Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media. Hello everybody, and
welcome back to the Shirley You Can't Be Serious podcast
d I've got my Reese's pieces and I've got a
massive flamethrower. I'm ready to go on this episode. That
is great.
Speaker 2: I've got my Holy cap. Okay, I just saw some
like glint in your eye. There's a reddish kind of Clint.
I'm gonna need you to donate me some blood to
hear real quick. I gotta do a little checking here,
all right.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's all about the eyes. We're gonna talk about
the eyes. We are diving into June of nineteen eighty two.
This is a massive undertaking. We got three movies we're
we'll be talking about.
Speaker 2: Let's be clear about this. We do not just have
three movies. We have three of the greatest sci fi
movies of all time. And they were all released within
a week of each other.
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Like Et came out a week later, Blade Runner and
The Thing came out on the same day. So in
a span of eight days, you have three of the
greatest sci fi movies of all time. Nineteen eighty two,
forty years ago this month, before we dive in. Okay,
let's do a quick shout out for a couple of
the folks who have left us an awesome review. Oh yah, yeah,
Hey guys, if you're out there, if you're listening, we
would love it if you visited our Patreon page and
could do a monthly subscription.
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right now, hit us up and leave us a review
or some stars on your podcast app, and that helps
us tremendously. It gets us in front of other people.
We always have some sort of contest going on as
far as the re reviews are concerned. If you get
picked out of the people who give the reviews, then
we send you a cup. There are a couple of
awesome reviews that we've gotten just in the last few days,
and I don't know who these people are. We have
awesome reviews that, even if they won, we couldn't tell
who to send the cup to. So let me just
say a couple of them real quick.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So the first one I've got is from the diz Kids.
I don't know who the diz Kids are. We probably
know this person's name, but all we've got on the
review is the diz Kids. So if you are the
diz Kids, hit us up on Twitter, hit us up
on Facebook, and let us know who you are. But
the name of their review was writing checks the podcast
can't catch. The podcast is like a warm hug of
nostalgia every week eighties and nineties movies, music, and pop culture.
If it's time to schedule your first colonoscopy, you'll love
this podcast. I especially recommend the episodes where they go
track by track on Pearl Jam and Nirvana. High quality,
well researched stuff. Thank you the diz Kids.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. Please hit us.
Speaker 2: Up on social media and let us know who you are.
We also have another one from somebody known as Real
KD twenty twenty. Again, I don't know who this is,
but I think this is maybe the third awesome review
that they've sent referencing one of our episodes, and we
just got to say, Real KD twenty twenty hit us up,
tell us who you are.
Speaker 1: Real KD twenty twenty, thank you so much. You're awesome.
We appreciate you. Here's what Real KD twenty twenty says,
good podcast. I look forward to seeing the movie. Prayers
for Caleb's head and Jason's stones. Thank you very much.
Keep up the great work. Thank you, Real KD twenty twenty.
We appreciate you for everybody who's paying attention. Caleb is
doing much better every day. He actually went to his
last day of school so he could see all of
his friends. So he's doing much much better. And are
all the stones gone? Stones have cleared? I think so?
Speaker 2: Congratulations And then we got one on that same day
from cf HB CG N v D. I don't even
know how you pronounced that. There's not even any vowels.
That's catchy right there, right so the Best gen X
Nostalgia pod, hands down the best eighties nineties podcast out there,
fun and incredibly well researched conversations about movies and music,
including tons of great show pitting two classics against each other.
If you're a gen xer or live that era, this
is a must listen. Thank you, cfhbcg NV whoever you are,
Hit us up and let us.
Speaker 1: Know, man, that's your real name is? Those are three
awesome reviews. Thank you guys so much for taking the
time to do that. If you like us and you're
listening out there, please give us a five star review
and maybe you'll get a cup out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jason, we have a new executive producer for this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is our good friend, Sissy Johnson.
Speaker 2: She's communicated with us on Twitter before. I think right, Yeah,
I think she found us. I think maybe through Duran
Duran episodes. Awesome, Sissy, Thank you so much for your support.
Shirley fans. If you want to help us out, we
put hours of time into each one of these episodes,
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Just go over to our Patreon page Patreon dot com
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you like to give us a monthly donation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Sissy, We sure appreciate it. You
are the best.
Speaker 2: Okay, guys, we are ready to jump back into these
three sci fi movies forty years ago.
Speaker 1: They're all turning forty And I was texting with our
buddy Jeff Manzuoka Yes, and he was asking me, He's like,
what's the connection between these three? And I said, well,
they all came out in June of eighty two, and
they're all like all time classics, which for us is enough. Right,
But I've got some really cool connections between these movies
I want to talk about before we dive in.
Speaker 2: Okay, first movie that came out was E. T. The
Extraterrestrial by mister Steven Spielberg. Yes, then we had on
the same day we had The Thing by mister John
Carpenter and Blade Runner by mister Ridley Scott. I mean,
talk about big hitting directors of the eighties. All of
these guys were in, they're trying, and they're prime.
Speaker 1: The list of these connections, I'm ready to blow your
socks off. You ready for this? Blow online, buddy?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: So Harrison Ford was the lead actor and Blade Runner, right.
He was also at the time married to Melissa Matheson,
who was the writer for et. She wrote Freaking ETEP.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: The last line of dialogue or the sentence of dialogue
from the Thing from Another World, which the Thing is
a remake of, is Watch the Skies. Yes, Watch the
Skies was the working title for E T. Yes, Okay,
I've got a few more connections for you. So The
Thing was made in response to Ridley Scott's Alien movie. Yes,
Alien actually revitalized the thing, gave it life. Okay. One
of the possible choices for McCready in the Thing Peter Coyote,
who plays keys in ET. Yeah. And then one last
thing is gonna blow your mind. Okay, there is a
miniature of Dark Star the ship. Okay, John Carpenter's Dark
Star that can be seen in the background at the
police station. And Blade Runner. Wow, how about that.
