Speaker 1: There was once a man as the highest paid stuntman
Speaker 1: in the world. This man broke fifty six bones his
Speaker 1: back twice, punctured a lung, and knocked out a few teeth.
Speaker 1: His career has included work on forty five hundred television
Speaker 1: episodes and three hundred and ten feature films as a stuntman,
Speaker 1: stunt coordinator, second unit director, and ultimately director. This man
Speaker 1: wrecked hundreds of cars, fell from tall buildings, got blown up,
Speaker 1: was dragged by horses, rescued the cast and crew from
Speaker 1: a Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia, set a world record for
Speaker 1: a boat stunt on Gator, jumped a rocket powered pickup
Speaker 1: truck across the canal for a GM commercial and was
Speaker 1: the first human to test the car airbag. This man
Speaker 1: was Hal Needham and he was wrapped.
Speaker 2: All right. This is Dick Miller. If you're listening to
Speaker 2: junk food cinema, who.
Speaker 1: Are these guys? Do you believe in Heaven above? Do
Speaker 1: you believe in love? Do you perhaps believe in jug
Speaker 1: food Cinema? Brought to you by Send Me an Angel
Speaker 1: dot com dot com dot com dot that is not
Speaker 1: a mail order bride catalog, but actually our exclusive take
Speaker 1: delivery service. This is, of course, the weekly Culton Exploitation
Speaker 1: film cast. So good it just has to be fattening.
Speaker 1: I'm your Brian Salisburnham, joined as per usual by my
Speaker 1: friend and co host. He is a novelist. He is
Speaker 1: a screenwriter, a lieutenant of Mega Force, a man with
Speaker 1: thunder in his heart who's every movement is like lightning.
Speaker 1: Luckily that's what emodium is for. Mister c Robert Cargill. Hi,
Speaker 1: how's it going? Man?
Speaker 2: What I would give to go ass sliding with you
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 1: I would love to go. You know what, Cargo, that
Speaker 1: touches me that you want to go ass sliding with me?
Speaker 2: Sliding Joel as lighting.
Speaker 1: If there were two people better equipped to go as
Speaker 1: lighting together, I'd like to meet them. Well, actually no,
Speaker 1: I don't think I would kirkt me if I'm wrong, Cargo.
Speaker 1: But I think you told me that while you were
Speaker 1: watching Brad for this episode, you got a text from
Speaker 1: friend of the show, Joe Lynch. Yes that Joe Lynch did.
Speaker 1: What did? What did he say?
Speaker 2: He's like, what are you watching? And I told him
Speaker 2: and he's like, ass lighting first word out of his mouth, asslighting.
Speaker 1: You know what's crazy, Cargo, is that sounds like a
Speaker 1: reductive bit we're doing. And no, that's what they call
Speaker 1: that in this movie.
Speaker 2: To go to one of our regular segments, Unfiltered Wife,
Speaker 2: I was making as sliding references and just just kept
Speaker 2: looking over at me and then and then right, and
Speaker 2: she looks at me. The character goes, let's I want
Speaker 2: to take you ass sliding and she looks at me
Speaker 2: and she gives I thought that was a bit you
Speaker 2: were making this up and I was like, oh no, baby,
Speaker 2: get ready for the ass sliding.
Speaker 1: You have never heard a term that seems dripping in
Speaker 1: as much irony as it turns out to be completely
Speaker 1: bereft of irony as two teenagers saying let's go as
Speaker 1: sliding together. And no, you know what kills me, Cargo,
Speaker 1: I don't even care fucking sidebar at the top of
Speaker 1: the show before we get into it.
Speaker 2: Personally, I think it's gonna be the whiskey, but what
Speaker 2: he could be also be the fried foods. But what
Speaker 2: do you think is gonna kill you?
Speaker 1: What kills me is that no one, even the newbiest
Speaker 1: to this town, no one's ever like, I'm sorry, did
Speaker 1: you just say as sliding. That's weird. What the fuck
Speaker 1: does that? They all just go along with it. It
Speaker 1: is like it is this film takes place in yes
Speaker 1: and and Alberta. Hey buddy, Hey buddy, how are you
Speaker 1: now going as Ladin? Are you Goodn't you like? What
Speaker 1: the fuck is happening in this movie? Figurenau?
Speaker 2: I mean, everybody knows what movie we're talking about, but
Speaker 2: let's let's make this official.
Speaker 1: You know what Cargill. Recently, I was made aware that,
Speaker 1: in honor of its fortieth anniversary, RAD was returning to theaters.
Speaker 1: And what a great opportunity I thought to reshare our
Speaker 1: rat episode on social media. So imagine my shock and
Speaker 1: horror to discover that I could not reshare our rat
Speaker 1: episode on social media because we did not have a
Speaker 1: rat episode at all.
Speaker 2: It's one of the few now how Needa movies we
Speaker 2: haven't covered Cargil.
Speaker 1: We've had plenty of occasions where we are startled, shocked,
Speaker 1: and even miffed to find out that there is a
Speaker 1: piece of foundational junkie cinema that has yet to be
Speaker 1: covered on this podcast. But the omission of RAD from
Speaker 1: the junk food Cinema catalog is deeply disturbing and in
Speaker 1: a sense a trader's betrayal of our core values.
Speaker 2: Yes, but we have a good excuse, is.
Speaker 1: It because we did BMX bandits and just got completely
Speaker 1: Mandela affected into thinking we did this one okay?
Speaker 2: And we did that shortly after I had rewatched RAD
Speaker 2: and showed Jes for the first time, and we met.
Speaker 2: I believe we mentioned RAD in the episode and a
Speaker 2: couple of items for it, So it feels like we've
Speaker 2: talked about it, and it's hard to get through an
Speaker 2: episode of Junk Food Cinema without me saying the word RAD.
Speaker 2: So I can't imagine, you know why our brains think
Speaker 2: we've covered this masterpiece.
Speaker 1: Social psychologists for years. After this show is dead and gone,
Speaker 1: we'll study it and trying to figure out what the
Speaker 1: fuck is wrong with me and Cargil. But until that time,
Speaker 1: let us now write this most egregious of oversights, because Cargil,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, only we can make
Speaker 1: it right by standing on our handlebars and releasing in
Speaker 1: a full voice as loud as the thunder in our hearts.
Speaker 1: Our adoration of nineteen eighty six is Rat.
Speaker 3: His name is crewe Hey, good looking BMX is his world.
Speaker 3: Rat is his way of life. The world would be
Speaker 3: a lot better off we.
Speaker 4: We're here for the biggest and most important bicycle motocross
Speaker 4: event ever held hell Track.
Speaker 2: This is a very important race.
Speaker 3: That are a finest riders in the country.
Speaker 4: You're here writing for some one hundred thousand dollars Heil Track.
Speaker 2: Just pick out.
Speaker 3: They've gotta be kidding.
Speaker 2: This is a joke. I really think I can get
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 4: I think I got a chance.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear any more about it.
Speaker 3: Everyone's on his case.
Speaker 2: Get that.
Speaker 3: The paper boy thinks he's a pro. He's not the
Speaker 3: next Bart Taylor. He's got the style. There's something about
Speaker 3: the way you ride so naturally, and he's going to
Speaker 3: prove it.
Speaker 4: I've never seen this raw determination and talent against the
Speaker 4: factory hot shots.
Speaker 3: Looks like the local yocle's gonna race that. It's gonna
Speaker 3: take a miracle to beat this guy against the big
Speaker 3: money fixers.
Speaker 4: All you have to do is take out that kid
Speaker 4: against impossible odds.
Speaker 3: This guy doesn't even stand a chance. Yeah, yeah, he's
Speaker 3: going for it all rad.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to talk about this, to finally
Speaker 1: cross it off the list to fill in this weird
Speaker 1: memory pothole that both of us have had, and to
Speaker 1: say that this is accidentally an anniversary episode where it
Speaker 1: was definitely not intended, and claim very proudly that I
Speaker 1: have now seen RAD on the big screen and I'm
Speaker 1: super excited about that.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: It was playing in selected theaters for like two days,
Speaker 1: and one of them happened to be yesterday, So I
Speaker 1: was like, fuck it.
Speaker 2: Oh oh it was yesterday because we were gonna record
Speaker 2: yesterday and I couldn't. Yeh that fuck yeah. That allowed
Speaker 2: you to see it on the big screen before we recorded.
Speaker 2: That's amazing, dude.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying is like all of these weird
Speaker 1: things that fell into place to make this the most
Speaker 1: rad RAT episode that ever ratted Radical Radical? Have you? Okay?
Speaker 1: So for those of you who haven't seen RAD, this
Speaker 1: is a movie about hell track this dastardly BMX race
Speaker 1: that's taking place in a small town, and it's about
Speaker 1: our hero, Crew Jones, who is a teenage BMX racer, uh,
Speaker 1: and he wants so desperately to win this race. Even
Speaker 1: though we're gonna talk about the weird like economical politics
Speaker 1: of BMX racing and how corporate it is evidently, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into all of that, but it's really just
Speaker 1: a movie. I mean, it's to Save the rec Center movie.
Speaker 1: If the rec Center is just personal pride, personal glory
Speaker 1: at being the best BMX racer in your town. And yeah,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned a moment ago, it's directed by Hal
Speaker 1: mother fucking need him, the Immortal hounding them.
Speaker 2: Yes, a man who never let the plot get in
Speaker 2: the way of a good story.
Speaker 1: And I love him for that. A patron saint of
Speaker 1: junk food cinema. I believe he hasn't earned he's earned
Speaker 1: that cannonization.
