Speaker 1: Will you wait, miss Welcome back to another midnight viewing
Speaker 1: Noise Junkies crossover. My god, it's becoming a trend. Welcome back,
Speaker 1: mister HP, composer of the weirding Way Media Network and
Speaker 1: certainly a frequent collaborator here, host of Noise Junkies, host
Speaker 1: of Night, mister Walters, and my good pal he's a
Speaker 1: music man by trade, mister HP. How are you, sir?
Speaker 2: I couldn't be more thrilled. I feel like I say
Speaker 2: this every time follom alone, but this is I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: This is such a such an awesome movie for us
Speaker 2: to dig into, so excited.
Speaker 1: We certainly seem to be going down the list of
Speaker 1: childhood musical related films. Last we did Sergeant Pepper before,
Speaker 1: and that was a cable box theater one. But here's
Speaker 1: this one's going out to everybody. Yeah, of course it
Speaker 1: is anyway, the movie we're talking about this time, Directed
Speaker 1: by Walter Hill, written by John Fusco, starring Joe Seneca,
Speaker 1: Jamie Gertz, Ralph Mancio and Steve I and Joe Martin.
Speaker 1: It's Crossroads, not to the Britney Spears movie.
Speaker 3: There's a place where deals are made and legends are born.
Speaker 3: And there was a kid they called Lightning Boy. He
Speaker 3: was searching for the lost song. You could be the
Speaker 3: first man to record it for a piece of fame
Speaker 3: and fortune.
Speaker 1: Like Clapton did with Crossrooms, Rolling Stones did it with
Speaker 1: love and van.
Speaker 3: And he was looking to get him there.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Bruceville, Son. This is a real thing to say.
Speaker 5: No, Lighting Boy and blind What the hell are you
Speaker 5: guys supposed to be?
Speaker 2: I'm a bluesman.
Speaker 4: He's from Long Island.
Speaker 1: Oh and he's the Mississippi Street.
Speaker 2: I'm ready to roll.
Speaker 4: You need a lot more than that, you know.
Speaker 6: The owner walked up to will We did three one
Speaker 6: hundred dollars dolls and says you're.
Speaker 1: Barking play only one blues man in town to night?
Speaker 5: Who was met?
Speaker 3: I choke you, dude, and you get knocked on your
Speaker 3: There's a place where deals are made.
Speaker 1: And you made your deal with the Crossroads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I made a deal.
Speaker 1: Oh I get you want some kind of contest.
Speaker 6: Huh.
Speaker 3: Where a thin line separates the good? I'm giving you
Speaker 3: all the magic I got from the Great Woo Brown
Speaker 3: cent Eugene Morton is ready to cross it.
Speaker 1: HP. Yes, I'm gonna go out on a limb and
Speaker 1: say that this was not your first time seeing Crossroads.
Speaker 2: Oh, no, this was. This would have been nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: This was a big cable movie. I didn't see this
Speaker 2: one in the theater, so I saw it probably dozens
Speaker 2: of times in its day, but since then I've rewatched
Speaker 2: it many times. This was a real formative film for
Speaker 2: me in becoming a guitar player. I honestly this. I'm
Speaker 2: not ashamed to say that this probably inspired me to
Speaker 2: pick up the guitar and start taking lessons.
Speaker 1: Oh I had thought you had already been playing guitar
Speaker 1: by the time you had seen this movie.
Speaker 2: No, because that would have been about thirteen when this
Speaker 2: movie came out, or thereabouts. I probably look I might
Speaker 2: have started taking lessons right around the time. But certainly
Speaker 2: this was something between this and I would say, in
Speaker 2: a funny way, back to the future, seeing Martin fly
Speaker 2: up there at the Enchantment, under Sea Dance playing Johnny
Speaker 2: b Good, cheesy as hell. I'm a kid of the suburbs,
Speaker 2: but these things got me excited to learn how to
Speaker 2: play guitar. And you could do a lot worse than
Speaker 2: see Steve I up there as Jack Butler doing his thing,
Speaker 2: but we'll talk about him momentarily.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we will. You know what, We're gonna dive right
Speaker 1: into this movie. But the nominal plot, such as it is,
Speaker 1: finds Ralph Manteo, a student of Juilliard in New York
Speaker 1: City who is become obsessed with the blues, and more
Speaker 1: importantly obsessed with the legend of Robert Johnson, the famous
Speaker 1: bluesman who was purported to have gone to the crossroads
Speaker 1: and sold his soul to the devil in order to
Speaker 1: play the guitar better than anyone on earth, and then
Speaker 1: gave us twenty nine songs, but they were supposed to
Speaker 1: be thirty. Eugene, Ralph Macchio's character thinks he's found a
Speaker 1: guy who knew Robert Johnson was his harmonica player, Willie Brown,
Speaker 1: in a nursing home right there in the heart of Manhattan.
Speaker 1: He's trying to get that song. It's a tantalizing premise.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it's funny because this was really Ralf Macchio's
Speaker 2: second sort of apprentice type movies. He obviously the Karate
Speaker 2: Kid just before this. While he was making this and
Speaker 2: taking guitar lessons, he was also taking karate lessons for
Speaker 2: the upcoming at that point, Karate Kid Part two, So
Speaker 2: his days were pretty full and he was I believe
Speaker 2: he was twenty five at the time, playing seventeen years
Speaker 2: old in this movie and doing a great job of it.
Speaker 1: He's a good actor. I mean, I certainly think he's
Speaker 1: good in the role. I don't know he's pulling off seventeen.
Speaker 2: I think he is. There's a confidence and an awkwardness.
Speaker 2: I think he's obviously he lets that shine a little
Speaker 2: more in Karate Kid because he's firmly a high school
Speaker 2: kid there. But I think in this he's supposed to
Speaker 2: be a guitar prodigy, a classical guitar prodigy. By the way,
Speaker 2: did you happen to see one of our favorite actors
Speaker 2: in a little cameo as his guitar teacher, Helen Arbus
Speaker 2: He was on Mash. He's like an Alan Alda type
Speaker 2: who he was in Mash. He was Carlos Navarone's manager
Speaker 2: in the taxi episode.
Speaker 1: Where they That's where I know I'm from.
Speaker 2: He's mister sensitivity. He didn't have his mustache. That's the
Speaker 2: only thing. That's why I didn't notice it at first, But.
Speaker 1: The thing is HB. I'm conversant in mash but I
Speaker 1: really did not watch that show.
Speaker 2: I didn't either, but I just he I guess I'm
Speaker 2: just such a fan of Alan Arbus and it's a
Speaker 2: delight when I see him pop up on My only
Speaker 2: problem with him here is he has a very ill
Speaker 2: advised accent that was totally unnecessary for it, doing my
Speaker 2: guitar teacher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doing like a Brahm and upper krusty snow.
Speaker 2: I thought it was more like an Eastern European kind
Speaker 2: of as if maybe he was Russian or something. That's
Speaker 2: what I got out of it.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought he was doing an impression of William Daniels,
Speaker 1: the voice of Kit.
Speaker 2: Not at all, Not at all, but but not. I
Speaker 2: really love Ralph Macchio in this. I like everybody in
Speaker 2: this really, there's I can't point to. There's only one
Speaker 2: aspect of his performance that bugs me even now after
Speaker 2: all these years. And there's a few geeky guitar type things.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, boy, we're gonna disagree fundamentally about a lot
Speaker 1: of things in this movie.
Speaker 2: It seems we might, we just might.
Speaker 1: This is a Walter Hill film. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any better action director at that time. I think there
Speaker 1: are better action directors now. I certainly think action films
Speaker 1: have come up to his level in some regards, but
Speaker 1: none will ever come up to the level of macho
Speaker 1: masculinity that Walter Hill was always striving for. And of
Speaker 1: course he's just trying to get up to the level
Speaker 1: of Sam Peckinpah, which I don't think he ever quite achieved.
Speaker 1: But man, he tried really hard, and in some cases
Speaker 1: that meant stepping away from action and doing a movie
Speaker 1: like this, which he's the perfect guy to do it.
Speaker 1: And I don't really see the downside to his direction
Speaker 1: here at all.
Speaker 2: I don't either. The remarkable thing for me, and doing
Speaker 2: more research on this is I did not realize that
Speaker 2: this was an R rated movie, and for the life
Speaker 2: of me, Father Malone, I can't figure out on what
Speaker 2: basis it was rated.
Speaker 1: Are they say fuck a lot?
Speaker 2: I guess they do. It just seems rather tame compared
Speaker 2: to what you can do nowadays. But it's certainly not
Speaker 2: a violent movie. It's not sexually explicit, but I guess
Speaker 2: for on the basis of language alone, I guess I
Speaker 2: could see that, but it seems a little unfair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It's not like anyone was going to
Speaker 1: be damaged by watching this mild tale of a boy
Speaker 1: checking or rescuing an old man from a nursing home
Speaker 1: and helping him get back to his home before he dies,
Speaker 1: or possibly preventing that.
Speaker 2: But I think if we're gonna dig into this I
Speaker 2: think the first thing we need to talk about is,
Speaker 2: let's talk about the screenwriter, John Fussco.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 2: I don't know I'm gonna call him. Let's go fuse
Speaker 2: go is probably.
Speaker 1: I'm going I continue to call him Feusco. If I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I apologize, mister Fusco.
Speaker 2: And I apologize. I apologize, right So let Fusco now
Speaker 2: this he was enrolled at was at NYU. He was
Speaker 2: He was on the screenwriting track at NYU, and this
Speaker 2: was his master's thesis, this screenplay. Now he was. He
Speaker 2: was a blues musician. He was somebody who I think
Speaker 2: he played guitar, and from what I have read, he
Speaker 2: was told by his doctor that he had to take
Speaker 2: some time off from singing because he had damaged his
Speaker 2: vocal cords or something. And in the meantime, he was
Speaker 2: taking time off from playing music. And his girlfriend worked
Speaker 2: at a nursing home and she said there was an
Speaker 2: old African American fellow there who played harmonica, and this
Speaker 2: inspired Fusco Fusco, excuse me to start writing this screenplay,
Speaker 2: and eventually I think he sold it for something like
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty grand, which I would guess in
Speaker 2: eighty six eighty five was that's a lot. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of money anyway, but it's probably way more about
Speaker 2: half a million.
Speaker 1: Now, that's a huge sum man.
Speaker 2: But let me ask you, father Malone, this is yes,
Speaker 2: this is really a rhetorical question. What else would we
Speaker 2: know John Fusco from.
Speaker 1: I know that I certainly know him from Young Guns
Speaker 1: and Young Guns two in particular. Now, ye, you say
Speaker 1: the names of those movies and people just brush them off.
Speaker 1: Soh the Brent Packwestern AHAs, and that's silly, is not fun.
Speaker 1: They're trying to play cowboys and shit right, And I
Speaker 1: to a degree, I agree with that for the first film,
Speaker 1: because it does feel a little stunt castie. Look at
Speaker 1: all these young studs out there riding and roping and
Speaker 1: on the range. The second film, however, which is the
Speaker 1: actual story of Billy the Kid, and Pat Garrett is
Speaker 1: my favorite cinematic interpretation of their story, and I am
Speaker 1: fully aware of Peck and Pom's Pat Garrett and Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid's existence. I've seen it in the theater. I've
Speaker 1: seen the extended cut. I love the movie. I listened
Speaker 1: to the soundtrack just the other day. Young Guns two
Speaker 1: is a better presentation of that story between those two guys,
Speaker 1: and John Fusco's script is the fucking reason why it
Speaker 1: is so well researched. It throws off a historical fact
Speaker 1: with a plome like. It's very economical, giving you all
Speaker 1: the facts of those two guys' lives while never ceasing
Speaker 1: to be a rip roaring, fucking action movie. It's the
Speaker 1: rarest of films.
Speaker 2: I love Young Guns too, Love. I enjoyed the first one,
Speaker 2: but like you, I fucking loved the second one. I
Speaker 2: saw it in the theater. I'm I'm no student of
Speaker 2: Western cinema. I will admit that, so I'm sure that
Speaker 2: there's probably it's somewhat derivative of other movies that came
Speaker 2: before it. But to your point, I think it's so
Speaker 2: economically written, and it's for it being another in this
Speaker 2: sort of brat pack type Western movies you had the
Speaker 2: balls to have they all died. They it would have
Speaker 2: been so easy for them to set it up for
Speaker 2: another sequel because these stars were all hot. They could
Speaker 2: have probably made another few of these movies. But yet
Speaker 2: everyone died. They're not presented glamorously at all. It's a
Speaker 2: fantastic But we're not here to talk about young guns too.
Speaker 2: But I am here to say.
Speaker 1: We're talking about John Fiusco and this is one of
Speaker 1: his things, So I.
Speaker 2: Love it, So I'm you know, I'm a fan of
Speaker 2: his work, and I was surprised when I don't remember
Speaker 2: when I learned this, but to learn that he wrote Crossroads,
Speaker 2: which is one of my all time favorites. In addition,
Speaker 2: was really cool to learn.
Speaker 1: And what it is a really good script. I have
Speaker 1: some problems with it. It feels a bit like a
Speaker 1: first screenplay to me, but I do love when you
Speaker 1: hear someone's master's thesis goes immediately to film. The other
Speaker 1: one that immediately springs to mind is what's his name?
Speaker 1: Gregory Widen was the name of that screenwriter and then,
Speaker 1: which is funny because he had been a firefighter and
Speaker 1: would eventually write the screenplay for backdraft. You would think
Speaker 1: that would have been his lead.
Speaker 2: Off back because that's what he knows best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you know, it is No, I think my
Speaker 1: first greenplay will be about immortals fighting with swords in
Speaker 1: New York City in the modern times.
Speaker 2: And yet that's what will That's what is, That's what
Speaker 2: he's best known for. That is what has given him
Speaker 2: that cult status. Right, they're even still talking about remaking
Speaker 2: Highlander even now forty years later. It could be a
Speaker 2: very good thing and a very bad thing. We'll have
Speaker 2: to say.
Speaker 1: I'm cautiously optimistic. Henry Cavill as the Highlander. I'm okay
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 2: Oh, he's got I like Henry Cavill because he feels
Speaker 2: like a geek that was just born into this Adonnis
Speaker 2: type body. I think his heart's in the right place,
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: And we'll finally hear Connor MacLeod do a proper Scottish accent.
Speaker 2: If I'm looking at this movie with a bit more
Speaker 2: of a critical eye towards theme, one could look at
Speaker 2: this and see this as an example of just some
Speaker 2: white kid who's got to come in and be the
Speaker 2: savior for an African American and need I don't subscribe
Speaker 2: to that point of view. I think it's just a
Speaker 2: good story. But I could see somebody looking at this saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe not the best look. But if no other reason,
Speaker 2: this was made in nineteen eighty five, eighty six. I
Speaker 2: think I'm going to give it a pass. I'm not
Speaker 2: about to cancel this because I think maybe thematically there's
Speaker 2: some hinky stuff to our modern day eyes. But I
Speaker 2: just had to put that out there because it is
Speaker 2: something that you could probably dig into if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: Here's the last thing I'll say about John Fisco. He
Speaker 1: had a movie in twenty nineteen called The Highwaymen with
Speaker 1: Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson, about these two Texas Rangers
Speaker 1: who are hunting down Bonnie and Clyde, which is also
Speaker 1: really great. So everyone checked that out. Now to the
Speaker 1: white savior point you were making, Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: thought when I saw this movie. I saw this movie
Speaker 1: in the theater, by the way, because I mentioned it.