Speaker 2: That's awesome? All right, Okay, there's more. I'm gonna bounce
back and forth on them. But you've got a cameo
appearance in Et on a deleted scene by one of
those people we've talked about. You have guys that owned
rights to one of the scripts, that had written scripts
for the directors. These movies are interlaced like you wouldn't believe,
and we're gonna hit all kinds of connections as we
go through.
Speaker 1: So just a refresh your memory. Movies from June of
eighty two. June of eighty two is really strong. Okay.
The weekend of June fourth you had Poltergeist along with
Star Trek to the Wrath of Kahn. Then June the
eleventh you have of course Et and Greece two. For
you cool riders out there. Then June eighteenth you have
the Clint Eastwood Firefox movie. I don't even remember that one,
but I was freaking pumped up to see that one.
I remember of it, I don't. It was boring into
the last ten minutes, and then d the Top done
in the last ten minutes. And then June twenty fifth
you had Blade Runner, Mega Force and the Thing. Wow,
June of eighty two was great month to be a
movie watching kid. Almost as good as June of eighty one. Almost,
not quite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Jason, We're going to go back to nineteen
thirty when a young eighteen year old kid going to
his first year MIT starts writing science fiction.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay.
Speaker 2: This guy's name is John W.
Speaker 1: Campbell.
Speaker 2: From nineteen thirty to nineteen thirty one, when he's eighteen
years old, he wrote six short stories, six letters, and
one novel for the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. He
would later become an editor of another science fiction magazine
called Astounding. But this guy, to say that he was
an important force in this world of science fiction is
too much of an understatement. Let me just say this.
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction said, quote more than any
other individual. He helped to shape modern science fiction. Isaac Asimov said,
he is the most powerful force in science fiction ever.
What this guy is huge? And he decided to start
writing some stories in a different tone. He assumed a
pen name of Don A.
Speaker 1: Stewart.
Speaker 2: That was the name he used when he wrote a
little story called Who Goes There in nineteen thirty eight.
It is the story that the thing is based on.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 1: John W.
Speaker 2: Campbell became the editor of Astounding in nineteen thirty seven
and stayed the editor through his death. He helped shape
the careers of the Big three as far as science
fiction goes. Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, remember that name, Robert
Heinlein and Arthur C. Clark, Right, so, Isaac Asimov, I
mean everybody knows who that is, right, sure, okay? Robert
Heinlein Starship Troopers and a ton of other things. He
also shaped the career of Theodore Sturgeon, who did Starship Troopers,
and then of course Arthur C. Clark is two thousand
and one and a million others. Right As the editor
of this magazine. He was a guy who kind of
imposed certain standards upon all of his writers, these guys included,
and that's how he kind of shaped the world of
science fiction. And he started to go in a direction
that was kind of disturbing to these other guys, where
he started investigating parapsychology and ParaScience and pseudoscience and some
of these other things, and that turned off Isaac Asimov
and these other guys. Which is interesting because when we
talked about parapsychology and dan Ackroyd back when we did
our Ghostbusters episode, he was like, you know, if people
would give this sincere scientific study, maybe we could learn
something about these other worldly type of things. And you
also mentioned that while they were filming the movie, there
was a certain resident of New York City who ran
into dan Ackroyd at the time that they were filming
the movie.
Speaker 1: Can you remember that. Yeah, So dan akro is like,
holy crap, it's Isaac Asimov. And Isaac Asmov is like,
are you the reason why all this traffic is here?
Dan Ackroyd's like, I guess so, sir, And he's like,
I think it's disgusting. Right.
Speaker 2: So Isaac Asimov doesn't like the parapsychology guys right at all?
So what this ultimately ends up happening is John W.
Campbell does befriend a guy who's into these kind of
weird things, and his name is l Ron Hubbard, and.
Speaker 1: So John W.
Speaker 2: Campbell is a key in the development of what would
become dianetics, the foundational piece of work for scientology.
Speaker 1: Wow, you blowing my freaking mind.
Speaker 2: Hi, Tom Cruise, great job on Maverick. Okay, So back
to who goes there? So this was produced in nineteen
thirty eight. It is very similar in story to what
we get in the movie The Thing from nineteen eighty two.
But there was another movie called The Thing from Another
World that came out in nineteen fifty one that was
directed by Howard Hawks. Okay, and that one you had
a guy in a costume, right it was.
Speaker 1: I watched that movie. Yeah, I watched it. Well, tell
me Tommy, Well, I watched it on YouTube. Okay, it's
free on YouTube. Okay, it's you know, it's a nineteen
fifties science fiction movie. It's a whole lot of you know,
a couple of people grandstanding about you know, creation moving
forward and evolving and the scientists. You know, it goes
a little crazy, but essentially there's a they find a
fling saucer and they accidentally blow it up, but they
rescue one of the alien b from the ice and
the ice melts, and then that guy wakes up and
goes on a rampage and kills everybody, and they managed
to take care of it because he's a plant. Like,
it's a walking plant. Vegetable matter. There you go. Yeah,
and then the guy at the end is like, you know,
watch the Skies. What was what was the last line?
