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Episode 50: Southland Tales featuring Saul Rosenbear
51 Plays23 days ago
Raconteur Saul Rosenbear has brought in a doozy today for Chris, Anna and Greg. It’s a confusing yarn from 2006 called Southland Tales. A film starring the Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake and many others in a plot that involves energy as drugs, constipation and the Iraq war, amongst so many other things. This follow-up to Donny Darko didn’t land with quite the same impact, but it still leaves an impression. Tune in to find out what kind.
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Transcript
Introduction: Why Discuss Bad Movies?
00:00:07
Speaker
oh
00:00:16
Speaker
It's bad to be bad, it's bad to be bad And I guess it's understood That you would, if you could And you know that you should Yes, you know that you should
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. It's the only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, if this movie's so bad, why do you like it so much?
00:00:54
Speaker
We're your
Meet the Hosts and Guest
00:00:55
Speaker
hosts. My name is Chris Anderson. And with me, of course, I have the Roland to my Ronald, Mr. Greg Bossy. Yes. hello I'm glad that we're the twins and we should never shake hands.
00:01:09
Speaker
It's true. Or are we destined to? Tough to say at this point. It's very tough to say. And we also have with me another very special co-host.
00:01:22
Speaker
Obviously, they're going to be the Zora to my Bart Bookman. It's Anna Anderson. ah Hello, my love. So great to have you here with us, my heart.
00:01:36
Speaker
And of course, we have a very special guest. You might call him indeed the Baron Von Westphalen of the whole dang show.
00:01:49
Speaker
It's Saul Rosenberg, a.k.a. Tintin Quantasino. How are you, Saul? I'm doing well. How are you folks doing? I can't complain. I mean, I will complain, but I can't complain. Mm hmm.
What Makes 'Southland Tales' Unique?
00:02:03
Speaker
doing all right. So ah you chose for our movie this week, Southland Tales. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And i mean, excited for this plot summary.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yes, I have a very brief plot summary, which is almost impossible. So I'm very excited. My my ah I was originally going to cop out and play the song and then say, i don't know.
00:02:31
Speaker
I don't know what happened in this movie. But that felt like a cop out. I had to give it my best shot. So, right. You're a professional. That's right. Yeah. I'm not doing that lazy hack joke. give it Give it the college try.
00:02:43
Speaker
ah yeah I'll do plenty of other lazy hack jokes. There's a lot of time in the show.
00:02:55
Speaker
Action movie star, Boxer Santeros, finds himself embroiled in a blackmail scheme involving faked police shooting, pornographic pop stars, perpetual motion machines, and a pair of time-traveling twins.
00:03:14
Speaker
Sure. Accurate? Yeah. Now, you might say did not actually include anything as far as plot, but I really feel like this movie is more just a series of things than it is a plot.
00:03:27
Speaker
It's a lot is what it is. Yeah. here's here's This movie, I think, is best understood as a roller coaster. It is a it is a ah ah vibe, a strange vibe, and then a steady progression of people and things appearing on your screen, causing you to question what the heck you are watching.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So how did how did you first come across Southland Tales? Tell me your personal history with Southland Tales. Sure.
Saul's Experience with the Film
00:04:00
Speaker
So ah way back in the not actually good days of the Internet, um I liked to read the A.V. Club. I don't know if any of you. I see some nods, nods in the chat. um Yep.
00:04:14
Speaker
Reader, never commenter. Yeah. So I. ah I was a steady reader of the AV club and a fan, obviously, of Nathan Rabin's series, My Year of Flops, all that sort of thing.
00:04:27
Speaker
um And I remember reading his review of this movie when it came out, when it was released, I think, or or his summary of talking about going to see it in the movie theater, like a mostly deserted movie theater at the time.
00:04:43
Speaker
um And it always stuck with me because it sounded like a glorious disaster. um yeah yeah And so I, later on... it certainly gave me that vibe.
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's... There's a lot of things happening in the movie. So then I tracked it down. If I tracked it down, I went to my local library, support your local library. Absolutely. Watched a copy of it um and was continually astonished by...
00:05:14
Speaker
what I was seeing and unable to piece it all together, um which I think is a normal experience for someone seeing this film. ah Then ah i ah so this movie begins. It is part four of the story. um Yeah.
00:05:35
Speaker
Like Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah. There's a series of graphic novels, which are now insanely expensive to try and purchase, but the library. I can only imagine. So I checked those out from the library, read those.
00:05:51
Speaker
This is over a period of time. I didn't just do it like in a series. I didn't, I didn't have like a lost weekend with this movie. Okay. Right, right, right. Yeah. So I, I read those. And then at some point later,
00:06:03
Speaker
I think watched it again, maybe with a friend, um e yeah like a year or two after that, and understood it a little bit more than, I'd say, maybe five years later, this last fall, I showed another friend this movie, and then finally i watched i watched it again for y'all.
00:06:24
Speaker
And I'm still understanding things about it. I don't know if that journey's worth it for me, personally, but I am still... I'm still, I'm like, oh that's what you're trying to do there? Oh, I get that sort of joke.
00:06:40
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Movie's a bit of ah a paper tiger, I think. You know what I mean? i don't think there's any there, there. It's a Wizard of Oz experience. What does paper tiger mean?
00:06:52
Speaker
Like, it's this big, scary thing, but it's just made out of paper. There's nothing, there's no substance. Yeah. Okay. All right. Interesting. Well, Greg, I know you're a big Southland fan. What's with your background with Southland fans? So I knew Donnie Darko. Obviously, I came to it kind of late in the game. And I wasn't even going to watch it. it was just my roommate had it lying around. And my girlfriend at the time was like, well, it's here. do you want to watch it i was like, sure.
00:07:20
Speaker
And I thought it was interesting and also kind of stupid. ah But it was like I could see it's like I can see why some people are into this. I can also see why some people think this is stupid.
00:07:31
Speaker
i don't know what I think of this, but okay. And then I heard about Southland tales and just the response at con and just other things. And I was just like, wow, this seems like it was a real nightmare.
00:07:43
Speaker
And then, uh,
00:07:47
Speaker
I had just been getting, I had lived with you and I was getting into bad movies and I moved to that new apartment where they had a large viewing area with a, with a projector in my room. And at the time was also into bad movies. He's like, you want to watch Southland tales? I was like, hell yes.
00:08:01
Speaker
So we got a huge group of people, maybe not huge, but like eight people together in this room and we all watched it. And everyone was like, Holy crap. That was bad. and I was just like, by I thought it was interesting and I'm going to just shut my mouth.
00:08:16
Speaker
I'm just going to not express that I found... Obviously, it's got problems. Obviously, it is hulking behemoth that is somewhat otherworldly and strange.
00:08:27
Speaker
There was something about it. I don't know what it was. i was just It's just interesting to me. I just i just find it interesting. I don't know. There's something compelling. i won't deny that. That's funny because that's how I feel about it, Greg.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah. It's... it's ah Like, I know it's not good, and I knew was... I... I also tracked it down after it was featured in my year of flops because it sounded like it sounded because I had liked Donnie Darko and I like, I like ambitious failures. Yeah.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. um And I like, I like, I like movies where there's a lot going on. hmm. um In general, i did not support library, though. Yes, I know that um I remember
Is 'Southland Tales' Worth Watching?
00:09:15
Speaker
i was renting DVDs from Netflix by then, and this is definitely a Netflix rental.
00:09:21
Speaker
I remember watching it on my laptop, like in my room, because my parents were not interested, and I was not interested in watching it with my parents, to be honest. No, no,
00:09:33
Speaker
yeah um This is generationally targeted, this movie. Very much. Very much. Enough that i like I don't know if somebody 20 years younger than us would find it ah find it at all ah interesting. Interesting? I doubt it.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah. The casting is so specifically targeted, too, which is yeah very... I mean, part of the... I guess joy in a very loose sense of this movie is the casting, which ah sure we'll talk about, but no, you're going to build on what you guys are saying.
00:10:11
Speaker
ah It's a rich text, right? Like the best thing you can hope for is something that you can hopefully pay attention to, but is a rich text giving you many opportunities to figure out why it doesn't work.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah. yes It, yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
Well, I had never seen this before. I had never seen Donnie Darko. ah It was one of those movies that a lot of people recommended to me, but they were all the people who did not understand my taste in film. And so was just like, see that yeah. Oh yeah. I heard it's good.
00:10:45
Speaker
That's all I would ever say about Donnie Darko. Yeah. I heard it was good. You know, and it was just one of those things that just became sort of defined in my mind. And
The Film's Context and Casting
00:10:53
Speaker
so I didn't feel like I had to see it anymore. it was like, yeah, yeah. I know what Donnie Darko was.
00:10:57
Speaker
And then I read about Southland Tales also in my year of flops, which I follow very closely. Shout out Nathan Reb and obviously dream guest come on the show. And, ah but,
00:11:10
Speaker
It was also just, it seemed like, okay, it's just sort of bad and it's overambitious. And also it was like dauntingly long. I've always been a guy where if it's going to be over two hours, I'm going to, I'm going need some, some kind of guarantee.
00:11:24
Speaker
ah You know, I don't do two hours and 20 minutes for fun. I don't F around at that length. Uh, so I watched it this time. I really disliked it. I really, uh, did not enjoy the experience.
00:11:37
Speaker
julie Mostly because once again, I found myself in the situation where I would have to write down every element of the plot so that I could, you know, to this podcast. And, ah that is, i think the absolute worst way you could watch South.
00:11:54
Speaker
I would, I would agree with that. Yeah. I would 100% agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, also, ah I did watch for part of my research. I didn't watch Johnny Darko, but he'd watch his other film, the box. Have any of you guys seen the box? I haven't. I want to, I have seen the box.
00:12:11
Speaker
The box I thought was not bad. ah It kind of lost me a little bit in the second act, but as far as like a Twilight Zone-ish movie, sure. And it at least had a look.
00:12:23
Speaker
I found this movie to be uniformly ugly. I wanted to get that out of the way. There was nothing pleasant to look at in this entire film. Shirtless The Rock. Come on. Yeah, no, that's fair. It was garish.
00:12:35
Speaker
I think it was purposely garish, but it was definitely garish. It had the shirtless rock, but it made his tattoos even worse. It has that like video era feel though, right? Of like digital video where everything just kind of Like it like i don't I don't know it.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, it had that sort of gross for similitude. Yeah, I really noticed that it does like there's no art in what he in like actually how it was shot at all.
