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1995 - Kids; Basketball Diaries; Empire Records
65 Plays2 years ago
Wherein we you meet your hosts and listen to them rant for way too long.
Produced by Bud Cutino
Music by oji, "rooms for music" - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/oji
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Transcript
Is Fifth Element the final Die Hard film?
00:00:33
Speaker
Somebody that I was talking with, oh, in my fucking game group, Matt, our game master, he was like, all right, here's the thing. Fifth element is just
00:00:47
Speaker
the end of the Die Hard franchise. It is just a Die Hard movie. There's pretty much right. There's a hotel. There's a beautiful woman. There's a crisis. There's a bunch of shooting. Like it is literally just it is the most. It is the most Die Hard film out of all the ones after Die Hard with a vengeance, according to Matt.
Podcasts as Companions for ADHD
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's called a cold open. We're doing classic cold open.
00:01:18
Speaker
It's good, it's good. You know, people are going to become like really invested in our banter. You think so, huh? Definitely. That's what I'm hoping for. I mean, I definitely am invested in the banter of the podcasts I listen to.
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, no, I yeah, well, this this is I have this theory hypothesis working hypothesis that will come up over and over again, which is that like podcasts are just a surrogate for your for your friends or surrogate for friendship is really what a podcast is. Yeah, for a lot of people, certainly for myself in a lot of ways.
00:01:57
Speaker
They're also like fucking miracles for people with ADHD. It's a way to feel like you're having somebody there with you while you're trying to get your chores done.
Cathartic Road Rage
00:02:09
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Especially the more conversational ones. The ones that kind of go off the rails a little bit, those are the ones that I can do the dishes to.
00:02:20
Speaker
Right, for sure. Do you multitask with Book of the New Sun podcast? Yes, I do. I love it. I've driven back and forth to Pittsburgh recently and listened to that show the whole way. That sounds terrible. I mean, not the podcast part, the driving part. I drive a lot. That's okay. I like it, actually.
00:02:43
Speaker
So completely off topic, but I have like shocker road rage, but it doesn't. But it doesn't manifest in.
00:02:58
Speaker
It doesn't manifest in like me driving recklessly. It manifests in me just like screaming at the top of my lungs at people, but like driving like super calmly. I'm just like I just scream and like just yeah, I don't but I don't like honk my horn or like swerve or anything. I just drive like a regular person while I'm screaming at the top of my lungs.
Driving Habits and Fatigue
00:03:23
Speaker
It's actually quite cathartic. I was going to say, yeah, sounds relaxing.
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, but I feel like if I did that, I would probably like if I had to drive for my job, like it either would get like it would get tired. You know, like I feel like this doesn't really cut the mustard anymore or I'd accidentally scream at the wrong person and then like get run off the road or something.
Driving in Hawaii
00:03:46
Speaker
Right. Yeah, I find myself like getting tired and just driving very slowly when I'm on the road. That's so stressful.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I would be calmly driving behind you, not passing, but screaming at the top of my lungs about how you're not going the speed limit. Well, okay. The posted speed limit is different than like the highway speed limit. Like it's like everybody knows that you can go 80 even if the speed limit is 65.
00:04:20
Speaker
Well, some of these places have minimum speed limits. That's where you know you're with some real slow motherfuckers. Oh, gross. Like in Hawaii, Hawaii has a minimum speed limit, which makes sense because people are like truly just like on that island time and just cruising. Yeah. I honestly, though, can't imagine driving very fast, at least like
00:04:46
Speaker
The only island I've been to is the Big Island. We took a bus because neither one of us had driver's licenses, so we couldn't rent cars at the time. Even the roads, the buses went on, I was like, the fuck? I would not be speeding on those roads. They're so twisty and turny and damp. Everything's damp. Everything is damp.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah, and everything's it's a lot of like two lane highways like just up and down the coast, right? And yeah, especially the big island like up into the mountains. It's fun. It's lovely. It is. That's how we got to the other side because I was there with Sasha and she was like it was when she was working for Nordstrom and she had to like go and help like set up the new Waikiki Nordstrom that was getting opened.
Meet Blood Catino and Beth Martini
00:05:33
Speaker
And it was like immediately like post divorce. So I was like just like going ham on anything I wanted to do. And she was like, do you want to come to Hawaii with me? And I was like, sure, why not? And the tickets were like dirt cheap. It was insane. They were like $400. And we stayed in a hotel in Waikiki. And then we rented bikes.
00:06:02
Speaker
And I was so paranoid about getting sunburned that I wore so much sunscreen that I didn't even get a tan. I fucking hit you not.
00:06:14
Speaker
I was pissed. Last time we went, which was in March, I put it on sunscreen. Rachel went surfing because we just rented one surfboard. This is in Waikiki. I was sitting under an umbrella the whole time and then she got back after an hour and I went surfing for like 45 minutes and I was sunburnt like nasty, nasty sunburn for like four days. Like there was a day in which I was like, I can't, I just have to stay home. I can't go outside.
Movies of 1995: Cultural Significance
00:06:43
Speaker
Yeah, dude, like my friend Cody went hiking in Hawaii and he is like he's a daywalker pale, like, yeah, so pale, like so like northern European. It's painful. Yeah.
00:06:58
Speaker
and he went hiking with like a sun one of those like sunshirts you know the ones that are supposed to be like sunscreen but clothing yeah and his back it's so gross his back got so sunburned that the skin when it like raised and he was like it and he was like sweating and so he had like
00:07:20
Speaker
blisters of sweat all over his back because like the sunburn was so bad that like the peeling almost started immediately.
00:07:29
Speaker
Oh, that's awful. Yeah. Like so nasty. So like, I mean, I rather would have like, you know, not, I guess not gotten a tan then fucking ended up with that. For sure. That's horrible. That's horrible. Yeah. Yeah. I just kept thinking about that the whole time I was there. I was like, Sasha, you have to put sunscreen on my back. All right. Well, let's talk about movies. Let's talk about some movies. All right. This is a podcast. It's called we're spending time. My name is blood catino.
00:07:59
Speaker
I'm Beth Martini. Yeah. Nailed it. Oh, we're so good. Uh, so we decided that we were going to, I guess we should do a little backstory, right? Right.
00:08:12
Speaker
Okay. So, um, we decided that we were going to do a movie podcast where, you know, we get to talk about films and it gives us a reason to watch them. And the format that we came up with was a year at a time. And the first year we are doing is 1995. Um, you know, we were youths back then. I think I was 10. Yeah. Were you born in 85? Yeah. That's, that's about right. Yeah. I was like 13.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, like some of the stuff is highly relatable, but some of it is just a little bit outside of our times, I would say a bit. But I think like a lot of the stuff.
00:08:53
Speaker
was very rentable. Like my parents were kind of strict and it was like PG 13 only or PG or whatever. I was never allowed to rent radar on movies. So I think why I have such, I don't know, like, well, there's a lot of these movies that I have never seen cause they were like adult movies, but a lot of the ones that I love so much were just accessible, which is why I love the movies from this year so much.
1995 in Context
00:09:15
Speaker
Absolutely. Um, I'm like also thinking like,
00:09:20
Speaker
So the really like the only crazy things that really happened in 1995 was the Oklahoma City bombing happened. Right.
00:09:32
Speaker
And Michael Jordan came back to the NBA. Whoop, whoop. Oh, from baseball? I guess. Like, you know, the OJ Simpson trial was happening in 1995. OJ Simpson trial is happening. I believe Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were secretly having an affair already at this time. That's wild. Yeah.
00:10:01
Speaker
You know what I also realized and like, let me just fact check this real fast. But and this is something that happened that I thought of while we were I was watching the basketball diaries by the
00:10:22
Speaker
The shooting at Columbine is highly reminiscent of that scene in Basketball Diaries when...
Movies Reflecting Real-Life Events
00:10:35
Speaker
What's his name? Wow, my brain just stopped working. Yo. We're only 15 minutes in. Leo. Well, Leo is in the... Yes. Yeah, when Leo's like... ...heavenly induced dream sequence. Yeah, and he goes in and he's like, I could think of... I thought I could do anything.
00:10:50
Speaker
And I was like, wow, those are some, that's an outfit he's wearing right there. Yeah, trench coats and yeah, the handle. Trench coat, shotgun. Shotgun, yeah. Boots with like a little heel. I don't know, I was just like, that's kind of weird. You did have boots with a little heel. I noticed that as well. I was like, oh, check out that heel. Yeah. Kind of sexy actually. Yeah, there was a trench coat mafia at my school.
00:11:15
Speaker
Like, uh, the year of Columbine. I don't know how all these kids knew each other. I mean, they were just like theater dorks, but they all took a big picture together. Um, and they all like where their trench coats to school. And which, which school was this university of San Diego high school? Okay. So this was at uni. Yeah. And that was a Catholic high school. Wasn't it correct?
00:11:42
Speaker
Um, so how did they, did they just like pull them out of their lockers and take the picture and then put them back? Didn't you guys have uniforms and shit? Uh, yeah, but we had this rule in the student handbook that said like you can, if it's shitty weather or whatever, if it's inclement weather, you could wear whatever type of like outer layer, outer jacket you wanted to, which is why I used to wear like a polyester plaid blazer, oversized polyester plaid blazer.
00:12:11
Speaker
And like the principal and like saw me and just looked at me and just like smirked because he knew that, you know, I was a little shit weasel and I can get away with it. And it was really, you know, nothing he could do about it. Yeah. Yep. Right there. My mom used to threaten to send me to uni and I was like, oh yeah, with what fucking money? Mm hmm.
00:12:34
Speaker
I was unaware that there were like scholarships and stuff. Um, but I'm really glad that that, uh, that that particular ultimatum never, never went through. Never came to work. I mean, let's see, you would have ended my brother's class.
00:12:52
Speaker
Um, interesting how things would
Windows 95 and Internet Era
00:12:55
Speaker
have been different. Do you think we would have been friends? We probably would not have been friends if you went to uni. Cause you were, cause you would have been like, you're my brother's age. You're my brother's class. Definitely wouldn't have hung out with you with like a freshman when I was a junior, I guess it would be. Yeah.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah. But we know now. No, it's great. I'm like just like checking to see if there's like anything interesting. Holy shit. Amazon sold its first book in 1995. Yeah. Microsoft came out with, you know, Microsoft 95. Yeah. It was like.
00:13:39
Speaker
Uh, kind of, I mean, there were other, you know, windows platforms before that, but I think that was like, I really, I don't know. I'm not a computer person. That was an important one for what I understand. It was like, kind of, it was the beginning of the internet this year, more or less as we know it. And like having windows on your, being able to be on your home computer, it basically like,
00:14:02
Speaker
it normalized, democratized all of the computer, right? Suddenly everybody could access a computer and figure out how to use it really pretty easily. You
Empire Records: Escapism and Identity
00:14:19
Speaker
didn't have to know Linux or some other operating system that was written off of code. You could just be on a computer.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah, you didn't have to like navigate through your file structure from the command line, right? Like just awesome. Do that shit. Yeah. All right. Well, but what order did you watch these movies in? Well, I thought so I wanted to go.
00:14:47
Speaker
gnarly first, and I believe I failed. My choice didn't really work that way, so I went kids basketball diaries, Empire Records, and I really felt that basketball diaries was gnarlier than kids in a lot of ways, or harder to watch. It was much more visceral, I will say. It was way more visceral, yeah.
00:15:13
Speaker
Um, yeah, I did kids empire records and basketball diaries. Um, cause I was like, Oh, I'm deaf. I'm definitely going to need a palate cleanser in between these films. Um, and this is your first time viewing kids, correct? Yeah. It's the first time seeing kids and the first time saying basketball diaries. Oh, okay. Yeah. Awesome. Um, uh, what, tell me about your relationship to empire records.
00:15:45
Speaker
Cause you said that this one is in like heavy rotation when you were growing up, right? Yeah. I don't remember the circumstances that I saw it for the first time, but there was a period after like, I think after I moved to Seattle, so around 19,
00:16:04
Speaker
that like either I had it on VHS or we like got it at like a cheap bargain bin DVD situation. But it just became one of those movies that I would put on when I was bored or like it's kind of like how I use podcasts now, right? Like I just needed something familiar to be on.
