SPEAKER_10: New, immune-supporting Emergen-C crystals brings you the goodness of Emergen-C and a fun new popping experience. There is no water needed so it's super convenient, just throw it back in your mouth. Feel the pop, hear the fizz, and taste the delicious natural fruit flavors. Emergen-C crystals orange vitality and strawberry burst flavors for ages 9 and up have 500 mg of vitamin C per stick pack. Look for Emergen-C crystals wherever you shop. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Every kid learns differently, so it's really important that your children have the educational support that they need to help them keep up and excel. If your child needs homework help, check out iXcel, the online learning platform for kids. iXcel covers math, language arts, science, and social studies through interactive practice problems from pre-K to 12th grade. As kids practice, they get positive feedback and even awards. With the school year ramping up, now is the best time to get iXcel. Our listeners can get an exclusive 20% off iXcel membership when they sign up today at ixcel.com slash invisible. That's the letters ixcel.com slash invisible. Hello, beautiful nerds. A few weeks ago, I had the honor of being a guest on one of the best podcasts of all time. I've listened to every episode. I'm a Patreon supporter. It's been a genuine comfort and companion to me for quite a while. It's called Blank Check with Griffin and David. It's a movie podcast that dives into directors' filmographies. I showed up during the Sam Raimi series, specifically examining his 1995 masterpiece, The Quick and the Dead. I'm such a fan of this podcast and I had such a great time. And so I just thought I'd share this thing I love as a bonus episode with you. Just a warning, there are 78 curse words in this episode. So and since it's their show, we decided to leave them as is. You've been warned. So enjoy.
SPEAKER_08: I'm so damn fast. I can wake up at the crack of dawn, rob two banks, a train and a stagecoach, shoot the tail feathers off a duck's ass at 300 feet, record a three hour podcast and still be back in bed before you wake up next to me. That's pretty good. Thank you. I was trying to figure out which one to replace with podcasts and that was like, just throw it in. It makes it even more impressive. The brag.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. I mean, it's like a K young Leo, right?
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was pretty good. It kind of had that. It's the rhythm of right. Yeah. The ring of Titanic and Romeo and Juliet that will not Romeo and Juliet so much, but like that kind of like swaggery quality. I don't know how to describe it.
SPEAKER_08: It's funny how different and how much he is still the same from adult Leo to child Leo. You know, like this is, I'd say when you get to Titanic and Romeo and Juliet right after this, right? Right after that's when he's like a young man, right? He's become like a heartthrob. This is maybe the last performance where he still feels like a kid. He's literally playing the kid, but he feels like he is playing the kid. Right? Absolutely. He feels like a boy in this movie.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. And he's about eight inches wide. He's very little. He's very little. He's quite petite.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_08: He's so little and delicate. And I feel like I think so much of the narrative around Leo was like his whole post Titanic Scorsese jump was like, I need people to stop thinking of me as boyish, right? Like he went so out of his way to stop being floppy haired, stop being sort of like charming and light and all that sort of stuff. But you still see so many kind of similar mannerisms and tricks even in how he plays his most hard boiled people today.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you do. But there was that and it suits him. Yes. Obviously in this and in Titanic I think there's that sort of punky, I think I'm so special quality to these early performances that totally suits like it's perfect, perfect casting here, right? I think that he, that he, that he's maybe like whatever fully convinced that he's a movie star when you're like, well, you're not a movie star yet, Leo, but now it's weird because he isn't, he's Leonardo DiCaprio. I know it is one of the most fascinating things about watching this movie is like all the
SPEAKER_08: home media releases. And I imagine even just like the graphics they use on streaming sites and rentals or whatever are sort of like the four of them at equal billing, right? Like Stone Hackman Crow DiCaprio. And then you watch the opening of this movie and it's like Stone Hackman quick in the dead, Russell Crowe names, names, names, names, names, names, names, names, names, and Leonardo DiCaprio. And they are obviously, no, I know there's a central quartet, but it's like the two guys immediately become the biggest fucking movie stars imaginable right after this movie. And Hank Hackman has like six more years of being elder statesman before he retires and Sharon Stone. This is one of the movies that I think causes Hollywood to sort of disregard her prematurely.
SPEAKER_02: Yes. Although this is also, is this not her Oscar nomination year? Is it? Because casino is 95, isn't it? Yes. Casino is 95. But I mean, I think you're right that this is, I mean, I mean the, there's a couple of movies coming. We can talk Stone in a minute. I've got a few years coming up that I guess is the true nail in the coffin for her as a movie star. But this would be definitely underperformed. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_10: I think it's her blank check. Like she's real producer. She's like, she's coming up. That is my exact point. Yeah. Yeah. More than Ramey's. Ramey's is very confusing filmography for blank check purposes as far as I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_08: But she used a check to hire Ramey's someone who people thought of only for doing sort of junky sci-fi horror sort of pulpy stuff. I don't think they would have been quick, no pun intended, to hire him for this. She used her check for Crow. She used her check for DiCaprio. Literally. Yeah. No, but like, right. Exactly. This was really her thing. Yeah. Got Sony to buy it for her. I do think you're right, David, that like casino feels like a coronation moment of like, fine, we're going to respect you as a serious actress, but also now can you go away? It there was a weird dismissal in the casino nomination, I find where people are like, OK, Scorsese got a good performance out of her.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So the year after this, let's just dive right in. I have to give it a piece of it. I know we have to introduce the show in our guest. It's blank check with Griffin and David.
SPEAKER_08: I'm Griffin. I'm David.
SPEAKER_10: And I'm Roman Mars.
SPEAKER_08: Now, wait a second. You can't do that. Well, I know I'm supposed to speak before I'm introduced, but I wanted to introduce
SPEAKER_10: myself before I was introduced.
SPEAKER_08: That's the one that you can't do on this show. That is brilliant, actually. Yes. You can speak before you're introduced and you can make a good point, which you did before you can introduce yourself before you've been introduced. Well, I don't play by your rules.
SPEAKER_10: No, look, you're you're you're podcasting legend.
SPEAKER_02: I guess you could do what you want.
SPEAKER_08: Do you not immediately the second Roman came on the Zoom? David feel like my voice sucks like the second.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't even have grip. I didn't even have the you know, the window in the front of my I didn't have a window open right. I just heard the voice. So right. I just heard hello. And I mean, I can't even do it. I was like, what the you know? Yes. It really feels like I am like a high school basketball player. And like, you know, an NBA guy just walked in the locker room. I feel like, oh, I see.
SPEAKER_08: I feel like I'm the kid and fucking Hackman just walked. Well, that makes Roman sound scary and mean.
SPEAKER_02: Look, Griff, I want to say something about Sharon Stone right away.
SPEAKER_08: I want to say that it's a podcast about filmography directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks, make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce. Pew pew, baby. I shoot out. I couldn't think of a good whatever. It's a mini series on the films of Sam Raimi. It's called Podcast Me to Hell. Today we're talking about his 1995 Western The Quick and the Dead, which I think a lot of people don't know exists. And I think a lot of people who know it exist don't realize it's a Sam Raimi movie, which is bizarre because it is so much a Sam Raimi movie.
SPEAKER_08: It is.
SPEAKER_02: And it should be called the slaps and it's great. I don't know. Yeah. Sorry. It's so good. The rules and it fucks. Yeah, exactly. But listen. Yes.
SPEAKER_08: Speaking on Sharon Stone. Our guest today is Roman Mars of 99% Invisible. He already introduced himself.
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, Sharon Stone's early career is busting out of hit genre films like Total Recall and then Basic Instinct and then Sliver, right? Like these are these are where she's making her name. This year she's got the quick and the dead, which we will talk about today, but did not do that well at the box office. She has Casino, which is an undeniable hit. Maybe a little bit of a come down from like Goodfellas or whatever, but still she gets an Oscar nomination. I was going to say a hit.
SPEAKER_08: It's certainly a win for her, but it was like, oh, Scorsese made lesser Goodfellas was the tag at the time.
SPEAKER_02: Now in the next year, in 1996, Griffin, she had two films. She had Diabali, the remake of late Diabali, Big Flop, which is a big flop. And she had a Bruce Beresford movie called Last Dance that was also a big flop. Right now, this is what I want to get to. There's a Golden Raspberry Award that existed for quite a while until from 1982 to 1999
SPEAKER_02: called for the Golden Raspberry for Worst New Star. And she was nominated for it that year. And I saw that and I was like, what do you mean new star Sharon Stone? Like she'd been around for a while. Like what were they thinking? So let me read you, Griffin, the five nominees for worst new star for the 1996 Golden Raspberries. OK, OK, OK. The and these are rude to be in classic razzie fashion, I guess. Myself for rudeness. OK, OK, here we go. All right. One and Ben's going to be mad. Beavis and Butthead and in Beavis and Butthead to America. What the fuck? producer.
SPEAKER_09: That's so like undeserved. First of all, they're so cool. Whoever made this list is like such a nerd who doesn't like fun. And the movie was a hit. And it was a good hit.
SPEAKER_10: And it was good as hell.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. OK, so the next two are the guy from fucking unsolved mysteries.
SPEAKER_09: Right. Yeah. The voice, the unsolved mysteries. Sure. What is his name?
SPEAKER_09: I don't know, but that's a huge get as far as I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_02: That's your argument against a particular razzie knob. I think there are other arguments.
SPEAKER_08: I don't think there's other stuff that's great, too.
SPEAKER_09: It's got Hank Hill in it. I mean, come on, don't get me started. Robert Stack was it Robert Stack at the time?
SPEAKER_08: Robert Stack. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: OK. OK, so some other nominees. Ellen Degeneres was nominated for Mr. Wrong. I guess that was sort of the first Ellen star vehicle. It didn't work out right. That that's more pretty disastrous movie. Yeah. Next, there's a group nomination for four Friends cast members. So they're going after the Friends cast members.
SPEAKER_08: So 96. Would it be is Ed in there?
SPEAKER_02: Ed is in there. Matt LeBlanc. I feel like that's the one they're really going for. Yeah, because the others are David Schwimmer in The Pallbearer. Right. Matt Reeves is directorial debut. Lisa Kudrow in Mother, which is like a supporting role. So that's a real stretch. Yes. And Jennifer Aniston. She's the one which I feel like was a movie that everyone thought was OK. So they really should have just nominated Matt LeBlanc in Ed. That would have actually been on target. Yes. Fair. Yeah. Then they've got Pamela Anderson in Barb Wire. OK. And an obvious Razzie thing, right? They just pick on the model slash act. Right. You know, like, let's put a pin in that.
SPEAKER_08: I'm going to come back to that later. This is connected to a larger point I want to make.
SPEAKER_02: Go on. Sure. And then the fifth nominee is Sharon Stone, but it's billed as the new quote unquote serious Sharon Stone in Diabolique and Last Dance. So they're basically, you know, stamping her with the like, don't try and fool us. Right. And Stone, you're not a serious actress. You're a genre actor.
SPEAKER_08: Last Dance is a death row movie. Yeah. Right. She's she's the one making the clemency case. She is on death row for a murder.
SPEAKER_02: And Rob Morrow is trying to save her from death row. You've also got Randy Quaid, Peter Gallagher, Skeet Ulrich. Wow.
SPEAKER_08: I mean, I'm just I'm looking at how to hit. No, no, no, no. I'm just looking at after this. Right. So 97. She doesn't make a movie. Ninety eight. She's got Sphere, which is a flop. It is a high profile flop. What if there was a sphere? Sure. She's got Mighty, which I think is viewed as another sort of failed Oscar bait movie for her. Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Although I quite a sweet film. I haven't seen it since I was a teenager, but I remember being. Yeah, I remember being relatively fine.
SPEAKER_08: Gets a Golden Globe nomination for that.
SPEAKER_02: Right. She's kind of like a fake lead. Like the kids are obviously the leads. She's the supporting mom. But yeah, right. It's billed as a Sharon Stone movie.
SPEAKER_08: Right. It's a voice and ants. Ninety nine is rough. Ninety nine. Ninety nine is Gloria, which is a Gloria remake. No one disastrous movie. Right. Lumet remaking Cassavetes only 15 years later, whatever it is. Bizarre, a bizarre choice. Yes. The Muse, which she gets the Golden Globe win for that. And the story immediately becomes she bought every member of the Hollywood foreign press like a Rolex and she bought her way to the award. It's an infamous sort of this is how easily the Hollywood foreign press can be swayed story.
SPEAKER_02: Griff, here's the thing. She didn't even get the win. That was the nomination. Are you kidding me? She lost to Janet McTeer for tumbleweeds. Well, the Golden Globes ordered all 82 members to return luxury gift watches that Sharon Stone and or October films had sent. So yes, it became this embarrassing. Like she didn't even earn the award. The nomination. She's pretty good in the Muse, isn't she? That movies all right. She is good in that.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. But but like truly from that point on, she's done. Simpatico if these walls could talk to picking up the pieces, which I think isn't even theatrically released. Beautiful Joe. Like these are like movies that do not exist. I know by the time she's popping up in Catwoman as the villain.
SPEAKER_02: Yes. It's this like jokey thing of like Sharon Stone. Like remember her? And of course, she was famously attacked by a Komodo dragon. Yes. Right. That's the other thing. What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_09: She was like Komodo dragon.
SPEAKER_08: He's talking about exactly what he just said. She was attacked by a Komodo dragon. She told how big are those fucking things?
SPEAKER_09: The biggest land animals or whatever.
SPEAKER_02: They're like 10 feet long or something. They're terrifying. They paid to close down a reptile house at a zoo so they could have a private tour.
SPEAKER_08: Right.
SPEAKER_10: Well, she was married to Phil Bernstein who was the editor-in-chief or I don't know, something of the San Francisco Chronicle. So this is the local story that I knew of the time. And you're an SF guy. They closed down on East Bay. I will correct you. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. You're a Bay Area guy. Wow. And then, but I lived in San Francisco too, so I don't mean to be so rude about it. They closed down to get a special viewing of the Komodo dragon and actually bit Phil Bernstein's foot, which is notable because the way that they kill things is they have this horrible mess of bacteria in their mouth and they don't actually like kill things by killing them, chomping them. They kill things by biting them and then letting them fester and die and then eat later. Wait, that's kind of sick.
SPEAKER_09: That's so metal actually. They are very bizarre.
SPEAKER_02: I remember when you're a kid, I feel like you learn like Komodo dragons are like the largest lizards that exist. And you hear like, that sounds awesome. They're called dragons. And then you see them and they just kind of look like big lizards. They're like, and you're a little disappointed. Like they don't even look like a crocodile or something cool. They just look like, and you, you, you never see them in comparison to anything. So they just kind of say it's tough to gauge size.
SPEAKER_09: That's the thing. I can't get any perspective on them. They just kind of look like lizards. Yeah. They're pretty big. They're low to the ground.
SPEAKER_02: Obviously. What's the, there's a, there's a James Bond with the Komodo dragons in it.