00:13:05
Speaker
It is kind of just like there's some, you know, there's some camera stuff, but it's really not. That's not what he's interested in. He's certainly trying to make it more functional. I do think that um some of the shots of the fluid karma, the mist that you see kind of pouring over in the interstitial things are actually quite beautiful.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah. ah i I think that that stuff is beautiful. It has nothing to do with the plot. It's just basically linking material. um I don't think he was trying to make a pretty movie just because I don't think he was trying to make a pretty movie.
00:13:38
Speaker
It's a pretty gross movie. And I don't think the art part of it was what he was thinking about. But I do understand what you're saying. Yeah, I'm a sucker for something being aesthetically pleasing. I like my art to be aesthetically pleasing. Lock me up, everyone.
00:13:55
Speaker
um grade yeah ah i guess what I mean is like, I think there's more there's more things he's thinking about with like the placement within the scene. why things that you know it's more surrealistic i'm not saying that he didn't make any choices you know just right as as a visual experience it did not satisfy for me sure sure but that i have plenty of time to talk about my beef let's talk about my context research let's find out how this came to be whatever it is all right
00:14:41
Speaker
I wish I had some context about the background of the film. Script character and who's on set. What's going on on screen? wanna hear some details.
00:14:54
Speaker
Gossip scene to all that shit. Can't imagine all the time.
00:15:10
Speaker
and So Southland Tales came out November 14th, 2007. Director Richard Kelly. Here are some of your taglines.
00:15:20
Speaker
Have a nice apocalypse. Okay. It feels very Gen X to me. That's very like Alan Moore. It's an extremely Gen X movie.
00:15:31
Speaker
yeah I feel like this is a very millennial movie to me. I feel like Richard Kelly is a very millennial filmmaker, even though he is technically of the age of Gen X. I feel like Donnie Darko is sort of like a formative millennial text.
00:15:48
Speaker
ah And ill i'll I'll argue for that more as I get on. Other taglines. This is the way the world ends. Also, this is the way the world ends, not with a whimper, but with a bang. Yeah.
00:16:02
Speaker
And also, my personal favorite, and perhaps the most accurate, warning, you are entering a domain of chaos. hundred Wait, that's a real tagline for the movie? That's a real tagline.
00:16:18
Speaker
That was on IMDb in the taglines listing. And ah very accurate. Yeah. Yes.
00:16:28
Speaker
So ah Richard Kelly broke into the national consciousness in 2001 with his feature film debut, Donnie Darko, at the young age of 26.
00:16:38
Speaker
Its unique blend of teen angst and apocalyptic anxiety, combined with a release date of October 26, 2001, made Donnie Darko a cult hit among fresh-faced millennials who were certain that the world was crashing down around them in the after the events of 9-11.
00:16:56
Speaker
I think it was the first sort of millennial text in that sense. The first thing to sort of capture that post-9-11 anxiety that spoke to a millennial generation.
00:17:08
Speaker
okay Okay. Having not seen the film, that's my theory. Sure. ah Now, ah perhaps it was just a coincidence that Donnie Darko was released on the same day that the Patriot Act was signed into law.
00:17:20
Speaker
But there's no denying that the single most important piece of context to keep in mind about Kelly's next film, Southland Tales, is that it was made in response to a post 9-11 America under George
Post-9/11 Themes and Predictions
00:17:33
Speaker
W. Bush.
00:17:34
Speaker
That's sort of undeniable. Really? Yeah. This movie would make no sense in an ahistorical reading. You have to say it. Yeah.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I do still think, even if, you know, even though it's a bad movie and it may not have much substance behind it, I think it does actually function quite well as a ah document of of that time.
00:18:04
Speaker
Absolutely. But because it's so obsessed with pop culture, it it pulls all of it in. I would also say that I'm going to argue a little bit about that. The fact that there's no substance to it, because I think it is like a lot of the stuff that's in it ended up kind of coming true in a way.
00:18:19
Speaker
Like this idea of celebrities now being experts in getting involved in politics and everything. Like it was a little prescient and everything. And so it may not have some things to say to speak about what is going on, but I felt like it was reading something in the room and putting something out there, which I think is interesting.
00:18:37
Speaker
i I think that's true, but I also want to not fall into that, like, idiocracy is a documentary track. You know what I mean? Sure, sure, sure, sure. I don't want to give it too much credit for being like, boy, people are obsessed with celebrities, and bet that's going to get crazy. Right. mean, do think that the more specific,
00:18:55
Speaker
ah the way that fascism works comes in via clean energy um did kind of make me want to scream once I yeah hooked it together in my mind.
00:19:11
Speaker
But, you know, that can. Yeah. But I mean, you throw enough darts at the board. One of them is going to hit the bullseye. And this thing throws a lot of darts at the board. Okay.
00:19:22
Speaker
Now, ah let's see.
The Evolution and Release Issues
00:19:24
Speaker
Southland Tales was originally conceived of as a Hollywood satire about a group of out-of-work actors ah blackmailing a Hollywood star.
00:19:34
Speaker
That was where the ah pulling the action star into a racially motivated shooting plot line came from. Okay. That's where we started. ah But the post 9-11 context, as you know, he continued to rewrite it in this era, ah that was a catalyst for changing Southland Tales into something much more unique than a Hollywood satire.
00:20:02
Speaker
So Kelly moved the story to the near future and he started adding more political, religious and science fiction elements to the script. He also began assembling cast of actors who he felt would be known to the public, but had unexplored potential. That was what a he universally wanted to do. He wanted to take pigeonhole to actors and let them do something different. Let them do something fresh.
00:20:27
Speaker
ah He also brought in a lot of ah people from Saturday Night Live because he knew that Saturday Night Live had ah experience with satire. They would understand the social satire of it.
00:20:38
Speaker
Mm-hmm. You know, it would be just as cutting as when you would see Nora Dunn out there doing her impression of somebody.
00:20:51
Speaker
ah The first big name that he got on board was Sean William Scott, most famous for playing Stifler in American Pie, to take on the challenging dual role of Roland and Ronald Taverner.
00:21:04
Speaker
Next, though, was the big dog. That was Dwayne The Rock Johnson. And he signed on after one lunch meeting with Kelly, where obviously Dwayne the Rock Johnson ate a shit ton of food. That's just what
00:21:19
Speaker
his addition to the cast got the movie greenlit. And he, he, it just took this one meeting and the rock was on board. ah Kelly brought in like pictures and they gave him a whole pitch about this crazy movie. And the rock's like, yes, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to be. This is how I'm going to stretch. Um,
00:21:37
Speaker
This is how I'm going to make sure that I don't get pigeonholed into being an action star. oh I'm going to play an action star. Kind of explains a lot about his subsequent career too, doesn't it? Yeah. After this, he's like, actually, maybe he's to stretch again.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah. he stretched and He stretched the other way and started doing family movies. And then after that, he's like, okay, but this is now killing my action thing. I'm just going to go do middle of the road action movies from here on out.
00:22:06
Speaker
Good enough for me. There we go. Now, ah it was a very tight shoot. It only had a... What do you guys think the budget was for this? and I know what the budget was, so I'm not going to say that. It was $17 million. Oh.
00:22:20
Speaker
oh In the commentary track, he says 18. I know that he got a little more to get some VFX, so maybe he was including that, but every number I found 17. It might have been 17 at the shooting budget, then after Cans, he was able to get another million to finish it.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah. um This was not a lot of money for the grand vision that Richard Kelly had. No. it's I'm going to argue probably not enough money.
00:22:49
Speaker
Also, you know how long it took him to shoot it? I believe it took him around 20-something days. It took 29 or 30 days to shoot the entire movie.
00:23:01
Speaker
It's insane to me to shoot this complicated movie. In that many number of days. And the fact that he actually did it is crazy. I did watch the commentary track on this one again. I'd seen it before, but he said that he would never do that again.
00:23:17
Speaker
i In the oral history that I read, he's mentioned at one point that he stayed awake for 50 hours. i Yeah. I mean, that's the kind of vibe that shows up on screen.
00:23:29
Speaker
yeah yeah you can see that sort of dedication and sleep depravity induced dementia. ah Now ah the shoot went fast, but apparently very smoothly. I couldn't find anybody really complaining.
00:23:44
Speaker
ah They did have to shoot at the sotama Santa Monica pier for 24 hours straight though, because they did not have it rented out for very much. They obviously had a lot of very famous LA locations in this that they could only book for a very short time because LA doesn't like it when you shut down the Santa Monica beer.
00:24:02
Speaker
Now, uh, before the movie would be released, Kelly wanted to put out a trio of graphic novels, about a hundred pages each that would lay the groundwork for South. His heart looking at it now in retrospect,
00:24:20
Speaker
When we see that the MCU was not really successful in driving movie audiences towards comic books, it does seem a little naive to think that Donnie Darko fans would be rushing to their local comic book shops to pick up prequel comics for his second film, which would released a year after the graphic novels.
00:24:40
Speaker
But still, an early cut of the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and he did have the first graphic novel, which he tried to pass out to prospective audience members. I'm sure none of them read it. ah Greg will talk more about this Cannes cut later, yeah but ah two important things to know for context are ah that this cut was nearly three hours long, and ah Roger Ebert wrote that he was dazed, confused, and deafened by the booze.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Yep. yep Yep. And having to sit down and write about this film, I can only imagine how frustrating that perspective would be knowing that was your job and you were going to go have to do this at work the next day.
00:25:30
Speaker
be like, boo for making me write about this.
00:25:35
Speaker
I don't want to have to describe this boo. Yeah. ah Now, Kelly realized that maybe part of the problem was that nobody there read the required 300 pages of graphic novel necessary to appreciate the film.
00:25:51
Speaker
So he cut out about 20 minutes and added in some narration courtesy of Justin Timberlake to sort of clarify what was lost from those 300 pages. Unfortunately, that didn't really help very much.
00:26:06
Speaker
It only made about $375,000 at the box office on its $17 million dollars budget. Which is so crazy. Yikes. And this is a movie that stars The Rock.
00:26:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And that's not its opening week in total. That's its total. ah Yeah. yeah it And it was released by a Hollywood studio, too. Yeah. Yes.
00:26:29
Speaker
that is ah That's got a sting. Yeah. Yeah, you can see why Rock never stretched these muscles up ever again. so ah Science fiction movies of 2007. Just to put a thing in its place, give it its proper context.
00:26:44
Speaker
What else was in the theaters? We got Danny Boyle's Sunshine. You seen in Sunshine? Yeah, and I'd like to. I'd like to. It's on my list.