00:16:25
Speaker
because I had to try to get something done. It's funny now as a grown woman with a fairly recent ADHD diagnosis, looking back and seeing all of the ways that I coped as a young person to try to make my way through
00:16:48
Speaker
all the times that I failed to live up to my potential.
Empire Records Cast and Impact
00:16:52
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so I'm very records. It just like, it struck this like romantic chord in me. Like I lived in the Pacific Northwest record stores were still like a really big deal. I really wanted to work at a record store or like all of these things. I mean, records were like a huge part of my growing up in San Diego, even, you know, like,
00:17:15
Speaker
And so it just had this sort of like quirky romantic nature that kind of just like slowly seeped into my
00:17:30
Speaker
like my personality, I guess. Like one day I looked in the mirror and I was like, Oh my God, I'm literally dressed like Lucas. Like I had short, short, dark hair, um, uh, like fucking black turtleneck.
00:17:49
Speaker
acid washed vintage Levi's a lot like 517s and a pair and like I was wearing fucking Samba's. Yeah. And I was just like, cool. Like this is this is that's my fashion icon. I mean, you still do. Mm hmm. You were just like long hair now. Yeah. You still rock the black turtleneck and the black jeans.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yep, I just wear bloodstones every day now because I don't like my feet to be wet. Oh, fair. Yeah, bloodstones do do an OK job, right? Yeah, they're they're pretty good. But yeah, there's I have this thing like.
00:18:32
Speaker
for no reason at all, usually, and pretty much typically out of nowhere, just the kid, the shoplifter kid will just pop into my mind shouting, my name's not fucking Lauren. And like,
00:18:51
Speaker
I don't know why. I just, it just like every once in a while it just pops in and then I'll say it out loud and people will look at me like I'm insane. I'll be like. Fair. There's too much of a story here. This is a, shit, I was just looking him up. He's a hunk as an adult, that actor. Really? Uh-huh. What? Brendan Sexton.
00:19:19
Speaker
I don't I didn't think that anybody except for Liv Tyler went on to do anything from that movie. Everyone. Everyone went on to do little bitsy things, bits and bobs,
First Impressions of Empire Records
00:19:30
Speaker
more or less. Yeah. I mean, I think some people. Oh, my God. He's good as an adult. We're going to see him twice this season because he's also welcome to the dollhouse. No shit. Yeah.
00:19:47
Speaker
Um, that's absolutely wild to me. He's, he was like in a couple of things that I've seen. And of course, like I can't fucking think of it. Did you pull up some pics of this guy? Yeah. I'm pulling it up right now. Oh, he's an El Camino. Interesting. He was in Russian doll, which I just watched for the first time recently. Oh, fun. I fucking love that show.
00:20:12
Speaker
Oh, my God, it was so good. Yeah. Oh, you're right. He was. Oh, he was. It must be a new episode. He was in Drunk History. What the fuck else? Seven psychopaths. I never watched that. It's OK. Yeah, it was fine.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, he's had like a halfway decent career out of everybody from that movie. It's like a working character actor and he's fucking been in it since 1995. So good for him. Yeah. Debbie Mazer did a bunch of stuff, too. Oh, I guess Renee Zellweger also had like a career, didn't she? Yeah, she kind of fell off. I think that she either sort of like retired or. I don't know.
00:21:05
Speaker
Wasn't there some weird thing where she kind of disappeared? And then people were like, she came back and they were like, oh, yeah, you get plastic surgery. It's not your face. Yeah. Yeah. She just aged naturally and people were grossed out by it. Yeah, absolutely. You see her and stuff. You're always like, oh, that that one lady. Yeah, exactly. She's been in the business forever.
00:21:32
Speaker
Like she was in Goodfellas. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, she was, wasn't she? Oh, shit, we're going to see her again in Batman Forever.
Character Dynamics in Empire Records
00:21:41
Speaker
Amazing. If we choose, not that we need to do Batman Forever, but if we so choose. Let us know if you leave a comment. Let us know if you want us to do Batman Forever. Maybe you want to if we never make it through these three movies we're talking about right now.
00:21:56
Speaker
We're already almost half an hour into this record, but that's okay. That's fine. It's fine. We can always edit. The magic of editing. Yeah, right? The first time I saw Empire Records, I swear to God, was at Vincent's house, probably in 1995 or 1996.
00:22:17
Speaker
And yeah, never again. And so although I, during this movie, I thought that a lot of it was stupid and annoying. It was also quite nostalgic. And there was just very poignant like bits and bobs that kept on sticking out to me and felt kind of visceral because I did watch it as like, you know, a sweaty 13 year old or 14 year old. Totally. In Vincent's mom's living room.
00:22:45
Speaker
Well, I think that the bit with, um, with Deb, when they like give her the funeral, um, you know, like that was pretty, pretty intense for a second. You know, like that wasn't easy for, you know, I'm sure kids, 16 year olds to be like, Oh man, I relate with this. Who's your favorite character in this movie?
00:23:14
Speaker
Um. You know. I definitely love, I definitely do. God, it's a really hard question, actually, because like I kind of love everybody for different reasons. Sure. This is also like. Like a moment when I was like, oh, my God, Ethan Embry, he's so cute. But. Wait, who?
00:23:45
Speaker
Ethan Emory, who plays Mark, he's so stupid and funny. I loved him so much. Which is really hilarious in contrast to the crush that I had on Jason Lee and Mallrats, which we will definitely be doing later this season. Oh, absolutely. They're like opposite ends of the spectrum. Oh, yeah. Scumbags. You know, I do love Robin Tunney's character. Is it Tunney or Tunney?
00:24:14
Speaker
I'm going to say Tunny. Okay. Yeah. Like Deb, she's, she was just very relatable. You know, I definitely can understand what it feels like to like not have your shit together and not have a support system and like kind of lash out in a way.
90s Films and Slut-Shaming
00:24:38
Speaker
Right.
00:24:39
Speaker
Lucas always holds a special place in my heart because like he had like such good intentions and then just ended up fucking everything up in a way. Right. But yeah, like I think AJ is my least favorite character. OK, sure. You wouldn't like an AJ. No, like he was just like so like.
00:25:10
Speaker
I don't know. And the cut that I watched too, I think that it was like a cut for TV or something because like there was no cursing in it. And I distinctly remember there being cursing, but like, was there any in the one that you watched?
00:25:27
Speaker
Not that I recall none that stuck out to me. Huh? I have this like memory of the scene on the roof between Liv Tyler's character and AJ, where he's like kind of a prick to her about throwing herself at Rex Manning. And like, oh, God.
00:25:53
Speaker
Go please continue. I was just saying like that. So I have this memory of like him like kind of like shaming her. But that was not in the version that I watched. And I don't know if I like made it up. That wasn't in the I didn't have that take either. So you might have just interpreted it that way somehow. You might have interpreted that way. Yeah.
00:26:16
Speaker
I mean, I thought it was very inappropriate what his reaction was where he was just like, oh, you just tried to bone Rex Manning and you've all felt like really shameful and your sweater's on inside out and your skirt is on backwards. Perfect time for me to tell you that I'm in love with you and I think we should be together. You know, like that was very inappropriate.
00:26:39
Speaker
It was, yeah, to be slightly fair, like she hadn't told him that he did that until after he told her that he loved her. Okay, got it. She was like, I can't do this right now. And instead of just like not being in his own fucking world and his own head and seeing that like she was not emotionally available, which is like its own problem. Right. I definitely noticed like the problematic male characters in all three movies the most.
00:27:09
Speaker
Oh, sure. Because that is kind of like that was kind of a theme. Yeah. Especially like the between kids and Empire Records, like there are a lot of thematic similarities while they were like definitely conveyed differently. It was still like really there was like that similarity there of like, you know,
00:27:35
Speaker
quote unquote virginity and like it's importance and like the purity of girls and shit like that and like slut shaming and all of it like.
Teen Relationships in the 90s
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, there's. Yeah, what is up with the slut shaming in especially Empire Records?
00:27:56
Speaker
It's just like that was a thing that I just could not get on board with or it just didn't, doesn't seem compelling to me. It just seemed like incredibly, like a two dimensional way to create tension between Gina and Deb or Gina and Corey and Deb. Um, and it's just, it's frankly not believable in my opinion, like that dynamic. So of the time though, yeah, you think so a hundred percent, the number of like,
00:28:27
Speaker
The number of girl relationships that I was either part of or I witnessed where like there was a falling out over like a potential sexual partner and the immediate resort for the hurt person was to slut shame. Like it was it was so prevalent. Like it was like
00:28:54
Speaker
I mean, it happened to me. I probably did it to someone like it was like. Real, there was a very real thing that happened and it probably only like the concept of slut shaming didn't even really come into like, you know, conversation, I feel like until after 2010, you know, like. And just this like.
00:29:22
Speaker
this idea that like a sexually active young woman
00:29:31
Speaker
has no agency and therefore and she has to be doing this for attention was like just regurgitated through everything. It was like in the media, it was in, you know, our fucking classrooms. It was in sex ed, you know, like if you sell the if you give away the milk before you sell the cow kind of shit like, you know, and
00:30:01
Speaker
It was just it was just like ingrained. It just was, you know, one thing I will say for, you know, the younger millennials and Gen Z is that they will not tolerate that shit. It's actually like incredible how they don't. Tolerate people tearing each other down. Yeah.
00:30:25
Speaker
And our age group, our friend group, our generation, whatever that is, like we weren't quite so generous with people. Yeah, it was an easy way by which I don't know.
00:30:44
Speaker
in a weird, strange way we could be divided from each other and frankly have our growth stunted by that way of thinking, which honestly came from the media and came from our parents' generation. Oh, 100%. Yeah, just this idea of like, oh, I don't even know if women even enjoy sex. And so I guess the ones that do or have sex are there's something wrong with them and they're just acting out. Mm-hmm.
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, it became like the go to way to. Oppress each other, fuck with each other. Yeah, 100 percent gain power. Yeah, yeah. This this especially we're going to pull from our own like teenage memories because you and I grew up as teenagers together also in the same community. So this is going to be like a particularly poignant episode, I think. Number one, episode number one. You know, got to got to hit the ground running.
Comparing Kids and Basketball Diaries
00:31:39
Speaker
So right.
00:31:42
Speaker
So do you think that like that scene in kids where the girls are talking about how much they like to have sex, do you think that sort of juxtaposes with the dynamic that you're seeing in Empire Records?
00:31:56
Speaker
Well, it's, you know, the editing in kids was really interesting because they were doing that like cutaway back and forth between the conversation amongst like the dudes and the conversation among the girls. And like it was just so funny how diff like how wrong each like the guys were about the girls, you know, like
00:32:24
Speaker
the the like. I would say if Gina had been in kids, like if her character had been in kids, she also would have been having that conversation about how much she enjoyed fucking and like the discussion about like the different types of sex, like there's making love, there's having sex and then there's fucking and they're different things and you do it with different people like that's all like
00:32:53
Speaker
real conversations that would have been had. I just don't know. You know, the only part about kids that I found like slightly unrelatable was the level of like. Self awareness that some of them had, because like I do not remember having that level of self awareness as a kid, you know, and they were kids. It's very shocking.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yeah. But then at the same time, we also at least I was that age where I was getting into some shit at that age, like 14, 15, 16. I was wild. And when my when my little sister tried to pull some shit at that age, I was like, absolutely not. This is unacceptable behavior.
00:33:42
Speaker
Right. Like I know what you're doing because I did it and you're less clever about it than I was. And you're getting into more trouble. Like this is unacceptable. Yikes. You know, but. I don't know, like. That conversation, it was just like. It was just like so.