Speaker 2: I mean one of our first episodes is on his films,
Speaker 2: and we covered three or four of them over the
Speaker 2: years at the very least, and mentioned the rest. At
Speaker 2: some point.
Speaker 1: We've done Mega Force, We've done Hooper, We've done but
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, Butch Cassidy Smoking the Bandit is
Speaker 1: a very different film than Butch Kassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Speaker 2: Uh, didn't we do Cannonball Run? At one point?
Speaker 1: We have not done Cannonball Run yet.
Speaker 2: If you can believe that, I know we haven't done
Speaker 2: Cannonball Run too. I did that with someone else and
Speaker 2: we're unlikely to. We'll cover Cannonball Run two the same
Speaker 2: way we covered Eddie and the Cruisers to Eddie lives.
Speaker 1: Eddie lives, he lives, Canniball Runs. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's the same situation there.
Speaker 2: Now there's no exclamation points.
Speaker 1: And also, as we mentioned, this is a movie he
Speaker 1: filmed in Alberta, Canada, so essentially this is a Letter
Speaker 1: Kenny sports film fingernail. Again. I kind of feel like
Speaker 1: the stars have aligned perfectly for us to cover Rad
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So what is your relationship with Rad? Cause
Speaker 2: you're younger than me. I was old enough to see
Speaker 2: this when it came out. I loved this. This was
Speaker 2: a whole ass meme. This was a movie we remembered
Speaker 2: for one scene, and pretty much one scene only, because
Speaker 2: functionally the movie is essentially like the plot of most
Speaker 2: other hou Need of movies in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: And we'll get into all of that. But so, it
Speaker 2: was a movie that you know, I saw on the
Speaker 2: big screen when I was a kid. You know, it
Speaker 2: came out when I was eleven, perfect fucking age for it,
Speaker 2: right when having a BMX bike was the coolest fucking
Speaker 2: thing in the world. Skateboarding was starting to become cool
Speaker 2: in the mainstream, but m was where it was fucking at.
Speaker 2: And I was all in on this fucking movie. And
Speaker 2: you know, it is formational in you know who Cargill
Speaker 2: is because Lori Laughlin in this movie, as we will
Speaker 2: get to, was kind of a whole eighties aesthetic. She
Speaker 2: you know, if there was an eighties version of the
Speaker 2: Manic Pixie dream Girl, it's Lori Laughlin in this fucking
Speaker 2: movie and caused a number of awakenings in the eighties.
Speaker 2: And so this is one of those movies that was
Speaker 2: formative for me.
Speaker 1: See, yeah, this is I believe a just post Austin
Speaker 1: move viewing for me. Uh it's you know, I was
Speaker 1: a little too young for it when it came out,
Speaker 1: but you know, I was one of those kids that
Speaker 1: really wanted to have the cool bike in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And I was the kid who tried to make little
Speaker 1: stunt tracks and you know, you know, right as fast
Speaker 1: as absolutely as I could and get hurt plenty of times.
Speaker 1: But I didn't see this movie until shortly after moving
Speaker 1: to Austin, and even then, in bits and pieces. It
Speaker 1: really wasn't until twenty nineteen that I sat down and
Speaker 1: watched it from start to finish. But my god, did
Speaker 1: I fall in love with this movie. It's kind of
Speaker 1: insane to think that I saw BMX Bandits before I
Speaker 1: saw Rad.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean BMX Bandits came out before Rad.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, that I know. But just like in
Speaker 1: the quantum leap of my life. Yeah, because temporal shit.
Speaker 1: Temporal alignment doesn't mean shit to me because BMX Bandits
Speaker 1: came out, I believe before I was even born, So
Speaker 1: I don't really think that's the prerequisite here. But it
Speaker 1: is kind of strange that BMX Bandits found its way
Speaker 1: into my heart before Rad. But once Rad got in there,
Speaker 1: there was thunder in that heart. I absolutely adored this movie.
Speaker 1: It represents everything I love about the eighties. But it
Speaker 1: also hammers home the idea that howning Him can shoot
Speaker 1: anything on any vehicle and make it look cool, and
Speaker 1: I applaud him for that.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, that's when I said earlier about how
Speaker 2: he never lets the plot get in the way of
Speaker 2: a good story. The classic Joe Bob Briggs reference, the
Speaker 2: thing about how need him is he was one of
Speaker 2: the greatest stunt coordinators of all time. All he developed
Speaker 2: several stunts that you see regularly on screen that he
Speaker 2: developed the safety apparatus to do the stunts. He would
Speaker 2: not have anybody do a stunt he himself wouldn't do.
Speaker 2: That's what the whole movie Hooper's about is about the
Speaker 2: life of a stuntman and how he eventually, you know,
Speaker 2: had to move on and go into directing because you know,
Speaker 2: there's only so much your body can take. And yet
Speaker 2: he put together amazing stunt teams and would stunt coordinate
Speaker 2: his own films, and so his films are essentially frameworks
Speaker 2: for stunts, and he knew how to make a really enjoyable, emotional,
Speaker 2: very core base experience. Like he's never trying to do
Speaker 2: anything deep in any of his movies. He's just trying
Speaker 2: to show off how badass his boys are. And man
Speaker 2: is his team always up to the task. And here
Speaker 2: he collected up a whole bunch of actual BMX stunt
Speaker 2: riders and built a whole film around them. And this
Speaker 2: is a movie that is absolutely showcasing real badass is
Speaker 2: doing really real things. And he always knows where to
Speaker 2: put the camera and how fast to be running that
Speaker 2: film through that camera to get the perfect fucking shot.
Speaker 1: So, in addition to watching the movie again, in addition
Speaker 1: to going through the research provided by our research team,
Speaker 1: and in addition to seeing Rad on the big screen,
Speaker 1: in preparation for this episode, I also watched a RAD
Speaker 1: documentary which is from just last year, and in the
Speaker 1: documentary they have some stock footage of how Needham and
Speaker 1: they talk about the making of this film. And I
Speaker 1: think this process of preparation for the episode, more than
Speaker 1: anything else, has crystallized the fact that I want to
Speaker 1: be how Needham when I grow up. Like the guy is.
Speaker 1: It's just brilliant and funny and charming and humble, but
Speaker 1: also like living in.
Speaker 2: Burt reynolds pool house for twelve years.
Speaker 1: Dude, basically the if you liked Once upon a Time
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. The relationship between Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Bitt
Speaker 1: is completely one hundred percent stolen from the relationship between
Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham one percent.
Speaker 2: That's exactly exactly what Quenton was doing in that movie.
Speaker 1: But there's just something so inspiring about the way he
Speaker 1: approaches work, about how excited he is about his work,
Speaker 1: and I learned so much about not only how he
Speaker 1: made this movie, but who he was as an artist.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's really interesting is that
Speaker 1: rad is the first movie he worked on where he
Speaker 1: didn't know more about the stunts being performed than the
Speaker 1: stunt performers did, because he wasn't familiar with BMX writing.
Speaker 1: This was a fairly new thing in the late eighties.
Speaker 1: And what that means is this guy who was known
Speaker 1: for being a legend in this industry, for being a
Speaker 1: shed figure for the art of stunt performing, a guy
Speaker 1: who was also known to be kind of a task master,
Speaker 1: like Hey, I want this stunt, we gotta get it done,
Speaker 1: and there's no pussy footing around it, like let's make
Speaker 1: it happen. Suddenly is dropping back and giving a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of grace and leeway to the young BMX writers,
Speaker 1: who would you know, be the stunt performers in this
Speaker 1: movie and in some of the actors as well. And
Speaker 1: it's just really interesting to hear him talk about how
Speaker 1: he kind of had to take a step back and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: you guys, show me what you can do. What's the
Speaker 1: what is the capacity of this vehicle and then figure
Speaker 1: out how to shoot it, working very much in collaboration
Speaker 1: with them, And I just love that because it's the
Speaker 1: thing that works best about this movie. I'll just rip
Speaker 1: this band aid off right up top. I think the
Speaker 1: thing that absolutely works best for this movie in terms
Speaker 1: of its legacy is the weird chocolate and peanut butter
Speaker 1: of the old Hollywood sensibilities of hol Needham and the
Speaker 1: completely new teenage sport of BMX writing. Like, those two
Speaker 1: worlds colliding make for a very interesting film because you
Speaker 1: have all of these performers who are doing these incredible
Speaker 1: things on these bikes that you know, when rad came
Speaker 1: out a lot of people had never seen before. But
Speaker 1: then you also have a dance number, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Like there's there's all of these little
Speaker 1: trappings of what an old school teen film would be
Speaker 1: smashed right up against what we know an eighties teen
Speaker 1: teen film looks like. And I love the at times
Speaker 1: disparate but always wonderful smashing up of those two things.
Speaker 2: After these messages, we'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Seven Eleven's got it.
Speaker 4: It's your wave, not microwave hamburger, cheese, burger, all beat
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Speaker 4: a seven eleven.
Speaker 1: The other thing that that comes about of this union
Speaker 1: between old Hollywood and you know, eighties teen film is
Speaker 1: the fucking cast of this movie. Oh yeah, like hal Ninam,
Speaker 1: isn't just like I'm gonna go out and find a
Speaker 1: bunch of young, somewhat unknown actors. I'm gonna get Olympic
Speaker 1: gymnasts to play the bully in the film. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a lot of the things that you
Speaker 1: would expect from a sort of low budget teen film
Speaker 1: in the eighties. But then on top of that, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna cast uh, you know, guys like like Ray Walston,
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Weston and Jack Weston. I'm gonna get tally
Speaker 1: a fucking Shire.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, we need a Coppola in this movie. Let's go.
