaking hard. Yeah, the stupid FBI agent
would always grab me and I could never I could
never do anything in the et game and it was frustrating.
And you know what what, I wasn't the only one
that found it really frustrating.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: In fact, Atari bet the company on this game and
lost and it was a bust.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We talked in our previous episode about the fact
that all the companies that you see in the Blade
Runner Future Verse are actually companies that went out of
business or had some real financial setback at the time,
and Atari is definitely one of those. And it was
because of et There's a documentary out there on I've
watched it. The land fell where like two hundred and
fifty thousand and the or something et cartridges were buried.
Speaker 2: Yeah, during the in the documentary they actually go to
the landfill. They figure out like look at the catalog
and figure out the date and then go to that
spot and then have to go eight feet down to
find the.
Speaker 3: It's a good documentary and making a cameo appearances. Ernest Klein,
writer of Ready Player one. I think it did you
drive us Delarean over there?
Speaker 2: I think he did?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. Has definitely something to check out.
All right, good TIDBT.
Speaker 2: Okay, guys, let's hear from our buddy James Buckley and
hear what he has to say on these three movies.
Speaker 4: Hey, Jason, Indeed, this is James Buckley chiming in from
the North Louisiana chapter of the show You Can't Be
Serious Appreciation Society. I've been asked to chime in on
the three movies you guys are looking at this week.
And while I definitely have a favorite, there's no going
wrong with any of these three films. Each one is
a classic in its own right, and each one deserves
all the praise it's received over the years, starting with
et this is a perfect fairy tale, I'll be at
A slightly dark fairy tale in some points, extremely well
acted by the kids, Lots of tense action scenes. The
old botanist, as I believe the alien was called in
some promotional material, was very well done, especially considering the
level of special effects at the time. Oh, in all,
it's a perfect movie for kids and adults. I love
it as a twelve year old, and I love it now.
Blade Runner, it's a slightly different story. I saw this
when I was twelve with a buddy of mine, and
confession I was a little bit of a geek. So
I had read Philip K. Dick's novel beforehand and I
was puzzled. And I saw the movie and I was
still puzzled. There were some great action scenes, a topless
scene but don't tell my mother, But overall, the question
about what it means to be human? Yeah, this was
not what I was looking for in a movie at
the time. Subsequent versions of the movie really straightened a
lot out for me and gave me a greater appreciation
for the overall narrative. But from a visual sense. This
movie was amazing. The cyberpunk, vaguely post apocalyptic city in
which Decker lived, Decker's cool gun coat and flying car,
all this was amazing to look at. Rutger Howard was
outstanding as Roy Batty. His improvised rooftop scene was amazing
of work and stands the test of time. Now we
get to John Carpenter's The Thing. I had read Alan
Dean Foster's novelization of this movie prior to actually seeing
the movie, so I was pretty pumped up and I
was not disappointed. It's an amazing science fiction horror movie.
I had seen the original with James Arness as the
bloodsucking Vegetableman from Space and it was okay, But this
movie was mind blowing. John Carpenter really created a palpable
sense of isolation in Paranoia, which was really helped by score.
Kurt Russell was amazing as always, as was the rest
of the crew, including the dog and the special effects man.
Not to give anything away, but when the guy's back
splits open and tries to eat somebody, yeah, that was
pretty shocking at the time. I think it's safe to
say that this is my favorite of the three it
was such a well made movie. I still enjoy watching
it today, always rank it as one of my favorite
films regardless of genre. So yeah, you can put me
down in team McReady, but honestly, as a earlier all
these films are great and uh well what you guys
have brought out about them. So that's it for tonight,
keep on keeping on. You guys really have the greatest
podcast out there.
Speaker 2: We'll talk to you later, all right, James, thanks a
lot for weighing in there. From northern Louisiana. We can
hear the crickets as they are chirping. Appreciate you as always.
Wake up, time to die, reay for final judgment.
Speaker 3: Let me have it, buddy. What do you think? All right?
And my first? You're first?
Speaker 2: Okay, Listen, we don't pick any losers, right right. We
pick nothing but winners, although we're going to make an
exception in July. I feel actual pressure on this one
to like make sure that I cover all my bases
and then I think through my judgment and stuff like that.
