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Episode 101: Diggstown featuring Charles Star
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Charles Star, host of No Homework Podcast, ALAB Series and City Saint/Country Saint, has sauntered into town to propose a bet that we can’t turn down: Diggstown (1992). This Micheal Ritchie directed sports con film stars James Woods and Oliver Platt teaming up to trick Bruce Dern into a ludicrous bet that Lou Gosset Jr. can take on 10 Diggstown’s boxers in a day. Will Heather Graham kiss James? Will a young Jim Caviezel stand up to Gosset’s fists? Will anyone explain the tonal shifts? This one is all over the map in smalltown Georgia and we’re trying to keep the fight card up to date over here, but there will be surprises. Such as a new segment and a robust breakdown of what we think the film was attempting. It’s going to the judges by the end, and you’ll never know the result unless you tune in!
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Transcript
Introductions and Guest Appearance
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. The only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, this movie's so bad, why do you like it so much?
00:00:50
Speaker
We're your hosts. i am I'm obviously the Gabriel Kane of the show. I think that's fair to say. Definitely. And that means, of course, Greg, you've got to be the Fitz. 100%. Yes. Good. I love i love ah Oliver Platt.
00:01:07
Speaker
Very excited to hear that. Yes. So I love being Fitz. Yes. Unfortunately, we do not have my honey, the honey of the show, Anna Anderson, with us tonight. Prayers of a weather-induced migraine.
00:01:22
Speaker
What can you do? But we do have with us a very special guest. Let's face it, he's the big dog. He has to be the Mr. Guillaume of the show. It's Charles Starr. Oh, I always thank you so much. I have forgotten what Randall Tex Cobb's name is in the show, but I figured being carried out in a box is my best case scenario.
00:01:48
Speaker
oh Oh, no, that would be the wolf. That would be Wolf Forrester. No, no, no, no, Tex Cobb was his friend in prison. Yeah, that's Wolf Forrester. Guillaume is Dern.
00:02:01
Speaker
No, I know. I know. Okay. ah Okay. Oh, you know what? I'm just confusing movies because Randall Tex Cobb, ah Randall Cobb was in a different movie. And I was very briefly picturing his character in that different movie as Wolf.
00:02:19
Speaker
And it's where he is like a bounty hunter. and i Now I got to look his filmography while we're talking. That's got to be Raising Arizona. Yes, it is. It is Raising Arizona.
Digging into 'Digstown': Plot and Opinions
00:02:30
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:31
Speaker
Ah, yeah. No, here he's almost a baby face. It's an opposite. Yeah. Here. Yeah. This week, listener, we're talking about the movie Digstown. And if you haven't seen Digstown, you're not the only one. But here's a brief summary of the film to hold in your mind as we progress throughout the show.
00:02:53
Speaker
Oh, shit. I didn't write one. Okay. No problem. Ha! Ha!
00:02:59
Speaker
Okay, so there's a con man, and he has a great plan, and it involves his friend getting nearly beaten to death. And that's about It's
00:03:12
Speaker
boxing-based. Yes, he has a boxing-based plan that is yeah and involves a 48-year-old man getting nearly beaten to Yes, absolutely.
00:03:23
Speaker
That is true. i More than one, if we're going to be honest. It's true. More than one good friend. i I love this movie. And i I don't know what the consensus is on this movie because I've mentioned on socials loving this movie in the past. And usually the response is positive, where it is, i think, it is the kind of movie where if you know it...
00:03:53
Speaker
You probably like it because it the like I think all of the very obvious kind of signal flares that the movie sends up act as a repellent for the people who wouldn't want to see it. Right. I mean. it is, it's very boxing centric and there is a lot of boxing in it.
