Speaker 1: Will you wait, miss.
Speaker 2: Sill put the twist, if you smoke like a smoke
Speaker 2: like every day and if you as as a buster
Speaker 2: two one three, will.
Speaker 3: Wag you lay?
Speaker 4: Welcome back midnight viewers to midnight viewing. And if hey,
Speaker 4: if Warren g is on the soundtrack, then we're talking
Speaker 4: about the regulators and that can mean only one thing.
Speaker 4: We're talking about Young Guns tonight joining me as a
Speaker 4: permanent guest here. Look, we had such a good time
Speaker 4: talking about the movie Crossroads, and that was just a
Speaker 4: midnight viewing one off thing. But as it turns out,
Speaker 4: having looked through the film credits of the writer of
Speaker 4: that particular film, mister John Fusco, turns out we like
Speaker 4: pretty much all of his films and he's his uns
Speaker 4: song as a screenwriter gets so turns out we're just
Speaker 4: gonna blaze on through his fucking filmography. Crossroads was his first.
Speaker 4: So next up is Young Guns joining me to do it.
Speaker 4: We did. We did Crossroads together. We're me doing all
Speaker 4: of these. Host of Noise Junkies, Host of Night, mister
Speaker 4: Walter is a taxi podcast.
Speaker 5: Mister h p annoy, did you follm alone? I gotta
Speaker 5: say you took my Nate dog joke. I was all ready.
Speaker 5: I thought, Oh, this is gonna be great to kick
Speaker 5: it off, and once again you're one step ahead of me.
Speaker 5: What can I say?
Speaker 4: Hey man, we're gonna come out of that music. That's
Speaker 4: what's happening there.
Speaker 5: No excited. The Crossroads was fun and this is going
Speaker 5: to be a blast.
Speaker 4: Indeed, so Young Guns. This was released on August the twelfth,
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight, directed by Christopher Cain, written by John Fusco,
Speaker 4: starring Emilio Estevez, Keeper Sutherland, Lou Diamond, Phillips, Charlie Sheen,
Speaker 4: Dermott mulroney, Casey Shamasco, Terry O'Quinn, Jack Palins, and Terrence Stamp,
Speaker 4: with cinematography by Dean and Similar.
Speaker 6: The Six Reasons Why the West Was Wild and.
Speaker 4: No One's fool enough to go and after Murphy's people.
Speaker 6: Emilio Stebs, I'm in deputize them. Keeper Sutherland, it looks
Speaker 6: like trouble. Trouble, you figure looks like trouble. I'm a poet.
Speaker 1: Next weeen.
Speaker 4: Those are just boys, ain't one of them?
Speaker 6: Over twenty one Murphy's been on front of and half
Speaker 6: within a day. Casey Shimoshko, I'm a pugeisten gord to
Speaker 6: Jermy Dermott mulroney as lou Diamond Phillips by vision told
Speaker 6: me we're headed for blood. Charlie Sheen, we got words.
Speaker 4: You're alone.
Speaker 6: You're supposed to serve elemon warrants that exposed to ring.
Speaker 4: It's time to went out.
Speaker 3: You went on the war pen.
Speaker 6: The Governor's revoked your deputization of powers.
Speaker 7: You're now wanted by the legitimate law as well as
Speaker 7: goes outside law.
Speaker 3: You're being hunted by trumps, the odds, young guns.
Speaker 4: This is the story of Billy the Kid and the
Speaker 4: Lincoln County War. Now, this is one of dozens upon
Speaker 4: dozens of films about Billy the Kid, but one of
Speaker 4: the only few to touch on the Lincoln County War. Ordinarily,
Speaker 4: when they're telling Billy the Kid's story, it's about the
Speaker 4: Kid's gang being hunted by Pat Garrett, and the events
Speaker 4: of the Lincoln County War always loom large because that's
Speaker 4: what set his eventual fall to fall from grace in motion.
Speaker 4: But it's very rarely presented. The only film that I
Speaker 4: can think of that really did it prior to this
Speaker 4: was Chisholm in seventy one with John Wayne, and that
Speaker 4: was a boring slog. This is the only one that
Speaker 4: kind that kind of doesn't and does it right. But
Speaker 4: we'll get into the nuts and bolts of it there are.
Speaker 4: It's a wildly historically accurate film for what is essentially
Speaker 4: a pot boiler Shoot them Up. HP. When did you
Speaker 4: first see Young Guns? What was your experience with it then?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 5: So I did not see Young Guns the first one
Speaker 5: in the theater. I did see the second one, but
Speaker 5: this one, it probably it must have been on cable
Speaker 5: around that time. I guess we were in high school,
Speaker 5: so it's probably what did you say? This was eighty
Speaker 5: eight eighty.
Speaker 4: Seven, nineteen eighty eight, August nineteen eighty eight, nineteen.
Speaker 5: Eighty eight, so I probably saw it around then. I
Speaker 5: confess at the time the big critical knock against this,
Speaker 5: and I know we'll probably get into this a little more,
Speaker 5: was this was still kind of post brat pack. I
Speaker 5: guess this was. I think this was unfairly tagged as
Speaker 5: a brat pack Western, so that probably turned me off
Speaker 5: a little bit at the time. I wasn't necessary and
Speaker 5: I wasn't necessarily a huge Western ban in high school.
Speaker 5: But I was surprised, as you said, to find out
Speaker 5: after the fact that this was considered one of the
Speaker 5: more historically accurate depictions of this time period in these events,
Speaker 5: So that thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker 4: What's your opinion of it now?
Speaker 5: Mixed mixed opinion, Father Malone. I, if I'm being totally
Speaker 5: honest as you should be, I should be I prefer
Speaker 5: young guns too, because well, we're going to get into
Speaker 5: all these reasons. I hate I don't want to this
Speaker 5: is too long, didn't read kind of a thing. But
Speaker 5: I think I have issues with the direction of this movie,
Speaker 5: which again we'll talk about, but I in rewatching it.
Speaker 5: I probably haven't seen it in at least ten years.
Speaker 5: The performances, actually, I was impressed. They were better than
Speaker 5: I remember them being, so that was a big plus.
Speaker 5: And I forgot that Terry O'Quinn was in it. I
Speaker 5: forgot that Terrence Stamp is John Tunstall and he is
Speaker 5: always a welcome sight. So it was a bit of
Speaker 5: a mixed bag, but I'm sure we'll get into it.
Speaker 4: In nineteen eighty eight, I, like you, had tired of
Speaker 4: the brat pack, both as a concept that the media
Speaker 4: was shoving down our throats and by the output of
Speaker 4: the members of the brat Pack except mister Emilio Estevez.
Speaker 4: I've never had any truck with mister Emilio Estevez. Look, man,
Speaker 4: he's in Repo Man. That's where I first saw him
Speaker 4: and forever in always He's gonna be the fucking coolest
Speaker 4: no matter what he does, because he was in Repo
Speaker 4: Man and he is a really good actor, and I
Speaker 4: thought he was unfairly painted with the brush of these
Speaker 4: are young kids who just want to be famous for
Speaker 4: famous sake. None of them are interested in the craft.