So here's where I am. My heart says et okay,
my head says blade Runner okay, and my balls say
the thing. Say your balls yes. Pg. Thirteen. I can't
say that.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna keep going. They say balls is PG
thirteen time.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so when I was a kid. So
let's get in the Doloreum and go back to nineteen
eighty two. I mentioned before that et was one of
the greatest cinematic experiences I've ever had in my entire life.
I laughed, I cried, I was moved, I was entranced.
Speaker 3: Better than cats. I'll see it again and again.
Speaker 2: I loved it, absolutely loved it as a nine year old.
So I was nine and eighty two, so basically I'm
the same age as Elliott.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: When I finally saw Blade Runner, I guess I saw
the director's cut in the early nineties. I didn't quite
get it, but ever since that time, it's one of
those movies you can't really shake, and every time I
watch it, I like it a little bit more every time.
I'm also a big believer that sort of modern movies.
Sometimes it can get cluttered with characters. I love the
final Mono Emano scene with Harrison Ford and Roy Batty.
There can be only one and so I really love
that part about Blade Runner. I also love the ambiguity
and the questions and the discussions that go along with that,
and the thing I was thrilled by. I was scared,
I was paranoid about it. Really was a heart thumper
for me. So it all comes down to it. I
can't even say rewatchability because I don't rewatch ET very much,
but when I do, it still moves me. Okay, So
here's what I'm going to say of these three, and
it's razors Sharp in the number three spot.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go the thing.
Speaker 2: I love it, the poster, the plot is exciting. I
love Kurt Russell. I love it. Number two, Blade Runner,
It's very interesting. It makes me think. I love the
futuristic stuff. I'm a big fan of Ridley Scott. But
for me, number one has to be ET. I'm an
old school guy. John Williams, Steven Spielberg and a little
man from space. Come on, I get a lump in
my throat just thinking about the movie ET. So that's
how I'm gonna go. Spike in the football ET number one.
Speaker 3: Okay, where yet? All right? So when we started on this,
I was pretty confident where I was going to end up. Right, ET.
I loved when I was a kid. I was Gertie's age.
I was due Barrymore's age. Okay, so a little bit younger.
So I didn't quite get all of it, but there
wasn't much that I didn't get. It was pretty simple story.
The thing was something that I watched with my dad
because he preferred the kind of scarier, tougher movies, and
this one didn't have any nudity in it. You got
some f bombs, but you know, when we watched the
TV versions, it was probably those were edited out right.
So I've got nostalgia with my dad associated with the thing,
and so the last one for me was definitely gonna
be played Runner because I had seen it. I hadn't
seen it. I didn't see it in the eighties. I
don't even think I saw it in the nineties. I
think it was twenty first century before I ever sat
down and watched the movie. I wasn't super impressed with it.
I didn't know why it was such a big deal
when I watched it the first time, and it literally
was the one that I had to force myself to
watch this last time. So when I watched ET, I
was impressed by the simplicity of the story, right, And
I had to keep asking myself the question like why
did this one win? Right? Why did this one break
all the records? And the other two were cut and
left to die right, and only became cult classics later
on after years and years go by. And then when
I watched the thing, I was like, Okay, how much
of this do I remember for being a little kid,
and how much of it did I really love? The
thing was the reason I became a fangor a ficionado.
Okay like that, I mean the makeup effects like Blew
Me Away, and so I became obsessed with Ye, yes, yeah,
I became obsessed with movie makeup special effects because of
that movie. But when I watched it, there were parts
in the plot that I, as an adult, I went,
this doesn't make any sense. Yeah, Like they're burning down
the camp at the end of the movie, which is
kind of an important feature, and it doesn't make any sense,
Like why is this going to solve the problem? It
really just seems like a way for you to have
a bunch of explosions and everybody dead at the end, right,
I mean, it just does It didn't need shelter, Yeah, yeah,
it didn't make it. I mean, the idea is we're
going to burn him out and then he can't, you know,
hide in the ice. Well what if he watched twenty
yards away where it's freezing cold. You guys are about
to freeze to death right now in the middle of
all of this stuff. It didn't make any sense. So
I was troubled by that, and so I thought, Okay, well,
the thing is going to finish second to ET, because
Et is still amazing. And the thing that ET did,
and this is really what I believe is the key here,
is that it was the pepsi cola of these three movies.