00:34:07
Speaker
weirdly obvious, you know, like it was just like the dudes were like, Oh yeah, girls like they love sucking dick. Like it must be their favorite thing. Like this, that and the other. And then every single girl in that room is like, I fucking hate it so much. And it's like, of course you hate sucking a 15 year old's dick. Those dudes don't shower. Like they eat like shit. Like it's nasty. Yeah. You know? And it's just like,
00:34:33
Speaker
It just really highlighted, I think, like the misconceptions that were sort of fulfilled by gender stereotypes of the 90s, you know? And like, I would assume that at the time that that movie came out, those perspectives being just like so blatantly called out would have been like
00:34:58
Speaker
pretty shocking. The version of the film that I watched opened with like the trailer. Okay. And so like the trailer has and you this is on Amazon also like the trailer has like
00:35:16
Speaker
all of these like headlines about the film from when it came out from like New York Times and, you know, Vogue and like fucking all this shit. And that's like the most important movie of a generation. Right. Right. It's like for home. I think, you know, I think we kind of saw
00:35:42
Speaker
in the 20th century a lot of firsts. Like I think about John Updike a lot because did you ever read those books like the Rabbit Run books by John Updike? So Rabbit Run is John Updike's first novel I think.
00:35:58
Speaker
And it's just about this dude who is like middle class life, married to a woman mid century. And he just runs away and takes up with like a local sex worker and they like live together in a shitty hotel room. And he's just like escaping his boring middle class American life. And I think that everyone kind of blew their loads over that because it's nothing special. And it's actually kind of an icky story.
00:36:27
Speaker
But I think that no one, white people had never even considered this sort of like lifestyle. You know, middle class white people had never experienced this, considered it, definitely never read about it or watched movies about it. And that's why I think it was like so important for a whole generation of people. Right, right. And I think that kids kind of plays the same role in a lot of ways.
Narrative Choices in Kids
00:36:50
Speaker
I found it very icky. I don't know if I, I don't know when I first saw kids.
00:36:56
Speaker
Uh, probably as an adult, I would be wanting to say probably my twenties. Um, and I could not wait for it to be over during this watching. I kept on like, you know, putting my finger on the computer to just check and see when it'd be over. Cause it made me feel very uncomfortable. It's about a bunch of people who are a perfect age to be my children. And it was very disturbing in that sense. Um, yeah.
00:37:28
Speaker
The like the rape scene at the end was really fucking like I was not expecting that at all. And like I was genuinely shocked, genuinely shocked that Harmony Corrin made the choice to have Chloe Sevenier not intervene in that piece of shit, like fucking that girl after she
00:37:54
Speaker
either did or did not get like, it's not, it's not clear that the HIV diagnosis was a hundred percent accurate because the nurses, like sometimes the tests are wrong, right? You know, but like,
00:38:08
Speaker
The lack of, I mean, I'm not surprised because Harmony Curran has a pretty bad reputation for being a piece of shit. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, I didn't do any deep diving, but I definitely remember, especially when Brown Bunny came out.
00:38:29
Speaker
that there was like this whole thing because like Vincent Gallo was being shitty. And then they were like, well, is it any surprise? Like he's friends with Harmony and Corinne. And there was like all of this like conversation that was going on around like kids and gummo and like that whole like
00:38:46
Speaker
Vice era sort of like romanticizing of like being a fucked up teenager and like being poor or whatever I don't know anyway tangent, but like You know the the lack of agency that was written into the script while Infuriating was like also kind of painfully accurate in a way as well like
00:39:14
Speaker
She's fucked up like she is like in it and she feels really super alone and you know, she's like looking for this kid for some kind of like something like desperate for any kind of validation in this thing that has happened.
00:39:31
Speaker
And then because she is in this environment and in this subculture, she gets fucked up when she goes to the club and tries to find him. So by the time she actually finds him, she's literally out of her mind and can't do anything about it. And so
00:39:54
Speaker
while, you know, a lot of movies would take the unrealistic opportunity to have her get some kind of closure, have her get some kind of like vindication. This movie decided to, you know, say instead, that's not actually what would really happen because
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah, it felt very accurate to me, like you said. And I think from a story perspective, I mean, I don't know how horrible this sounds, but I'm glad that it happened that way. Like if I were writing this story, I would have written it that way as well. Yeah. Just, because I mean, for her to like have stopped that telling, having sex with
00:40:47
Speaker
the next young girl, uh, and possibly exposing her to HIV. Um, like to have like Chloe Savini, um, like stop that, like, I don't know, like from the structure, from the perspective of the narrative, like how that would really serve the story at that point.
Cautionary Tales: Kids vs. Empire Records
00:41:05
Speaker
Um, it definitely could have ended there. It didn't need to, like, she didn't need to get further, like raped by Casper. Um,
00:41:16
Speaker
I'm not going to say it's like a hat on a hat, but it's that serves the story, too. I do think because it because this is just such a clusterfuck and just layer upon layer of nastiness in this movie. What I thought was like an incredibly poignant was like that he while Casper is raping Jenny, Jenny, he kept on putting her arms, her like limp unconscious arms around his body. Mm hmm.
00:41:46
Speaker
in order to mask the fact that she was unconscious, which is like so fucking sinister, while also juxtaposed with him like repeatedly, like in a very sweet way, like telling her his name and being like, oh, it's OK. It's just Tully. It's just telling him I'm here, you know, which is like, yeah, just very crazy saying it's me, Tully, not it's me, Casper.
00:42:12
Speaker
Oh, I'm sorry. It's me, Casper. I'm sorry. He was. OK, he was saying that I was like, oh, my God, I miss that. Yeah, wait, he was saying it's me, Casper. Yeah, he was saying it's me, Casper. But yeah, that that was just like so extra sinister, that one little.
00:42:29
Speaker
like direction to like continually throw her limp arms like around his back was just like so gnarly. So yeah, so crazy. I figured out what the thing with Harmony Corrin was and I remember right now, it's that he
00:42:45
Speaker
So he during the filming of Julian Donkey Boy, he fucking went off of his rocker and like started doing like so many drugs, like all of the drugs and like the the little blurb that I just found out, found was he wound up in Paris doing so many drugs that his teeth fell out. Whoa. Yeah, yeah.
00:43:10
Speaker
And then I didn't realize that he also did Spring Breakers. Yeah, definitely. Which I never watched. Yeah. I watched it. Of course he did. Just like, yeah. I mean, I watch everything, but it is what it is. I fucking saw the first avatar in the morning, and then I went and saw Avatar that night in the theater. Because that's how I roll. Incredible. That's how I live my life alone.
00:43:40
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, it's just like, did that further humiliation need to happen? And it's like,
00:43:52
Speaker
No, but semi also yes, like because the story isn't about like the story isn't about like kids having fun. The story is about it's like it felt like a cautionary tale for parents like that. That's who that film was actually made for. Like this is what your kids are doing. Like look at how fucked up everything is when you don't take care of them, not like
00:44:18
Speaker
you know, a glorification. It definitely did not feel like that. Whereas Empire Records feels like a glorification of like counterculture, of like being weird and mask, and that just masks like a bunch of really toxic behavior that ends up, you know.
Connecting with Cultural Themes
00:44:40
Speaker
My notes about this were Basketball Diaries and Kids are 90s movies, whereas Empire Records is a Gen X movie. And Kids is a movie that's about the subjects that are on film in the movie. Basketball Diaries is more about the audience that's watching the movie.
00:45:01
Speaker
the topics kind of explored in basketball dowry is like kind of really expose the social mores of the generation at the time of the audience. And Empire Records is just a fucking soundtrack that wants to be a movie pretty much. It's so funny that you bring up the soundtrack to Empire Records because like
00:45:25
Speaker
the actual like published, um, like soundtrack, like for the movie, it has songs on it that weren't in the movie and it has, it does not have songs on it that were in the movie, which always is infuriating to me. It happened with Romeo and Juliet too, or Romeo plus Juliet. Yeah. Um,
00:45:49
Speaker
Talk show host by Radiohead was not on that soundtrack, if I'm remembering correctly. Yeah, I'm looking at the soundtracks section on the Wikipedia page for Empire Records and it's like soundtrack and it's like 16 songs and then other songs and that's like 25 songs. I mean, this movie had a fucking lot of songs.
00:46:17
Speaker
It really did. It pretty much was a musical. I would say Empire Records is almost basically a musical. Yeah, I completely forgot that aspect of it, but there is never not a song happening in the entire. In the entire movie, there's never a moment where there's no. Song happening, which makes sense because like it's in a record store takes place in a record store.
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so they list talk show hosts on the on the soundtrack, but I don't think it was ever actually on the the released soundtrack, which is weird. Hmm. Anyway, that's that'll be another year. That'll be. Do you can't wait. Yeah. What year is that? I love that movie.
00:47:09
Speaker
1996. Oh, 96. Okay. So here's the thing is I think some at some point in this season, one of a weird spanning time, we have to do kind of shout outs to the book ending years around 95 because there's some fucking good movies that came out in 96.
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah. Um, that would have been fun to compare. Like for example, um, dead presidents, uh, would, would have been really good to do was set it off, but then it off came out in 96, I believe. Yeah. Thematically, I think that the two years kind of just like rolled into each other. And yeah, maybe that, maybe that becomes, maybe it moves from just being one year to maybe we just like,
00:48:00
Speaker
kind of span the years, so to speak. So hilariously, we have pretty much danced around basketball diaries this entire time.
Emotional Depth in Basketball Diaries
00:48:14
Speaker
Should we? Yeah, we really haven't talked about it hardly at all. Partly because it's pretty brutal, you know? Yeah, I really, it was a hard one too. I would say that
00:48:32
Speaker
Uh, kids really felt like, well, it's, you know, Larry Clark's a photographer, right? First and foremost. And kids was his first feature film. Uh, and that's kind of like, I didn't, I didn't realize that till after I saw the movie and did a little bit of research. And I was like, Oh, this makes sense because these are like all these sort of like living tableaus, right?
00:48:54
Speaker
in a way that everything shot and lit and featured and composed on screen. Basketball Diaries is so much more of like a film, as you would think of it. And so much more of a 90s movie. It felt very much like a 90s movie. Just the trappings, the lighting, the filters and all that sort of stuff. So this is your first time watching this movie as well, huh?
00:49:23
Speaker
Yeah, 100 percent. Can we just like really just shout out Juliet Lewis in Basketball Diaries playing basically the exact same character that she plays in Yellow Jacket. So I haven't seen Yellow Jacket. What is it? What is that?
00:49:42
Speaker
It's a show that takes place now, but it is also half told through flashbacks. Christina Ricci is also in it, and it is a story about a
00:50:01
Speaker
All Girls Soccer team who is in a gnarly plane crash and they spend 18 months in the forest and nobody knows what really happened. And it pretty much definitely like tells you in the beginning, so like literally the first shot, so this is not a spoiler, but that like these girls devolved into like maybe a cult and also definitely some cannibalism.
00:50:30
Speaker
That sounds fucking cool. Yeah. It's, I loved it. Like some people didn't like it and they were like, it's too campy or whatever, but I thought it was absolutely fantastic. And it's told from the perspective of like these ladies are all adults now. Um, and they're like flashbacking to when they're doing their Lord of the flies thing.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Cool. Yeah, it's really stellar. So highly recommend. But yeah, Juliette Lewis coming in hot. But yeah, so this movie I literally watched right before recording today. OK, right. It was wild. It was a wild ride.
00:51:17
Speaker
Yeah, sure was. I took a lot of notes. Uh, you want to see the crazy, I don't know if you can see it in this light. My handwriting is so bad, especially if I'm like not paying attention. You're like just blurry enough that I can't actually see it. Okay. I'm sorry. Just, just know that my handwriting is really horrible, but I took a lot of notes about basketball diaries. Um, yeah. Hit me. Let's talk about them.
00:51:43
Speaker
Uh, I thought it was a good movie.
Cinematography in Basketball Diaries
00:51:46
Speaker
I don't know. Do we need to say anything more besides that? Probably. It was a good movie. It was, um, I don't know. Trevin, like after I got done watching it, he walked past me. He's like, are you done? Is it finished? How do you feel? And I was like, I don't know, man. Like, that's like fucked up. But like, that's what happens when you start doing heroin. Like.
00:52:13
Speaker
Unfortunately, I'm pretty desensitized to that life. Yeah. Between like, you know, the broader friend group in San Diego. Yeah. And my mom's own shit like. Right. You know, this is what this is. This is your brain on drugs, you know.
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah, I thought they they really nailed down. I didn't necessarily hang out with like extremely drugged out people like as it's portrayed in basketball diaries. But I mean, you definitely I live in New York City, lived in San Francisco forever.