Speaker 4: I thought that was bullshit when it came to Estevez,
Speaker 4: and I'd liked everything he'd done, Outsiders, fucking soda pop
Speaker 4: Curtis for fuck's sake, with the Mickey Mouse shirt and
Speaker 4: the fucking switchblade. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 5: I love?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I although I felt like the brad Pack
Speaker 4: themselves were annoying. I remember seeing this trailer for this film,
Speaker 4: which if you've watched the credit sequence for the film,
Speaker 4: it's the sort of solarized They're coming up over the
Speaker 4: ridge and then they're all shooting their guns and stuff. Right, Okay,
Speaker 4: now imagine that without the solarization without any of the
Speaker 4: terrible music, and it's these masked figures coming up over
Speaker 4: the thing, and then each of them pulls their masks down,
Speaker 4: and it's like all of the fucking best of the
Speaker 4: youngest actors going right now, and then they're firing their guns,
Speaker 4: and shit, I could not be more excited. I was
Speaker 4: a huge Western fan. I was already a big fan
Speaker 4: of Billy the Kid. I was always more of a
Speaker 4: wider doc holiday guy, but I still loved the Billy
Speaker 4: of the Kid to mythos, and here was like a
Speaker 4: version for us. There was a whole lot of sort
Speaker 4: of in the nineteen eighties. I remember thinking the same
Speaker 4: thing about Twilight Zone eighty five when it came out, like, wow,
Speaker 4: they're really pitching it toward us. This is it is
Speaker 4: a rehamann of like the Twilight Zone, but in a
Speaker 4: modern context. And now here's an attempt at a Western
Speaker 4: and we're going to get it into modern context with
Speaker 4: modern actors. So I was very excited to see it.
Speaker 4: And then, of course, as you said, there are problems
Speaker 4: with this movie, the main one being the direction. The
Speaker 4: main I can't think of a better example than going
Speaker 4: from that trailer, which was nothing but pure excitement to
Speaker 4: the credit sequence of this film. This solarized version, where
Speaker 4: the fucking music is the as bad as the direction
Speaker 4: is of this movie, is as historically inaccurate as the
Speaker 4: movie can be. In some places, the most unforgivable thing
Speaker 4: going on in this movie is the fucking music, which
Speaker 4: sounds like, I don't know, like nine O two one zero,
Speaker 4: kind of twenty one jump street.
Speaker 7: Level, like airn aarn aar Hey, Look it's Billy the Kid.
Speaker 5: That's another big tick for Young Guns two, because by
Speaker 5: Young Guns two you have Alan Silvestri doing the soundtrack.
Speaker 5: There's just so much more. I mean, I know we're
Speaker 5: here to talk about Young Guns, but that's one thing
Speaker 5: that's one big knock against this. Let me ask you
Speaker 5: a quick question, because you said unforgivable. When did Unforgiven
Speaker 5: come out in relation to this.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety two ninety three?
Speaker 5: Okay, so it was quite a few years after this.
Speaker 5: I didn't know if there was any friction between those
Speaker 5: two movies, but I guess they came out so far
Speaker 5: away from each other that there was no impact whatsoever.
Speaker 5: But yeah, the music is very eighties, it's very nine
Speaker 5: O two one zero. It makes everything, I think, feel
Speaker 5: a little bit smaller to me, because when you have
Speaker 5: a real orchestral score or something that's real Western sounding,
Speaker 5: it really lifts like any good music should in a movie,
Speaker 5: and this just kind of lets it down in my opinion.
Speaker 5: It's not as Walt's Wall as that. In fact, there's
Speaker 5: less music in the picture than I remembered, but when
Speaker 5: it's there, it calls attention to itself in a very
Speaker 5: negative way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that was when I was taking away from
Speaker 4: it too, Like I appreciated the moments without any music
Speaker 4: or source music because it didn't have the Reek of
Speaker 4: the twentieth century, not just the Reek of the twentieth centuries,
Speaker 4: just not the Reek of anachronism, but the Reek of
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty eight. Here I am. Aren't I doing a
Speaker 4: clever job here at my job writing for movies. That's
Speaker 4: what it fails.
Speaker 7: Like.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Even Blaze of Glory, as cheesy as it might be,
Speaker 5: a fit, was it fit? And it was so it
Speaker 5: was so exciting. It was such a great teaser for
Speaker 5: young guns too, that video Ryan on TV, and it
Speaker 5: was just it was great. This to me is it
Speaker 5: falls flat in a lot of different ways, but I
Speaker 5: to sort of circle back, I one hundred percent agree
Speaker 5: with you that Emilio Estevez is really good in this.
Speaker 5: There's something slightly, well not slightly, there's something unhinged about
Speaker 5: his performance that I think is just perfect for the
Speaker 5: character and the way that everybody reacts to him. The
Speaker 5: gang in this handed Young Guns too. He's more of
Speaker 5: he's kind of more of a of a nuisance at times,
Speaker 5: and more of like they really don't like him. I mean,
Speaker 5: they're a gang and they support each other, but at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, he's the one putting them
Speaker 5: in danger more often than not, and Estevez plays that beautifully.
Speaker 5: I love his performance.
Speaker 4: I don't know if this is the most historically accurate
Speaker 4: portrayal of Billy the Kid, but it is my favorite
Speaker 4: portrayal of Billy the Kid for those reasons. He seems
Speaker 4: really not all there. The character of Dirty Steve, played
Speaker 4: by Derma mulroney has this running joke of like he's
Speaker 4: not all there. He's actually not all there. He's a
Speaker 4: troubling character, and the fact that he's as charming as
Speaker 4: he is while doing those things is because of Emiliostivius.
Speaker 4: I think if you had a lesser actor, there a
Speaker 4: grubbier version, like if Dermot Mulroney, let's say, had been
Speaker 4: playing Billy the Kid dressed as he was as Dirty Steve,
Speaker 4: he would be unbearable as a character.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's make no mistake. Billy the Kid is the
Speaker 5: one who sets the plot in motion. Really, he's the
Speaker 5: one that gets who starts all the trouble to begin with,
Speaker 5: they've been deputized. Well do we want to get into
Speaker 5: the story.
Speaker 4: Okay, Look, here's the thing. The Lincoln County War, such
Speaker 4: as it is in Lincoln County in New Mexico, there
Speaker 4: had been for at least a generation a group of ranchers, farmers, Irish,
Speaker 4: the Murphy's and what was the other fucking hold on
Speaker 4: keep forgetting Lincoln County? Well, Lincoln can't the regulator's baby.
Speaker 4: Who cares William Brady? Oh, I know, we're blah blah blah. Anyway,
Speaker 4: So basically it was the Murphy conglomerate. Like like, they
Speaker 4: had herds of cattle and they had a store. So
Speaker 4: not only were they raising cattle and raising money that way,
Speaker 4: but they were selling goods to all of the people.
Speaker 4: And then an English fellas shows up named Tunstall, and
Speaker 4: he's backed by a local other irishman named Alex McSween.
Speaker 4: And they proposed that they're going to have their own
Speaker 4: heads of cattle and they're going to have their own store,
Speaker 4: and half the people, half the surrounding ranchers and folk,
Speaker 4: side with the Irish, half side with the English. The
Speaker 4: ones that side with the English include young William Bonnie
Speaker 4: who is Billy the Kid. Also Josiah doc Skurlock, Jose Chavez.
Speaker 4: These are all real people, like Vic Charlie Bowdrey, also
Speaker 4: Dirty Steve, he's one of them. Interestingly, you know John Tunstall,
Speaker 4: the Englishman was twenty four years old.
Speaker 5: I learned that after the fact. But what is a
Speaker 5: tern Stam must be fifty if.
Speaker 4: He's a day exactly, I believe he's forty nine fifty
Speaker 4: years old. So yeah, but you know that's okay because
Speaker 4: what ends up happening is here Fusco script I think
Speaker 4: is incredibly clever in that it reduces everything down to
Speaker 4: sort of signs and signifiers, almost like each of these
Speaker 4: guys were like little independent outfits that were behind each other,
Speaker 4: and instead he turns them all into a group of
Speaker 4: street urchins being raised by the Fagan like, yeah, the JT.