Speaker 1: We need a couple of Coppolas in this movie, at
Speaker 1: least one. So we're gonna get Talia Shire, who's not
Speaker 1: only not only plays the mom in this movie, but
Speaker 1: also her and her husband and produced it. And there's
Speaker 1: a whole fascinating story about that that we'll get into.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like HB.
Speaker 2: Haggarty, HB.
Speaker 1: Haggarty, HB, which by the way, was who was a
Speaker 1: professional wrestler, So you better fucking believe the HB stood
Speaker 1: for hard boiled jung fud.
Speaker 2: Alums know HB. Haggarty. He's one of the guys that
Speaker 2: the minute you see him, you smile. You may not
Speaker 2: know that name, but you remember him from the Muppet movie,
Speaker 2: you remember him from Foxy Brown, like you remember him
Speaker 2: from these movies that he did and all these TV
Speaker 2: appearances that he did where you just he's unmistakable.
Speaker 1: It's just it's an incredible cast that they've put together
Speaker 1: around these these young actors. And then of course Lori
Speaker 1: Laughlin in this movie just showing up just long enough
Speaker 1: to remind everyone how anyone within her eye line will
Speaker 1: instantly fall in love with Lori Laughlin.
Speaker 2: Convicted Fella, Lori Laughlin.
Speaker 1: You know it's true. It's true.
Speaker 2: That's the thing is that we feel so conflicted. It's
Speaker 2: very easy to like be like, oh, convicted fella, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's laur Laughlin.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: Look at those brown eyes. Man, come on, come on,
Speaker 2: I get it here. I'm not made of wood people.
Speaker 1: We're not made of wood. She is a man at
Speaker 1: Pixie dream girl. She might be the scourge of academia,
Speaker 1: but she is still an absolute cinema darling.
Speaker 2: And she might she might turn into a man mid stunt.
Speaker 2: So apart from.
Speaker 1: That, don't worry about that. Don't worry about who's in
Speaker 1: those white hands. Don't worry about that for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Laura Laughlin truly is an angel. Like send me an angel,
Speaker 1: send me Lori Laughlin. Oh wow, she just been with
Speaker 1: me a thousand dollars for saying that, Laurie, I would
Speaker 1: have said it for free.
Speaker 2: But no, no, no, she's trying to get her kid
Speaker 2: into college.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yes again, I'm doing a bit. But it does,
Speaker 1: it does become a weird foreshadow that she's giving Crewe
Speaker 1: advice on college admissions in this movie that actually fucking happens.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you're waiting for the mem where she
Speaker 2: goes just pay your way into college with the ten
Speaker 2: thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, then she's like, you know, you can like
Speaker 1: take a year, Like he doesn't even understand how college works.
Speaker 1: She's like, you know, if you don't take the SATs now,
Speaker 1: you can take them again, and like you could take
Speaker 1: like a few months off and go to college the
Speaker 1: next semester. It's like he had never thought of that
Speaker 1: as an option. He thought if he didn't take the
Speaker 1: SATs right then and there, he would never go to college.
Speaker 1: And she has to be the one like ushering him
Speaker 1: through the process of college admissions, which, again, because it's
Speaker 1: Lori Lachlan, feels really fucking weird. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: little bizarre, uh, but yeah, And because it's an eighties
Speaker 1: teen movie, we've got to have a blonde bad guy, right.
Speaker 1: The bad guy has to be an arrogant, towheaded little
Speaker 1: shit And in this Miniszka Minnie Zapka played by Bart
Speaker 1: Conner in this movie playing Bart Taylor and before, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, he became an actor. This is his
Speaker 1: first movie. He was an Olympic gymnast. He was the
Speaker 1: youngest member of the seventy six men's Olympic gymnastics team
Speaker 1: and he won two gold medals at the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four Olympics, and in the documentary he says that he
Speaker 1: has remembered way more from this movie than he ever
Speaker 1: was for winning gold medals at the Olympics.
Speaker 2: I mean, sidebar, we treat our Olympians like dog shit.
Speaker 1: This is true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is this is why you know,
Speaker 2: in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty six, Snoop
Speaker 2: Dogg is out and Flava Flave is in. And why
Speaker 2: because Flava Flave has been standing up for our many
Speaker 2: women Olympians who aren't getting supported and he's paying to
Speaker 2: back them, just like in this movie. He found out
Speaker 2: they couldn't go to the Olympics if they didn't have
Speaker 2: backing of a support, and he became that support and
Speaker 2: now is a hype man for Olympians And I think
Speaker 2: that's the coolest shit ever. And uh yeah, that is
Speaker 2: a that is a thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna go ahead and burn this twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six Bingo card, Like at this point, it's worthless
Speaker 1: to me. This is insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, none of us, none of us had any of
Speaker 2: this on the bing Go card.
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't make sense given that he is
Speaker 1: one of the greatest hype men in the history of
Speaker 1: hip hop. So that's literally what he would do in
Speaker 1: those Public Enemy tracks, as he would just be like
Speaker 1: in the background like yeah, yeah, boy, like that's this
Speaker 1: whole thing. Uh.
Speaker 2: By the way, have you listened to their new album yet?
Speaker 1: I have. There's Shut the fuck Up. Public Enemy has
Speaker 1: a new album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it sounds exactly like they made it in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, and it fucking rips.
Speaker 1: Let's fucking go. That is Rad Cargil. That is the
Speaker 1: first of many things in this episode that I find
Speaker 1: Rad Rad Rad. You know what else I find Rad
Speaker 1: is Bartrad Brad Bart's double trouble cronies Rod and Rex
Speaker 1: Reynolds in this movie.
Speaker 2: You mean the Reynolds twins.
Speaker 1: The Reynolds twins, the other Reynolds twins. Uh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: always It's always Sunny and Alberta as well.
Speaker 2: Uh uh yeah. You know that Jessica's maiden name is
Speaker 2: Reynolds and she is a twin. I married one of
Speaker 2: the Reynolds twins.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, you're gonna die.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: But they look identical. By the way, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you caught this to the Cobra twins. And g
Speaker 1: I Joe. Oh yeah, Brah Tomas and zeymot yep. First
Speaker 1: of all, who decided to name them Tomax.
Speaker 2: And Zaymot someone who got paid way too much in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: That show was drawn on individual cells of cocaine, Like
Speaker 1: we all need to just be aware of this. Pure
Speaker 1: Nicaraguan gold was used to make that Gi Joe cartoon.
Speaker 1: You better fucking believe it, like you could. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: you couldn't find a snake name that worked forwards and backwards.
Speaker 1: Tomax and Zaymot, like they both sound like stores my
Speaker 1: mom would drag me to when the jeans at Target
Speaker 1: were too expensive. What the fuck is happening right now?
Speaker 1: It also doesn't help that in the dance sequence, which
Speaker 1: we're gonna fucking get to, don't you worry about it,
Speaker 1: they're not helping themselves in this comparison. They're wearing silver
Speaker 1: spacesuits that were literally borrowed from the mini series v.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah no, Like you see them and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's me, and then you look into the background you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: wait no, those were actually borrowed from.
Speaker 1: B Again, there's gonna be a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are said in this episode that are gonna sound like
Speaker 1: bits that are not fucking bits.
Speaker 2: There's a reason why as silly as this movie is,
Speaker 2: as simple as this movie is, it is still legendary
Speaker 2: forty years later. It got played in theaters forty years later,
Speaker 2: and it's rocking a six point seven out of ten
Speaker 2: on IMDb, which for a movie like this is astoundingly high.
Speaker 1: It's a B movie if the B stands for be lovid.
Speaker 1: This is a beloved eighties film.
Speaker 2: Because it does. We can make fun of a lot
Speaker 2: of the silliness, we can make fun of the flaws.
Speaker 2: But this is a perfect example of what we talk
Speaker 2: what we talk about when we say it's not a
Speaker 2: good movie. It's a great movie. Like you can make
Speaker 2: fun of it, but it's hard as in the right place.
Speaker 2: It's fun. Everybody is doing their damnedest to make this
Speaker 2: the most enjoyable movie possible, and it's never fucking boring.
Speaker 2: It is always entertaining, even in slow mo as sliding.
Speaker 1: Slow moo as sliding. Here's what I'm gonna say, Cargol.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take our mind one step further and say
Speaker 1: that I do not think this is a bad movie
Speaker 1: at all. I think this is a tremendously cheesy film.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I think it wears its heart on its sleeve in
Speaker 1: a way that is a little cringe at times. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's hard to fault a movie
Speaker 1: for doing that, especially when you revisit it in this
Speaker 1: day and age, like there is something so endlessly pure
Speaker 1: and charming and wonderful about rad And when it comes
Speaker 1: to the actual shooting of the action sequences, because you've
Speaker 1: got hal need them, and you've got the best BMX
Speaker 1: writers in the country at the time performing in the movie,
Speaker 1: it's an absolute legitimate marvel. Like you don't need to
Speaker 1: apologize for one frame of the action shots in this movie.
Speaker 2: Nope, So you.
