Speaker 1: We're in wait. SI, welcome back to Midnight Viewing. I'm
Speaker 1: father alone and actually welcome back to Fusco Fast joining
Speaker 1: me here as we run down the works of screenwriter
Speaker 1: John Fusco. He's the host of Noise Junkies and to Night,
Speaker 1: mister Walters and lover of all things Fusco. Sometimes mister HP, HP,
Speaker 1: how are you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm doing okay if I'm alone, ready to put on
Speaker 2: my crypto zoologist hat and talk some cryptids with you?
Speaker 1: Some cryptids, the cryptid. We're on our way to Scotland.
Speaker 1: Oh boy. Now, so far we have covered crossroads, young guns,
Speaker 1: young Guns, to the Babe Thunderheart, and now lock Ness.
Speaker 3: From the company that brought you Four Weddings and a
Speaker 3: Funeral comes the story of a timeless mystery whose time
Speaker 3: has come.
Speaker 2: You want me to go find a lot mess monsters
Speaker 2: out what you're offering me.
Speaker 3: No, I want you to save the state of the
Speaker 3: out equipment and prove that it's the boost Hols of
Speaker 3: the century.
Speaker 1: Now that's a monster, So.
Speaker 3: You'll be another beastie hunter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 1: I don't have much time, you know, I gotta get
Speaker 1: up to Greenland. The four Winter hits fine, Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: why from my monster?
Speaker 4: I'm gonna catch your monster and I'm gonna put it
Speaker 4: on Oprah Webbreak.
Speaker 1: There's nothing down there, there's nothing unexplained flying around the
Speaker 1: skies at night, but in a place that still believes
Speaker 1: in magic. Are you telling me you actually saw them?
Speaker 3: It's a.
Speaker 4: Young girl holds the keys jineheaded to get from her gentlemother,
Speaker 4: the ability to see things, sometimes.
Speaker 2: To the greatest secret of them all. My god, it's
Speaker 2: the perfect glasmosaur.
Speaker 1: I've got down to the ronvoy front Saints. I guess
Speaker 1: it's part of something very large, very much alive.
Speaker 2: You've got something here, the fire up the straw, going
Speaker 2: to his assisions, maybe to find the hope?
Speaker 1: Did you do you scared a leaf and never come back?
Speaker 1: Ted Danser want me to pretend that I didn't see this,
Speaker 1: Jolie Richardson.
Speaker 4: There's something that meant to be left alone in the
Speaker 4: year's most Magical Adventure.
Speaker 1: I have to say it before I complay Lois. You've
Speaker 1: got to believe it before you can see it. Oh luckness.
Speaker 1: Lock And released on February the ninth, nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom, in September the twentieth, nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six in the United States, written by John Fusco, directed
Speaker 1: by John Henderson, starring Ted Danson, Julie Richardson, Ian Holme,
Speaker 1: and A James Frayne. Is the story of a eight.
Speaker 1: It is the story of a cryptozoologist you mentioned cryptozoologist
Speaker 1: at the beginning, who has been disgraced for his long
Speaker 1: lifelong dream of exposing the Yetti that's proven to be
Speaker 1: just a complete Nutter hoax, and is at the end
Speaker 1: of his academic tether. He's given the only job he
Speaker 1: can possibly pull off, which is to map Lockness to
Speaker 1: prove that there is no famed monster. HP. This's your
Speaker 1: first time seeing Lockness.
Speaker 2: Like many of these latter day Fusco films, this was
Speaker 2: my first go round with Lockness.
Speaker 1: Yes, did you enjoy Lockness? And what's your experience of
Speaker 1: Lockness prior not the movie? I'm talking about the idea
Speaker 1: of Lockness. Start there. Let's start there.
Speaker 2: Sure, I will say this like many kids, I'm sure
Speaker 2: maybe you were the same way. Father Malone. I had
Speaker 2: a very I went through an obsession with cryptids like
Speaker 2: Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster and all of that. That's
Speaker 2: UFOs anything that was unexplained phenomena. So I came into
Speaker 2: this excited because I hadn't really thought about the Lockness
Speaker 2: Monster in quite a long time, and I know just
Speaker 2: from research that this project was obviously very near and
Speaker 2: dear to John Fusco. So I was excited to see this.
Speaker 2: But as far as any direct experience, the closest I
Speaker 2: can say I was we were telling this. I was
Speaker 2: telling you the story off off the air that my
Speaker 2: wife's aunt was from Glasgow, very proud of Scottish ancestry.
Speaker 2: So I was excited to delve into this and see
Speaker 2: what Lockness had to offer. How about you, was this
Speaker 2: your first time seeing Lockness.
Speaker 1: First time seeing the movie? I remember it came out.
Speaker 1: I was a projectionist in Santa Monica at the time,
Speaker 1: but I worked at an art house, so basically, if
Speaker 1: it was a more mainstream flick, it wasn't going to
Speaker 1: come my way. And if it wasn't coming my way,
Speaker 1: then I had to go seek it out, and that
Speaker 1: usually involved some sort of trade with another projectionist, and
Speaker 1: those were near and deer, so I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to squander it on a children's movie
Speaker 1: starring Sam Malone. Now, my experience with Lockness prior to
Speaker 1: this is, as you said, cryptids were a big deal
Speaker 1: for us, for Generation X, certainly fixation in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Most of my cryptid information was and continues to come
Speaker 1: from one source. In search Of, starring Leonard Nimoy. I
Speaker 1: have the entire series. I watched my Lockness episode again
Speaker 1: last night. It's the fucking best. Mo's in the credit sequence,
Speaker 1: the famed photo of NeSSI just that sock puppet sticking
Speaker 1: up out of the water.
Speaker 2: I should have done that. I have in Search Of
Speaker 2: as well. I didn't think to watch that episode. Good
Speaker 2: on your father, Malone.
Speaker 1: Anytime I'm going to talk anything supernatural or paranormal or anything,
Speaker 1: outcomes to the collection of In search of First and Foremost,
Speaker 1: and I will proudly cite that as my only sources.
Speaker 2: A scary show at times, wasn't it. It was a
Speaker 2: little creepy the unexplained things that I don't know, Like
Speaker 2: Amelia Earhart was a scary concept for me. That she
Speaker 2: just fell off the face of the earth. No one
Speaker 2: knows what happened to her, so that could be a
Speaker 2: little frightening as a child, but I loved it like
Speaker 2: you did.
Speaker 1: Most of the concepts on the show were really frightening.
Speaker 1: There was a treasure, a buried treasure where they kept
Speaker 1: attempting to dig for it, but the hole kept filling
Speaker 1: itself in, and so many people had died trying, and
Speaker 1: they kept going, and there was a new expedition mounting,
Speaker 1: and oh my god, I love everything about it.
Speaker 2: In Search Of I'm going to paraphrase a Malaney joke
Speaker 2: about he said something to the effect of he thought
Speaker 2: that quicksand would be a much bigger problem when he
Speaker 2: got older. For me, I thought the Bermuda Triangle was
Speaker 2: going to be a much bigger problem when I grew
Speaker 2: up than it actually ended up being. That's a frightening concept, too,
Speaker 2: like the idea that there's this place in where planes
Speaker 2: vanish ships vanish. Eleonard Eemwoy was great.
Speaker 1: And of course Tenasus d has memorialized him and his
Speaker 1: Bigfoot episode in any of their Sasquatch Things and The
Speaker 1: Original Things. Not only was I fascinated by Lockness the
Speaker 1: Lockness Monster from the In Search Of episode, but I
Speaker 1: have a very distinct memory in fifth grade of both
Speaker 1: the fourth and fifth grades of the Immaculate Conception School.
Speaker 1: In our little Catholic uniforms, we were marched down the
Speaker 1: street to the local library, where in the children's section
Speaker 1: we were shown some sort of sixteen millimeter film about
Speaker 1: the Lochness Monster. It made a huge impression on me
Speaker 1: because it made it real. The fact that it seemed
Speaker 1: to be an official school sanctioned trip to a library
Speaker 1: to watch this thing convinced me that there was a
Speaker 1: prehistoric dinosaur living in a giant lake in Scotland that
Speaker 1: had been closed off from the salt water surrounding ocean
Speaker 1: and somehow survived for hundreds of not centuries. Those are
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 2: There's something about the way it's almost like it's academically
Speaker 2: sanctioned for you to see a film of it on
Speaker 2: a school trip. But yeah, I agree that iconic picture
Speaker 2: of the head of nessigning out of the water, which
Speaker 2: I think was eventually debunked as being fake, But I
Speaker 2: don't know. Obviously, we cryptid hunters want clear footage, clear evidence,
Speaker 2: but the fact that all of these pictures are fuzzy
Speaker 2: and zoomed in and blown out just made them more
Speaker 2: stark to me, and more I don't know. There was
Speaker 2: something harsh and scary about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now you can show me footage of the Locknest
Speaker 1: Monster coming up onto land and rampaging through the wilds
Speaker 1: of Scotland, and I wouldn't believe it. But that fuzzy
Speaker 1: photograph that blur, I think it could be something was
Speaker 1: definitely an actual monster that had been captured idly by
Speaker 1: some passers by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Now.