Speaker 4: Tunstall or J. H. Tunstall, Yeah and sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4: So no so so William Bonnie's one is just a
Speaker 4: kid on the run. He gets taken in by this
Speaker 4: group of na'er do wells who were basically the enforcers
Speaker 4: around Tunstall's ranch. Anytime there's trouble. These guys take care
Speaker 4: of for him and basically they look that it's the
Speaker 4: two biggest kids on the block. Eventually they're going to
Speaker 4: come to blows. But unfortunately they bring the law into it.
Speaker 4: So the Murphy people try to server warrant, but it
Speaker 4: is just really an assassination, which in turn gets through
Speaker 4: the regulators all deputized as a posse to go serve
Speaker 4: a warrant themselves. But it probably doesn't go down exactly
Speaker 4: the way it goes down here. But like I said,
Speaker 4: the script is combining and compacting events in the movie.
Speaker 4: But in the movie what happens is Billy just starts
Speaker 4: fucking shooting people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they've been deputized, it's all going to be above board.
Speaker 5: They're going to seek out because Murphy has everybody in
Speaker 5: his back pocket, he has the law, and they've been
Speaker 5: deputized to find all the men responsible for this killing
Speaker 5: of John Tunstall, and instead of doing this, serving the
Speaker 5: warrants and bringing them into jail, they lose Canon. Billy
Speaker 5: just kills everybody and he doesn't stop like their deputies
Speaker 5: for a while, and it becomes a rampage essentially, and
Speaker 5: then it escalates to the point where the US Army
Speaker 5: has taken an interest in their exploits and everybody is
Speaker 5: after him. Bounty hunters are after the gang, Murphy's men
Speaker 5: are after the gang, the army, and it just that's
Speaker 5: essentially the movie. It's just all of these escalating gun
Speaker 5: fights and people coming after the regulators until essentially they
Speaker 5: have no choice. They're hold up in a house and
Speaker 5: they have no choice but to basically have their last stand.
Speaker 5: But let me ask you a question, botherm alone, what
Speaker 5: do you make of we talked about Terrence Stamp playing
Speaker 5: John Tunstall. What do you make of Terrence Stamp's performance?
Speaker 5: I'm really curious.
Speaker 4: I feel like this is a loaded question that their part,
Speaker 4: But I love his performance here. It's it might be
Speaker 4: it's not my favorite performance of this because there's so
Speaker 4: many great performances throughout a fucking amazing career, but it's
Speaker 4: certainly for me. My first experience with I'm sure like
Speaker 4: you with Terence Stamp was General Zod, so he was
Speaker 4: the most evil person in the world. My second introduction
Speaker 4: to Terrence Stamp was this film, where he was the
Speaker 4: most fatherly. So I love his performance, Sarah, sure, and
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: I'm not presenting it as a loaded question because I
Speaker 5: love I strike that I adore Terence Stamp like you.
Speaker 5: General Zod was my first exposure I was. I'm not
Speaker 5: ashamed to say that I was scared of him as
Speaker 5: a child because he was a really scary dude in
Speaker 5: that movie. I mean, I never watched any of the
Speaker 5: old English movies that he did, Like, I didn't have
Speaker 5: any real exposure to him, and this was probably the
Speaker 5: second time I saw him. I he's great, but what
Speaker 5: I couldn't help thinking is that there's something otherworldly about
Speaker 5: his performance in this something that I couldn't quite put
Speaker 5: my finger on. He almost seems above everything and anyone
Speaker 5: else in the picture. There's something kind of I don't
Speaker 5: know what's the word, just sort of a loof, not
Speaker 5: a loof, that's something a right word, huh. Saintly not saintly,
Speaker 5: just just something untouchable. Yeah, just just sort of ethereal.
Speaker 4: I guess seem to just sort of he just says,
Speaker 4: just does seem to float from scene to scene, dispensing
Speaker 4: sage advice and calming everybody down. Even when there's a
Speaker 4: moment of violence. It isn't He's just very calm. And
Speaker 4: then let's Casey Schamasco step in do what he does
Speaker 4: and then continue to calm everybody back down.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I like this is not to say that it's
Speaker 5: a bad performance. I think it's fantastic, but I did
Speaker 5: my memory of it was a little different watching it now,
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, that's interesting. He made a lot
Speaker 5: of interesting choices that I thought suits him. That's who
Speaker 5: he is. But but yeah, he's very paternal. He's great
Speaker 5: as John Tunsta willdn't get me wrong, but I just
Speaker 5: found his performance a little bit arm's length. I guess,
Speaker 5: for lack of a better phrase.
Speaker 4: I could see that the other problem with this movie.
Speaker 4: I just want to get the problems with the movie
Speaker 4: out of the way, because there's so much that you
Speaker 4: like about this film, and I don't want to dwell
Speaker 4: on the negative. But look, whoever put the If Christopher
Speaker 4: Kine put this cast together, brava, okay, but he should
Speaker 4: not have directed this movie hiring that. Hiring Anthony Marinelli
Speaker 4: to do the score alone should have disqualified him as
Speaker 4: a director of this film.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: I know he had previously worked with Estevez on That
Speaker 4: Was Then This Is Now. He directed that se hint
Speaker 4: and adaptation, and I believe Emilia Westvez wroped, so I
Speaker 4: can see them wanting to work together again. But he's
Speaker 4: out of his mind if he thinks this guy was
Speaker 4: right for a Western. We're gonna keep mentioning Young Guns
Speaker 4: Too in its superiority in every way. But Jeff Murphy
Speaker 4: is a fucking awesome action director and should have if
Speaker 4: they had him here for this one, Holy shit, and
Speaker 4: we would be talking about this as one of the
Speaker 4: greatest Bond Billy the Kid movies.
Speaker 5: The fact is that Emilio Estevez himself was not entirely
Speaker 5: happy with Young Guns. He deliberately set out with John
Speaker 5: Fusco to make a better movie with Young Guns Too,
Speaker 5: and it's hard to argue that it's not better and
Speaker 5: almost every single way to this, oh my god, not to.
Speaker 4: Say if that's their if that was their goal, they
Speaker 4: succeeded across the board. It's like it's night and dead again.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that this is a bad movie. I
Speaker 4: like this movie. It's just that there are fucking fundamental
Speaker 4: problems that could have been avoided very easily.
Speaker 5: Totally and like you, I think it all begins and
Speaker 5: ends with the direction just seems it lacks anything resembling
Speaker 5: like dynamics. It all seems rather flat and dour isn't
Speaker 5: the word, But it's not exciting. A lot of it isn't.
Speaker 5: The excitement is on the page, but it's not reflected
Speaker 5: in how the movie is photographed, how that how it
Speaker 5: all is depicted. I mean there's I love the story.
Speaker 5: I think the direction leaves a lot to be desired.
Speaker 5: It just seems to kind of just sit there. The
Speaker 5: action is and all that interesting to me. It's not
Speaker 5: really shot. The gunfights aren't shot that interesting lead to me,
Speaker 5: it's sometimes hard to know exactly what's happening.
Speaker 4: Some of the character scenes work despite the rest of
Speaker 4: the direction in the movie. I think like some of
Speaker 4: the sequences are fun, like the Peyote sequence I thought
Speaker 4: is photographed really well, and some of the interactions between
Speaker 4: Doc and the young lady. He's wooing like all that stuff.
Speaker 4: In fact, I was about to praise the direction, but
Speaker 4: I'm not going to praise the direction because it turns
Speaker 4: out it's another script thing and I only noticed it
Speaker 4: really this time around. About Doc Skurlock in this movie,
Speaker 4: but the moment where they allow him to react after
Speaker 4: getting blood splattered on his face after Billy kills one
Speaker 4: of their own in front of him, that scene is
Speaker 4: well directed.