Watch the Skies? Well, that's important. Can you tell me
more about why that would be important because that's the
working title of ET? What yes, tell me more. Yeah. So,
when Steven Spielberg was developing ET, what he was doing
was he was actually writing a sequel to Close Encounters
of the Third Kind, and the studio came to him
and said, hey, listen, we like Close Encounters. We want
to do a sequel. And Steven Spielberg's like, well, they
asked me to do a sequel for Jaws. I didn't
do it. They did it without me and it sucked.
And so I want to be involved. If they're going
to do this, I want to be involved. Yeah, And
so when he wrote the screenplay, for Watch the Skies.
It became it sort of evolved into et.
Speaker 2: So you I think we talked about this before. There's
a guy named John Sales involved here, right, yes, And
they didn't keep the name Watch the Skies. It ended
up being something else.
Speaker 1: Do you remember this? So Watch the Skies was actually copyrighted,
so he couldn't use Watch the Skies, right, So he
changed it to Night Skies. Yeah, White Skies is great, yes, right,
So he went to Lawrence Kasten and said, Hey, I've
got this idea for this script. I want you to
write it for me. Lawrence Casden said, well, I'm doing
this little project called The Empire Strikes Back, so I'm
a little bit busy right now. So he went to
John Sales, who had written for Joe Dante the spoof
on Jaws called Piranha, which we talked about in Jaws
and in our Grimlins episode. Yes, sir, yes, so he
changed the Night Skies. It's a story about a group
of aliens who terrorize a family. And the aliens there's
like a group of them, like, one was named Scar,
one was named Squirt, one was named Buddy.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Does this sound familiar to you? This sounds like Grimlins.
So the night Skies became basically ET Grimlins and Poltergeist,
that's right.
Speaker 1: Which also came out this year. It came out just
a few weeks prior to ET. Yeah, directed by Toby Hooper,
but really Steven Spielberg supposedly was actually the guy who
directed it, but he was going back and forth between
Poltergeist and ET. Poltergeist is the story of a suburban
nightmare and ET is the story of a suburban dream.
Speaker 2: Yep, when we get to casting in a second, I've
got a nice little connection on those two.
Speaker 1: Movies as well. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2: So jumping back to Who Goes There, I'm going to
tell you something that came about just in the last
few years. There was an expanded manuscript found in twenty
eighteen at Harvard.
Speaker 1: John W.
Speaker 2: Campbell had donated a bunch of his manuscripts to Harvard,
and somebody was just searching through these old manuscripts and
found like a much larger version of Who Goes There.
They started a Kickstarter campaign to try to get it published.
Their goal was one thousand dollars. They raised one hundred
and fifty five thousand dollars, and so the book was released,
it was called Frozen Hell, the book that in sp
fired The Thing, published twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. You know. That sounds very similar to the
birth of Blade Runners. We'll get to that here in
just a minute.
Speaker 2: I have so much stuff. That's so much stuff, all right,
let's go. Okay, So after the movie The Thing from
Another World, there were a couple of guys, a couple
of screenwriters who had the rights to the story the
original who goes their story right? And those guys' names
were Hal bar Wood and Matthew Robbins. Let me give
you a couple of movies that they wrote, Okay, Dragon's Layer,
Whoa and The Sugarland Express. Are you serious, which, of
course is Steven Spielberg's first movie. Yes, starring Goldie Hawn.
There you go, another connection. Yes, all right. So those
guys had the rights, they passed the Universe. They were like,
we're not going to make this movie. We're not interested
in it. So Universal bought it and David Foster, Lawrence Termann.
We're trying to get a more faithful adaptation of the
novel because in the novel you've got the alien's body
mass that will change. It involves taking over people and dogs.
The dog is killed, it's telepathic. It's all very similar
to what we get in nineteen eighty two as opposed
to what we got in nineteen fifty one, and they
wanted it more like that. They approached John Carpenter in
nineteen seventy six, but Universal chose not to go with
him because he wasn't under contract. He was an independent guy.
And the guy that they hit up was Toby Hooper
because he was under contract, and Toby Hooper.
Speaker 1: Is the director of Poltergeist and Texas Chainsaw'm massacre. There
you go.
Speaker 2: So they intempted to get others, including John Lannis, but failed,
but it got put on hold right right until a
couple of things happened. Okay, but before I get to
those things, to talk about John Carpenter and Kurt Russell. Okay,
So I'm gonna start with Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1: We're gonna draw a little bit everybody's blood. We're going
to find out who's a thing.
Speaker 2: So Kurt Russell at fifteen, when he does his first
Disney movie called Follow Me Boys, he's already seasoned actor.
He's been acting for four years at that point. One
of the movies that he was in when he was
twelve years old, was it happened at the World's Fair.
Speaker 1: Do you know who's in that? No? Elvis?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And so at some point Kurt Russell shows
up and kicks Elvis in the shin.
Speaker 1: Okay. So then he goes to Disney.
Speaker 2: Between sixty six and seventy five, he had a big
career with Disney, Computer War, Tennis Shoes, Strongestman, with all
these amazing Disney movies. And after nine years and nine movies,
he was ready to be done, right, ready to be
done with Disney. So in nineteen seventy four, the last
movie that he does with Disney is The Strongest Man
in the World. In the same year, he plays Charles Whitman,
the sniper killer in the movie The Deadly Tower.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I mean talk about let's burn this image to the
ground seriously, right, So that's his objective. I am you know,
I've been the Disney kid for nine years now, I
want to do something completely different. Well, enter John Carpenter.
Now John Carpenter we talked about in our Aliens episode,
because John Carpenter went to school with this guy named
Dan O'Bannon and they worked together on John Carpenter's student
movie called dark.