SPEAKER_10: I think it's Skyfall is the one where he's in Macau and he gets like kicked into a Komodo
SPEAKER_02: dragon pit or whatever. Yeah. Classic. It's always happening.
SPEAKER_08: But that is truly her biggest credit in that five year period, right? Between 99 and 2004 Catwoman where they're repositioning it as, is this the sort of ironic comeback of Sharon Stone playing full camp? It's just new stories like that. And it's her going on the golden globes and giving a rambling speech and then Amy Poehler making fun of it. Like she just becomes this weird sort of pop culture figure who isn't even thought of as an actor anymore.
SPEAKER_10: And it sucks because she is so good. She is so good in this.
SPEAKER_02: She's so good in this. I think she's a very underrated star in general. Not by everybody, but by a lot. I think her, her nineties run is very strong and you know, and she took good risks. And certainly the story of this movie is her making a lot of correct creative decisions. Correct. You know, she, she's handed some power and she uses it well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: I mean, when this movie came out, I was a 20 year old into movies. And so I saw it in the theater. I was very excited for this movie. And Sharon Stone was a thing I had to overcome to be excited about this movie because I only knew her as basic instinct, a sliver, you know, like, and I didn't, I never saw those movies, but they just were distasteful for me as a, like a snobby movie guy, you know, at the time. And yeah. And, but now when I, when I watch it and I, at the time I love this movie and it, but now when I watch it, I'm just like, she's amazing in this movie. She's so good in this movie.
SPEAKER_02: She has incredible onscreen presence. And I want, I want more for her, like a, like a time machine me wants more for her in her
SPEAKER_10: career than this.
SPEAKER_08: But when we were doing the Verhoeven series some years ago and watching like total recall and basic instinct back to back, you're just like, how did within five years of basic instinct coming out, all of Hollywood decide she is a joke. Like it, it just doesn't make sense. And it's not like that's a fluke performance, but I do think if I could circle back to the Pamela Anderson thing, right? Cause the Razzies are dumb and they're rude, but they do in their own stupid way represent the sort of worst type of consensus opinion around popular culture within eras, right? There are things that they do latch onto of just like, this is what the dumbest people feel. This is, this is what they're reducing movements and pop culture to. And you look at a list like that, you look at a category like that, David. And two things I find run really, really strongly through the entire history of the Razzies is they hate things made for women.
SPEAKER_02: No they absolutely do. Right.
SPEAKER_08: They also look, they make fun of big dumb boy action movies. They hate Michael Bay and Sylvester Stallone and whatever. But like it does feel like movies that are specifically made for women. There's this attitude of the nerve. How dare you even try? What is this dumb shit? The other thing is they, they like hate anyone who too explicitly titillates them, right? Like I'm not saying Pamela Anderson is good and barbed wire, but there's this fury of how dare you make this movie where you show us your tits the whole time. Right. And like they gave basic instincts, so many fucking nominations. It is absurd. And it felt wild considering obviously the basic instinct, right?
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God. I'm realizing Sharon stone was also nominated for worst new star in 1992. Exactly. For that. Right. Like twice, twice. It's like rejecting, rejecting her before she has a chance to reject their nerdy asses.
SPEAKER_10: Right.
SPEAKER_08: Right. But it's like a, it's a Madonna and the whore thing of being like, how dare you be this sexy on screen in this hyper sexual movie? That means I can't take you seriously. You have to be frivolous. And then once she makes the shift to like, I'm ready to use my clout to make serious films, interesting films, they're like, how dare you try to be serious now? You fucking piece of shit. You know, like the first time they give her worst star for being in an erotic thriller and the second time they give her a worst star nomination for not being in erotic thrillers anymore. Because the run in between is her doing like sliver and specialist and the movies that you would do after basic instinct if that's the thing you want to maintain. And the second she starts veering off from that, like the Razzies get angry at her again. It's very interesting, you know, beyond the Razzies though that like, I guess.
SPEAKER_02: The roles like quick in the dead is a great pick. That's sort of out of the ordinary in that she has actually identified a script with a very compelling female lead, right? That she can play and she's like, cool, I'm going to do this casino. Obviously that's Scorsese tapping her at the absolute perfect time for the absolute perfect role. She is such good casting and casino. I love that performance. And then after that, things like diabolic last dance sphere feels like her agents, Hollywood, whoever being like, okay, let's find you more like steely ladies, right? Like what, how can we class that up or how can we, you know, make that a list? And I just feel like the scripts aren't there. Here's the other thing, and this is totally superficial, but she cuts her hair, right? Everything pre casino, long hair, and then post casino, she has the look that I knew when I was a teen person getting into a teen person getting into movies. Sharon stone always had short hair. She always had the like very short blonde hair in movies like the mighty, not in Gloria. Obviously she needs like the big, you know, muse. She has it too. Yeah. Yeah. Sphere like, and does that like kind of like put her in a weird, like sort of posts, you know, femme fatale box. I have no idea. I just, I just feel like her image shifts and Hollywood gives up on her or something. I don't know. I don't know. The Sharon stone things weird.
SPEAKER_08: Nope. I think it was the person who saw this in theaters at the time. As you said, it's like there is that sense of even if her erotic thrillers are her more, you know, sexy roles were big hits that it was like, but we can't take that seriously. I also think on top of that and tell me if I'm wrong here, everyone was just making fun of her all the time. Like even when she was at the peak of her career, she was kind of like a classic like Leno style punchline. Yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_10: I think that's the nature of those erotic thrillers like make in the same way that you talk about the Razzies. It makes people like nervous and nervously make jokes and nervously like dismiss her because they're afraid of their feelings. Right, right. And then when she cuts the hair and it's like, wait, you're not trying to be a pinup model
SPEAKER_08: anymore. Like you're not looking like the idealized form of a femme fatale. Then people get angry at her again.
SPEAKER_10: It's a tragedy. But it is. But I also think that she probably, you know, she stepped away. She seems to have a lot of other interests. She's super smart, you know, and I'm pretty sure that part of her career was her choice too. I wouldn't like take that away from her because she definitely like made choices later on to not be in things. I'm sure.
SPEAKER_08: Yes. I mean, she's talked about being like really fucking fed up with how everything works.
SPEAKER_10: Why not? Absolutely. Why not? And so, and especially because I think this is one of those ones where it is both, it is so Quickly Dead is so against the grain. Like this is not the heyday of the Western. This is not, Sam Raimi is not an established director, A-list director. It is a strange role. And she took all that stuff put together and made this thing happen. And it's just a testament to like how on it she was and how much she was not, you know, really just trying to take boxes and that sort of, you know, kind of Will Smith way of just like, okay, I'm going to study all the blockbusters of the world and I'm going to decide I'm going to, you know, like make blockbusters. She just made a cool ass movie with her power, which is awesome. She also like put her neck out on the line successfully for two of the guys who were
SPEAKER_08: about to become two of the biggest leading men in Hollywood and the man who would direct the first huge superhero franchise.
SPEAKER_10: It's amazingly prescient. It's stunning. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's, it's funny for 1995 and I can get into some of the context in a sec, but like when you think of Westerns, obviously it was sort of a supposed boom for the nineties. Western was sort of had me write Dances with Wolves wins best picture and then Unforgiven wins best picture. And then you have these movies like Geronimo, you have Tombstone, uh, City Slickers, Maverick, City Slickers 2, that's a huge one. Uh, like, and so in 1995, all the movies we just mentioned have come out and not, I would say a lot, most of the movies we just mentioned were hits, not Wyatt Earp, but most Geronimo was, not Geronimo. And like this, I would say is right when the bloom is again off the Rose, like Hollywood's Western comeback really just lasts a few years. And by 1996, the only big Westerns I'm seeing here are from Dust Till Dawn, which does not count. That's a horror movie obviously, but it's got Western themes, I guess, Western aesthetics. I love that movie to be clear Lone Star, which is like a, you know, dark Neo Western mystery, contemporary. And like, that's basically it. Like, I mean, this list has last man standing. I don't think of that as a Western really is it? It's like a prohibition movie. It's like gangsters.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah, but it's, it's definitely in the style of these. I mean, it's a remake of, it's a remake of your Jimbo and whatever. What's the, what's the Western version of your Jimbo? I can't remember, but there's another one in between there.
SPEAKER_02: And then by 97 it's like the postman. That's like the only Western Hollywood. This is what I was going to say though.
SPEAKER_08: Like Costner is the guy who's like really working to bring the Western back. And by the second half of the nineties, he's kind of shifted more to sci-fi like postman is like Western sci-fi. He's done West world now or water world rather not West world. You can sneak in horses and stuff in like the mass gazaro, you know, some wild, wild
SPEAKER_02: West, like something like that where it's like, it's not just a straight ahead Western, but the quick and the dead is really stripped down in that it's like, here we are in a town. There's a mean sheriff, there's guys, there's a saloon. Everyone's got guns. This is not about like the American experience, you know, in the West at all. It's about like, what if there was a town where everyone's job was cowboy who shoots you? Right? Like, you know, there's no like economics at work. No, it's like, it's like fucking like karate kid part two with, with shootouts or whatever.
SPEAKER_08: But also, yes, you have Gene Hackman doing a Western for the first time since he won an Oscar for playing the bad guy in a Western.
SPEAKER_02: Which was just like three years ago. It wasn't that long ago. It is really funny to me the juxtaposition of those two characters, which are basically
SPEAKER_10: the same character. Yeah. But one of them is like, serious with serious motivations where you can see he's a good guy or maybe at one point in his life was a good guy who went down a very, very dark path. And and and the Herod character in this one where he's just a cartoon villain. And they're both so good. I like both performances so very, very much. And it makes me think that maybe Gene Hackman is the best actor of all time.
SPEAKER_08: And there's a solid argument. Anytime I hear someone suggest that it's it's hard to shoot it down. Like you, he's at least in that very, very upper realm of debate.
SPEAKER_02: The whole thing with Gene Hackman is he could absolutely just give you Gene Hackman, right? Like, if I just called him up, and I was like, you're gonna play kind of like a gritty tough guy in this who doesn't take a lot of shit. And you're maybe gonna have a mustache. He would be like, you know, that would be fine. And so you could be fooled into thinking like, yes, Gene Hackman was a great movie star, but he kind of just did his thing. And then you'll see something like get shorty one of my favorite Gene Hackman performances ever, where he plays like a quivering buffoon. Yeah, like, like absolute idiot, cuck great character, so funny. And then you're like, Gene Hackman secretly could do anything. Yeah. And like, and like, that is why yes, there's an argument that he is the greatest actor in Hollywood history. I think I think he's, there's an argument.
SPEAKER_10: You never hear horrible things about him. He's sort of like he he just is able to you. Everyone said, and I think he's admitted in the years since he retired and chilled out
SPEAKER_08: if he was incredibly difficult. Okay. That he was not a friendly man. I'm not using like language to skirt around it, but I feel like even like when they've done Royal Tannenbaum's retrospectives and that's like his second or third to last movie ever. They all say like he he's not he's not pleasant. Like he's very intense and he's angry, which look is his superpower on screen. Like he is better at harnessing anger. Oh, he's so good.
SPEAKER_10: He's so good. The levels of anger are fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I like his sort of growly anger and I like his like when he gets upset, it's like the when he gets in his register and he goes, you're not faster than me. You know, he gets really up here. Like I just fucking love it.
SPEAKER_08: You are dead right though, Roman, that like the facility and in just sort of him understanding the difference between these two characters. You know, this character and the character and Unforgiven that on paper are very similar and the differences, the sort of shifts he makes in energy modulation and performance style to fit into each movie and the demands of that narrative properly.
SPEAKER_10: It's totally different because I was coming in. So I watched a quick in the dead and Unforgiven for this. Oh wow. For this little broadcast here and and I was like because I was going to make the case that they were the same character and they are not. They are very, very different and it's all comes from the way Gene Hackman plays it. Not how necessarily how they're written.
SPEAKER_02: It is surprising that he was cast because of what you're just the superficial connection on paper.
SPEAKER_08: You're like, right. It's the kind of thing where studios are both like, let's just have him play little bill again. But also you wonder if that's a deterrent, if audiences can be turned off by seeing something they've already seen.
SPEAKER_10: Right. But but they're totally different. I mean, it takes a it takes a minute to notice it in a way or you have to really be paying attention to it. I think you have to notice all the incredible things. I think Sharon Stone is doing like she's one character in the very beginning. She is she is playing a character of what is what if Clint Eastwood was this role, but it's a woman playing it and then Herod shows up. It freaks her the fuck out so much that every moment after that she's twitchy. She experiences her trauma all the time. You see it in her face. You see it in the movie like they really train on her reactions in her face and I think it's brilliant. I think it's brilliant choice. I think it's a brilliant way that she plays it and I and and it really is about a person being affected by another person that changes their whole like facade. And I think that the way they interact together is like is incredibly well done.
SPEAKER_08: I think you see how much you learn from working on those Verhoeven movies about not needing to be realistic. Right or naturalistic in her performances that she can do something more expressionistic to better suit the tone, the mood, the genre to sort of make bigger statements because so much of a character is this sort of I mean this entire movie comes out of this like if you were to just have the man with no name be a woman, how does that change the dynamic of every scene? Right. And so she's playing with that very consciously of when she needs to play the emotions of the character when she needs to play the iconography of what she's representing and it's yeah, it's like really impressive work and Hackman is able to make this entirely different character from little bill despite not doing any obvious actory things. It's not like he said, I want a prosthetic nose and a mustache with the characters different. I'm going to do a different voice. I'm going to call it some tick to make him really unique. It's just emotional modulation and knowing exactly what movie he's in and what role he needs to serve within that story.
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SPEAKER_02: You guys know Hackman lived with like Dustin Hoffman and who's the other right back in the day in New York. The original pussy posse.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Like imagine living with him, even young Hackman like who's maybe has less gravitas or what, you know, and like you ate his cheese out of the fridge or like just imagine like having a roommate conversations with him. It chills me to my bones. Yes.
SPEAKER_09: Like trying to ask him to do the dishes like when you come home at night, you slam the
SPEAKER_02: door. It's waking me up like whatever.
SPEAKER_08: I mean the other thing is he just, he always looked like that. You know, he just had like had she'd Hackman face and he had that voice.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Young Gene Hackman. I is very, very hard to picture. Obviously there's sort of like night moves. Gene Hackman, right? Like sort of like middle Gene Hackman with the stash where he just looks exactly the same. You look at young Gene Hackman, you're like, yeah, I get it. Like I get that that makes sense, but he's like a little, he's, he's bulkier in front
SPEAKER_10: of the French connection, which is his breakout role. And he's a little sausage.
SPEAKER_02: He's you know, he's with a little hat and a little jacket. Like yeah, he's, he's, yeah, he's not a trim guy.
SPEAKER_10: Intimidating. Yeah, that's basically it. He's intimidating. But I think one of his reasons why like I have such reverence for him is because he was never quite that Lee man style. He was able to be the best part in so many movies. While he, you know, he, he can be big, he can be smaller. I mean, he didn't just do so much and I kind of like all of it. Agreed.