Speaker 1: Walter Hill is one of my all time favorite filmmakers.
Speaker 1: Walter Hill directed The Warriors, he directed Forty eight Hours,
Speaker 1: he directed he'd eventually direct Deadwood when that came out.
Speaker 1: He did another forty eight hours. That's a great one too.
Speaker 1: No it's not, it's terrible.
Speaker 2: Oh it's not.
Speaker 1: Anyway, he is a favorite of mine, and of course
Speaker 1: any new film of his I was going to go see,
Speaker 1: so it was definitely involved in this. Now, okay, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's before we head further into this, let's
Speaker 1: just talk about the music for a moment, because the
Speaker 1: music in this film nominally is composed by Ry Cooter,
Speaker 1: and he is a frequent Walter Hill collaborator, starting back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty I think was Southern Comfort and everything
Speaker 1: up until I want to say maybe Geronimo. He did
Speaker 1: all of his scores. Now, Ry Cooter is a legendary
Speaker 1: Los Angeles session musician and a renowned bluesman. I think
Speaker 1: the first album of his I bought was The Slide Area.
Speaker 1: It's from nineteen eighty one, which is all pedal steel
Speaker 1: and very reminiscent of what we're going to get here.
Speaker 1: Of course, I wouldn't have known to go buy any
Speaker 1: of his stuff until after this movie came out, But
Speaker 1: I think this movie is what sort of cemented in
Speaker 1: my mind that this is his musician. This is Walter
Speaker 1: Hill's guide to go to guy and to look further
Speaker 1: into him. Fine, when we'll get to raycot fun before that,
Speaker 1: would you or would you not agree that the majority
Speaker 1: of white suburban America's introduction to the blues are thanks
Speaker 1: to mister Dan Ackroyd and John Belugi.
Speaker 2: Unquestionably, we were indoctrinated when we were so young, father Malone,
Speaker 2: watching The Blues Brothers the movie. So many great R
Speaker 2: and B and blues musicians in that and we didn't
Speaker 2: know it wasn't I didn't know who Ray Charles or
Speaker 2: James Brown or any of these people.
Speaker 1: Were, or John Lee Hooker or John.
Speaker 2: Lee Hooker is He's the best example. He's somebody I
Speaker 2: mean who I mean. At least James Brown was known
Speaker 2: as this towering R and B figure, But John Lee
Speaker 2: Hooker was always on the cusp of just being a
Speaker 2: bit unknown. But hearing Boogie Chilling on the radio there
Speaker 2: and seeing him perform in the streets of Chicago.
Speaker 1: I love that talta glad that take it like that?
Speaker 2: How that was certainly my first exposure to the quote
Speaker 2: unquote real blues and not something that was like white
Speaker 2: blues appropriated from England in the sixties.
Speaker 1: So there is a current of resurgence of the Blues
Speaker 1: going on around this time period anyway, And I think
Speaker 1: if there's a if there's a filmmaker who would have
Speaker 1: the Wherewithal the ghett a movie made about the Blues,
Speaker 1: it would be Walter Hill at this time, and also
Speaker 1: the juice to get it made at this time. Although
Speaker 1: I'm a little confused because he had just had Streets
Speaker 1: of Fire, which was a terrible, horrible failure of a
Speaker 1: film financially. I love that movie.
Speaker 2: Crossroads wasn't like the last movie that he made that
Speaker 2: was a big budget studio movie. I'm looking at his IMDb.
Speaker 2: He did remember Trespass with Iced t Oh yeah, he did.
Speaker 2: Johnny Hansome, Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 1: And you know what what's funny is when you mentioned
Speaker 1: those movies to me, the first thing that comes to
Speaker 1: mind is the grinding guitar scores by Ry Cooter.
Speaker 2: Right. I think for me, the last sort of big
Speaker 2: budget studio picture that I remember him making was probably
Speaker 2: Last Man Standing, which was that the Bruce Willis. I
Speaker 2: think it was like a remake of was it.
Speaker 1: First Fistful of Dollars? Yo Jimbo and now Jimbo?
Speaker 2: Yes, But after that, I think he started moving into
Speaker 2: a little bit more TV. He did still get undisputed
Speaker 2: with ving Rains and a few other things.
Speaker 1: But you know about that Yo Jimbo thing. Ya Jimbo
Speaker 1: is an unofficial adaptation of The Glass Key by Dashal Hammett, right,
Speaker 1: which is a gangster movie. I did not know that
Speaker 1: gangster novel. Right, So he makes you Jimbo, turns it
Speaker 1: into a samurai film, and then the Anion Maraconi, not
Speaker 1: any of Macaroni, fucking what's his name?
Speaker 2: Oh oh, Sergiolioni.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so then Sergioleni says, hey, that samurai thing, that
Speaker 1: would make a good Western and turns it into a Western.
Speaker 1: And then Walter Hill says, hey, you know that western
Speaker 1: that'd make a good gangster film.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like a game of telephone where it just
Speaker 2: keeps getting pulled away from the ear.
Speaker 1: It is because that original book it takes place in
Speaker 1: like Chicago or something like that. It's just a normal
Speaker 1: town that this gang war is taking place. And by
Speaker 1: the time it gets to Waldo Hills, fim, it's like
Speaker 1: this post apocalyptic like border town where there's nothing but gangsters.
Speaker 2: So Ralph Maccio's guitar coach for this movie was a
Speaker 2: guy named Arlen Roth. Okay, Arlon Roth, I believe can
Speaker 2: lay claim to being the first sort of guitar guy
Speaker 2: who put out a series of like VHS lessons like
Speaker 2: hot Licks or something. It was called right, So he
Speaker 2: ostensibly taught Ralf Maccio, if not how to play the music,
Speaker 2: at least how to mime it as good as he
Speaker 2: could do it. So it's my understanding. Although obviously ry
Speaker 2: Cooter is credited as the guy did the soundtrack, it's
Speaker 2: my understanding that a lot of the slide guitar stuff
Speaker 2: that you hear, the stuff that Eugene plays throughout the movie,
Speaker 2: a lot of that, A good portion of that is
Speaker 2: actually Arlen Roth playing the music. But for some odd
Speaker 2: reason that I no one ever, no one seems to
Speaker 2: really know or convey. Arlen Roth's credit on Crossroads is
Speaker 2: all but xcized. He's not credited anywhere in the music credits.
Speaker 2: I don't believe he may have a credit somewhere for
Speaker 2: guitar teacher or something. But I do want to say
Speaker 2: I want to make sure credit is given where credit
Speaker 2: is due. I do believe that I'm not going to
Speaker 2: sit here and say that Arlon Roth did everything, but
Speaker 2: I think he did a lot more that he's credited
Speaker 2: for doing, which is zero. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 1: Do we have any idea of what particularly is his
Speaker 1: in the film or on the soundtral.
Speaker 2: No, we don't, that's the thing. It's it all. We don't,
Speaker 2: and I don't. Frankly, I don't know enough about either
Speaker 2: man's style to be able to go, oh, that's definitely
Speaker 2: ry Cooter and that's definitely Arlen Roth. But I do
Speaker 2: know that Arlin Roth was on set. He was, like
Speaker 2: I said, he was Ralph Macchio's guitar coach for the
Speaker 2: duration of the picture, and for some reason he wasn't
Speaker 2: given credit, and I don't really don't know why. He
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to know why either.
Speaker 1: In interviews, I couldn't tell you off the top of
Speaker 1: my head any differentiations between guitarists and styles. But I
Speaker 1: could tell you when ry Cooter is playing, I know
Speaker 1: his style at least that well. Man has thirty albums
Speaker 1: and I have too many of them.
Speaker 2: He's a legend. He played on probably one of my
Speaker 2: favorite Monkeys tracks, which is off of the album head.
Speaker 2: It's called as We Go All Along it's not he's
Speaker 2: not necessarily like doing a showy solo, but he's part
Speaker 2: of that track. He's part of the vibe, and I
Speaker 2: think it's an amazing song and his playing is wonderful.
Speaker 5: Oh give up your secrets, let down, He's sit with me.
Speaker 1: There has to be a movie made about the sixties
Speaker 1: session musicians in Los Angeles, maybe a TV series on Netflix.
Speaker 2: There's all sorts of because these are musicians that really
Speaker 2: didn't get much credit. I know there was a Wrecking
Speaker 2: Crew documentary, and there was a documentary about the session
Speaker 2: musicians from the seventies that played on, like James Taylor
Speaker 2: and all these other Linda Ronstadt, So there must be
Speaker 2: some sort of fictionalized take on that would be really interesting.
Speaker 2: I would see it.
Speaker 1: Me too, man, I'd watch the fuck out of that,
Speaker 1: just like I would watch Crossroads anytime.
Speaker 2: That's right, I would too. So that the music's pretty
Speaker 2: well covered there. The only what's a little jarring now
Speaker 2: when you listen to it is there's a lot of
Speaker 2: Eighties noess, it's blues. You're hearing mostly just blues through
Speaker 2: the whole picture, but it's that eighties blues with the
Speaker 2: sort of reverb laden drums, a lot of chorus on
Speaker 2: the guitars and everything. There's just a sound. There's an
Speaker 2: ineffable quality to eighties music, including eighties blues music, that
Speaker 2: is all over this and it if nothing else, it
Speaker 2: dates this movie immediately.
Speaker 1: It's not exactly the sound of Delta Blues.
Speaker 2: No, not in the but it works because these are
Speaker 2: really good musicians. Because ry Cooter is amazing. He's a
Speaker 2: tremendous slide player. So it's a lot of that's forgiven.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's it's it's a little dated.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's my two cents about the white Savior thing.
Speaker 1: By the way, Yeah, this character should be black. There's
Speaker 1: just no question that this should be a young black
Speaker 1: man who in the middle of the nineteen eighties when
Speaker 1: popular culture everything was R and B and or hip hop.
Speaker 1: To have a young black character like going back through
Speaker 1: his roots even though he's Okay, Now, that makes it
Speaker 1: even trickier because my other problem can be found at
Speaker 1: the end of the movie during the cut and head sequence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so maybe we'll revisit this particular topic, the white
Speaker 1: savior topic, because I don't have a problem with white
Speaker 1: the white savior. It doesn't have to be a white savior.
Speaker 1: It can be just an interested character who is a
Speaker 1: total outsider, and the outsider helps facilitate the thing from
Speaker 1: the community that he's not part of. That's fine by me.
Speaker 2: But to the movie's credit, to Fusco's credit, there's a
Speaker 2: scene where Eugene they find Eugene is finally exposed Willie
Speaker 2: Brown for being this legendary blues man, and he has
Speaker 2: sprung this idea on him that you'll teach me this
Speaker 2: song and then we'll take it and we'll you know.
Speaker 2: And one of the things Willy Brown says is he
Speaker 2: basically says, you're just like every other white guy. You're
Speaker 2: just going to take the music and you're going to
Speaker 2: make it, you know, its own thing. I you know.
Speaker 2: And that's that's true. That's exactly it would be, basically
Speaker 2: be appropriated by a white guy taking it away. It's
Speaker 2: cultural appropriation. That's exactly what it is. And at least
Speaker 2: in that moment, the screenplay seems to be aware of
Speaker 2: that the danger there.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even allude to it. Like Eugene says, just
Speaker 1: like clamped in.
Speaker 2: With Crossroads, Yeah, that's what he says, Just.
Speaker 1: Like appen with the Crossroads, I'll be able to and which,
Speaker 1: by the way, if Willie Brown here is making his
Speaker 1: point and he does he say no, he just says
Speaker 1: another white boy, right, But we've already he just white.
Speaker 1: They've already planted fucking Clapton's name in my mind. And
Speaker 1: that's all I think when I think of Eric Clapton,
Speaker 1: when I hear that fucking Crossroad song come on the
Speaker 1: radio or something, I'm just like, you, fucking thief, you
Speaker 1: shot the sheriff. Fuck you.
Speaker 2: I'm not such a fan of Clapton anyway.
Speaker 1: He's a racist piece of shit.
Speaker 2: That's exactly why he's a racist. I don't care if
Speaker 2: he was smacked out and maybe that he said those things.
Speaker 2: There's no going back from that.
Speaker 1: And I and he said those things multiple times on
Speaker 1: multiple okays. Oh it was the drink talking. It was
Speaker 1: the drugs talking. It was him talking. I've never been
Speaker 1: so drunk that I've suddenly become a racist.
Speaker 2: I totally agree, to be honest. Like his music, I
Speaker 2: was never that thrilled by it, just on a on
Speaker 2: a musical level, put aside all the other stuff. I
Speaker 2: just I never really got the Clapton god stuff. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm just willfully ignorant of the man's place in music.
Speaker 2: I don't think I am. I think I know a
Speaker 2: little bit, but it was.
Speaker 1: Never you know what he was at the same time
Speaker 1: as Jimmy Page and Jimmy Hendrix. Go fuck yourself with worship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's Alvin Lead, you could the list goes on.
Speaker 2: There's a million, Rory Gallagher. The man is the king
Speaker 2: of the blues and he was an irishman. Get the
Speaker 2: fuck out of here. There's ways to do it. There's
Speaker 2: an authentic way to do it, and I'm I don't
Speaker 2: know how authentic Clapton is ultimately, And now watch all
Speaker 2: this hate mail is going to come in for you,
Speaker 2: all these listeners going, what are you talking about? It?
Speaker 2: Clipton's God.
Speaker 1: Anyway, they'd be wrong, but then we'd both be wrong.
Speaker 2: This is true. Yeah, so he's so. But what one
Speaker 2: thing I want to a slight correction, and this is
Speaker 2: important to the story, I think is you had mentioned
Speaker 2: Eugene Springs Willie Brown from this rest home of this
Speaker 2: nursing home, but it's really not a nursing home. Father
Speaker 2: Malone in actual fact is he's basically in prison. He's
Speaker 2: been in prison for something like twenty years, twenty five
Speaker 2: years up to that point. We're shooting a man, so
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily that he's this cuddly. It's not cocoon
Speaker 2: where he's getting busted out of a nursing home. That
Speaker 2: the man admitted that he shot someone in the neck.
Speaker 2: So I like that about this. Willie Brown isn't some
Speaker 2: saint who's gonna who needs to be rescued from all
Speaker 2: of this sort of stuff going on. The man shot somebody,
Speaker 2: will fully shot somebody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Willie Brown is a fully functioning character, definitely. And yes,
Speaker 1: obviously I made it seem like it was cocoon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he played that up a little bit. When there's
Speaker 2: that sequence where they actually spring him where Eugene comes.