00:52:55
Speaker
just like they really nailed it down. Just the the lifestyle and the body language and the way you talk and just the misery of being trapped in that lifestyle. It's just like so gnarly. The desperation. Yeah. The like day to day grief and desperation. You know, and I think like
00:53:20
Speaker
A hundred percent. And, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio was an unbelievable youth actor. Like just unbelievable. Like his willingness to just like get into a role and. Yeah, dude, it was like 19 when he filmed this movie. Yeah, yeah. Which is like fucking nuts. He did so good.
00:53:46
Speaker
It was crazy. And like, you know, the. The way that his life was spiraling and like. It really did take.
00:54:04
Speaker
all of his friends getting like popped. And then that moment where he sees his one friend that stayed in school on TV for playing like the all star high school basketball game. I think that's the moment where you're like, yeah, Neutron.
00:54:26
Speaker
I think that's the moment in the movie where you're like, oh, OK, he's he's he's going to get clean. Like it's not going to happen at first and it's not going to happen immediately, but he is going to get clean. And, you know, of course, obviously, the film is being narrated by him in the in the first person, so.
00:54:50
Speaker
you're told that he's well, and recounting what happened. But it's never, there's no excessive exposition, besides the narration, you know, like,
00:55:04
Speaker
which I think is really interesting and it's something that's kind of, you know, been lost a little bit in the last like 10 years. Like there's a lot of unnecessary exposition that happens in movies and TV now. You know, like they, they, that something flipped, some switch got flipped and the idea of showing not telling kind of fell by the wayside.
Symbolism in Basketball Diaries
00:55:29
Speaker
Um, I thought like, you know, from a cinema, cinematograph, cinemagraphic, is that the word cinematography? Yeah, cinematographic. Yeah, we're getting there. We'll figure it out. Yeah. So from a filming perspective, uh, the way that they, um,
00:55:54
Speaker
the way that they showed the time while he was detoxing in his friend's house, the basketball player's house. It was really fascinating because it showed passage of time, but what it was actually showing is that no time was passing.
00:56:18
Speaker
And like particularly the the shoot where he's sitting and he's trying he's like pretty much he's not sit dope sick anymore he's obviously still going through withdrawals but he's not dope sick anymore and he's trying to write and he's realizing like he's having in this realization that he is convinced he can't be creative without getting loaded.
00:56:43
Speaker
And so he goes crazy and starts tearing up the room and looking for any kind of money he can get his hands on so that he can go get high. And the way that it's filmed suggests that this is over the course of a significant period of time, but there's this subtle detail as the camera comes around where the candles haven't changed.
00:57:09
Speaker
And every time the camera comes around, he's in a different frustrated position, but the candles haven't gone down any on the bookshelf. And I sincerely doubt that that was a continuity error. I think that that was sort of a mechanism to really reinforce this idea that in his mind, he had been sitting there for fucking ever.
00:57:38
Speaker
but the reality of the situation is he barely made it 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. There is like a stuck timelessness in that whole scene. I mean, it's literally circling around and around, right? The camera is just like going around, around in the room and it's very disorienting, but also claustrophobic sort of way.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good thing. That's a good point that you make. I didn't notice that. Yeah, I love when he's like sort of compressed in between the mattresses of the bed and just like shivering, fucking white lips drooling.
Parental Roles in Addiction Narratives
00:58:16
Speaker
It's very visceral the way that they make him up and the way that he he portrays what it's like to to kick. It's like so gnarly. It's certainly more compelling than when they did it in Trainspotting.
00:58:33
Speaker
Yeah, right. I think so. Because like when he does it in train spotting, I mean, it's more artful, but and he's kind of all alone, right? Right. Whereas like I think that it's made so much more poignant in basketball diaries because he's with his his friend Reggie, who's like a local neighborhood guy, played by Ernie Hudson. And
00:59:04
Speaker
I like Ernie Hudson just does such a good job of just being like he is present. Right. But he's also kind of disgusted by, you know, Jim, by how Jim is acting and how Jim is just like drooling and spitting and probably like pissing himself and just as like nasty and screaming and horrible.
00:59:27
Speaker
I thought that was like, uh, yeah, just like super poignant. Uh, Ernie Hudson obviously is like an amazing actor. Um, not, not enough of him in, uh, in Ghostbusters, I would say. Um,
00:59:45
Speaker
And I think that like, I don't know, I think I kind of like that scene better than the other super gnarly scene, which is where Jim is like trying to break into his mother's house and there's that like insane sequence where he's just like reaching through the door and she's just on the other side of the door and she won't let him in and she's kind of going back and forth like she wants to touch him and wants to touch his hand, but like can't let him in, can't let him inside, even like back into her life at all.
01:00:13
Speaker
And it's like so crazy poignant when she's on the phone with the police, but she's also still pulling money out of her wallet, which is really illustrates what it must feel like to be a parent and probably specifically a mother kind of in that in that role where you're like, I need like for the good of both of us, I need to cut you off, but also like I can't because you're my son at the same time. Right. Yeah. The moment when he's like when he's like
01:00:43
Speaker
Mommy, please just let me in. I promise I'll be a good boy. And she just like fucking like wordlessly breaks down. That was like such an, such like a, a well, well acted and well filmed scene. Yeah.
01:01:00
Speaker
I think the only thing. And this is going to come up a lot wherever there's like cops present in films, but like one of the few things that I found the most unrealistic was the response time of the New York City Police Department. In New York, in whenever this movie is supposed to fucking take place. Yeah. Yeah, they were just coming like immediately. Yeah.
01:01:28
Speaker
And then like showing up, arresting the bad guy and then just leaving, like, come on. Yeah. The sense of urgency was highly unrealistic. Yeah. Yeah. You know, yeah, I like Lorraine Broncos performance. I thought that I did think that the Ernie Hudson scene with with with Jim was better or more like I could grab onto it.
01:01:58
Speaker
But I think that the Lorraine Bracco performance was really good, but I think it was almost subdued. And I probably I would like maybe blame that on the director. Just being like, yeah, you can't go like full blown overboard emotional because. I mean, it is your son like.
01:02:17
Speaker
You would be kind of pissed off at the same time and you would have boundaries, you know, and it is like a New York parent at the same time. So maybe it is really good the way that she played it. It's very sophisticated performance. It is a very sophisticated performance.
01:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, I'm still gonna have to unpack it, because it's not like she completely falls apart, and not like she's completely emotional and crying and screaming. She's very upset and she is crying a bit, and it's very hard for her, but it is more subdued, and it's almost a more subdued performance than the Ernie Hudson performance.
Youth Sexuality in Kids and Basketball Diaries
01:02:52
Speaker
Well, yeah, because Ernie Hudson straight up knocks him around. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
01:02:59
Speaker
Crazy details in both of these movies, I would say that like both in kids and in basketball diaries that I really love that you don't really see in movies like Empire Records, for example, or anything like a lot of crummy movies that come out these days.
01:03:20
Speaker
just like I don't know what's going with this. I've completely lost my fucking train of mind. I don't know. You were talking about the details and I'm going to guess I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it has something to do with like filming locations, possibly. I do want to circle back to that, but oh, no, it just went.
01:03:40
Speaker
Jim and Reggie are wrestling around in the kitchen, and then Reggie's shirt gets untucked, and then he has to tuck it back in. He goes to tuck it back in. He realizes it's easier to just unbutton your pants to do it, and he unbuttons his pants to tuck his shirt back in, and Jim is just like, I'm not gonna fucking suck your dick.
01:04:00
Speaker
And it's just like, I love fucking little tiny details like that. I really think that those things are what makes a movie good. And I think that's kind of going back to showing not telling, which is what you're saying previously. I love these sort of like subconscious details that like a well-intentioned movie maker puts in into their pieces. Well, you know, and I think that, you know, in that particular scene, I think
01:04:29
Speaker
even slightly more overlooked than than that is the moment. Like, there's like a moment of realization that he has in what was what Jim just said to him. And like, it takes him a second and then it clicks. And then he's like, OK, but motherfucker, like, look at yourself in the mirror. Like, I wouldn't even want you to suck my dick. Like, look at yourself like the fuck is wrong with you? You know, it's like.
01:04:58
Speaker
not even like, you know, there's like there's a there's like a. A disgust with the implication, and then there's like this, like, oh, no, this boy is fucked up like this kid, some there's some shit here and like, you know, it's never explicitly said.
01:05:20
Speaker
But it is very much suggested that that basketball coach did more than just that one time of trying to get with him in the in the locker room, because there's a moment in the very beginning when he's getting paddled by the priest where he's like he calls them all molesters or something. He says, like,
01:05:45
Speaker
It might have been a derogatory term used, but the insinuation that the priests took liberties was there at the fucking very beginning. Like the first fucking thing that Jim says, right?
01:06:01
Speaker
And so there is this implication of molestation, of that vulnerability, creating a significant amount of this need for self-medication that's just exasperated by his best friend dying.
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there's, there's this sort of like rampant. Yeah. With the coach, I definitely, you feel this menacing sexual intent towards Jim immediately. And I think even, even before he approaches him in the shower, um, or even before he, I mean, the first time he kind of approaches him, he's like,
01:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, we should get together. Like, we'll get a pizza. We can kind of go over the schools together that you should be applying for. Like, you want to do college ball, right? And Leo was like, I don't know. I'm pretty busy. That's kind of the first sort of implicit sexual advance from from Swifty, the coach. But I think even early on when they're sitting around signing the basketball for Bobby and
01:07:13
Speaker
And Swifty walks up and they're like, uh, he's like, Hey, what are you doing? And they're like, okay, this guy is fucking pervert over here. You can kind of see the wariness and especially, uh, and, and Leonardo DiCaprio is like how he's, um, responding to Swifty's presence and his, his attitude. And yeah, it feels like you can already feel that something is up even before Swifty tries to like, Hmm, plan a date with Jim, you know?
01:07:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I certainly had friends from back in the day who got into drugs and like, you know, would share with me that like they can almost directly link it back to stuff exactly like that. Right.
01:07:58
Speaker
which is really unfortunate. Yeah, that was another thing I felt was very visceral for me because I was also a cute little boy growing up and you do feel weird sexual energy pointed towards you from people in places of authority, for sure.
01:08:22
Speaker
I mean, you're a girl. You grow up. You were a cute girl. You grew up. And I'm sure you had the same shit
Unwanted Sexual Attention in Films
01:08:28
Speaker
happen. The same experience, right? Yeah, I mean, I I was definitely. I was definitely like pretty fortunate that like I never had to deal with any like fucking lecherous ass like men in like my youth or teens, really. I mean, outside of the punk scene.
01:08:51
Speaker
I said men. That's for real. Yeah, outside of the punk scene. But mine came more from the outside world. When I was
01:09:07
Speaker
a sophomore, junior in high school, I lived right off of the Elkhorn Boulevard, which is like a super main street, like super, super busy, but also like runs, it's like one of the longest streets in the county. And it occupies a lot of different types of neighborhoods, like
01:09:30
Speaker
And this particular apartment that I lived in was on a particularly unsavory stretch. You know, it's not like that anymore. There's like cool bars now and like people live there or whatever. What block was it? Alcohol in 35th.
01:09:50
Speaker
That whole stretch was like not great. And more than one occasion, I was either propositioned by men soliciting sex.
01:10:06
Speaker
Mm hmm. Or I was propositioned by other sex workers who had been sent to to talk to me by whomever they reported to to try to like. Encourage me to join their profession, you know. Yeah, yeah, like.
01:10:30
Speaker
And you know, one of my most visceral memories of that time is I literally had to hide in a gas station because this dude would not stop following me in his car. Right. Which is insane. That's insane. You know? And so I didn't have to deal with it in my places of authority because I, you know,
01:10:57
Speaker
just, I either had like female teachers or I just avoided my male teachers because I didn't want to ever have to deal with that shit because like I heard about it. I knew what, I knew what goes on. Like fucking, I know what goes on. People with, there are sick people who work in education and yeah, but anyway,
01:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, that was gonna be the thing, the thing that I would bring up about alcohol. I mean, that's the thing that everyone brings up, right? Growing up in that, in our generation, it was that, yeah, alcohol in boulevard is known for like, yeah, the street walking sex workers, like all up and down the whole stretch. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I mean, I'm talking like six o'clock in the morning while I'm waiting for the city bus to go to school. Like. Oh yeah, for sure. It was not limited to when the sun went down. Oh yeah.