Speaker 1: Star, which is also coincidentally the name of the plane
that Tom Cruise flies and Tom gun Maverick.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I think that I think the movie had
to have inspired the plane. Right, Those guys Lockheed Martin
have to be John Carpenter fans.
Speaker 1: I believe it. So you can go.
Speaker 2: Back and listen to that episode, but you'll have to
remember that Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter had a falling out.
Dan O'Bannon ended up doing a big project with a
guy that didn't come through called Dune.
Speaker 1: Remember this, Yes, flew.
Speaker 2: Out to Europe, project fell through, he lost all his money.
He came back and was sleeping on the couch and
that's when he wrote the movie Alien right.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: The reason that he got the job was because Alejandro
Jeordowski was making Doune. So Alejandro Hordawaski had gone to
talk to this guy named Douglas Trumbull who was the
special effects guy to talk to and Douglas Trumbull said, Hey,
this is the way that we are going to do things,
and Hordwaski was like, I don't want to do it.
That way, and Douglas Trumble was like, well tough, that's
the way it's going.
Speaker 1: To be, or I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2: He's like, well then I don't want you. And then
they went and saw this movie at the theater called
Dark Star, and he said, who's the special effects guy
for this movie? It was Dan O'Bannon, who, of course
then became the guy who wrote Alien, which was directed
by Ridley Scott worked closely with him. Ridley Scott, of
course is the guy who directed Blade Runner, who had
the most amazing set design that was made by Douglas Trumble.
Speaker 1: Wow, how about that?
Speaker 2: So Douglas Trumbule just passed away in February, God rest
his soul. We had a couple of guys who are
involved in these things who have just recently passed away.
But Douglas Trumbull is a and icon as far as
visual effects goes.
Speaker 1: But there you go.
Speaker 2: Another connection, hey, by the way, just a little connection, Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Ridley Scott also directed Gladiator, which we paired up
against Braveheart in one of our earliest episodes, Yes, which
you were way wrong in whatever. That was one of
the few episodes we really disagreed in.
Speaker 2: Yes, so, after John Carpenter has done Dark Star, he
starts doing some of these other kind of low budget
horror movies. One is called Assault on Precinct thirteen, which
is a retelling of the Rio Bravo movie Yep. And
he realizes that there's a lot of work and a
lot of money to be made in TV movies at
the time, does another couple of horror movies, and then
he does this bio pic on Elvis. Yes, and guess
who plays Elvis, Kurt Russell.
Speaker 1: You want to be able to walk around and see things,
all the mobs of people, you know, just just be
pre just be playing little old media instead of the inning.
Speaker 2: Same guy who at twelve years old kicked Elvis in
the shin is now playing Elvis in the biopic in
nineteen seventy nine, directed by John Carpenter, And that is
where these two get together and fall in love.
Speaker 1: By the way, one of the little horror movies that
you kind of skimmed over there, Yeah, Halloween, one of
the most profitable movies of all time.
Speaker 2: Yes, so nineteen seventy nine is when this biopick came out.
Nineteen seventy nine. Us of course, when Alien came out, yes,
And also, of course John Carpenter had Halloween.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So those are the two colossal events that wake up
universal to say, hey, maybe we should go ahead and
remake the thing to trust.
Speaker 4: I know what you mean, Blair, Trust a tough thing
to come by these days.
Speaker 1: Tell you why why don't you just trust in the Lord?
Bang on? Good job, nailed it.
Speaker 2: So they go back to John Carpenter, and he didn't
think that he could do it better than Howard Hawk
had done it. It was a movie that he had loved
since the time he was a kid, but he hadn't
really ever read the book. And so he reads the
novella and he's like, you know what, this isn't the
same as the movie. This is more like an Agatha
Christie like and then there were none It really is
like and then there were none. Yes, And so he's like, huh,
I think I can do something different with this. I mean,
just let me be clear on this. Howard Hawks was
like a huge influence on John Carpenter. He was scared
to do this movie. If you watch Halloween, you can
see that it is an homage to Howard Hawks in
the way that he did stuff and so they said,
John Carpenter, we really want you to do this. Once
he read it, he was like, I think I can
do this in a different way. But they needed a script.
They approached several different writers, one of which was Richard Matheson,
who was, of course the father of Chris Matheson.
Speaker 1: Who wrote Freaking Bill and Ted Excellent Adventure.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Richard Matheson is the guy that said, hey,
you should do a time travel movie based on your
short story.
Speaker 1: Richard Mathson wrote, I am legend. I mean it's a
big deal. He's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He didn't do it, But there was a of a
famous actor that was in descript writing and they approached him,
and his name was Bill Lancaster, son of the famous
Bert Lancaster incredible. When they approached him, he said, I
want to keep this close to the novella, and they said,
that's what we want.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: In this script, you don't really see the monster. They
played the Jaws card where they kept the monster brilliant hidden.
But there's a guy named Rob Boteen who they had
approached about doing the special effects in this movie, who said,
I really think we should see the monster more often
and that's why you got it in there as often
as you do.
Speaker 1: By the way, every time you see the monster, you're
gonna crap your pants because it's so freaking scary.
Speaker 2: This is one of the best special effects movies of
all time, and one of the movies that John Carpenter
had done in this time period between you know, hey,
we want you to do the movie and the movie
coming out. It was a movie called The Fog. Yeah,
And so this young I think twenty or twenty one
year old kid is like, Oh, John Carpenter, I want
to go meet him. He's over on the lot. He's
doing some work with a special effects guy named Rick Baker.
Speaker 1: Who you might have heard of Rick Baker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so he's like, oh, I want to go
meet him.
Speaker 1: And he's like gets in.