00:04:17
Speaker
It is a heist movie that doesn't look like a heist movie. Um, and I think that draws people away. i I don't want to jump the gun, but James Woods is a pig fucker and that has, uh, undermined a lot of, uh, I, I pro I apologize. I, uh, am, ah I am a weak man with too much education and I cover that with a coarse mouth. So if, uh, no, no, if, if I, if yeah that's, I don't want to, our listeners are no prudes. I think ok i trust your taste. Okay. Um, ah so, ah I don't know. it Like, I think that there are a ton of great performances in this movie. I think the part of the story is very compelling and good and it takes some directions that are
00:05:18
Speaker
ah surprising.
Exploring 'Digstown': Production and Comparisons
00:05:20
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, that is true. at the same time, I think its biggest flaw is that it is tonally uncertain.
00:05:31
Speaker
Yes. There is a big problem with tone in this movie. It all over the place on tone. and yeah So I could see where it fell down. but all But I feel like despite those deficiencies,
00:05:49
Speaker
It really, really works and has some really good moments in it, both comedy and dramatically. I don't know. Like, it really just genuinely works for me in a way. that I am going to get very defensive of it because I feel didn't resonate with either you. I think you are going to on the defense on this one. I hate to break it to you. did not find this one particularly compelling.
00:06:20
Speaker
What about you, Greg? I had never seen this before. Yeah, so I will reserve my thoughts until the end as to what I thought of it, but I will say that I really, I had no idea what this was. Like, I saw the name, was like Digstown, and in my my head was like, is that a documentary?
00:06:39
Speaker
don't know why that was my first thought. Maybe, think there was like a- It sounds Civil War. Sure. Or I was thinking, maybe I'm thinking like Z-Boys and Dogtown or whatever, the sort of documentary slash. Backwards, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's where my brain went because I think it was a documentary that was turned into a film. yeah or you know So am I was like, is that the one about the the skateboarders maybe? And then I looked it up and I was like, I have no idea what this is actually.
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah. But with a lot of people, you know. Yes, it's it's true. And I will say that as far. This is what I will say about the tone at this point. Like, depending on where you look, it has a like multiple. It's like it's a sports drama or it's it like a sports comedy con man. It's like, what? What is it? It's really it's doing a lot of things. Uh huh. Mm hmm.
00:07:31
Speaker
Well, do you guys want to hear what I found out about the making of this film? Please. Sure. It wasn't a lot. Okay. but So this ought to go pretty quick.
00:07:57
Speaker
I wish I had some context about the background of the film. Sprinter of the actors on top. What's going on on screen? I want to hear some details.
00:08:09
Speaker
Gossips can do all that shit. Can't imagine all the time.
00:08:25
Speaker
So Diggs Down was released August 14th, 1992. Your director, and Michael Ritchie. Your tagline, only one. Where the pros meet the cons.
00:08:39
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:08:41
Speaker
Once again, I think it doesn't really help set the tone. No. No. So Digstown began its journey to the silver screen in 1978 with Leonard Wise's novel, The Digstown Ringers.
00:08:57
Speaker
According to Wise's Goodreads bio, he's had his work optioned 59 times. But according to his IMDB, Digstown is his only work that ever actually made it to screen.
00:09:09
Speaker
Wow. Okay. But he must have picked up a couple of nice little checks. you know Yeah. Five grand here, ten grand there. I hope so. Now, near as I can tell, Digstown is just a straight up studio picture.
00:09:24
Speaker
So I feel like it was MGM who must have optioned the Digstown ringers and then hired relatively inexperienced screenwriter Stephen McKay. But for directing, they brought on a steadier hand, a guy called Michael Ritchie.
00:09:38
Speaker
Ritchie had been directing since he was a student at Harvard, where he directed the original production of Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad.
Analyzing 'Digstown': Storytelling and Impact
00:09:51
Speaker
Huh. Never heard of it. That was also optioned and did not make to the screen. hope ah Now, ah this production got him noticed by fellow Harvard alum Robert Saudek, who was a producer at ABC, who hired Richie to work on TV shows like Omnibus and Profiles in Courage.