Speaker 1: Need them, you need you need them. This movie in
Speaker 1: your life is what we're trying to say. When Hall
Speaker 1: Track comes to town and you have the chance of
Speaker 1: winning one hundred thousand dollars and a new Chevy Corvette
Speaker 1: and the fame that goes along with winning Hell Track,
Speaker 1: you participate in Hell Track, the SATs be damned, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: college will still be there. The hell Track is where
Speaker 1: we need to focus all of our attention. What I
Speaker 1: really love here is that they are so committed to
Speaker 1: getting BMX culture correct even though it is a brand
Speaker 1: new thing. So like there's a lot of Vans sponsorship
Speaker 1: all over this movie. Jack Weston is literally playing a
Speaker 1: character who owns Mongoo's Bicycles, which is a real fucking
Speaker 1: bicycle brand that is still around to this day. Oh
Speaker 1: just some random corporate fat cat. He's the owner operator
Speaker 1: of Mongoo's Bicycles.
Speaker 2: And Mongoos was really big at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's like we're just trying, we're trying so
Speaker 1: hard to make sure that we're doing justice to this
Speaker 1: weird new subculture. And that's that's a testament to hell.
Speaker 1: Need Him. It's like, I don't want to make a
Speaker 1: shitty movie about about BMX bikers. I want to make
Speaker 1: the movie about BMX bikers.
Speaker 2: I mean, look this, this was always the thing with
Speaker 2: need Him. It's what's really interesting about his films. You know,
Speaker 2: when he made Smoking in the Bandit, he dug deep
Speaker 2: into trucker culture and he got into that and CB culture.
Speaker 2: That was something they did. He did a deep dive
Speaker 2: and represented to the point that it was already popular,
Speaker 2: but he helped push that over, you know, over the
Speaker 2: line Cannonball Run was based on a very real event,
Speaker 2: and he dove deep into that and got into that.
Speaker 2: You know, he he was always paying attention to the
Speaker 2: things that he was, uh he was directing and making
Speaker 2: sure that you know it, it got the culture right,
Speaker 2: because that's one of the things about these these various
Speaker 2: hobby cultures is that they are real cultures and they
Speaker 2: really do have whole systems to them and work in
Speaker 2: certain ways that are fascinating. And that he was like, well,
Speaker 2: what if I do what I did with Hooper and
Speaker 2: put you know, stuntman culture out there, but treat other
Speaker 2: people's cultures with that same respect. And that's how he
Speaker 2: got megaphors.
Speaker 1: And megaphce the good guys always win, even in the eighties.
Speaker 2: No, but I mean, like you look at you know,
Speaker 2: stroker Ace and how much he put into, you know,
Speaker 2: getting stock car culture and body Slam, which is a
Speaker 2: favorite of a friend of ours, which you know, is
Speaker 2: all about trying to get wrestling culture right in the
Speaker 2: mid eighties. And so he's really almost all of his
Speaker 2: films are like taking some kind of sporty or competitive
Speaker 2: culture and diving into it and making a movie about that.
Speaker 2: And literally I mentioned megaphors because it's like the only
Speaker 2: one maybe that in the Villain, where arguably the villain
Speaker 2: might you know, be Yeah, I mean I don't even
Speaker 2: know what to say about the villain at this point.
Speaker 2: I haven't talked about it in ten years.
Speaker 1: Have you ever wanted to know what it would be
Speaker 1: like if a Wiley coyote cartoon was made for real
Speaker 1: and populated with human beings instead of animated roadrunners and coyotes,
Speaker 1: because that's the villain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just realized. I realized we had memory hold it.
Speaker 2: This is why we thought we'd covered this. We did
Speaker 2: a Hall Needum panel together at Convergence years ago and
Speaker 2: talked about it there.
Speaker 1: We did, We absolutely did, and we.
Speaker 2: Talked about the villain there as well, because we haven't
Speaker 2: done an episode on the villain, but we've talked about it,
Speaker 2: and I was like, we've talked about it. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: this is why we memory hold this fucking thing. This
Speaker 2: is holy shit.
Speaker 1: Well, I think to put a button on what it
Speaker 1: is you're saying though about how Neat his approach is
Speaker 1: similar to Golan and Globist in terms of like, what
Speaker 1: is a popular thing right now, let's make a movie
Speaker 1: about it. But the difference is how Needam goes into
Speaker 1: that focused on the art. Golan and Globists go into
Speaker 1: that focused on the commerce. Right. So it's like where
Speaker 1: Goldin and Globus are like, what's popular with the kids
Speaker 1: right now, break dancing? Let's make a break dancing movie,
Speaker 1: and they go into it and they make Breaking, which
Speaker 1: is fine, like we love Breaking, but and then they
Speaker 1: would do it again with like, oh what else do
Speaker 1: the kids love Lumbarda. It's like do they think.
Speaker 2: And yes, we did it was it was for three months,
Speaker 2: but we did love it.
Speaker 1: Well, That's what I'm saying is this like how do
Speaker 1: we how do we capitalize on this? Whereas how Needam's like,
Speaker 1: how do I do this thing justice? How do I
Speaker 1: make the best version of that movie? How do I
Speaker 1: tell that Fad story? And he is a consummate artist,
Speaker 1: And I think that's why Rad you know, continues to
Speaker 1: have the legacy that it does today. I mean, how
Speaker 1: how Needam says in the documentary, if you find a radfan,
Speaker 1: they're a fan, like there is no in between, which
Speaker 1: I think and in fact, hol Needham refers only to
Speaker 1: Smoking the bandit and Rad as his quote classics. So
Speaker 1: he he loves this movie as much as we do.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a tremendous testament to why this
Speaker 1: movie is still so good. You know, so many years later,
Speaker 1: so many decades later.
Speaker 2: After these messages, we'll be right back.
Speaker 4: Could seven eleven offer the same kind of fountain soft
Speaker 4: drink value as fast food places, Sure, but you'd get
Speaker 4: lots less for your money because we'd have to cut
Speaker 4: our forty four ounds Super Big Gulp in half down
Speaker 4: to their twenty two ounce size ounce four ounce, Our
Speaker 4: super Big GLP gives you almost twice as much for
Speaker 4: your money.
Speaker 3: We even give you your choice of coke or Pepsi.
Speaker 4: They don't. Seven eleven's biggest drink is your best value,
Speaker 4: and that's what makes our forty four ounds Super Big
Speaker 4: Gulp super.
Speaker 1: But of course, the other reason we love Rad is
Speaker 1: the fucking soundtrack.
Speaker 2: I mean, they sent me an angel.
Speaker 1: They few movies have the courage to break the ice,
Speaker 1: the confidence, the downright to marity to let you know
Speaker 1: how rad they are from frame uno, and the radness
Speaker 1: of Rad is on full display as the first few
Speaker 1: notes of Break the Ice play and bmx's are flying
Speaker 1: into freeze frame above the camera. If you don't know
Speaker 1: from the first few seconds whether you like this movie,
Speaker 1: turn it off like it's like it's it's not for
Speaker 1: you if it doesn't grab you immediately, like this movie
Speaker 1: is rad from Jump Street and I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck ice, break.
Speaker 1: It, break the ice. This movie is ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: Fuck ice, break the ice. Dare I say, Hal Needham
Speaker 1: breaks the ice for this ninety two minute discussion on
Speaker 1: radical bikesmanship and I could not be here for we
Speaker 1: needed a montage cargo and that's just what we fucking got.
Speaker 2: Well. One of the things I love it about this
Speaker 2: movie is it has almost as many montage as as
Speaker 2: the cutting edge.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that the radness of rad could not
Speaker 1: be contained, It could not even be slightly mitigated by
Speaker 1: a pea soup fog that would make John Carpenter remark
Speaker 1: out loud, g that's a lot of fog. He's shooting
Speaker 1: montages in the fucking fog because he knows the audience
Speaker 1: is going to be looking at the gray background that
Speaker 1: makes it look like they're in a warehouse in o Hi.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna be focused on the guy in the foreground.
Speaker 1: Like up on one wheel, spinning the bike underneath him
Speaker 1: as he hops. Even if he had a montage montage,
Speaker 1: John Farnham is an elite company. I feel like Robert Tepper,
Speaker 1: John Farnham, uh, you know, obviously Survivor and of course
Speaker 1: possibly the king of the montage, the log Dog Like,
Speaker 1: those are your A listers when you're talking about the
Speaker 1: music of montage in the eighties, those are your absolute
Speaker 1: A listers. And this movie, like the balls of this movie,
Speaker 1: the fucking soundtrack in this movie is so goddamn good
Speaker 1: that literally cargil. It has two of the best montage
Speaker 1: songs of the.
Speaker 2: Eighties, and shit songs are they?
Speaker 1: That is Break the Ice and Thunder in Your Heart, Like,
Speaker 1: those are two of the best montage songs of the eighties,
Speaker 1: and they're both from the same film, from the same film,
Speaker 1: from the same guy, because they're both John Farnham.
Speaker 2: And I love how You're skipping over Send Me An Angel,
Speaker 2: which is the best montage in the movie.
Speaker 1: It's the best montage in the movie. But that song,
Speaker 1: that song doesn't even feel like a montage song to me.
Speaker 1: That sounds just like a powerful love ballad that happens
Speaker 1: to play over one of the greatest sequences ever committed
Speaker 1: to film, and we will fill It was a.
Speaker 2: Huge hit on the radio and still played to this
Speaker 2: day on your your name stations. You're Jack, You're Bob,
Speaker 2: You're Chris FM. Whatever, Chris FM. Boy, that sounds like
Speaker 2: a Christian station. I don't want to listen to.
Speaker 1: Now NonStop our block of jars of Clay DC talking
Speaker 1: the newsboys, let's go on, Chris f M. Your volume,
Speaker 1: Knob has risen, like, no, fucking thank you, car Gill,
Speaker 1: No thank you at all.