Speaker 1: Listen, I'm a fake priest named Father Malone, but Wallace
Speaker 1: is the actual last name. And I'm as Scottish as
Speaker 1: the fucking day is long. So anytime you're gonna make
Speaker 1: a movie and put it in Scotland, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: go see it. I didn't go see this one. I
Speaker 1: had my fill with Rob Roy by this time.
Speaker 2: Was that a pun? You had your fill of Rob Roy? No?
Speaker 5: But it does work.
Speaker 1: It does work both the ways, doesn't it. Yeah the
Speaker 1: drink that movie, I don't know, man, that movie, it
Speaker 1: didn't It put the kibosh on my enthusiasm for Scottish
Speaker 1: things for a little. For a little while, I did
Speaker 1: not enjoy Rob roy And then of course we had
Speaker 1: they came out. Listen, I am wearing my kilt. Right now,
Speaker 1: I am wearing a HP has seen and he can
Speaker 1: attest to with Houston. He's here in the studio. I
Speaker 1: am wearing the Wallas starting today. I love all things Scottish.
Speaker 1: I love all of their weirdo fucking myths and legends,
Speaker 1: and the kelpie in particular, the water horse that seems
Speaker 1: to show up in every region of Scotland, actually all
Speaker 1: over the Celtic map. I love all of that. And here,
Speaker 1: you know what, here's how I feel about Scotland. I
Speaker 1: will recite a verse from mister Michael Scott, not the
Speaker 1: guy from the office, but the lead singer of the
Speaker 1: water Boys, who said that of his body, England is
Speaker 1: the spine, the backbone, and the trunk. Scotland is his
Speaker 1: dream in head, and Ireland is his heart, although his
Speaker 1: Wales is his two hands held apart. I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave out Whales. So anyway, Scotland is his dream andhead.
Speaker 1: That's how I think about Scotland. It is airy and
Speaker 1: wild and weird, and it is my goal to get there.
Speaker 1: And so on some level, I'm going to be wired
Speaker 1: to this movie more than I should just from scenery alone,
Speaker 1: because something about seeing those stark, fucking landscapes really appeals
Speaker 1: to me on some subatomic level.
Speaker 2: A lot of cable news sweater is being worn by townsfolk,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 1: Just tell you, can I just tell you that I
Speaker 1: hate cable knit sweaters. I know certain people look great
Speaker 1: in them, but I do not like them. And that
Speaker 1: seems to be the one function of the UK that
Speaker 1: I can really do with that.
Speaker 2: Ted Danson looked pretty good in his cable knit sweater.
Speaker 2: It's suited him.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, let's talk about this movie for a second.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. What's the movie about, HP, that's
Speaker 1: your job.
Speaker 2: So we started to talk about this. So Ted Danson
Speaker 2: is Dempsey. He's this disgraced cryptozoologist who he's at the
Speaker 2: end of his rope. He's got no money, he's barely
Speaker 2: hanging on as a professor of some sort. His car
Speaker 2: has fallen apart. His car's literally died on the freeway.
Speaker 1: Speaking of death, this movie opens with a man standing
Speaker 1: on the bank of the lock and getting startled as
Speaker 1: he lifts a camera and then he falls over and
Speaker 1: his cracks, his skull open and he dies.
Speaker 2: I have a problem with that opening for the alone.
Speaker 2: I have to say, because the whole look, putting aside
Speaker 2: the advertising in the poster, which is a bit spoilerific,
Speaker 2: if there's supposed to be this uncertainty over whether the
Speaker 2: Lockness Monster actually exists. Within the first five minutes, when
Speaker 2: you see this situation with this other researcher who dies
Speaker 2: because something comes out of the lock startles and he
Speaker 2: falls and dies after hitting his head, don't you think
Speaker 2: it kills the uncertainty of the whole situation or are
Speaker 2: we already meant to believe that it actually exists.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't think it ruined the mystery, because in
Speaker 1: my mind it could have been as most movies that
Speaker 1: deal with the Lockness Monster him discovering the hoax and
Speaker 1: then falling and dying, and then they could have just
Speaker 1: as easily. By the end of this movie, that little
Speaker 1: girl leads ted dancing into a cave where there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of teenagers going, oh, no, you've given this away.
Speaker 2: I wish I had that uncertainty held in my head,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't help. Maybe it's because it was tainted
Speaker 2: by the posters and by the trailer, because it basically
Speaker 2: gives that part of it away. But let's put that
Speaker 2: aside for a moment. So there's this other researcher that's
Speaker 2: been on at Scotland researching this. He's died. So Harris
Speaker 2: Eulen plays I guess the dean of the college that
Speaker 2: Ted Danson is teaching at, and he basically gives him
Speaker 2: the assignment to go and give definitive proof that the
Speaker 2: Lockness Monster does or doesn't exist, knowing that, and Dempsey
Speaker 2: resists this. He doesn't want to go, but he has
Speaker 2: no choice. He's at the end of his like I said,
Speaker 2: he's at the end of his rope here. He's got
Speaker 2: no other alternatives. He's already a laughing stock because, as
Speaker 2: you said, he had a famous, infamous expedition to find
Speaker 2: Bigfoot that yielded nothing, but somehow it actually made it
Speaker 2: made his name encryptid circles, but it didn't do wonders
Speaker 2: for his career, quite the opposite. So, with no alternative,
Speaker 2: if he goes to Lockness to try and figure out
Speaker 2: if the Lockness Monster is real or if he's not,
Speaker 2: and he runs a foul of all the locals, all
Speaker 2: the typical predictable things you would expect from a sort
Speaker 2: of a romantic comedy, bent happened to him here, and
Speaker 2: that's the basic. I won't go into the details. We'll
Speaker 2: get into the details, but that's the broad stroke of
Speaker 2: what has to happen.
Speaker 1: Let's get into some of those details. Actually, let's just
Speaker 1: get into the cast if we could, because here's something
Speaker 1: that I found really admirable in this film. Ordinarily, when
Speaker 1: you start a movie with the broke down character who
Speaker 1: gets thrust into some career that they have no business
Speaker 1: being in or no interest being, and then they find
Speaker 1: both rejuvenation in the activity and in their own life,
Speaker 1: that's across the board. That was all the nineties, right.
Speaker 1: We saw this type of story a thousand times. This
Speaker 1: is the one where I looked at ted Dance and
Speaker 1: then went, Yep, he's broken down and very unpleasant. This
Speaker 1: character is a prick and he's unlikable, and Ted Danson
Speaker 1: ted to dancing. Sam Malone manages to pull off what
Speaker 1: a dick he is, so by the time he starts
Speaker 1: coming around, I actually believe that as opposed to ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of these type of movies where they're just
Speaker 1: telling us what a prick it is and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's the sweet cuddly guy from all the other
Speaker 1: sweet cuddly movies.
Speaker 2: There's two reasons why I knew that he could play
Speaker 2: a believable prick. One of them is, do you remember
Speaker 2: he had a show called Becker where that was his stees.
Speaker 2: In that show, he was basically an unlikable, crotchety guy.
Speaker 2: I never watched the show, but I was familiar with
Speaker 2: the character.
Speaker 1: But I bet he was. I bet he was crotchety
Speaker 1: and unlikable the way Archie Bunker was. There's an underlying
Speaker 1: like lilt of we love this guy ted Dance at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this movie, I really don't like when
Speaker 1: he's in the room with Harris Yulin and he's he's begging.
Speaker 1: Obviously I ain't doing this. I'm with Harris Ulan. I'm like, good,
Speaker 1: fuck off. Don't then sure?
Speaker 2: By the way, the other reason why I knew he
Speaker 2: could play a believable jerk is because he was so
Speaker 2: great at playing a jerk version of himself on Curb
Speaker 2: Your Enthusiasm for twelve seasons, So I knew that he
Speaker 2: could be. He's Ted Danson, so we're pre programmed to
Speaker 2: like him because of Sam Malone and so forth. Creep
Speaker 2: show in Your case, I'm sure you have a lot
Speaker 2: of affection there for him, but that part of it
Speaker 2: that was great. But what I thought was amusing was
Speaker 2: somehow he like they gave him the hairdo from Lethal Weapon,
Speaker 2: the Martin Riggs haird the Mel Gibson, which is a
Speaker 2: little weird, but you're right. And the thing that I
Speaker 2: also want to talk about in terms of Harris Eulen,
Speaker 2: who plays, like I said, his superior, is one thing
Speaker 2: the movie avoided, which would have been so easy not
Speaker 2: to is typically in these kinds of situations, the superior
Speaker 2: who directs their underlaying to do something can come off
Speaker 2: as a real asshole, and you're secretly rooting for them
Speaker 2: to fail. But honestly, Harris Eulen plays this character. He's
Speaker 2: very nice, he's very tolerant. He only seems to have
Speaker 2: the best interest of the research at heart. I really
Speaker 2: that I loved about this, At least at the start.