Speaker 5: I love Keifer Sutherland in this he next to Emilieuistevez.
Speaker 5: He's probably my favorite of the regulators. I just think
Speaker 5: he because I think the character is allowed to be interesting.
Speaker 5: Not to say that Dirty Steve and Charlie don't have
Speaker 5: their own moments, and obviously Chavezy Chavez, but I just
Speaker 5: think Key for Sutherland gives a very grounded performance. He's
Speaker 5: allowed to react a lot. He often you see Billy's
Speaker 5: misdeeds through Doc's eyes, and I think that's in a sense,
Speaker 5: it's almost like an audience proxy. Like that scene you
Speaker 5: talk about. That's one of my favorite moments in the
Speaker 5: whole movie, where Billy shoots McCluskey in the head because
Speaker 5: he believes that he's a spy. For the Murphy Gang.
Speaker 5: And it's such a great reaction because there's a horror
Speaker 5: to Sutherland's reaction, but he still does what has to
Speaker 5: be done. He still keeps his eyes on all the
Speaker 5: other goings on, but it really is a horrifying moment
Speaker 5: for him, and I love that it's really effective. But
Speaker 5: I guess I can see your point. Is it a
Speaker 5: direct directorial choice to show the blood and have him react?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I give the credit to Key for sucklin how about that.
Speaker 4: Look, it's in the script and it's in the performance.
Speaker 4: But the fact that he allows him the room afterwards
Speaker 4: to continue to react like it could have just been
Speaker 4: like a oh, that's a horrible thing. One of the
Speaker 4: things the direction does, at least right is this movie,
Speaker 4: as much as it is about the Lincoln County War
Speaker 4: and Billy the Kid and all of this other machinations
Speaker 4: and playing with the American myth of the cowboy, it's
Speaker 4: the story of Josiah Scarlock and what the Lincoln County
Speaker 4: War does to him. Because when we first meet him
Speaker 4: in the opening scene, he is the sweetest character on
Speaker 4: planet Earth. He is just golden lightness. And by the
Speaker 4: end of this movie, he is hardened as fuck. In fact,
Speaker 4: I know we're going to talk about young guns too
Speaker 4: when we get to it. But watching this movie now,
Speaker 4: the doc we get at the beginning of that movie
Speaker 4: and the way he's acting towards Billy makes so much
Speaker 4: sense to me, because this movie is as much Doc
Speaker 4: Skurlock's fall from grace or fall from innocence as much
Speaker 4: as anything else.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they agreed. Was McClusky a real person on the
Speaker 5: regulator's father alone? Do you know that or is it
Speaker 5: created for this movie? The trader Frank.
Speaker 4: McCluskey was a regulator, was a trader, or was perceived
Speaker 4: to be a trader, But I think that's pretty much
Speaker 4: all that is known about him. Each of the regulators
Speaker 4: presented were real people. There were originally eleven regulators. I
Speaker 4: believe we get six here, but in each of their
Speaker 4: names are they match up? Like what's interesting is those
Speaker 4: in real life those guys were interesting on their own,
Speaker 4: Like Billy the Kid ends up getting a lot of
Speaker 4: credit for all of their exploits, and this would be true,
Speaker 4: like every gunfight in the Lincoln County War in the
Speaker 4: newspapers gets attributed to Billy the Kid. They play that
Speaker 4: off in the movie, like they even they have the
Speaker 4: wrong photo. Oh, and it's like as wrong, it's right
Speaker 4: all the time. But you'll notice he keeps getting the
Speaker 4: credit for everything that would eventually be a problem for
Speaker 4: him because it's hard to get amnesty when you've not
Speaker 4: you've never disputed that you shot like twenty nine men.
Speaker 5: Yeah. The reason I ask that is because I think
Speaker 5: one of the great things about that scene is there's
Speaker 5: this doubt as to whether McCluskey is actually a spy
Speaker 5: or not. Because what happens is they've got another bunch
Speaker 5: of Murphy's men at gunpoint, and they're debating whether to
Speaker 5: kill them or bring them into to jail to justice,
Speaker 5: and McClusky is the one who says, no, I don't
Speaker 5: think we should go here. I think we should. Murphy's
Speaker 5: going to be looking for us. We should do this,
Speaker 5: And Billy is watching him, and Billy says, I saw
Speaker 5: what you did, and it kind of it's almost like
Speaker 5: a reservoir dogs kind of moment where all of a
Speaker 5: sudden you don't know who's telling the truth, or even
Speaker 5: the regulators themselves aren't sure if Billy's right about this.
Speaker 5: So I think that's actually another great moment is because
Speaker 5: it's never they do in the performance. They do make
Speaker 5: it seem like the guy is actually a trader, but
Speaker 5: in actual fact, like the way the scene goes, he
Speaker 5: very well may not have been a trader. And this
Speaker 5: might have just been another example of Billy going a
Speaker 5: little crazy and killing people when he shouldn't have.
Speaker 4: And speaking of Kiefer Sutherland and like sort of the
Speaker 4: audience proxy, you just watch the way he reacts to
Speaker 4: Billy throughout the entire movie. So there's the scene where
Speaker 4: they hole up at at that saloon and there's a
Speaker 4: bounty hunter that Billy goes and fucks with, like, oh,
Speaker 4: who you're looking for? What's he look like?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 4: Yeah. If you watch the way Doc is reacting to Billy,
Speaker 4: he's so frightened of him at that point he says, Okay, yep,
Speaker 4: whatever you say, Bill, Yeah, how a man Like they're
Speaker 4: all just trying to hold it together at that point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because at that point they've already been through the Ringer,
Speaker 5: they're very close to the end of their sort of adventure,
Speaker 5: and he's just this carries through to Young Guns too,
Speaker 5: by the way, this idea that they're just they're doing
Speaker 5: all they can to put up with this loose cannon
Speaker 5: of a gang leader essentially, And you're right, Sutherland plays
Speaker 5: it awesome because he's just like yeah, because he ends
Speaker 5: up killing this bounty hunter and he says, what does
Speaker 5: that make it about about ten? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: but whatever you say, Billy, Yeah, whatever you say.
Speaker 4: It was five and let's call it ten. Okay, Yes,
Speaker 4: it's ten. Okay, wherever you get.
Speaker 5: It's a nice antidote to what I think you would
Speaker 5: normally get in a movie like this, where they're all bonded,
Speaker 5: they're all pals, and they're all like one for all
Speaker 5: for one. These guys actively, at a minimum, they don't
Speaker 5: like Billy at maximum, they're afraid of him and what
Speaker 5: he's capable of. And that I think is a very
Speaker 5: interesting tack in this movie that I think makes it
Speaker 5: a little unique. I think it's one of the things
Speaker 5: I really like about it.
Speaker 4: And I know we just keep going to keep talking
Speaker 4: about Young Guns too, but they went ahead and made
Speaker 4: that movie and they made it so good. And I
Speaker 4: sort of said it already, but the beginning of that film,
Speaker 4: if you haven't seen Young Guns, when they're getting the
Speaker 4: band back together. He's rescuing Chavez and he's rescuing Skurlock,
Speaker 4: and they're going to go out and have more adventures
Speaker 4: and everything. Like the way they're acting towards one another
Speaker 4: is so standoffish and it should be like a rousing
Speaker 4: Western moment. But you watch this movie and you go, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's like the last thing you would want is to
Speaker 4: be back with this fucking crazy man. And now he's
Speaker 4: even more famous and he's even more untouchable.