Speaker 2: He's like, okay, so the movies he you're doing is
what the Fog?
Speaker 1: Oh? Can I be in it?
Speaker 2: And he says that John Carpenter's like stand up, and
he's like he thinks he's going to say stand up
and get out, and he's like, turn around, Okay, I
got a part for you. You need to be here
tomorrow morning. You need to wear this, you need to
learn these lines. I mean so so Rob Botein first
working with John Carpenter as an actor in the Fog.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now, of course we know from our American Werewolf in
London versus The Howling that Robotein worked again with Rick
Baker initially on the Howling. But then John Landis called
Rick Baker and he's like, what are you doing? I've
got a werewolf movie. Wait? Yeah, I mean John Landis
is the reason that Rick Baker is a household name. Sure, right,
So Rick Baker leaves to go do American Werewolf in London.
He leaves Rob Botein in charge of the special effects
for the Howling, which of course are monumental at time.
And so then when we get to the thing, Robboteen
is the man for the plan.
Speaker 1: The effects in the Thing are so graphic and shocking
that the press accused John Carpenter of being a pornographer
of violence.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We even did a little a little presentation a
live show. Oh yeah, that's right last fall, and we
presented some of the scariest movies in cinema. And one
of those moments was when the.
Speaker 2: When opens up and the arms come off. Oh my gosh,
so incredible. We'll talk about special effects in a little
more detail a little bit later on. Okay, so we've
got our director, we've got our script by mister Bill Lancaster,
we've got our special effects guy.
Speaker 1: And it's time to start going.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, okay, So that's the beginning of the thing.
Speaker 1: Yep. Now we've got to talk about the beginning of later.
Speaker 3: Wake Up, trying to die.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so once again we're going back in time.
We are going to talk about sci fi writers. This
guy's a little bit younger.
Speaker 1: His name is Philip Kindred Dick, mister phild K Dick.
Speaker 2: Philip K. Dick, an unfortunate name. Born a twin Oh
really yeah, had a twin sister. She died in infancy.
That's why you will see a lot of twinless twins
in his works.
Speaker 1: Interesting. He said it had a.
Speaker 2: Profound effect on him, even though he's only six weeks old.
It's a big condition, like there are organizations that are
the twinless twins organizations. So it was profound on his life.
But I don't need to get into all that. What
you need to know is that he also was a
young science fiction writer. He wrote other more mainstream stuff,
but it was unsuccessful and he really was never truly
appreciated during his lifetime.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Phil K.
Speaker 2: Dick started writing in nineteen fifty two and wrote for
nearly ten years without any real success. His stuff would
get submitted to the science fiction magazines. My guess is
probably John W. Campbell read some of his stuff and
rejected it. But in nineteen sixty two he came out
with a novel called The Man in the High Castle. Yes,
have you watched this on showtime?
Speaker 1: Or I have not seen a series? Okay. I read
this book a long time ago, and it's basically what
would have happened if Germany had won World War Two?
And that premise alone is just fascinating.
Speaker 2: I haven't read the book, but as I understand that,
there's actually a book within the book that is what
would have happened if the Allies had won World War Two?
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is kind of.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's crazy. That is some deep weird stuff.
I can say that going down the Phillip Dick Hole,
if you will, is a world of crazy beyond your
normal crazy.
Speaker 1: It's upper level, super highly intelligent stuff. It can get
over your head in a hurry.
Speaker 2: He just as a quick glim of his life. He
didn't have a lot of financial success despite the really
famous works that he's done. I mean, we're talking about
a guy who was the inspiration for his stories, were
the inspiration for mann in Height, Castle, Minority Report, Blade Runner,
Total Recall. I mean, this is huge, right, it's huge.
But he was a weird, kind of messed up dude.
I sent you a video today of him talking about
a real life experience that he had that sounded like
the inspiration for the Matrix like where he was talking
about how he met this woman that had delivered something
to him after he'd had a tooth extracted and he
was still under the effects of the sodium pentahal and
he thought she was like some sort of angel. She
had an Ickc's necklace that he was like, what is that?
Speaker 1: Fish? What is that?
Speaker 2: And this guy, who was never Christian in his life,
suddenly after meeting this woman's believed he was living two
parallel lives. One is Philip K. Dick and the other
is a man named Thomas who was alive during the
events of Acts in the Bible, which he said he
had never read, and one of his books is based
upon that experience.
Speaker 1: He's a strange dude.
Speaker 2: He's definitely a strange dude, and not being a financial success,
so he.
Speaker 1: Was in trouble with the irs, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In one of the dedications in his books, he dedicated
to a guy who helped him out when he needed
help paying off the irs, that guy who had never
met just a guy who's liked his work and wanted
to help him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robert Heinlein, really yes, the science fiction right now?
Speaker 4: Yes? What?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there.
Speaker 2: You go, and again another looping connection. Ultimately, Philip K.
Dick would win the John W. Campbell Science Fiction Award.
Speaker 1: It's just it's crazy, the overlap that we have in
all of these things. Insane.
Speaker 2: And so you mentioned to me that while he was
studying on The Man in the High Castle, he came
across some stuff which led to the development of another story.
Speaker 1: Right. So he would he would go to the library
at cal Berkeley and just read like the dark hallway journals,
like the back corner stuff, right right, the stuff that
nobody he reads. He's back there reading and he came
across a bunch of journals from World War Two and
it was Nazi journals, right, and so he's thinking about
the man in the High Castle. So he's reading through
these Nazi journals and he reads this one guy's journal
and it says, we can't sleep because these stupid children
who are starving keep crying. And Phil k Dick is like,
this person who wrote these words cannot be human. It's
not possible. You cannot listen to starving children cry and
be upset that you can't sleep. That's not human behavior.