Speaker 1: He recognized that Ted dance AND's Dempsey character is going nowhere.
Speaker 1: He really is the laughing stock and he's not going
Speaker 1: to be able to be hired by any other university
Speaker 1: for research or otherwise, and this is his only shot,
Speaker 1: and he keeps hanging in until he accepts it. He
Speaker 1: starts making plans for his tickets for the plane flight over,
Speaker 1: while Ted Danson is still saying, No, it's great. It's
Speaker 1: a great bit of business. It's a great bit of characterization.
Speaker 2: It's very funny. But I appreciated that they didn't make
Speaker 2: him like another antagonist for the main character to deal with.
Speaker 2: He was actually very reasonable.
Speaker 1: I thought he's rooting for him. He seems an actual friend.
Speaker 1: Imagine that. Yeah, as opposed to I'm thinking of summer
Speaker 1: school in particular, with the principal that you're mister shup
Speaker 1: I needed a teach summer school. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Too often those kinds of characters are it's a means
Speaker 2: to an end. They know that the main character will fail,
Speaker 2: and they're banking on the fact that they will fail.
Speaker 2: But in this case, it's the deact opposite, and I
Speaker 2: found that refreshing.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we get to Jolie Richardson, Ian Holme and
Speaker 1: James Frain, I want to talk about Nick Brimble.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about him. I was delighted to see Nick
Speaker 2: Brimble in this me too.
Speaker 1: I love Nick Brimble. Right around this time period, right
Speaker 1: around the late eighties, early nineties, he seemed to have
Speaker 1: this crazy renaissance. I know, this is this movie a
Speaker 1: little bit later, this is like ninety six. Nevertheless, it's
Speaker 1: still in that time period. I remember him first. I
Speaker 1: remember first seeing him in Frankenstein Unbound, Roger Corman's last
Speaker 1: feature film that I happened to see in the theater
Speaker 1: where he played the monster and they had a crazy,
Speaker 1: unus usual tank on the monster and he's really good
Speaker 1: in it. And then the next thing is he's in
Speaker 1: the fucking piece of that Robin Hood movie. He's fucking
Speaker 1: little John in the Robinhood Prince of Thieves movie, which
Speaker 1: they were competing Robinhood movies. Remember that at the time.
Speaker 1: There was also there was one with Luma Thurman and
Speaker 1: Patrick Bergen.
Speaker 2: I forgot about that one.
Speaker 1: Was remember they were both being mounted at the same time,
Speaker 1: and then the Kevin Costa wan really started taking off
Speaker 1: and bringing all the heat. So the Patrick Bergan one
Speaker 1: still got shot, but it got relegated to television and
Speaker 1: it came out like about a month before the Kevin
Speaker 1: Costner won an attempt to circumvent it in some way.
Speaker 1: I thought there's movie. I thought both of those movies
Speaker 1: were garbage.
Speaker 2: By the way, I my biggest memory of him was
Speaker 2: from Robinhood Little John. He has this sort of beatific face,
Speaker 2: this incredible smile, these awesome, these brilliant eyes. He's just
Speaker 2: such a friendly, warm, cajoling presence.
Speaker 1: I love that about him as Little John. Didn't he
Speaker 1: look like an ewok, like a cuddly ewok baby.
Speaker 2: You could have easily seen him playing Hagrid in an
Speaker 2: alternate universe version of Harry Potter.
Speaker 1: Like, oh my god, he'd be a great Hagrid because
Speaker 1: he would have a bit of more menace than Robbie
Speaker 1: Coltrane is not capable of menace. He is, but not really.
Speaker 1: He would be kidding ultimately, Nick Brimble, you would believe
Speaker 1: he would fucking hurt you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. But so I saw him and I'm like,
Speaker 2: what do I know that guy from? And then when
Speaker 2: I put two and two together, I was really warmed
Speaker 2: by his presence, by a lot of the presence that
Speaker 2: a lot of the actors. I had the same reaction to.
Speaker 1: James Frayne is the contact there, the young believer, the
Speaker 1: young researcher. I know James Frayne mainly for a few
Speaker 1: seasons he was on Gotham playing Azrael, one of the
Speaker 1: fucking villain, one of one of the Rogues Gallery villains Gallivan.
Speaker 1: I think that the villain's name is He was great
Speaker 1: in that, and then on top of that, he ends
Speaker 1: up playing Sarah on Star Discovery, so he's now fucking
Speaker 1: Spock's dad and great like the best one since original
Speaker 1: Mark Leonard.
Speaker 2: He looked so familiar to me. I couldn't put my
Speaker 2: finger on who the actor was or what he was in.
Speaker 2: To be honest, I wasn't overly familiar with his catalog
Speaker 2: or with his roles. But what I was surprised to see.
Speaker 2: The thing that I was surprised most by was he
Speaker 2: played a character named Jarvis in the Tron sequel Tron Legacy.
Speaker 2: He is the assistant to the Jeff Bridges evil character
Speaker 2: who has he's balled with the screen that's omnipresently and
Speaker 2: over his face. He's like the slimy lackey who tries
Speaker 2: to help the evil Jeff Bridges do his thing. Looks
Speaker 2: nothing like he does in this, of course, but what
Speaker 2: range the guy has to hear that he was in Gotham.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got such a great face. It's a cartoon
Speaker 1: character face if anything. Speaking of cartoon characters, Ian Holme
Speaker 1: as the water bailiff apparently, so which the thing is real.
Speaker 1: There are water bailiffs who can board your ship and say,
Speaker 1: let's see your fishing license. God damn it, I'm towing
Speaker 1: this in. I'm gonna sink your craft when I get
Speaker 1: over there. No, you can't actually do any of that.
Speaker 1: Now you can search things. I don't think you could
Speaker 1: sink anybody.
Speaker 2: So he's like like a coastguard of one on the lock.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, he's like the harbor master, but like for
Speaker 1: an entire lake.
Speaker 2: I figured, look love Ian Holme is. I'm happy to
Speaker 2: see him and whatever I'm watching. But I feel like
Speaker 2: he was the one that they brought in to class
Speaker 2: up the joint a little bit more, to give it
Speaker 2: a little more like an imprint of gravitas. That's I
Speaker 2: felt like. That's because any honestly, it's great to have
Speaker 2: him there, but any number of actors could have. Also,
Speaker 2: it's not a very big role. Anyone else could have
Speaker 2: played it, but it's Ian Holme, so that's automatically going
Speaker 2: to make it more like I said, grounded and interesting.
Speaker 1: How badly did they want Sean Connery.
Speaker 2: Sean Connery, I think would have been too big for this,
Speaker 2: though he would have over It would have been about
Speaker 2: Sean Connery. That man was He had charisma for days.
Speaker 2: Not that Ian Holme isn't charismatic, but look, when Sean
Speaker 2: Connery was on screen, you're looking at Sean Connery and
Speaker 2: nothing else.
Speaker 1: What if Sean Connery played Gordon Shules, the eccentric who
Speaker 1: claims that the monster is his.
Speaker 2: That probably would have been a more interesting choice. But again,
Speaker 2: I just think that it's it's like having Sean Connery
Speaker 2: at the end of Robinhood Prince of Thieves, where it
Speaker 2: takes you out of the movie a little bit because
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's Sean Connery.
Speaker 2: Not that's Richard the Lionheart, that's Sean Connery up there.
Speaker 1: How about Time Bandits? Do you feel the same when
Speaker 1: you watch Time Bandits?
Speaker 2: No, but that could have been because I saw it
Speaker 2: when I was much younger, and he wasn't as dominating
Speaker 2: a presence for me. But it's I don't know. It
Speaker 2: was fine, I didn't have that same reaction, but maybe
Speaker 2: it's because I was younger. And less or more impressionable,
Speaker 2: and didn't really take stock of such things.
Speaker 1: I'm not claiming they wanted Sean Connery for this movie
Speaker 1: or anything. I'm just saying he probably could have pulled off.
Speaker 2: Oh without a doubt he could have pulled it off,
Speaker 2: but I think it would have pulled focus off of
Speaker 2: whatever else was going on onto him.
Speaker 1: Instead, we get Ian Home.
Speaker 2: It was great, great, getting wrong. He's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And and Jolie Richardson in the lead. I don't
Speaker 1: think Jolie Richardson is the Scottish. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: that right now, only because it seemed like a poor accent.