00:26:55
Speaker
yeah Oh, we should watch it. I'd love to. ah You got The Mist. Frank Darabont's The Mist. Heard good things about that one. That one's good.
00:27:06
Speaker
You should take the time to seek out the black and white cut. No. It looks great. Gorgeous. Okay, cool. yeah ah You also got Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer.
00:27:22
Speaker
Oh, that's not the really panned one, is it? uh yeah it's the one with yo and grofid chris evans that's the the tran one was that the director i think jonathan tran or something like that i have no idea it had laurence fishburn as the silver surfer okay yeah that sounds that sounds made up but i feel like that yeah yeah that's no notes for the fantastic four they're not here today Michael Chiklis was the thing.
00:27:50
Speaker
Jessica Alba, the invisible woman. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. so I mean, not bringing a bell. it sounds plausible. You didn't miss much. Yeah. I am legend with Will Smith fighting vampires on the planet.
00:28:04
Speaker
and Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Plot Complexity and Viewer Reactions
00:28:06
Speaker
And of course you've got everyone's favorite double feature, transformers and trans morphers. Everybody loves those two. Trans morphers featuring Bruce box lightener, I believe.
00:28:18
Speaker
That sounds right. that That seems like what he would be up to. where were they were Where were we in the Riddick film series at that point? Oh, I was going to say we'd probably be between Chronicles of Riddick and Riddick, if I had to guess.
00:28:32
Speaker
I think Riddick is coming out soon. I mean, it kind of if I was going to sort of loosely put this into in a bucket with another science fiction film from this era, I think I would put it in a bucket with a Riddick film.
00:28:46
Speaker
Interesting. I find the Riddick films much more sort of old fashioned, straightforward fun. I would say, God, I don't know. Cause I don't watch movies like this.
00:28:58
Speaker
Let's talk about the plot.
00:29:01
Speaker
His brother. It's, uh,
00:29:22
Speaker
Plot bumper, listen to me. I'm gonna give you the plot summary. Come on, baby. Here's the synopsis.
00:29:34
Speaker
Plot bumper, plot bumper.
00:29:48
Speaker
It's July 4th, 2005 in Abilene, Texas. We're at a house party and a nuclear bomb goes off. Boom. Oh, no. Yeah. This house party footage was gotten by Richard Kelly just ah throwing a house party and giving kids some cameras.
00:30:04
Speaker
Yeah. Justin Timberlake then narrates that this launched World War III, U.S. versus Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
00:30:15
Speaker
Action movie superstar Boxer Santeros was discovered in the desert without any memory. And now it's July 4th, 2008. And we're told that it's chapter four.
00:30:25
Speaker
Temptation awaits.
00:30:30
Speaker
Here we go. We're rapidly introduced to several more things that are happening. Baron von Westphalen, who might be named Baron or might be a Baron, ah has invented a remote transmitting power generator that works using something called fluid karma.
00:30:50
Speaker
There's an evil government agency called US Ident that tracks the general public. ah Interstate travel is often closed. ah Let's see. Boxer is working on a screenplay called The Power ah with his partner slash lover, Krista Now, a successful pornographer played by Sarah Michelle Gellert.
00:31:13
Speaker
Boxer is, of course, The Rock. Yes. He also may or may not have recovered his memory. It's very vague. The nature and extent of his amnesia is not clear.
00:31:28
Speaker
Krista, in addition to hosting a beachside talk show with her fellow porn actresses, is also a writer. Let's see. Boxer is also engaged to be married to a Republican vice presidential candidate's daughter.
00:31:44
Speaker
They're married. Oh, they're married? Okay. Yeah. yeah yeah All right. they are He is married to a Republican vice presidential candidate's daughter. And, of course, her mother is the head of U.S. Ident.
00:31:58
Speaker
Yes. What Boxer doesn't know is that Krista is in league with the neo-Marxist underground. Zora, one of the neo-Marxists, buys some blanks and a couple of guns from Christopher Lambert, who's driving an ice cream truck full of guns.
00:32:16
Speaker
Back at the neo-Marxist headquarters. And listen, I'm going to be skipping some stuff. You're going to have to. Thank you. Thank you. You're going to have to. I was going to say, for those ah for those who don't remember who Christopher Lambert is, he was the original Highlander.
00:32:30
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And of course, listeners might also know him from Mean Guns. Check out episode 18, Mean Guns. Christopher Lambert, welcome to the two-time club.
00:32:41
Speaker
Boom. Oh, yeah. Yeah. yeah ah Back at Neo-Marxist headquarters, a pair of twins named Roland and ah Ronald Tavner are there.
00:32:55
Speaker
One of them is a cop who is being held hostage so that his twin brother can pretend to be him and escort Boxer Santeros on a ride-along that Boxer is doing to prepare for the power. i could not tell which one is which.
00:33:14
Speaker
I apologize. I mean, I could keep them straight story-wise, but I did not catch which one's name was which one's name. Yeah, think... Roland is the is the cop. Roland is the guy who's tied up for the first... Yeah.
00:33:28
Speaker
For most of the movie, yeah. Ronald is the one that we are following most of the time. yeah Okay. Now, meanwhile, another member of the Neo-Marxists has sent a video of Boxer making out with Krista as blackmail to the campaign.
00:33:45
Speaker
In response, U.S. Ident raids the Neo-Marxist headquarters and Roland slash Ronald escapes. The hostage one escapes. Meanwhile, Ronald slash Roland, the one that's the in the police car and is pretending to be a police officer but isn't, and Voxer, they're taking a break from the ride along to grab some lunch.
00:34:08
Speaker
Boxer wanders into a bookstore where he runs into several of Baron von Westphalen's lady scientist friends, and they tell him that they've read his screenplay. I do want to go back one moment because there is a brief moment here that I want to touch on that we didn't talk about. Well, they're in the car talking about the movie.
00:34:27
Speaker
Boxer and Ronald are, you know, they're discussing the screenplay and he's like, the movie is about a baby that hasn't had a bowel movement in six days.
00:34:38
Speaker
Or hasn't hasn't hasn't pooped in a while. And Ronald turns to Boxer and says, I haven't had a bowel movement in six days. I haven't peed either. Which is weird.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah. comes out of the blue and then everyone is talking about it and you're just like, wait a minute, what? Also, has he is he actually not? Is he just constipated? Like, why is this a point?
00:35:02
Speaker
What is going on here? It does have a larger point, which is weird ah in and of itself. but i just thought that we should include it because it's so bizarre it's like the first yeah it's very deadpan too yes like very very straight-faced like yes like it's just the the ronald slash roland being like hearing this this anecdote about a baby and then and then saying like, well, I haven't had that. i You know, I haven't pooped your Pete in six days.
00:35:36
Speaker
Pause, pause, pause, beat, cut to something else. Yeah. Okay. yeah It's a very strange moment. Very strange. And I think that that is a good example of the type of strange moments that are near constantly happening in this movie. Constantly happening in this movie.
00:35:53
Speaker
And I think, yeah, I think Richard Kelly was definitely trying to confuse his audience. This movie feels deliberately obtuse, I want to say. Sure.
00:36:04
Speaker
Part five. Yeah. i have a I have a larger theory, but I'll save it after your summary. Okay. We're actually, we're moving in a good clip if I'm already up to part five.
00:36:16
Speaker
No, I'm shocked at this, frankly. Oh, did did we mention the the name that they're using under under which they're blackmailing? Oh, Deep Throat 2. Oh, Deep Throat 2.
00:36:27
Speaker
Deep Throat 2, that's right. Yes, which they is used later for a great, ah I wasn't in that gag with Krista the Pornographer.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's a great little who's on first with pornography. Part 5, Memory Gospel. At the U.S. IDENT office, we find out that there's a woman who works there named Starla who is stalking Boxer.
00:36:56
Speaker
Boxer and Ronald slash Roland continue their ride-along. Zora calls in a fake domestic disturbance. And so the boys veer off.
00:37:07
Speaker
En route, they run into an actual police officer, Bart Bookman, played by a silver-haired John Lovitz, looking very menacing. He's great in this. I love John Lovitz in this. I love John Lovitz in this movie.
00:37:22
Speaker
John Lovitz always had bad vibes, and this movie really capitalizes on that. Yeah. ah And he joins them for their fake domestic disturbance. when one of the disguised neo-Marxists, one of them is Amy Poehler. The other one is the actor that played Avon Barksdale on the wire, I believe. Yep.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yes. And they're great. They have a great little moment where they're improvising a fake fight between each other. Cause they're both improvisational actors. That's their background.
00:37:53
Speaker
Well, that's Amy Poehler's background in real life. I don't know about the actor who played Avon and I'm sorry, I don't know his name. And, ah They, ah but also within the diegesis of the film, they're doing like improv acting with each other to set up this fake fight.
00:38:10
Speaker
And it's, I'm going to say one of the few scenes in the movie that actually made me laugh. Yeah. Genuinely just like, Oh, that's funny. oh Oh, nice. Some comedy in this movie. Their imitation of a domestic dispute is heard through the wall. It's just really hilarious.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's mostly just Amy Poehler saying, like, I sucked your brother's dick on our wedding night. And then him going, oh, I hate you.
00:38:36
Speaker
Oh, I hate you. You're the fight. That scene good. And he's wearing aesthetic noses for some reason. Yeah, because they were afraid of being too recognizable.
00:38:49
Speaker
So actually, so for to prepare for this movie, I watched the movie. I rewatched the commentary track. I'd already seen the bonus material, and then I watched the con cut. So they are actually they are actually putting those fake noses on themselves because their mind is so deteriorated from doing fluid karma that they're losing their minds.
00:39:08
Speaker
Ah, yeah. Okay. And so that that manifests in putting on fake noses. Yeah. Cause they're like, they're going to recognize this. It's like, yes, they are. Even with the fake noses, you're out of your mind.
00:39:20
Speaker
I don't know why you think this is going to do it. The most, the commentary track is mostly him explaining the plot. ah Yeah, he's interesting it would have to be. Yeah.
00:39:32
Speaker
So ah when ah Amy Poehler, she stops the scene and starts doing some slam poetry at Bart Bookman. So Bart Bookman shoots both of them, but he shoots them for real.
00:39:46
Speaker
ah Roland slash Ronald and Boxer both run away, but Boxer leaves his camera behind and the camera documented the whole thing, including his involvement.
00:39:59
Speaker
Starla calls up Boxer and points him in the direction of Vaughn Smallhouse, his future father-in-law's associate campaign manager, something like that.