Speaker 2: You didn't stick around for the Amy Grant block. Boy,
Speaker 2: You're right, I didn't carget Baby Baby.
Speaker 1: Even when they tried to go super hip with the
Speaker 1: kids and play like pod, I was like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm already out, or like the first Creed album, like no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't. I can't do any of this,
Speaker 1: which is crazy because there has been a complete one
Speaker 1: eighty on both Creed and nickelback that I am a
Speaker 1: thousand percent on board with because I always wondered why,
Speaker 1: like I understand the backlash against Creed because Creed Scott
Speaker 1: Staff had a major christ complex, like a major major
Speaker 1: Messiah complex. Nicoback didn't do shit to anybody, and yet
Speaker 1: they got lumped in with that and we all hated
Speaker 1: them for so long, and now guys my age are like,
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, that was like good music from
Speaker 1: our youth. Why are we throwing the baby out with
Speaker 1: the bathwater six feet from the edge of the window.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to throw the baby out with
Speaker 1: the bathwater, as it turns out, but this.
Speaker 2: Soundtrack, Oh, that was a good period of music.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it it you'll, it's been it's being
Speaker 1: re evaluated, and I appreciates that.
Speaker 2: Is that what you appreciate?
Speaker 1: That's what I appreciates about Creed. Allegedly, hell Needam, according
Speaker 1: to the documentary, by the way, had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with putting the soundtrack together, but he knew how good
Speaker 1: it was as soon as he heard it. Like again,
Speaker 1: I love that. Hal Needham, who was such a hands on,
Speaker 1: you know, borderline control freak when it comes to his movies,
Speaker 1: is like I need to let somebody else take the
Speaker 1: reins of Like I'm gonna listen to my writers because
Speaker 1: this is a sport I don't know, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to trust my mute usic supervisors because we're making a
Speaker 1: movie for teenagers, and I'm not connected with their music,
Speaker 1: but as soon as he heard this soundtrack, he's like,
Speaker 1: we've got fucking gold. And he did have gold because
Speaker 1: this soundtrack is like, it has a pulse. It's the
Speaker 1: living heartbeat of the sound of the nineteen eighties, not
Speaker 1: just for montages, but just for popular music in general.
Speaker 1: And I think again, it's one of the things about
Speaker 1: this movie that is forgive the repetitiveness super Red Brad.
Speaker 1: Should we talk about it? Should we talk about the
Speaker 1: bicycle boogie cargo?
Speaker 2: I mean, we can't talk about this and not talk
Speaker 2: about the bicycle boogie. I mean, first you get a
Speaker 2: Reynolds Twins dance sequence, and then that gets interrupted by
Speaker 2: the bicycle boogie.
Speaker 1: Again, it's just this old Hollywood mentality of like, we're
Speaker 1: making a movie for teens, it's gotta have a dance number.
Speaker 1: It's like, what, like what is this Saturday bike Fever?
Speaker 1: Are you buzzby bikeley? Like why are we putting a
Speaker 1: dance sequence? Because that's the thing. If you're making a
Speaker 1: movie about BMX riders and you want to have a
Speaker 1: dance sequence, they have to dance on their bikes, and
Speaker 1: they do. They dance. Dear God, send me an angel
Speaker 1: because I watch this scene and I am dead.
Speaker 2: And they slowly fall in love during it.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. So, you know, this hell track is coming
Speaker 1: to town. Jack Weston's bringing his team from Mango's Bicycles
Speaker 1: because everything is corporatized in BMX riding evidently, and they
Speaker 1: are there to be celebrities. He has to sell these
Speaker 1: this team to the town as being the coolest, hottest
Speaker 1: young people ever conceived. So they show up at this
Speaker 1: town hall for a meet and greet dance and God
Speaker 1: love them. Between the g I, Joe Cobra twins and
Speaker 1: not quite Zabka, not a single fucking one of them
Speaker 1: can dance. And yet the fucking like dj' is like,
Speaker 1: oh man, look at him, bust to move. Is there
Speaker 1: anything this kid can't do? And I'm like, yeah, dance
Speaker 1: because he's terrible at it. Absolutely, So it's funny that
Speaker 1: that is immediately followed by, you know, the a female
Speaker 1: member of this team, Lori Lochlin, who started to kind
Speaker 1: of get sweet on Crewe, the local boy, and the
Speaker 1: two of them are like, all right, you think that's cool,
Speaker 1: fuck it watch this and then lights go out and
Speaker 1: the first few notes of Send Me an Angel just
Speaker 1: come up in this room, and the next thing we know,
Speaker 1: they're slowly moving around this dance floor, like pirouetting around
Speaker 1: each other while doing wheelies. They're standing on the handlebars,
Speaker 1: they're like posturing. It is so grandiose and so amazing,
Speaker 1: Like it's something that I feel like is not only
Speaker 1: a centerpiece of this movie, but one of those perfect
Speaker 1: encapsulations of what I look for, the kind of like
Speaker 1: complete commitment and yet audacity that I look for whenever
Speaker 1: I'm wanting to discover films. This is exactly the type
Speaker 1: of thing that I hope to see in every new
Speaker 1: film into my eyeballs.
Speaker 2: Hell fucking yes.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned at certain points it's not Lorie Locke Clynn.
Speaker 2: Oh no, oh no. There's a few shots where the
Speaker 2: stuntman takes her place.
Speaker 1: So the character of Crew is loosely based off of
Speaker 1: Eddie Fiola, who is a BMX writer who did most
Speaker 1: of Bill Allen, the guy that plays Crew, he did
Speaker 1: most of his stunts.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of moments during this dance number
Speaker 1: where Eddie Fiola, who does a lot of the stunt
Speaker 1: work not only for Crew, but for Lori Lachlan as well,
Speaker 1: and he's the one like in a Wig and White
Speaker 1: Jets pretending to be Lori Lochlan in this sequence. But
Speaker 1: I also love that how Neinam built like this rotating
Speaker 1: sort of lazy Susan stage and then he locked the
Speaker 1: bikes to it so they could sit on the bikes
Speaker 1: and look like they're spinning around, you know, the actual actors,
Speaker 1: Like it's such a cool thing. Like the way he
Speaker 1: shoots this movie is absolutely incredible because that's that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that hal Ninham does is he does
Speaker 1: a lot of wide shots. It's all masters, not a
Speaker 1: lot of close ups, and he uses that to such
Speaker 1: great execution this movie because he shoot all these races
Speaker 1: from all these different angles. And I also love that
Speaker 1: a lot of the professional writers in this movie thought
Speaker 1: that they were gonna do the whole race and it
Speaker 1: would actually like trip them up and he'd be like, okay, cut,
Speaker 1: He's like, what do you mean cut? Like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't shoot the whole race. We shoot
Speaker 1: it in pieces. And they were just like what do
Speaker 1: you mean, Like they couldn't they couldn't wrap their heads
Speaker 1: around just not doing the entire race, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: we shoot it in segments, and we shoot it from
Speaker 1: multiple angles. And that's why this movie looks so goddamn
Speaker 1: good mm hmmm, because of the way he shoots where
Speaker 1: it's just like, we're gonna we're gonna set up all
Speaker 1: these cameras and have you do portions of the race
Speaker 1: for real. If the the plot points were then built
Speaker 1: around what happened in the race he film, So if
Speaker 1: the stuntman standing in for the hero happens to fall,
Speaker 1: that's the moment the hero falls in the film and
Speaker 1: has to get back up. If his buddy crashes out
Speaker 1: and can't finish the race, his buddy crashes out and
Speaker 1: can't finish the race, that becomes like you said, never
Speaker 1: letting a plot get in the way of the story
Speaker 1: away is what it is. Yes it is, Yes, it
Speaker 1: absolutely is. And then treating watching the dailies as a
Speaker 1: mini rap party every day, like I can only imagine
Speaker 1: how amazing it was to be on this set.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, yeah, if you're watching, you're watching the
Speaker 2: dailies and watching everybody do stuff. I mean, because that's
Speaker 2: one of the things when you're performing stunts you never
Speaker 2: get to see what you're doing, and to be able
Speaker 2: to then sit down and watch what you just did
Speaker 2: filmed by people who really know how to fucking film it,
Speaker 2: that's got to be fucking fun. Plus we all know
Speaker 2: Needham was as fond of the drink as I am,
Speaker 2: so that was probably a fun set at rap time.
Speaker 1: Oh one thousand percent, especially when he was paying some
Speaker 1: of these guys five hundred dollars per injury, Like it's
Speaker 1: like if you get hurt's five hundred bucks. So like
Speaker 1: you had guys like literally pushing themselves to do crazier
Speaker 1: and crazier shit just because they knew if they got
Speaker 1: hurt they would get extra money from Hal Needham. Which
Speaker 1: is that a responsible way to run a set? No? No,
Speaker 1: does that sound exactly like a way how Needham would
Speaker 1: run a set, Yes, it fucking does.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, no, that's no. Incentivizing injury is never a
Speaker 2: good thing when it comes to your insurance. So it
Speaker 2: just but also how Needum sets were known for that
Speaker 2: kind of shenanigan, So you know, yeah, you know this
Speaker 2: is a guy who used stuntman and live explosives all
Speaker 2: the time, because fuck yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm Hal Needam. You gave me three billion
Speaker 1: dollars to sneak away to Alberta and make a movie
Speaker 1: about BMX writers. I'm gonna do it the hell Needham Way.