Speaker 1: Am I wrong there? I might be her husband. Her
Speaker 1: husband was the producer, Tim Bevan.
Speaker 2: You are not wrong to two interesting things to point
Speaker 2: out she was. She's from London, so she's English. She's
Speaker 2: not Scottish, so that was her. I didn't think it was.
Speaker 2: I'm no linguist, so I thought it was fine. It doesn't.
Speaker 2: It didn't seem incredibly authentic.
Speaker 1: It seemed, you know what. It seemed like it seemed
Speaker 1: like she was thinking before every word.
Speaker 2: Probably she I think she's pretty good in this, but
Speaker 2: she's to your point, she's not Scottish, So I think
Speaker 2: if you're looking for such things, it might be.
Speaker 1: The luck with youssy, That's what I have to say.
Speaker 2: I also didn't realize that she was the daughter of
Speaker 2: Vanessa Redgrave. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Oh she's great. Love her, I've loved her and other things.
Speaker 1: That just didn't really buy the accent.
Speaker 2: That you didn't buy the accent, But that did that
Speaker 2: mean that you didn't buy the performance?
Speaker 1: Ultimately, no, I did buy the performance because it would
Speaker 1: seemingly be easy to be exasperated by Ted Danson, particularly
Speaker 1: as this character ted dancing probably would be exasperating in
Speaker 1: life just in general, can constantly be trying to get
Speaker 1: you to save things.
Speaker 2: The dark side of Ed Begley Junior with his electric car, and.
Speaker 1: That's right, was powered by my sense of self satisfaction.
Speaker 1: These are all Simpsons jokes. I'm just stealing.
Speaker 2: Bravo, Bravo, Where were we? Oh, Jolie Richardson. We're going
Speaker 2: through the main cast.
Speaker 4: That is that that?
Speaker 1: I think that is the main cast. And then there's
Speaker 1: the little girl. She's fine.
Speaker 2: The little girl, by the way, this was her one
Speaker 2: and only role. You never did anything else after this?
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's fine.
Speaker 1: She's fine. She's she doesn't suffer from from kid actor itis.
Speaker 1: She's not precociousness in child acting is death.
Speaker 2: No, she was fine. But ultimately it is really a
Speaker 2: three or four person story.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You have Dempsey, you have his assistant Adrian. You've got
Speaker 2: the woman with the daughter and the water bailiff who's
Speaker 2: managing things.
Speaker 1: Her name is Kirstin Graham. By the way, no else
Speaker 1: could have played young Isabelle Sean Connery. What do you think.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say? What's your name? From?
Speaker 2: Baron Munchausen.
Speaker 1: Sarah Pole. Oh, my constant love affair with Sarah Pola
Speaker 1: that she doesn't know, she's not aware of, but we've
Speaker 1: been involved with for twenty or so years now. My god,
Speaker 1: it's been so long me and Sarah.
Speaker 2: What a fucking smart filmmaker. She turned out to be good.
Speaker 1: God man, She's yeah, she's fearsome as filmmaker. She her
Speaker 1: short films are fucking fantastic. One She may this one
Speaker 1: short film called last Night I Believe, which just haunts
Speaker 1: me to this day, about a couple breaking up and
Speaker 1: they that she convinces him to re experience like all
Speaker 1: of their favorite things like one last time and it
Speaker 1: just tears her heart out.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we're talking about de loch Ness era. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a man reconnecting with the hit with his
Speaker 1: cryptid past. Is that what this movie is about about
Speaker 1: finding your getting back in touch with your roots, even
Speaker 1: if your roots are based on animals that don't exist.
Speaker 2: He's finding his mojo again. At the beginning, he's broken,
Speaker 2: he's a laughing stock. Like you said, he's got nothing
Speaker 2: going on. They I think he even is divorced. They
Speaker 2: make some mention of that. So it really has come
Speaker 2: to Scotland. Really is a bitter, angry, depressed loser who
Speaker 2: is going through the motions at first, but he does
Speaker 2: a spark is lit because they're in the They rent
Speaker 2: a boat, actually I think it's Nick Brimble's boat that
Speaker 2: they rent. Andy McClain, the character, his boat.
Speaker 1: They soak him for many thousands of dollars, but Ted
Speaker 1: Danson don't care because the university is paying for it.
Speaker 1: And Ted Dance is a dick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because at every turn he tries to get lodging
Speaker 2: at this woman, Laura's place, and she soaks them for
Speaker 2: quadruple the normal rate. Nick Brimble soaks him for twenty
Speaker 2: thousand pounds to rent this boat. I don't know how
Speaker 2: much that is in American dollars, but it sounds like
Speaker 2: a lot. But every time he does that, Ted dances.
Speaker 2: I don't care. Just charge it to the university. He's
Speaker 2: a prick. You got a doctor Mercer is giving him.
Speaker 2: He's hoping that he gives his honest best shot at
Speaker 2: finding Smunster. Why is he being such a prick? I
Speaker 2: don't know that.
Speaker 1: Why did warm up? Why didn't Abernathy already have a
Speaker 1: boat secure with all this high tech equipment that they've
Speaker 1: sent over, like they're going to prove once and for
Speaker 1: all that there's no U lockness much. But we don't
Speaker 1: have a boat yet. That's ah, we should have written
Speaker 1: that down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why didn't? What was Abernathy's situation? All that I
Speaker 2: saw of his equipment was a camera that he keeps
Speaker 2: a picture of them.
Speaker 1: Abernathy was a really strong swimmer. He would just dive
Speaker 1: into the lock and snorkeling and a code act on
Speaker 1: in a zip lock, just dog paddle his way. That
Speaker 1: is a that is a scientific method for disproving cryptids.
Speaker 2: Sure, but what I was expecting, And maybe it's unfair
Speaker 2: of me to come in with this expectation, but what
Speaker 2: I expected was a bit like like a local hero
Speaker 2: type of situation. I think that's I'm not the first
Speaker 2: person to make a direct connection between the two movies,
Speaker 2: but I had expected that this was going to be
Speaker 2: a Scotland filled with unique and outsized characters that were
Speaker 2: going to help him find his way back to the
Speaker 2: person that he always wanted to be. For better or
Speaker 2: for worse. This is not the movie that we're given.
Speaker 2: This is the people there are actually very sensible, except
Speaker 2: for that there's.
Speaker 1: The one guy. Don't you think that the movie, This
Speaker 1: movie seems to be working against specifically local hero by
Speaker 1: toning everybody down. And you got to remember this is
Speaker 1: also in the wake of not only Twin Peaks, but
Speaker 1: Northern Exposure. This is around that show is probably still
Speaker 1: on the air when this when they're making this movie,
Speaker 1: So the tendency to write all of the wacky characters
Speaker 1: that our lead has to wade his way through probably
Speaker 1: felt a little slack.
Speaker 2: That's a very good point. Maybe that was John Fusco's
Speaker 2: way of kind of confounding those expectations, Like you think
Speaker 2: you're coming in for a quirky character study, but it's
Speaker 2: actually closer. Not to make a direct comparison, but the
Speaker 2: thing that I was reminded of as was watching this
Speaker 2: was Jurassic Park in a lot of ways, the kind
Speaker 2: of shock and like wonder of finding something that was
Speaker 2: thought lost forever, and even some of the directorial choices,
Speaker 2: especially when we get to the actual moment, where are
Speaker 2: we going to just say, yes, he does. It turns
Speaker 2: out there is a there's not one Lockness monster, but
Speaker 2: there's actually two dinosaurs basically living in the lock. And
Speaker 2: eventually this little girl who shares some kind of a
Speaker 2: psychic connection to them or something. Yeah, something, it's a
Speaker 2: little it's unclear, but she takes she ted dance and
Speaker 2: gains the little girl's trust. Not he's not after anything.
Speaker 2: He just happens to be charmed by her and they
Speaker 2: establish a friendship, and she eventually trusts him enough to
Speaker 2: take him to this castle in the lock where that's
Speaker 2: the only place you can be assured to find these cryptids,
Speaker 2: these Lockness monsters.
Speaker 1: In a cave underneath the castle. They're not they're not
Speaker 1: hanging out on a parapet or No.
Speaker 2: You have to squeeze through these very tight crevices and
Speaker 2: things and make your way to this flooded area, and
Speaker 2: there they are. That's there's no doubt in anyone's mind
Speaker 2: that this is the Lockness monster. So yeah, So, as
Speaker 2: a spoiler alert, they do exist. Dempsey finds them. He
Speaker 2: goes against the little Girl's wishes by taking a photograph
Speaker 2: of them, or tries to. He takes several photographs which
Speaker 2: startle the monsters like gremlins.
Speaker 1: They don't like that.
Speaker 2: That's right, don't feed the Lockness monsters after midnight.