SPEAKER_08: He's fascinating because he can selflessly take on a supporting role or a villain role or be a mentor character or whatever it is and be the most interesting part of the movie. And then whenever he was placed at the top of the movie to play the plot driver, he also somehow remained the most interesting person in the movie. Like he never collapsed under the weight of that sort of narrative responsibility or needing to be the leading man type or any of that. There's a story. I think I sent this to you and the doughboys, David. We were texting about how good Hackman is. And I sent you guys that clip of Kevin Costner on the rich Eisen show talking about Hackman. Did you watch that?
SPEAKER_08: Maybe what's, what's the, there was whatever thriller the two of them did together. Hackman and Costner pretty early in Costner's. Oh, no way out. Yeah. Uh, yes. Yes. Um, so they were talking about on that movie. Costner was coming in pretty hot, right? Like he is a man with a lot of opinions and he was a very ready to be a leading man and a director and all of that. Uh, so they're doing all these scenes and, um, I think he was saying that like most of his scenes with Hackman were in like office rooms behind a desk and they didn't feel very dynamic. I've never seen this movie, but that he was behind a desk for most of it and that, um, he got to set and was sort of like, this is boring. We should do this. Move this chair, stand up, change the blocking, whatever. And uh, was just being very opinionated with everything around. Roger Donaldson was sort of pushing back on him. He was really being stubborn about like, I finally become a leading man. Like I don't want to blow it. I don't want to be lazy. I don't want to rest on my laurels. I want to make every scene as dynamic as I can. This is Gene Hackman. This is one of my idols and Hackman was just sitting there like silently the entire time
SPEAKER_08: as these fights were happening and then would just wait for them to settle and would do whatever they landed on. Right. And at the end of the day and costume was like, I don't know if I pissed him off. I don't know what's going on here. And at the end of the day, Hackman stops him when he's like walking on his trailer to get to his car and he goes like, Hey kid. And Costner, Kevin Costner was like, Gene Hackman's about to chew me out. Like is terrified of Gene Hackman even at peak physical Kevin Costner. Right. And it's just like, this guy's going to fucking destroy me. And Costner goes up to him and he is like, you know, I had a bad divorce and I had to
SPEAKER_07: take some movies I didn't really want to do and pay my settlement.
SPEAKER_07: I think I sort of forgot what I like about doing this and watching you today fight for that. And I did when I was a young actor and I cared about every single choice. So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_08: Wow. And he like walked off and then Hackman has like a golden period right after that.
SPEAKER_06: Huh?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's true. Passes the, you're right. He like reignites the torch. Sorry. Yeah. It's like when Hackman, cause I feel like why Hackman won an Oscar for Unforgiven. I mean, obviously he's really good in Unforgiven. It's a perfect supporting act. But it was also kind of the Oscars being like, you still got the juice buddy, like or whatever. You know, like it's that rediscovery thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: I mean, I think his eighties were not particularly great outside of Hoosiers and Costner says that Hoosiers I think came out when they were shooting No Way Out. And Hackman was like, I gotta be honest. I didn't know what we had. I thought that was a piece of shit and I didn't think I was giving it my all. He's incredible in Hoosiers, but it's obviously a very quiet internal performance.
SPEAKER_08: But Hackman by his own admission was like, I feel guilty by how much I wasn't respecting that movie and appreciating it while we were making it.
SPEAKER_02: I feel like he did a lot of stuff for money, right? Like he's in Superman 4. That's kind of embarrassing. He's in a lot of shit. But like Uncommon Valor was a movie that was like a hit, but wasn't respected.
SPEAKER_08: Like he did a lot of the eighties. This is what he was saying. He did like a bad divorce and he did a lot of movies for money.
SPEAKER_02: And it's not like in the nineties he did all gems. It's like he did a lot of it. But uh, but I mean, God, this year he has quick in the dead Crimson Tide and Get Shorty. This is 95. Well, I just feel like even though he, you know, he's in movies that don't turn out to
SPEAKER_10: be great, he always comported himself well. We're like, I don't think this stink of a bad movie ever really stuck to him. Um, which is part of the, you know, the grace of not being a Dustin Hoffman or a Robert De Niro or a, you know, like that he gets to be good in things and be respected. But I don't know, like he doesn't take, I don't, I don't remember him in those bad movies.
SPEAKER_08: No. And I also think, I mean, David, we've talked about like the Tommy Lee Jones phenomenon where Tommy Lee Jones is another actor whose superpower is like anger. Right. And so when he's simmering. Right. And like disgust and distaste for everything around him, when he's giving a movie his all, he's incredible. And when he hates that he's in a movie, he's incredible because his actual disregard, his movie version translates. So I think like whatever period where Gene Hackman's heart was maybe in it a little less, the performances were still really fucking compelling. And then I think in the nineties he started just being like putting his heart fully back
SPEAKER_08: into everything. And then yes, even when he was taking paycheck jobs, he's like over delivering on all of it. God, he's so good.
SPEAKER_02: He is good. The Quick and the Dead is good. This film is directed by Sam Raimi.
SPEAKER_08: And boy was it directed. It really was. Directed the shit out of this movie.
SPEAKER_02: Look, I love Sam Raimi and I love this movie and I love how he directed it. But it is that kind of thing. Like when I was 12 years old and I was trying to understand like, what is a director? How can I watch a film and understand how it was directed? This would be a good entry level where you're like, did you notice there were a few subtle choices in terms of how the story was told? That's sort of Sam Raimi's fingers that you're, these little fingerprints that you're noticing here, right? You know, like, do you notice that that gun floating across the screen for no reason?
SPEAKER_10: That's a very Sam Raimi move right there.
SPEAKER_08: You watch this movie, you're like, was he the only guy who watched the Man with No Name trilogy and during all the shootouts and standoffs was like, come on, let's throw some juice in here. Not enough stuff happening.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
SPEAKER_10: I, I love it. I think it's like, it, it, it's weird that, um, you know, Western, which is often kind of an excuse to kind of, um, have a movie do nothing except for just have Vistas being on display, that he takes that and just like pours Sam Raimi-ness into it in a way that is like, um, I find so compelling. Like, I really love it. It's just like, I would never put it together that these like succession of shootouts is the perfect use of his superpower, but it totally is. It's just a video game of like, of a boss level, like, you know, like continue with like series of boss level fights that allow him to like do canted angle that just, you know, flips all the way over or the jaw, the jaw is like pull back angle sort of thing. And he just does every, in every single fight is different. He's like, it's so good. It is that thing.
SPEAKER_08: He uses every tool in the toolbox. He doesn't repeat himself. And the other thing with him is for how loud his directing style is. I don't think there's a single thing in this movie that is like the flash or style for its own sake. I agree. Every choice he makes as loud as it is, is in support of trying to convey the emotion of that moment with the most sort of extreme amount of energy, which for a film that is very, very clean and simple and straightforward plot wise, it does help a lot.
SPEAKER_10: I totally agree. And I think that also the emotion stays with it. I mean, there's some key emotional moments that are played sincerely and you feel them sincerely. And it's a really delicate balance to strike. And he does it, I think throughout this movie, which is why I think one of the reasons why I think it's a real triumph.
SPEAKER_02: I agree with everything you guys are saying, but I think that at the time critics did not agree at most. Absolutely. The popular reaction was this movie is all flash. It's all sizzle, no steak. And I'm not getting any emotion and Sam Raimi can't fucking calm down. Right? Like that was the hit at the time.
SPEAKER_08: Well, also all the westerns you're talking about in this sort of like nineties, late eighties, nineties wave, right? That is dying at this moment. All of them are like very austere. They are prestige, adult revisionist westerns by and large that have like a simplicity to their filmmaking style. And this is a popcorn movie. Right.
SPEAKER_02: I would say Tombstone is the trashiest of those nineties westerns. It's not nearly as sort of fizzy as this movie, but Tombstone, obviously definitely a little more, a little less austere. And then city slickers was not the most austere work, but of course I'm joking when I include city slickers and all this.
SPEAKER_08: But truly city slickers is more austere cinematically than this is like city slickers is very saccharine. I would say that most things are more austere.
SPEAKER_02: That's the thing. It's a low bar, but yes, it absolutely is. Yeah. Quick and the dead, even though it has actors from Unforgiven and it has, uh, like the aesthetics, uh, the, the, the, the look, not, not the way the camera's moving, but you know, the, the frontier town and the costumes and all that, that would feel very recognizable. Yes. It is aesthetically, uh, completely different from all the other westerns people are seeing. So maybe that threw people off like too goofy.
SPEAKER_08: I'm looking at Gene Hackman here. I forgot that in between Unforgiven and quick of the dead, he is also in Wyatt Earp and Geronimo. Yeah. He's in the other movies we've been, he would sign on, run.
SPEAKER_02: He would sign on. He still liked money. Yes. He loved it.
SPEAKER_10: I remember this being a flop or being a critical flop as it was completely confounding to me. Like, cause I saw it and I just like, well, that's one of the greatest movies I've seen this year. And I mean, I think that one of its, the other thing that was going on is like, you're, you're kind of in the pulp fiction, you know, I ironic, uh, like th this, this is a, it's kind of like pastiche in a, in an interesting way of Sergio Leone, but it's also not ironic. It's not, um, me, not ironic spirited. It's not, it has a real sincerity to it that I think also short circuited the kind of cinephile reaction to it too. Like it had, it didn't get embraced by any group of, of moviegoers at the time. And I just, I don't know why it was this a big fat meatball for me.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I mean, it was a February release. Like, I feel like that's kind of a weird dumping from Sony and like the whole thing is just kind of neither. It's like, well, this is an expensive movie with movie stars. This is a prestige project. No. Is it for families? Definitely not. Oh, okay. You know, like the, the, the options are kind of narrowing. It's only award nomination is a Saturn award for best actress. That's it for her.
SPEAKER_07: Wow.
SPEAKER_08: From dustle dawn is the year after this. And that's what you're talking about. And like, that's the Western that is now speaking to the post Tarantino generation by being written by Tarantino, starring Tarantino and 30 minutes and being like, just kidding. We're not a Western. Right. I mean, and to be clear, I adore that same, but right.
SPEAKER_02: The whole joke it's great of that movie is that it stops being a Western and it's, you know, right. Yeah. Anyway, the quick and the dead, let me give you guys some context. Okay, please. All right. So this was written by Simon Moore, who at the time is best known for the TV mini series traffic with a K. How would you know that traffic is spelled with an IC in the United
SPEAKER_08: States of America, where we all have lived our entire lives in 1989, there was a British
SPEAKER_02: mini series for channel four in it called traffic. Are you talking like that? David doesn't sound right. He famously turned into the film traffic by Steven Soderbergh many years later. I'm assuming none of you have ever seen it. I have never seen the film.
SPEAKER_02: That's right. The mini series. Well, David, how would we have seen it?
SPEAKER_08: I don't think it aired in the United States until 2000.
SPEAKER_02: No it aired on masterpiece theater in 1990. It was a very big deal. Well, how would you know that? I'm reading Wikipedia. I've never seen traffic despite having lived in England for many, many years. I feel like we're getting very close to something.
SPEAKER_08: I said it. I said it.
SPEAKER_02: What? No, it's funny when you look at traffic because obviously the Soderbergh movie was about the cartels and all that. It was about Mexican drug dealing and so on and so forth. But the British movie was about heroin dealers, I think. And it was about like Afghan and Pakistani growers and all that. It's funny how it got transposed. It was a big deal. I think it was a big deal. And then the movie was about the French government and the French government, which is kind of like, okay, that thing was
SPEAKER_02: a big deal. So I guess Simon Moore gets kind of brought out to Hollywood where it's like, okay, buddy, what do you got? And he had written a movie called under suspicion. He writes, turned into a movie. Right.
SPEAKER_08: That's something that I've never seen. It is funny. Sometimes when you like troll through IMDb like that and you find a movie where it just feels like four things pulled out of a hat. You're like, try and you're slapping magnets on the board. You're like Liam Neeson fucks Laura San Jacomo. Is that a movie?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Right. Which is sort of sounds like something that would have happened in 1991. Like, what are you going to check? Like that sounds fine. What do we call it?
SPEAKER_08: I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: Under suspicion or something. So Simon Moore basically is like, I loved spaghetti westerns. I loved the, you know, Sergio Leone style western. I loved the Mexican standoffs and I was just like, what if there was a movie that was all that cool. We cut everything else out and it's just shoot out after shoot out the princess bride effect.
SPEAKER_10: You know, that kind of, yeah. Take all the good stuff.
SPEAKER_02: So smart. It is quite smart. And he wanted to do it spit Getty. Yes. Western style. He was going to direct it himself. He was going to like go out to Italy, you know, try and get like $4 million, right. From some studio. And basically what happened was eventually Sony who had turned down the idea of the movie with him directing calls him and they're like, we'll buy it for a lot of money. Like we will, you know, turn it all around. And he truly, like, I think he didn't even know what script they were talking about. Cause he was so confused. Like I guess he had several scripts out and then like the way he puts it is like, it was a Frank Capra moment where you're, you know, like where he was like, I'm never going to have any success. I'm always going to be poor. And he got the phone call and like, that was it. It was like all the money in the world. And he was suddenly like his whole life changed or whatever.
SPEAKER_08: Was that because Sharon Stone had found the script? Was Sony buying it to try to lure Sharon Stone? Or did Sharon Stone ask Sony to buy it? Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Basically I think the, and it sounds like classic Hollywood stuff, which is like, Sony calls him and they're like, we want the script. We'll pay top dollar. And he's like, what do you want to do with it? And he's like, we can't tell you. And he's like, Sony won't reveal any of that. And then eventually they are like, so yes, we're going to have, this is going to be a star vehicle for Sharon Stone. And she wants Sam Raimi to direct it. And Simon Moore was like, wait, that sounds great. I love Sam Raimi. Like, you know, like I think like he, they maybe assumed that he would be like, Sam Raimi, like forget that. And he was like, yeah. And they, he, he did the rewrites. Like, it's like basically they never took the script away. Like oh no, I'm sorry. No, they did eventually take the script away. For a while he's, he's working on it for them. And then one day they fired him and they brought in John Sales and he beefed up the script to a two and a half hour movie. Jesus. Well, it's so funny that you mentioned Lone Star, which is John Sales written and directed
SPEAKER_10: that came out at the same time, which is almost like if you could have a polar opposite Western from quick and the dead, it's probably Lone Star, which is a movie I fucking adore. Like I love that movie is fantastic.
SPEAKER_02: Phenomenal. But certainly it is not a blockbuster tinged. Right? Exactly. It is a slow and interesting film.
SPEAKER_08: And what's interesting about it from the way I read it is that I think they brought in sales cause they were like, this thing might be a little too popcorny. And he adds some like serious Western gravitas to it. Right. And then he does that by adding an hour onto the runtime, which they're like, this thing is overblown now. So then they bring more back to rewrite sales as draft. And what he did was just hook out all the sales stuff and they went, great, you fixed it. So he was like, essentially what they made was the first script from before they fired me. What a waste.