00:10:17
Speaker
So he had been just a TV guy, think, in like the 60s. He'd been around ah for a while at this point. From there, he built up his skill set working on TV shows like Dr. Kildare and The Man from Uncle and something called The Felony Squad. which That sounds great. That sounds great.
00:10:38
Speaker
They only handle felonies, Greg. I was thinking maybe it was like a Mod Squad knockoff where it's like they're all felons, but now they're fighting crime. I don't know. Maybe.
00:10:50
Speaker
Maybe both. Maybe they they're felons who only handle felonies. That would be point. It would be their field of expertise. It was the Ordinary Victims Unit. Yes. Yes.
00:11:04
Speaker
So in 1969, he leveled up and directed his first theatrical feature, Downhill Racer, a skiing picture starring a young Robert Redford. Oh, I'm sure it's great. I think he seduces Gene Hackman's wife. Gene Hackman is his coach. Something like that.
00:11:24
Speaker
Great. ah In his review, Roger Ebert described it as the best movie ever made about sports without really being about sports at all. How about that?
00:11:35
Speaker
Yeah. Well, like that's I think that's the baseline for the best sports movie. I think it's unlikely that your best sports movie is going to be, you know, a literal telling of 1985 Bears.
00:11:50
Speaker
yeah But maybe like ah the documentary Tokyo Olympiad. Someone might say that's our favorite sports movie. don't know. I might put, the well, anyway.
00:12:00
Speaker
ah So ah sports and competition would be a theme Richie would return to throughout his career with movies like The Candidate, Smile, about beauty competition.
00:12:15
Speaker
The Bad News Bears, something called Semi-Tough. I forgot what that was about. Wildcats. I think. Is Semi-Tough the arm wrestling movie with Sylvester Stallone? No. That's that's over the top.
00:12:31
Speaker
Oh, that's over the top. But I do think it involved truck driving. I think it was semis. I think so. I think that's right. That would be on that would make sense. He also did Wildcats, the Goldie Hawn football movie. I like that movie.
00:12:47
Speaker
The sucker for that movie. You did The Scout, the Brendan Fraser, Albert Brooks Oh, okay, okay. That one also uneven. also did The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader Massacring Mom.
00:13:05
Speaker
Oh. That sounds fun. I remember that story, but not, and I remember when the movie came out. Yeah, it was like a made for HBO with Holly Hunter in it, I think. Yeah, based on a true story of a woman who killed her daughter's rival for the last spot on the cheerleading squad or something. Yeah.
00:13:27
Speaker
it wow Wild stuff. yeah I bet that wouldn't be bad. i'd I'd check that out. I'll put that on the Plex. So he tried branching out to comedies without any type of competition angle in them in the 80s. But his biggest hit, The Golden Child, proved to be a massive critical flop.
00:13:47
Speaker
You guys ever seen The Golden Child? I remember really enjoying The Golden Child. Eddie Murphy, right? Yeah. I remember enjoying it. but I saw it a long time ago, but at the time was like, yeah, it's pretty good.
00:13:57
Speaker
So. Yeah, maybe you were the target audience. Maybe. I also ah do want to say, I don't know if you mentioned it, but he did Prime Cut. I learned that. And the other day, literally like two days ago, I was thinking to myself like, God, Prime Cut's such a good film.
00:14:12
Speaker
don't know Prime It's Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman is like a shady meatpacking guy. And Gene Hackman comes down and says, you owe the mafia money. And he's like, yeah, good luck getting that from me. And then a series of events ensue. And there's a famous scene where ah Lee Marvin is avoiding thresher.
00:14:33
Speaker
Okay. Definitely worth checking out. It's worth checking out if you want to see some good 70s counterculture kind of filmmaking. It's nice. It's good. yeah know i don't think i ever saw I don't think I ever saw Golden Child. But as I recall, that movie suffered a lot from having Eddie Murphy in it, doing something other than what everyone wanted Eddie Murphy to be doing.