Speaker 1: Never do that. Evidently, that's the thing among cryptids is
Speaker 1: that they don't like flash photography, and who can blame them?
Speaker 2: Did you see that that famous video of Bigfoot? He
Speaker 2: looks very disdainfully back at whoever's filming that. He says,
Speaker 2: get out of here. I don't want to see you film.
Speaker 1: I guess cryptids are not fans of just cameras in general.
Speaker 2: Why don't we just leave cryptids alone? I guess is
Speaker 2: what I'm driving at here.
Speaker 1: It's too late. We need them to save us now.
Speaker 2: He but what I actually thought was an interesting aspect
Speaker 2: to backtrack a little bit. So Dempsey, before all that happens,
Speaker 2: we're going out of order here. He's got the boat.
Speaker 2: He's on the boat with his assistant, and they're trawling
Speaker 2: the water with all this fancy sonar equipment to try
Speaker 2: and find the Lockness Monster. But they're running up against
Speaker 2: Ian Holmes's character, the water bailiff. But the thing that
Speaker 2: I found interesting that didn't occur to me was the
Speaker 2: water bailiff, Ian Holmes doesn't want them to find the monster.
Speaker 2: And it's Dempsey's assertion, which I think is a logical one,
Speaker 2: that is, what if I can definitively prove that there
Speaker 2: is no such thing as a Lockness Monster that will
Speaker 2: kill the tourism in this area, that must be the
Speaker 2: reason why you don't want me to continue with this.
Speaker 2: And we actually eventually find out that's the exactly opposite
Speaker 2: is the case. But before that, before we get to
Speaker 2: that point, there's an episode where some boats come and
Speaker 2: basically knock all of the equipment off of the boat,
Speaker 2: sabotaging his equipment and trying to prevent him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they signed. There are two boats, and they broad
Speaker 1: signed them from either side. They scrape along the hall
Speaker 1: and knock all their equipment to pieces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that only serves to cement his resolve, and
Speaker 2: he basically redoubles his efforts to try and find what's
Speaker 2: going on. And I think at some point they do
Speaker 2: discover actual evidence something rams their boat, basically destroys it
Speaker 2: right out from under them.
Speaker 1: And I think it was a rental.
Speaker 2: Right, that's twenty pounds out the window. And I guess
Speaker 2: we're led to believe that it is the monster destroying
Speaker 2: the boat, capsizing the boat effectively, just it's in pieces.
Speaker 1: But why would it do that if the little girl
Speaker 1: has a psychic connection with.
Speaker 2: It that I didn't understand. It would have made more
Speaker 2: sense if it was in some way further sabotaged by
Speaker 2: because he aside, I shouldn't say, aside from this little girl,
Speaker 2: I'll say pretty much everybody on the island, at least
Speaker 2: at the outset, regards Dempsey with at best suspicion and
Speaker 2: at worst complete disdain for what he's doing and the
Speaker 2: kind of person he is. So it would have made
Speaker 2: more sense to me if this somebody, like I said,
Speaker 2: put some kind of explosive on the boat, or somehow
Speaker 2: sabotaged the vessel. But I thought it was odd that
Speaker 2: this we're led to believe these are very gentle, sweet creatures.
Speaker 2: Why it would destroy the boat and almost kill these guys.
Speaker 1: It would make more sense for them to have gotten
Speaker 1: to James Frayne he turned coat.
Speaker 2: That would have they could He was so pure of heart.
Speaker 2: I don't know we have taken.
Speaker 1: See now, he's an Englishman and he had a good
Speaker 1: Scottish accent.
Speaker 2: He did that was shading very close to Scotty from
Speaker 2: Star Trek blah blah bahlone.
Speaker 3: But I do it.
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to attempt it. So anyway, So
Speaker 2: he eventually Dempsey has the evidence. He develops these pictures
Speaker 2: himself and there is definitive proof that this is that
Speaker 2: it exists, It's there, and he presents this proof where
Speaker 2: he calls his doctor, mercer Harris Ewlen's character over to
Speaker 2: They're gonna they're gonna have a big presentation in front
Speaker 2: of a lot of stuffy, old white English dudes at
Speaker 2: some fancy college in London.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, can I just say, I know this
Speaker 1: isn't like the best movie, but I did like how
Speaker 1: low key this movie. It's a little bit it's a
Speaker 1: little bit of splash with the Eugene Levy trying to
Speaker 1: prove the thing. But it's also it's as if the
Speaker 1: Eugene Levy character were the lead of Splash.
Speaker 2: It is very low key, and there are parts of
Speaker 2: it that are charming because in the midst of all
Speaker 2: of this, Ted Danson's character falls in love with Jolie
Speaker 2: Richardson's character. She's very hardhearted, she tries to keep him
Speaker 2: at arm's length, but eventually they abudding romance starts. The
Speaker 2: problem I have is the timeline of this movie is
Speaker 2: so compressed. All of this happens within the span of
Speaker 2: two maybe three days, because it's five days is the
Speaker 2: duration of his trip. He has to prove this within
Speaker 2: five days. I don't recall why five years exactly?
Speaker 1: Why is there a clock on this movie? This should
Speaker 1: have been more like Local Hero. It should have been
Speaker 1: he spends the entire off season on the lock getting
Speaker 1: to know everybody like it's that fucking American again, and
Speaker 1: then they fall in love and then eventually, though I
Speaker 1: don't this movie is confused in that it's trying for
Speaker 1: a Disney version of a movie in a way without
Speaker 1: fully committing to it. So it remains charming because it
Speaker 1: doesn't have If this if Disney and produced this. There'd
Speaker 1: be some big jet ski finale, right, yeah, jet skis
Speaker 1: and speedboat somehow and whatever. So it fails to engage
Speaker 1: in that folly. But at the same time, it doesn't
Speaker 1: give itself over to what it really wants to be,
Speaker 1: which is a drama that it isn't a family movie. First.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it just doesn't feel like a family movie.
Speaker 1: If this feels like the story of a fucking broken
Speaker 1: guy who finds himself and unfortunately they've tried to turn
Speaker 1: it into a Hallmark film.
Speaker 2: They do this whole So he's on the train to London.
Speaker 2: They're gonna give this scientific It's like it's like a
Speaker 2: worldwide scientific demonstration for all these scientists. And while he's
Speaker 2: on the train, wouldn't you know it, the water Bailiff
Speaker 2: is on the same train and he makes a final appeal,
Speaker 2: as only Ian Holm can do, to not do this,
Speaker 2: not present this definitive evidence that these animals do live,
Speaker 2: because think of how much it will be lost, the
Speaker 2: mystery be lost, and God knows what they're gonna do
Speaker 2: to these poor animals if the scientific world gets a
Speaker 2: hold of them. What's it going to do to the village.
Speaker 2: What's it going to do to the residents and all that?
Speaker 2: So he makes a final appeal. This is it gets
Speaker 2: in Dempsey's head. They get to the presentation. What happens
Speaker 2: in the presentation? Father Malone, I'll let you describe the
Speaker 2: ending here.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's it's the big stuffy room. It's like basically
Speaker 1: like an operating theater scenario. And they've got the they've
Speaker 1: got the slide projector up and he has his slides
Speaker 1: placed in And will he won't he is where we're
Speaker 1: at it? Will he reveal this and gain notoriety and
Speaker 1: clear his name and become the fucking academic god that
Speaker 1: he always thought he would be. Or does he preserve
Speaker 1: the dignity of these creatures that he's only experienced because
Speaker 1: he was taken in by these locals. And instead of
Speaker 1: pictures of the fucking blocknest monsters, he has a he
Speaker 1: shows up a drawing that the child has done the
Speaker 1: blockness monster and the music. Swell yeah, let's continue to
Speaker 1: talk about this movie. And then let's talk about the
Speaker 1: music in this movie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, ready for this? So he his conscious, his
Speaker 2: conscience wins out. He it's this spells ruined for his reputation.
Speaker 2: There's no coming back from this, but he doesn't care.
Speaker 2: Ted Danson's character, Dempsey is happy to go back to
Speaker 2: this quaint little town and be with Jolie Richardson's character
Speaker 2: and have the daughter there, to be a little family,
Speaker 2: So that part of it, I mean, there's there was
Speaker 2: no question when Ian Holm is on the train with
Speaker 2: him and makes his final appeal, there's no question in
Speaker 2: my mind that he's not going to sabotage his own
Speaker 2: future for the sake of the town and for these animals.
Speaker 2: That I found that a little bit off putting, a
Speaker 2: lot off putting. In fact, this was so predictable.
Speaker 1: Two things about Ian Holme. Do you think there may
Speaker 1: be was a better location for them to have that
Speaker 1: final plea than on a train into London. Considering how
Speaker 1: water based this entire film is, could they have maybe
Speaker 1: been on a maybe been on a ferry.