Speaker 1: And nobody cares.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing. He springs him from this prison,
Speaker 2: He breaks him out of jail effectively, and I know
Speaker 2: it's a nursing home, but it's jail, and they proceed
Speaker 2: to do nothing about it. No one ever tries to
Speaker 2: find Willy. No one puts out an APB on a
Speaker 2: kid and an old black man on the run. That's it.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're just happy that Willy's his hair out of
Speaker 2: their hair. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's what I liked about that sequence, the utter lack
Speaker 1: of magnitude of the actual event.
Speaker 2: It's funny because they make their way to this cab
Speaker 2: that Eugene has left waiting outside, and a cop car
Speaker 2: starts screaming towards them with lights and sirens blaring, and
Speaker 2: Eugene freezes because he says to himself, well, this is it.
Speaker 2: The jig is up, and then the cop cary just
Speaker 2: proceeds to keep going down the road wherever it's actually going,
Speaker 2: whatever call it's attending to. They don't care about Willy
Speaker 2: Brown now.
Speaker 1: So Eugene is springing Willy Brown because he's gonna WILLI.
Speaker 1: Brown has promised if he gets him out and gets
Speaker 1: him back down south to Mississippi, he will reveal the
Speaker 1: thirtieth Missing song from Robert Johnson, and that is just
Speaker 1: so tantalizing. But speaking of Robert Johnson, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the opening scene. If we get tu Voc.
Speaker 2: The vulcan is he one of the engineers.
Speaker 1: On no On voyage And here he's Robert Johnson making
Speaker 1: a deal with the Oh I.
Speaker 2: Thought you were talking about one of the Okay, I
Speaker 2: was thinking of not Tuvac. Who is the guy who
Speaker 2: is Spock's brother, Lawrence Luckinbill Lauren.
Speaker 1: Big characters there, Cybock, Cybox, There you go, Spock. What's
Speaker 1: going on there on Vulcans?
Speaker 2: So, yeah, So he's playing Robert Johnson performing Crossroads at
Speaker 2: the very beginning of the picture.
Speaker 1: Now we never get to see Robert Johnson interact with
Speaker 1: the devil. It's just hinted at. And they're going to
Speaker 1: keep playing at that through a lot of the movie.
Speaker 1: This Every time we get to one of these flashbacks,
Speaker 1: it's it's cpa tone haziness, like he's trying to recreate
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight Mississippi in the best way possible. I'm
Speaker 1: surprised he didn't resort to skipping film and stepping on
Speaker 1: it and adding scratches to it. I guess he just
Speaker 1: didn't want to go that far. But I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. Yeah, I have a music question for you.
Speaker 1: It's about the debate, the Robert Johnson sped up slowed
Speaker 1: it down debate.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because I was
Speaker 2: prepared to if you didn't go for it.
Speaker 1: So there is a popular theory that during the recording
Speaker 1: of Robert Johnson's songs. The machine itself was sped up
Speaker 1: or sped or under cranked by something like twenty percent.
Speaker 1: So if you take his songs and speed them up,
Speaker 1: you get a jauntier version. And the only thing that
Speaker 1: gives it credence is it sounds good. Either way. It's
Speaker 1: a little the guitar playing is a little worse in
Speaker 1: the sped up version. It sounds like he's making mistakes,
Speaker 1: but it does sound credible. So I to get your
Speaker 1: take on it, because I have mine. And so there
Speaker 1: are people who believe that's the case and there are
Speaker 1: people who don't. And I think, ultimately, whether or not
Speaker 1: it's true or not, we're still going to continue listening
Speaker 1: to those original recordings of Robert Johnson.
Speaker 2: Sure from believe I actually I believe that they were
Speaker 2: recorded slowly. The commonly held theory, one of the commonly
Speaker 2: held theories is they did that so that they could
Speaker 2: fit more music on a record, on a seventy eight
Speaker 2: rpm record, right, So they had the music when recorded
Speaker 2: sped up so he could fit more. By all accounts,
Speaker 2: Robert Johnson had a low resonant voice, and anyone who
Speaker 2: listens to a song like the original Crossroads, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a high keening. It's like an upper register.
Speaker 2: It's hard to really explain. I've heard the YouTube videos
Speaker 2: of people that have slowed it down by a factor
Speaker 2: of twenty percent like you describe, and I think it
Speaker 2: sounds much more. It sounds much more like musical to me.
Speaker 2: It just sounds less frantic, less ad and noidal, because
Speaker 2: that's a technique that people used to use to make
Speaker 2: someone sound younger, like the song Caroline Know by the
Speaker 2: Beach Boys that was actually sped up a little bit too.
Speaker 2: They just turned the ips switch up a little bit
Speaker 2: to make him sound younger. So that's not why they
Speaker 2: did this to Robert Johnson. But I think when you
Speaker 2: listen to it slowed down, I think it's a much
Speaker 2: more credible and listenable performance personally. But what do you think?
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're saying that his songs were recorded and
Speaker 1: then in a kind of post production situation, they were
Speaker 1: shortened or slowed down or sped up.
Speaker 2: No, I think when they were being recorded, they were
Speaker 2: recorded at a slightly slower speed, so when you play
Speaker 2: them back, they play back naturally faster.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they would have to fiddle with the machine itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, either deliberately. But it's also probably just as likely
Speaker 2: that these machines aren't precision calibrated machines. They were being
Speaker 2: recorded essentially in like a hotel, like in a room.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like they were in a recording studio per se.
Speaker 1: That machine had been carted there and probably rolled across
Speaker 1: things and carried upstairs and dropped and who knows.
Speaker 2: So it's also possible that this whole theory that they
Speaker 2: were trying to fit more music on a record is bullshit.
Speaker 2: It could just be that the equipment wasn't properly calibrated,
Speaker 2: or it just recorded slower so when he played it back,
Speaker 2: they didn't know that. It's not like they're sitting there
Speaker 2: with a tuning fork saying, oh, this is at four
Speaker 2: forty hertz. This is perfect because I also have heard
Speaker 2: that some songs are more likely to be sped up
Speaker 2: than others, Like it's not a universe versal across this
Speaker 2: whole catalog. So it's a very mysterious question that you're posing.
Speaker 1: Now. I've heard that the entire catalog of songs was
Speaker 1: recorded on two machines. The theory is, or at least
Speaker 1: the counter theory is that it could not have been
Speaker 1: the machine's fall. It couldn't have been a mistake because
Speaker 1: the mistake wouldn't have crossed over from machine to machine.
Speaker 1: It couldn't have glitched twice to twenty percent. However, if
Speaker 1: they were doing it there on the day to each
Speaker 1: machine and actually fiddling and making it slower than that
Speaker 1: theory is plausible.
Speaker 2: Could be I just know for me, actually, after watching Crossroads,
Speaker 2: I went out and got the same Robert Johnson cassette
Speaker 2: that Eugene plays in the picture with it's like this
Speaker 2: sort of cartoonish image of Robert Johnson's back as he's playing.
Speaker 2: But partly because I don't I just don't think I was.
Speaker 2: My mind wasn't calibrated to really understand this music. I
Speaker 2: didn't like it because it just, I don't know, it
Speaker 2: was a little frantic. It wasn't quite as. It wasn't
Speaker 2: like I was like Robert Sorry John Lee Hooker. That
Speaker 2: to me is classic blues, right low voice, nothing but
Speaker 2: the guitar and his foot tapping, and it took its time.
Speaker 2: It wasn't frantic, Whereas I found the Robert Johnson stuff
Speaker 2: a little more hyper to listen back to.
Speaker 1: John Lee Hooker's Burning Hell is the greatest blues album
Speaker 1: of all time. Ripley agrees with me. She just barked.
Speaker 2: Really, I would agree with you there too. The man
Speaker 2: is a giant. He lived it.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I fall. I like the idea
Speaker 1: because it sounds so natural when you listen to the
Speaker 1: sped up Robert Johnson vocals, and now obviously you're going
Speaker 1: to listen to them here, folks, here's the original.
Speaker 5: Don Blues.
Speaker 4: And A Day Keep doing on Me, the hell alm
Speaker 4: trees kill are.
Speaker 1: Killed, Okay, And now here's the sped up version.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm falling down a boo falling down kill.
Speaker 4: And a day Keep on on Me the hell hag
Speaker 4: almores kill.
Speaker 6: Kill.
Speaker 2: Both are pretty credible, right, But I think the slower one,
Speaker 2: I think just sounds more natural to me.
Speaker 1: I know, but I'm just so used to the other
Speaker 1: one that it just sounds like somebody covering crossroads and
Speaker 1: they just have a they tap their toe a little
Speaker 1: bit faster.
Speaker 2: If only Bill and Ted went back in time to
Speaker 2: the Mississippi Delta and they brought Robert Johnson back instead
Speaker 2: of Beethoven, maybe we'd have an answer to this question.
Speaker 1: Father. That's true. If somebody could check with Ulysses McGill
Speaker 1: from Oh Brother were Artho. They basically meet Robert Johnson
Speaker 1: at the end of that movie too out on the Crossroad.
Speaker 1: He might have the answers there. He didn't sound sped
Speaker 1: up there, No.
Speaker 2: But I that's I can point to Crossroads as being
Speaker 2: the thing that kind of I was inspired to seek
Speaker 2: out Robert Johnson. It just didn't stick because I just
Speaker 2: couldn't get into the music. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 2: but the man is I can say just he was
Speaker 2: an amazing guitar player. I wish I could play slide
Speaker 2: guitar like he did amazing.
Speaker 1: Do you play slide guitar?
Speaker 2: No, I could never. It's the tricky part about slide guitar, father, alone,
Speaker 2: is that normally, when you're playing, when you're fretting the notes,
Speaker 2: you're putting your finger between two frets, whereas with a
Speaker 2: slide you're only you're resting the slide itself on the
Speaker 2: upper part of the fret itself, on the piece of
Speaker 2: fret wire, so not in between the threts, on the
Speaker 2: thread itself, over the thread itself. I also believe that
Speaker 2: you have to tune your guitar in what's called open tuning.
Speaker 2: I think it's open G so that when you lay
Speaker 2: that slide over the whole of the strings, it plays
Speaker 2: a chord. Because normally you're making a chord by crunching
Speaker 2: your fingers in all sorts of interesting ways. But if
Speaker 2: the whole guitar is tuned to an open G chord,
Speaker 2: you just lay that. It's easy. You can play any
Speaker 2: chord anywhere on the fretboard with one finger basically.
Speaker 1: So what's your trouble.
Speaker 2: I just it's hard for me to recalibrate my fingers.
Speaker 2: I haven't tried it in many years, to be fair,
Speaker 2: but I just I had trouble recalibrating my brain to
Speaker 2: play it as opposed to just fretting the notes normally.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's just and to be honest, I
Speaker 2: didn't spend a great of time trying to learn. But
Speaker 2: it's cool someone who does it well, like ry Cooter.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing sound.
Speaker 1: By the end of this podcast, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to play some slide guitar for I.
Speaker 2: Think a lot of people were inspired by this movie
Speaker 2: to delve into the Blues, and that's probably one of
Speaker 2: the very good things about this movie, if nothing else.
Speaker 1: I agree any of these nineteen eighties movies that were
Speaker 1: urging anyone toward any sort of artistic area that they
Speaker 1: might not have been exposed to. It's it. Look, I'm
Speaker 1: going to sound real old here, but there was a
Speaker 1: pre internet time and exposure to any other culture was welcome,
Speaker 1: even if it was even if it was freighted with
Speaker 1: a with the white savior like Lawrence of Arabia is
Speaker 1: just a bunch of white people out there in the
Speaker 1: desert pretending that they're Bedouins and such. But at least
Speaker 1: we got to see that culture in some way, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like it's I don't know, it
Speaker 1: just feels like we were cut off from the world
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. So having this entree into
Speaker 1: the blues beyond the Blues Brothers, which is a total fantasy,
Speaker 1: at least, look, this is not in any way reality,
Speaker 1: but at least we're getting a look at the actual
Speaker 1: blues people or their lifestyle and what it was like
Speaker 1: for them. Because we do get vignettes of what it's
Speaker 1: like being a bluesman on the road in the South
Speaker 1: kind of should have made this a period piece in
Speaker 1: like nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: Well, the whole legend of Robert Johnson going down to
Speaker 2: the crossroads and making a deal with the devil. To me,
Speaker 2: as a thirteen year old kid and probably a lot
Speaker 2: of people, that's a very for lack of a better word,
Speaker 2: that's a very alluring tale. That's you, you know, you're
Speaker 2: drawn to that. That just I remember I heard the
Speaker 2: same thing about Jimmy Page and led Zeppelin, like they
Speaker 2: made a deal and you could back they had back
Speaker 2: masking with devil messages and all this nonsense. I love
Speaker 2: the fact that this movie takes that legend as its
Speaker 2: starting point because Robert Johnson was a real person, and
Speaker 2: that was a real legend surrounding the man that he
Speaker 2: went down to this crossroads in the Delta and became
Speaker 2: he sold his soul to the devil. I think that's
Speaker 2: what a great starting point for kind of a fantasy
Speaker 2: about this kid going down and helping this old man
Speaker 2: steal his soul back. I think it's great.
Speaker 1: It's a legend just tailor made for cinematic adaptation. Here's
Speaker 1: this great music, here's this great legend. All of that happened,
Speaker 1: by the way, and now you can do whatever we
Speaker 1: want with it. Also, it wasn't that long ago, so
Speaker 1: one of our leads can be the contemporary of Robert Johnson.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to think about this, Like when this movie
Speaker 1: takes place, it was fifty years prior.
Speaker 2: You think about fifty years ago that was.
Speaker 1: It was seventy five. Man, Yeah, it was like SNL
Speaker 1: was on the air. It's inane.
Speaker 2: It is when you're a kid, especially, fifty years might
Speaker 2: as well be one hundred and fifty. But as you
Speaker 2: and I age, that's we realize that's an eyeblink. That's
Speaker 2: not long ago at all.
Speaker 1: This would be like breaking dan Ackroyd out of the
Speaker 1: SNL nursing home to get him to down South where
Speaker 1: he can be a blues brother. Again, Like it's that's apt.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, just as far as like how long ago
Speaker 1: it was, Like you know, there are people seeing this
Speaker 1: movie who could potentially knew Robert Johnson.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was. It really wasn't that long ago. The
Speaker 2: movie makes it feel like it's ages and ages ago
Speaker 2: because he always goes to that CPA, Like you said,
Speaker 2: that CPA tone look in the tac piano playing blues
Speaker 2: chords in the background. But I but by the way,
Speaker 2: I really like those little interstecial or not interstitials, but
Speaker 2: I like those little interludes in the movie where you
Speaker 2: see Willie Brown dealing with the Devil's assistant.
Speaker 1: And it's why are those scenes so good? HB Why
Speaker 1: are they so?