Speaker 1: And again this is why I say I want to
Speaker 1: be Hal Needham when I grow up. But this is
Speaker 1: all stuff that I learned from the documentary. One of
Speaker 1: the things I learned is that so they built this
Speaker 1: hell track right, and the Hell track itself apparently caused
Speaker 1: it caused a delay in shooting because the Hell Track
Speaker 1: starting ramp was so high. Initially none of the writers
Speaker 1: wanted to go down it, so they actually had to
Speaker 1: cut the ramp down to the twenty five foot tall
Speaker 1: version that's in film Like. BMX Plus magazine actually published
Speaker 1: an article about it at the time because they had
Speaker 1: to stop shooting and shave some feet off of that
Speaker 1: thing because all the professional writers are like, you are
Speaker 1: a goddamn mad man, Hell need Him. Nobody's going down
Speaker 1: that thing. But it's also like hell Trek is so
Speaker 1: what an old stunt icon would think is a suitable
Speaker 1: BMX track, Like it's not just the insane drops, it's
Speaker 1: not just going over these crazy terrains at one point
Speaker 1: they go in and out of a giant cereal bowl structure,
Speaker 1: like they're dipping down into the bowl before they springboard
Speaker 1: off the spoon handle. And I'm like, I'm sorry, did
Speaker 1: Wayne's the Lynx?
Speaker 3: Wait?
Speaker 2: Hold on back, go back and use that lingo against.
Speaker 1: Her the springboard off the spoon handle?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, it just it seemed really super technical.
Speaker 1: No, I'm I I just make because it looks like
Speaker 1: a giant fucking spoon like it literally looks like Wayne
Speaker 1: Zelensky designed this thing, like Honey Shrunk the BMX ers.
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, I was under the impression that springboarding
Speaker 2: off of the spoon handle was a BMX stunt I
Speaker 2: was unfamiliar with.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I think it's a term for taking heroin that you
Speaker 1: could hear in one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers albums.
Speaker 1: I don't know that for sure, but I'm sure they
Speaker 1: have a song called springboarding the spoon handle on one
Speaker 1: of their albums, for sure.
Speaker 3: Not on a lot.
Speaker 2: After these messages, we'll be right back. Have you heard
Speaker 2: the latest fresh idea? It's something new, something good.
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Speaker 2: We also talk about for a second the fact that
Speaker 2: just being called hell Track, how the hell is there
Speaker 2: a movie made in nineteen eighty six that features hell
Speaker 2: track and doesn't involve summoning Satan when you get to
Speaker 2: the end of the race.
Speaker 1: Could so easily be a horror film. This could so
Speaker 1: easily be a horror film. And then I thought about
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, this movie could have been
Speaker 1: called hell Track and probably attracted a few more you know,
Speaker 1: theatrical goers. Then I remember that originally, do you remember
Speaker 1: what the original title for rad actually was.
Speaker 2: No, I have no idea balls out? Now there is
Speaker 2: that great moment where that that line comes up, no
Speaker 2: balls out, as if as sliding wasn't enough as sliding
Speaker 2: in balls out. There's a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: lingo in here.
Speaker 1: There sure is, Cargil, There sure is, And just for
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety nine, you can get all the lingo in
Speaker 1: this movie on two kissettes or two CDs. Call now
Speaker 1: no CODs.
Speaker 2: Uh, please allow four to six weeks for delivery.
Speaker 1: Pure Balls, the CD collection about the Lingo in rad
Speaker 1: with your favorite song Springboard the Spoon, No like, but
Speaker 1: Smith has that line. Sargia Smith, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: apparently just sits around the town and waits for He's weirly,
Speaker 1: kind of a wily coyote character. He just sits around
Speaker 1: his motorcycle waiting to see a BMX biker. Not them
Speaker 1: doing anything wrong, he just likes to chase them. And
Speaker 1: that's why we get this sequence where you know, we're
Speaker 1: riding around the lumberyard and going up and down these
Speaker 1: massive piles of wood, and you know, you just got
Speaker 1: this former NWA wrestler, former NFL linebacker chasing these dudes
Speaker 1: on a motorcycle. And he gets that line he tells crew, hey,
Speaker 1: go balls out, which before they changed the title was
Speaker 1: probably like the trailer moment. I'm sure he was pissed
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: Maybe. Well, you know, I love this character so much.
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of the things that I really
Speaker 2: it's just so wonderfully big hearted about this movie is
Speaker 2: that Sergeant Smith is kind of portrayed as a bad guy,
Speaker 2: as an antagonist, but he actually isn't He said this
Speaker 2: good nice cop, like wh' who does his job? And
Speaker 2: like he shows up outside and you get the impression
Speaker 2: that he's taunting these kids. He's just having a good time.
Speaker 2: He's playing with the kids. He's letting them ride around
Speaker 2: and treating him like, hey, kids, if I catch you,
Speaker 2: you're in trouble and having a good time, like he's
Speaker 2: doing it for fun. And I think that's kind of
Speaker 2: fucking neat.
Speaker 1: One of the things about how Ningham as a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and they talk about this in the documentary, is that
Speaker 1: he loved to get the community involved when he was
Speaker 1: making a movie like that was one of his big things.
Speaker 1: Is he wanted to make He wanted to make it
Speaker 1: feel like it was an experience for everyone. And I
Speaker 1: think I think that's why the moral of this movie
Speaker 1: is that mighty corporations are no match for a consortium
Speaker 1: of local small business owners.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like I said, Jack Weston, he's the president of Mango's Bicycles,
Speaker 1: which again is a real company, but he does all
Speaker 1: this we and delan and bribing. He's corrupt, and yet
Speaker 1: it's the town that comes together to raise the fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to pay the exorbitant sponsorship tax or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. The company that sponsors you
Speaker 1: has to be worth fifty thousand dollars or you don't
Speaker 1: get to participate in hell Track and all of this
Speaker 1: just because he doesn't want his on staff bikers to
Speaker 1: be shown up by the local boy. And more than
Speaker 1: half of that money is provided by mister Timmor who's
Speaker 1: played by Ray Walston, who throughout the movie, much like
Speaker 1: Sargent Smith, seems like they are very annoyed by the
Speaker 1: local BMX writers. But when push comes to shove, Sargent
Speaker 1: Smith is at that meeting like, we need to stand
Speaker 1: up for these boys, We need to help them achieve
Speaker 1: their dreams. So that's like his he's a former wrestler, right,
Speaker 1: So that's his face turn right there. And I love it.
Speaker 1: And honestly, the moment where Ray Walston coughs up the
Speaker 1: additional twenty seven thousand dollars that the rest of the
Speaker 1: town wasn't able to raise, it's a legitimately moving moment.
Speaker 2: No, he did, absolutely, Like it's one of those things
Speaker 2: that really works for this I also loved at one
Speaker 2: of the things he always does is he always has
Speaker 2: like these weird goofball characters who are the antagonists. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and like you've talked about Jack Weston, but Jack Weston's
Speaker 2: number two is Alpi Wise, Yes, who we sadly lost
Speaker 2: last year, but is also in you know, several of
Speaker 2: the films, like he plays Batman and Canniball Run. He's
Speaker 2: the patrol man in Traffic Jam. But here he's playing
Speaker 2: a similar role to what we've seen other characters play
Speaker 2: in these hound Eedo movies, which is like the Father
Speaker 2: and Son and Smoking the Bandit and he's the idiot,
Speaker 2: you know, sidekick that adds a little light humor to it,
Speaker 2: because the bad guys can never be truly competent.
Speaker 1: Well, this movie sheds light on an important issue of
Speaker 1: the time, one that I previously had little to know
Speaker 1: knowledge of, which is wild considering it's evidently as scandalous
Speaker 1: as Reagan's I ran contra Quagmire, and I'm speaking, of course,
Speaker 1: about the out and out corruption of factory riders in
Speaker 1: competitive BMX racing. And you know, is it ethical for
Speaker 1: the president Mongoose Bicycles to also be the founder of
Speaker 1: the Federation of American Bicyclists Yep, fab in rad. You
Speaker 1: race for FAB and I think that's amazing. It's essentially
Speaker 1: the NFL of BMX racing.
Speaker 2: BAB is my favorite eighties diet soft drink.
Speaker 1: FAB. Yeah, FAB has half the sugar but twice the caffeine.
Speaker 1: And that would be like Ladies and gentlemen meet the
Speaker 1: new Commissioner of Professional Baseball, Lewis Villslugger. It's just like, wait,
Speaker 1: you owned the bikes and you also owned the league,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't make sense, and the dude just changes
Speaker 1: the rules whenever he wants to exclude amateur riders who
Speaker 1: threaten the winning reputation its factory riders. But not before,
Speaker 1: mind you bribing the amateur rider to throw the race
Speaker 1: so that his sponsored factory boys look like an unstoppable
Speaker 1: winning machine. Thus he sells more bicycles. I cannot wait
Speaker 1: cargil for the ESPN thirty for thirty documentary that will
Speaker 1: inevitably be made about this that I assume it is
Speaker 1: called Hell on Wheels or maybe Break the Vice. Perhaps
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I can't wait for that documentary.
Speaker 2: Bm dash e x ooh oh should I should be
Speaker 2: a you? Should?
Speaker 1: I should be a writer Jesus fucking Christ. It's good.
Speaker 1: It's all fucking good. But yeah, I mean when the
Speaker 1: town comes together to support you know, crew at the
Speaker 1: end of the movie, and they're selling shirts. By the way,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get my hands on one of those fucking shirts.