Speaker 2: That would have been a lot because that you would
Speaker 2: have felt like the Ian Holmes character was more in
Speaker 2: his element.
Speaker 1: And you would have looked around at modern London where
Speaker 1: all of these watercraft are going and it's polluted and gross,
Speaker 1: and you could say, this is what they want with water.
Speaker 1: These days, and this is what the lock will become. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we always hear anytime you see a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: and a director is talking about working with Ian Holme,
Speaker 1: they'll always say, from take to tank, you are getting
Speaker 1: different versions of the character. You've heard this before, right,
Speaker 1: Peter Jackson saying, you're getting different flavors of Bilbo every time.
Speaker 1: I wonder sometimes what those flavors were like if you
Speaker 1: did seven takes of this speech of him imploring Ted
Speaker 1: Danson to not give up the reality of these monsters?
Speaker 1: Were you getting a comedic version? Were you getting like
Speaker 1: a goofy version of Ian Hull? Were you getting that like.
Speaker 2: A Jerry Lewis version?
Speaker 1: Yeah, come on now, mister Dempse, you can't the monsters. Like,
Speaker 1: I wonder sometimes how far that goes. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just think it's funny because everyone's every every single take.
Speaker 1: It's so distinctive, and you have so much to play with,
Speaker 1: Like how far?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: How many? How many different flavors of him in alien?
Speaker 2: Do you suppose there is? Also because he's playing an android, right.
Speaker 1: And he has to he had and he knows he's
Speaker 1: an android, and he knows the audience and doesn't know
Speaker 1: he's an android and he has to keep that concealed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, how many layers, how many flavors of ash
Speaker 1: where we really get it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's again.
Speaker 1: It would happen if Ian Holme came up against Stanley Kubrick,
Speaker 1: Man of a Thousand Takes, would Ian Home have exploded?
Speaker 2: It's like the classic Stephen Wright joke about putting instant
Speaker 2: coffee in the microwave and he almost went back in time.
Speaker 2: I just think the world would have ended and that
Speaker 2: would have been That would have been it. But he
Speaker 2: is really good. If anyone's going to persuade you not
Speaker 2: to sell out this community, I'd want it to be
Speaker 2: Ian Home, because he's very persuasive in the scene.
Speaker 1: Hey everything, everything ends up happy. And I believe, like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, the transformation of Ted Danson, because I
Speaker 1: believe him as a nice guy just as much as
Speaker 1: I believe him as a prick. I also always believe
Speaker 1: Ted dancing around children, he seems genuinely interested and cares
Speaker 1: for children like I love all the interactions between him
Speaker 1: and the child here in this.
Speaker 2: That was probably my favorite part of the movie, is
Speaker 2: this budding relation they have where they sit down at
Speaker 2: the table and he's teaching her how to play poker,
Speaker 2: and they're playing little games, and you can see this
Speaker 2: cloud lift off of the character the more that he
Speaker 2: gets to know the daughter, and obviously the daughter's the mother,
Speaker 2: the love interest. But it is very that part of
Speaker 2: it is very charming.
Speaker 1: Even just a moment where it's like, can I just
Speaker 1: sit here with you? And then just I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: charming is the word.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: I found that part of the movie fantastic. Now, let's
Speaker 1: talk about a part of the movie that I did
Speaker 1: not find fantastic. Just mentioned it.
Speaker 2: The music.
Speaker 1: The music. Now, I know you have a particular hatred
Speaker 1: for one aspect of the music of this film. We'll
Speaker 1: get to that. First, we have to deal with Trevor Jones.
Speaker 1: I genuinely like Trevor Jones as a composer. He's composed
Speaker 1: some of my favorite scores for some of my favorite films.
Speaker 1: I don't know what he's doing here. He's scoring that
Speaker 1: Disney movie. I was mentioning, it's all bomb bass, it's
Speaker 1: all heartstrings, it's all this. You could have slapped this score.
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned that there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: Scottish flavor in it, and there's some and yes, my
Speaker 1: heart does sing when I hear a booran, which is
Speaker 1: the sort of drum, the hand drum you play. When
Speaker 1: I hear one of those, Oh my god, it really
Speaker 1: it does. It makes me feel really good. But those
Speaker 1: are few and far between. The rest of it feels
Speaker 1: like any fucking Hallmark score for any kind of nineties
Speaker 1: sort of melodrama that this could have been any like
Speaker 1: Michelle Pfeiffer romantic comedy score.
Speaker 2: It's every emotional beat is being telegraphed by the score
Speaker 2: in this and I found that so grating. It could
Speaker 2: have been a lot more subtle and a lot more muted,
Speaker 2: in line with the peacefulness of the setting. But it
Speaker 2: just it grated on me over time. And like I said,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of there's purposeful Scottish fla to it,
Speaker 2: which I know you said you didn't mind it, and
Speaker 2: that's fine, but for me, it just seemed like a
Speaker 2: lazy shortcut to making it feel more authentic to the setting.
Speaker 2: And I really didn't appreciate that much. But I having
Speaker 2: said that, I agree with you. I think Trevor Jones
Speaker 2: is a wonderful composer. He did Labyrinths for God's Sake,
Speaker 2: one of my favorite scores. So he was this was
Speaker 2: an ill fitting score for him.
Speaker 1: I think he did Time Band, It's mentioned earlier. He
Speaker 1: did a lot of Terrygo Infants, he did a lot
Speaker 1: of Alan Parker films. He did Angel Heart for God's Sake,
Speaker 1: he did ex Caliber, Rathmophobia, Last of the Mohicans. These
Speaker 1: are all appropriate for their fucking movies. Man, this one
Speaker 1: I do not understand it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did not like it, but I what I
Speaker 2: hated even more Musically speaking, I don't know if you're
Speaker 2: ready prepared to talk about this aspect of it, but
Speaker 2: this was This wasn't the thick of the rock Star
Speaker 2: sound track single that was. I think it was Oscar
Speaker 2: bait at the time. Really we're I'm talking about Rod
Speaker 2: Stewart and his song Rhythm of My Heart, which the
Speaker 2: score references it here and there. Instrumentally, you don't hear
Speaker 2: it the Rod Stewart version till the very end, But
Speaker 2: boy is it's so cloying and it's so cheesy, and
Speaker 2: it's like this was really the time of Remember we
Speaker 2: talked about Robin Hood where you have like Brian Adams
Speaker 2: doing the song you had three Musketeers.
Speaker 3: Do it.
Speaker 1: Ballads, ballads, ballads, It's just awful.
Speaker 2: And Rod Stewart this was in the thick of his cheat.
Speaker 2: I guess it depends on whether you believe his reinterpretation
Speaker 2: of the American Songbook. His kind of Swan song was
Speaker 2: more or less cheesy than this, but this was his
Speaker 2: last gasp of pop celebrity.
Speaker 1: I think before we before we continue to eviscerate, I
Speaker 1: just want to say that this terrible fucking song, Rhythm
Speaker 1: of My Heart, which was not originally recorded by him.
Speaker 1: There was another artist who wrote and recorded it, and
Speaker 1: there's a band that covered it. And if you bought
Speaker 1: the soundtrack to this album, it was that cover you
Speaker 1: were getting, not the Rod Stewart version, because he recorded
Speaker 1: it separately on his album a few years beforehand. Anyway,
Speaker 1: point being, the actual melody of this and the structure
Speaker 1: of it is just the Bonnie Banks of local omend,
Speaker 1: which everybody knows if you watched any cartoon from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties, which is You'll take the high
Speaker 1: road and now I'll take the low road. Now I'll
Speaker 1: be in Scotland before ye. But me and my true
Speaker 1: love will never meet again on the Bonnie Bonnie Banks
Speaker 1: so la lomnth Okay, that is the basis for so
Speaker 1: much Scottish music, all the reels and sea shanties and jigs, Okay,
Speaker 1: they're all in there. So there's something just fundamentally that
Speaker 1: I respond to when I hear that melody. But if
Speaker 1: you put it in the fucking gravelly throat of that
Speaker 1: prick Rod Stewart and you shoot it through that late
Speaker 1: era treakily stealing Tom Waits's Midnight Train, fucking what was
Speaker 1: the other one? Was the big hit the Forever Young,
Speaker 1: with that kid, with that adorable child, making us believe
Speaker 1: that Rod Stewart is somehow a decent human being when
Speaker 1: we all know he's not.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 2: It's also a bummer to me on a personal level
Speaker 2: because this song was co written and this is where
Speaker 2: the noise junkies, music, nerd and me comes out. The
Speaker 2: song was co written by a guy named Mark Jordan
Speaker 2: Father Malone. He is one of the formative yacht rock
Speaker 2: classic artists. This guy was responsible for a lot of
Speaker 2: great albums and a lot of great songs in the
Speaker 2: yacht rock vein on. You won't know any of them
Speaker 2: because you're not into yacht rock, said great name one
Speaker 2: his songs, dancing on the Boardwalk.