Speaker 5: All Doc wanted to be was a school teacher in
Speaker 5: Young Guns Too. He was happy, he was married, he
Speaker 5: was doing his thing. Now he's back in the pit
Speaker 5: literally with Billy, the last person on earth he wanted
Speaker 5: to be dealing with.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 5: Again, that's Young Guns Too.
Speaker 4: We'll talk about we'll get there. I know, I just
Speaker 4: want to I we just want to talk about it.
Speaker 4: But that's our next episode.
Speaker 5: Basically, we were talking about performances. Another pleasant surprise to me,
Speaker 5: given how his personal sort of how his persona has
Speaker 5: evolved over time, is Charlie Sheen in it as Dick Brewer,
Speaker 5: that's the character's name. He is the basically the moral
Speaker 5: center of the regulators, and he's the leader of the regulators.
Speaker 5: He is so upright and Harry Cooper of this movie,
Speaker 5: he really is. He's like the old fashioned outlaw with
Speaker 5: a sense of morals and a moral compass. And given
Speaker 5: the fact that now, like people may not remember, but
Speaker 5: what it wasn't that long ago? Was it ten fifteen
Speaker 5: years ago that Charlie Sheen went through his kind of
Speaker 5: nutty drug phase, remember Tiger Blood, and he was waitning,
Speaker 5: he cut a winning he went off the deep end.
Speaker 5: It's interesting to reconcile that public persona with his character here.
Speaker 5: He does a wonderful job with Dick, because he's got
Speaker 5: to be the one to try to hold the regulators
Speaker 5: together in the face of all of this stuff happening
Speaker 5: around him, in the face of the chaos that is
Speaker 5: William Bonnie. I think he does an awesome job.
Speaker 4: I noticed that. I don't know if this were purposeful
Speaker 4: or not, but he very rarely takes that hat off,
Speaker 4: keeping the upper half of his face in shadow for
Speaker 4: most of the movie, which I think is really wise
Speaker 4: considering he's acting against his brother, and really they do
Speaker 4: look a lot alike.
Speaker 5: They do.
Speaker 4: Speaking of them looking like things, there's a scene late
Speaker 4: in the movie where Billy is having a bath and
Speaker 4: he's dictating a letter to doc to the governor to
Speaker 4: basically kiss my ass. Where Emilio Westavis looks so much
Speaker 4: like Martin Sheen that I thought I was watching Apocalypse now.
Speaker 5: It's crazy, mean that when he's coming up out of
Speaker 5: the water at the end.
Speaker 4: No, just in general.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he well, I always thought he did zemble him
Speaker 5: some of the roles. I mean, it's hard to say
Speaker 5: that he looked like Martin Sheen and Ripo Man, but yeah,
Speaker 5: for sure, there's definitely a resemblance there. But they're all
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm singling out Charlie Sheen this and Emeli
Speaker 5: west Has that, but they all do wonderful work. Derman mulroney,
Speaker 5: who kind of became a rom com lead later in
Speaker 5: his career. He's totally unrecognizable as Dirty Steve. He's a
Speaker 5: really like you can just smell him off the screen.
Speaker 5: He just seems like this filthy dirty He's always got
Speaker 5: tobacco in his mouth and his teeth are all gross,
Speaker 5: and he's got a great accent. He's awesome too. The
Speaker 5: regulators themselves, to a man, are fantastic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that Dirty Steve Stevens's character was my favorite when
Speaker 4: I first saw the movie, just because he looks so authentic,
Speaker 4: because you, as you said, you can smell him through
Speaker 4: the screen. You know that the Old West was peopled
Speaker 4: mainly by that guy. You know, just lunatics out there
Speaker 4: trying to forge a life in the fucking wilderness. Like
Speaker 4: just yes, that was my favorite performance when I saw
Speaker 4: it as a kid. Favorite performance. Now, Casey Shamasco is
Speaker 4: Charlie Bowdrey. He is so sweet from moment one. That's
Speaker 4: the regulator who just wants to do the right thing,
Speaker 4: and he's the tiny man who can kick your ass,
Speaker 4: and he gets a fucking romance in it.
Speaker 5: Come on, man, And for me, he's the most heartbreaking
Speaker 5: member of the Regulators because by the end, they're holed
Speaker 5: up in Alex's house, they're surrounded and he basically he
Speaker 5: freaks out. Basically they're getting shot at by every direction.
Speaker 5: He's already talked at length about how afraid he is
Speaker 5: of getting hanged, so what Essentially, he just basically has
Speaker 5: a break. He just goes nuts, and it's heartbreaking to
Speaker 5: see this guy who's held it together, tried to hold
Speaker 5: it together through all of the bad shit that Billy
Speaker 5: leads them through and then to see this because you
Speaker 5: know the end is coming for him. I mean, there's
Speaker 5: no very little chance they're going to make it out
Speaker 5: of there alive, and you want him to because he
Speaker 5: is so sweet and like you said, he's he had
Speaker 5: just gotten married in Mexico and it's he plays it beautifully.
Speaker 5: Casey Schremasko is awesome. He's so underrated. I liked him
Speaker 5: ever since. I think you talked about this in other
Speaker 5: podcasts Three o'clock High. He's so good.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, un let's we forget. He's also three D a
Speaker 4: member of Fiff's gang in Back to the Future.
Speaker 5: That's true. He was only in the first one though, right,
Speaker 5: he wasn't in the second and third one? Or was he?
Speaker 4: No, he's in the second one, is he?
Speaker 5: There were certain members of the gang that didn't make it.
Speaker 4: Into the s oh in the second one, he's no,
Speaker 4: because they had old age him. He's got the leather sap. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: We could do this the ease way or the hard way.
Speaker 4: Where did Casey schmonsk go go? I fucking love him, man,
Speaker 4: Everything he was in I liked.
Speaker 5: I don't know, that's a good question, because he he
Speaker 5: really did seem to be carving out quite a career
Speaker 5: for he was the lead in Three o'clock High.
Speaker 4: He was the lead. He's a fucking character actor. He
Speaker 4: led that movie. The other thing I like about Casey
Speaker 4: Schamasco his sister Nina Shamasca.
Speaker 5: Oh, I knew her from Airheads, very good looking airheads.
Speaker 8: And what's it was the sequel to the fucking Mickey
Speaker 8: Ork movie, that horrible, fucking the one where he went
Speaker 8: to Rio for when he fell off man, when he
Speaker 8: came back all puffy and fucking and blowed it for
Speaker 8: the first time.
Speaker 4: And he did that sex movie and like, yeah, he
Speaker 4: ended up with the girl he made the movie with,
Speaker 4: so that all this on screen fucking it's real. Fucking
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, you mean is that Wild Orchid? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 4: So there was a sequel to Wild Orchid called Wild
Speaker 4: Orcid two Two Shades of Blue, starring Nina Shamasco.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at Casey Schumasco's IMDb.
Speaker 4: Okay, tell me he's okay.
Speaker 5: The last performance I have is he was a voice
Speaker 5: in the video game Red Day Redemption two.
Speaker 4: Wonderful, but I love that game.
Speaker 5: But it's that's a Landmark. I love that game. But
Speaker 5: the last like actual acting role, live acting role was
Speaker 5: a TV series called Billions. He hasn't really acted since
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, which I think I'm surprised by. I don't
Speaker 5: know what. I don't know what movie. He's fantastic, he's well,
Speaker 5: he's great in everything he's in. But he is What
Speaker 5: did I write down here? I wrote that the character
Speaker 5: was the where is it here?
Speaker 4: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: He's one of the more affable members of the group.
Speaker 5: He and he's the one. Also, lest we forget, they
Speaker 5: sampled him extensively in Warre and G's regulated isn't it?