00:14:59
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So without it being any kind of commentary on his own performance, the market was like, where's Gumby or whatever. you know like they what they did not They were not ready for Eddie Murphy to stretch his wings, which is really a pity because I think yeah he has shown Like an incredible amount of like charisma and versatility in his. Yeah. If he had gotten able to do that earlier in those yeah prime years, you know, it would have really been great to see what he could have done.
00:15:32
Speaker
Yeah. But people didn't want it. And so the golden child ate it hard. Yeah. They wanted, you know, Axel Foley in the golden child. and Right. Right.
00:15:44
Speaker
ah Richie also had worked with notorious career killer Chevy Chase in 1989 on Fletch Lives. Oh. And after that, he sort of fell out. I don't remember Fletch Lives particularly well, but I loved the original.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. he And he did the original as well. He was one of the few guys that worked with Chevy Chase more than once. How about that? and Good for Richie. Yeah. So he's got to have some, some sort of Svengali power about him. Who knows?
00:16:17
Speaker
oh But Richie would not make another film after Fletch lives until he returned to the world of sports in 1992 at Diggstown. He's coming back after a three year hiatus.
00:16:28
Speaker
So with Richie at the helm and a cast that included two Oscar nominees and one Oscar winner, MGM thought that they could not lose. Yeah. Unfortunately, they very much did lose.
00:16:43
Speaker
Diggstown cost $17 million dollars to make, and it made just under $5 million. dollars o It was their least successful film of the year, and they consequently fired their head of marketing, Greg Morrison.
00:17:00
Speaker
I hate to see it happen to a fellow Greg, but here we are. Yeah. I i watched the trailer to see, like, did did Greg Morrison fuck this up? and was like, the trailer seemed normal, yeah you know? Yeah, I don't know.
00:17:14
Speaker
i I was, I don't think I saw this exactly when it came out. 92, I'd have been, i mean, I don't know that I saw it much after. 92, I'd have been a senior in college. And this was, ah you know, the first time I saw this movie was a very long time ago. So I don't know if this was a blockbuster style pickup for me and my brother because we used to watch a lot of stuff together. Or if this was something I don't think I saw it in the theater, but it very easily could have been something that played it like a campus theater.
00:17:50
Speaker
or so That makes sense. This seems like the box art seems grabbing. The poster for this was not bad. You see James Woods. You see Lou Gossett Jr. You got the block fund title. It's very just like very straightforward. OK, let me see. I see these two. That's their best angle is showing me those two guys. Those are their cards.
00:18:13
Speaker
So if anything's going to hit, it's going to be this poster. Yeah.
00:18:18
Speaker
and So others... and ah Yeah, no, go. No, no, no, no, please. I was about to transition. I want to hear what you're going to say. Okay, no, no, no. I also was about to transition, and then I realized we were in the middle of a structured segment. Well, ah I was just going to say ah other sports movies of 1992, just to put a thing in its place.
00:18:38
Speaker
You got the romantic classic The Cutting Edge. Oh, yeah. Toe pick. Yes. You seen The Cutting Edge, Charles? Yes. I have not.
00:18:48
Speaker
Is that... it's ah It's a hockey player and a figure skater. Yeah, I was going to say, is that Tom Cruise maybe? No, it's D.B. Sweeney. Oh, okay.
00:18:59
Speaker
He'd be flattered that you thought it was Tom Cruise. Yeah, I don't remember what I'm confusing it with. well Or why I thought it was Tom Cruise. It's a charmer. And I feel like if they did a gay version of it now, it would get that heated rivalry audience easy. This is an idea that's waiting to happen. Yep.
00:19:17
Speaker
You also have the absolute classic, A League of Their Own. Oh, yeah.