There's something wrong with this person. Therefore he has to
be an android. He legitimately believed this. Yes, he legitimately
believed this person is not human, right, and so that
led him to the story we know as do Android's
Dream of Electric Sheep.
Speaker 2: Which of course was the inspiration for our movie Blater Runner. Yep,
So tell you about another guy real quick. His name
is Hampton Fancher. Hampton Fancher, at age fifteen, ran away
to Spain to become a Flamenco dancer and renamed himself
Mario Montejo.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Why would you? Why would
you know that?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So there's good job.
Speaker 2: There is a deep dive on Hampton Vancher.
Speaker 1: So, Henny Vancher's the screenwriter for Blade Run Right.
Speaker 2: So he had a job as an actor in westerns
and Troy Donahue movies, The.
Speaker 1: Guy Who's named Jacked in Greece and in The Godfather yep.
Speaker 2: And by the way, he also had a couple of
relationships with some hotties, one of which was Barbara Hershey.
The other was Terry Garr.
Speaker 4: What mackers, thank you doctor, Let's go dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's kind of rocking and rolling it. But
around nineteen seventy seven he's like, you know what, I
think I'd like to do some screenwriting, and that's what
he decides he's going to do as a full time job.
So he starts trying to option do Android's Dream of
Electric Sheep in nineteen seventy five. Okay, and Philip k
is like, I don't know who you are. I'm not
gonna let you make a movie. No, And so Fancher
goes to his buddy named Brian Kelly. Now, Brian Kelly,
you will know as the dad from Flipper.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Brian Kelly had been involved in a motorcycle
accident before he was about to make a movie. It
left his right arm and leg paralyzed. He sued he
didn't get to be in the movie because he's lost
movement on that side of his body. So he sued,
he got a settlement, and with that he started building
homes and producing movies really, and so Fancher' is like, hey, Brian,
I really want to make this movie.
Speaker 1: Can you help me out?
Speaker 2: When Brian Kelly goes, Philip Dick agrees, and Frantire gets
brought on to write the screenplay. Now, ultimately, Kelly would
later enlist the support of Michael Deeley, who wrote The
Deer Hunter. Yes, and they made Fancher an executive producer,
and he was obviously still largely involved, but he is
kind of the catalyst that brought this book into movie world, right,
But he as executive producer ended up having a ton
of disagreements with Ridley Scott. And Ridley Scott even brought
on his own guy named David Peeples, who you will
know from writing The Unforgiven and Twelve Monkeys and rework
the script. And rework the script. Now we're going to
talk about the big question of Blade Runner, right, the
big the big question where Ridley Scott is on one
side and Fancher is on the other side on this one. Right,
So you've got the guy who wrote the original script
and the guy who directed the movie and they say
opposing things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. So and Harrison Ford with Fancher as well. Yeah,
by the way, Fancher and Peoples. When Ridley Scott brought
in Peoples to help out with the screenplay, Fancher's like, you,
f you and f you. I don't need this fan project.
And he really got his feelings hurt. And so when
Will Peoples met him, he was like, Hey, we kind
of need to talk through, you know, some stuff, and
he's like, I really did not expect to like this
guy at all. And they became like best. Oh that's awesome.
You know that is awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently Fancher when he would try to rewrite, he was
so slow that the production crew would call him happen faster.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you know where the name blade Reunner comes from?
Tell me Okay. The title comes from a book by
a guy named Alan Norse, and he wrote a book
called The Blade Runner, and this is about someone who
sells illegal surgical instruments on the black market. Yeah. Really,
Scott's like, that's a really cool name. A whole lot
better than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? And so
he optioned the title from that guy and it became
Blade Runner. Now listen to this. So here's the names
considered for Blade Runner. Okay, so do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep not a great movie title. So he thought
about Android Macanismo that sucks dangerous days? Okay, okay, how
about this one? Really? Scott said, hey, how about we
call it Gotham City.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Bob Kane is like, nope, yeah, not happening. Yeah, right,
So that's when he bought the title from the book
and called it Blade Runner.
Speaker 2: So the name blade Runner literally has nothing to do
with the original story. It is a completely unrelated.
Speaker 1: Story, right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And they didn't want the title do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheet because that's way too freaking long. But not
only did they not want it, the word android became
a you're not allowed to say this word. On the
set of the movie, like Ridley Scott said, we had
a few impermissible words, and one of them is android.
If you said that word, you get a baseball back
to the head.
Speaker 1: Not literally. That's interesting. Well, I do know that the
word that they added in his place was replicant. Yeah,
I mean Star Wars was huge and r g D
two and c threepo are droids, yep androids?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, he considered the misuse of the term
android and what had gone on with it in the past,
and he was like, I don't want that for this
group of people that we have, these pseudo humans that
we have.
Speaker 1: We need a different name for him.
Speaker 2: So replicants and if you're less formal skin.
Speaker 1: Jobs, that's good.
Speaker 2: So we've got Ridley Scott who has just done Alien,
which is what allowed the thing to be greenlit. Yes,
we've got a script that has been worked and reworked
based on a book by a guy whose Looney Tunes
as can be. Yes, And so how do we get
to et from here?
Speaker 1: How do we get to et from here? Good? Be
good time?
Speaker 2: That too, Okay, So here's something that's interesting to me.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So when they cast Blade Runner, yes, Indiana Jones was
not a name that anybody knew. Yes, isn't that crazy?