01:11:53
Speaker
Even like when I was in my early thirties and I was like an Uber driver for a minute when I first moved back to San Diego. And I remember just kind of like waiting for a customer waiting for a pickup in that neighborhood in a parking lot. And like two sex workers walked by were just like, I was like, Hi, good morning. And they were just like, Oh, he's police because I just, you know, I look like what I look like.
01:12:13
Speaker
You know, just like clean cut white guy, like sitting in a Corolla at seven a.m. You know, yep. Yeah. I was like, oh, shit. Yeah, it's still going on. It's still there. I mean, like.
01:12:29
Speaker
I don't knock sex work at all. Like that is not the point of the story. The point of the story is the like fucking creepy 45 year old white dudes who felt like it was appropriate to follow a fucking 15 year old girl walking by herself. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Masculinity and Intimacy Portrayals
01:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, um, yeah, straight guys are creepy for sure. Uh, the coach really reminded me of like, I don't know. There's just this way that this weird thing I've noticed with like when, if, if, uh,
01:13:06
Speaker
And this maybe sounds like it doesn't make sense, but if a straight guy has a crush on another guy, he will just like hover around them in their vicinity, just kind of pleasurably soaking up their presence, but not really like understand what they're doing because they're straight and they don't understand like that they sort of have a crush on this other guy and they're just like kind of like not leering, but like what's a word for just like I'm just hovering.
01:13:35
Speaker
Just sort of like being there for too long. It's very, very interesting. What are you up to? What are you working on? Yeah, what do you need? Yeah. I had this coworker, one of my more recent jobs, who would just like, it's like, I was like, Oh, you just want to spend time with me. You're just like standing around waiting, waiting for me. And I was like, bro, we don't really have anything to talk about and we're not working anything together. And you're just like, kind of like, you know, you're just here loitering.
01:14:04
Speaker
Lloyd range, I'm honored. So yeah, guys are kind of creepy and don't even know what's going on inside of their own gross brains. Yeah. Yep. I would, I would argue that that's pretty true. There seemed to be a weird theme that I noticed in kids and basketball diaries where there's like homosexuality is for
01:14:33
Speaker
like youthful times, like when you're young, you're homosexual. And when you're an adult is when you're straight. I noticed like there's I mean, there's so much there's so many homoerotic elements to both kids and basketball diaries. And I noticed like and even when they would play at heterosexual tasks or like whatever, like experimentation, it always seems like
01:15:04
Speaker
They didn't really care about having sex with women. Like Telly, for example, always fucks with his eyes closed as though he's like thinking of something else.
01:15:17
Speaker
basketball diaries like I don't think anyone I mean I mean I guess they like hooked up with girls but like when Jim is with winky and blinky he like seems very uncomfortable certainly much more comfortable than if he were to be like naked with his friends like on a basketball court in the rain sort of like interesting and I don't know if like
01:15:40
Speaker
That's was that like a zeitgeisty sort of theme? Was that like a subconscious thing that was going on in our culture? Like, oh, like it's, you know, gayness is for youthful, youthful boys. And then but when you're supposed to grow, you're supposed to grow up, you have to put all that away. I think that there is this idea that, you know. Boys can, you know,
01:16:10
Speaker
like rough house and like wrestle and like being naked around each other. And like, there's no problem with that. Uh, because it's just, you know, it's just guys stuff. Like they're just being guys. Like it's like real natural for boys to like wrestle and be naked around each other. Like,
01:16:36
Speaker
Um, and they're like, you know, the whole having sex with a woman thing, like making you a man is just like kind of like a trope. I think, you know, like it's just kind of like that sort of like leftover hyper masculine sort of like
01:17:01
Speaker
coming of age story, I'll make you a man sort of trope. I did think that it was just- But it's like a conquest and it's like I do this to make myself feel better about myself or I finally accomplish this.
01:17:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a rite of passage, but my true form of intimacy is with my friends, right? Right. Right. And that's the thing is, is that like intimacy amongst like stereotypical mid-1990s
01:17:33
Speaker
males, that's like a dirty word, right? They weren't intimate. They were just friends. They were just guys doing guy stuff, right? Like the idea of like intimate male relationships is that is like, that's, that was like zeitgeist. That was like taboo. Like you wouldn't call hanging out with the guys.
01:17:57
Speaker
having an intimate male relationship or like, you know, that's just hanging out with you guys. And because the, there was like this very interesting, you know, juxtaposition of the moment where they're all like skateboarding in the park and like to
01:18:16
Speaker
queer people walk through the park holding hands and it devolves from all of the dudes like roughhousing and like whatever to them all shouting homophobic slurs at them. And then immediately off the cuff of that experience, they beat the living shit out of another person all together as like a group, you know, like pack mentality kicked in.
01:18:42
Speaker
Well, yeah, it's like they go from, they're all topless and cuddling in that scene, right? It's a bunch of guys who are naked and cuddling. They're like hanging around, yeah. Yeah, like they're all just sitting like skin to skin, 25 of them. And then they are gay bashing a couple that walks by. And then it's just like, in order, like the fruition of getting that weird,
01:19:09
Speaker
circuitous sexual energy out of their system is that they have to, like, almost kill someone.
90s Culture Depicted in Films
01:19:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like. I think that it is really interesting to that, like, you know, Telly only wants to have sex with prepubescent girls and.
01:19:33
Speaker
like talks like really openly about like fantasizing about doing anal and then like is like so vocally, you know, homophobic, but also has like HIV. It's like possibly right. That's never actually confirmed in the film. It's like suggested, but then like, you know, it's just like this,
01:20:00
Speaker
Is it supposed to be irony? Is it supposed to suggest that actually Telly's gay and that like he's been closeted this whole time? You know, what is that? What is that? Like, what does that desire to be so
01:20:22
Speaker
like vocally cis, like what is that? Like, what's that about? You know, cause like that is, that is one of the main aspects of the film is that these like boys are very much trying to assert their like cis heteronormative behavior. Right.
01:20:44
Speaker
But they devolve into not that very rapidly. Just like fucking wagging their dicks around literally. Yeah, all the time. And Telly and Casper just love each other is really what it comes down to, right? Casper just loves Telly. And we'll just go along with him.
01:21:08
Speaker
Like, no matter what tell he says, Casper's like, yeah, yeah. And even there's certain points where Casper's like, yeah, huh. Yeah, man, I can kind of see what you mean by that. Like he's because Telly is too crazy at times. Right. And I think Casper just loves Telly so much that he just is willing. Also, Casper drinks like 740s throughout the course of the whole movie. So Casper's just like extra fucked up. Just out of his fucking mind. Yeah.
01:21:36
Speaker
Also like so many 40s were drunk in both of those movies in basketball diaries. And it's like, it, it reminded me, I like literally haven't fucking even touched a 40 since I was like 17 years old. But oh my God, we drink so many of them and I don't understand why. Like it's not good.
01:22:02
Speaker
No, it's fucking nasty. It doesn't make any sense. Like I remember trying to order 40s from someone that was like over 21 and they're like, I'm going to get you a 12 pack because A, you can divide it up better with your friends and.
01:22:16
Speaker
they stay colder longer and it's not like that nasty shit at the bottom of a glass 40. I think I liked it. I liked forties because you could hide it under your hoodie when you're walking around the streets. Did you ever do that trick? Yeah, I did a yes. Yes, definitely. But like we also
01:22:38
Speaker
I think that they were cheap and because they were like malted beverage, not just fucking beer that they like got you more fucked up for less. And I think that that was definitely like an impetus to the 40. I also think that there was like particularly in San Diego and maybe also in New York, like
01:23:01
Speaker
There was this like urban vibe of a fucking 40, like, oh yeah, like Beastie Boys talk about 40s, like fucking, you know, Sublime talks about like 40s and weed.
01:23:20
Speaker
You know, that is the only way that you can say sublime is with that like sort of disgruntled exhortation, breathy exhortation. It's the worst, the fucking worst. I got that. Did I tell you? I did tell you about my theory that Beastie Boys is just like New York sublime, pretty much sublime for New York. No, absolutely not. There's no because the Beastie Boys are actually listenable.
01:23:50
Speaker
Sublime is trash. Have you actually tried to listen to Sublime at all? No, no, not when they are together still like no. But like I came up with this BC boys is is East Coast Sublime from some New Yorkers that I was working with from like native NYC people. What did they put that out of my head? What was their argument? What was their argument?
01:24:18
Speaker
You know, I don't know if it wasn't like an argument, but it was I think I think the guy was trying to relate to me because he knew I was from San Diego. And so he assumed that I'm a sublime guy, because he truly is a fucking ride or die forever sublime town. So I would say I hate that so much.
Personal Teen Experiences vs. Film
01:24:43
Speaker
It's true. Could you do an entire fucking podcast about how much I hate sublime?
01:24:49
Speaker
If it recorded everything I said after I froze, you'll get to go back and listen to it. Well, we were devolving into a we hate San Diego. Our miss miss spent youths were a little rough. Not as rough as these movies. We're doing great.
01:25:09
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I would say my my life was somewhere in between kids and Empire Records is what I would say my my 20s were somewhere in between there. I would say that my teens hints of both. Yeah, I would say that my teens were. And I'm talking like. Twelve, thirteen, because you because you have to understand before you and I were friends,
01:25:35
Speaker
Before we even knew each other, me and Erica were like wild. We had already been wilding out for years by the time we started hanging out with everybody else. And you guys just know each other from Spring Valley, is that right? Yeah, because we went to middle school together.
01:25:59
Speaker
And by seventh grade, like we were fucking wiling out. And so I think like we met all of the like Grossmont crew. Like sometime toward the end of our eighth grade year. Jesus. Yeah.
01:26:22
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. There was like a lot of kids that I was like, yeah, this is highly relatable. Like the fucking taking the train all the way downtown to see if you could find your friends and then calling somebody on a pay phone to see if somebody was home, to see if they knew where somebody was.
01:26:42
Speaker
Like the breaking into swimming pools. Oh, that pool is near my house. And I went to that gym just the other day actually. I was super excited. I do love that a lot of kids does take place like in kind of lower Manhattan. And also in basketball diaries, when they swipe the car, they drive past stomp.
01:27:05
Speaker
That was like a really funny thing about basketball diaries is that it was very much a movie out of time. Like it's written from the perspective of like a baby boomer. So these guys would have been like 60s, early 60s, mid 60s. It was very much a 90s movie, more of a 90s movie than kids is.
01:27:29
Speaker
Because I mean, I guess kids like everyone is dressed very 90s. It's like hardcore skate culture, hardcore like hip hop culture. But like Basketball Diaries has all the trappings of a 90s movie. I think I mentioned before, but it's supposed to be this sort of like mid century druggie story. But but also we were having the sort of same drug epidemics in the 90s in America.
01:27:57
Speaker
So I guess it felt sort of cyclical. So I guess it was appropriate in that sense. But yes, it was funny that they drove past stomp in basketball diaries. What is that? Stomp is a fucking musical.
01:28:14
Speaker
at the Orpheum Theatre, I want to say, which is on Second Avenue and St. Mark's Place. Yeah. Second Avenue, St. Mark's. And Stomp was fun. I fucking saw a touring production of Stomp. I'm like getting animated for the first time in this whole podcast. I saw a touring production of Stomp. My mom took me to back then, back in the 90s at that time. And it was great. It's just people like, you know, stomping around. They have like trash can lids and shit, right?
01:28:41
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's got got them combat boots, got them cargo panel tied around the waist kind of vibe. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I definitely, definitely like like realized it. The one thing. OK, so the one thing in kids that definitely felt unrealistic was the idea that there was just like a rave club.
01:29:08
Speaker
Was that actually a thing for youths in the 90s in New York? Because by the end of the 90s, by 1998, 1999, 2000, the idea of going to a club for youths in San Diego was like, we could barely find a place that had all ages shows. You know what I mean?
01:29:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we had a good amount of them. We had Showcase, we had Soma, and those places sort of felt like that. I mean, that was just like the electronic dance music rave scene version of what we went to. I think more druggy, more like what would be called Molly. Yeah, Club Kid Shit. Exactly. And I guess we just didn't really, if there was a Club Kid scene in San Diego, I was not aware of it.