Speaker 2: I just think they're so they're cinematic. I don't know
Speaker 2: it just it they feel heightened in a way, and
Speaker 2: I like that about this. It creates this witchiness, for
Speaker 2: lack of a better word term, about this whole because
Speaker 2: mostly this movie takes place in very mundane places, like
Speaker 2: a flophouse here, or you know, an old barn here.
Speaker 2: But that's there's the way it's shot too. It's very compelling.
Speaker 2: The crossroads with the one sort of dead looking tree
Speaker 2: off to the side and somebody just standing there waiting
Speaker 2: for the devil to offer them a ride. That's so compelling.
Speaker 2: That's so cool.
Speaker 1: I have two words why those sequences are so good.
Speaker 1: Joe Morton ah As.
Speaker 2: He doesn't really have a name, does he.
Speaker 1: He's just the devil Scratches assistant, That's what I mean.
Speaker 2: He doesn't He's not Legba or scratch. He's just Scratch
Speaker 2: his assistant.
Speaker 1: It should just be the devil. It just should be
Speaker 1: Joe Martin should just be the devil. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that I'm disappointed when the devil shows up, because I'm
Speaker 1: not when Scratch Legma the devil. When he shows up,
Speaker 1: he's fucking awesome.
Speaker 2: He's great.
Speaker 1: It's a little disconcern that we deal specifically with Joe
Speaker 1: Morton for the entirety of the thing, and then in
Speaker 1: the end we get this one guy who we're gonna
Speaker 1: deal with the battle for and we've only just met him.
Speaker 1: So even as great as he is, it's yeah, but
Speaker 1: you're not the guy.
Speaker 2: Joe Morton may as well be the devil, because, like
Speaker 2: you said, he's the one that really interacts with all
Speaker 2: these characters. But yeah, it's he's so derisive and dismissive
Speaker 2: to everyone that he deals with. You would think he
Speaker 2: would if the Devil's gonna come and try to make
Speaker 2: a deal for your soul, he's gonna come with honeyed
Speaker 2: words and all this kind of stuff. But not Scratch
Speaker 2: his assistant. He basically he calls him like like four.
Speaker 1: Eyes and hey, blam ball, come over here.
Speaker 2: What's your name?
Speaker 3: Boy?
Speaker 2: My name Willy Brown. So what you're doing all.
Speaker 1: These gross goods alone? Willy Brown?
Speaker 2: Robert Johnson told me, I can make a deal here,
Speaker 2: a deal with Like. There's nothing cheery or nic or
Speaker 2: welcoming about Scratch's assistant. About Joe Morton, he's like a
Speaker 2: not a nice guy. But what I always thought was
Speaker 2: really cool is so he goes to Willie Brown goes
Speaker 2: to the Crossroads as a young man. It's one of
Speaker 2: those CPS shots, and Joe Morton's character drives up in
Speaker 2: an old nineteen twenties car or something, and he makes
Speaker 2: the deal with him. And then when you flash forward
Speaker 2: and now he's on the crossroads with the Eugene as
Speaker 2: an old man. Joe Morton comes back, only now because
Speaker 2: it's the modern day. He's driving a trans am and
Speaker 2: he's all decked out in modern day. He hasn't aged
Speaker 2: a day, but he's still keeping up with the contemporary
Speaker 2: trends and cars and fashion and all that. I love that.
Speaker 1: And props has blacked out the transam logo from the
Speaker 1: front of the car.
Speaker 2: I noticed, Oh did they do that? It was unmistakable
Speaker 2: for me, just because I've seen a ton of those
Speaker 2: and growing up, But no, it's great. I love those
Speaker 2: sequences at the crossroads. Particularly.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing that I noticed this time watching up
Speaker 1: the second time in the transam. He has a consort,
Speaker 1: a petty little she bitch with him. She should have
Speaker 1: been with him the whole time. She should have shown
Speaker 1: up with him in the thirties and with pin curls.
Speaker 1: She should have always been It would have been great.
Speaker 2: I wondered about that too, because she's so prominent during
Speaker 2: the head cutting scene.
Speaker 1: And that's why I said it, because she's out on
Speaker 1: the floor. She's basically performing the anti Willie Brown's number
Speaker 1: on stage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she should have been there too, in the era
Speaker 2: appropriate fashion in the nineteen she should.
Speaker 1: Be Scratch's assistant. He should be Scratch because the thing
Speaker 1: I liked about Scratch when he finally does show up
Speaker 1: is he is the honeyed word guy. He gets hard
Speaker 1: when he has to, but really he's sweet and welcoming.
Speaker 3: He is.
Speaker 2: But there's one moment that I never really thought about
Speaker 2: until I was rewatching. I probably watched it three times
Speaker 2: over the weekend, father alone, and he's talking with Willy,
Speaker 2: and Willy he basically tries to make a double or
Speaker 2: nothing bet because will he wants his soul back. He
Speaker 2: wants him to tear up the contract.
Speaker 4: Unless you might want to say it in for don't
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 5: So he's my friend.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in any of this shit anyways.
Speaker 4: I say it, don't do it, light Ning, you win,
Speaker 4: I tear it Willis contract. But what happens if my
Speaker 4: man Jack Bloway, you kid me already got you.
Speaker 2: I swear to you, Father Milive. There's something primal in
Speaker 2: his eyes, like it's almost like with all of the
Speaker 2: honeyed words and the smiles and everything, his eyes in
Speaker 2: that moment aren't smiling because he knows he's I already
Speaker 2: got you, Willie, like you give me something more because
Speaker 2: he wants the kid. He wants Eugene's soul also. But
Speaker 2: that's the only moment really where you'd see that mask
Speaker 2: of civility fall a little bit from scratch and you
Speaker 2: see this guy for who he is. It's I don't frankly,
Speaker 2: I don't know much. I think the actor who played
Speaker 2: him was more of a theater actor. He only has
Speaker 2: two three credits in IMDb, and he died shortly after
Speaker 2: this before the movie was released. He died unfortunately stomach cancer.
Speaker 2: But he's phenomenal in this. I love him in this.
Speaker 1: The moment you're describing occurs again in the same scene,
Speaker 1: and that's when Willie Brown begs off that he was
Speaker 1: not given what he was promised. You can tear that
Speaker 1: up and give me some peace.
Speaker 2: Why on earth would I want to do that?
Speaker 3: Are you slept up on your end of things? I
Speaker 3: didn't end up where I wanted.
Speaker 2: I didn't end up with nothing, didn't get nothing. You
Speaker 2: got but you were supposed to get.
Speaker 4: Blues Man ain't nothing ever as good as we wanted
Speaker 4: to be, but that he'd no reason to break a deal.
Speaker 1: I love this guy. I love that actor, So I'm
Speaker 1: happy with him being leg But maybe he should have
Speaker 1: been in the car and Joe Morton should have been
Speaker 1: his sidekick, and Joe Morton could have been cruel and
Speaker 1: mean while the devil's being nice.
Speaker 2: It's, if nothing else, it's an embarrassment of riches, this
Speaker 2: sort of devil in his consorts. It's great leading up.
Speaker 2: I mean that.
Speaker 1: The fact is I like their characters so much, because truly,
Speaker 1: in rewatching this movie, when I was able to identify
Speaker 1: why I what I not liked about the movie finally
Speaker 1: coalesced s HP, and that is our three leads are
Speaker 1: a bunch of pricks. All three leads are insufferable in
Speaker 1: their own ways.
Speaker 2: Now, when you say three leads, you're talking about Eugene,
Speaker 2: you're talking about Willie. Are you talking about Francis also?
Speaker 1: Well, of course I'm talking about missus Jamie Gertz.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they.
Speaker 2: I can excuse Willie Brown. I think it's great that
Speaker 2: they made him a prick, because it would be so
Speaker 2: easy to make him this saintly old man who just
Speaker 2: needs another chance. The fact that he is, I mean,
Speaker 2: he lies to Eugene to break him out of this
Speaker 2: prison essentially, and he's not so nice to Francis when
Speaker 2: he meets, although they do make up at the end.
Speaker 2: But him, I can excuse it. I think it's appropriate
Speaker 2: for him to.
Speaker 1: Be a dick.
Speaker 2: But and I guess, for instance, like she's a runaway,
Speaker 2: why wouldn't she be even bittered?
Speaker 1: And all her character does is get them in trouble
Speaker 1: because she's an amoral nightmare.
Speaker 2: Pretty much pretty much.
Speaker 1: I don't why do you think is an insufferable prick?
Speaker 1: His motivation here is to get famous and then only
Speaker 1: to compaut. He has his one night up on the stage, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is only that situation is manufactured by
Speaker 1: Willie Brown to get you Gene out of trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he blows the moment of triumph there just playing
Speaker 1: guitar passively, and then he turns into a megalmoniacal nightmare.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree with you there after he performs at
Speaker 2: the juke joint, and then he's so wired on the
Speaker 2: adrenaline of performing and doing well. He in that moment
Speaker 2: he is a prick. I agree with you there And.
Speaker 1: The rest of the time he's just complaining about your
Speaker 1: lie to me. Willy, you know where you This is
Speaker 1: all bullshit, Willy, What the fuck? Willy? Where's my fucking song? Willie?
Speaker 1: It's just like he's a nice he says, just a jerk.
Speaker 2: But Willy did lie to him, though, Willy said Willy
Speaker 2: says to him at the beginning, because he says, well,
Speaker 2: how the hell are we gonna get down to Mississippi?
Speaker 2: And Willi says, I got this bank roll right here,
Speaker 2: I've had it forever, and he pulls out a wat
Speaker 2: of bills. Yeah, they make it so Eugene has enough
Speaker 2: money to get them to Memphis. It's still a long
Speaker 2: ways to Mississippi. So he says, all right, give you
Speaker 2: the money, will because Willy says, you get us to Memphis,
Speaker 2: I'll give you the money to get us the rest
Speaker 2: of the way to Yazu City. So he gives him
Speaker 2: the billfold and he even says to Eugene, why don't
Speaker 2: you count it first? And then Eugene counts it and
Speaker 2: it's it's forty dollars with newspaper underneath it rolled up
Speaker 2: to make it look like it's a big wa of cash.
Speaker 2: What would you do in that moment, Father Malone? This
Speaker 2: guy promised, you're already hundreds of miles away from New York.
Speaker 2: You got no fucking money, you got no transportation.
Speaker 1: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: Of course he be pissed.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take four dollars, I'm gonna rent a car,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go back to New York. If his
Speaker 1: reaction is anything but rent a car and go back
Speaker 1: to New York, get on a train, go back to
Speaker 1: New York, take a bus back to New York. If
Speaker 1: his reaction is anything but, then shut the fuck up
Speaker 1: for the rest of the trip. Young Eugene he has
Speaker 1: he look, he does have a valid reason to be
Speaker 1: mad when he finds out there is no song.
Speaker 2: But that's the carrot that will he keeps dangling, like
Speaker 2: it would be easy for him to say, let's.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. He's leading Eugene along with his own
Speaker 1: greed because Eugene just wants that song so he can
Speaker 1: become famous. It's not like I just need to hear
Speaker 1: this one song. Like if that were the case, then
Speaker 1: he should be devastated when there's no song, and.
Speaker 2: I can't argue with that. His motives, Eugene's motives are
Speaker 2: are not so pure. Clearly he wants I think he
Speaker 2: even says this is his shot at entering like the
Speaker 2: Blue breaking into the Blues is this song.
Speaker 1: I will say this though, as much as I love
Speaker 1: Joe Martin in the scenes that we get him in,
Speaker 1: I do think the dream sequence that Willie Brown has
Speaker 1: where Scratch's assistant is tiny when he opens the door
Speaker 1: and then he grows bigger. No, it's a great effect.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. It's a fantastic sequence. Might be my favorite
Speaker 1: sequence in the movie. It should be Scratch, it should
Speaker 1: not be the assistant appearing to him on the crossroads
Speaker 1: as the devil's proxy is one thing, appearing in his
Speaker 1: dreams to tell him what's in store for him. That's
Speaker 1: the devil's business, it should be.
Speaker 2: But I know they're just saving the reveal of the
Speaker 2: devil for the end of the movie, So I get
Speaker 2: why they did it.
Speaker 1: And I understand that too. But here's the other thing
Speaker 1: I noticed. As much as I love Walter Hill as
Speaker 1: a filmmaker, as an action filmmaker and dramatically, he's not
Speaker 1: a horror filmmaker. This would be borne out in his
Speaker 1: work for Talales from the Crypt, none of which are scary.
Speaker 1: But he has several moments in this movie that should
Speaker 1: be horrifying and aren't. When we finally get the Devil,
Speaker 1: it's just like we hear him talking and we turn
Speaker 1: around and there's the devil, and it could have been
Speaker 1: a fucking awesome reveal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you that the nightmare sequence in
Speaker 2: particular should have been more surreal, more nightmarish, because what's
Speaker 2: there is effective. Like you said, there's this forced perspective
Speaker 2: bit where Scratches assistant walks through the door and they've
Speaker 2: made the door really big and he's really small, but
Speaker 2: he keeps it like there's something about a nightmare sequence
Speaker 2: where the person or creature or whatever walks towards you
Speaker 2: in POV that should automatically be scary for the viewer
Speaker 2: because you're putting yourself in this nightmare that this person's
Speaker 2: And that's what's happening, is Willie's having this nightmare about
Speaker 2: this thing that it was a very I thought it
Speaker 2: was a very effective nightmare. There probably should have been
Speaker 2: more of that to sell this idea of how or
Speaker 2: mened he is. There's not enough of that. I will
Speaker 2: give you that.
Speaker 1: No, And that's the thing. Like his character as a prick,
Speaker 1: we appreciate and understand, but they could have they could
Speaker 1: have done a little bit more to show, yeah, how
Speaker 1: desperate his situation is. This is really a movie about
Speaker 1: him trying to get back to the crossroads to get
Speaker 1: his soul back, as much as everything else we're talking about.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's odd to me that he didn't
Speaker 1: he wasn't more upfront earlier in the movie, like Eugene,
Speaker 1: it's all real, I sold my soul and I need
Speaker 1: to get down there.
Speaker 2: He does tell him that they're on the bus and
Speaker 2: early on in their journey, they're on the bus, and
Speaker 2: he does say because because Eugene is relating all these
Speaker 2: blues of these books on blues folklore that he's read,
Speaker 2: and but will he says, it's real. I went to
Speaker 2: the Crossroads. Robert Johnson went to the Crossroads. And this
Speaker 2: is the thing. He doesn't convey the gravity of it.
Speaker 2: I think, even up to the point where Legba makes
Speaker 2: his appearance to Eugene admits, he says, I don't believe
Speaker 2: in any of this shit anyway, So he readily agrees
Speaker 2: to this guitar duel between Legba's proxy and Eugene.
Speaker 1: But it is fun, which is wrong, by the way
Speaker 1: he should at that point, if that character doesn't believe
Speaker 1: that he's engaging in a competition where his soul is
Speaker 1: at stake, then there are no stakes.