Because when I watched this movie the first time, I
was like, I can see how people who had just
seen Raiders of the Lost Arc would have been extremely
disappointed with Blade Runner because it's an entire like he's
not He's not Indy at all, right, and he's not
Han Solo, right. But at the time time they cast him,
nobody knew who Indy was. Harrison Ford was just doing
well right, yes, And so just before he had filmed
this movie, he filmed that movie, he filmed Raiders of
the Lost Dark. And while they were filming Raiders of
the Lost Dark, he had his wife with him. She
was friends with Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg is out in
the desert looking at old seashells because he said it
used to all be ocean, right, And he's talking to
this wife of Harrison Ford named Melissa Mathieson. Yes, and
he says, I've had this idea since I was a
little kid, and I would love for you to help
me out with.
Speaker 1: The fact alone that et is birthed in Tunisia while
they're shooting my favorite movie of all time. Has anyone
had two bigger movies back to back like that?
Speaker 2: Well, keep in mind, Alien became a movie because of
Star Wars. Raiders of the Lost Arc became a movie
because Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were building a sand
castle on the beach in Hawaii, yep, just after Star
Wars had been released, and Steven Spielberg said, I'd really
liked to direct a James Bond movie, and George Lucas said,
don't do that. I've got a better idea direct my
movie instead, and that became Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Speaker 1: It's incredible, right, incredible. By the way, Harrison Ford when
he auditioned for the part of Rick Deckard in Blade Runner,
he showed up with a fedora and a leather jacket
straight from the set of Raiders of Lost Ark. And really,
Scott's like, huh, you're doing this little project with George
Lucas and Steven Spielberg. I guess maybe we should take
you seriously. So Steven Spielberg wanted to do a story
about a boy and an alien. He also wanted to
do a story about divorce. He had experienced divorce when
he was fifteen. His father left the family and it
was him and his two younger sisters, I believe, and
it had a profound impact on his family and he
fell alone and sad. And so it just so happened
that these two projects coincided, and it's fascinating too, because
he's like, I don't really care about this being commercial.
This is a project I want to do. I don't
know if people like it. It's kind of like a
Disney movie. It was his small movie, like he considered
it his small movie. And if you think about it,
it really is. I mean it all takes place in
the suburbs and the woods. You're not on the.
Speaker 2: Deck of a starship, that's right. You are not in
deepest darkest Africa or in the deserts of the Middle East.
I mean it's at a little kid's house, right, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So we mentioned before in her Godfather episode that George
Lucas was partners with a guy in their first production studio,
and that guy was Francis Ford Coppola. Yes, well, Francis
Ford Coppola. After he made The Godfather, he made a
little movie called The Black Stallion.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know who helped him write that script, Melissa Matheson.
Melissa Matheson, You've got a boy who finds an animal,
befriends it, falls in love with it, and ultimately the
story revolves around that relationship.
Speaker 1: Right. That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: And so when Steven Spielberg is in the desert looking
for seashells. Talking to Melissa Matheson, He's like, I really
loved what you did with Francis on the Black Stallion.
I've got this idea for a story where a boy
finds an alien.
Speaker 1: I will love you for you to write it. Maybe
an el for Leprechawn.
Speaker 2: There's nothing like that, Penis Bla Elliot and she says no, really, yeah,
she said no. She's like, no, I don't really, I'm
not interested in doing that. And so Spielberg, after Raiders,
tries to write it. He and Kathleen Kennedy worked together
to try to write it. They're not getting anywhere with it,
and so finally they just pressure and pressure on Alyssa Matheson,
and finally she relents. She's like, okay, I will write
it for you, and so she spends eight weeks eight
weeks writing the first draft. She sends him the first draft.
After he reads it, he runs into Kathleen Kennedy and said,
this is it. This is the script. We don't need
to do any rewrites. This is the script. We will shoot.
It is shoot script ready. That never happens, That never happens.
I mean we're talking about two months. Last than two months,
she writes what essentially is the entire movie of ET
the Extraterrestrial.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. I love it. That's a great story. By
the way, we did mention this. Melissa Matheson married to
Harrison Ford. Yeah, she's not the Hollywood glamorous woman that
you might think, not at all.
Speaker 2: And I remember when I looked at her the first
time and I was like wow. I mean, Harrison Ford
is regarded as, you know, Hollywood handsome, you know, big
time leading man, and she's not, like you said, not
classically beautiful Hollywood style. But I got to watch a
lot of them behind the scenes stuff because she was
always on set. The rewrites that they did, they would
do as they were shooting the movie, and she was
there and talking to the kids the whole time. I mean,
she grew up raising Harrison's kids and had kids of
her own and babysat kids and said all of those
conversations that she would overhear became a part of the script.
But as I watched her talk to these kids, she
has an infectious smile and personality. I can see how
anybody could fall in love with her.
Speaker 1: That's great. I saw those two and after you had
said that to me, we were talking on the phone
and I watched them behind the scenes with ETM like, totally,
she's wonderful. Yeah, she just she beams joy. Yeah, which
is oddly enough, Harrison Ford does not beam joy.
Speaker 2: No, but that's typically the way those marriages go, right,
you know, you get the joy for one and you
got the old grump.
Speaker 1: So Steven Spielberg takes that screenplay and goes to Columbia
and says, hey, I've got a screenplay I want to do.
It's about a boy and an alien. You're gonna love it.
It's great. They look at it and they're like, I
think we're going to pass on this one. There's another
movie we're going to do instead, called Starman by John Carpenter. Yeah. Right, yeah,
that came out in eighty four. But they said, listen,
we're not going to stop you from making this. We'll
give it back to you. So he goes to Sid
Sheinberg at Universal, his mentor, the mentor, the guy who
he did Jaws with, guy who hired him to be
their full time director at the youngest age of any director. Yes, yeah,
Sid Sheinberg, who also goes on to do jos for
which we'll talk about here in just a few weeks.