Speaker 3: You won't know any of these.
Speaker 2: But personally I was let down by the fact that
Speaker 2: he was into this schmaltz. It was offensive to me.
Speaker 2: I thought of him as this cool kind of singer,
Speaker 2: songwritery guy, and apparently he has a schmaltzy side too.
Speaker 2: Marina del Rey is a great song. It's about a
Speaker 2: place near where you used to live, near and dear
Speaker 2: to your heart California.
Speaker 1: I saw a sneak preview for Needful Things in Marino
Speaker 1: del Right. Really, yeah, a test screening for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: none of the visual effects were done.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So anyway, he's fabulous singers.
Speaker 1: I saw Guil Gerard at a diner, a Ruby's diner,
Speaker 1: and Marina del Rey with a much younger woman, and
Speaker 1: it made me think that he was gross.
Speaker 2: Was that the story where he was wearing a tracksuit?
Speaker 1: Yes, I think he told me that.
Speaker 2: So it's the schmaltiest of the schmaltzy songs, And I
Speaker 2: guess that was for a the time and place. It
Speaker 2: just it was like, I don't know, if it was
Speaker 2: something a little more, a little less emotionally out there
Speaker 2: and big and that sort of style. I think I
Speaker 2: would have appreciated it. Something a little more muted and
Speaker 2: maybe a little more classy would have been great.
Speaker 1: He's not even Scottish, Ron Stewart, Yeah, Stewish. He's fucking English,
Speaker 1: is he? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Man, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: He's a fucking spoiled English kid. He shouldn't be saying
Speaker 1: that fucking Scottish song, fucking soccer person. He's a fucking
Speaker 1: he's a football guy. You can tell. He's just one
Speaker 1: of those What is it about this? There's a particular
Speaker 1: type of English celebrity that, like they all just want
Speaker 1: to be fucking sports stars and then they like end
Speaker 1: up at the height of some other career that they
Speaker 1: fall into. Jason Stantham was like mister diving guy and
Speaker 1: now he's the biggest action star in the world. Like
Speaker 1: Ron Stewart just wanted to kick a ball around and
Speaker 1: ended up this huge fucking music superstar. Are I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of that jocks, jocks turning into fucking superstars.
Speaker 1: I don't approve, but you find that.
Speaker 2: I think you find that typically more with English rock
Speaker 2: stars than you do with American rock stars. Are there
Speaker 2: any American like rock stars of that vintage who always
Speaker 2: wanted to be like baseball players or their half players,
Speaker 2: their half nothing.
Speaker 1: I know, Okay, this isn't music, But wasn't Kurt Russell?
Speaker 1: He wanted to be a baseball player and then injured.
Speaker 1: Injury fed him back into the system, even though he
Speaker 1: had already been a child actor.
Speaker 2: So you can find the reverse example of the actor
Speaker 2: who wanted to be a baseball an actor, but not
Speaker 2: a reversing actors. You can find examples like that. I'm saying,
Speaker 2: like rock stars, I can't think of anything. Even I'm
Speaker 2: sure you can. Like football players, I'm sure you can
Speaker 2: find a bunch of them who were they wanted to
Speaker 2: they were they wanted to be football players, they injured
Speaker 2: their knee or something, and they had to become actors
Speaker 2: by default, and they end up being big stars. But
Speaker 2: I don't know too many. Did Bob Dylan secretly want
Speaker 2: to be a badminton player or something? I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't think of it.
Speaker 1: I can't think of any I wonder that's again. I'd
Speaker 1: like to know. Actually, I'd like to know some of
Speaker 1: the people at the top of their name if they
Speaker 1: had some other career in mind up until a point.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's an element of boredom to that
Speaker 2: whole notion, because it's like someone like Rod Stewart gets
Speaker 2: the top of his game, so to speak. He's the
Speaker 2: biggest rock star of his era, but it's somehow maybe
Speaker 2: they just get bored or dissatisfied being just that and
Speaker 2: they want to go back to their childhood dream of
Speaker 2: being like a football star.
Speaker 1: In his case, it's boredom Rod Stewart. I'd like to
Speaker 1: remind everybody that there was a moment when he was
Speaker 1: performing at Red Rocks where there was a gust of
Speaker 1: winds so strong that it ripped his two pay including
Speaker 1: the to pay tape, right off the top of his
Speaker 1: head and then buffeted away like so much garbage?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 2: Is there a video of that? Can I watch that?
Speaker 1: I've only ever heard the story. If it exists, please
Speaker 1: share it with us, and we will share it with everyone,
Speaker 1: because no greater image could exist. It's already an epic
Speaker 1: in my mind, the two pay tape tearing off but
Speaker 1: struggling for a bit like ghost after gust and the
Speaker 1: tape just oh and Stewart knowing it's going but nothing
Speaker 1: he can do about it.
Speaker 2: The music was maybe my least favorite part of this
Speaker 2: movie ultimately, Father alone, What was your how did Obviously
Speaker 2: you didn't like it, but did you think it was
Speaker 2: as bad as I did?
Speaker 1: This song?
Speaker 2: The song and the music over. I know you basically
Speaker 2: said that Trevor Jones was a bit of a letdown,
Speaker 2: But ultimately do you think that was the worst part
Speaker 2: of the movie for you because you liked the movie
Speaker 2: better than I did.
Speaker 1: I did the movie quite a bit. Yeah, the big
Speaker 1: letdown is musically. Just as a fan of Scottish music,
Speaker 1: I put on bank pipes for fun, just to listen.
Speaker 1: So I'm not expecting a full on traditional score. I'm
Speaker 1: not expecting a full on orchestral necessarily somewhere in between.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like there might have been a little
Speaker 1: folk band you might have hired to do some traditional
Speaker 1: stuff here. It just felt all I'm talking about the score.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Trevor Jones score that particularly more
Speaker 1: egregious to me than the song, because I think the
Speaker 1: song just plays in the credits at the end. It's
Speaker 1: a take it or leave its scenario. With that it
Speaker 1: doesn't impact the movie at all. It's much more egregious.
Speaker 1: That score is just trying to elicit emotion where there
Speaker 1: needn't be any, or it trying to heighten it or
Speaker 1: ramp it up, or I don't know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: so wrongheaded. It just bothers me. I'm really bogged by it.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's it. Look, it was, but there were
Speaker 2: a lot of ways the movie could have gone. I
Speaker 2: didn't love it. I really liked I really liked Ted Danson,
Speaker 2: thought he was great. I loved his relationship with the
Speaker 2: little girl. I liked hean home. But ultimately I found
Speaker 2: it more predictable, and that a lot I could be
Speaker 2: because of the time and the type of movie it was.
Speaker 2: I don't think it was intended to be this sort
Speaker 2: of bit and switch for viewers. You wanted the sort
Speaker 2: of wonder of the story, and that was fine, but
Speaker 2: it wasn't maybe what I was looking for.
Speaker 1: I was actually I did not know. Somehow avoided this
Speaker 1: movie when it came out, somehow avoided any of the
Speaker 1: artwork or the plot line of the movie. I did
Speaker 1: not know if we were going to get a lock
Speaker 1: mass monster in this film. So when it finally showed up,
Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised, and I was specifically pleasantly surprised
Speaker 1: by the physical creature that they have interacting with our actors.
Speaker 1: The CGI monster, on the other hand, not so great.
Speaker 1: But the physical monster is fucking fantastic. I was blown
Speaker 1: away by it as a matter of fact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the actual like the ship and all the
Speaker 2: technology they used to find it, that was all very
Speaker 2: tactile and tangible, like the texture of it I thought
Speaker 2: worked really well, and in fact, just the town itself
Speaker 2: I thought was very well rendered in the movie. But
Speaker 2: I agree that the CG was not good, and I
Speaker 2: think you could probably just assign the blame to the
Speaker 2: fact that this is a thirty year old piece of
Speaker 2: technology that we're witnessing. And I even I don't know
Speaker 2: how it was looked at in the day. I think
Speaker 2: it's up against Like I said, I brought up Jurassic Park,
Speaker 2: that was the gold standard for that kind of CGI
Speaker 2: in a movie, I think at that.
Speaker 1: Time, right where they had come out three years prior,
Speaker 1: so don't do it here. They The stuff with the
Speaker 1: animatronic was great. I don't know that we needed any
Speaker 1: real range of motion for the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. They could have accomplished the same thing
Speaker 2: without actually having so much of the CGI monster there.