Speaker 2: It eventually becomes real for him once he It's unclear.
Speaker 2: I think they're meant to think that he gets teleported
Speaker 2: directly from the Crossroads to this juke joint where the
Speaker 2: devil is having this headcutting duel, because at that point,
Speaker 2: when Eugene and Willie walk into this club, you can
Speaker 2: see that Eugene is maybe rethinking his cavalier attitude.
Speaker 1: That's my point. It should have been what about you,
Speaker 1: lightning boy? You want to be part of the competition.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in any of this shit. And then
Speaker 1: suddenly they're in the juke joint place and you go,
Speaker 1: how about now, what do you think you still want
Speaker 1: to compete with me? Then it would be like, oh shit.
Speaker 1: Then he's making a real decision, that's all. There's no
Speaker 1: agency for the character in that way. It's just another
Speaker 1: thing he's doing because he doesn't believe that crap any sure, but.
Speaker 2: At least the character of Eugene is continually trying to
Speaker 2: prove his blues prowess and prove that he is the
Speaker 2: lightning Boy. So even just on that basis, I think
Speaker 2: he's going to give his all during this performance, even
Speaker 2: if Willie doesn't impress upon him the importance.
Speaker 1: And really it's no.
Speaker 2: Different than the scene in Karate Kid two where he's
Speaker 2: about to fight Chosen and mister Miagi has to tell
Speaker 2: him this isn't for points, this is for real Daniel.
Speaker 2: So it's like, I know John Fuscot that he says
Speaker 2: there was no direct influence on his screenplay of the
Speaker 2: Karate Kid and in fact, Ralf Machio like there were
Speaker 2: other actors considered to play Eugene. I know Tom Cruise
Speaker 2: was me mentioned Sean Penn was actually someone else that
Speaker 2: they said, Can you imagine how insufferable he would have
Speaker 2: been if he had been Sean Penn?
Speaker 1: But my point is, you know, I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Do you think Sean Penn would have been a good Eugene?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Who else would have been a good Eugene?
Speaker 2: I think Tom Cruise would have been good at that age.
Speaker 1: I think he would have been Timothy Hunting. He's too white,
Speaker 1: That's exactly, He's too white. It definitely would have been
Speaker 1: white savior with him.
Speaker 2: Who else would have been somebody about super popular?
Speaker 1: How about Matthew Modine He could have.
Speaker 2: Because he could have been scholarly. I think he would
Speaker 2: have played that up.
Speaker 1: He could have been. I know, I'm just a fucking
Speaker 1: white kid from the suburbs. Man, but this music is important.
Speaker 1: You would believe him, you.
Speaker 2: Would because it would have felt like he put in
Speaker 2: the work to learn all of this folklore. But like
Speaker 2: as I don't have a problem with Ralph Macchio. I
Speaker 2: think he's fine.
Speaker 1: He is no and I'm not complaining about him necessarily,
Speaker 1: and he probably got the movie made.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you another question, father Milone. We briefly
Speaker 2: touched on the character of Francis only if only to
Speaker 2: say that she's an asshole. But what's your impression of
Speaker 2: Jamie Gertz. I know the character isn't that you're rich
Speaker 2: of a character, but what did you think.
Speaker 1: I think they were right to cast her if she
Speaker 1: walked into any casting agency, or rather any audition in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five nineteen eighty six. She's so fresh on
Speaker 1: the scene, and she's so fucking capable in every role
Speaker 1: she's in. She can adapt really quickly to whatever genre.
Speaker 1: So I don't blame them for casting her, and I
Speaker 1: think she does a good job. But it's a fucking,
Speaker 1: absolutely superfluous character.
Speaker 2: That's another problem that I have with this. And some
Speaker 2: of this ties in with Eugene, so really the only
Speaker 2: purpose that she serves in this picture is she has
Speaker 2: a alliance with Eugene. They have sex in this hayloft
Speaker 2: before getting shaken down. I want to talk about the
Speaker 2: scene with the sheriffs. We'll get back to that, but
Speaker 2: the whole point of her being there is so that
Speaker 2: he can basically fall for her, and then when she
Speaker 2: leaves him that all of a sudden finally gives him
Speaker 2: the deeper understanding of the blues quote unquote capital B blues.
Speaker 2: That's really the only purpose that she serves. I hate
Speaker 2: to say it because I think it does her a disservice,
Speaker 2: but that's the character is written. There's no way around it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do Jamie Gertz a disservice. The character does
Speaker 1: Jamie Gertz a disservice, because that is the character's only
Speaker 1: function in this screenplay. It's to get Eugene to over
Speaker 1: the hill finally, to get him to feel the blues
Speaker 1: deep down. Until then, he's only intellectualized. And now because
Speaker 1: someone has broken his heart, someone who he met and
Speaker 1: has been arguing with and has had no real attraction to,
Speaker 1: but on the high from his performance, has sex with
Speaker 1: her quickly, and then she disappears because she needs to
Speaker 1: move on, and now his heart is broken.
Speaker 2: No, they had sex before he performed.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. They had it in the barn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then so there's that barn scene and.
Speaker 1: Then okay, after he's all right, so you know what Okay,
Speaker 1: they did have a legitimate fling, but they didn't seem
Speaker 1: to really like each other. And she's horrible and he's horrible,
Speaker 1: and fuck them both.
Speaker 2: But I did that scene, by the way. I know,
Speaker 2: you want to move on to something, but you're not
Speaker 2: a scene where she leaves him and he comes back
Speaker 2: and they're staying in some flophouse somewhere, and he comes
Speaker 2: back in and Willie sits them down at this table
Speaker 2: in this crappy hotel room and pours them both whiskey
Speaker 2: and basically has a sit down. And that's when he tells,
Speaker 2: essentially tells Eugene there's no thirtieth song. I lied, there's
Speaker 2: only twenty nine. And that's, you know, putting aside him
Speaker 2: playing and feeling the blues, that moment of the two
Speaker 2: of them sitting at that table, there's a vibe about
Speaker 2: that Father Malone. It just feels so comforting, like he's
Speaker 2: trying to comfort Eugene. It feels like they're seeing each
Speaker 2: other as contemporaries for the first time. Maybe finally WILLI
Speaker 2: sees him as something other than the kid with no
Speaker 2: real experience. There's something about that scene I always really liked.
Speaker 1: I agree with you across the board. It's a great
Speaker 1: scene for those two characters, and it is a pivotal scene.
Speaker 1: It is the moment where Eugene finally figures out how
Speaker 1: to play this music emotionally right. But the Francis character
Speaker 1: has been nothing but a drain as far as time
Speaker 1: spent between these two characters, because that's what this movie
Speaker 1: is about. This is a father and son journey, or
Speaker 1: a brother or a mentor and mentee story. Anything else
Speaker 1: is a fucking distraction. What should have taught him the blues?
Speaker 1: The fact that that there was no song, the fact
Speaker 1: that all of his bullshit was for not you're not
Speaker 1: going to be famous. I lied to you, kid. We're
Speaker 1: out here with nothing and nobody, and you don't have
Speaker 1: a fucking mean, you don't have a fucking like a
Speaker 1: penny to your name to get home.
Speaker 2: We are trapped.
Speaker 1: That's when he starts playing the blues, not because the
Speaker 1: girl he fucked in a barn took off.
Speaker 2: This is the blues, Eugene you wanted because at the beginning,
Speaker 2: Eugene has taken a job as a maintenance worker at
Speaker 2: this nursing home slash prison just to get into to
Speaker 2: see Willie and he keeps pumping Willy for information, trying
Speaker 2: to understand is this the real Willy Brown? And at
Speaker 2: one point Willy says, why he's so interested in the
Speaker 2: blues anyway?
Speaker 5: Kid?
Speaker 2: And he's in his coveralls, he's mopping up or whatever,
Speaker 2: and he says, because I'm a blues man. And that
Speaker 2: could not have been funnier for Willy to hear. He
Speaker 2: laughs so much the nurse comes in to take him
Speaker 2: to his medical appointment, He's laughing all the way down.
Speaker 2: For Willie to finally accept Eugene as a quote unquote
Speaker 2: blues man, like you said, it's a pivotal moment because
Speaker 2: this whole time he's just cutting down Eugene. For they
Speaker 2: have this great night at the juke joint where he
Speaker 2: plays well, and Willy just cuts him down. He's half
Speaker 2: drunk and he just says, look, you even you're not
Speaker 2: even intent of the way there, you're not a blues man.
Speaker 2: I'm only one blues man in this town and that's me.
Speaker 2: And it completely crushes Eugene because this was his big
Speaker 2: shining moment. So for him to finally say, you know what,
Speaker 2: I accept you as a blues man. I thought that
Speaker 2: was really cool. It was a cool scene.
Speaker 1: Once again, I agree with you, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: reiterate I needn't have Jamie Gartz in any capacity to
Speaker 1: make any of those scenes work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, because all to your point earlier, all
Speaker 2: she does is get them in trouble. She's going to
Speaker 2: hook up with some bar owner.
Speaker 1: And she's a piece of shit bar owner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and but Eugene wants to white knight and
Speaker 2: save her from doing something show regret, so he comes
Speaker 2: in and try to get her out of there. She
Speaker 2: tells him wait behind the door for this guy to
Speaker 2: come out of the bathroom and hit him over the
Speaker 2: head and we'll steal his money. That goes awry. They
Speaker 2: steal the guy's car, they have to later get rid
Speaker 2: of it, and all this kind of stuff. Willy takes
Speaker 2: them to this juke joint there's a white one across
Speaker 2: the street, and he tells them going there with this
Speaker 2: piece and whatever, and she fucks it up like she
Speaker 2: basically she wrote. She robs the guy in there, causes
Speaker 2: this big ruckus. They get kicked out. The guy confiscates
Speaker 2: Eugene's guns, so they got no more gun to defend themselves.
Speaker 2: Now they've got to go over to the black you know,
Speaker 2: juke joint, and they're about to get like at least robbed,
Speaker 2: but probably worse. And that's when Willy saves them by
Speaker 2: saying bringing him up on stage and making him play music,
Speaker 2: because up to that point, Francis has been nothing but trouble.
Speaker 2: So I agree with you that I don't know why
Speaker 2: they continue to hang out with her because she's bad.
Speaker 1: And because it's her making all the fucking mistakes. It's
Speaker 1: not like Eugene is learning anything throughout the movie, right,
Speaker 1: It's just that he's dealing with the situations that keep arising.
Speaker 1: He should be failing in there. I not only didn't
Speaker 1: make us any money, but they fucking took my gun.
Speaker 2: He's reacting. That's all that Eugene really does for most
Speaker 2: of the trip is he's reacting to what's happening around them.
Speaker 1: And playing the blues slowly. That's what Eugene's purpose is
Speaker 1: for most of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. By the way, one of the things
Speaker 2: that drove me nuts about him is so at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the movie he is playing acoustic blues. He
Speaker 2: has his beat up all acoustic guitar, and even Willie
Speaker 2: I think it's great. He says, like, you probably bought
Speaker 2: this because it looked beat up. You don't know. So
Speaker 2: he takes him to a pawn shop, right, and they
Speaker 2: pick they's It is a great scene. They pick up
Speaker 2: an old fender. It's a seventies telecaster with the block lettering,
Speaker 2: the yellow and white beautiful. And the guy gives them
Speaker 2: a pig nose amp and he says, you could be
Speaker 2: a walking concert with this thing. So whatever first thing
Speaker 2: that bugged me is the guy says, four hundred dollars
Speaker 2: and all this can be yours. That's a fucking seven
Speaker 2: thousand dollars guitar alone. The guitar is seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: The amp, that vintage jamp is probably another five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars on top of that. Now fo them alone, that's
Speaker 2: number one. Number two. That when they go to when
Speaker 2: they go to the this abandoned house to get out
Speaker 2: of the rain, that's when they meet Francis. They're running
Speaker 2: through the rain. He never got a case for this
Speaker 2: beautiful guitar. They're walking through torrential rain and the fucking
Speaker 2: guitar is sticking out of this duffel bag that he
Speaker 2: has it's stuffed into. I'm like, what are you fucking nuts?
Speaker 2: You're gonna ruin that beautiful instrument, Eugene, You're such an idiot.
Speaker 2: So that bugged hell out of me to see that
Speaker 2: beautiful telecaster just treated like crap. Sorry, I had to
Speaker 2: get off my chest.
Speaker 1: No, that's I love hearing that that. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: thought of that. I would be thinking like the filmmakers
Speaker 1: were thinking, put the stunt guitar on his back. Who cares?
Speaker 1: Just get through the shot?
Speaker 2: Just killed me to see that. Now, when I was
Speaker 2: a kid, I didn't care. But now seeing that's a
Speaker 2: beautiful guitar and that amp is like that that amp
Speaker 2: seems like a goofy thing in the movie, but that
Speaker 2: actually is a real piece of like the Rolling Stones
Speaker 2: use that a lot of different bands. That was like
Speaker 2: considered a cool piece of vintage gear. The other thing
Speaker 2: that kind of bugged me is that the scene where
Speaker 2: he's finally learned the depth of the blues and he
Speaker 2: sits down to do slide guitar. This is so geeky.
Speaker 2: I can't even believe I'm mentioning to you, father Blone.
Speaker 2: But I've already gotten this far. He's playing the slide
Speaker 2: and the sound coming out of the amp is tremolo.
Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean by tremolo. It's that
Speaker 2: kind of what's like a volume quickly toggling, quiet and soft, first,
Speaker 2: quiet and fast. The pyg nose am did not have tremoloe.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That bug the hell on me because
Speaker 2: it's not true. It's not accurate.
Speaker 6: Damn it.
Speaker 2: That took me out of it a little bit, but
Speaker 2: because the playing is beautiful, but I know for a
Speaker 2: fact he's not playing through that goddamn amp.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Hey, man, if you know something is wrong and
Speaker 1: you're watching a movie, it's gonna take you out of it.
Speaker 2: It's killing me. When are we going to talk about
Speaker 2: Steve V? By the way, So.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, what do we need to talk about before
Speaker 1: we get Steve Vis?
Speaker 2: That's what? Okay, Let's get back to that scene where Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's another scene I really liked, and I think it's
Speaker 2: very It's one of the more perceptive scenes in the
Speaker 2: movie where so they've taken shelter in this barn, but
Speaker 2: it's not an abandoned bar, and people live someone's barn
Speaker 2: in the county. This is the scene where Eugene has
Speaker 2: had sex with Francis and the hayloft. Eventually the cops
Speaker 2: come and they're searching the place, and it has to
Speaker 2: be said, it's a whole bunch. They're African American cops.
Speaker 2: He's not a white guy in the bunch. They rouse
Speaker 2: them out of the barn and they take them to
Speaker 2: the first thing that happens is that one of them
Speaker 2: takes their money, basically says, oh, what are we here,
Speaker 2: and he takes it for himself. They take them to
Speaker 2: the county line and the sheriff, who I know, his
Speaker 2: name is John Hancock. I've seen him in a bunch
Speaker 2: of things. What if I seen him in Fathom alone.