His wife is the wife the main she's the star
of the movie. Yes, okay, can't wait to get into
that one.
Speaker 2: I can't believe of all of the Sid Sinberg movies,
you're laying Jaws four onbody. Okay, go ahead, take the good.
Speaker 1: With the bad. All right. Sid is like, this is great,
we want to do this. Yeah, I believe in you.
Let's do this. So he has to pay Columbia get
this one million dollars and five percent at the box office.
Oooh okay, okay. Columbia is like, we'll give to you
for a million bucks and five percent of whatever you
make on it, this little crappy little Disney alien thing
that you're working on. Okay. Now, John Vetch, the president
of Columbia, said they made more on that five percent
of et m HM than they made on any of
their movies that entired you. Wow. Five percent of ET
worth more. Wow. Now. Then we'll talk about reception here
in a minute, but basically what we know is that
The Thing and Blade Runner and a lot of other movies,
let's be honest, Yeah, got swallowed up in the tsunami
that was et that summer.
Speaker 2: Let's be clear about this. Blade Runner and The Thing
were considered to be failures. Yeah, drop dead fail yours,
and both do in large part to the success of
E t Now You've got You've got movies that spent
tons of money on special effects and had incredible stories
and what ultimately become highly regard art movies that got
kicked to the curve by a little movie about a
boy who finds an alien. Okay, we are almost at
the end of our time for this episode, but before
we go, we need to have our Shirley showcase.
Speaker 1: This week. We've got our good friend Travis Lasley and
he must to weigh in on one of our former matchups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's going to tell us his opinion on Licensed
to Ill versus Raisin Hell. That's an episode we did
last November with our good friend mister deaf Dave. Let's
hear what Travis has to say.
Speaker 4: Hello, Shirley, you can't be serious fans. My name is
Travis and I have on my yellow ingred Adidas, so
it's time to get ill. I'm here to talk about
Raising Hell versus Licensed Ill.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't.
Speaker 4: Wrap and I can't teach anyone anything they didn't learn
from Death Dave, Jason, and d during their extensive four
part series. But I hope to bring a unique perspective
to the conversation. I was born in rural Indiana. My
backyard was a cornfield and across the street was a
Christmas tree farm, so I wasn't stepping out my front
door to a corncopria culture. Let's just say I watched
a lot of TV and movies. Being the youngest in
my family, I was the TV remote control and my
sister's video music alarm, and she would often tell me
to watch MTV and come get her when bon Jovie
or whatever the hottest new video her and her friends
wanted to watch came on. During this time, I started
to see videos for run DMC and The Beastie Boys.
It reminded me of my favorite movies on HBO at
the time, Breakin', Break In Two, and of course Barry
Gordy's The Last Dragon. It was awesome and their style
and beats just spoke to me. I was only seven
years old at the time, and even kids in my
school were bringing these tapes to listen to during indoor
Recess while we traded garbage pail kids. These two albums
mean a lot to me and bring back more memories
than any other. I'm mentioning this because I'm not ready
to pick apart one of these two albums, but I
want everyone to know that I literally grew up with
both of these albums in my life since second grade.
These albums mirror each other in so many ways, but
one shines just a little bit brighter than the other.
And my vote goes for License to Ill. And here
are three reasons why I came to this conclusion. Number one,
DJ Double R. Yes, Rick Rubin himself got better, having
worked with Ello, Cooljay Run, DMC, and Slayer already, it
is clear that he evolved as a producer. The sounds
on Licensed Dill are clean and more polished than Rick's
previous perks. Reason number two, there is no margin for
error in this competition, and the worst song on either
album is Perfection. I still listen to this song every
time I put on this tape. Yes, I did say tape,
but it does not belong on an album the caliber
of Raising Hell. Reason three, and this one hurts. I
have a lot of mixed emotions about what I'm going
to say next. I love a crossover, and Walk This
Way is the best crossover since the Harlem glob Chotters
went to Gilligan Viole. That being said, the fact that
the best song on your album is essentially a cover
and the original band that is helping you is Strike three.
This song changed everything and I love it. But Licensed
to ill has no covers, and it's the reason it
rained supreme. I would like to take a minute and
thank Jason and d The last few years have been tough.
Speaker 1: On a lot of people.
Speaker 4: During that time, I have been entertained not only by them,
but some of their suggestions. The thirty something meter movie podcast,
the soundtrack show, buzz In the Tatler, the Vintage Video podcast,
and of course the podcast Full of Kryptonite, which itself
is the best crossover since Chubby Checker and the Fat
Boys did the Twist. Add all that up and it's
around one thousand hours of entertainment when a lot of
us really needed it. Thank you, and I can't wait
to hear what comes next.
Speaker 2: Wow, that was the best early showcase since Mork and
Mindy went over to Happy Day.
Speaker 1: I loved that. That was fantastic. Thank you, Travis.
Speaker 2: Travis has been a listener for a very long time
and we truly appreciate the friendship that has developed with Travis.
What a great showcase loved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really nice, and thank you for that compliment,
and thank you for endorsing our good friends other podcasts
that we've made friends with.
Speaker 2: Yep, Okay, that does it for Part one of ET
Versus The Thing Versus Blade Runner, be sure to join
us next week for part two, where we will get
into casting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to talk about cast, we're going to
talk about development, we'll talk about the directors. It's going
to be great. Come back for part two next week.