00:19:25
Speaker
Big Dottie Hanson, please smash my skull in with a hammer. I'll tell you, ah i Kit can also um yeah attack attack me on where the high, hard fastball goes. Absolutely.
00:19:43
Speaker
Absolutely. You got this this year, you got white men can't jump. I think beginning the the that partnership, Woody Harrelson and snipes Wesley Snipes. Yeah.
00:19:58
Speaker
They team up again for Money Train, and I
Final Thoughts on 'Digstown'
00:20:00
Speaker
feel like there was another. I feel like there was three. I feel like I watched Money Train again recently for some reason. e don't know why.
00:20:09
Speaker
It was better than I recall it being. Was it after we watched Money Plane? Maybe. Maybe. That would make sense. ah You got the Babe Ruth biopic The Babe starring John Goodman.
00:20:22
Speaker
Oh, okay. That was another bust, wasn't it? Yeah, that movie can't be good because if it was good, you would hear about it. I sort of forgot about it occurring. It's weird that it isn't good. There must be something wrong.
00:20:37
Speaker
And, of course, you have the teen soccer gender swap classic The Ladybugs. Ladybugs. Yeah. Oh, this No respect for that movie.
00:20:51
Speaker
you no No, not the amount that it's due. I'm sure that that that movie probably reached a lot of people. Well, no, wasn't Rodney Dangerfield the coach in that? Yeah, definitely was. Yes. He absolutely was.
00:21:04
Speaker
And Jonathan Brandes was the ladybug, as I recall. Yes. Yes, he was indeed the ladybug. Well, you guys want to talk about the plot of the movie Digstown?
00:21:17
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:21:37
Speaker
All right, so we open on a crowd of prisoners cheering on two fighters.
00:22:02
Speaker
and so we open on a crowd of prisoners cheering on two fighters And our title flashes on the screen. My title was The Midnight Sting. Did you guys watch it and had the title of The Midnight Sting?
00:22:14
Speaker
I don't recall that. i Somehow I don't recall the title either. But I do recall it being seeing somewhere that it was also called The Midnight Sting. Yeah, I watched a Midnight Sting cut.
00:22:26
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah, because they wanted to make this more clearly tied to con movies. So they thought, oh, if we call it the something sting, people will be like, oh, it's the sting.
00:22:38
Speaker
a Probably somebody told them that they couldn't do that without upsetting the sting people. But we meet our hero, Gabriel Kane. who is played by James Woods, and he leads an older prisoner out through an access tunnel to a vent that will allow him to escape in exchange for 10 grand.
00:23:01
Speaker
So this is what he is doing in his time. Even in prison, he's finding a way to make money. The consummate hustler, the consummate con man. Mm-hmm. So he gets dragged in front of the warden, who can, of course, prove nothing.
00:23:14
Speaker
And then Kane has visiting time with his criminal associate Fitz, as played by Oliver Platt. Yeah. Who unfortunately doesn't get to be as charming as Oliver Platt can be. And frankly, I feel like James Woods doesn't get to be as charming as James Woods can be in this movie.
00:23:31
Speaker
I feel like these roles are underwritten. I think there's just a lot happening, so it's hard to establish a lot. It's true. We don't get to spend a lot of time with them. there's It's very propulsive.
00:23:44
Speaker
So we find out that Kane has been doing these prison break concierge services at 10 grand a pop, and he's done about five of them. So he's going to get out in a week.
00:23:55
Speaker
He's let five dangerous felons back out onto the street, by the way, but we don't really concern ourselves with that. Are they? Are they, though? it's I mean, we don't. We don't trust all of our county justice.
00:24:08
Speaker
I'm not based on some of the things I've seen in the film. So they they might have been the five innocent men. Who can say? Are we are we a pro-carceral pod now? Absolutely. Very good point. He should be letting them all out for free. ah But still, he gets out in a week, and he tells Fitz that it's time to put their plan in motion.