00:40:10
Speaker
He's played by Emmy powerhouse John Larroquette. And he's amazing. John Larroquette. Of course he's. He's John Larroquette. I love John Larroquette in anything. I will say that now on this, what was whatever, my fourth watch, I think I know who John Larroquette's character is.
00:40:25
Speaker
I think he is actually Boxer's manager. That's who I think he is. Okay. ok Okay. Okay. That made sense to me. it It makes sense, but also i don't know. and also the movie is so dysfunctional at explaining these things. Right.
00:40:41
Speaker
Right. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because we first see him with the Senator, but it does actually make sense that he's hanging out with the Senator because the Senator and his daughter are, you know, they want to get Boxer back. Yeah.
00:40:54
Speaker
Yeah. but Now, ah Small House is currently with a group of people watching an SUV commercial where the SUVs fuck. Yeah. And then he tells Dr. Soberin X, Curtis Armstrong, to go pick Boxer up.
00:41:12
Speaker
From what I read in this oral history, the this SUV commercial where the SUVs fuck was included solely because he had somebody make it And then he said, well, this is so good, I
Surreal and Satirical Elements
00:41:26
Speaker
have to put it in the movie somewhere.
00:41:28
Speaker
And so...
00:41:31
Speaker
So he did. Now, ah meanwhile, Christopher Lambert has found Ronald slash Roland, the one that was being held hostage. And he's drugged him and kidnapped him and has him tied up in the back of his ice cream truck.
00:41:48
Speaker
Dr. Soberin X brings a boxer to a party at Senator Frost's. Yes. bear Baron von Westphalen is there as is boxers wife, Madeline.
00:42:01
Speaker
And then Crystal rolls up to, we've got a lot of players in the field. Everybody yells at each other about what's happening and then they all leave. Sure. Sure.
00:42:13
Speaker
ah We should find out. can i Can I just add as a brief comic moment here? Please do. Boxer's wife, who is played by Moore. ah one of many surprising. She is completely outraged um and has a copy of Krista's big hit Cock Chuggers 2.
00:42:35
Speaker
Cock Chuggin', I believe. Yeah. Yeah. yeah That's a great subtitle for Cock Chuggers. Salute yeah to them. Yeah. Sometimes it works when you don't overthink it.
00:42:48
Speaker
Now, we soon find out that the Baron has been ah injecting people with fluid karma. And also he has so much power that he's able to get the prime minister of Japan's hand cut off just for his own amusement.
00:43:05
Speaker
I don't think he's the prime minister. I thought they said specifically. I could be wrong about that. i thought I thought he That's what have written down. i thought he just owned a company that made energy and did parts, but I could be wrong about that. It's difficult to pick up all the details in this thing.
00:43:24
Speaker
It's also tough because I know, ah Greg, you just watched the can cut and they re and and like identifying this guy was done by voiceover, which I think, you know, if you're trying to understand the plot is one thing, but this movie is so heavily dependent on strange voiceover.
00:43:45
Speaker
And I think that that character is identified by voiceover, which was all rerecorded for yeah the theatrical. Yeah. Yeah.
00:43:55
Speaker
yeah ah Boxer gets another call from Starla, who tells him that he should go to the Santa Monica Pier.
00:44:02
Speaker
Down at the pier already, we got Justin Timberlake's character, Pilot Abilene. And he sells some fluid karma, which is not just a means of transmitting or generating electricity, but also a viable street drug.
00:44:17
Speaker
Amazing stuff. ah He sells it to a dude named Martin Kefauver before self-injecting and then treating us to a little music video ah for the song All These Things That I've Done by the Killers.
00:44:32
Speaker
This, I thought, was perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing segment the film, and I think it's my favorite part. Yeah, I think it's a lot of people's favorite parts, and in the commentary track, he called it the heart and the soul of the film.
00:44:46
Speaker
I think it's because it's perhaps the only part of the film where this sort of lyricism or expressionism makes sense. You put it in the context of a musical and it frees you up a little bit, I think. Yeah, yeah.
00:45:00
Speaker
ah Then we get part six. We're up to part six already, if you can believe it. I can't, actually. Part six, wave of mutilation. Now, there's a mega Zeppelin launch happening.
00:45:16
Speaker
and It's happening in downtown LA tonight, the 4th of July. Krista goes back to Zora and steals a videotape that she thinks has footage of her with Boxer on it, but actually has the footage of Boxer being involved in the shooting.
00:45:33
Speaker
It's a wacky misunderstanding. Yeah, it's a different blackmail tape. Now, ah Ronald slash Roland stops Martin Kefauver from killing himself.
00:45:46
Speaker
I believe our first ah of at least four attempted suicides that we get in part six. yeah And he asks Martin Kefauver for his help locating Roland slash Ronald.
00:46:04
Speaker
Now, meanwhile, Small House meets up with Deep Throat 2, played by Nora Dunn. always love to see Nora Dunn. Yeah. And she's the neo-Marxist that's been coordinating the blackmail against the Frost campaign.
00:46:19
Speaker
The two of them debate freedom versus security for a moment, and then Deep Throat 2 tases him in the balls.
00:46:28
Speaker
Extensively, like for 30, 45 seconds. You can hear it just crackling. really sticks it to him. Now, Boxer, he's made it out to Santa Monica Beach, where he runs into Starla in person for the first time.
00:46:44
Speaker
She tells him two very important things. One, there's a dead body on the Mega Zeppelin that he should take a look at. And two, she says, quote, if you don't let me suck your dick, I'm going to kill myself.
00:47:00
Speaker
The second time we're seeing someone place a gun to their head She doesn't have the opportunity, though, because Justin Timberlake shoots her through the heart with a sniper rifle.
Iconic Scenes and Lines
00:47:11
Speaker
Next scene. Isn't an anti-aircraft gun?
00:47:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's definitely much, much bigger than ah just a sniper rifle. And they talked about the scene later where it will be fired. They literally fired that thing on the beach, and it set off every car alarm in the area.
00:47:27
Speaker
It's like that powerful. like it set off a parking garage of car alarms. Yeah, it looks like an anti-tank gun. Yeah, it's definitely not. And they had to get ah the guy who actually shoots it was a military person who was trained to shoot it because I think you probably couldn't really have anybody else do it. Right.
00:47:45
Speaker
Yeah. I would have just built a fake gun. I wouldn't have fucking known it's a sci-fi. got a lot of authenticity and he involved a lot of Iraqi war vets in this film. There's a lot of them in this movie.
00:47:55
Speaker
Yeah. Awesome. ah Krista wants to leak the tape that she stole from the Neo-Marxists. And one of her friends tell her that the best way to do that is to put it in one of the secret drop locations run by the Neo-Marxists.
00:48:14
Speaker
I don't get it, but you know, Marxists, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. So they go to a bar called the Poop Deck and they drop off the tape. Zora and Bookman try to stop them, but they get taken out by another sniper for causing a big ruckus.
00:48:30
Speaker
Snipers don't like ruckus. Yeah. ah Boxer gets drugged and kidnapped. Another drugging and kidnapping. This time by his associate Fortunio, who was working for Baron von Westphalen the entire time.
00:48:46
Speaker
I don't quite know why this happened. Because soon after, he's just boarding the Mega Zeppelin anyway. Do you guys know why that happened? Did I miss it? ah In the con cut, they go into that further.
00:49:01
Speaker
so ah What it is is he doesn't contact Fortunio or he doesn't know that Fortunio is working for him. And then he shows up and he's like, yeah, it was working for the Baron the whole time. Because they got to get him on the blimp. I think he supposed to be on it, but he's trying to avoid going maybe. it is a little confused. i feel I thought I had clarity, but as I say it, I'm not certain I do actually.
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Now, ah once he's aboard, Boxer is summoned to the Marks suite. There he meets Curtis Armstrong, Kevin Smith, and the lady from Poltergeist.
00:49:36
Speaker
Everybody's FMK highlight reel. Yes. Dream blunt rotation. ah They tell him about serpentine dream theory.
00:49:48
Speaker
They also tell him um that the Utopia 3 Fluid Karma Generator created a rift in space-time, just like in his screenplay. They tell him that he already traveled through the rift 16-min minutes into his past, and then killed himself from his past.
00:50:06
Speaker
And this is also how he got amnesia. But he tells them that killing his past self would be suicide. And then he would never do that because, quote, I'm a pimp and pimps don't commit suicide.
00:50:21
Speaker
I just want to talk about the scene for a second, because sure ah yeah aside from the the insane content of it, ah ah and yes, that 69 number is intentional, but this scene is done. It's pretty much all exposition.
00:50:40
Speaker
It's people... you know, this trio telling Boxer Santeros, The Rock, these things, and him essentially doing little nods and then adding his own strange exposition on top of it.
00:50:56
Speaker
So it's it's it's yeah very bizarre. it's like It's like you, it's like the equivalent of a Masonic secret handshake or something where everybody's like, oh yes, of course, now we do the thumb thing. Aha, oh yes.
00:51:12
Speaker
but it's totally insane content. Like with the substance of what they're saying. Yeah. the The whole movie, they do a great job of everyone in movie acting like this movie is very normal.
00:51:23
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Now, meanwhile, oh, and I forgot, he was also looking at his own charred up corpse at this point while he said that pimps don't commit suicide, which I'll admit.
00:51:35
Speaker
Well, his duplicates charred up corpse. Yes. Yes. yeah Yes. That's because he's the one who went through the rift. Yeah. It's kind of like the prestige in that way.
00:51:47
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. Now, ah meanwhile, Ronald slash Roland and Martin Kefauver rip an ATM out of the wall with Martin's Hummer.
00:51:59
Speaker
Back on the ah Mega Zeppelin, Baron asks Bai Ling, who is also one of the scientists in the Baron's employee. And I'm going to say one of the few actors that is not playing against type. She is still playing very much a Bai Ling type in this. Yeah. ah She's also the Baron's lover.
00:52:17
Speaker
Okay. So. Great. yeah Boxer asks her who drove him through the rift. And ah she tells him that it was Roland slash Ronald.
00:52:31
Speaker
And roland puts together or Boxer puts together that Roland and Ronald are the same person. Yeah. And it's very... Not twins, but doubles. Yes. Yes.
00:52:42
Speaker
They're time twins. and Speaking of Roland slash Ronald and Ronald slash Roland, ah they are soon reunited after Christopher Lambert crashes his gun-filled ice cream truck in the middle of an ongoing riot.
00:52:58
Speaker
Roland slash Ronald gets shot and Ronald slash Roland rushes to his side. They clasp hands and it begins to generate an energy field that causes the truck to float upward.