01:30:00
Speaker
There was, I was definitely not aware of it. I don't know where it happened. It must've been like very underground. I would imagine. I don't even know who to ask because we hung out with like rocker kids. Raver Joe would be the person to ask. Raver Joe would be the person to ask. Yeah, he would know about it. Speaking of Joe's,
01:30:24
Speaker
weren't you telling me that one of your friends's dad might have been involved in the basketball diaries in some way? Yeah, that's right. My friend Joe, my friend Joe's dad. Oh, we were talking about it last night. I saw that I saw him for dinner, actually. He's in town. And he was saying that his dad went to the same high school as Joe.
01:30:45
Speaker
And yeah, I don't think they were friends. I misheard that from a different friend, but I was like, oh, which one is it? But yeah, I think they went to high school or grew up in the same neighborhood. And Joe was saying that his dad related that, yeah, just so many people from that time didn't survive.
Jim Carroll's Influence on Basketball Diaries
01:31:04
Speaker
They just fell prey to the drug epidemic. Was the song, all the people who died, do you think that that was?
01:31:11
Speaker
uh written for that movie or do you think that that was fit into the storyline because there is a there is a line in that song that they play right after it's i think sam dies and it's the line is and sam was 17 and he had leukemia and he died
01:31:36
Speaker
Oh, people who died. That's that's a Jim Carroll song. That's a Jim Carroll band. So that was intentionally that was about this. Yeah. So there are like a half dozen songs on the soundtrack that are by Jim Carroll. Personally.
01:31:57
Speaker
And he was in the movie too. He was like that creepy, skinny guy who helps Jim shoot up. Oh, the blonde one that's like telling the story about being in church and how he loves a ritual.
01:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, pretty much. I'm sure that I'm pretty sure that was Jim Caron. I was like, this is such like a weird philosophical moment that I'm like, oh, no, that OK, that tracks now. One thing I have to say is like how much I appreciate like your overall preparedness and like knowing like actors and their character names, because I'm like so fucking bad at that, that like one of us has to be good at it. Otherwise, this would be just a podcast of this going.
01:32:38
Speaker
You know, that one character
Actor Knowledge and Preparedness
01:32:41
Speaker
with the shirt.
01:32:43
Speaker
Um, yeah, I don't know. I, I am really excited about this project and I really fucking love movies. Um, and so yeah, I'm somehow able to read a lot of this stuff and like really absorb the information. Um, you know, not doing such a great, uh, job at my, my day job these days, you know, I'm still kind of fucking up the,
01:33:10
Speaker
But, you know, that's all right. Fine. That's just kind of how it is. It is how it is. I'm still getting paid. I'm probably won't because nobody wants to work according to the media. Remember, right. He wants to work. Yeah. Yeah. Let's. I think also my job is so annoying and difficult that at this point, they're like,
01:33:34
Speaker
He's halfway decent and he's really willing. He's willing to get in there. Yeah, there you go. I think that counts for a lot.
Creating Movie Rating Systems
01:33:43
Speaker
So overall, how do we grade these movies? What do we think of them? Well, I've got my rating system. Did you make up your own arbitrary rating system by chance?
01:33:57
Speaker
I didn't formally, but I can definitely make some shit up on the cuff.
01:34:06
Speaker
Okay, so let me just tell you what I came up with a scale scale between one and 500 on a scale of one to 500. And I rated for enjoyability, veracity, transportational strength, like retransported into this movie or out of wherever it was that you're watching it.
01:34:29
Speaker
Would you watch it again? Does it accomplish its purpose? Like whatever you think the movie is trying to do, did it accomplish that? And did it have a sense of setting in the world? I just kind of made all that shit up. I don't know if any of that makes sense or feels impactful to you. Those are much more earnest categories than what I was expecting. Like they're really thoughtful. That's me earnest. Oh, thank you. Thank you.
01:34:59
Speaker
So, um, is it that time? Do you want to do, are we into the reading section of the podcast? Let's do it. Cool. Let's rate these guys. Uh, yeah. I'll go first to give an example. Um, what, what movie do you want to do first? Should we do them in order of gnarliness or should we do them in order of like release states? Should we do them? Oh dear.
01:35:27
Speaker
I think I want to do Empire Records last because I'm going to have shit on it a little bit. I'm going to do some pooping on Empire Records for sure. So let's go most compelling, the least compelling. How about that? Oh, OK. I'm just going to go for. I'm going to going to do basketball diaries
Reviewing Basketball Diaries
01:35:50
Speaker
first. That's what I would have picked as well.
01:35:54
Speaker
Basketball Diaries, directed by Scott Calvert, written by Bob Goluboff, and based on a novel by Jim Carroll. Obviously we know Jim Carroll is like, you know, a long, successful poet and musician. Enjoyability 400 out of 500, I would say. That's fucking enjoyable. I like that movie. I'm going to give it, I'm going to give it a cool 375 because
01:36:21
Speaker
where you were doing the thing with kids, like tapping it to be like, oh, my God, how much more of this is there? I was absolutely doing that. I was like, how much further can this movie possibly spiral? Like I cannot. It is already so dark. Like we've got more to go. And of course, it was the him getting clean and then getting loaded again and then having to go through like a dude dying.
01:36:50
Speaker
And his mom fucking calling the cops on him. Like, of course, you know, cause I was like, there can't be like a 27 minute, like, there's not going to be like a 27 minute, like redemption scene. So I was like, so yeah, cool. Three 75.
01:37:07
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, luckily the redemption did last like 90 seconds or whatever. Like luckily it was just like a little bit. Cause yeah, I don't think I could go through like a long, like doing good rehab thing. And, and, and he did need to relapse. I think for the structure, for the structure of the narrative, he did need to relapse obviously, although it would have been nice, but it's so disappointing when he runs out on, on Reggie.
01:37:34
Speaker
Yeah. And because it's such a poignant scene between them and they work so well as actors together. Like I said, I think before, I think they work better than Leo and Lorraine Bracco work together.
01:37:50
Speaker
So so it is that much more poignant when he runs away and relapses and like, oh, man, that fucking scene when he's with Juliet, when he bumps into Juliet Lewis on the screen and like she's she's clean and she looks fucking great. And like he looks like a piece of shit. And like she just he just gets his like just desserts because of even even before he was a junkie, he treated her like shit. Yeah, that was that was good.
01:38:19
Speaker
I, okay. So we'll, we'll get to that, but okay. So veracity, I guess truth, truthiness, truthfulness, uh, four 69, I gave it. What do you think? Um,
01:38:32
Speaker
it's hard because it's a 90s movie. So you're like certain aspects of it. Like my, my thing was like being a fucking drug addict and living that drunk, junky street life felt very real from as I've experienced it, like so like objectively. Yeah. I will second your four 69.
01:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. Cause it's not, it wasn't like so honest that, you know, I was like, man, this, this really happened. Like it very much still had based on a true story vibes, you know, like there was obviously some
01:39:08
Speaker
dramatization. There was obviously some glamorization at points, like it not glamorous in terms of like old Hollywood, but like, you know, there were these moments with the like flowers running through the flower scene and like, you know, so there was definitely like some truthfulness there for sure. This happened to someone. But was it quite this like
01:39:35
Speaker
Was it quite as raw as what was portrayed like? I don't know. You know, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's also an adaptation that's always really difficult, right? And it's just because you have like story to write like it's like he's retelling a story that happened to him. Through these writings that he did while he was getting loaded, so like. Could we argue that he's an unreliable narrator?
01:40:06
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah, especially like it felt especially unreliable when Mark Wahlberg Mark Wahlberg is in this movie. How surprising was that? Once I realized I was like, what the fuck? At first, I thought it was fucking not Matt Damon, the other one. Ben Affleck at first, I thought it was Ben Affleck.
01:40:33
Speaker
Sure, sure. Well, the director, Scott Calvert, I believe he was a big music video guy. Let me look this up one more time. Yeah, he was a big old music director for Cyndi Lauper, Snoop Dogg, Jazzy, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Bobby Brown and Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. So that's probably where he came from. I don't know.
01:41:04
Speaker
I don't know. It did make me very like curious about Mark Wahlberg's just where he comes from and like his whole career trajectory. I'm not interested in looking it up right now, but it did make me more curious. The vernacular of the youth. Is he a Nepo baby? Oh, I don't know. Well, I truly don't know. If his mom or dad has a blue line under their name on Wikipedia.
01:41:32
Speaker
I'm going for it. Um, okay. That's fine. Let's do it. I'll race you. We'll fucking miss you. You'll probably do it better because my fucking brain isn't working. It's because we've been podcasting for two hours. All right. Let's see. Uh, former stage name, Mackie Mack.
01:41:52
Speaker
uh, early life, Dorchester, Boston actor, his siblings are got blue name, blue lines under their name, but no, his mom was a bank clerk and his dad was a delivery driver. Yeah. So just like classic kind of blue collar folk.
01:42:15
Speaker
No, I have a really funny story about Mark Wahlberg. I'll just tell it and then maybe I'll bleep it out or I'll just get it out. I know because we're going to be famous podcasters and also, well, I don't know. I guess I could get sued for. Oh, my God. He's like a fucking racist. Yes.
01:42:37
Speaker
I mean, it's from Boston. Like a piece of shit teenager doing like nasty, nasty shit. Oh, I see. Oh, I see this. Yeah. And then he does rap. That's awful. Get the fuck out of here. All right. Anyway, can tell your story. Yeah. Remember when I had that? Yeah, we probably do have to cut it out because
01:43:04
Speaker
He seems litigious. That's libelous. Yeah, it's pretty legit. Yeah, exactly. Wow. We'll cut it out. In the B roll that we release only to the to the Patreon subscribers. That's right. Behind the paywall. And then I noticed around the same time that he like came out with some like some dumb magazine, did a puff piece on like how big of a family guy he is like directly after like a right around that time.
01:43:34
Speaker
Okay. Glad we got that figured out. Where was I? Mark Wahlberg. Oh, I thought, yes. So we were saying that.
01:43:45
Speaker
I thought that the scene when Mark Wahlberg throws the guy off the roof or accidentally pushes the guy off the roof, I was like, Oh, this, this sounds kind of fake. This, this seems unreliable. Uh, sort of like, Oh, you have the ability to kind of write, like maybe, I don't know, maybe Jim Carroll was more involved.
Reliability of Movie Narrations
01:44:01
Speaker
And just because, uh, his friend went down for it, was able to put it in his book and put it in his movie. I don't know. Yes. Yep.
01:44:08
Speaker
There's got to be some, it's got to be some, he portrays himself as just been like, no, I never wanted to. Oh, yeah. Like I wasn't even fucking here. Don't pin this on me. Yeah. But he was literally, I guess he like, by staying on the roof, he like avoided, you know, fucking getting popped by the cops or whatever. But you would think, again, unreliable narration being like,
01:44:34
Speaker
If a fucking guy just fell off of a roof, you would think that you would go up on the roof and see. You would. Right. Like you just check the cup, the cup to go in the fucking building. Like how the hell did he get out of the building to go to his mom's house? You know what I mean? Like, right. I don't know. So whatever. I mean, we're giving it four sixty nine. Like it's not five hundred.
01:45:02
Speaker
You know, totally. That's right. Okay. Transportational strength. Like, did it transport you into the movie? I said 483. That's pretty high. That's pretty high. I don't think I want to ever go, but I don't think I want to go back and edit, edit my, my numbers, but I could maybe it was some more fourth or more thought, given like a lower score, maybe, maybe in the, maybe a hundred lower, maybe like the upper. Yeah. I would say like definitely more than half.
01:45:32
Speaker
Like, you know, like 250 is like kind of, you know, does the job, but hasn't like really done much. The only part of it for me that just didn't really do the transporting was when they were in the like drug den. Like that had to it felt too much like I was watching a play.
01:46:00
Speaker
you know, like that felt like a set piece. And I don't know if that was intentional. There was some different like sort of, they did use some different camera angles when they were in that space. And I think they used like a little bit of different filtering and different lighting when they were in that space. Oh God. Okay. But yeah, it's like,
01:46:29
Speaker
It's like it would get me in and then something would pull me back out again. So I would say probably like. Like I'm going to give it like a. Like a 315. Yeah, 315. Yeah, I'm changing. I am going to change one to 383.