Speaker 1: Oh come on now, don't do that to me. You
Speaker 1: know who I'm talking about, right, I know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. The sheriff in the scene, he's fucking fantastic,
Speaker 1: he's great.
Speaker 2: So he's another African American gentleman. He comes out and
Speaker 2: basically says to them, you know what, I don't like
Speaker 2: vagrants in my county. You guys walk across that bridge,
Speaker 2: then you're a sheriff. Tillman's problem not mine or whatever.
Speaker 2: And Francis says, well, what about our money? She says,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? He says our money. That
Speaker 2: guy took our money. And the sheriff makes a threat
Speaker 2: to her and basically says, you know what, I think,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna take you to the women's farm, the prison.
Speaker 2: You know what, They're gonna love you there. You can
Speaker 2: be there while you try to figure out what we
Speaker 2: did with your money, and basically shuts her up. And
Speaker 2: this is whole it's just corrupt angle. And Willie steps
Speaker 2: in and says, you know what, this lot's changed in
Speaker 2: this county, but I guess a lot has stayed the same,
Speaker 2: ain't it. And he tips his hat and says, we'll
Speaker 2: be on our way. I'd love that, because you could
Speaker 2: have the scene would have played exactly the same if
Speaker 2: it was the white, rednick sheriff and his cronies shaking
Speaker 2: these people down and sending them on their way. But
Speaker 2: the fact that the whole crew of they're African American,
Speaker 2: I thought it was really cool, And the fact that
Speaker 2: Willy called him out on that and said, you know what,
Speaker 2: why are you doing this? This is something that I
Speaker 2: would have expected during Jim crow Era. I wouldn't expect
Speaker 2: it from you guys, but he just says, we'll be
Speaker 2: on our way. I love that scene.
Speaker 1: Police are corrupt, no matter what race they are. That's
Speaker 1: a Walter Hill trope, that's true.
Speaker 2: I didn't think of it in those terms, but yeah,
Speaker 2: you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a bunch of Walter Hill trops on display here,
Speaker 1: including my favorite, which is also race related, which is
Speaker 1: because you can consider Eugene black here because he's playing
Speaker 1: the blues with his pig nosamp when he goes into
Speaker 1: that red neck bar, but the African American in the
Speaker 1: red neck bar causing havoc because we see that in
Speaker 1: forty eight Hours, we see that here, we see that
Speaker 1: in one other Walter Hill film. What's the other sort
Speaker 1: of big old Walter Hill trope. Look, the thing is,
Speaker 1: if we didn't know Walter Hill was behind this film,
Speaker 1: I might give the white savior attack a little bit
Speaker 1: of credibility. But the fact is Walter Hill ain't no racist.
Speaker 1: He doesn't believe white people are saving black people at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, that's true. And it is funny because that
Speaker 2: scene in the white sort of bar across the street
Speaker 2: from the black juke joint. Does it plays a little
Speaker 2: bit like the scene in forty eight Hours when Reggie
Speaker 2: goes into the bar pretending to be a cop and
Speaker 2: kind of shakes the place down. I mean it, the
Speaker 2: scene has a different arc, but it's the same. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it feels the same to me.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised the bar wasn't named Torchies, because that's every
Speaker 1: bar in Walter Hill movies is named Torchies.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, in Streets. I didn't know that in Streets
Speaker 1: to fire at the bar that Willem Dafoe that they
Speaker 1: have to infiltrate what Willem Dafoe is hold up and
Speaker 1: that's Torchies. The in forty eight Hours, that's Torchies.
Speaker 2: So that's his See you next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically. And I think there was a bar in
Speaker 1: downtown Los Angeles called Torches, like in the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies that he used to go to and then was
Speaker 1: eventually went defunct. But he's keeping the he's keeping the
Speaker 1: torch alive. Oh, it's in Brewsters Millions as well. Torchies.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a Walter Hill movie.
Speaker 1: Huh huh. And the other thing that why it's so
Speaker 1: good as a scene is there's no refuge for them.
Speaker 1: This is the idea of the blue Usman. There are
Speaker 1: there is no refuge, just the music. It is hammering
Speaker 1: home slowly here, thus reaffirming that we don't need Jamie
Speaker 1: Gertz here, because if she's that fucking street wise, why
Speaker 1: is she yelling at a cop give me back my money?
Speaker 1: Did she think that was ever going to happen? Also?
Speaker 1: Why are they seventeen? Let's talk about that. These are
Speaker 1: clearly actors in their twenties. What are we gaining by
Speaker 1: having them be seventeen? Just have them be in their twenties?
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 2: It didn't Yeah, I can see. I guess Eugene could
Speaker 2: have been older and still have been as naive as
Speaker 2: he was at seventeen or whatever. You're right about Francis though,
Speaker 2: although the only reason you need her to be younger
Speaker 2: is when that the racist bar owner, when they finally
Speaker 2: get to drop on him, she lays a threat that
Speaker 2: she's fifteen. It would not have been believable if she
Speaker 2: was in her twenties. It would be hard to sell that.
Speaker 2: That's the threat is she will tell on him for
Speaker 2: a dalliance with a minor basic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's just I don't know, it's it's all
Speaker 1: just off putting. She's, oh, you could have as a character.
Speaker 2: She is, and you could have even if it was
Speaker 2: just Eugene and Willie. There's any number of things they
Speaker 2: could have gotten into that didn't involve some creepy lecherer's
Speaker 2: guy who's trying to get it on with someone. They
Speaker 2: could have run a foul of any number of racist
Speaker 2: people on their on their journey, or people who just
Speaker 2: didn't want to deal with vagrants. I don't know. You
Speaker 2: have to ask uh A Fusco. See what he says.
Speaker 1: We're asking Fusca, what's going on? Why did you have
Speaker 1: this character? Did they make you make her? Did they
Speaker 1: make you add her? We're wondering, possibly an early draft.
Speaker 1: I'd love to have read an early draft.
Speaker 2: Did you think she was tough enough bottom alone as
Speaker 2: the actress, not the character?
Speaker 1: No, I don't, because it's Jamie Gertz from Square Pegs. Listen.
Speaker 1: She has that Anne Hathaway quality of theater kid. But
Speaker 1: she has she doesn't have it as bad as it
Speaker 1: just reeks of it, you know, the sort of superior
Speaker 1: asshole theater kid quality.
Speaker 2: I agree, and that was my impression. I was thinking, like,
Speaker 2: if they had someone like a young rene Zelwiger who
Speaker 2: had an edge to her, who could have played a
Speaker 2: Texan who she just feels like she she could have
Speaker 2: played tough when you see her in I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think of what.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: She just feels like she could have been more authentically
Speaker 2: tough then Jamie Gertz. It's like having Sarah Jessica Parker
Speaker 2: play Francis.
Speaker 1: Right, It's right, she's got the chops to play the character.
Speaker 1: But do you believe her?
Speaker 2: And I didn't believe her. Not that it matters, because
Speaker 2: we both agree that she was rather superfluous. But at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, like who would you have had?
Speaker 2: Who would you have preferred? Who do you think would
Speaker 2: have been a better Francis.
Speaker 1: See, I'm trying to run down a list of people
Speaker 1: who were popular and or just working at the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm just blanking on actors in their twenties at
Speaker 1: this period.
Speaker 2: It's not like renees Eliger was. But I'm just playing
Speaker 2: fantasy here.
Speaker 1: Who would I have played that part? Nobody? I would
Speaker 1: cut this character out of the fucking movie. If we're
Speaker 1: playing fantasy.
Speaker 2: But say, say the producer said you got to have
Speaker 2: a girl in this role. I don't care what you
Speaker 2: think about the story. Let's just do this. Who would
Speaker 2: you if you had to pick somebody I want Dase Eliger.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't put Renes Eliger, and I would cast specific
Speaker 1: to eighty five. You know what, I put young Melanie
Speaker 1: Griffith in that role. And I'll tell you why. Because
Speaker 1: Melie Griffith comes off like a fucking badass, you know
Speaker 1: what you can around the same time she's in body
Speaker 1: double and her speech about what she will and won't
Speaker 1: do as a porn actress. I believed every fucking word
Speaker 1: of her. There's no question she can be tough. But
Speaker 1: if this character is supposed to if we have to
Speaker 1: have the fucking character and she's just there to inspire
Speaker 1: the blues in Eugene, then at least make her a goddess.
Speaker 2: What about someone like Lori Petty.
Speaker 1: No, I would believe that it looks she's spunky enough
Speaker 1: to have been the character.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, I just you know, we don't have to
Speaker 2: go that much further with this. I just as a
Speaker 2: thought experiment. I thought it was interesting to see because
Speaker 2: I didn't. I agree. I didn't buy her as she
Speaker 2: wasn't tough enough. I don't no knock on her abilities
Speaker 2: as an actor. I just thought someone else might have
Speaker 2: done a better had a better edge to them.
Speaker 1: Good performance, bad character, and unbelievable actor in a role.
Speaker 1: I just don't believe them.
Speaker 2: Sorry, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: Where do we go from here? Which is the way
Speaker 1: that's clear?
Speaker 2: I tell you what we have to get to. We
Speaker 2: get to get to the climax of the story where
Speaker 2: you know, now we So they've gone down to the crossroads. Eugene,
Speaker 2: they made it. Eugene and Willie. They they set up
Speaker 2: this double or nothing bet with the Devil that if
Speaker 2: if Eugene can cut heads with Legba's proxy, this guy
Speaker 2: named Jack Butler, then he will rip up Willy's contract.
Speaker 2: But if he doesn't, if he loses to Jack Butler,
Speaker 2: the Devil gets Eugene and or he gets Willy and Eugene.
Speaker 2: So Eugene is putting his soul on the line for Willie.
Speaker 2: So they're magically transported essentially to this juke joint where if.
Speaker 1: You lose, the devil gets your soul.
Speaker 2: That was yet that's you know, that's probably something that
Speaker 2: maybe helped prime me for liking this movie, because I
Speaker 2: always loved that song The Devil Went Down to Georgia,
Speaker 2: the appeal of the legend of the guy playing the
Speaker 2: devil for the Golden Violin. I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I always love that song. I don't love Charlie Daniels,
Speaker 2: but I love that song.
Speaker 1: It's a great song. Man, if it comes on the
Speaker 1: fucking radio, it's getting turned up to full volume in my.
Speaker 2: Car without a doubt. So we end up in this
Speaker 2: club and we get our first look at Jack Butler,
Speaker 2: played by none other than Steve I. Now Steve I.
Speaker 2: Just to catch people up a little bit. I know
Speaker 2: everybody kind of has this impression of who Steve I is,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure that that is, but let's I don't
Speaker 2: think people necessarily understand that Steve VII is really he's
Speaker 2: a prodigy. The guy started in Frank Zappa's band when
Speaker 2: he was something like nineteen or twenty years old. He
Speaker 2: transcribed the song for Zappa called the Black Pages. It
Speaker 2: was this notoriously difficult composition that Zappa wrote for drums
Speaker 2: and melodic percussion, and Steve I transcribed it for him
Speaker 2: and sent it to Zappa, and Zappa was so impressed
Speaker 2: that he brought him in to do transcriptions and eventually
Speaker 2: brought him into his touring band in nineteen eighty. He
Speaker 2: was so it's not as if Steve I was just
Speaker 2: this guy wanking off on his guitar and doing all
Speaker 2: these things. The guy has chops. The guy put in
Speaker 2: the time and the effort, and he's solid technically, and theoretically,
Speaker 2: there's no one more solid than this guy. Originally, though, let's.
Speaker 1: See Steve's getting Do you think he's a fucking terrible actor?
Speaker 1: I don't. I think this is his I'm saying, from
Speaker 1: the producer's director's perspective, would it not benefit them to
Speaker 1: cast Steve VII as Eugene?
Speaker 2: Oh, you're talking about having him play Eugene. I don't
Speaker 2: see that at all, because I don't think he could
Speaker 2: have pulled that off. He's too old looking. He couldn't
Speaker 2: have pulled off someone that young.
Speaker 1: See, I'm just wondering if he can act at all.
Speaker 2: I don't think he.
Speaker 1: I think this is what he was in this movie
Speaker 1: is not acting. It's just him being Steve VII.
Speaker 2: But but I think you're under selling it. I think
Speaker 2: there is a little bit of acting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when he when he starts to get flustered, Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: But it's not like we're seeing him realize the meaning
Speaker 1: of the Blues.
Speaker 2: No, I think he I think if you talked to
Speaker 2: Steve VI, I think he would agree with you that
Speaker 2: he is or I think he would be the first
Speaker 2: to admit that he's no actor.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, and I'm look, I'm not bagging on his
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if he could have acted, do you think
Speaker 1: they would have cast him? Do you think they tested him?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 2: Percent, I don't know. Here's the whole story behind his involvement. Originally,
Speaker 2: father alone, it wasn't He wasn't even the one who
Speaker 2: was going to be Jack Butler. Originally it was supposed
Speaker 2: to be ry Cooter was gonna be the devil's proxy.
Speaker 2: It was gonna be him, and it was supposed to
Speaker 2: be a slide guitar duel. Oh my god, no, but
Speaker 2: hold your horses now. It was gonna be between him
Speaker 2: and Eugene, and ry Cooter was all primed he was
Speaker 2: going to do this, but they realized during the rehearsals
Speaker 2: and everything that it wasn't working at.
Speaker 1: All, and in fact, the music was too similar.
Speaker 2: Yes, because it because Arlen Roth, who I talked about
Speaker 2: at the top of this episode. He on his SoundCloud
Speaker 2: page you can go, he posted the original headcutting duel
Speaker 2: between ry Cooter and him right because it was him
Speaker 2: doing the slide guitar for Eugene, I believe, and it
Speaker 2: is so samy it's hard to tell who's playing what.
Speaker 2: I think it was the right call to bring someone
Speaker 2: else in because it just would have been it. The
Speaker 2: beauty of bringing Steve Vaian is not only is he
Speaker 2: very theatrical and he looks the part, but having somebody
Speaker 2: who's playing a more contemporary style still blues, but he's
Speaker 2: playing it in such a showy because what he's doing
Speaker 2: is he's actually doing Paganini. Believe it or not, He's Paganini,
Speaker 2: who's Caprice number five is the basis for Eugene's trick bag,
Speaker 2: the thing that wins him the duel. Paganini was another
Speaker 2: musician who was thought to have sold his soul to
Speaker 2: the devil because he was such a brilliant musician and
Speaker 2: when he would perform, he would do things like throw
Speaker 2: his head back, roll his eyes up, and you know,
Speaker 2: in the back of his head and do all this stuff.
Speaker 2: That's what Steve I's doing there, He's doing Paganini.
Speaker 1: So Paganini had the original guitar face.
Speaker 2: Pretty much.