00:24:33
Speaker
So Fitz has to go set the hook in Digstown. Yeah. Yep. That's Fitz's job. So he heads down to Digstown.
00:24:46
Speaker
And he shows up in the fanciest four-door red pickup truck you've ever seen in your life. And he heads right to a local shit-kicker bar that just so happens to be across the street from a multi-story boxing gym slash fight venue.
00:25:05
Speaker
One local, the young Robbie Guillaume, runs over to the gym to talk to his daddy, John Guillaume, as played by Bruce Dern. who tells him that one day all of Digstown will be his, and then he gives him a 1957 Corvette for his birthday.
00:25:22
Speaker
He's daddy's little boy, but today he's daddy's little man. Yeah. Back in prison, Cain says goodbye to his fellow jailbird, Wolf, played by Randall Tex Cobb, and he promises to check in on his sister and also his dogs.
00:25:42
Speaker
Cain then gets picked up by a beautiful woman in a Corvette who sucks him off as they pull away. Classy. We never find out who this woman is or why this happens.
00:25:53
Speaker
Oh, no, but it's very clear why who she is and why it happens. Who she is is a prostitute. And why it happens is to show up the warden as he pulls away.
00:26:06
Speaker
It's just a big fuck you thing. As he's driving away from the jail. I don't think they ever say she's a prostitute, but it is very clear to me that she is prostitute. Sure, sure. That makes sense.
00:26:18
Speaker
That makes perfect sense that, yeah, he would definitely turn to a sex worker for that. and And I guess if you need a ride home and you're planning on seeing a sex worker, maybe you can get these services combined.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah. Get a nice package deal. You know, like there's no there's no like hidden girlfriend. It's just like, no. no yeah You never see this woman again. Yeah, yeah never.
00:26:41
Speaker
So Kane drives to meet up with one Victor Corsini, who agrees to finance this con with a stipulation that he will kill him if this doesn't work.
00:26:52
Speaker
I just love that Corsini is always just like, yeah, because I think he just wants to kill him. I think he's just looking for an excuse to. That was my read on Corsini. I think, yeah, he's happy either way this player sounds. Yeah, he's he's he's like, either either this guy is dead, or I'm making a lot of money, and frankly, I'll take either one of those two. Oh, yeah.
00:27:14
Speaker
I think so. I think that is the game that Corsini enjoys. Yeah.
00:27:20
Speaker
So Kane heads to the boxing gym to establish himself as an honorable gambler by losing a bet on a fight that Guillaume clearly rigs. Like in the middle of the fight, Guillaume just stands up and gives one of the fighters a thumb down and he knocks the other guy out.
00:27:37
Speaker
And, you know, he's he's he's showing that he runs things in town. He runs Diggs Town. Yeah, he runs Diggs Town. But this allows Kane to pay out and prove that he's he's a man of his word. He is a gambler that you can gamble with. even Even in a rig, he's like, well, if this is how we're going to play it, then this is how we're going to play it.
00:28:01
Speaker
You know, the rules of the game are established with this first bed. I do like that moment. yeah Meanwhile, Fitz is across the street, drunkenly hustling the younger Guillaume out of his Corvette.
00:28:15
Speaker
He follows that up by talking shit about Charles Macon Diggs, the local boxer that the town is named after, who is also still alive. I don't understand the timeline of this town.
00:28:27
Speaker
I don't either.
00:28:29
Speaker
Here's what has happened within this boxer's lifetime, because he is still alive. He has become a boxer so famous that they have named a town after him.
00:28:42
Speaker
And has subsequently, ah at some point in his training, defeated five men in one day.
00:28:51
Speaker
And then he was working his way up to a title fight when his boss poisons him, paralyzing him. Spoiler alert. And now he's in an old folks home and the town thinks of him as a legend.
00:29:05
Speaker
And this town also supports enough of a population to have like 20 boxers. Yeah. and i Can I reframe that a little? Okay, please. Because okay so I have one way that this makes sense to me.