Speaker 5: Isn't it his speech that kicks off the whole song.
Speaker 4: Indeed, it is you who taught me as a young
Speaker 4: man what a pugilist was.
Speaker 5: I wanted to see more of that, though there's only
Speaker 5: that one scene where he beats the crap out of
Speaker 5: the guy.
Speaker 4: You needed more pugilism from him, Come on, man, that
Speaker 4: was a fucking good plus. There was not going to
Speaker 4: be any more pugilism past that. Everyone was shooting at
Speaker 4: each other.
Speaker 5: But if you can get Chavez twirling knives around in
Speaker 5: every single scene, you can have him doing a little
Speaker 5: bit of a.
Speaker 4: Rope a dome kicking butt, just like shadow boxing. He's
Speaker 4: just like punching alls and shit.
Speaker 5: Maybe he could get into a tussle with Billy.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Buckshot Roberts for a second. Buck Shot
Speaker 4: Roberts is a fucking weird historical character to begin with,
Speaker 4: and then we get Brian Keith shows up for wat steam.
Speaker 4: It's one of my favorite scenes, the moment where he's
Speaker 4: like he shows up at the they're looking for him,
Speaker 4: like he's wanted by them. He shows up and says, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not with those fuckers anymore, but I understand that
Speaker 4: you're all wanted, so I'm here for you. Let's go dance.
Speaker 4: He says, let's dance and then start shooting. It's great.
Speaker 5: He's totally fearless. I actually it's funny because I was
Speaker 5: watching that awful credit sequence and his name scrolled by
Speaker 5: and I went Ryan Keith, the Brian Keith, Who the
Speaker 5: fuck did he play in this? I totally forgot that
Speaker 5: he was that absolutely bad shit bounty hunter because he
Speaker 5: only shows up in that one scene and he's so
Speaker 5: blase about the prospect of taking them in and you
Speaker 5: get the sense that he's seen everything, he's done everything.
Speaker 5: He doesn't give a shit about these like these pipsqueaks.
Speaker 5: He's just gonna it's just another day in the office
Speaker 5: for him. And it's such a He only appears in
Speaker 5: it really very briefly. He pulls out his gun and
Speaker 5: starts shooting, and then he basically hides in the outhouse,
Speaker 5: so you don't see him anymore. But he kills.
Speaker 4: We don't know what happens to him. It's great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's such a great It's just sort of out
Speaker 5: of nowhere kind of whirlwind that blows into their their path.
Speaker 4: That's crazy, how engrossing this fucking screenplay was a fucking chaos.
Speaker 4: Agent shows up, fuck shit up, kills one of our
Speaker 4: main characters, and then we just forget all about him,
Speaker 4: like we don't even care what happens to him because
Speaker 4: we're so swempt up in the rest of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's awesome. Brian Keith, it was great in this two.
Speaker 5: I mean everybody again, the performances themselves are by and
Speaker 5: large right. The only one that I thought was a
Speaker 5: little bit odd was the guy who played Pat Garrett.
Speaker 5: It might have been just the actor wasn't quite right.
Speaker 5: I know he's John Wayne's son, was Patrick Wayne?
Speaker 4: Patrick Wayne? Yeah, here's the problem with Patrick Wayne that
Speaker 4: I think you might have You saw Young Guns two first,
Speaker 4: and how are you gonna compete with William fucking Peterson?
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me? Look? Patrick Wayne is fine here
Speaker 4: because the character is not a character. They included Pat
Speaker 4: Garrett here just as a foreshadowing for those in the know.
Speaker 4: Like really, his character delivers one line of he delivers
Speaker 4: a piece of information at the end, which may or
Speaker 4: may not be a trap that he's laying for them,
Speaker 4: But the earlier scene, because he's only in the two scenes,
Speaker 4: is just a hey, look, well these two might be friends,
Speaker 4: they might be enemies, who knows. We'll see. And if
Speaker 4: there was never going to be a Young Guns too,
Speaker 4: then it would have been just a nice bit of
Speaker 4: for a shot. So he does fine within the parameters
Speaker 4: of he has to show up say hi, I'm Pat Garrett,
Speaker 4: and later say hey, kid, they're really coming for you.
Speaker 4: You got to get out of here.
Speaker 5: That's fair, that's fair. I guess I.
Speaker 4: Wasn't going to trust Patrick Wayne to handle the moral
Speaker 4: complexity of whether or not he can accept money and
Speaker 4: hunt down his former friend but get a better life
Speaker 4: for him and his family. William Peterson was needed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great point. He really wasn't a character.
Speaker 5: He was kind of in a way, not an easter egg,
Speaker 5: but he was there as an interesting foible for someone
Speaker 5: who knows that they have a history Pat Garrett Billy
Speaker 5: the kid. I And it's also interesting I assumed that
Speaker 5: he was laying a trap for the gang. But you're
Speaker 5: saying it's up for debate whether he knew that they
Speaker 5: were going to get to drop on them when they
Speaker 5: went to go help out Alex.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well I'm saying did he come there as friend
Speaker 4: or foe? Like he did he come there to let
Speaker 4: them know that's happening so that they would go there
Speaker 4: to be captured or did yes? Was it potentially like, look,
Speaker 4: you got to go now to get your friends because
Speaker 4: they're not there yet. They don't really they say it
Speaker 4: in the during the blockade moment, they're like, may I
Speaker 4: probably said, is it probably said us here as a trap?
Speaker 4: But who knows? You don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I got to come back to the music for a second.
Speaker 4: James Horner was the original composer on this film turned
Speaker 4: in a score that was rejected and then replaced with
Speaker 4: this one. How can this be crazy?
Speaker 5: Crazy?
Speaker 4: I wonder if that's that we find, that is that available.
Speaker 5: It's quoted as saying it was an electronic score. Oh
Speaker 5: so I don't know what that means, if that would
Speaker 5: necessarily be a better thing than that we got, because
Speaker 5: I wanted your classic, sweeping orchestral score like the one
Speaker 5: we got with Young Guns too. Who knows if it would,
Speaker 5: I mean, it couldn't. It certainly couldn't be much worse
Speaker 5: than what we got because what we got is very
Speaker 5: dated and kind of is at odds with the movie.
Speaker 5: I think in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: They could have had Tangerine Dream. That was the only
Speaker 4: acceptable electronic version of the scar that they could have
Speaker 4: had for this movie other than that col Allen Silvester,
Speaker 4: God damn it. Anyway, we'll get to Young Guns.
Speaker 5: Too prior to watching it for this episode, FA them Malone.
Speaker 5: When's the last time you saw Young Guns? The first one?
Speaker 4: It's been about ten or fifteen years, Yeah.
Speaker 5: So similar to me. Was there anything that surprised you
Speaker 5: having not seen it for that long, something you didn't
Speaker 5: remember or thought, Hey, this is actually better than I remembered.
Speaker 4: Well, as I said, sort of focusing in on Doc
Speaker 4: Skurlock's journey here this time I thought was very rewarding,
Speaker 4: as was not that it hasn't been before, but and
Speaker 4: mean the rest visits he's part. It's fucking out of
Speaker 4: hand here. Man, He's so good. I've already praised it,
Speaker 4: and I'm gonna praise it again for the exact same reason.
Speaker 4: Billy's a fucking psychopath and he just keeps making life
Speaker 4: worse for them. But at any time you don't want
Speaker 4: to tangle with him, and the fact that there are
Speaker 4: moments where you actually want to follow him because Emelia
Speaker 4: List is the one doing the crazy things. It's like,
Speaker 4: well he did do that crazy thing, but he seems okay.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a marvel to me.