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, Griffin, you and I have heard stories like this about Hollywood production, where they ruin a script trying to fix it and then like turn back around and they're like, Hey, can you fix it? And the answer isn't, Hey, can we go back to your original draft? It's Hey, could you come back and change your change script so that we like it again? Like they, they, they, they, they can never admit the mistake enough that they're actually like, you know what, let's go to draft eight instead of draft 47 draft eight was actually when it was good. They just have to keep going.
SPEAKER_08: They feel like it has to be an additive process. And especially in this day and age, you can just be like, go to my email from February. There's a draft that is dated. There there's a story I remember hearing about a uncredited writer who I think he was a credit did rewrites on the first Tim story, fantastic for movie and Jessica Alba kept on coming in with notes every day about her character not making sense. Cause a missing woman doesn't make the most sense in the world, but okay.
SPEAKER_08: But they were just sort of like this whole movie doesn't make sense. This is like chaos. Like what are you talking? She'd come every day and have so many notes on the scene, this and that. I want this and I want more of that. And at some point, uh, the, uh, the, this writer just caught like 90% of her dialogue out and was like, because the studio was just sort of like, she's becoming like a nightmare. We just like can't solve this and she's holding everything up. Can you just like cut her dialogue down? So she's got as little to do in every scene as possible. And he comes to set the next thing. He's like terrified that just got, Alba's going to chew him out. She runs up and gives him a kiss and a hug. And she's like, finally someone cracked my character. Not present. All they did was just remove. Wow.
SPEAKER_02: It's look, I'll say this as someone who writes professionally for living. Sometimes you know, you'll turn into story and you're right. It'll be like, I want this, this, this, this, and this. And you'll like make one change and it'll be like, yeah, I love it. It looks great. Like, you know, like it's sometimes it's just some weird vibe thing. It's it's, it's, it's so bizarre. I don't know.
SPEAKER_10: It is a mystery of editing. I edit for most of my life is, is focused around editing and it is weird how much of it is like we work on it, work on it, work on it. And the answer is, uh, let's just cut that.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, more here says that a specific concern the studio had was the repetitive nature of the movie. Like it's just gunfight after gunfight. Is this, isn't this going to be boring? Raimi solves that.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Like, I guess I understand that concern in theory, but like it's, it's, it's Mortal combat boring.
SPEAKER_09: No, we love this. Street fighter boarding. No, you motherfuckers. I mean, I think something that's very important is that you make every character, even if
SPEAKER_02: they're a little character really pop. If it was just a bunch of anonymous villains who are getting shot off the screen cause you know Sharon stone is not going to die until, you know, like then sure it, maybe that would be an issue. But Sam Raimi is like, no, there will not be one face that you do not remember in this movie.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. It reminds me, it's sort of like, um, when, when we make radio, which is my only context for this, I don't, I don't do anything visual at all. Is like, if you can read a script and it functions the same as, as the audio product, then you didn't actually, then you didn't actually make radio, you know, like you shouldn't be able to read it and have it be the same. And so if you read it, you know, and, and that's what is added with all the visuals and all the tricks and all the cool things with it is just like they made a true movie because if you read the script of it, you'd be like, well, that's a dumb, you know, like that doesn't do enough. But it shouldn't. No, yeah, no, yeah.
SPEAKER_08: Not only does he have sort of unique visual ideas for each gunfight and is, are those ideas uniquely paired to each gunfight, not arbitrarily applied for the sake of variety. Right. But also as you sort of said, David, it's like, we got to get through a lot of characters fast. How do you characterize them fast? How do you cast great character actors? People that has a scar, right? Will be remembered scar. How do you style them specifically? Like all of this shit. It truly is though. Like I've been listening to so much dead eyes. Our friend Connor rattles podcast and so much of that is talking about the weird when he talks all these other actors, when you lose parts or gain parts or how people gain parts and the weird as interest is of casting. And part of it is like a movie like this where Sam Raimi has to make sure that every person looks distinctive, right? Has a different voice, has a different name, has a different gimmick. Is it an actor who we all know? So we got the shorthand of that's Keith David or is it a guy who you make like be named rats be and you kind of give him fucking rap aesthetics, ace in his cards.
SPEAKER_10: And it's, it is so, it is so Mike Tyson's punch out like I'm 10 years old and you, so my video game references are slightly older, but it's like, it's very much just like, this is the guy that does let me go dancing. And so he has the name flamenco in his name, you know, like it's just, it's right with one for one.
SPEAKER_04:
SPEAKER_00:
SPEAKER_08: But it's a very smart understanding of how, what the audience is going to need to hold on to in order to be able to stick with this movie. Yeah. Cause when it starts, it's like, wow, you're introducing a lot of characters in the first five minutes, you know? Yeah. How do I keep track of this? What complicated spider web narrative. And then you're just like, yeah, they're all going to be on chalkboard. We're just interesting you all now. And then there's going to be a tournament one by one that will get shot down.
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SPEAKER_02: So Sharon Stone, as we said, is the producer of this movie along with the star. She picks this movie because she likes the role that's been written here. It's unusual. She likes the idea of a woman with no name, right? She had, I guess, been mogul enough on Sliver and said that she like rolled over a lot there. Like she was trying not to step on toes or whatever. And that movie, you know, didn't do amazing. I mean, Sliver is sort of like a trash masterpiece, I guess, of the early nineties, but it's not like a well-received film. No, and was certainly right.
SPEAKER_08: Not well respected.
SPEAKER_02: So this is her, like, I am putting my foot down, like movie, right? Like this is where she has all the she's calling the shots and she's like, I'm not fucking this around. Like just because you'd like a big thing she cites is that someone, some people quote who shall remain nameless, wanted her to wear a dress when she rides into town. And she was just like, we're not doing that. I am not going to be sexy in like whatever way, like whatever normal way you think for this movie. They actually shot a sex scene that got removed. With her and Crow?
SPEAKER_02: I must have been. It's not clear. It's not cited. Yeah. Where would that have happened?
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: Like outside? Yeah. You always chained up to the fountain. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Wait, is that where it moved down? And of course she got to pick her director and she picks Sam Raimi. And it's sort of a weird thing because Sam Raimi, I don't think has ever directed a movie at this point that he didn't write, right? Like this is his first kind of for hire job.
SPEAKER_08: Correct. And the main thing I read that she hired him off of was army of darkness. That was the one. She loved army of darkness.
SPEAKER_02: Right. And like Sam Raimi, not only this is the thing, had basically never worked with a big actor before because like Liam Neeson in dark man is not like that famous at that point.
SPEAKER_08: No, it's pre fucking Schindler's list. Like this is the first time he's working with established movie stars. And then everything else is like literally his friends.
SPEAKER_02: Like, you know. It's almost what's most impressive to me about this movie is that like crime wave was obviously
SPEAKER_08: such a sort of knockback for him, but how well he transitions to like new budget level working with established movie stars in a new genre in a studio system with a script he didn't develop. And it's just seamless. It feels as personal as any of his earlier films and it feels as of a piece.
SPEAKER_02: Bruce Campbell I think does actually have a tiny role in this movie, but he was Raimi wanted him to have a bigger role. One of the gun fighters obviously, but he was shooting Briscoe County junior. So he was a good reason at least.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it is a good reason. But he should have been one of these guys. He absolutely, I mean, he's at any one of these roles is basically, and he's very nice
SPEAKER_02: in that kind of Raimi way where he's like, this is Simon Moore's thing. Like it's a great script. 90% of it is him like good job by him. I just wanted to do a good job like putting it on screen. Like he, I think he, as someone who had never directed another person's script before was very deferential to the script. What a mensch. He is a bit of a mensch. He had a good time working with Sharon Stone. Guess who he had a tougher time working with? Gene Hackman. That's correct. Things were a little difficult. He says, Gene, very strict, reminded me of an elementary school principal teacher called Mr. Little sounds kind of cool. Actually. He was shooting Geronimo. Sam Raimi goes to meet him and he says, Sam, tell me about the picture. At that point, I would shoot myself and piss my pants. If Gene Hackman just said, tell me about the picture. I would be like, no, I won't. I will, I will commit suicide in front of you.
SPEAKER_08: By the way, he said that with a gun, a loaded gun, talk to Sam Raimi's temper. Tell me about the picture, Sam.
SPEAKER_02: So Sam says he talked for about 15 minutes and he was kind of just like, and then Hackman says, tell me about my character, Harrod. Does he love the kid or not talking about DiCaprio? And Sam Raimi's like, well, of course he does. That's why he's so mean to him all the time. And Gene Hackman apparently nods and goes like, and then there's no further discussion because then he accepts the part. But I guess like that was Gene Hackman's sort of weird test was like, do you understand this character in the way I want you to or something?
SPEAKER_08: Do you, do you know that Brian Cox succession thing? Either of you?
SPEAKER_02: He plays, I know he plays the role of Logan Roy in succession. That's what I was asking.
SPEAKER_08: It's a little trivia fact I found IMDB. I didn't know if you know. No, what's, uh, Jesse Armstrong when he was, uh, I get, maybe he had taken the part already. They were meeting with him. They hadn't started filming though. Right. And he said to Jesse Armstrong, like, I just have the one question for you. I can do all my work. I'm not going to pester you with shit. The one question I just need to know before I can play this part and either answer is fine, but I need to know what your definitive answer is. Does he actually love the kids or not? Right. And I wonder how much the Hackman thing was like a test versus him being that kind of very practical actor where he's like, I just need you to tell me which it is and I can tell you whether or not I can get my head around playing this guy.
SPEAKER_02: I do get the sense that right, Brian Cox is a fairly practical actor in a way, because obviously he does a lot of weird crap. Like I mean, no offense to him because my favorite thing, I mean, I haven't read the Brian Cox book yet. I'm going to, but obviously, you know, everyone's heard that that book is him being like, you know, and Jeremy Irons, what a hack. I hate him. And he has 10 paragraphs and all the shit he's been in. And it's like Brian Cox, you've done like 40 movies that no one's ever heard of that are like, you know, you yelling at Gary oldman on a submarine and then you walk off with money in bags. They didn't even forget. They forgot to cut that out of the movie. But like you're, you're handed some like aluminum that you can go, you know, barter with it like, right. Like, you know, it's just weird that Brian Cox is such a hack and yet also so comfortable calling everyone out. And I love him to be clear.
SPEAKER_06:
SPEAKER_08: The last chapter of the book, by the way, David, because you said you haven't read it yet. I haven't read it yet. The last chapter of that book is him calling you out for not having read the book. He knows. He knows. He's sitting around doing fucking podcasts.
SPEAKER_07: Read my book. God damn it. Fuck off. Fuck off. Sims.
SPEAKER_02: So Gene Hackman, I, this again, this may not, this may stun you guys to hear was not super into Sam Raimi's style of filming.
SPEAKER_08: Very technical, complicated setups. Many takes.
SPEAKER_02: As he says, he cuts the film in the camera to some degree, meaning that he never lets a master scene run through. So I guess that's Hackman saying like, why don't you just point the camera at me and let me be gene fucking Hackman and Sam Raimi's like, no, no, no, no, no. I want to do this. And then I want to do this. And then, you know, like, I know it has to be exactly this way or else the studio is going to not like, you know, let me do it. Right. You know, so I'm sure he got on his nerves.
SPEAKER_08: Yes. It is a reason why I think I look, I don't know what his technique is with actors by and large, but I do think Sam Raimi doesn't get enough credit for how good the performances are in his movies, considering how difficult his style of filmmaking is for performances. And I think part of that is he casts very well. And even if he wasn't getting along well with Hackman, Hackman is so fucking good in this and especially we'll get to it. But the moment after the shootout with the kid, he plays that in such a fascinating way. It's not Hackman like pulling a scene off of the shelf that he's done before. You know, that scene is the best scene in the movie, I think.
SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of good scenes in this movie.
SPEAKER_08: Can I read this thing? You were talking about David, the terror of imagining living with Gene Hackman as a struggling actor. Go ahead. I'm just on his Wikipedia. So his one of his main jobs at that period of time living with Hoffman and Duvall was that he worked at the Howard Johnson in Times Square. So if you think it's scary to be his roommate, imagine having to order ice cream from Gene Hackman at a fucking diner. But he one of the people he served at that restaurant was previously one of his instructors at the Pasadena Playhouse who said that him working at Howard Johnson was proof that he wouldn't amount to anything.
SPEAKER_09: Damn. Wow.
SPEAKER_08: Jesus. Yes. And he was a Marine, he had been a Marine. He enlisted in the Marines when he was 16 years old. He lied about his age. Well, he probably looked 47. Absolutely. I don't think he had to lie. Yeah. He's 24 in this movie, but he lied about his age at 16 to enlist in the Marine Corps for four years as a field radio operator. Right. So he's had this Pasadena Playhouse guy tell him you're not going to amount to anything. And then a year or two later, he's working as a doorman. And the former Marine officer, his former commanding Marine officer said, Hackman, you're a sorry son of a bitch. And there's this quote from Hackman here where he talks about how much everyone dismissed him at that time. And he said, it was more psychological warfare because I wasn't going to let those fuckers get me down. I insisted with myself that I would continue to do whatever it took to get a job. It was like me against them and in some way, unfortunately, I still feel that way. But I think if you're really interested in acting, there is a part of you that relishes the struggle. It's a narcotic in the way that you were trained to do this work and nobody will let you do it. So you were a little bit nuts. You lie to people, you cheat, you do whatever it takes to get an audition, you get a job. It does feel like that is the energy Gene Hackman carried with him throughout his entire career until he retired. Like he was just sort of adversarial to everyone he worked with. Not like abusive. You know, that's what I think when I was thinking that I hadn't heard much bad about him is
SPEAKER_10: like it never went to the level of abuse. It seems like he's the typical kind of artist style scare. Yeah, he was just constantly locking horns with everyone all the time.
SPEAKER_08: And it's one of the reasons he's like when the rare times he does interviews been very clear on why he doesn't want to come out of retirement. He's like, I'm a lot happier now. I finally let go of all that shit.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. Is this the movie where Raimi kind of puts on the suit and does stuff like this? Is this him trying to like, like I wear fancy clothes to basically as my armor and my costume. Yeah. Confidence. Like I got it. You know, and and heretofore, you know, he had been, like you said, just mainly working with his friends and maybe that wasn't required. But like, do you know when he made that transition to the kind of wearing a suit all the time?
SPEAKER_02: I don't. Although I know, of course, that is his on set by right. He dresses up. Right.
SPEAKER_08: Right. Right. Right. And if it isn't, it still does feel like this is the moment where symbolically the shift happens. Well, this that's what I like.
SPEAKER_10: My psychology is this is the moment I would dress up if I was asking Gene Hackman to sit there while I rearrange the cameras would be the moment when I would be sure I was wearing a suit when I asked him respectfully to do this.