01:46:50
Speaker
Yeah, because like 450 and above, that's like I'm engrossed, you know, yeah. And time, time, I'm so engrossed that time has like disappeared, you know, and like, I think you're right. It's just like.
01:47:10
Speaker
I was able to like work on something while I was watching the movie and I was also like able to like and I kept doing the thing where I was checking to see how fucking much longer that this was going on for and I think that that is like you know it's a testament to how gnarly the subject matter was but it's also like there were the way that things like
01:47:34
Speaker
broke and who knows if this was an editing thing or if it was like just you know a filming thing but there was a lot of there were a lot of moments although I will say
01:47:46
Speaker
One of the things at the very, very beginning that I was a hundred percent sure was going to happen and was like, I even like fast forwarded 30 seconds because I was so sure it was going to happen. And I didn't want to watch it was when they were all jumping off the cliff into the river. I was a hundred percent convinced that the like the like dopey little kid that was also in hook
01:48:14
Speaker
uh that he was going to eat shit and die that's the that's the kid from hook yeah because he's so short he's so short right sure thought like he was gonna under jump and like crack his head open on the fucking cliff and die like i was like oh my god that's the kid from hook jesus christ you got me fucking got me
01:48:38
Speaker
Yeah, you know, gritty, gritty drug drama to happy go lucky. Fucking never, never land in a matter of years. Well, I don't know James Mario. Let me look at it. I do not know.
01:48:58
Speaker
Oh, hook was 91 shit. Yeah. So, you know, he really took those never, never land acting chops and turned it into something pretty incredible. I mean, that moment, you know what? Yeah. That moment when he like pops out of the fucking alleyway right before Jim is about to go inside the theater. Yeah. Just like, you know,
01:49:27
Speaker
It was good. He did a good job. He did a really good job. Yeah, for sure. He was also in kick ass and also in single, single white female to the site colon, the psycho direct to video. Yeah. So that's fun. He's doing good. He's doing great. Whatever this full works. Does TV. Yeah. Does TV does video games. That's where it's at. Voice acting man.
01:49:56
Speaker
Dude, hell yeah. Making those big, big bucks. And he was very, uh, yeah, he's very memorable and hook. Okay. So would you watch it again? Basketball diaries? Probably not. That's going to be a note for me, dog. So like a zero.
01:50:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's like a big old goose egg. Yeah, I can't. I can't like I just I saw I get to say that I saw it. I don't need to watch youths ruining their lives. I don't need to watch like snot just flowing down Leonardo DiCaprio space like.
01:50:40
Speaker
You know, he was an incredible actor in his youth. Absolutely fucking fantastic. No doubt about it. Give that fool the Oscar. Whatever. I don't. But like, I'm never going to watch that movie again. And it's not because it wasn't good. It's just because I just did it. I did it. And I don't need to do it again. Yeah. Did you see this boy's life? I did not.
01:51:09
Speaker
which is a movie that came out like just before. Yeah. Mama, Mama, 93. And it's also kind of gnarly, but it's like he he's like Robert. Fuck, we have Robert De Niro's stepson. Robert De Niro marries his mom and it's like this crazy, like weird movie that takes place in the 50s. And then Robert De Niro is like a weird, abusive father. Yeah.
01:51:38
Speaker
biographical coming of age drama. Okay. We got to wrap this up because my brain is just like literally falling apart at this point, but we did good though. Two hours over two hours. Okay. All right.
Transportational Strength of Films
01:51:49
Speaker
Does it, does this, does this movie accomplish its purpose? I think so.
01:51:55
Speaker
Yes, I think so too. I, I, I did four 92 pretty, pretty good and pretty. Yeah. I would say like, I would, I would argue that, yeah, it's like not perfect of course. So four 92 is a good, a good score for it. Um, okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's you're going to go from four 92. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good, good number. Cool.
01:52:20
Speaker
a sense of setting in the world. I gave it like kind of a low score of 335 just because it had good setting. It had great production, like design, staging, you know, location management. It's all fucking good. But like I couldn't tell when this movie took place. Like it felt very 90s. It felt very 60s or 50s. 50s really is how it felt.
01:52:45
Speaker
So I kind of took particularly the the the moments where they're like. Taking the ferry to Staten Island, the the burgers, the burger shop. You know, like it very much was like, you know, out of an out of time sort of moment where like, would you wear a sweater of us like that? Right at that age, at that time, like, no, so.
01:53:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's sort of like anachronistic, like they're kind of dressed like kids from the fifties. They're driving around in cars like that are from the early seventies. It's a little fucked up. Yeah. So give me your give me your number so
Reviewing Kids' Raw Portrayal
01:53:29
Speaker
we can move. I'm going to give it a two sixty seven. Nice.
01:53:36
Speaker
Um, I took the total of the score, my numbers and I divided it by Juliet Lewis appearances and I got a total of, uh, 851. So for what it's worth. Uh, yeah. Okay. Let's move on to kids out of, wait, sorry. 851 out of, out of nothing. That was just a number. I don't know. It's just an arbitrary number. Yep.
01:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, kids, kids, director like Larry Clark, written by Harmony Korine. Enjoyability 200. I did not enjoy this movie. I really did not either. Can't say I like a 173, honestly. Fair. Yes, it kind of hurt to watch.
01:54:29
Speaker
Yeah, it was real painful. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful movie. I mean, I like I like to go to the photography museum that's right down the street. You know, I do like the I like I like the visual art, but just too painful overall veracity.
01:54:47
Speaker
Guess I gave it a four ninety five because I'm like, well, this is just real as fuck. These are like not even actors. These are it's a scripted movie. It's not allegedly not improv'd at all, but it felt pretty real to me. And like, that's kind of like Carmen and Kern's fucking deal, right? Like fucking Gummo was like almost entirely comprised of people who lived in that small town and then Chloe Sevigny. Yeah. You know, and so like definitely like
01:55:15
Speaker
And I think we talked about this, though, the the aspects of like. In a movie, if it was just a movie, she would have gotten that vindication, but like it was fucking based on like some real shit and like you would walk into that room, not know what to say, turn around and start crying. Like that's just like what would happen. So, yeah, I'm I. Yeah, if you've been being victimized all day by multiple people, just about every turn.
01:55:44
Speaker
you're being like shit on and victimized, then no surprise if you are halfway twacked out on whatever that was. So yeah, I would say four ninety five, like pretty, pretty good. Yeah, cool.
01:55:59
Speaker
I'm recording your scores just for, uh, that's the word. That's, that's what it is. Transportational strength. I give it a three 89. I was kind of transported, but also I didn't like being transported into that world. So sweaty. So I could, I could smell the fucking boys. I can feel how hot it was like that, like
01:56:21
Speaker
One of the first things I noticed in that opening scene was how that girl's hair was sticking to her arm because of how fucking gross and sweaty that bedroom had to have been.
01:56:35
Speaker
Yeah, so like definitely transported. Didn't want to be transported there, but like, you know, I'm going to give it like, I'm going to give it like a four oh two. Um, because like that scene in the fucking swimming pool, I was like there. I was like, Oh, I, I, I remember this. I know this. Yeah. I can like smell the chlorine.
01:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Would you watch it again? I gave it a 250 just for like, I guess. I'll give it like a 111.
01:57:15
Speaker
Okay. Because like I might watch it again without the sound just to like look at the cinematography because like the way it was shot and the way it was edited and like the color palette is pretty, pretty extraordinary. And like that is an aesthetic that is like interesting to me. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If I don't have to
01:57:38
Speaker
listen to fucking Leo Fitzpatrick's like bad acting mouth full of teeth mouth mouth just full of tongues and teeth. And yeah, that was like the most disturbing thing is like he's a terrible actor. I think they even said like, why are you choosing this guy? Like he's ugly and he can't act. And he was like, yeah, he wouldn't, you know, he's the character's got a try harder because he's not like a good looking guy. He's like this groggy little. Yeah, absolutely a show we as well.
01:58:05
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, I get 500 for accomplishing its purpose because I think, I think it just did exactly what it wanted to do. It 100% did exactly what it intended to do. Yeah. Like no doubt put you down for 500 as well. And since the setting in the world's aim, I get it nailed that New York vibe that like New York in the nineties idea, like, yeah, I mean, it was filmed in New York in the nineties. Like there's no fucking posturing. Like that's what it was.
01:58:36
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I do at times like this, I do wish that I was still in contact with my ex girlfriend, Catherine, because she lived in New York and she lived in like the lower Manhattan at this time.
01:58:50
Speaker
Uh, like she's the same age as like all these people. Yeah, pretty much a little older. She's in college. So, uh, it would be interesting to get her take on just like the fucking menacing nature of the youth in New York at that time. So menacing. Sounds fucking, sounds fucking terrifying. Um, so my total, uh, divided by how many 40s Casper drinks, I got a score of.
01:59:18
Speaker
333.428571. That was a much lower score than the score for basketball diaries. And we gave categorically higher scores to. You know, I wouldn't have been a massage therapist if I were going to math. We don't do math on purpose. That's a, that's canon. Everybody, we do not do math on purpose.
01:59:44
Speaker
Not on purpose. Well, I divided. I think there's only three Juliet Lewis appearances in basketball diaries, whereas Castro drinks uppers of seven 40s. There's four. There are four Juliet Lewis's. Yeah, absolutely. Because there's the doorstep one. There's the like when they first start getting loaded.
02:00:11
Speaker
There's like a, there's like a scene. I'm pretty sure. Then there's the one where she's like, I want to know what you're on.
Empire Records: Themes and Reflections
02:00:21
Speaker
Or maybe I just assumed that the scene with the, like the toe, the big old toad man and the scene where she's like, I want to know what you're on. We're different, but I swore there was a fourth one. Maybe you're right. Maybe there was only three. We'll stick with three.
02:00:38
Speaker
So yeah, so far basketball divers is winning. Okay. Let's do good old, uh, empire records director Alan Moyle written by Carol Heikinen.
02:00:55
Speaker
An ensemble cast, I guess you could say, of people who went on to do whatever. Rory Cochran, probably my favorite actor in the whole bunch. Not that I loved Lucas. I didn't really like Lucas. I thought that he was... I don't think he was nearly as smart as everyone thought he was at the end of the movie. But Rory Cochran's awesome. Enjoyability. I'm going to say 247. Oh, come on, man. That movie's entertaining as fuck.
02:01:27
Speaker
All right. All right. I'm going to change it to three 47. No, I'm going to change it to three 23. Okay. I'm going to say enjoyability, like 600. Absolutely not. I'm going to give it like a strong four 15 because as I get older, it gets less enjoyable. Um, because I'm smarter now and
02:01:49
Speaker
And I know more about class and capitalism and the systems that are used to oppress us. And so there are just more things that come out of that movie where I'm just like,
02:02:07
Speaker
Right. But you're still like a villain, kind of like you're like the guy who wants to buy the record store. But like, you know, but also Joe like wasn't the worst. Like he's not like the worst member of the Petit Bourgeoisie that's ever existed. But like, oh, you didn't you. So as you're getting older, you start to have issues with Joe. Yeah, like a little like just all of it. Like, you know, the the the fucking
02:02:37
Speaker
The fact that like, he didn't, he knew that fucking Renee Zellweger was in that copy room, fucking that old ass dude. And she was like, what, fucking 17? You know, like, he didn't fucking stop it. Like, I know that this is not the point of the fucking movie, but like, that's not cool, you know?
02:03:06
Speaker
That's a good point. I do kind of view Joe as like trying to do his best to be a mentor, mentor of sorts and unwillingly. He does fail all the time constantly.
02:03:22
Speaker
Going back to political aspects of this movie, I really feel like there's this thing back in the 90s and 80s of just a sort of disdain for what you would call, I think we called it earlier, urban culture.