Speaker 5: By the way, did you know that there was another
Speaker 5: outsider in this movie?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: Tom Cruise is in the final scene on credited. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we'll talk about it. Yeah, well, during the sort of
Speaker 4: final big battle. By the way, Murphy eventually died a
Speaker 4: few months later from cancer, right I read that? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: not to not shot between the eyes by a Billy
Speaker 4: the kid with a quipie one liner.
Speaker 5: Well, and that is but can I just say that
Speaker 5: is a terrible on screen death because he's shot like
Speaker 5: the well, the direction of it made no sense because
Speaker 5: they Billy and Doc and Chavez escape right and Billy
Speaker 5: comes back in order to shoot Murphy through the right
Speaker 5: between the eyes. But he shoots him. But Jack Palance
Speaker 5: doesn't just fall dead as you would expect him to.
Speaker 5: He turns into the He turns toward the camera with
Speaker 5: an anguish look on his face, like like this, if
Speaker 5: you're a shot between the eyes, I'm sorry, you're just
Speaker 5: gonna fall You're dead, no more brain like that bugged
Speaker 5: me when I saw this again, I'd forgotten that part.
Speaker 5: That really annoyed me.
Speaker 4: It's Jack Palance. He was in Shane. He can do
Speaker 4: what he wants.
Speaker 5: What did you think of Jack Palance in this?
Speaker 4: He's terrible. I'm sorry, I love you and that's yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm I am a Jack Palance fan. Don't get me wrong.
Speaker 4: The accent is slippery and he's I don't know, he's
Speaker 4: just I don't know. Feel bad criticizing him, but he's
Speaker 4: an effective amount of creepy. But he doesn't seem like
Speaker 4: some sort of tactician fighting a war with these people.
Speaker 4: He just seems like a brute.
Speaker 5: Agreed. But my issue with Jack Palance I think later
Speaker 5: in life he had a tendency to hiss a lot
Speaker 5: in his acting, Like just I'm thinking of him or not.
Speaker 5: I can't help thinking of him in Tangling Cash, which
Speaker 5: is probably the worst performance of his career. Granted, but yeah,
Speaker 5: there wasn't a lot of nuance with Jack Palance as Murphy.
Speaker 5: And maybe that's by design, but I guess Look, if
Speaker 5: it's a Western and you've got Jack Palance and he's
Speaker 5: willing to do your movie, you don't hire Jack Palance
Speaker 5: to be in your movie. But still, I didn't love
Speaker 5: the performance. I found it a little bit to cartoonish.
Speaker 4: Agreed, could have been better. I mean, they needed some
Speaker 4: better villains here, perchance. Considering on the good side, we
Speaker 4: not only had Terrence Stamp, but we've also got Terry O'Quinn,
Speaker 4: who just radiates decency, even as a villain, even as
Speaker 4: the worst villain's even as a smoke monster, he just
Speaker 4: radiates decency.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I love Terry O'Quinn.
Speaker 4: Remember him as Howard Hughes the Rocketeer. Yeah, man, he
Speaker 4: made Howard Hughes decent.
Speaker 5: That might be my favorite sequence in The Rocketeer too,
Speaker 5: when he shows them the movie, the propaganda movie the
Speaker 5: Germans made where there's armies of rocketeers flying through the air.
Speaker 4: Speaking of favorite moments featuring Howard Hughes, remember Tucker with
Speaker 4: fucking the boy with the green hair.
Speaker 5: You got me?
Speaker 4: Sorry, Candy colored clown. Come on, man, I don't remember.
Speaker 5: It's been forever.
Speaker 4: Tony No Phony, Baloney, Tony the Tiger. So I can
Speaker 4: name every character, the man who's played and his name
Speaker 4: escapes me.
Speaker 5: You know who's in the Tucker? Miss Nina Shamasco is
Speaker 5: in Tucker?
Speaker 4: Oh my god. All signs point to Shamsco.
Speaker 5: As is of course, Christian Slater, who we would see
Speaker 5: in Dean Stockwell. Dean Stockwell, Holy could I forget Dean Stockwell?
Speaker 4: Yes, Dean Stockwell. They call him Spruce Goose. That's funny to.
Speaker 5: You, Well, it is his character's name. And that quantum leap.
Speaker 4: He wasn't Iggy the one that wat.
Speaker 5: I I'm not ashamed to say it. I watched it.
Speaker 4: I bet you did.
Speaker 5: It had one of the most depressing finales of all time.
Speaker 4: And they meet God or something.
Speaker 5: Oh, there was a final like text crawl that said
Speaker 5: that he never ever found his way back. He just kept.
Speaker 4: The network. That's what that is. Those are our favorite
Speaker 4: Howard Hughes performances. What about Melvin and Howard with the
Speaker 4: Jason Robarts that's Howard is. We can keep going. There
Speaker 4: have been others. Fucking Leonardo DiCaprio did a version of
Speaker 4: him speaking of Okay, you know what, here is something
Speaker 4: I want to talk about because the performances of or
Speaker 4: portrayals of Billy the Kid through the years, because there
Speaker 4: have been some big ones, including a movie I had
Speaker 4: fully fucking intended on bagging on right now, but now
Speaker 4: it's tempered because the fucking lead just died and we
Speaker 4: both love him and everyone listening loves him because we've
Speaker 4: just lost mister Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer played Billy the
Speaker 4: Kid and gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, which is a
Speaker 4: TV movie and it's an interesting performance in a really
Speaker 4: bad movie. Gore Vidal thought he understood Billy the Kid
Speaker 4: in ways others hadn't, and thought he had uncovered facts
Speaker 4: that he didn't, and his version is really terrible, and
Speaker 4: that's a terrible movie. And Val Kilmer has chosen that.
Speaker 4: One of the facts of Vidal sort of harps on
Speaker 4: is that Billy the Kid had like kind of a
Speaker 4: high nasally voice. So of course mister method goes for that,
Speaker 4: making an unlikable character even more unlikable. Imagine if Nicholas
Speaker 4: Cage's character from Peggy Sue Got Married was like deep,
Speaker 4: like very unwashed and not very nice.
Speaker 5: That's what Val Kilmer was going for in that movie.
Speaker 4: He was going for something, man. So that is one
Speaker 4: of the performances Billy the Kid. It's at least worth
Speaker 4: checking out. I mean, if you're a completist, now it's
Speaker 4: the time to do that. And we're gonna be talking
Speaker 4: about Welkomer and another projects. In fact, we're gonna be
Speaker 4: talking about a John Fusco movie that is a very
Speaker 4: good movie and the features a great performance by Val Kilmer.
Speaker 4: So we will give mister Kilmer his due. It's not
Speaker 4: with Billy the Kid, nor is it with Chris Christofferson,
Speaker 4: who's got this somnambulant performance in Pat Garrett and Billy
Speaker 4: the Kid, this sort of like aloof rock star kind
Speaker 4: of fucking perform not even a rock star, like a
Speaker 4: fucking Folks star performance as Billy the Kid. It is.
Speaker 4: I don't want to say it's terrible, but it's very unwatchable.
Speaker 4: Oh dirty Little Billy. Ever seen that one?
Speaker 5: No, I haven't seen any of these, but they also
Speaker 5: you're making them sound good.
Speaker 4: Oh well, no, they're all worth a look. I'm just
Speaker 4: saying as portrayals of Billy the Kid, or performances of
Speaker 4: Billy the Kid, they leave a lot to be desired.