SPEAKER_08: J.J. our researcher found this. He posted this on Twitter recently. I imagine it was in doing research for the show, but I don't know what specific episode. Did you see this quote, David? Which one? I don't know where this interview is from, but they said to Rami, he just did the screen grab of this question and answer. You always wear a suit on set. Rumor says it's a nod to Hitchcock. And he said, although I have a tremendous amount of respect for Alfred Hitchcock, who is the true master of horror and the father of such modern filmmaking technique, I don't actually wear a suit as a tribute to him. Believe it or not, I wear a suit and tie as a sign of respect to the cast and crew. I like a very serious and well ordered film set. For me, it's the best way to work. And out of that order, I like to get a tremendous amount of creativity. At the same time, the old masters used to dress in a very formal manner on set. And I always thought it was super cool. And then in a line that might have been ghostwritten by my father, the end of this answer is Sam Raimi saying nowadays everyone's got the nose rings and the colored hair. So for me to wear the suit and tie is a different way to go.
SPEAKER_02: Sam Raimi's not here for the nose rings. My father always talks about the Mohawk hairdo and only refers to it by that full name.
SPEAKER_08: The definite article. Look, the note, the Mohawk hairdo and the thing in the nose is what my dad always says. I mean, there's this story that Bruce Campbell relates because I feel like Sam Raimi doesn't
SPEAKER_02: talk a lot of shit, right? Like Sam Raimi strikes me as someone who's not going to be a gentleman. Gene Hackman was a huge pain in the ass, but apparently Sam had a very specific setup. He wanted Gene to do six different things. And Gene looked at him and said, I'm not doing any of that. And Sam had to talk to him for like 15 minutes about the character to be like, this is why I want you to tip your hat, to sit in the chair, to say this line, you know, like, you know, he had to like talk him all the way through it because clearly Gene Hackman was like, I'm not your action figure, you fucker. Right. Or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_08: Right. But, but like with Campbell was his action figure, you know, he like, he had this big goofy friend who was also a producer who was down for anything and he could just manipulate into a billion takes by himself. It's just, I just like every single performance in this movie is good and he gets people at very different stages in their careers. Well, speaking of, when are we going to talk about Russell Crowe?
SPEAKER_10: Because this is his first American movie. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: I'm about to pivot to Russell Crowe who, I mean, I feel like I've lavished some praise on Russell Crowe on this. You're a fan. Griffin. Yes. Have we covered a lot of Russell Crowe films? Insider. Insider obviously really compelling, wonderful performance.
SPEAKER_08: But is there another one? That's a good question. I feel like we talk about him a lot. We're obviously developing a live action Donkey Kong movie with him, but that might be the only proper Russell Crowe film we've covered.
SPEAKER_10: Well, in addition to Ramey, the thing I was most excited about when it came to this movie was Russell Crowe because I had seen him in Australian movies. You did you see romper stomper.
SPEAKER_02: That was so big stomper. Which was a big deal and but this other movie that another one that I hope people find and
SPEAKER_10: love is this movie called Proof from 1991.
SPEAKER_02: Proof is a wonderful. Yes. Jocelyn Warhouseville.
SPEAKER_10: It is so good and he plays just a dude that is not very notable in any way except for he is so charismatic that he makes this very ordinary guy very compelling. And between that and romper stomper, I was like, this is the guy. I was like, I was super convinced on him really early on.
SPEAKER_02: Well, guess who else was convinced Sharon Stone Sharon Stone fucking good ass taste because guess who Sam Raimi wanted for this role. Oh, I don't know Liam Neeson who he had just worked with. Oh, obviously now at this point, Liam Neeson is coming off of Schindler's List. I don't know if Liam Neeson would want to do this. He would be make total sense for it like big him, you know, imposing but Sharon Stone had seen romper stomper. She thought he was charismatic, attractive, talentless, talented, not talentless. Yeah, I was gonna say what a neg. Talented and fearless, which I do feel like is fairly crucial. Crow had addition for a small role. He'd addition for one of the, you know, many gunslingers, I guess. And Sharon Stone basically was like, you have to audition for the lead role for court. And I basically talked Sam Raimi into it. Like, you know, and I, I, this is not even a, probably not even a top 10 Russell Crowe performance. He's given a lot of wonderful performances, but he is magnificent in this movie and he is so hot. It is crazy how good he looks.
SPEAKER_10: I think it's one of his best. I agree. Maybe it is. I, it's sort of like his subtlety that I, you know, his bluster that sort of comes on later is like, is the part of our school I don't enjoy as much. You know what I mean? He can bluster me all over the room. He can throw a fucking phone at your head.
SPEAKER_10: But him, his ability to play a gentle and tough and kind of an addict and kind of, like he's basically a violent addict that's recovering. And to, for him to do that and be, I, this might be my favorite role of his ever. That's the thing. Obviously look, I'm a disgusting David.
SPEAKER_08: I may be a notorious soft boy and I don't want to fucking become Eddie Redmayne here, but I do think there is a fragility in this performance that I don't know I've ever seen Crow capture as well. And the way that is cut with his natural sort of brutish animalistic intensity is really fascinating. It's it's a, I don't think he is ever called upon to pull up this same amount of energy,
SPEAKER_08: the same kind of energy rather.
SPEAKER_10: It's a different energy. And also like he's, when you capture him here and the something that you get is this infinite possibilities with him, you just see that all the movie stars he could possibly be. And just over time you, you watch them narrow and those walls close off and he chooses a path and he becomes more of a Russell Crowe as a person. And in this one I just see this like amazing performance in this infinite potential and it sort of delights me when I see it. It's it's so good. I'm regretting the top 10 comment.
SPEAKER_02: I think I might revise it to a top five because I'm just looking at his filmography right now because my favorite Russell Crowe performances is not mastering. Oh, that's probably my favorite Russell Crowe movie. That's probably, you know, but LA confidential is my favorite performance. That's like one of my favorite performances of all time. And that's right after this, right?
SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's two years later. Virtuosity. It's basically like confidential, right? It's basically his, for his next performance in a serious movie because God bless virtuosity, which is a very bananas piece of nineties, you know, Hollywood crap. And he's, he is really good at it and he's like, you know, he pops really hard at it, but that's not like a, you know, a real serious movie or whatever, you know? Yeah. So LA confidential.
SPEAKER_06: This looks good. Virtuosity.
SPEAKER_09: Sid 6.7, the ultimate killing machine. Correct. He is a VR amalgam of every serial killer.
SPEAKER_02: Ben. Do you know what Sid stands for?
SPEAKER_08: No. Sadistic, intelligent, dangerous. Fuck me. That movie is. I gotta get my hands on this shit.
SPEAKER_09: Damn. I'll bring it over, Ben.
SPEAKER_02: I've got it on Blu-ray. I'll bring it to you sometime. Perfect. That's another movie I saw in the theater.
SPEAKER_10: I was very excited for that movie.
SPEAKER_02: Why wouldn't you be? They're all on pro. Yeah. Look, Bud, Bud White is my favorite pro performance ever. That's one of my favorite characters ever. I love that movie.
SPEAKER_10: And that is true. I would put maybe that one is higher than this one, but I just find this one. So he just has a different type of appeal in that I just, I find it really stunning.
SPEAKER_08: What's interesting. Are you saying, Roman, the thing about like, you see all the different ways he could have gone in this. You see how he could have become a little more like Liam Neeson. Like I think Liam Neeson probably had a little too much gravitas to pull this off at this point and also was probably a little too known and is a little bit too much of a physical presence. There's something about the fact that Russell Crowe in this movie still even watching it from a modern perspective, you can't really tell if that violence is inside of him or not. You know, there's an actual tension to how much this guy seems to be fighting this stuff. Totally.
SPEAKER_02: Can I fill out my top five? I'm now, okay. I think it's, I think it's like confidential. I do think I would put Master and Commander second. That performance is so beautiful. Then I guess I would have the insider. Those are sort of right. That's kind of like your Holy Trinity of Crow. And then I, you guys are talking about tenderness. Like the movie is, I don't like the movie that much. I know what you're going to say. I do think his performance in a beautiful mind is like that. You know, he's tapping into that. You know what I did not, I was going to say that.
SPEAKER_08: No, I thought you were going to say boy erased. Boy erased is, look, we talked about it.
SPEAKER_02: It's yeah, I like, I like that performance. That movie did very little for me. Yes. He's he looks so strange in the movie that it's almost as you said, his eyeballs. Eyeballs are fat. Like it's just, do you remember that line?
SPEAKER_08: Griffin said, no, I do. It haunts me in my sleep.
SPEAKER_02: Nice guys is, is this sort of underrated Crow that people forget about. That's a really great performance. Great. Obviously Gladiator is a, is a movie star performance. Like no other like that. You know, that shit is for real.
SPEAKER_08: I like Gladiator, Master Commander less than you. Rude.
SPEAKER_10: I know I would. I'm with you. I like Master Commander better. I did, I did not like Gladiator when I saw him in the theater. I was, it did nothing for me.
SPEAKER_08: And I've given it a few more tries since then. Doesn't work for me.
SPEAKER_10: It's kind of the point where I kind of got off the Russell Crowe train. I will. That's what people got on. That's what the train was overcrowded. I know that's what, it's so weird. People are on the roof. And, and, and I would take, you know, take him or leave him in certain places. Like I think for, for example, nice guys, I think is like the perfect use of him in a certain way. Right. But, but he never like sold a movie for me the same way again after Gladiator. No, no, I think for me, it's probably, I probably say Insiders the best performance.
SPEAKER_08: And then I think this LA confidential, nice guys. And I'm trying to think what my fifth would be. Well, I mean, there's some others, good Crowe performances for not shutting out 310 to
SPEAKER_02: Yuma. He is actually fantastic in that. He is fantastic in that. I think he's good in Man of Steel that I wouldn't call that a, you know, but he's very good. He's a lot of fun. He played two characters in a little film called the mummy, Dr. Jekyll. And wait a second. What's this? What's it's coming into focus. Hold on. Justing them.
SPEAKER_02: Mr. Hyde. David is holding a jeweler's loop up to his computer screen.
SPEAKER_02: I love, I love Russell Crowe. And then, and then absolutely, you know, Romper Stomper is an incredible performance. If anyone has not seen that film, proof is a really good movie that, that Hugo Weaving is also in that film. And he's also really good.
SPEAKER_10: That's a gem that people should find. And it's another movie where they made another movie called Proof. Yeah, the Math Play movie.
SPEAKER_02: Bad movie. Decent play.
SPEAKER_10: And in the other movie was so small that nobody cared. He's also, he was also an Australian movie called The Sum of Us where he plays a gay
SPEAKER_02: character that was sort of, you know, for 1994, like, you know, a fairly adventurous role. Like, you know, he's pretty good in that too. Thinking of his pre Hollywood stuff. You guys don't like gladiator. Gladiators based on a painting. We got to cover gladiator for that story alone. Yeah. It's just fucking Ridley Scott seeing a painting of a gladiator match and being like, God, he ate us. We got to do it.
SPEAKER_08: This is going to be great. Can I just run through what, what Russell Crowe has like on deck? Sure. Cause it's a pretty exciting lineup. Actually he's working. The man works. The man's working. Okay. He's playing Zeus in Thor Love and Thunder. He directed a movie that he's starring in called Poker Face where he plays a tech billionaire who gathers his childhood friends to his Miami estate for what turns into a high stakes game of poker. I am to use the term all in on that show. It sounds pretty good. He's in love this cast, but sure.
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
SPEAKER_08: He's in the greatest beer run ever, which is Peter Fairley's follow up to Green Book. It's him and Efron, a man's story of leaving New York in 1967 to bring beer to his childhood buddies in the army while they're fighting in Vietnam. Then he's I think a bill Murray's in there. He is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. He's doing craving the Hunter playing who knows what he's playing Rothko in a Mark Rothko bio-pic and then what's the last thing here. Oh, American son. Oh, he's doing the remake of a prophet, a movie that Sam Raimi was originally supposed to direct.
SPEAKER_02: Right. He's, he's playing the, the Neil South drop. Yeah. The Neil South drop.
SPEAKER_08: Right. Yeah. That's cool.
SPEAKER_02: That's an interesting lineup of movies ahead of time. I like him working. I look unhinged was a good time, but I'd like him to do more serious stuff as well. Sure.
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SPEAKER_02: Another actor who's in this film, guys, is Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah. Have you heard of him? Yeah. Yeah. Big time movie star. He was a recent Oscar nominee, of course, at the time, right? Because Gilbert Crape is what, the year before? Yeah. And he was, Sharon Stone was intent on casting him. Apparently Stone and Raimi paid him themselves out of their budget, out of their salaries, I guess?
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. Correct. And it's like, it's like him being hired that she had them take his salary out of her salary on this movie.
SPEAKER_02: It's weird that they wouldn't want him. That's the only thing I don't understand. It's like, he seems like a really hot name. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: It does feel like there might've been a perception thing. Cause you also have this boy's life. It's like De Niro has said like, this kid's good. Right. But I almost feel like there was a perception thing of like, he's a serious actor. He's not a movie star.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Right. Right.
SPEAKER_08: Right. And he's like, he's got nothing. Is it that he was too baby face like, or was it that right.
SPEAKER_02: He only did like serious movies. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: I had read that, that Matt Damon was also considered for this one.
SPEAKER_02: Sam Rockwell was considered, you know, this is those nineties whenever like Damon or whoever is interviewed now, it's like, you think about all those, all these A-list movie stars, like who are like young Hollywood bucks, like trying to get a good role, right? Like, cause when Damon gets courage under fire, he's like, I got the role. Like, you know, that, that's why he like lost 400 pounds and was like, I gotta, I gotta go all in on this. But you could see Damon's face working in this movie.
SPEAKER_10: Although I love Leonardo DiCaprio in this, but like he, he has a, like a harder, like, you know, like face and you could see him fitting in this milieu a little more than, than one of the things that's both funny and odd about Leonardo DiCaprio is he does seems like a nineties teen heartthrob in this role, which is kind of what the role needs, you know, but, but it's not, it doesn't fit the Western part of it. He's not dirty at all. He's not a speck of dirt on them.
SPEAKER_09: He's a true like golden boy.
SPEAKER_08: But that's why it does work for me because he does feel like fricking, you know, I mean,
SPEAKER_02: this isn't an old movie, but like Alden Ehrenreich in Hail Caesar or whatever. Like he does feel like some shiny little Hollywood star from the thirties. Right. I think that's right. I think that's what's, what's funny about him is he's, he's like being cast in a Western
SPEAKER_10: movie. Like, yes. He's like, Hey guys, so fast. Bang, bang. He's not being, he's not in a Western, like he's not, it's, it's a complete meta commentary of, of, of a certain type of movie. He feels like Bobby Driscoll and like a live action Disney movie or something like this
SPEAKER_08: is, this is the very last performance DiCaprio gives that still has any child actor energy in the like growing pains sense. Right. Because when he makes the transition from like growing pains and critters three and whatever, it's like, Oh no, but he's working with heavy duty actors and De Niro's telling people that he's like very serious minded and he's like wise beyond his years and Gilbert grape. Everyone said, how could someone so young give a performance like that? This is the last movie where he's got a little bit of child star shine on it. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's that cleanness to his delivery and even just how he styled. And I do think you're right that like Matt Damon's face even at this age fits into this milieu better, but it works against the movie almost. If you have someone who is more realistically cast, they leaned into something that might
SPEAKER_10: seem incongruous, but it worked I think for the movie really, really well.