00:53:11
Speaker
They're both very confused by this.
00:53:15
Speaker
Back on the mega Zeppelin.
00:53:19
Speaker
Krista now takes the stage for a little musical number and then Boxer joins her for a dance and Madeline joins the both of them. And then Boxer pulls out a gun and threatens to kill himself. The third person to do that in book six.
00:53:33
Speaker
Wave of mutilation. Meanwhile, in the floating ice cream truck... Well, he wants to evacuate the crowd quickly. Yeah. He does. So he does pull out a gun and threaten to shoot himself in the head.
00:53:46
Speaker
Meanwhile, in the floating ice cream truck, Roland slash Ronald has also pulled out a gun and is threatening to shoot himself. Number four. Kefauver, who has hitched a ride on the ice cream truck, finds a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
00:54:02
Speaker
and uses it to shoot the mega Zeppelin. Roland and Ronald repeat to one another, friendly fire and I forgive you. And that's the last thing I wrote down. So the movie must be over.
00:54:17
Speaker
ah It also ends with a little line from Justin Timberlake quoting the book of revelation.
Ambiguous Ending and Comparisons
00:54:23
Speaker
And then he's the last line is in pimps don't commit suicide.
00:54:30
Speaker
Fair enough. That is what happened. but oh but but yeah But Roland Tabner was identified as our our new Jesus Christ, too, at the end of the movie in the voiceover.
00:54:45
Speaker
e Okay. yeah Yeah. Cool. yeah Great. Awesome. I'm glad that happened too. ah Final thoughts. Five star ratings. Where did people land on our new exciting two axes rating system?
00:55:01
Speaker
Can I just add a couple of of just just notes sort of about... Please. Absolutely. Absolutely. ah Because this movie is... I it's it's confounding and I think you know what you mentioned before Chris of like sure he had this Hollywood satire originally and I can you can kind of see the bones of that right like that's yeah but then it feels like he just he just pulled out a huge syringe and filled it with
00:55:33
Speaker
the reference like references and the bible and just injected that puppy straight into that script like you like yeah we cannot do justice to the sheer amount of justin timberlake just his voice just floating into a scene and quoting some bible stuff and then disappearing again for another 10 minutes and then floating back in again and telling you like you Bart Bookman was secretly in love but but you know and just then floating back out again it like all that stuff and then the and then like the weird like SNL like ah
00:56:13
Speaker
comedy bits SNL cast member like just the like the the kaleidoscope of tones that this movie yeah yeah does not integrate Yeah. Yeah.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Yeah. That fits into a tradition that we've got here of of films with very complicated, overambitious tones. want to say going back possibly to wizards. yeah ah this Yeah. This felt a lot like Zardoz to me.
00:56:41
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. Okay. and Have you seen Zardoz? Oh, I have indeed. Okay. It just, it felt like someone's like, I've got this idea. i don't have a lot of money, but I've got some stars and people are willing to let me do it. I just had a thing I've got this idea. And everyone's like, go ahead.
00:56:58
Speaker
And then they saw it they're like, what? Yeah, and it was overly ambitious. They were just trying to bite off more than they could chew. And the the what we got is certainly something.
00:57:12
Speaker
ah And and and this is this is kind of like the the point ah I've been leading up to is that I think this is really a novel. What this yeah should be is a novel, right?
00:57:24
Speaker
Or a streaming series. Oh, yeah, exactly. Because it because it's it's all these different storylines taking place at the same time. It's essentially if you tried to do a George R.R. Martin book,
00:57:38
Speaker
and did it in two hours. and So you wind up having all this insane voiceover with all these complicated relationships and everything. And it just becomes utterly confusing because you have to constantly, you're, you're, but you're expected to understand who like eight sets of people are yeah as well as the relationships between them.
00:58:00
Speaker
ah And also like science gobbledygook at the same time. yeah it's it's ah Yeah, it is a novel. It's a it's I don't know Have you guys seen the movie Amsterdam?
00:58:13
Speaker
No, haven't. You know what I'm talking about, though? It came out a few years ago. It's no, I know. I know about it. Yeah, you know what it is. Margot Robbie and Amsterdam is a different problem where it just keeps jumping around in the same story and becomes incredibly confusing.
00:58:28
Speaker
ah But, that you know, just the the giving the audience too much and just like throwing all this stuff at them and then expecting them to understand what's happening. That's why it's Yeah.
00:58:40
Speaker
I guess it's not a rollercoaster ride. It's like one of those rollercoaster rides that goes through water where you're just constantly being pelted with stuff. Anyway. So that's that's that's kind of my big theory is like, that's why like, like you know, i realized like, oh, the vice president or the Republican ticket is Elliot Frost because of all the T.S. Elliot and Robert Frost references.
00:59:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah. In the movie. Like, does that add anything to the movie? Not really. Right. Really? It's just there anyway. So that's it. That's my, that's my big theory of this movie is that it's really a novel. It should be a novel. That's the only way you could ever comprehend it.
00:59:26
Speaker
I, I, I feel like perhaps you're giving it too much credit.
Final Thoughts: Overwhelming or Genius?
00:59:30
Speaker
I, I, once again, feel like there's, I'll, I'll kick us off with final thoughts. Five star. Okay. I gave this one, I'm going to say about a one and a half in terms of watchability on our watchability access.
00:59:43
Speaker
Uh, I think it sort of combines the worst aspects of our last two movies. Uh, I feel like it was very overwhelming in the same way that Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat was.
00:59:58
Speaker
And I feel like it was also a very, Poorly thought out and used twindom as a shortcut for making a statement about identity when there was really nothing there, just like twisted pair did.
01:00:11
Speaker
It's really weird to have two Utre twin movies, two weeks in a row. Yeah. Uh, very odd coincidence, I guess. Um, but mostly it just sort of reminded me of like screenplays that I would read by other kids in college where like, man, I got a lot of ideas. and it's like, yeah, you sure got a lot of ideas.
01:00:31
Speaker
It's a shame that none of them are good. Not a single idea in this is good or interesting. I will give it a four stars on the weird scale in that it does offer a very weird experience ah because of the way that it was written with these graphic novels.
01:00:48
Speaker
It's a lot like going to see, a sequel to a movie and you ask your friend like oh well i need to have seen the first one to understand this movie and they're like yeah you're going to be lost if you haven't seen the first one and but there is no first one right that's that's what southland tales was for me so i give it a four in terms of weird but a one and a half in terms of watchability i had a bad time here okay where did you land greg So in terms of watchability, I'm going to give it a two. This is not my take on it. This is what I think its general watchability is.
01:01:22
Speaker
I think for someone like myself, the watchability is like a four and a half or a five. But I think for the average person, it's it's a it's like a one or a two. I think a lot of people are going to bounce off this. But I think there's going to be people like myself who watch it and they don't bounce off it.
01:01:39
Speaker
Um, I don't, and I can't necessarily speak to it's what it's trying to say or it's quality. I don't i don't know how to talk about this movie is kind of what it comes down to in some ways.
01:01:51
Speaker
It's, it's just a really interesting movie to me. i give it a, I think it's very easy to watch this movie and to not give it credit. I'm not going to say that that's the wrong idea. or that anyone should be bad for saying that. But I think um that it is something that if if you are drawn to in some way and you give it some time, you can get something out of it that is interesting.
01:02:14
Speaker
Or at least you can feel, ah was reading in this where he said that he wanted it to be a comfort food for paranoid times, something that you could just get lost in. And I think that that kind of makes sense.
01:02:28
Speaker
It's like, do does it feel like the world is falling apart? Good, because it is. Here's a movie that's saying the world is falling apart. ah yeah And here's how here's why, ah here's why you're thinking what you're thinking. Here's what I thought about these things.
01:02:43
Speaker
I just find it really fascinating as far as its weirdness goes, genuinely seeing twisted pair. And then this one is very difficult for me to not give both of them fives because in all truth, I don't, I really like, it feels weird to start that way to be like, I'm going to give them fives because I haven't done anything else.
01:03:01
Speaker
But in comparison, literally to everything else that, um, that we've watched and that I have watched in my lifetime, I really feel like twisted pair and Southland tales, if maybe not the weirdest things I've seen are definitely up in that like 95th percentile.
01:03:17
Speaker
Like they're very near the top. ah they're They're all crazy. They're just crazy. I won't argue with that front. How about you, my dove? Well, I would say on final thoughts, I'm closer to you. i think maybe I can split the difference by saying, i don't know there There may not be necessarily deep ideas behind this, but I don't know that it matters that much.
01:03:55
Speaker
Yeah. um At least for for me. for me, is like, I maybe haven't thought about it, and like, it it is, for me, it's a very vibes-based movie, and the vibes are very, like, both, and they were both interesting to me at the time, you know, when, when it was those, you know, those paranoid times, and it's also very interesting to me, you know, 18, 19 years eighteen nineteen years on
01:04:27
Speaker
um looking at how things have changed. And I, and I also, um as far as, as far as watchability, I would give it, I would give it like a two, maybe a two and a half, not because I think it's not because I think you can follow it, follow the plot or anything, but the cast is so wild and so packed with people that it it's just kind of fun to to to see them come on and be like, wait, who's this?
01:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, you almost missed Kevin Smith. Yeah, yeah, i didn't recognize him with that beard. I just say, did anybody see Janine Garofalo in this other than the two of us who watched the con cut? Yeah, no, no.
01:05:17
Speaker
ah She's dancing with Timberlake at the end. Yeah, and did did anybody recognize Eli Roth? I did. And I did on the toilet. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's his character's name, man. Who gets shot on.
01:05:33
Speaker
And, um, what was the other weirdness? Weird. Definitely a four. Yeah. Definitely a weird movie.
01:05:42
Speaker
How about you, Saul? How did you feel about it? Uh, well, I'll start with weird first. I think, I think this is a highly weird, highly weird film. I would say for it's, um,
01:05:53
Speaker
I for all it's weird in the sense that the rules of this world are pretty simple, but have strange effects.
01:06:05
Speaker
It's not like, it's not weird in the sense that people are, you know, growing things Akira style, but everybody's behavior is deeply strange. Yes.
01:06:17
Speaker
The, like the vibe is clearly off, right? It is, it is this sort of dream hellscape that ah climaxes at the end of the movie. I don't know how else to say it. No, for sure.
01:06:33
Speaker
Yeah. It's yeah. So, so while, while what you're seeing, is it necessarily by itself weird? It is just, it it is, it is definitely wearing a strange pair of of glasses. Yeah.