Speaker 4: The only one that is really good is from just
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago. It's from a movie called
Speaker 4: The Kid, directed by Vincent and Afrio and co written
Speaker 4: by Vincentinofrio, starring Ethan Hawk as Pat Garrett and Dane
Speaker 4: Dehan as William Bonnie Billy the Kid. Dane Dehan's performance
Speaker 4: as Billy the Kid is really fucking good. I think
Speaker 4: that performance might be the closest to who that guy
Speaker 4: actually is. I think that might actually be Billy the Kid.
Speaker 4: I think Vincentinofrio and Dane to Hans somehow captured what
Speaker 4: the guy might actually have been like. I think in
Speaker 4: seeing the guy's context of these events. I think the
Speaker 4: Young Guns movies are the perfect movies for that. But
Speaker 4: as a character study, you're not going to do better
Speaker 4: than the Kid.
Speaker 5: I knew that Vincent Andofrio had done some writing and directing,
Speaker 5: but I've never heard of that. I don't have to
Speaker 5: chase that one up as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's all I got for Billy the Kid. That's
Speaker 4: Billy the Kid moment. Everybody performances. Oh you know what,
Speaker 4: was it Billy the Kid or was it.
Speaker 5: You're forgetting one Billy the Kid performance? Brother alone? Maybe
Speaker 5: you said that was the greatest Billy the Kid performance.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna push back on that because there's a certain
Speaker 5: actor by the name of Dan Shore. You might know
Speaker 5: him from Trump John. Yeah, okay, you're right, excellent adventure.
Speaker 5: That's right. He is like the he's great, he's Billy
Speaker 5: the Kid. He says bogus a lot. He befriends Aristotle.
Speaker 5: What's not to like about Billy the Kid, Bill and Ted.
Speaker 4: Well, he also unfolds his own wanted poster to like
Speaker 4: show off to chick.
Speaker 5: That's great. I mean, that's look, we're being silly with
Speaker 5: this here, but you know, it was kind of a
Speaker 5: it was a nice touch to have someone like Billy
Speaker 5: the Kid be amongst the assemblage that Bill, Bill and
Speaker 5: Ted brought back for their so their History paper.
Speaker 4: I would like to have seen what Amelia Restivos would
Speaker 4: have been like. This came out the same year. That
Speaker 4: would have been an interesting crossover movie.
Speaker 5: It would have been really cool. But yeah, no, Ultimately,
Speaker 5: there were some things that I remembered that I didn't like,
Speaker 5: some things that I forgot that I actually really liked.
Speaker 5: So I don't know it was. I was glad to
Speaker 5: have seen it again, but again I don't. We've harped
Speaker 5: on this more than we probably should. But Young Guns
Speaker 5: Too is the superior movie, and we will talk about
Speaker 5: it one day. But it's just more epic, more grand.
Speaker 5: The music's better. There's some interesting actors that are brought in.
Speaker 4: But as a foundation for that film, though, we'll tell
Speaker 4: everyone to watch this, know that we know that the
Speaker 4: music sucks and the direction is workmanlike at best. There's
Speaker 4: one pretty great shot, but even it is done clumsily.
Speaker 4: It's during New Year's Eve. It's a crane shot, slowly
Speaker 4: tracking backwards, like pulling the street as everyone's shooting their
Speaker 4: guns off and stuff. It's pretty I just noted that
Speaker 4: that's all there. I don't want to be totally negative
Speaker 4: to the director, but the rest of it is terribly directed.
Speaker 4: But also the performances across the border really good. Here
Speaker 4: the script is really good. So watch this movie if
Speaker 4: for nothing else, key for Sutherland's performance, just to watch
Speaker 4: where Doc Skurlock starts from in Young Guns Too. Because
Speaker 4: Billy is Billy no matter. Watch You don't need a
Speaker 4: primber for where to know who Billy the kid is
Speaker 4: at the start of Young Guns To you get everything
Speaker 4: just from the opening scene and Emilia west Visit's performance.
Speaker 4: I think for the character of Skurlock, you're not going
Speaker 4: to do yourself any service watching this movie.
Speaker 5: It can only enrich the experience of watching Young Guns Too.
Speaker 5: But I stand by the fact that Estevez himself said
Speaker 5: that they wanted to make a better They weren't entirely
Speaker 5: happy with Young Guns Won. They set out to make
Speaker 5: a better movie, and by God, they made a better movie.
Speaker 5: Doesn't mean that Young Guns Want is a terrible movie.
Speaker 5: It's well worth your time to see it. It's not
Speaker 5: as good as a sequel, it's just a fact.
Speaker 4: Hp Before we go, I want to point out one
Speaker 4: other thing I noticed for the first time. When they're
Speaker 4: in the throes of their Peote Trip, Dermott mulroney and
Speaker 4: Dirty Steve keeps yelling about you see the size of
Speaker 4: that chicken.
Speaker 5: But that chicken.
Speaker 4: Yeah. In the scene that follows, when they're no longer
Speaker 4: on the acid trip, if you'll notice, Dermot mulroney walks
Speaker 4: into a scene eating a drumstick the size of his head.
Speaker 4: So he found that chicken.
Speaker 5: I never put that together, but you're absolutely right.
Speaker 4: I'm the next well, the next version this we're following along.
Speaker 4: We're just doing the next movie. The next movie is
Speaker 4: Young Guns to so Here fuseco fast. I don't know.
Speaker 4: We don't even have a name for this yet, but
Speaker 4: I guess we're gonna have to call it something because
Speaker 4: this is its un cadicated thing here on Midnight Hearing though.
Speaker 4: So I hope you like Westerns because that we're gonna
Speaker 4: get a lot of those, and we're gonna get a
Speaker 4: We're gonna get a trip to locke Ness. Have you
Speaker 4: seen that one yet? No? Buckle up, baby, ted Dance
Speaker 4: and I watched it last night. I loved it.
Speaker 5: Cool. I've never seen it.
Speaker 4: But until then, HP, where could people find.
Speaker 5: You when I'm not watching John Fusco movies? You can
Speaker 5: find me elsewhere on the weirding Weed network. As fallom
Speaker 5: Alone said, I co host the Night Mister Walter's Taxi
Speaker 5: podcast with fathom Alone. I also host the Noise Junkies
Speaker 5: music podcast. I am an occasional guest on The Culture
Speaker 5: Cast with Chris Dashu, and last but not least, I
Speaker 5: have a band camp site HP Music Place dot bandcamp
Speaker 5: dot com. Please check it out, and yeah, that's where
Speaker 5: you can find me.
Speaker 4: As for me, you're here right now. You're on the
Speaker 4: midnight viewing show. Mondays is Father Malone's weekly round up
Speaker 4: where Young Ripley, Gene, My Pug and I review of
Speaker 4: the latest new release type stuff. And here each week
Speaker 4: we do retrospectives, alternating obviously between this and Channels from
Speaker 4: the Dark Side that we do with Mike White and
Speaker 4: the Chris Statue from Projection Booth and Culture Cast, respectively.
Speaker 4: If you want to support us financially here on the show,
Speaker 4: go to Patreon dot com slash Father Malone. Subscribers get
Speaker 4: episodes early commercial free, and you get bonus series, including
Speaker 4: one that HP and I do called Cable Box Theater,
Speaker 4: where we look at filmed theatrical productions that aired on
Speaker 4: cable television in the early nineteen eighties. I guess away
Speaker 4: case at Chamasco. We miss you.
Speaker 3: Regulators. You regulate any stealing of his property.
Speaker 4: We're damn good too.
Speaker 3: But you can't be any geek off the street. Gotta
Speaker 3: be handy with the steel if you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: or you keep regular.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: It was a clear black knight, A clear white woman
Speaker 2: was on the streets trying to conserve some starch for
Speaker 2: the eve.
Speaker 3: So why could get something H sneaks s