Speaker 1: I didn't mind it. I didn't mind. I didn't mind
Speaker 1: a computer generating thing when it was in the world water,
Speaker 1: in the murk, that's fine because it should be weird
Speaker 1: looking under there. But when they had that fucking beautiful
Speaker 1: puppet interacting with the little girl, like why cut to
Speaker 1: a wide shot where they've got this obviously slapped on
Speaker 1: computer generated bullshit like not their image?
Speaker 2: Yeah, agreed, Have we solved it? We've solved the missionary.
Speaker 1: We solved the mystery of the Locknest Monster. I treat
Speaker 1: I think we have. Is it really? There?
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 3: Ever?
Speaker 1: There was it?
Speaker 2: A pl sr You know what, let's wrap this up
Speaker 2: by what I want to ask you in wrapping this
Speaker 2: up on them alone. Do you believe in the Lockness Monster?
Speaker 1: Now? Yes, now and forever because you know why? Because
Speaker 1: there are some mysteries that deserve to live, and maybe
Speaker 1: all the old gods stopped existing because we stopped believing
Speaker 1: in them. And in this case, till my dying breath,
Speaker 1: I'm going to believe in the Lockness Monster. I want
Speaker 1: it to be there. I know scientifically it makes no sense.
Speaker 1: It would have to be magic. It would have to
Speaker 1: be an actual magical animal to continue to exist in
Speaker 1: this closed environment after we have mapped every fucking inch
Speaker 1: of that goddamn lake. It would have to be Look,
Speaker 1: I know there's this other theory that there's another cave
Speaker 1: and it goes down there, but how would it be
Speaker 1: very Okay, it doesn't make sense. Yes, it still exists,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: I'm of the same mind. I'm a firm believe I
Speaker 2: want to believe that it exists like you do. And
Speaker 2: I guess there's so much in the world, and the
Speaker 2: world is so much smaller than it was when we
Speaker 2: were kids, and a lot of the mysteries have been
Speaker 2: exposed as during our lifetime. I do want to believe
Speaker 2: it's there, but a part of me still thinks maybe
Speaker 2: it's possible. Maybe this thing is just evading every attempt
Speaker 2: at finding it. I will say I don't believe Bigfoot exists.
Speaker 2: There's other cryptids that I'm fairly certain.
Speaker 1: Do not exist.
Speaker 2: I think you're the one who told me that the
Speaker 2: famous Bigfoot film was just a hoax. By John landis
Speaker 2: I think was involved, wasn't he?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: No, No, okay, look there, Yes, there is a rumor
Speaker 1: about the Rick Baker John landis involved in a Bigfoot film.
Speaker 1: There's also there's a pretty great National geographic special about
Speaker 1: Bigfoot where they interview a fella who was a friend
Speaker 1: of the guy who like turned in the footage to
Speaker 1: begin with, and they surreptitiously filmed this old man walking
Speaker 1: across the street on his way to the meeting, and
Speaker 1: god damned if he doesn't walk exactly like Bigfoot in
Speaker 1: the famous footage, that might be him. Yes, but there
Speaker 1: have been sightings of Yetti in the Himalayas, there have
Speaker 1: been sightings of Bigfoot elsewhere. He's a possibility. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: still believe in that guy too. Maybe, but if I'm
Speaker 1: the one debunking it to you, I continue to believe
Speaker 1: in them.
Speaker 2: No, But I at a minimum, I want to believe
Speaker 2: that the Lockness Monster exists, and I don't really, it's
Speaker 2: not going to ruin my life to know whether it's
Speaker 2: there or whether it's not there. But isn't life a
Speaker 2: little more fun with a little mystery, a little bit
Speaker 2: of magic of wondering it doesn't exist, and if it
Speaker 2: does exist, where is it, how does it whatever? I'm
Speaker 2: fine with that. I'm fine with some mystery around.
Speaker 1: It me too. If there's a kelpie out there, I
Speaker 1: hope it's continuing. I hope it's continuing health in a
Speaker 1: hearty lifestyle. And also I want to mention the bunyip
Speaker 1: in Australia, which is a kind of a cousin to
Speaker 1: these water monsters. The bunyip, to me is the most
Speaker 1: terrifying cryptid out there now. It probably because as a
Speaker 1: child I saw that film Dot in the Kangaroo and
Speaker 1: they have a nightmare sequence with a bunyip and a
Speaker 1: song called like Bunyip Moon and which is basically like
Speaker 1: aboriginal drawings come to life, and it fucked me up.
Speaker 1: HP So I just want to say, bunyip, bunyip. Those
Speaker 1: I hope don't exist. How about that? Take that bunyip.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of the bunyip. I will have to
Speaker 2: do some research for me. I think one of the
Speaker 2: more terrifying cryptids that I've heard of. I don't know
Speaker 2: a ton about this, but I think the mothman is
Speaker 2: scary because I don't know. There's something about this creature
Speaker 2: that's flying, and every encounter seems to be happening at
Speaker 2: night when you're driving and it's raining and this thing
Speaker 2: comes out of nowhere and makes you crash the car.
Speaker 2: There's something freaky about that. What it's flying? Is it
Speaker 2: an insect? Is it a man?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 2: That's the kind of cryptid that's scary to me. The
Speaker 2: chopicabra also pretty scary.
Speaker 1: This weird.
Speaker 2: Is it from Spain or Mexico?
Speaker 1: Mexico. It'll suck your goats, that's right, So I.
Speaker 2: Love I don't know. There was something about cryptids we
Speaker 2: talked about when we were kids, in the wonder and
Speaker 2: the mystery of it all, And thank goodness, some of
Speaker 2: that mystery still live, still exists in this world. Let's
Speaker 2: not explain everything. Everything doesn't have to be explained. Let's
Speaker 2: leave a little mystery.
Speaker 1: And on that note, on our next Fusco Festival, I
Speaker 1: don't know what okay. On the next midnight viewing that's
Speaker 1: gonna be Father Malone's weekly round up that's coming up
Speaker 1: this I apologize to everyone. If you tuned in this
Speaker 1: past Monday and I wasn't there, I'm fine. I'll explain
Speaker 1: a little bit more on the roundup itself. Till then
Speaker 1: hp hpeople will be back on Fusco Fest. Whatever that
Speaker 1: next movie ends up being should be Spirit of the
Speaker 1: Spirit the Stallion of the Cimarron. But Hidalgo we've got
Speaker 1: coming up as well. Looking forward to both of those,
Speaker 1: Hidalgo in particular, I fucking love that movie. Anyway, till then,
Speaker 1: HP Where can people find you? All right?
Speaker 2: I am the co host of the night Mister Walters
Speaker 2: Taxi podcast with my esteemed co host Father Malone sitting
Speaker 2: across from me here. I host the Noise Junkies music
Speaker 2: podcast for music nerds. Please check that out. And I'm
Speaker 2: an occasional guest on the Culture Cast with Chris Dashu.
Speaker 2: And finally, i have a band campsite Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp
Speaker 2: dot com. Check that out as well. That's where you
Speaker 2: can find me.
Speaker 1: As for me, you're hearing it here on Midnight Viewing.
Speaker 1: Check us out every Monday for Fonda Malone's weekly round
Speaker 1: up band check us out every Friday for either Towns
Speaker 1: from the Dark Snide or an Anthologies Attack or a
Speaker 1: Fuseco Fest. We've got too much going on. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've got another show coming out this fucking fall. I've
Speaker 1: already signed up for God damn it, I'm collaborating with
Speaker 1: Paul Waller. We've got a new show coming out called
Speaker 1: Little Old Lady Got Mutilated late last night, so look
Speaker 1: for that around sometime around October. Until next time, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave you with a little bit from this flick,
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 3: Was he a prosperous London surgeon, perhaps a member of
Speaker 3: British Royalty. Well, a bullshit team has unearthed spectacular new
Speaker 3: evidence which suggests that Jack the Ripper was, in fact.
Speaker 1: The Luckness Monster.
Speaker 3: Is it possible that Nessy murdered five street walkers before
Speaker 3: the Tourney's Luckness? Using undiscovered evidence, We've pieced together the
Speaker 3: events leading up for the first murder. Although this is
Speaker 3: a bullshit reenactment, it may have happened just this way.
Speaker 5: Hello, dearie, show you a good time for a quid
Speaker 5: for the wife and for free old gents. Don't you
Speaker 5: want a girl to keep you warming tonight? Mom told
Speaker 5: me that would be nights like this. Oh, oh my,
Speaker 5: you are a big one. How hard you come on?
Speaker 5: Darlp my, you don't you be stepping on my feet?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 5: What you all worry now, Will you'll be careful?
Speaker 3: Not so?
Speaker 4: Wait?
Speaker 5: Is this the way it happened?
Speaker 3: Was Jack the Ripper in fact a sixty foot sea
Speaker 3: serpent from Scotland?
Speaker 4: Did I take this job for a quick buck? We
Speaker 4: may never know the answer to this questions.
Speaker 1: Spasso