SPEAKER_08: And it's exactly why that fucking final moment between him and Hackman is a goddamn hammer blow because when like the entire child star facade drops from him and he's just going to the paint, like full DiCaprio, it's heartbreaking.
SPEAKER_08: It's heartbreaking. And it's what you said, this thing where you're just like kind of impressed that this movie is able to pull off slow, quiet moments of genuine emotion to that degree in a film that is otherwise so kinetic and frenzy. Right.
SPEAKER_02: In a film that is about a March madness of shooting. Like that is what it's about because it's like Sharon stone rides into town. There's the little brief prologue with Tobin Bell. But basically she rides into town and Pat Hingle is there and he's got like a chalkboard with a bracket on it. And he's like, well, are you, are you in?
SPEAKER_08: It's a knockout. Here's the deal with this town. We just do a fucking shoot out every day at the, at the strike of noon. And it's a quick draw. This town's run by this shitty guy.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's such a bad town. Like what if you want to go like buy an onion? Right. And it's like, it's like, sorry, there's no onion salesman here. Only shooters. The only other person I want to shout out is Lance Hendrickson who we'll talk about Keith David in a second, but I don't think there's any Keith David rich research specifically in here. I, but I mean, we love Keith David obviously, but just the funny land Hendrickson thing is he knew someone who I guess worked in wild west shows and stuff. His name was Rex Rossi and Lance Hendrickson before the movie starts before production starts goes to Rex Rossi and says, I got to shoot a card out of this kid's hand. That's in the script. I think there should be more to it than that. So teach me a horse trick. So Rex Rossi taught him the trick where he flips off the horse backwards. And when he showed up on set, he says, Sam, I want to show you something. They bring a horse over. He jumps on the horse. He's like, well, I don't know why, but I want to show you something. And then he's like, well, I want to show you something. And then the next episode out off of the horse shoots under its belly. And Sam Raimi was like, this rules that's in the movie. Like that's great. So let's say we showed up with a special horse trick. And I guess rather than Sam Raimi being like, Jesus, like, what?
SPEAKER_08: Why did you work so hard on this without telling me? So maybe it was like, of course, like you got, you got to do this horse course. And then they had a set dressed like this and said, where is hair and makeup? And they said, we're just going to put you on camera in this look. That's a joke. But his look in this is unbelievable. The long jet black hair. The hair.
SPEAKER_09: Yeah. He truly is dressed like, God, like, like a rapper now. Yes. I'm saying like, who's the rapper with all the face tattoos. Like does country stuff to post Malone post? That's some shit. Post Malone would fucking go out at the VMA's wearing, but he's got that sort of like the
SPEAKER_08: Renaissance Van Dyke facial hair. Oh yeah. I mean, just he's, he's leaning so hard into his gimmick.
SPEAKER_09: He has all the aces in his deck of cards for each kill.
SPEAKER_02: You've got Keith David. Absolutely swagged out looking incredible. The best outfit. Sick ass pipe.
SPEAKER_10: Big pipe. Big voice. Like he's got it all. He's like, it's incredible. Yeah. I love the outfits in this. Like unironically love. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Such like Henriksen and David are such specific castings of like, not only are these actors
SPEAKER_08: who are very familiar faces to audiences at this time, even if they don't know my name, they're going to stick out, they're going to remember them. And they also have incredibly distinctive voices because you need to just introduce them the first five minutes, put a pin in them and make sure the audience doesn't forget when they come back and are relevant again. Totally.
SPEAKER_02: You got Mark Boone Jr. who of course, Griffin, you once said on his performance of Batman begins, it looks like he sleeps under a pizza. Another line I've never forgotten. No, it's just like he is, he is the bat. Anytime Junior in a movie is in a movie or like, Oh, I get it. This guy's a bit of a scumbag, isn't he? He's just got the perfect face for it. He scars. You got Tobin Bell, Jigsaw himself.
SPEAKER_08: Right. What do you, what do you strode? This is his final movie, right?
SPEAKER_02: What he strode right at the end of his career. You're right. Yeah. He died before this movie even came out. Yeah. You've got, what's it called? What's his name? Robert's blossom. Oh, famous old man. Yes. He was in Christine. We've discussed him in that. Obviously he was in a couple of the Demi's.
SPEAKER_08: He's the old man in home alone.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And then we've got Keith, Kevin Conway, who I've always liked as a, what's it called? As dread. Yes. Judge who gets his Dick shot off. Yeah. Not, not to, not to find a point.
SPEAKER_08: Deserves it in my opinion. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: He's a bit of a jerk. I think he played, I think Kevin Conway. Yes. He played Kalis in star Trek, the next generation. If anyone's a star Trek fan out there. Yeah. It's just, it's just an incredible lineup of beautiful character actors. Great faces. Such good faces.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. It's really, really fun.
SPEAKER_02: And there's men, there's others I'm not remembering. And obviously like Bruce Campbell shows up for a second and Gary Sinise obviously shows up in flashback, which is kind of a coup, kind of a casting coup, Gary Sinise, like right off of Farah Faris Gump. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: I remember that being notable at the time, but you see his, you see his face as a kind of daguerreotype, you know, before he shows up and, and yeah, and he plays a good role and he plays like, you can see the way that, that he looks and mirrors court in a lot of ways. And it's it's it's really something. And I also think that that flashback scene of her initial trauma, which is it takes a surprising turn where, where he's like in it and it mimics or, you know, reflects the moment that court is brought in and they shoot at the chair and that stuff. And and you know, she's given the gun to save her father and shoots him in the head instead is like a real moment. It really, you feel it to me at least. No, I agree.
SPEAKER_02: I agree. You think it's a good job being a genuinely visceral in all the cartooniness. Yeah, exactly. There's the thing I've invoked too many times, but I always just think it's such a good like
SPEAKER_08: storytelling lesson for movies, but the Andrew Stanton finding Nemo thing where originally he had that movie structured where you would get blint glimpses to the flashback of the barracuda killing his wife and all the other babies throughout the movie. And when they screened it for people, they were like, I cannot stand this Albert Brooks character. He's driving me fucking insane. Why won't this fish calm the fuck down? And so they were like, as an experiment, what if we just take the scene and we run it in full at the very beginning of the movie and the movie immediately worked. And it was just that thing of like, you think you're being clever by withholding information for later, but not only is it almost never worth it, it also you're depriving the audience of the information that will help them understand the character at the beginning. So when this movie is doling out these little glimpses as the flashbacks with Gary Sinise, I'm not turned off, but I'm like, why aren't they just telling me the thing? But that final reveal is so good. I'm like, this is one of the examples of this being done right. Because you think you put together all the pieces. I get it. Hackman killed her father. That's why she hates him. Why are we like tiptoeing around this? And the final hammer blow they're like holding back on is it's the mirror of the scene you've already seen. And you remember that moment, but it just felt like cool Western shit in that moment. And now everything in the movie has like added weight. I think it's one of the few times where that device actually benefits the film at large. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: But you're right about the tension up to that point because the sort of vague flashbacks don't do anything for you. They're like, they don't do much, but it really does pay off. And it does that perfect thing of making you reevaluate the rest of the movie. And you do see her fear and her, when that moment happens where it is the exact same scene of her father. And it's like, just like the memory of it, like jolts you in this great way of reevaluation. I think that scene is really, really great and, and heroin. And it's also truly surprising. Like I expect her to miss a bunch of times or whatever, but first shot, you know, hits her dad is like, it's a real gut punch. It's like, it's just perfect backstory.
SPEAKER_08: That's all you need. You know, it's like everything you need to know about this character is in that one moment defining her.
SPEAKER_10: And it shows her motivation, but like, you know, she's not until the end where you put all that stuff together and there's the sort of final confrontation. She is not presented as superhuman. She's presented as competent. She's presented as very good, but you know, she doesn't shoot the rope once and not, she, she just go bam, bam, bam. You're like, she really like, it is not that she's perfect at this. She's just driven. And I think that's another great move with this movie is that, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Everyone is good, obviously at shooting, but that's why they want to do the shooting, but no one is presented as a total terminator. If anything, the kid is maybe the most like naturally gifted in a way. And that he keeps being like, I'm so fast. Like, you know, and that sort of seems to almost be a superpower.
SPEAKER_10: And Gene Hackman seems to have a certain superpower to him. Well, he's scary, but he also feels so vulnerable in that way where you're just like, I mean,
SPEAKER_02: it's especially the scene, obviously where the kid dies and he's like, it was never proven that he was my son. And he's so like sort of pathetic in that scene and like clearly just unable to admit his humanity or what you know what I mean? Like that you kind of are just like, Oh God, someone take this guy down. Like it's so perfect.
SPEAKER_09: Yeah. I'll for that, David, I'll just say too, like there's the time when after a fight when he wins, obviously he pauses to wait for everyone to clap for him. Yeah, exactly. It made me think of Mr. Burns. When Mr. Burns competes in the film, you know what I mean? Festival. Yes. Of course. It just had that vibe. Like he is really just pathetic, truly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
SPEAKER_10: That is a really good moment. I'm holding up his hands and please clap for me. It's so good.
SPEAKER_09: Like, and he's expecting it. He's like, I am, you know, the hero of this movie, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: Nope. The moment with the kid is so fucking good. And you've set up this uneasy thing of like the Caprio's told you, I think he's my father, right? You've seen them have a number of exchanges and you can't tell whether Hackman is completely oblivious, knows, but is trying not to acknowledge it or doesn't believe it's true. Right. Right. And then, you know, he's sort of saying like enough's enough kid. They go to the shootout. Stone's trying to talk to Caprio out of it. He says like, I just need him to acknowledge me. Right. I need to earn his respect.
SPEAKER_02: Right. It's so, man, it's sad. It's so sad. It's what do you want out of this?
SPEAKER_08: It's like, I just need him to fucking respect me. And then the moment, the way he sets that up and cuts it so that it's like, draw, draw Hackman responding to the bullet on the neck. You almost think the Caprio's won. And then when you cut back to the Caprio's face, you see his like shock that he landed a bullet that immediately turns into the physical. Like he plays it really well. He plays it really fucking well. Collapse. Yeah. And then he just collapsed. Right. He's like full on like embarrassing child crying. So terrified. I don't want to die. Right. And Hackman stands over him and he fucking reaches out. That's what plays that moment. Yes. And he just fucking reaches out. And Hackman, as you said, once the Caprio dies, he goes through all the motions of, well, they never proved he was actually my kid. I tried to give him an out. I told me to have to do this. This and that. Like Hackman's making every single excuse. When he looks at the Caprio, he is inscrutable. You cannot read his face. And to Caprio just wants anything out of him.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. Gives him nothing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's really good. And again, like Roman saying, like it would be easy for these more emotional moments to fall really flat because the movie is so heightened. Like it's, it's a tricky task, like getting that stuff to work when you also have like someone shooting a perfect hole in Keith David's head and the wind blowing through it.
SPEAKER_08: So that's the other unbelievable Hackman scene for me. Yeah. It's a really good scene. Yeah. You've kept Keith David on the shelf for a while, right? You're like, why was Keith David introduced? If you're not going to really use him for like 40 minutes or whatever, he's around. Yeah. But like such a distinctive dude. Then he has that little meeting where he susses the guy out and he is like, okay, they paid you to bring me in. And then that fucking just brutal, like the rules have changed. This is now to the death. Right. I'm knocking this guy down. I'm blowing a hole in the back of his head and I'm telling all of you how quickly it turns into the like, Oh, so you complained to me about not having enough money, but you paid some fucking guy to kill me. That's great.
SPEAKER_10: His menace, like turning that moment around is like, yeah, just adding to his like overall power is like, it's, it's, it's great. It's like, I think this movie is so perfectly structured. It like, and it mimics, it really mimics a video game more than probably anything.
SPEAKER_10: And where you just get progressively each, each sort of setup of the gunfight is, is like, yep, that has to be the way it is. It can't be another way around. You know, like it has to be a court and the lady at the last, you know, last one, it has to be that it's just like, it's perfectly structured and the kid and Herod at the very end, like all of it is like set up really, really perfectly as a, as it's a plot mechanism.
SPEAKER_08: And you have four perfect character arcs.
SPEAKER_10: Like totally. And it hits it and amongst this like very, really, really silly premise. It is undeniably ridiculous premises.
SPEAKER_02: No one could possibly defend it. It's true.
SPEAKER_08: I think there is like truly one scene in this movie that feels a little bit wonky to me. I think it's the only scene in this movie that feels just a little bit miscalibrated, which is the, the Sharon stone, Robert blossom confrontation in the graveyard in the rain. It just feels over cranked like her and blossom are both sort of overacting. The scene is overwritten. It feels too expository. Like the movie has also coming kind of late. So the movie has to slow down to do it.
SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of like, eh, we kind of already figured this out. You know what I mean? Like it feels like you're kind of, the movie's catching up in a way that you don't need it to.
SPEAKER_09: Yeah. The rain is good though. The rain is good.
SPEAKER_08: I agree.
SPEAKER_10: It's slick. Yeah. It's not ruinous, but if like, if you're making fun of Sharon stone in this, this is the scene you made.
SPEAKER_08: It's the scene to pull out. It's the one scene that may be placed to her weaknesses. And I also think the rest of the movie is just kind of like so clean and lean and economic and diamond cut that this one scene ends up feeling a lot sloppier by comparison. Yeah. I, I, I agree with that.
SPEAKER_10: I'm totally able to get over it though when I'm watching it.
SPEAKER_07: Whoa. Me too. It's, it's, it's just such an easy watch.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_09: Go ahead, Ben. I want to shout out spotted horse. That character fucking rules. I love that his whole thing is he's like, I'm just not afraid of this. You know, cause like, I don't think we really discussed him like his whole trait though of like, and he runs through all the bullets he's taken and he just seems so fucking bad. Cannot be killed by a bullet. Yeah. I really, I was very sad to lose that character.
SPEAKER_02: That scene is also really intense and clever. The whole thing with court, uh, like by, you know, like being like, get me another bullet, get me another bullet. And then you're like the blind kid, God, this movie is, I, I do wonder, right. In 1995, if people were just like too much, too many bits, like there's a blind kid, like rifling through the bullets. Like, you know, like is no one in this normal is that was that the complaint? Because I was just thinking of that scene and I'm like, right. It's not only is it everything I'm describing, but the blind kid is then working through the bullets to find a 35 millimeter or whatever. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: I mean, I don't really think Ray me was too fast, too early and culture has caught up to him, right. And how we can process information and all of this, especially when so much of it's visual. But I do think it's a thing I love about his movies where it's just like every single thing can be something. There's no like unimportant detail moment, character performance shot.