Speaker 1: He is worshiping at the altar of Paganini when we
Speaker 1: saw him on SNL all those times.
Speaker 2: I guess you could look at it that way, but
Speaker 2: but you need to have that that friction between the
Speaker 2: classic blues slide guitar style that Eugene brings up, the
Speaker 2: quote unquote authentic blues and this guy who's playing this
Speaker 2: metalized eighties version of blues. So you have to have that.
Speaker 2: This is a this is essentially a boxing match between
Speaker 2: the two of them. I will stump for Steve I
Speaker 2: in this all the time. I mean, if I'm going
Speaker 2: to watch any part of Crossroads, It's going to be
Speaker 2: the headcut and duel ten times out of ten.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny as a kid watching this movie
Speaker 1: over and over again. I understand the importance of the scene,
Speaker 1: and I like the scene, but it didn't register with
Speaker 1: me what was going on between these two. It was
Speaker 1: I was watching them play until one couldn't do what
Speaker 1: the other did, and then he won. That was what
Speaker 1: it was. To me on the rewatch now it was
Speaker 1: what you're saying, and I do agree with you now.
Speaker 1: Hearing Steve I playing these very modern, very sort of
Speaker 1: mid eighties metally versions of a bluesy kind of a
Speaker 1: riff and then having having it repeated back with a
Speaker 1: slide guitar and hearing them bounding off of one another
Speaker 1: was fucking awesome to hear. Like I didn't appreciate how
Speaker 1: excellent that portion of the music was. My thing about
Speaker 1: Walter Hill's movies and Ry Cooter was I like Ry
Speaker 1: Cooter and I liked his sound, and so this sort
Speaker 1: of attack of different styles didn't land with me as
Speaker 1: a kid, but now it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And don't forget that when I just I love
Speaker 2: the arc of the whole guitar battle because it starts
Speaker 2: off they feel each other out, and then there's a
Speaker 2: moment where because Jack Butler's just throwing riffs basically at
Speaker 2: Eugene to see if he can keep up or if
Speaker 2: he's worthy of engaging in this duel, and Eugene gives
Speaker 2: as good as he gets, and at that point, Jack
Speaker 2: Butler takes off his guitar, takes off his jacket, and
Speaker 2: that's when you know, as a viewer, all right, this
Speaker 2: is going up to a higher gear. Now, this is
Speaker 2: really on. And then they play this song together and
Speaker 2: it feels like Eugene's about to fucking win it all.
Speaker 2: And that's when Jack Butler hits him again with this
Speaker 2: little solo piece. And one of the unique things about
Speaker 2: STEVI that kind of puts him in a different category
Speaker 2: from somebody like Eddie van Halen at the risk of
Speaker 2: being sacrilegious about this, is that Steve I had the
Speaker 2: ability to make his guitar talk in a very real sense,
Speaker 2: Like there's a moment where they he launches into the
Speaker 2: solo to basically tell Eugene in musical terms like this
Speaker 2: is it. I'm taking control, You're done. And he plays
Speaker 2: this little bit and he kind of bows to Eugene,
Speaker 2: and then he bows to the audience and then he
Speaker 2: does this kind of hot thing with his whammy bar.
Speaker 2: It's so you know, it's so unique and so Steve I,
Speaker 2: and so you know what he's saying, even if he's
Speaker 2: not using words to do it. And it's easy to
Speaker 2: see why Steve VI became the sound for Bill and
Speaker 2: Ted's air guitar because he did all the Air Guitar,
Speaker 2: and all the Bill and Ted movies.
Speaker 1: Excellent, all the props in the world. Is Steve Vie
Speaker 1: man of everyone from the nineteen eighties. He always seemed
Speaker 1: like the solid performer. He seemed like the guy who
Speaker 1: actually knew what he was doing and was doing it
Speaker 1: in an interesting way.
Speaker 2: He's a very I've since looked up a lot of
Speaker 2: his videos. He's a very humble guy for somebody who
Speaker 2: can basically play his ass off at whatever he is.
Speaker 2: I think he's like in his late sixties now, he's
Speaker 2: pretty old. But what I was leading up to was,
Speaker 2: so he does this little piece and he's basically trying
Speaker 2: to close the case on Eugene, and that's it. And
Speaker 2: then Eugene launches into what's known as Eugene's trick bag,
Speaker 2: which is that caprice number five by Paganini. That's Steve
Speaker 2: v playing that. That's the one piece of this duel
Speaker 2: that neither Arlen Roth nor Raykotera are playing so effectively.
Speaker 2: Steve I is playing against himself at that point, which
Speaker 2: I think is it still blows my mind when.
Speaker 1: I'm the only person who can defeat Steve is.
Speaker 2: Steve VII and as a kid, I used to eat
Speaker 2: up these guitar magazines. I was just learning how to
Speaker 2: play guitar, so I'd buy guitar player, guitar for the
Speaker 2: practicing musician guitar world. And I guarantee you at least
Speaker 2: once a year after that movie came out, somebody would
Speaker 2: do a transcription of some piece from Crossroads. It could
Speaker 2: be the trick Bag, it could be the head cut
Speaker 2: and duel. You would see this laid out in tabulatair.
Speaker 2: Because and even now you go to and there's still
Speaker 2: people doing covers of this piece of music. It's not
Speaker 2: only was I, in my own small way inspired by
Speaker 2: all of this, but I would it's no exaggeration to
Speaker 2: say that countless other people were also inspired. And the
Speaker 2: proof is in, like I said, these videos, all these
Speaker 2: magazine articles, even now, it's still people. When Steve I
Speaker 2: performs live now fatherm alone, Okay, think back when when
Speaker 2: he first launches into the guitar duel, he does this
Speaker 2: sort of slow chugging riff with like almost like a
Speaker 2: Horsey Soundary goes doooo. He made that into his own
Speaker 2: song called bad Horsey on one of his albums. When
Speaker 2: he performs live the movie screen behind him cuts to
Speaker 2: a scene from Crossroads. It's Legba saying, oh, Jack Butler's
Speaker 2: gonna love you, and he mimes the first whatever intro
Speaker 2: to Bad Horsey, which is essentially the piece from Crossroads.
Speaker 2: Steve I has embraced this. I think Steve I loves
Speaker 2: the fact that he is no to a certain segment
Speaker 2: of the population as Jack Butler, and he's embraced it
Speaker 2: to the point where he plays Crossroads at all of
Speaker 2: his live shows. Now, I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1: He definitely should. Why wouldn't he, My God, he is
Speaker 1: Jack Butler, He's the Devil's He's the Devil's guy.
Speaker 2: It's great. The guitar, by the way, is in the
Speaker 2: hard Rock Cafe Biloxi, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Can I just say that Legba and the Devil are
Speaker 1: not analogs?
Speaker 2: Well, Legba is like some sort of demon, it's not
Speaker 2: actually the Devil. So I guess we're playing fast and
Speaker 2: loose with the language by calling but he's essentially the Devil, right,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I'm just you know what you're telling me. The fucking
Speaker 1: telecaster costs seven thousand dollars. I'm telling you that leg
Speaker 1: and the Devil aren't the same thing.
Speaker 2: This is the ven diagram of our actionship.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: It's an intersecting here with telecasters and demonology. That's perfect.
Speaker 1: It actually sums this up, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It is. It's amazing we've done it, Father Blone. This
Speaker 2: is like the what is that that the resetta stone
Speaker 2: of our friendship is right here at Crossroads?
Speaker 1: Just nearly forty years to figure it out, but thank
Speaker 1: God for that come along, Thank you John Fusco for
Speaker 1: bringing us together and sorting out our relationship.
Speaker 2: Really, and can I say how pissed I am that
Speaker 2: Britney Spears movie existsank you?
Speaker 1: Because every time I mention I'm gonna be watching Crossroads,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk Crossroads, I get the really you're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about that, and I'm like, no, not the Britney
Speaker 1: Spears moving like, oh there's another one. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: fucking another one.
Speaker 2: It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Okay, Can we talk the cutting head scene from a
Speaker 1: different perspective. Now we can both agree it's a fucking
Speaker 1: fantastic scene musically, dramatically. Now we got to talk about race,
Speaker 1: because if Eugene were black in this scene, it would
Speaker 1: be that much more powerful that when he shows up
Speaker 1: the Devil's Yeah, being black doesn't even count anymore. This
Speaker 1: white guy, it can beat you easily. That would have
Speaker 1: been great. That doesn't necessarily mean that the as is bad,
Speaker 1: But there is this weird implication that the blues is
Speaker 1: defeated by white classical music that I find a little disturbing.
Speaker 2: That I don't disagree. I will let me bring up
Speaker 2: another piece of this.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. And I would not say it
Speaker 1: if Eugene were black, because it would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, white person, here's your own music, and
Speaker 1: you can't play it as good as I can. Then
Speaker 1: it would have been something.
Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting is that there's another piece to this
Speaker 2: that maybe will lend some credence to that. Originally, when
Speaker 2: Eugene and Willy arrived at this juke joint, they see
Speaker 2: Jack Butler cutting heads with another guy. So the guy
Speaker 2: before Eugene, right, this guitar player that was going to
Speaker 2: cut heads with Jack Butler at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: scene was a guy named shuggy Otis. Have you ever
Speaker 2: heard of shuggy Otis? Chuggy Otis is this unsung guitar
Speaker 2: songwriting Prodigy. Okay, he did an album called Inspiration Information,
Speaker 2: which is one of my favorites. He wrote the song
Speaker 2: A Strawberry Letter twenty three, which was done by the
Speaker 2: Brothers Johnson. You've probably heard the song, maybe you don't
Speaker 2: remember it offhand, but he's he was a guitar in
Speaker 2: Blues Prodigy. This guy, Shuggy Otis. Anyone who's listening, look
Speaker 2: him up. I'm telling you, he's the real deal. Anyway,
Speaker 2: shuggy Otis is African American. So the scene was going
Speaker 2: to begin with Jack Butler cutting heads with a black
Speaker 2: man and winning. Okay, basically, shuggy Otis couldn't do it
Speaker 2: and he loses. They cut that out of the scene
Speaker 2: partly because they even at the time, they thought the
Speaker 2: optics of having this white guy beat a black guitarist
Speaker 2: in the setting would have been what would have been
Speaker 2: too much, would not have sat well with the audience.
Speaker 2: And I would agree with them on that to a
Speaker 2: certain degree.
Speaker 1: So that's alleviated. If you Gene is black. Look, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Eugene should have been black. The movie works
Speaker 1: as it is. I'm not saying it doesn't. Eugene should
Speaker 1: have been black. The movie he's so much better if
Speaker 1: he was it will.
Speaker 2: But here's one point I want to make on that.
Speaker 1: And if Francis were also black, then that character would
Speaker 1: work a little bit more for me. But here's the podcast. Okay,
Speaker 1: I call for a remake of Crossroads. Maybe make my
Speaker 1: point here.
Speaker 2: The issue there, Malone is if you have a Eugene
Speaker 2: be black, then it's not then him going on this
Speaker 2: journey with Willie, he's not going to learn anything because
Speaker 2: being black, he's going to already be pro all these things.
Speaker 1: If Eugene is a black kid from urban New York
Speaker 1: who has had no experience with what caused that music
Speaker 1: in the first place, because he's never been treated that
Speaker 1: the way those guys were treated, then that the journey
Speaker 1: becomes even more valid because it's teaching him about his
Speaker 1: own cultural past that he has no connection to because
Speaker 1: he's been living in an urban environment.
Speaker 2: But he would have been an African American kid in
Speaker 2: the middle of New York City. There's no I think
Speaker 2: there's very little chance that even if he had grown
Speaker 2: up sheltered him, going to Juilliard and being in that environment,
Speaker 2: he must have been privy to racism in some to
Speaker 2: some degree.
Speaker 1: Yes, he would have been. He would have been privy
Speaker 1: to snide, sneering racism. He wouldn't have been privy to
Speaker 1: get on the ground. We're taking your money. You're lucky.
Speaker 1: We don't fucking kill you here or ship you off
Speaker 1: to the fucking state farm until we decide whether or
Speaker 1: not you're worth prosecuting consequences.
Speaker 2: You're very you're very determined about my point.
Speaker 1: Look, man, I really this movie and I just want
Speaker 1: it to be better, and it's so close to being perfect.
Speaker 2: Then let me turn this around. Who could you have
Speaker 2: had play an act for kin? American Eugene Denzel Washington.
Speaker 2: We're talking nineteen eighty five, too old? No, okay, what's
Speaker 2: his name?
Speaker 1: Fuck? Oh Sagarera, what's your name?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Forrest Whittaker, Orest Whittaker, nineteen eighty five, long and thin
Speaker 1: sel Remember him in Color of Money, where he's playing
Speaker 1: a dummy just so he can hustle fucking Paul Newman,
Speaker 1: and then he takes all of Paul Newman's money.
Speaker 2: Ah, that might have been interesting. I actually, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: beginning to see your point a little bit, Father Molonte.
Speaker 2: I still think it's hard.
Speaker 1: Whittaker in Crossroads it would have been a whole other movie.
Speaker 1: It would have been this like dramatic, dynamic thing. As
Speaker 1: it is, it's just a fun adventure movie with Ralph Maaccia.
Speaker 2: You might be onto something there because because it definitely
Speaker 2: becomes there's more of an edge when you have Forrest Whittaker,
Speaker 2: and he could play funny too, he could make he
Speaker 2: can play charming and man, that could have been really good. Actually,
Speaker 2: I'm seeing him there with Joe Seneca going through all
Speaker 2: these same adventures. I think it could be good.
Speaker 1: Toe to toe with Joe Seneca, Joe Senica putting Forrest
Speaker 1: Whittaker in his place? Are you kidding? And then Forrest
Speaker 1: Whittaker walking into that room with Steve v and getting
Speaker 1: pummeled for a while and then going oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, let me play some classical Steve Vie. What
Speaker 1: do you think of that?
Speaker 2: And when you know it's always weird about that scene
Speaker 2: File them alone. They win the head cutting duel and
Speaker 2: the Devil or leg Book aka Scratch, tears up the
Speaker 2: contract and they finished the blues song and then there's
Speaker 2: this weird fade out and it becomes Cpa toned on
Speaker 2: the Crossroads. Are we meant to believe that they've been
Speaker 2: just and Eugene has this confused look on his face.
Speaker 2: Are we meant to believe that they've just been transported
Speaker 2: instantaneously back to the crossroads?
Speaker 1: They are, definitely, Yes, they're now back at the crossroads.
Speaker 2: But so so Eugene's confusion is this temporal confusion where
Speaker 2: he's I've just been insta transported to this place again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because no matter what happens in Eugene's life, he
Speaker 1: don't believe in that shit.
Speaker 2: But now he does.
Speaker 1: No, he doesn't. He's now still confused. I don't know
Speaker 1: how that happened, but now we're here. Anyway, there's nothing,
Speaker 1: says catl. Let's go to Chicago.