02:03:38
Speaker
which is a low-key disdain for black culture, stand-in for black culture. And definitely in the character of Warren, I found to be a really strong example of that, where Warren is sort of like wearing baggy clothes and he's like, has sort of like that inner city accent and is just like into guns and into robbing shit and like steals rap. And I thought that was kind of,
02:04:06
Speaker
I hate that. You see that a lot. You see that a lot in like 90s music and in 90s film, just kind of shitting on black culture. And in this example, in a very low key sort of like dog whistling. Absolutely. And like, you know, who the fuck cares if some fucking teenager is stealing CDs from a fucking music store, man? Like,
02:04:27
Speaker
Who cares? Like the whole premise of the film, whilst I still find it enjoyable, is at its center a bunch of fucking kids.
02:04:40
Speaker
trying to save a business that they don't own. You know, it is profiting off of the labor of others, you know, still like sure, it's not going to be a music town, but like it's still like a fucking business. It's still like putting money in someone else's pockets. And also like there's just like this wild and I never picked up on it before this reading, but like the classism of the movie.
02:05:09
Speaker
is like so strong and it's so subtle. Like the moment when the fucking kid from the pizza store and AJ are sitting on the stairs and he's like, dude, do you know where Boston is? Like, do you know where Harvard is? And he's like, yeah, it's like in Massachusetts. Excuse me. And he's like, no, it's in another world, man. Like it's a world that you and I don't belong in.
02:05:39
Speaker
And it's like, oh, right, because Corey's like this beautiful, smart young woman who's like effectively slumming it. She is, you know, she is the song fucking common people. Like she is the song common people. I want to live like common people.
02:06:00
Speaker
Right. You know, she's like doing fucking calculus and like biology dating like the art kid or like, you know, she's happy to be like everybody's fantasy or whatever. And like, no shame. Like I'm not throwing shame on her character as like a representation of a womanhood. I'm throwing shade on her character as a representation of upper class people wanting to know what it's like to be poor.
02:06:31
Speaker
You know, because like she's like, like I'm assuming like, are we expected to think that this like is like a like small town in the Northeast or is this like a small town in the Midwest? Like, I don't know. But yeah. Oh, yeah. Who fucking knows? I mean, driving distance to Atlantic City. Who knows? Jersey.
02:06:57
Speaker
I don't even
Character Analysis: Joe in Empire Records
02:06:58
Speaker
know. Yeah. Is that where the city is? I truly have no idea. So Tri State area, Harvard is a big deal, right? Yeah. Um.
02:07:12
Speaker
So veracity for this movie, I gave one hundred and twelve. I'm going to go even lower and be like fifty seven. Oh, like the only part of this that is real is the fact that. Businesses profit from their employees and rich people want to pretend like they're poor sometimes.
02:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you bring up a good point. And there is that line where Joe is talking to Mitch, who is the owner of the record store. And he's like, he's like, I'll fucking buy you out. And Mitch is like, you don't have the money. And he's like, I'll find it. That's cool. And you're like, yeah, no. Like Joe, Joe is maybe a kind of scummy, moneyed person. I think like who is maybe kind of slummy. I mean, I think like I think we're supposed to think that Joe is like
02:08:08
Speaker
a run down like wash up like musician. You know, like he's the contrast to Rex Manning, right? He's the real one. He's the real one. Yeah. And that's why Jane comes back and it's like, do you want to have a drink? And why Joe's like, because Lucas is actually the one that's like, he'll find it.
02:08:35
Speaker
Or he's like, yeah, I do. And like, Joe's like, I don't, but like, I'll figure it out. You know, like, I think we're supposed to understand Joe to be like this, like, you know, blue collar, ex musician guy who really just cares about the community and really just wants this like place to exist. But like, come on.
02:09:02
Speaker
Okay. Transportational strength. I gave this a four 19 because I was fucking transported into this movie. Fucking record store.
02:09:10
Speaker
I was fucking in there as much as it was insane and hectic and like so as he like nothing lasted more than 45 seconds. All the mosh pit scenes were fucking stupid as as much as I thought so much of this movie is fucking dumb. It was entertaining. And once it got past Mark is my least favorite character in this in this movie, like fucking get out of here.
02:09:39
Speaker
He's that he's a trope. He's a trope for movies of that era. So I get it. But he's also supposed to be the youngest one in the group. Right. I get that. I get that. And he's supposed to be started all the time. But.
02:09:55
Speaker
As soon as it got more serious and more focused, more on Deb and like her conflicts with Gina and Corey, like there was a certain part where it like it fucking gained momentum for me and I was drawn in and I enjoyed it. Uh, so yeah, four night transportation, straight for 19. I'll say just shy of like us. I'm going to give this a solid four 69 for six. Yeah. Nice.
02:10:20
Speaker
Um, for sure, because like, yeah, there are just these moments. Like when Gina's like, I want to be a singer in a band and I don't have the courage to ever audition. And then she's like singing like Sugar High at the very end.
02:10:39
Speaker
I'm in that moment. I still am in that moment. I find that to be so fucking relatable and as embarrassing as it is to say, and there will likely be lots of embarrassing things that get said on this podcast, that scene still gives me goosebumps because
Comparative Analysis of 90s Teen Films
02:10:55
Speaker
that feeling of doing something that you're so fucking scared to do and it being so joyful is very relatable.
02:11:07
Speaker
Yeah, you know, fun fact, the guy played Burko. He's Coyote Shivers guitar. Yeah, he's Coyote Shivers, who is Liv Tyler's stepdad at the time, fucked up. That's I think that's how she got into the movie, I believe. Incredible, incredible. That is a fun fact.
02:11:31
Speaker
So I would watch this again, I would give it a 300 score for watch again, because I'm not gonna say like, no, never. I would rather watch this in kids, 100%. Yeah. I would probably rather watch basketball diaries, but I don't know if this were on TV, if this were on TV, that's a kind of an outdated thing to say.
02:11:51
Speaker
I would definitely be like, sure. Like if I were in a hotel room in like pure Illinois, and this is on and I was flipping between this and like Desperado, I would definitely just be back and forth. I would still come back to Empire Records. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those movies that like
02:12:11
Speaker
when you're like when I'm home alone and I'm just like, what do I want to watch? Like, what's some dumb thing I want to watch? And I go on Amazon and they're like, you might like this. And I'm like, you know what? You're fucking right. I would like this. So it's like not ever like I'm going to watch Empire Records. But like when I see it and it's like the right moment, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to watch that.
02:12:34
Speaker
And so I think that that puts it probably steadily in the 375 category for me. It's like, I'll put it on, but I won't seek it out. Right. Totally. Maybe on a plane. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, fucking 100% on a plane. Does it accomplish its purpose? I gave it a 475. It's a dumb movie about 24 hours in the lives of some semi-dramatic teenagers trying to save a record store. Yeah.
02:13:04
Speaker
They saved the fucking record story, you know? Yeah, it does. I mean, in as much as it's probably meant to showcase all these dumb teen actors and ultimate also kind of meant to showcase the soundtrack. And it was a horrendous flop. Was it? Apparently, like, I don't think he even made in the millions. Oh, shit. I think it did really poorly.
02:13:29
Speaker
Oh, I asked him. Maybe it's here. We're a Cochran. There you are. We can look at it real quick. Yeah, I don't know. It didn't do well. It's called hit, of course. But I mean, a lot of these major losses. Yeah. OK, it was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. Actual Atlantic City.
02:13:59
Speaker
So it's supposed to take place in North Carolina, I guess. Like that's the town that they filmed in.
02:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those kind of logistically impossible things where you can't really drive to Atlantic City from North Carolina and back. You really can. I mean, I live on the East Coast and I drive everywhere and I truly don't understand the geography here. Yeah, you can. Pennsylvania is very confusing to me. It's like right there. For example, I know it's just so weird. Oh, box office, $303,000. Oh my God.
02:14:40
Speaker
United States. I don't know what worldwide was, what I'd be willing to buy. It's like nothing, $10 million budget. So yeah, they really shit the bed with this one. That's absolutely fucking wild. Yeah, that's really bad. And what was really interesting is that I believe the director, or maybe no, the executive producer at the studio got handed a script for a movie called Clueless.
02:15:09
Speaker
which we're also going to cover this season. And he's like, he's like, bruh, I'm good. I've already got a badass teen movie on my hand, so I don't really want to do to. Yeah. Imagine how much different clues might have turned out. Yeah, maybe would have been a giant piece of shit like this. It's not a giant piece of it. It's not. It's not.
02:15:36
Speaker
You know, it just sounded funny in my head. So I just had to say it, um, accomplices purpose. So what'd you say? I said four. So I said like, yeah, like, let's go for 75. That sounds great. Cool. Great. Okay. Uh, my total divided by instances of naked women and music town aprons came out to three, three 88. So.
02:16:02
Speaker
I don't know. Not that it's even possible to compare, but three to eight beats kids totally trounced by basketball diaries. I mean, that kind of tracks as far as like whether or not we would actually like, you know, think about basketball diaries is that it's a very good movie. It's just like really difficult to watch. Mm hmm.
02:16:28
Speaker
And my records is a pretty shitty plot, but it's a fun movie. Like it's fun, which is like those are like the kind of two criteria of films. Right. Like it's either so good and so beautiful that it's a good film or it's like kind of shitty and dumb, but it's really entertaining. So like it's a good felt like it's good. Right. Like kids are sort of that middle ground where like
02:16:54
Speaker
The story hurts. The fucking like plot line is like difficult very much. The acting is like not
02:17:07
Speaker
It's fucked up that Rosario Dawson is in that. Like that's insane. She's probably the best actor in the film. Like, Oh, I just, I thought everyone was good except for the main characters. The, the two like diametrically opposed characters of Telly and Jenny, like Leo Fitzpatrick. I've never liked him when, anytime I see him, I'm like, it's Telly also you suck.
02:17:33
Speaker
And Chloe Sevigny, I don't know. I didn't think she was very good either. She fucking, like her bad acting fucked up scenes and made it, took me out of the film. And at one point, in certain respects, I'm like, what does it mean that these are such bad actors? Because both these actors were second choices. I think they had cast other people originally. And I think the person who was supposed to be Jenny got fired.
02:17:59
Speaker
And the guy who was supposed to be Telly, I don't know, like ended up in jail or something like that. So, yeah, I don't know. I thought I thought the fucking girl in the opening scene was great, like right off the bat. She was super good. I thought everyone was good. Harold. Can't remember his last name. Harold, something or other. He's he's dead now.
02:18:30
Speaker
Anyways, the Herald Hunter as Harold, the one guy who flaps his dick at the pool.
02:18:37
Speaker
I thought he was pretty good. Yeah. They're all like good actors, especially like none of them were people who are trained as actors at all. I mean, I would just say like it makes sense that kids is at the bottom. That's all I'm saying. Yes. Like, sure. Thank you. Yeah. Um, I think like, yeah, we, this is, this is like, um, it was really interesting to watch all of them.
02:19:05
Speaker
together basically and to look at these three different facets of how teenage life in the 90s was interpreted and projected. Because they're different projections and they're different interpretations, but they kind of do make a vision of a whole sort of experience in a way.
02:19:31
Speaker
Right. Absolutely. Yeah. It was like with Empire Records, you have what we think teenagers are. Kids was what teenagers are. Actually are. Basketball Diaries are like what parents are afraid teenagers are going to turn into. Right. Yeah, exactly. Cool. Well, all right. We did it. We spent some time.
02:20:00
Speaker
We spanned some fucking, yeah, we sure did. My wife is like, what the fuck? It's been two and a half hours. There was a technical difficulty that took up like 15 minutes. There was. Well, can you, so when this ends, it sends me only, oh, I guess we should have a sign off. What is our sign off? Oh yeah. Thanks for listening. That is worst.
02:20:22
Speaker
Well, we got to sort this out. Yeah. Thank you for listening, rate, review, and subscribe. That's what the people say, right? I think so. This has been episode one of We're Spanning Time. Next episode is City of Lost Children and 12 Millions. Oh, yeah. We got ourselves a little international vibe happening.
02:20:43
Speaker
Very excited. Hell yeah. It's gonna be really good. Yeah. Yeah. If you like us, feel free to leave a comment wherever you get your podcasts and tune in for our next episode. This is Beth. And we were spanning time. Bye. Bye.
02:21:14
Speaker
I'm missing tonight I want to leave tonight
02:21:56
Speaker
you