When they had the pepsi challenge, everybody picked pepsi. And
why do they pick pepsi Because it's sweeter? Yeah, right right.
Speaker 2: You take that first drink and you're like, oh, that's it.
Speaker 3: But here's the thing. If you have an extended test,
you don't pick pepsi. You pick coke because that's sweet.
For that amount of time, it's not that great. So
you've got it long enough for a year worth of
great movies and some rewatches, but I don't go back
and revisit it. And when I watched it with my daughter,
I didn't get choked up. I thought, this is a
pretty simple, straightforward movie. The thing that Spielberg hit the
nail on the head with was the emotional vantage point
of a child, and he lowered the camera. I mean,
you got crop shots at the beginning, right, he lowered
the camera and he let the kids go chronologically through
the story, all to capture the emotions of a child.
And so that's great if you're nine or if you
were six, But as a forty five year old, I'm like, Okay,
this is a pretty simple story. The effects aren't that great.
You've got compelling music, which is really the reason that
this movie is so great, but if you really analyze it,
it's not super impressive. And so that left me with
Blade Runner, which I didn't even like the first time.
Speaker 2: I fall out of my chair if you say Blade Runner.
Speaker 3: I watched Blade Runner this time and I was engrossed.
I was like, holy cow, how did I not realize
how good the movie this was? And maybe it was
because I didn't watch final cut the first time, and
I watched final cut this time, and there are those
various versions. So probably in the eighties I would not
be picking Blade Runner. I wouldn't want the voiceover. I
wouldn't want the happy ending, but you give me the
final cut Ridley Scott's original idea, and you give me
those iconic imagery that sid Mead does, and you give
me the little pieces of deeper meaning as far as
historical fiction goes, and religion and meaning and the question
of life, and you put all that together in a
detective story. Blade Runner overtook me. WHOA, I didn't even
want to watch it again, and it overtook me, and
it overtook the Thing, and it overtook ET. So Blade
Runner is my number one pick. Cinematically incredible, visually incredible,
acted incredibly. The guys you identify with are the bad guys,
and it's still great. Wow, it's for me number one,
Blade Runner, number two ET, and number three the Thing,
only because the Thing had some plot problems with it.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's fascinating because when, like before I knew that
you hadn't seen Blade Runner, I may have guessed that
because you're kind of the thinker and I'm kind of
a feeler, and so that kind of makes sense for
me to take ET and you to take Blade Runner.
But you were like, I didn't like it, not really
and for now for it to emerge number one. That
makes me want to fall out of my chair, and
that makes me feel great because I love it when
we change opinions, and maybe we changed yours, maybe we
changed the people out there.
Speaker 3: Shirley fans. If you have not seen these movies in
a while, go give them a second look, especially the
final cut of Blade Runner, which is on HBO Max
right now. If you happen to have a subscription to that,
it is well worth the rewatch. And speaking of rewatch,
I will be watching it again soon before it's gone
off of HBO because I want to just drink it
all in.
Speaker 2: Wow. Fantastic. All right, d So that's the Kapper three
parter et Blade Run of the thing. What do we
got coming next week?
Speaker 3: So next week we have a special unplanned episode. We
talked briefly in Top Gun about the Top Gun soundtrack,
but those episodes have been so popular for us that
we have decided we are going to cover the Top
Gun soundtrack in depth, track by track, and we're going
to give you some bonus tracks from the Maverick soundtrack
as well.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be awesome. One of my favorite albums nineteen
eighty six hands down, I can't wait to dive into that.
After that, we got Motley Crue Versus Whitesnake. We're back
to stripper music. It's gonna be great.
Speaker 3: Great stories to go along with both of those albums.
I can't wait.
Speaker 2: Come back next week. Don't forget Patreon. You now get
additional Patreon episodes once a month. It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 3: One hit Wonders of the Eighties and beyond. If you're
a Patreon subscriber. If that's not within your budget, totally understand.
If you could do something free for us, leave us
a review hit the five Stars. It just help us
out tremendously and it doesn't trout you had done.
Speaker 2: Plus, we love it. It's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, builds our ego too. Thank you guys, look forward
to seeing you in next week.
Speaker 2: See you next week.