Speaker 1: Like I've found several places online that sell that exact shirt.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get it. Dude. I'm sorry I couldn't have
Speaker 1: worn it last night to the screening because had I
Speaker 1: had that shirt, I absolutely would have worn it to
Speaker 1: the screening. But yeah, I highly highly recommend tracking down
Speaker 1: the documentary, which again is just called a rad documentary
Speaker 1: from last year because the documentary literally talks to everyone
Speaker 1: involved with the movie, including again stock footage from some
Speaker 1: interview from some I don't know when it was recorded
Speaker 1: because obviously we lost hell Needham a few years ago,
Speaker 1: but he's talking all about this movie. Yeah, and one
Speaker 1: of the stories that gets told in the vein of again,
Speaker 1: why I want to be hol Needham when I grow up.
Speaker 1: Two days before they were set to shoot the actual
Speaker 1: Hell Track race, they had built this massive racetrack. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a dirt track and it rains, it's a downpour.
Speaker 1: They spent all this time building a massive dirt track
Speaker 1: that was now a massive mud hole. But did hell
Speaker 1: needam surrendered to the elements? No, never surrender, Fuck you,
Speaker 1: mama nature. I've got helicopters. So he had the studio
Speaker 1: fly out two massive industrial helicopters to hover over the
Speaker 1: track for hours until it was dry. Are you starting
Speaker 1: to understand? Are you starting to get the slightest inkling
Speaker 1: perhaps as to why I say I want to be
Speaker 1: holndeaed and when I grow.
Speaker 2: Up, I've always wanted to be handed and when I
Speaker 2: grow up?
Speaker 1: This is just this is a man who fucking lived
Speaker 1: by his own goddamn rules in service of his art.
Speaker 1: And his art was flipping cars, falling off of buildings,
Speaker 1: falling off of horses. It's just he's everything. He's a
Speaker 1: fucking hero man. I love the way he approaches everything.
Speaker 1: And Rad is no exception, because Rad is a movie
Speaker 1: that you know could have been written off. It's a
Speaker 1: movie that you know is a true blue cult classic
Speaker 1: because on a three million dollar budget, it only managed
Speaker 1: to rake in two million dollars, and it was not
Speaker 1: liked by critics, like not at all. Leonard Malton called
Speaker 1: it a straight up bomb something he reserved for movies
Speaker 1: he truly hated only but rad really ramped up its
Speaker 1: business on home video. It was released on VHS and
Speaker 1: laser disc in nineteen eighty six, was a top ten
Speaker 1: This is Insane cargo. It was a top ten video
Speaker 1: rental for two straight years after its release, two years
Speaker 1: of being in the top ten of video rentals across
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's yeah, we were all fucking watching it.
Speaker 1: That is wild.
Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes you drop a movie in the wrong weekend,
Speaker 2: or you don't advertise it properly, or the studio doesn't
Speaker 2: get behind it in the right way. It's not put
Speaker 2: out there. I got to see it. But then again,
Speaker 2: I saw it on the big screen because I lived,
Speaker 2: as I've talked about in the past, on an Air
Speaker 2: Force base, and we got everything that came through and
Speaker 2: anything that looked remotely, you know, geared towards me. My
Speaker 2: parents would give me a dollar fifty and go go
Speaker 2: to the movie theater, get the fuck out of the house.
Speaker 1: That tracks. Yep, that hell tracks. But no, and then,
Speaker 1: even though it was such a massive hit on VHS
Speaker 1: and laser disc, we would not get an upgraded release
Speaker 1: until twenty twenty, when Vinegar Syndrome put out that four
Speaker 1: and that that really kind of broke my brain because
Speaker 1: I was like, why in the hell did it just disappear?
Speaker 1: This massively successful on home video film, this kind of
Speaker 1: cult classic disappears for that long turns out. Let's rewind
Speaker 1: to the part where I said the movie was produced
Speaker 1: by Talia Shire's company. Talia Shire did not like this movie.
Speaker 1: She did not think she was good in this movie.
Speaker 1: She did not think the movie was good, and she
Speaker 1: actually prevented it from getting updated releases throughout the years
Speaker 1: until twenty twenty. So is as much gravitaz as she
Speaker 1: brings to this movie, and as much as I think
Speaker 1: she's committing one thousand percent of this performance. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's Talia Shire. She can't give a bad performance. She's
Speaker 1: incapable of that.
Speaker 3: She defied me.
Speaker 1: I didn't do it to hurt you.
Speaker 3: It's not me you're hurting. They're willing to sacrifice building
Speaker 3: a solid future for a bicycle race. It's very self destructive.
Speaker 2: Oh Man. One of my favorite moments in this movie
Speaker 2: is when she's watching her son and her son is
Speaker 2: winning and she's so proud of him, and then she
Speaker 2: has her this this moment of tremendous acting where she
Speaker 2: has this look on her face where she just you
Speaker 2: can read her mind and she's going, oh, fuck, he's
Speaker 2: not going to college. And she realized and you know
Speaker 2: it's there in the subtext like she's frustrating. It's like, fuck,
Speaker 2: he's really good at this, but also, fuck, he's not
Speaker 2: going to college. He's gonna be working at that pizza
Speaker 2: joint his whole fucking life.
Speaker 1: He's gonna be he's gonna be boogie bikeen and as
Speaker 1: sliding with girls in this town for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life.
Speaker 2: That is that is one hundred percent correct. That's and
Speaker 2: that she the look is on her face when you
Speaker 2: guys rewatch this see it for yourselves. I ain't lying.
Speaker 2: It's there. You can see it in that moment you're like,
Speaker 2: oh god, oh fuck.
Speaker 1: Man, it's it's And it's so great too, because as
Speaker 1: we're watching the hell track scene where she's having this epiphany,
Speaker 1: what's confounding This is the one thing, the one knock
Speaker 1: against the movie that I have, the single knock against
Speaker 1: this movie that I have is that it is literally
Speaker 1: legendary for it soundtrack. This movie has montage songs, to spare.
Speaker 1: And yet as we're watching the hell track climax of
Speaker 1: the film, why is it scored by G. E. Smith
Speaker 1: in the Saturday Night Live Band? Like why why instead
Speaker 1: of a montage song? Are we getting incredibly saxy up
Speaker 1: in here? Because this is a jazzy fucking final score.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the fuck is going on.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: I'm just all I'm saying is either Crew is gonna
Speaker 1: win Hell Track or one of the boys in the
Speaker 1: Hood is about to get whacked. Like there is so
Speaker 1: much fucking saxophone at the end of.
Speaker 2: The Boys in the Hood always hard.
Speaker 1: Come talking that trash and we'll support our female Olympians.
Speaker 2: That's correct, Yeah, boy, yeah.
Speaker 1: Boy flave. I also think it's great that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons this movie was so successful on VHS is
Speaker 1: because in the late eighties early nineties, bicycle shops all
Speaker 1: over the country, which again it was starting to be
Speaker 1: a very prevalent thing all over the world. Yes, they
Speaker 1: were selling VHS copies of rad in the shops because
Speaker 1: that's kind of like, you know, a Christian store selling
Speaker 1: the Bible, right, This is this is the er text
Speaker 1: of what it is that we do. If you were
Speaker 1: into BMX riding, you need to watch rad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the thing to talk about. You know,
Speaker 2: we haven't done this in a while, So old man
Speaker 2: car Gil, that old man car.
Speaker 1: Gil, I forgot how old you were.
Speaker 2: There was a reason the X Games were such a
Speaker 2: big fucking deal because there were all these sports that
Speaker 2: weren't taken seriously that were taken very seriously by Gen xers.
Speaker 2: And finally, you know, it's literally where they got the
Speaker 2: name the X Games. It was the games for gen X.
Speaker 2: They were our sports and they were being taken and
Speaker 2: seriously for the first fucking time. So if you were
Speaker 2: into BMX, if you were skateboarding, if you were doing
Speaker 2: any of those what we now knew at we now
Speaker 2: call extreme sports, or as we call it the nineties extreme.
Speaker 1: Sports, Aha, Mountain two level extreme.
Speaker 2: This was a big deal. And so like anything that
Speaker 2: legitimized the sport would be heralded and worshiped. And so
Speaker 2: it was like, yeah, here's a real movie, a Hollywood
Speaker 2: movie with real Hollywood actors in it, that you recognized
Speaker 2: by a real Hollywood director acknowledging that we were real
Speaker 2: fucking sport. So they were all in on that, and
Speaker 2: that was a big part of the culture at the time.
Speaker 1: I just think this movie is such a fucking delight.
Speaker 1: From frame one where we get the opening morning sequence
Speaker 1: that shows us exactly what a movie based on the
Speaker 1: Nees game Paperboy would have looked like, you know, and
Speaker 1: then the sequence where Sergeant Smith is uh is just
Speaker 1: chasing them around the lumber yard, right and uh, and
Speaker 1: then all the way up to hell Track. And then
Speaker 1: when we get through Hell Track, we get to the
Speaker 1: end of hell Track and literally, Bart, who has been
Speaker 1: this asshole the entire movie, gets fired on the spot
Speaker 1: by Jack Weston and he rolls over to Crue and
Speaker 1: his crew and they decide to let him onto Team Rad. Like.