SPEAKER_10: I think this was a victim of its time. This is a movie and he's a director of unfettered enthusiasm. And this was a moment in cinema where enthusiasm was not rewarded. It was really a cynical time. And but I think if you pulled it out today, people would just like, you know, this showed up on, you know, HBO max today. It would be the talk like everyone would love it. Everything was the most amazing second coming type of movie.
SPEAKER_08: We were saying this right before we started recording Roman. I feel like at least once a mini series, there is a movie that we've covered on the podcast, which because of the nature of this podcast covering an entire career is the kind of movie that maybe other podcasts will never devote an entire episode to. That's sort of a forgotten middle thing, whether, you know, whatever. And I feel like there's one movie per mini series that like our listeners are like, holy shit, this fucking thing. How did I not know? This is my new favorite movie. And I do expect that a lot of people are going to be like, oh my God, how was I unaware of
SPEAKER_08: this film existing? Or that's some movie I watched on TBS when I was a kid. I had no idea that was the same Ramey movie. It all makes more sense now. I bet like it, but I remember it having, you know, 10% more mustard than you think stuck
SPEAKER_08: in my mind as a kid or, you know, when I saw it in a dorm room or whatever, it's so good.
SPEAKER_02: It is funny to think of it in Sam Ramey's career as well. We're like, we are all basically just like, I love it more Dutch angles, more smash zooms, like great, great, great. But Sam Ramey's reaction to making this movie was I need to relax. I need to retreat into a hold. He comes back in 1998 with a simple plan, which is his most toned down, you know, uh, you know, sort of visual trickery free movie ever. But then the, for the love of the game and the gift are similarly much more muted, right? Like it takes him quite a while before Spiderman sort of encourages all of his, his Looney Toons stuff again. Like he really goes into hibernation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: And let's acknowledge the other shift is, I mean, it's why we've been like, you know, setting this up the entire mini series, but it is so bizarre that he gets Spiderman at that moment because they're almost calling him off the bench to do the thing he had sort of walked away from doing. Right. Like he had worked so hard to not be seen as that guy and they were like, Hey, the entire industry's changed. We need that guy. You know, it's like them finding the Gruber like at the fucking church in Mexico going, we need you to cut your head and come back into action.
SPEAKER_10: We need an enthusiast is what they need. I mean, the thing is like there was, that's what, that's what as a comic book fan, that's what we were calling for was someone who understood the material or at least the spirit of it in a way that, um, that didn't, nobody really did. Everyone was like, okay, we got to take him out of the costumes. We got to take him out of this. We got to ground them in this. And that was the, all the impulse and he didn't do that. Right.
SPEAKER_02: Cause that, yeah, there are Tim Burton, Brian Singer. Those were directors where it's like they were well regarded directors, but the, in the interviews they'd be like, yeah, I never really read a comic book. Like, you know, and that was seen as like, good, good, good, good, good. You're not going to embarrass us here or whatever. Right. And yeah, yeah. Sam Raimi is a different vibe.
SPEAKER_08: I just remember walking out of the first Spiderman and going, that's the first movie I've seen that actually feels like a comic book. And so many people had tried to, in a literal way, like Dick Tracy style, make something look like a comic book. But then they're like, you can make a movie with the aesthetics of illustration. And that's the first movie where I'm like, emotionally, this feels like a comic book. Right.
SPEAKER_10: That they, they took the archness of its presentation. And I, the thing was when I read comic books, I treated them seriously. Like, like they were, they had emotion between the panels and it wasn't just putting a proscenium proscenium arch around a frame. It really was something else. And I thought that he captured that for the first time more than anybody. And then also the technical aspects of it were so great. And like, he just sort of nailed it. And it wasn't until actually, I thought he was pretty muted for him in Spiderman one and then Spiderman two, where they have an actual horror scene inside of it. With the Doc Ock surgery where you go like, Oh God, that's the guy that's right. Now he's fully back in it. Right.
SPEAKER_08: One, it still sort of feels like he's auditioning a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: We'll get there. Yeah. No, I mean, it's a lot.
SPEAKER_08: It's a lot. The other thing just to call out before, I guess we should go on the box. I was came in or any of their thoughts we have is that the other thing that happens in the three years between this and a simple plan when he sort of tries to remake himself as like a serious adult picture maker is the, the entire TV empire. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Which is part, that's part of his hibernation. Right. That's part of him being like, okay, okay.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. He's doing something else. Yeah. And he's actually figuring out a really good path for him, which is, which is kind of fascinating and probably both more lucrative and more like ability to have success and also not have your life determined by a bunch of morons who run movie studios.
SPEAKER_08: That's the biggest thing I think around is he sort of gets, he gets his freedom. He gets his sort of like confidence, you know, he's built this little empire. It's syndicated. They're not really beholden to anybody. It's ever expanding. He's employing all of his friends and his brothers and it's like that. It puts a lot of the anxieties to bed maybe so that he's able to come back and just go like, what do I want to do as a filmmaker? That's the only concern. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10: It makes total sense to me that, that it would take something like Spiderman to be like, okay, well that's a thing with enough resources and enough, you know, like whatever to, to pull me off of this other thing in which I control everything and I don't have to listen to any of you idiots, you know? And, and that's a good position to be in, in your career to be able to say no to everything, which he probably did. He, you know, like he probably said no to a ton of things that we would have loved him to do, but it just wasn't right and more power to him.
SPEAKER_08: We'll do a at some point in some episode, but there, he's one of those guys where there is an entire Wikipedia entry just on, on made Sam Raimi projects. It's not a subsection of his Wiki page. It is its own page. I'll say a non merchandise spotlight. I know you've made the comparison very aptly a number of times now, Roman, but watching this, I kept on thinking like, God, I really wish there had been like a Sega Genesis game. It just, you, you could seriously the shootout game with all of these guys who would translate so perfectly into that sort of pixelated arts.
SPEAKER_02: Someone make that now make a, you know, a web browser shooting game, 16 bit. I want to see, you know, fricking Keith David and Lang's Hendrickson's faces all pixelated. Like I give me that please with Gene Hackman is the final boss, obviously. Right. Yes.
SPEAKER_08: Right. It just, it's feels like a layup. It's perfect.
SPEAKER_02: So yeah. Yeah. What, what, what are some moments we have? Obviously this movie is sort of all moments. I do love Pat Hingle. Shout out, Pat Hingle, a very well cast here. He's a very smart bartender, commissioner Gordon himself with a little bowler hat.
SPEAKER_08: We've choked about this before, but it is so funny that like casting commissioner Gordon now is like casting a Yago or something. And it's like, who is worthy of picking up the bat? And at that point they were like, I don't know who's some guy who looks like a cop. Like never fit commissioner Gordon as a type. God love him.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I love him both in all movies and as commissioner Gordon, but it is funny that every other commissioner Gordon, well, I mean the ones post Gary Oldman, right? Yeah. It's like a soft spoken, intelligent cerebral kind of, you know, war weary cop. Pangels just like basically got a pocket watch. He's like Batman, are you here yet? Mr. Freeze is tearing up the museum. Like, you know, he's just, it also feels like every scene right before he goes on camera,
SPEAKER_08: he goes like, what's my guy's name again?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_08: Commissioner what?
SPEAKER_02: So Pat Hinkle, anything else? Yeah, I did the ending.
SPEAKER_08: I think, I mean they, it's fun that the last 20 minutes of this movie are like an extended work, right? Like everything from DiCaprio's death on and that the payoff, like I, I love court kind
SPEAKER_10: of turning superhuman for, you know, at this last moment where he just like shoots people behind his back and like you get like his full powers and realize how much he's been holding back. And the whole premise of like, she's literally not a better gun fighter than Gene Hackman, but in this moment she is and both you believe it, Gene Hackman believes it. They just made that really work for me. Like they built up this whole thing to lead to this moment and it's super convincing and a very satisfying ending. And then she throws the martial star at court who's now going to be, you know, like the new new sheriff in town.
SPEAKER_02: Just what you wanted, even though you haven't been thinking about it at all.
SPEAKER_10: And you're like, yep. Oh, that's perfect. You know, like it has all these things that come together and then it's like, and then black and then it's like done and it's like no wasted time. You know, I mean, sheriff of what's left of the fucking church.
SPEAKER_09: I know not the greatest town in the world. He left the, she left quite a mess in her wake. Isn't a lot of people showing up being like, Hey, is this where we do the shooting?
SPEAKER_02: And it's like, no, we don't do that anymore. Like is that happening over and over again? Like I don't know. It is this thing I love though that, you know, she throws the star back to him.
SPEAKER_08: You're completing his arc, right? Here is this guy who never wanted to be a killer, who was forced to shoot this pastor who's tried to recommend himself to the cloth because he feels like he can never get over the sin. They tease him out. He realizes these innate instincts he has. He cannot help but kill when placed in this situation. That first moment, his first shootout, when you truly feel like he's ready to die and he is surprised that his hand reached for the gun and shot that really, really cool.
SPEAKER_10: It's it's, it's shot really well. And he's also his like his twitchyness when they give him guns to like, yeah, to, you know, and he's looking at him and he knows how to use them and he knows he wants to touch them and it's all there. It's shot really, really well. And, and it's super convincing. And then you get this moment at the end where you're like, I wasn't thinking about this. I wasn't thinking about the redemption of court this whole time at all. And then it's like, Oh, this is the perfect marriage of the things he's feeling and wants to make amends for and his literal skill set, you know, and it makes tons of sense. It just, it just, it just works. It feels like this very clean, neat, tidy, happy ending that is fully earned.
SPEAKER_08: But he like lingers on it for an additional moment before it fades to black where you see him looking at the badge and considering it like Raimi could have cut like a second
SPEAKER_08: or two earlier and it was just, he has the badge, everything's in order. And it does feel like there's this extra moment there of him looking at it and debating whether or not he wants to do this. And I think of like all three Spiderman movies and like that it is this thing that's so distinctive in those movies that all three movies end with this weird lingering moment of Mary Jane being like, what happens now? You know, like all three of them end on her face. I think. Yeah. And the evil dead movies obviously all end with Ash getting like upended in some way. But I feel like he always like for a, he always needs to pull the rug a little bit or at least leave some kind of graduate esque lingering question of like, but is it really going to be that tidy? The guy, the guy's still at odds with himself a little bit.
SPEAKER_10: You know, that's interesting. I think I read that differently. I think I re I think I read it as like taking time for you to recognize the genius of all this stuff coming together in the right way is like part of way I read that too. But that's, that's super fascinating.
SPEAKER_08: I do think he becomes sheriff, but I don't think it's something that like it's not a
SPEAKER_10: tidy resolution in the end. I don't think he can take it on easily. I think he's nothing else. He has to just start hiring a bunch of contractors to come. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shit to do.
SPEAKER_07: Such a good fucking movie. It's a good fucking movie.
SPEAKER_02: It's a good fucking movie. You want to play that box office? Okay.
SPEAKER_09: Last, last thing. Lance Hendrickson's death, the squib shot. Oh, also the speed with which everyone takes all of his clothing.
SPEAKER_08: Oh, I know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_09: It starts fighting each other over it.
SPEAKER_10: And him, him, like the image of him and his just his long underwear after he has been stripped and he's like, this, this naked like plucked chicken looking thing is a real also kind of like pathetic and sad and, and is a good image to end on him with, with all of his, like, since he's all surface, you know, he's all like leather and you know, and yeah, it was all the costume basically.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, not all, but yeah. Love Lance Hendrickson at all times. He also seems like someone who would scare the shit out of me in real life. The box of his game for this one is great. I gotta be honest. Okay. Well, the film came out February 10th, 1995. This is a real, there's a lot of Ben's choices in here. I think quick and the dead open number two, six and a half million dollars on its way to an $18 million gross, which is about half its budget. So rude. Not good. Yeah. Unfortunately, but it is also opening behind a very dumb comedy. That was the launch, I would say of a major comedy star. So is this sort of a Ben pick?
SPEAKER_09: It's a bit of a Ben pick and it is indeed the film Billy Madison.
SPEAKER_02: Yes. Wow. And I do think getting your lunch eaten by Billy Madison, if you're like Sharon stone and you're like, you know, big fancy Western is not a good look. Right?
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. It's rough. Especially that one where it's right. It's a particularly dumb style movie. Although I think it's a very good, like that's one of my favorites. So absolutely. Right. We, we, we all agree that that's top tier.
SPEAKER_02: Sam.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. Yeah. I do think that even someone, if there was ever a Ben region in March madness, she is a real candidate. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, it's a weird, it's a weird bunch of movies. It's gun crazy, which I've never seen, but is the Drew Barrymore Michael Ironside kind of like action indie. Right. Yeah. Then CB4. Wow. A crucial artifact. Yep. Then Billy Madison, then best men, the Dean Cain, anti Dick. I've never seen that doesn't really exist, but what's the next one?
SPEAKER_08: David. It's a little film called Half Baked.
SPEAKER_09: Hell yeah. Half Baked is like hands down the movie I've seen the most.
SPEAKER_02: Not too surprising to hear that. Then Skipped Parts, which is like a Jennifer Jason Leigh movie that never really came out. Then the Britney Spears movie Crossroads. And then she made like a Basquiat documentary. And also an incredible, incredible,
SPEAKER_09: like amount of music videos for awesome bands. Like some really big music video director, some really huge stuff. A lot of TV is, but also let's not brush over her Basquiat documentary.
SPEAKER_08: She worked at an art gallery in 1986 or is it 83. She was friends with Basquiat. It's a documentary of footage she shot interviewing him as her friend. And then he died. Two years before he died and she sat on it for 20 years before she was ready to edit it. So it's like someone making a documentary with all this unbelievable, unseen footage from. Fine. We're doing Tamra Davis. It's decided.
SPEAKER_02: Podcasted. I don't know. Billy Madison, number one. Quick and the Dead, number two. Number three is a, it's a sort of, it's a holdover from Christmas season. It's a very Tony, pretty, uh, epic movie that is not very good. Um, it's one of those movies that was clearly a major Oscar play and was widely ignored, except for technical nominations. Um, but it is a major moment for its star, uh, who is on the up and up. It's,
SPEAKER_02: it's one of those movies that is basically forgotten except as sort of a title and it's, it's score is kind of famous. Uh, it's a period film. It is. It's, it's an, it's a Western as well. It's another Western actually. We forgot to mention this one. Uh, frontier movie, big, it's, it's long, it's dramatic. There's crying, people die. You know,
SPEAKER_08: did you have a guess until he said Western Roman? It looked like you had a notion. No, I, I, nothing is ringing a bell with me. And it was just like a,
SPEAKER_10: this is the hallmark of me listening to the show and listening to the box office game. So, so, uh, yeah, I don't, I have no idea.