Speaker 2: Willy even says to him, get that dumb look off
Speaker 2: your face, because he's clearly looks like somebody who transports
Speaker 2: instantaneously somewhere, and they're like, how did I get here?
Speaker 1: This is weird because halfway through the movie he should
Speaker 1: have it should have been proven to him that the
Speaker 1: supernatural exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you, that him being on the
Speaker 2: crossroads and that should be like that shot, that's maybe
Speaker 2: my favorite shot of the movie, is this wide shot
Speaker 2: of the crossroads where he walks over next to the tree,
Speaker 2: Eugene and he starts playing slide get.
Speaker 1: But even then he's come on, say that again, I
Speaker 1: stepped in your line.
Speaker 2: So he's playing slide guitar out by this the gnarled tree,
Speaker 2: while Willy says, this is where it counts. We got
Speaker 2: to get them to come out here, and he even
Speaker 2: then he Eugene's saying, oh, come on, when are we
Speaker 2: gonna to Fulton's point, this is bullshit. He doesn't. He's
Speaker 2: still he's at the crossroads themselves, and he's heard all
Speaker 2: these stories from Willie, but yet he still doesn't believe
Speaker 2: that that is that doesn't bother them alone.
Speaker 1: Scratch's assistant shows up in a magic car and he
Speaker 1: talks to Willie Brown in a familiar way, talking about
Speaker 1: like confirming everything that Willy Brown has been saying through
Speaker 1: the entire movie, and then drives away, and then the
Speaker 1: fucking devil shows up. He appears.
Speaker 2: See this is what just appears.
Speaker 1: This is what I'm saying, Like that scene, I don't
Speaker 1: know why Walter Hill didn't try to eat least go
Speaker 1: for some sort of shock, if not scare, But if
Speaker 1: the car had pulled away, and in the same shot
Speaker 1: there's the Devil. It would have been like ah, but
Speaker 1: as it is, it's like the car drives away, they
Speaker 1: watch it drive away, and then you hear a voice.
Speaker 1: You turn around and go, oh, here's this guy. They're
Speaker 1: trying to continue to play with this idea that this
Speaker 1: may or may not be supernatural. We know it's supernatural, Walter,
Speaker 1: we know it's supernatural.
Speaker 2: It is per played. But it's just it's weird that
Speaker 2: Eugene never cops to the notion that this is true,
Speaker 2: for all evidence to the contrary. It's staring him right
Speaker 2: in the face. Willie has been hammering this home through
Speaker 2: this whole trip, like I need to get back to
Speaker 2: the crossroads. I need to get back there. Is he
Speaker 2: just we led to believe he's just humoring him so
Speaker 2: that they can learn the song, because at that point
Speaker 2: he knows the song is bullshit. So why are they
Speaker 2: at the crossroads anyway? Then it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: Remake Seriously, maybe it's time. Yeah, I don't know why
Speaker 1: this hasn't been remade. Honestly, not that I'm saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying it needs to be remade.
Speaker 1: Because that movie is bad. I'm just saying it could
Speaker 1: be a great movie.
Speaker 3: I like you cha.
Speaker 1: Which. Speaking of which, have you seen the trailer for
Speaker 1: Ryan Coogler's new film.
Speaker 2: The One with the Twins or what's his name playing Twins? I? No,
Speaker 2: I have not seen the trailer, but I've been reading it,
Speaker 2: but it sounds like it's gonna be pretty good.
Speaker 1: Is it possible Bootlegging in the South? Michael Michael B.
Speaker 1: Jordan as twin brothers, one of whom becomes possessed of
Speaker 1: the devil. It's gonna be the It's gonna be like
Speaker 1: Constantine in the in the twenties in the Deep South.
Speaker 2: What was that movie that the guy who was playing
Speaker 2: Kang the conqueror Lovecraft County? Is it like a Lovecraft
Speaker 2: County type of thing, kind of like that, Yeah, where
Speaker 2: it's like it's the Deep South, but it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's the racism thing, but it's something more sinister behind
Speaker 2: all of that. Is that what they're going for?
Speaker 1: I don't know that. I don't know how much the
Speaker 1: racism is playing into the plot of the story. I
Speaker 1: just know it's a story about the crime family in
Speaker 1: the Deep South, and then there there's some supernatural shenanigans,
Speaker 1: but they're not shying away from the supernatural.
Speaker 2: I love Ryan Coogler to the guy can do no
Speaker 2: fucking wrong.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the end of Crossroads because it's
Speaker 1: so fucking abrupt and weird.
Speaker 2: They get teleported back to the crossroad they're walking now.
Speaker 2: They decide they're going to go to Chicago and start
Speaker 2: to spread the gospel, right, and then with the stipulation
Speaker 2: that Willy's gonna leave, he's gonna leave Willy after Chicago
Speaker 2: and take the Blues in a new direction or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 2: they shake hands and then that's you're right. It is
Speaker 2: very abrupt. But how else would you want to just
Speaker 2: end it at the triumph at the juke joint.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the satisfying ending would be.
Speaker 2: By the way, there was another ending that was shot.
Speaker 2: There were two endings.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the thing I've been looking.
Speaker 2: For so bear. So there were two endings. One was
Speaker 2: they had a happy ending, which is the one that
Speaker 2: we see, and the sad ending. The sad ending is
Speaker 2: they're on a greyhound bus going back to New York
Speaker 2: and Willie Brown dies on the Greyhound.
Speaker 1: Awesome, that's the end. Apparently they were going to get
Speaker 1: the fucking Further Adventures of Willy and Lightning book.
Speaker 2: The thing was, Walter Hill's father had recently passed away,
Speaker 2: so there was something intensely maybe a little too personal
Speaker 2: for him, so it sounds like he didn't have a
Speaker 2: real handle on that ending. But frankly, it was just
Speaker 2: a situation where they test audiences didn't respond well to
Speaker 2: the sad ending, so they went with a good ending
Speaker 2: end of story.
Speaker 1: Pussye, how that's what I have to say to that
Speaker 1: shit man. That's the end. What's the point? He fucking
Speaker 1: gets his soul back and then he dies. It's perfect,
Speaker 1: and now Eugene has the fucking blues. That's the end
Speaker 1: of the movie.
Speaker 2: It would have made more sense because these blues guys
Speaker 2: all live fast, die hard, basically a blues man. I
Speaker 2: could very easily see It's like Hank Williams right now
Speaker 2: that he was a bluesman, but he died in his
Speaker 2: car outside of what Memphis or something, so I could
Speaker 2: see that being the ignominious end of a blues man
Speaker 2: is just dying on the way from Memphis or Mississippi.
Speaker 2: To New York on a Greyhound. That's sad, but maybe ropriatomatically.
Speaker 1: It's a little Midnight Cowboy. It's a little less than zero,
Speaker 1: but they can have him die in other ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't have a real problem with the.
Speaker 1: Years of a combine and that's a way to go.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't have a real problem with it. But
Speaker 2: I also didn't take it as them setting up the
Speaker 2: further adventures. I thought it was just like, all right,
Speaker 2: these guys all got what they wanted. Eugene maybe he did,
Speaker 2: can get the Lost Song, but his future is assured.
Speaker 2: That's enough.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just felt unsatisfying, not unsatisfying enough
Speaker 1: for me to not recommend this movie. I'm recommending the movie. HP.
Speaker 1: Are you recommending this movie?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 2: Hell yeah? Absolutely. The Danger of Fall the Malone is
Speaker 2: am I recommending it because it's a good movie or
Speaker 2: because I loved it when I was thirteen years old
Speaker 2: and I can't get away from that, and that's a
Speaker 2: little hard for me to I think objectively, it's a
Speaker 2: good movie, solid fun movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not everything has to be the fucking best, and
Speaker 1: not everything is the fucking worst. This is a pretty
Speaker 1: just solid musical flick that has great fucking music in
Speaker 1: it and is a good story and delves into a
Speaker 1: bit of Americana that not a lot of people knew
Speaker 1: about at the time, maybe still didn't know about today,
Speaker 1: Robert Johnson and his deal with the Devil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, White Savior or not. If this movie teaches somebody,
Speaker 2: anybody about the Blues who maybe didn't know about it, otherwise,
Speaker 2: I think that's a pretty pretty good thing. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: This movie inspired you to play guitar. You went out
Speaker 1: and bought the cassette tape of Robert Johnson that Ralph
Speaker 1: Macho has in the movie, as did I. So yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Like what could be bad about this movie?
Speaker 1: Nothing excepting except Francis is a terrible character and needed
Speaker 1: to have been there, and Eugene should have been black.
Speaker 1: Other than that, we're gonna we're gonna recommend this movie. HP,
Speaker 1: my man, let's finish up with with with a bit
Speaker 1: of a head to head battle if you will. Steve
Speaker 1: v Okay, we're gonna set him up as the ideal
Speaker 1: here because he's the Devil's man. He's Jack Butler, Steve
Speaker 1: I versus Buckethead.
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's tough because Buckethead can use nunchucks while he's playing.
Speaker 1: That's going to kind of make it playing better. Or
Speaker 1: is that just a gimmick.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a gimmick obviously, But you know that's I
Speaker 2: here's the thing. I love Buckethead. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't say that. You know, Buckethead is prolific, he's mysterious.
Speaker 2: That's a hard question. I don't know.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: I want to say Jack Butler because he's imbued with
Speaker 2: the devil's mojo, But man, Buckethead is so mysterious, and
Speaker 2: he can play so fast, and he's got that huge
Speaker 2: less Paul with the kill switch button. I gotta cop
Speaker 2: out and say, maybe it's a draw. Maybe they just
Speaker 2: look at each other and say, fuck, you're good. Now
Speaker 2: you're good.
Speaker 1: All right, Then I can't have a follow up. You
Speaker 1: got to pick one, you know what.
Speaker 2: For the sake of that, I'm still gonna say Jack Butler,
Speaker 2: but Buckethead's not far behind.
Speaker 1: Jack Butler versus Johnny Lang speaking of blues guitarists and
Speaker 1: white Jack Butler, no question, Jack Butler versus Ingvey Malmstein.
Speaker 2: Jack Butler ing Yingvey is is technically good, but he got.
Speaker 1: No soul Joe Satriani versus Jack Butler.
Speaker 2: Considering Steve I took lessons from Joe Satrianni when he
Speaker 2: was young, the student. It's got to be Satch Satch baby.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, now here's an idea for a movie Steve
Speaker 1: I as Eugene Joe Satriani as Jack Butler.
Speaker 2: I could be Joe Satriani is so good. Oh man,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm not convinced of VI's acting ability,
Speaker 2: but I could see that.
Speaker 1: Maybe another universe. There are multiverses out there. Maybe we
Speaker 1: can get an MCU version. Yeah, and then till then
Speaker 1: until we figure that all out. HP Oh no, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep interrupting myself. I'm gonna just before
Speaker 1: before I kick it over to you and tell people
Speaker 1: where to find you. I'm enjoying these musical collabs between
Speaker 1: Midnight Viewing and the Noise Junkies. There are certainly a
Speaker 1: whole lot of other musical films of this period to
Speaker 1: choose from. I want to throw it to the listeners
Speaker 1: to see which one you would want us to do.
Speaker 1: In order to do that, you got to write to
Speaker 1: me at father Malone seven to one at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Or hit me up on the socials, probably Instagram. That's
Speaker 1: what you'll probably find me the most. That's at Father Malone,
Speaker 1: but that's at Father Malone across all of them. And
Speaker 1: so we got to decide what's the next movie that
Speaker 1: we're going to watch. We should give them some choices. HP.
Speaker 1: Maybe American Pop.
Speaker 2: Ooh, that's a good one. But I thought you I frankly,
Speaker 2: I thought you hated American Pop.
Speaker 1: I don't hate it. I've come around. There are still
Speaker 1: major problems with it, but there are major problems with
Speaker 1: every one of the movies we're going to be discussing here.
Speaker 1: I think what's another big major musical one from Oh
Speaker 1: you know What's something like Shock Treatment I would like
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good one too. If I hadn't
Speaker 2: already done a whole podcast upisode on The Idol Maker,
Speaker 2: I would have advocated for that because I'm desperate to
Speaker 2: evangelize that movie. I love it so much.
Speaker 1: You know what, you know what I'll leave. That's that's
Speaker 1: an option. That's if people write in about they want
Speaker 1: to hear about the Idolmaker, will do the Automaker. So
Speaker 1: the choice of the Idol Maker little Shop of Horrors.
Speaker 1: That's the second one. Little Shop of Horrors is the
Speaker 1: second one, and the third one is American Pop.
Speaker 2: I think all of those three movies are all solid choices.
Speaker 2: I wish I could think of more off the top
Speaker 2: of my head, but I'm blanking right now. Father Alone,
Speaker 2: but any of those would be awesome.
Speaker 1: Leave it up to them, And until then, where can
Speaker 1: people find you if they're looking for you? Those same people?
Speaker 1: If you want to hear hps more of his stuff.
Speaker 2: In addition to Noise Junkies music podcast, which this is
Speaker 2: a crossover technically, you can find me on the Night
Speaker 2: mister Walters, a taxi podcast with yourself Father Alone. We
Speaker 2: just kicked off season three, so excited to be back
Speaker 2: in the garage on that one. I'm also an occasional
Speaker 2: guest on the Culture Cast with Chris Dashu and I
Speaker 2: also have a band campsite hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 2: You can come check out. Not a lot of blues
Speaker 2: up there yet. Maybe I'll start to change that at
Speaker 2: some point, maybe I should spread out a little bit.
Speaker 2: But anyway, album just released recently called Wired and Waiting.
Speaker 2: Please listen to that and if you like it. Throw
Speaker 2: a couple bucks my way, help a guy out.
Speaker 1: As for me, you're listening to the show, it's midnine viewing.
Speaker 1: But if you want to hear episodes early in commercial
Speaker 1: free and get access to shows that me and HP do,
Speaker 1: like Cable Box Theater, head over to patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Father Alone. You can subscribe there. That'd be cool.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have any money, I don't have
Speaker 1: any money. I don't blame if you don't have any
Speaker 1: Just if you could subscribe or like or share this show,
Speaker 1: that would be greatly appreciated. Tune back in on Sunday
Speaker 1: or Monday, whenever I'm conscious enough to get the goddamn
Speaker 1: show done. That'll be the next Father's Malone's weekly round up,
Speaker 1: and tune in next Friday. We've got another episode of
Speaker 1: Midnight Viewing Horror Anthology podcast where we're talking about the
Speaker 1: next two episodes of Tails from the dark Side Until
Speaker 1: next time. There's a hell hound on your trail.
Speaker 3: Shame on you, Willie Brown, traveling all the way back
Speaker 3: down home.
Speaker 2: As if you had a chance, ain't.
Speaker 3: Got no chance.
Speaker 4: Blind doll your soul, your soul, you going down all
Speaker 4: the way down hellhounds on your trail, Boy, hellhounds on.
Speaker 6: Your trails, sets stings, stasist