Speaker 1: It's just such a fucking wholesome ending, because unlike the
Speaker 1: ending of The Karate Kid, which by the way, is
Speaker 1: totally fucking unearned, where Zabka comes over like you're all right,
Speaker 1: LaRusso and it's like, no, I'm not shaking your fucking
Speaker 1: hand after you just tried to cripple me, you piece
Speaker 1: of shit. Sweep the leg, Johnny, I know what it is, Like,
Speaker 1: We're supposed to be friends after you can straight go
Speaker 1: fuck yourself, Johnny, I'm sorry. Hell no, That's why we
Speaker 1: made this entire other series about what happens when we're older,
Speaker 1: because this moment makes no sense. You don't have to
Speaker 1: do that with Rad because the only person that Bart
Speaker 1: fucks over during the race are his own teammates. He
Speaker 1: sells them out so that he can get a lead
Speaker 1: and knocks them out of the race. But at no
Speaker 1: point in this movie is he trying to kick crew
Speaker 1: or like throw something in the spokes. He does nothing shady.
Speaker 1: He's just trying to win the race. It's a straight
Speaker 1: up competitive moment between two guys at the top of
Speaker 1: their game. And at the end he comes over, he
Speaker 1: says great race, and they're like, hey, you should join
Speaker 1: team Rad. And it's completely believable because you haven't had
Speaker 1: that moment of Bart just being an irrerreprehensible piece of shit.
Speaker 1: So it's like it again. The movie wears its heart
Speaker 1: on its sleeve. And if that is why it gets
Speaker 1: labeled as cheesy, that's fine, but I think that's why
Speaker 1: the movie still works to this day.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you need a little Rad in your life,
Speaker 1: you need some thunder in your heart. I saw it
Speaker 1: in theaters and it was amazing to see on the
Speaker 1: big screen. I wish there had been a few more
Speaker 1: classic trailers for you know, maybe maybe get some thrashing
Speaker 1: in there, some gleam in the cube, some BMX Bandits, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, Cargil, you are gonna this bit of
Speaker 1: trivia is gonna delight you. You dig it the most baby?
Speaker 2: Do you think it the most baby?
Speaker 1: In Argentina? This movie was sold. It was marketed as
Speaker 1: a sequel to BMX Bandits.
Speaker 2: That's some zombie two shit.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, it's Argentina being the most Italian that
Speaker 1: Argentina has ever been.
Speaker 2: Mad respect mad respect BMX Bandits.
Speaker 1: To rad Rad and that brings us to the junk
Speaker 1: food pairing. And for this one, I'm gonna go with
Speaker 1: a big goalp a super dog and a VHS copy
Speaker 1: of rad from your local nineteen eighty six, seven eleven.
Speaker 1: Throughout this episode, you have been hearing commercials for seven
Speaker 1: eleven and you've probably been wondering, what the fuck? Why
Speaker 1: is that the theme? Why is that the audio bit
Speaker 1: that Brian went with. Well, it's not only due to
Speaker 1: the heavy sponsorship of hell Track, because seven eleven is
Speaker 1: all over all over. Uh. In fact, there is a
Speaker 1: deleted scene. You want to talk about the town coming together, right,
Speaker 1: being the theme of this movie. There's a deleted scene
Speaker 1: where Crew is gifted his new bike right before Helltrack
Speaker 1: by the local seven eleven manager. Because if you look
Speaker 1: really closely in the opening of the film and he's
Speaker 1: delivering newspapers.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's the bike for sale, the bike that
Speaker 2: you can win.
Speaker 1: It's a giveaway, yes, and the manager of that seven
Speaker 1: eleven gives it to Cruz so that he can have
Speaker 1: an even better bike for Helltrack has a better chance
Speaker 1: of winning.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It turns out that nineteen eighty six was an incredibly
Speaker 1: fateful year for the convenience store chain. In April of
Speaker 1: that year, they decided to stop carrying Hustler and Playboy magazines.
Speaker 1: So it looks like the mailman's going to have to
Speaker 1: send you your angels from from now on until the
Speaker 1: Internet is invented. But the biggest innovation for seven eleven
Speaker 1: stores in nineteen eighty six was the advent of movie
Speaker 1: rentals within the store locations.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, now that seven eleven has ninety nine cent movies,
Speaker 4: everybody's becoming a critic Silverado is a cinematic tour to fours.
Speaker 3: Don't you think it's a poetic lazing saddle.
Speaker 2: It's a new wave in Western In ten, your corner
Speaker 2: store had thirty to fifty VHS tapes and Circle K
Speaker 2: followed suit shortly thereafter, and I rented untold movies from
Speaker 2: seven eleven. In Circle K, seven eleven has all the
Speaker 2: top HiT's twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a photos dynamic for Strength to Rambo
Speaker 4: that you need.
Speaker 3: And the price.
Speaker 2: The Universal spent twenty two million on this baby, you
Speaker 2: hit it for only ninety nine sent Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like this was the like literally seven eleven first started
Speaker 1: doing this in nineteen eighty six. So the the the
Speaker 1: creation of rad and its success on home video corresponds
Speaker 1: directly with seven eleven starting to use a service called
Speaker 1: movie Quick. Right, so, in their American stores, this service
Speaker 1: was provided by movie Quick, but in the Canadian stores
Speaker 1: it was provided in partnership with a company called so Savas,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a gynecological disorder. I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: that's a terrible name. But it would therefore or not
Speaker 1: be outside the realm of possibility that you could walk
Speaker 1: into with seven eleven in nineteen eighty six, get a
Speaker 1: forty four ounce big gulp, grab yourself a super dog,
Speaker 1: and VHS copy of rad Rad one of the most
Speaker 1: popular rentals of that year and for the next two years, hence.
Speaker 2: Movies for ninety nine cents. Now it's seven eleven. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna take you a step further. The other thing you
Speaker 2: could do while you were there was hit the comic
Speaker 2: rack and get all your monthly comics. Yes, like I
Speaker 2: this was like going to when I was when I
Speaker 2: was eleven, twelve thirteen. I would walk off base to
Speaker 2: the circle k right out there, because there was a
Speaker 2: circle k right on the corner at the time of
Speaker 2: the base I was living at, and I would hike
Speaker 2: to the to the gate walk off base, and that
Speaker 2: was exactly what I would fucking do. I would go
Speaker 2: and get get me a dog. I would get me
Speaker 2: a big gulp of some kind, usually you know, probably
Speaker 2: a frozen coke slurpy if they had it. I would
Speaker 2: get my comic books. I would rent some movies, and
Speaker 2: I would go home and read comics and watch movies
Speaker 2: on a Saturday afternoon, and it was all done for
Speaker 2: my fucking convenience store. And if anybody ever wonders why
Speaker 2: the eighties were fucking heaven, it was partly that.
Speaker 1: That is truly red Brad.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, you need a greasy slice of pizza
Speaker 2: and some ice cold coke served in a wax cup.
Speaker 1: Oh the wax cup. Coke is a is a is
Speaker 1: a category unto itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like the whole thing of you know, of
Speaker 2: him working in the pizza joint and all the pizza
Speaker 2: joint you know, adjacent elements, it just it's it's a
Speaker 2: greasy slice of pizza and a coke movie Like it just.
Speaker 1: Is the the alt I had for this junk food pairing,
Speaker 1: by the way, Cargill was get yourself a good amount
Speaker 1: of really slow cooked and well seasoned pork, but mash
Speaker 1: that down into burger patties and put it on Mini
Speaker 1: King's Hawaiian rolls to happen.
Speaker 2: An ass slider, some assa there it is. Puts it
Speaker 2: with some donkey.
Speaker 1: Sauce, with some donkey sauce. We're taking you to flavored
Speaker 1: town a on diners, drive ins and hell tracks. I
Speaker 1: would watch that fucking show, That's all I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was gonna be the junk food pairing until I
Speaker 1: fell down this seven eleven history rabbit hole, and then
Speaker 1: like finding out that the company that provided the rental
Speaker 1: service for the seven elevens in Canada bought the rental
Speaker 1: service Movie Quick that did it in the United States,
Speaker 1: and then because of the massive debt that they absorbed
Speaker 1: by doing that, they went out of business, which is
Speaker 1: why they stopped renting movies. So RAD has its fingers
Speaker 1: in the creation of and destruction of the movie rentals
Speaker 1: at seven eleven. Like it is there for all of it.
Speaker 1: The circles are all aligned, and it's incredible. It's one
Speaker 1: of the best rabbit holes I've ever fallen down. Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: that is rad. This is rad Rad. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: we finally covered. A happy fortieth birthday to this movie,
Speaker 1: one that I highly highly recommend that you check out
Speaker 1: at your earliest convenience cargo. Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: On the interwebs.
Speaker 2: You can find me talking smack on fucking Blue Sky
Speaker 2: at c Robert Cargill dot blue Sky dot Social. You
Speaker 2: can find my latest movie, Black Film two on Peacock,
Speaker 2: and you can find my previous film The Gorge streaming
Speaker 2: on Apple Plus.
Speaker 1: So when you tay so when you say talking smack
Speaker 1: are you are you saying talking trash or are you
Speaker 1: springboarding the spoon handle?
Speaker 2: I'm pissing off the bigots.
Speaker 1: That's a different dragon to ride. That's your tedness dragon,
Speaker 1: but a different one for sure. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 1: for this episode. You know where to find us. If
Speaker 1: you really like the show.
Speaker 2: I mean you really like the show.
Speaker 1: You like it more than we like as sliding on
Speaker 1: a Sunday afternoon, you can go to patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash jun Food Cinema financially support the show. And as
Speaker 1: we close this lap around hell track, I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: Jack Weston enlighten you as to the consequences of not
Speaker 1: watching RAD this week in celebration of its fortieth You'll regret,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you you'll live.
Speaker 2: Three You'll live, Oh sure, you'll all. You'll live.