01:06:47
Speaker
In terms of watchability, I tend to to, I think I right now am feeling both sides of the, if this is for you, you'll love it, otherwise you're going to hate it. i yeah i watched this movie yesterday.
01:07:02
Speaker
Um, i also had previously seen it four or five months ago. And right now I think I could not watch this movie again for, for four years. It's just too much. I need to, I need to like get it out of my system. uh, I, I like kind of, I would dread having to watch it again in the next six months. Let me put it that way. I would just absolutely dread yeah having to go through this again.
01:07:30
Speaker
Now, I would say this movie for a lot of people is at the very least going to have a long cool down. ah Oh, yeah. Well, with that, are you guys? so did we? So where what were your scores?
01:07:41
Speaker
ah Four on weird. What was that on watchability? i Two, I guess. yeah All right. Sounds like we a lot of people were in that range. Yeah, yeah. we're all We're all the same but So there you have it, listeners.
01:07:54
Speaker
Well, we've talked so much about this cans cut. yeah It's time to talk about this brand new alternate cut.
01:08:04
Speaker
And we've got a brand new bumper for it. That's right, bumper heads. Let's talk about alternate cuts.
01:08:22
Speaker
I watched a movie film and it was longer than thought.
01:08:29
Speaker
It turns out I watched the extended director's cut. And now I
01:08:38
Speaker
That theatrical is for me It's the one I want to see But instead I watched The Alternate Cut This film it has an alternate cut, yeah!
01:08:53
Speaker
This film it has an extended director's cut This film it has an alternate cut, yeah! This film it has an extra 20 minutes
01:09:10
Speaker
Take it away, Greg.
Cannes Cut and Deleted Scenes
01:09:11
Speaker
Yes. So as we have talked about, this played at Cannes. He got it done. and when he got it done, his VFX were not completely finished.
01:09:21
Speaker
And he had a 158-minute film. He didn't necessarily think it was going to make it into Cannes. He sent it and they took it. I don't think he was there when it happened. I think his, from what I read earlier, his interns told him about how poorly it was received. and he's like, well, we have to do something about this.
01:09:39
Speaker
So he was like, we're going to have to cut it down. ah It did get distribution picked up and he was able to get a little more money to fix the effects in the way that he wanted. not that they look that great in the final picture, unfortunately.
01:09:53
Speaker
Yeah. So, yes. So the con cut is 158 minutes long, which is 13 minutes longer than our regular cut at 145 minutes. It does not have that opening animation, the doomsday scenario interface.
01:10:09
Speaker
The animation where it begins, like this thing pops up and it's just like the world was coming apart. And you have Justin Timberlake like explaining everything. We don't get that in the con cut.
01:10:20
Speaker
So that okay is that is the biggest that is the biggest difference. We're going to get more into that. But if you take that out, what we've got is about 15 minutes of extra footage.
01:10:33
Speaker
Okay. Because that is about 2 minutes, 40 seconds long or so. So it's about 15 or 60 minutes of extra footage. I think he said he put in like 20. So maybe other things were cut and more things were added. It's a little difficult to tell.
01:10:45
Speaker
ah without looking at them side by side. And the way that both are edited, it's just difficult. um So far as... You mean you weren't able to keep perfect track of what you had seen before when you were watching Southland? No, I tried a little bit and gave up.
01:10:59
Speaker
ah So as far as the things that were cut out of the movie, ah so it's your like your typical... At a certain point, eventually, becomes like your typical kind of...
01:11:10
Speaker
Like director's cut, though it goes in the opposite direction, usually they add the stuff in instead of taking it out. But it's like a minute long scene becomes a minute and a half. Or you have a few extra scenes of characters sprinkled in throughout.
01:11:23
Speaker
So that that standard stuff is happening. But here's what it all kind of boils down to in the end. So the some of the things that got cut here are Janine Garofalo's character and most of her interaction with Kevin Smith's character, ah Simon Theory, which is a great name, by the way.
01:11:40
Speaker
They speak a lot in like a Dungeons and Dragons style code. Some of this ends up in the movie when you hear um when you hear like the Baron be like, move the paladin out of Utopia 3.
01:11:53
Speaker
That is in reference to this Dungeons and Dragons style code that they're speaking in between Simon Theory, Janine Garofalo's character in the Baron and all of this. So that was cut out of it.
01:12:05
Speaker
That's a shame. That sounds great. I'm looking for the primer dungeon master. that's so that's the sort yes i'm looking for the primer dungeon okay so uh then again extra little bits of dialogue have been like kind of edited out some of the things that they edited out a lot more scatological humor there's a lot more references to shit in this like a lot of references to shit in this movie that doesn't surprise me at all i'm being completely honest
01:12:37
Speaker
ah The movie is very scatologically based. The man who is projectile vomiting in the movie is actually vomiting. Just a little thing right there for you. yeah He was known for his projectile vomiting. That's how he got cast.
01:12:48
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So and some of the other scatological humor that gets cut out is when they're doing, this is the craziest thing, but when they're talking about the baby that can't shit.
01:13:02
Speaker
Yeah, there's more of that scene. Yeah, they cut back to it earlier or later. I don't remember. um And The Rock is just like, so fucking Krista now, right? But I didn't realize how much I drank and I vomit all over her chest.
01:13:16
Speaker
But Krista's a professional and she just keeps going because nobody rocks the cock like Krista. And Tavener's like, yeah. And he's like, no nobody rocks the cock like Kristen now.
01:13:26
Speaker
And he's like, yeah, I get it. He's like, no. And it gets very serious and very strange. And then later we get into the part where he's like, so when this baby farts, it causes earthquakes in a scientist predicts that on that final thermonuclear baby fart in earthquake will be gun that will set in motion the events that make the apocalypse happen.
01:13:51
Speaker
And it's just like, Okay. Wow. Yeah. That's strange. And I can see why you cut some of this out. um John Lovitz in Sherry O'Terry's character. When you listen to the commentary, because he he's like, do you want to fuck or watch a movie?
01:14:11
Speaker
And he's like, there's an extended edition that will answer this question. Would anybody like to guess what the answer is say hope watch jim move I hope they watch Jurassic Park. It is watch a movie. She says, let's watch a fucking movie.
01:14:26
Speaker
And then John Lovett storms away angry. And then pilot Abilene is like, Bart Bookman was in love with Zora, but she would never love him. And it was destroying Bart. And you just watch him through security footage, like pick up stuff and just throw it around the room and be angry.
01:14:43
Speaker
it it was a very sad moment and strange. To be clear, he is he is like getting small like rubber ducks or balls out of the giant novelty toilet in the neo-Marxist headquarters. Why is there a giant novelty toilet in their headquarters?
01:14:59
Speaker
We don't know. Probably for the same reasons that there's a blow-up doll with the fluorescent light through its mouth. I'm also just going to mention really quick that the Neo-Marxist headquarters is also the location of the final auction in the feature film Lethal Ninja.
01:15:17
Speaker
which That movie is very important to me. It's very important and we'll eventually on the show, I hope. that's That's going to be, I think, probably the show's finale. That's when I will have nothing left to say.
01:15:28
Speaker
Okay. ah We get more of John Larroquette and Norma Dunn. Now, what's interesting to me about this is like when they first meet on the blimp, they have a conversation and I was like, that's interesting.
01:15:42
Speaker
I wonder if those two are going to get together. And then they meet again later and I was like, oh, maybe those two are going to get together. And then at the end, when the ice cream truck is rising up and in the movie, you'd be like, what's that out there? I don't even know if they did that because he marches into that room. He grabs her and he gives her a big old kiss.
01:16:02
Speaker
And I put both fists in the air and I went, yes, and I don't know why. It was my most real moment watching this movie. I was so excited for those two. And it was weird. Possibly because they're the only people that have an arc in the entire movie if that happens.
01:16:19
Speaker
ah And then ah was we get we see more of the neo-Marxists doing things. We get to see a lot of the thumbs that they have cut off, which is disturbing.
01:16:31
Speaker
It really helps you understand that the neo-Marxists are not our friends. um The VFX shot was, or some scenes near the end are expanded on a little bit.
01:16:44
Speaker
And then the VFX shot at the very end is different. It doesn't look like a... The VFX generally didn't look different to me, so I think they kept the ones that were in the theatrical cut, ah probably just for ease and to make everything like gel together better.
01:16:58
Speaker
But they kept... In the movie, it looks like a wormhole kind of effect. It was like this purple sphere outside of it. But in the con cut, it's just white light.
01:17:10
Speaker
There's nothing more than white light. And it starts to become... A little confusing when I watched the con cut, I was like, so is the world ending or is it just the people in the ice cream truck ending? And so it's sort of like their world's ending, but based on what I've read, it is the world ending. So that got a little muddled for me.
01:17:28
Speaker
um You also lose the fact that Serpentine is the one who's responsible for a lot of this. I'm not certain why, but she was the one that puts Roland in the truck when no one was supposed to be in there.
01:17:40
Speaker
So she is in fact the orchestrator of our doomsday. ah You have different Justin Timberlake narration, and they focus a lot more on Norma Mae Frost as a villain type character.
01:17:52
Speaker
Played by Miranda Richardson, an excellent English actress. Yes. Yeah. um So as far as the biggest difference in all of this, though, is the intro.
01:18:05
Speaker
Because it does not have the doomsday scenario interface in it. So in the movie, we get the classic, we get that home video footage, the nuclear bomb. And then it just cuts to like being on the beach, interviewing the Baron.
01:18:18
Speaker
You learn about fluid karma in a little bit that the U.S. is involved in funding it. And then we overhear that they're doing experiments with drugs. And then you see the Baron cut off that man's hand.
Director's Cut and Visual Differences
01:18:29
Speaker
And then we go to the title. Oh. which is vastly different. And the effect that this has, and they did some other re-editing in the first half an hour. So that's where most of the re-editing is done.
01:18:40
Speaker
It's like there's a 15 or 10 or 15 minute block that they moved to like the 25 minute mark. That is actually at the like, probably like the seven or 10 minute mark.
01:18:54
Speaker
The effect that all of this has is that it just gives the movie more room to breathe. Things are paced differently. And it gives you so when the way that they do the intro now, like the first 10 or 15 minutes feels like reading a glossary of a novel and then trying to keep all the terms in your brain, because as you read the remaining 500 pages, you can never look back at the glossary.
01:19:20
Speaker
yeah And what the intro does from the theatrical version is it intrigues you if you are intrigued by the movie. You don't know what's going on, but you're like, okay, so we've got a weird situation with a post-apocalyptic scenario.