SPEAKER_08: The score is sending me cause I feel like I, I keep track of like those sort of weirdly overused scores, overused in trailers that people even forget what movie they're originally from. Exactly. And you say it would be holiday time of 94.
SPEAKER_02: It was released Christmas 94. Uh, it was a hit. It made a lot of money. Uh, it made not, maybe not as enough, but it made $66 million, 160 worldwide. You know, it was a pretty, pretty solid hit for what I think is an R rated, uh, you know, uh, super long. It's like, you know, two hours, 20 minutes or whatever. Yeah. What about the director? He's a director who has made a lot of Epic films. Okay. He's a fairly major director, but I would say he is, um, uh, not the best. It's not a Zwick is it? It is a Zwick. It is a Zwick. So what's the Zwick after glory. It's after glory. Uh,
SPEAKER_02: he also did a movie called leaving normal in between this and glory with the Christian Lottie and Meg Tilly. I think one of, uh, yeah, it's better movies. Of course he does courage under fire right after this movie. I already mentioned that this, this episode.
SPEAKER_10: So is this the last samurai? It's not the last samurai that's in the two thousands. Okay. That's why it's really far off, but that's the only thing I can think of. That's the first time I remember his name. That is a Zwick. Of course.
SPEAKER_02: He also made blood diamond. He made, uh, the siege. He made love and other drugs somewhat bizarrely. It's not,
SPEAKER_08: it's not legends of the fall. It's legends. Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Aidan Quinn, Julia Ormond. Yes. I recently watched for reasons I cannot remember. Can confirm pretty boring. Right. Right. Uh, and it's kind of like a pit performance. Cause this is post, you know, pit emerging as like himbo King, Johnny suede, Thelma and Louise cool world. Right. Like it's post that it's in his like river runs through it, you know, uh, interview with the vampire legends of the fall days where he's so pretty, but he's boring. Like he doesn't get to have any fun. Like, and it's like one season, 12 monkeys and true romance and shit. It's like fun. Yes. Right. Brad Pitt is actually a very twitchy over the top actor.
SPEAKER_06:
SPEAKER_08: Sure. It is funny that 95 is seven and 12 monkeys like legends of the fall interview with a vampire is peak like 94 let Brad Pitt just be pretty. Let him stand. Straight up bad and interview with a vampire like Tom cruise acts him off the
SPEAKER_02: screen in that movie. And it's annoying cause it should be like, here we go. Cruise and pit, you know, like, you know, this is going to be great. And pit is such a dishrag in that movie. And in legends of the fall, he's a little more fun, but he's, you know, just very serious. Very, very serious. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's a James Horner score. It's right. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08: For some reason I always think that movies earlier cause of how big it was for Pitt's career, but yes. Yeah. That's why I was second guessing it.
SPEAKER_02: Number four is a, you know, a dramedy, female characters. I've never seen it. It's the final film of a fairly well-known director, who had a very long career making, you know, Hollywood comedies and dramas. Three female stars. I would say two very famous at the time,
SPEAKER_02: one kind of on the up and up, but famous now.
SPEAKER_08: I always get these confused. Is it boys on the side? It's boys on the side. Okay. Well done. Who directed it, Griffin? That's what I'm trying to remember. Boys on the side is Herbert Ross. It's a Herbert. It's his last film. Okay. After a very,
SPEAKER_02: obviously Herbert Ross made funny lady and the turning point and the goodbye girl and you know, pennies from heaven. He made so many footloose, you know, steel magnolias. He made tons of movies. It's written by Don Roos, which is interesting Griffin, you know, before obviously he becomes a director. Yeah. Merit Whoopi Goldberg, Drew Barrymore, Mary Louise Parker.
SPEAKER_06:
SPEAKER_08: I get boys on the side confused with how to make an American quilt. That's a very, very good question.
SPEAKER_02: I feel like there's one other movie of that era where I'm just like,
SPEAKER_08: which combination of the actors is it? Those movies where they're kind of generational and I'm like, which one's Drew Barrymore, which ones went on a ride or which one's Whoopi, which ones and Bancroft. Exactly. Yeah. Has anyone seen boys on the side?
SPEAKER_10: I've not. No, no, no. I've not seen boys on the side. It is really amazing to watch this in person because I was 20 years old when this came out and I have no memory of it whatsoever. I think you were maybe nine Griff. I don't even want to tell you how old I was. I think he was like six. I was six. I was six. And so this is a, this is a, this is a pleasure to watch. So honestly, he was about to turn six. It's February.
SPEAKER_02: My birthday's coming up. All right. Number five at the box office. It's a hit comedy that had come out in Christmas. It's made $111 million. Is it like a family comedy? No, it is more of a teen gross out vibe, although the characters are not teens. Sure. Okay. So it's a 1994 gross out comedy. Is it, is it dumb and dumber?
SPEAKER_08: It's dumb and dumber. Wow. Yeah. Another Ben pick. Right, Ben.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you liked dumb and dumber. No, I hated it. It was actually really like, felt like so beneath me kind of.
SPEAKER_09: You found it disrespectful.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. It was disrespectful. It was tasteless, you know, vulgar.
SPEAKER_09: Sorry. Sorry for saying anything, Ben.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I mean, I don't love when somebody just makes a really loud annoying noise for a long
SPEAKER_09: extended period of time driving a hit man insane, not your kind of style, leading him to have a heart attack. That isn't hilarious to me. Some other movies in the top 10, you've got nobody's fool,
SPEAKER_02: the Paul Newman, uh, Oscar vehicle you've got in the mouth of madness, a little bit we've discussed before very cute movie.
SPEAKER_10: Great. We're seeing the theater and I enjoyed your coverage of it. I think that one's another underrated movie. Agreed. I think that was similarly kind of the, the quick and the dead of that series.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. Yeah. Um,
SPEAKER_02: you got the kind of mostly forgotten film murder in the first, which was one of the Kevin Bacon Oscar play. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_08: One of the many early nineties movie that Kevin Bacon pops in and will get,
SPEAKER_02: he got like a sag nomination and got an Oscar. You know, like there's just like that run of bacon in the nineties where it's like he's, it's post, you know, cute bacon in the eighties. It's him proving himself like JFK, few good men, river wild murder in the first Apollo 13. Right. I don't need to be the star.
SPEAKER_08: I want to do good supporting parts and big movies. Yeah. He's good in all of them and he's always overlooked.
SPEAKER_02: Is Gary Oldman the other counterpart in that one or am I thinking of a different
SPEAKER_10: movie? Well, Gary open of course is in JFK. He plays Lee Harvey. No, no,
SPEAKER_02: but in murder. Yes, he is in murder in the first with Christian Slater. Slater is the, he's the do-gooder lawyer who is, uh, defending Kevin Bacon. And I think Oldman might be the villain lawyer or something. He's the associate prison warden of Alcatraz. Oh, he's the prison warden.
SPEAKER_08: That's right. Yeah. And he's, oh yeah. He's actually really good.
SPEAKER_02: This is one of those movies that's like, it's a total six out of 10. Yeah. The actors of Slater is kind of whatever, but like everyone else is good. Cause William H Macy is in it. And Beth Davis, Brad Durif, Arlie Ermey, Tobolowski, Mia Kirschner.
SPEAKER_08: Arlie Ermey is the judge, I think. Yeah. Guess what? He has a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_02: It's a very subtle performance of course, by Arlie Ermey. Ben, another film here. I'm noticing that maybe you were interested in number nine, the Jerky Boys. You're completely, you're completely off.
SPEAKER_09: Of course. Frank Coles. Like I, you know, I was too busy just, deep into reading Moby Dick and, you know, find works of literature. I would never laugh, you know, at like a guy who says, you kicked my dog. And number 10 at the box office, Highlander 3, the sorcerer,
SPEAKER_02: also known as Highlander, the final dimension. Another Ben pick. Another Ben pick, of course, cause Ben pitched us. He's been petitioning to do Highlander on Patreon.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. So if you guys are into that, hit us up.
SPEAKER_10: A series of diminishing returns that you will have. That would be a hard day for you. Right. It'll be fun though. We'll have a blast.
SPEAKER_09: David, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Just to circle back quickly.
SPEAKER_08: I think I missed, or you maybe weren't specific enough, which Jerky Boys movie was it in the top 10 at this point?
SPEAKER_02: Which one? It's the Jerky Boys. I think it's the original recipe. It's the original, 1995. The Jerky Boys.
SPEAKER_08: I'm just confused. They made so many successful movies together. It was hard. The Jerky Boys.
SPEAKER_02: Okay. Yeah. 81 minutes long. Honestly, longer than I thought it would be when I looked up the running time. I was like, was this a cool 75? No, they got it to 81. Okay. Yeah. So you're qualified for Oscars, you know, above 80.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So that's your top 10 fun top 10, in my opinion, even though the quick of the dead was treated rudely. Yeah. Yeah. We're done. Roman, you host a wildly successful podcast.
SPEAKER_08: Does not need our boost. 99% invisible, but it's a phenomenal show. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_10: It's a real honor to be here. Like I listened, I've listened to nearly every episode of this show. I'm a Patreon subscriber. It was my, it was my real companion during the beginning of the COVID novel coronavirus. The what? Yes. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it. But like, especially the, I jumped in there with all the Marvel movies and, and no, I, this show means a great deal to me. So I'm really honored to be here. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_08: It is a long overdue. You've been very kind to us and we've been talking with you for like years now since you started listening to the show and you've been very supportive and a good friend to the podcast, even though it's only manifesting on mic now. And I'm, I'm glad I threw you just sort of the list of like, you know, Oh, by the way, we should have you on at some point. Here are some of the things and you immediately sparked to like quick in the dead rules.
SPEAKER_10: Yeah. When you mentioned Raimi, the one thing is like, I feel like when it comes to like evil dead and Spiderman, like there's, there's a scholar of these things that is required for those movies in a certain way. And quick of the dead was, is sort of my, like my favorite in, and also low stakes enough for me to feel like I wouldn't ruin it. We do.
SPEAKER_08: We do arguably have three different scholars lined up for the Spiderman trilogy. We do. We do.
SPEAKER_02: It's going to be, that's going to be a good little run. I think it's a good run. No, but I'm, it's a real pleasure to be here and thanks so much.
SPEAKER_10: Pleasures all ours.
SPEAKER_08: Uh, now please never come on the show again. You make us sound like boys. No, you'll be back.
SPEAKER_09: I think I did great. I think everyone, I think everyone sounds marvelous.
SPEAKER_10: Everyone sort of talks about my voice, but like I'm a big lover of all voices to tell you the truth. Like that is not a bias I have. Yeah, but your voice is better than even just the way you said that.
SPEAKER_07: I couldn't deliver it that well.
SPEAKER_08: Um, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Thank you to Roman. He says subscribe. I refuse to say follow, which it's just, I'm all team Griffin on this one.
SPEAKER_10: Thank you.
SPEAKER_08: Even if the terminology is wrong, everyone knows what I'm saying. I don't like follow.
SPEAKER_10: I don't know what it means. I know subscribe means something different to people, but it's like, it's one of those ones that I don't know. I do not like follow. I don't know what it does. Does it mean I'm going to download the thing? I don't know. I don't know. That's my thing.
SPEAKER_08: I'm like, I feel like if I say rate, review and follow, people are like on social media. Exactly. Exactly.
SPEAKER_10: No, I feel your pain as a producer, Ben, because I'm a, I'm a long time producer in addition to being a host and when you try to get your hosts to do something and they will refuse to do, I understand that pain. So I'm with you on that side that you're just trying to do what's right for the show. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm a dream otherwise. It's never difficult to get me to do anything, but, but subscribing is what it's called.
SPEAKER_10: I can't get behind this. You got to subscribe.
SPEAKER_08: You got to subscribe.
SPEAKER_09: Then it's official. We've decided we're back to subscribe. You got to subscribe. And here's the thing.
SPEAKER_08: If you want to follow, you can follow our social media accounts run by Marie Barty. David's happy that I pulled off that transition. He's also saying, wrap it up. Uh, thank you to AJ McKee and Alex Berrien for our editing, JJ Birch, Nick Loriano for our research, lay Montgomery and the great American owl for a theme song. Pat rounds, Joe Bowen for our artwork. You can go to blank check pod.com for all the nerdy things that used to take up seven different call outs in this outro. Tune in next week for a simple plan. Uh, you can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features where at this point we are getting ready to do the Batman movies, right? Yes. We're doing all the Batman movies we haven't covered before. Uh, it's called hashtag not all Batman. Uh, so no Burton, uh, no, uh, Nolan, but we're including animated. Uh, I think it'll be a fun, weirdly diverse series considering that all the movies star a Batman. And as always, this is a different thing than I usually do friend as always, but I felt like I, I had to read this, David, it could not go unread. The final little bit that JJ and Nick put in their research dossier for this week for quick and the dead is not specifically relevant to this movie, but I just think it's a beautiful thing. It says, uh, there's this great quote from Bruce Campbell that I want to throw in because I haven't yet talked about how much Rami loves to garden. And this is the quote. He's had compost piles in the back of his house from the first time I've known him. Sam used to take super eight film and grind it up and then grow vegetables and eat the vegetables. He's the only filmmaker who eats film. That is pretty cool. That's both like cool and sweet and also bad.
SPEAKER_08: Yeah. And I hope his digestive tract is handling that. Okay.
SPEAKER_10: Thanks to Griffin Newman and David Sims for having me on right now. You need to go find blank check on your podcast app, scroll through the episodes, find a couple of movies that you know and love and give it a shot. And then I almost 100% guarantee you will listen to a couple about movies that you don't know as well, but are just curious about. And then you're going to be listening to a two hour conversation about Nancy Meyers, 2015 movie, the intern, starring Robert De Niro, which you haven't seen and loving the discussion, but also thinking, how did I get here? Just go for it. I would not steer you wrong. Thanks again to Griffin and David and producer Ben Hosley, AKA producer Ben, Purdue Ben, the bend, do sir, the poet laureate, the meat lover, the tiebreaker, the fart detective, our finest film critic, the peeper birthday Benny, hello, Fennel, not professor Crispy, the fuck master, dirt bike, Benny, white hot Benny, so going to have Benny the Haas, Mr. Positive, Mr. Positive, close personal friend of Dan Lewis, the voice of reason, Santa Haas, the commission wishful Ben Hosley would the futzer producer. Ben, he has adopted various sober case at the end of each mini series, including producer Ben Kenobi, Kylo Ben, Ben Knight Shyamalan, Ben Sate, say Benny thing, Ailey Ben with a dollar sign, war hoss, Purdue Urbane, Ben 19, the fennel maker, robo Haas, banglish, Mr. Ben credible, eat drink Ben Hosley, beetle vape juice, the hustler day, public Ben Amis, Husker of the ditch of the Jersey, stop making bands, Haas picking the city, Ben Hosley, Sally, the secret life of Benz, the great mouse fart detective, the housebreak kid, Benz and the Haas, Ben skate from new Haas and Bronco Hosley.
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