01:19:34
Speaker
They've found an a limitless energy source apparently that can be used as drugs. The government is involved and the Baron is the enemy. which is so much more information than we have in the first 20 minutes, despite the fact that in the theatrical cut, they're throwing information at you.
01:19:52
Speaker
It just feels like it's paced a lot better in this movie. And genuinely, while there's more movie there, I found it much more readable and much more understandable than the actual theatrical cut.
01:20:04
Speaker
I know that people will go back and forth on this. I just appreciated the pacing more. I appreciated the fact that the movie could breathe. The scatological humor, while I don't like it, at least gives you a better concept of what the tone of the movie is so you can understand how to take it.
01:20:20
Speaker
So that you understand that some of this stuff is being blown up to excess and the levels of farce because it's trying to be overwrought and stupid. It's making a lot of commentary about the stupidity of pop culture and things like that.
01:20:32
Speaker
ah At least that was how I took it anyway. Yeah. There's a beautiful scene in it that I liked where you have um you have the woman who thinks she's obsessed she's obsessed with Boxer and thinks she's in the movie. Starla.
01:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, Starla literally watching people shit on toilets for 24 hours and eating Cheetos compared to Norma Mae Frost in her headquarters watching all these screens of surveillance footage while she's eating carrots.
01:21:04
Speaker
And I found that comparison interesting, ah like this idea of the consumer eating junk food and watching shit. And then the higher ups eating like rabbit food. no offense to rabbits, but, you know, just like big clean, sterile, healthy food.
01:21:23
Speaker
ah while watching the world kind of fall apart and sort of orchestrating it. And it's also, I can't remember it's in this scene or another one, but there's a scene where normal ray frost Norma May Frost is just watching like the man vomit and a riot and gunfire and all this stuff. And she just hears like people who are watching the man vomit go, USA, USA, USA. And she just runs out of the room with all these screens showing all this stuff. And that to me felt like a pretty important,
01:21:53
Speaker
ah piece of the movie so i don't fully know why they would cut that out and to speak to that I have a quote from Roger Ebert here ah who like us got to see both the con cut and the theatrical cut and this is what he had to say After I saw the first cut of Kelly's Southland Tales at Cannes in 2005, I was dazed, confused, bewildered, bored, affronted, and deafened by the booze all around me at the most disastrous Cannes press screenings since, yes, the Brown Bunny.
01:22:26
Speaker
But now here's the director's cut, which is 20 minutes shorter, lops off a couple of characters and a few of the infinite subplots, and is even more of a mess. And I think that kind of describes it.
01:22:40
Speaker
I like the movie. I think there's something to it. It's obviously not a great movie. It has its problems. ah But I think the director's cut gives it a touch more room to breathe. And I think the movie kind of needed that.
01:22:53
Speaker
it's trying to be so It's trying to be too much. It's way too ambitious. So by trying to cut it down and reduce the amount of time it takes to give you the information, you just run the risk of missing all the information, basically. Kind of like what we saw in Sinbad of the Seven Seas and how they cut that down from four hours of television episodes to a 96-minute movie that was just... And they added in a bunch of narration that just didn't actually make the movie more watchable. Yeah.
01:23:20
Speaker
What did you think, sir? What did you think of the con cut when you watched it? I... I, I, I largely agree that that intro, whatever is it, the doomsday scenario up at the top of the theatrical cut, that is essentially a recap of the three graphic novels. It you'll notice that it does one, two, and three off to the side and it uses the graphics from them.
01:23:45
Speaker
Um, yeah, yeah, it, it very, it more clearly establishes the Baron as the villain up top, as Greg pointed out. Um, it's, um, in In some ways, I found it ah it gives, ah it does give the movie more room to breathe.
01:24:02
Speaker
It straightens out some of the plot lines. So for me, it destroys some of the magic. Sure. I could see that. Because things are clearer, right? And so you wind up taking a few steps towards coherence.
01:24:17
Speaker
And in in a sense, you are ah taking away what makes it so unique.
Character Pairings and Themes
01:24:23
Speaker
You're actually giving your brain something more to latch onto a little bit, I found. Yeah, the graphics, I don't know. i didn't notice much difference in terms of the the visual effects either. I don't know if it's in the theatrical or not, but there was one shot that I actually did notice, which is when they're on the Zeppelin, there's sort of a long...
01:24:44
Speaker
um it's a false one take, but it sort of follows. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's in both. That's in both. And that is that was a fun shot that I noticed. And I'm not sure if that's in the theatrical or not, but that sort of glides you through this cast of characters.
01:25:01
Speaker
in The other thing I think that it kind of shows, and I have not diagrammed it out, I think that the movie is intentionally... set like that, that the characters are paired off, not necessarily romantically, but that there's there's essentially like the Baron sets and then the other sets and that each character is somehow matched with another one. um Sure.
01:25:26
Speaker
And that he uses that to, you know, probably try to make thematic characters. explorations or make a different point. um And so that it's sort of, I think, restores some of that feeling in terms of, you know, trading off like, you know, Chris, you mentioned the like multiple threatening suicide scenes, right?
01:25:48
Speaker
that yeah That sort of like one group one pair talking about a topic versus another pair, you know, I feel like that was more established with a can cut.
01:26:00
Speaker
I don't know. It's yeah. yeah Like, ah yeah. One thing I will say when reading about this this afternoon, there was an interview in Vice that was very interesting. There's guy that really liked it.
01:26:13
Speaker
So he shot Richard Kelly an email to see if they could talk about it. And he was like, absolutely. they had a long conversation and the guy was upset because Richard Kelly had answers for every one of his questions. And the guy was like, I wanted there to be mystery, but it turns out there's none.
01:26:27
Speaker
But then later he got the email where he was talking about how like something had happened in Richard Kelly. Just just emailed him out of the blue because he's aware of the people who are big fans of this. ah He like kept tabs on them. And those people like he keeps tabs on me like he knows you like it.
01:26:42
Speaker
So he said you were a big fan. um So he like emailed people. It was just like, is this is just US ident. And then he went back and he found the thing in in his interview where he said that he wanted it to be a piece of comfort food that people could get lost in in paranoid times.
01:26:57
Speaker
And that's when the guy realized it's like, just because this movie has meaning to Richard Kelly and he can describe exactly why everything's in there. doesn't mean that I can't interpret it the way that I want and get lost in it. its yeah that I want to get lost in it.
01:27:09
Speaker
um And I think you're right. It does lose some of the majesty, but the honest truth for me is I just want to figure out what's in Richard Kelly. I, I like, Overly ambitious things that fail. And so it's very interesting
Engagement and Trivia Games
01:27:24
Speaker
for me to see this.
01:27:25
Speaker
And the less ambiguous he is about it, the more I find it interesting because it's just more detail about what he's thinking. And I don't always necessarily think that it always takes away, though I could see why you would think and feel that like that makes total sense to me.
01:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, and I think we're largely in the same place. It's sort of like it's new game plus, right? It's like right you finish the game and now you're playing it again. And now you're trying to and trying to figure out more bits from it. it Exactly.
01:27:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:53
Speaker
Well, you guys want to play a game? We got to keep on chugging. Let's go. listen up that Let's play a little. This guy played that guy
01:28:09
Speaker
This guy played that guy. Yeah! This guy played that guy. This guy played that guy in a fair...
01:28:28
Speaker
we're going to be playing this guy played that guy, and we're going to be doing it with Curtis Armstrong, who, of course, played Dr. X ah in this.
01:28:39
Speaker
Listeners might know him better as a Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a title of a film, and I'm going to read you the description, and then I have three characters, and I want you to tell me which one was played by Curtis Armstrong.
01:28:56
Speaker
This is a buzz in game. You'll buzz in by saying your own name. And ah if your opponent doesn't get it, there will be an opportunity to steal. Everybody ready? Yeah.
01:29:08
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Question number one. Safety patrol. Scout Basel always dreamed of joining the safety patrol, but at his new school, the safety patrol is rife with corruption and Scout will have to go undercover to find out how high it goes.
01:29:27
Speaker
Does Curtis Armstrong play Mr. Basel, Burt Miller or Norman Zabruder?
01:29:36
Speaker
Greg? Greg. Norman Zabruder.
01:29:42
Speaker
No, I'm sorry. That's not correct. Saul or Anna? I... ah ah Saul? Saul. What was it? softer Mr. What? What was that thing?
01:29:55
Speaker
Mr. Basel? Mr. Basel. I'll go with Mr. Basel. No, I'm sorry. Anna gets the point. He's played by... He played Burt Miller.
01:30:07
Speaker
Burt Miller. Okay. Burt Miller. Question number two. Gale Force. A reality TV show sends contestants to a tropical island for a $10 million dollars treasure hunt.
01:30:21
Speaker
But what they don't know is that the security they hired for the treasure doesn't have their best interests at heart. And there's a hurricane coming their way.
01:30:32
Speaker
oh Does Curtis Armstrong play Stephen Chaney, Detective Sam Garrett, or Rance? Anna.
01:30:44
Speaker
Anna? Rance.
01:30:48
Speaker
No, I'm sorry.
01:30:52
Speaker
Greg? Greg. Was it like a Steve Garrett?
01:30:57
Speaker
Okay, you you just gave both answers. There was either Stephen Chaney or Detective Sam Garrett. You have to pick one. Sam Garrett.
01:31:07
Speaker
No. Tuffy today. Saul gets the point. Question number three.
01:31:18
Speaker
Tales of a Fly on the Wall. This is a comedy anthology film that dares to ask a question, what if you were literally a fly on the wall?
01:31:30
Speaker
Does Curtis Armstrong play Bud, High Prince Zagon, or the fly?
01:31:40
Speaker
Anna. Anna. High Prince Zagon?
01:31:46
Speaker
No, I'm sorry. He does not play High Prince of Zagon.
01:31:50
Speaker
Saul. Saul? Does he play Bud?
01:31:57
Speaker
no God, I am stomping the panel tonight. He played the fly. He's perfectly cast as an anthropomorphic fly. I feel like he could have played any of those parts.
01:32:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, he could have played Bud. I guess they could have canceled him as High Prince Zagon against type. ah Question number four. Bad medicine. An aspiring medical student is unable to get into any American med schools and must study abroad in a small Latin American medical program run by the country's dictator.
01:32:32
Speaker
Did Curtis Armstrong play Dennis Gladstone, Jeff Marks, or Pepe the cab driver? no. Greg?
01:32:43
Speaker
Greg. ah Dennis Gladstone. Correct. Yes. All right. Jeff Marks, our lead, was played by Steve Guttenberg. Ooh. The Goot.
01:32:57
Speaker
That's the first time I ever called him that. Don't do the last... Question number four. Pucked. A failed lawyer uses his credit cards to finance a women's hockey league.
01:33:14
Speaker
Did Curtis Armstrong play Carl, Elvis, or janitor?
01:33:23
Speaker
Greg. Greg? Elvis.
01:33:28
Speaker
No, he'd play a great Elvis, but unfortunately not. Saul. Saul. Anna. Carl.
01:33:37
Speaker
I'm sorry, Saul.
01:33:40
Speaker
Anna, were you going to say janitor? I was going to say Carl, but all right then janitor. Okay, you get the point. I also have to take a minute to say that I'm glad that they mentioned the means by which the lawyer finances them.
01:33:55
Speaker
Yes, the lawyer was played by Jon Bon Jovi. That's interesting. I mean, they could just say like a failed lawyer finances a female hockey team, but we know specifically that it's by the credit card. So no, great.
01:34:09
Speaker
Question number six. Hi, honey, I'm dead. o Nice. A wealthy and successful real estate developer dies and is reincarnated as a lowly housekeeper in the employ of his neglected widow and son.
01:34:26
Speaker
Did Curtis Armstrong play Brad Stadman, Arnold Pishkin, or Ralph the Angel?
01:34:38
Speaker
Anna. Anna? Ralph the Angel?
01:34:44
Speaker
No, I'm sorry. Greg. Greg. Pishkin.
01:34:50
Speaker
That is correct. Brad Stadman was, of course, the successful real estate developer played by the voice of Batman, Kevin Conroy. Oh, good for him.
01:35:01
Speaker
Question number seven. Project Viper. A space shuttle crashes containing a lethal prototype organism designed to survive in any environment.
01:35:15
Speaker
The only people who can stop it are the Secretary of Defense and the female scientist who created it. Does Curtis Armstrong play Keech, Simpkins, or Dr. Shoup?
01:35:28
Speaker
So Simpkins, just because Simpkins is a great name. That's the only reason I'm suggesting that. It is a great name, but it is not correct.
01:35:39
Speaker
oh yeah Anna. Anna. Dr. Shoup? No, unfortunately was not Dr. Shoup.
01:35:51
Speaker
Greg gets a point. He's back in the lead. Two questions to go. Question number eight. Public enemy number two. a talentless actor is hired to portray a serial killer on a true crime show, but his terrible performance draws the ire of the real serial killer.
01:36:10
Speaker
This is a great plot. that's Yeah, this is great. Yeah. these these These have really strong premises. Was Kurz Armstrong, Wyand Dalton, Ivan Delbert, or Dwayne Gary Steckler?
01:36:30
Speaker
Saul. Saul? ah Dwayne Gary Steckler. Again, going with the dorkiest possible name. Good instinct, but incorrect. Can you read the two again?
01:36:43
Speaker
Wyand Dalton or Ivan Delbert? Greg. Greg? Delbert.
01:36:51
Speaker
That's correct. Oh. Wyand Dalton and Dwayne Gary Steckler were both played by SCTV alum ah Dave Thomas.
01:37:02
Speaker
Oh, nice. All right. Yeah, he was public enemy number two. Last question. Beer for my horses. Two sheriff's deputies head off on an outrageous road trip to save one of their girlfriends from drug lord kidnappers.
01:37:22
Speaker
Okay. Did Curtis Armstrong play D.A. Levine, rack Racklin, or Deputy Stippens?
01:37:33
Speaker
Anna. Anna? Deputy Stippens. No, he should have been, but unfortunately not.
01:37:43
Speaker
What are the two again? D.A. Levine or Rack Racklin? Greg? Greg. D.A. Levine. That's correct.
01:37:56
Speaker
Rack Racklin, of course, played by Toby Keith.
The Batty Awards
01:38:00
Speaker
That only makes sense. Well, congratulations. Greg's our big wiener. Woo! Woo-hoo!
01:38:08
Speaker
Good job. Hard Vaught. Well, I think all that's left is the Batty Awards.
01:38:22
Speaker
Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
01:38:38
Speaker
Congratulations to all the nominees.
01:38:45
Speaker
That's right. Congratulations to all our nominees. It's the Batty Awards. We've made it. Who wants to kick us off?
01:38:55
Speaker
I will. Okay. I am going to give my baddie award, of course, to Jericho Cain, who is the main character of the screenplay that ah Boxer Santeros is writing, but is also the main character of the movie End of Days.
01:39:15
Speaker
Yep. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. ah So this has obviously got to be a backdoor sequel to end of days, but also of course, end of days, another apocalypse movie.
01:39:25
Speaker
So, uh, boy, it all comes together in a way that is what makes you say, oh okay.
01:39:34
Speaker
Greg, uh, where did you wind up on this one? You got a baddie? Yeah, I definitely do. So I'm going to say what my Betty award is Going to and then I'm going to say what it is for.
01:39:45
Speaker
OK, so there are some rollerblades in this movie that have big wheels on them that are not underneath the rollerblade. They are on the side of the outside side of the rollerblades.
01:39:58
Speaker
which looks really bizarre. And there's a moment where Zora is just like, Hey, thanks for these rollerblades. Thanks for these off-road rollerblades. They're really great. And he's like, Oh, thank you. And then he's like, later he's like, I'm going to roll the blade away. And it's just like, what are these things doing in here? well I'm going to give my baddie award to the weirdest product placement I've ever seen in my life, because that is definitely product placement in the commentary. He's just like, Oh, those, uh, outdoor rollerblades are product placement.
01:40:24
Speaker
And it's just like, what? imcon what I have never in my life seen these things outside of this movie. It seems like another part of the weird sci-fi world that we're in, but apparently it was a product that we could be enjoying.
01:40:39
Speaker
So wow shame to us. Well, imagine if Southland Tales take off, everyone would have been buying the off-road rollerblades. Yes.
01:40:52
Speaker
Anna, do you have a Batty Award? um i've I have two. Okay. ah The first one, because it's in my ah ongoing series, Hey, That Guy Was on Supernatural.
01:41:06
Speaker
Carry on my wayward son. And that is, of of course, Curtis Armstrong, who played the angel Metatron. Oh, fun.
01:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, but since we had a whole game about Curtis Armstrong, i wanted to do another Batty Award. And so I'm going to give an award to Beth Grant's.
01:41:27
Speaker
who's the actress who plays Inga von Westphalen, Baron's mother. ah and she's just, I happened to watch the night before ah an entirely different movie from 2014 called Faults that she's in And she's been in ah you know, she's one of those people who's been in everything.
01:41:51
Speaker
if you look at her IMDb page, her, first credit was BJ and the bear in 1979. And her most recent was like, she was on the adaptation of the Anne Rice Mayfair witches novel in 2023.
01:42:09
Speaker
um And yeah, and she's always great. It's always nice to see her. um Probably. Oh, I did want to say probably what people might um know her best from, I think, because even though it It's a one-scene part, but it's just incredible.
01:42:25
Speaker
She's in No Country for Old Men. She plays Josh Brolin's wife's mother. okay Okay. Okay. She's just in that one scene in the car with them, and so good. She's so good.
01:42:38
Speaker
Beth Grant. Shout out, Beth Grant. Congratulations on your Batty Awards. And of course, we've saved the guest for last. Saul, do you have Batty Award? I do. And I hope this is okay.
01:42:50
Speaker
My Batty Award is a group award for commitment. Sure. yeah The actors in this movie are incredibly committed to doing, straight like, straight-faced, the most...
01:43:08
Speaker
ah strange things and and and and i'm not i'm not even saying this in jest the rock commits so hard to this dramatic role um he he is doing a lot of twitching he does a lot of eye movement he murmurs a lot um He ah we we didn't really talk about it, but there is a scene where that's like ah a serious scene where he says the N word and Sean William Scott character says the N word.
01:43:38
Speaker
I think everybody is really, really giving is really committed to this in a way that I think is. is both unusual for a satire ah or or quasi satire and just a little, i don't know if refreshing is the word, but um less and less common these days.
01:44:04
Speaker
It's not, it's not a movie that's winking at all. And I think that's because the cast is really, really giving it their all. I love it. And then if I, and then the smaller Batty award I would give to ah one of the locations that I noticed, which is the last bookstore in downtown Los Angeles.
01:44:22
Speaker
um Terrific bookstore. um You should go there. Hopefully you will not meet the, the barons ladies when you do. Yeah. Well, hey, at least they'll read your screenplay.
01:44:34
Speaker
Am I right, Angelinos? and Thank you so much for coming, Saul. Thank you for hanging out with us. Thank you for thank you making me watch this movie that I hated. I'm sorry. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
01:44:47
Speaker
i appreciate
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:44:48
Speaker
it. Do you have anything that you want to plug? No, I do not. um ah I do not have anything that I want to plug. ah Other than, I guess, Nathan Rabin's book, My World of Flops. We talked about it at the top.
01:45:02
Speaker
um It's still out there. It's still in print. I have no idea what he's doing these days. Hopefully he hasn't gone off the deep end and I'm accidentally endorsing someone who's saying bad things. But that book's entertaining.
01:45:15
Speaker
That's it. All right. A perfectly good plug. I'm going to make a perfectly good plug for this show. Listeners, I know you're about to stop listening. I know you got your phone in your hand.
01:45:27
Speaker
Just give us that five stars, brother. Five stars is free. And if not you, who? And if not now, when? Just bang it out. And then the next time you, ah you know, forget to stop before I start doing this, you'll say, oh, well, I already did that. I'm one of the good ones.
01:45:47
Speaker
You're one of our favorite listeners now, and you absolutely would be. And we'd really appreciate Another thing we'd really appreciate is if you tell a friend about the show, you share it on your timeline. Word of mouth is the only way to get ah show like this, you know, ah to have the fun, keep on rolling and have, you know, we love to see number go up.
01:46:09
Speaker
We're only human. So throw us a bone. Tell a buddy and ah come back next week when we'll have Mr. Mark Hensley.
01:46:20
Speaker
And we're going be talking about money plane. And to take us out, here's a little bit of Sarah Michelle Gellar singing probably the truest song ever written.
01:46:33
Speaker
Teen horniness is not a crime. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:46:44
Speaker
This is not a crime. Open your heart and your mind. Pointing this is the rise.
01:46:59
Speaker
Pointing this is not a crime. Open your heart and your mind. Pointing this is on the rise. Look inside and you will find. Pointing this is not a crime.
01:47:10
Speaker
Open your heart and your mind.