00:29:18
Speaker
It is named Digstown because he is the only like genuinely good thing to come out of this shitville, right? He was their great white hope.
00:29:30
Speaker
He was the guy who was going to make it. He was going to be the heavyweight champion of the world until...
00:29:43
Speaker
Until Guillaume double-crossed everyone, right? That's the formative event of this town, which comes out yes later, is that Guillaume was Diggs' manager who poisoned him before his biggest fight, leaving him brain-damaged because he got beat so badly. He put amyl nitrate in the nose spray, which is a wild concept to me.
00:30:11
Speaker
He gave him poppers. Yeah. Yep. And so he effectively killed the town hero. And instead of actually taking action from everyone in the town and laying it off, he ate all of the action and fixed the fight.
00:30:32
Speaker
So all of the town's money went to Guillaume. And so everything else... that exists in this town is basically at the leisure of this one asshole who owns and runs everything.
00:30:53
Speaker
Right? So this is yeah this is a backwater that is only anything because of Diggs' like persona and chance of going anywhere and anything that currently exists in the town is basically because all of its money was pooled in the the wallet of Charles Guillaume.
00:31:15
Speaker
And he is now, you know, he's got a gym and he's got a movie theater and he's got a, uh, whatever, you know, this shit kicker bar.
00:31:31
Speaker
To me, I feel like this story would... like I don't know why this doesn't take place during the Great Depression. This would feel so much more right if this took place during the Great Depression. That's not bad.
00:31:43
Speaker
i Yeah, I agree with you. yeah I mean, you also do have to allow for the fact that the hero is black and it is functionally integrated instead of the separate racial politics that would come from moving the movie 60 years earlier.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But that you would have to. You have to recast Lou Gossett Jr., basically. Or or yeah, or you could just recast Lou Gossett Jr., but it's a shame because he's so good. Right. Well, that's the point is you can't like the the I think the chemistry between Lou Gossett Jr. and James Woods is excellent in this movie.
00:32:21
Speaker
i You can disagree. I can see on your face that we'll get there. Okay. Yeah, we haven't even gotten to Lou Gossett Jr. yet for some reason. they They really hold him back.
00:32:33
Speaker
ah so to to to to do So Fitz says, who cares if Diggs beat five men in one day? in one day i know a guy that could beat 10 Diggstown men in one day, and his name is Honey Roy Palmer.
00:32:50
Speaker
And then Monsieur Guillon, he hears Fitz disparaging Diggstown and immediately takes him up on his bet. Fitz says he doesn't have that kind of money because obviously this guy wants to raise the stakes.
00:33:06
Speaker
But Cain says that he will back this random gambler that he has never met before that rolled into town two days ago, as he is also just a random gambler that has rolled into town. Isn't that interesting?
00:33:20
Speaker
It's funny. Guillaume agrees. Though I also think part of the reason why that works is that it's easy to be cynical about it and how obvious it seems.
00:33:32
Speaker
But Guillaume is also running what he thinks is a rigged game. Yeah. So he's like, you think you can come into my town and rip me off with this amateur shit? yeah I'll still take your bet. I just beat you in the gym and I'll beat you in this stupid fucking plot too.
00:33:51
Speaker
admittedly, I, I, I, well, I was like, Ooh, look at that coincidence. I was also kind of like, yeah, that's fun. That's a good time. yeah Like he's just sitting there. He doesn't care. Yeah. He's got his feet up on the table. He's like, I'll back him in that bet as the crowd like parts perfectly. it was just like, it's such a nice kind of cinematic moment.
00:34:09
Speaker
Yeah. I'll give it that. Uh, let's see. Fitz doesn't have that kind of money. Yeah. So now what Kane has to do is he has to convince his old friend, Honey Roy Palmer, to fight 10 guys in 24 hours.
00:34:29
Speaker
Right. that's I mean, now if that's that's a very funny reveal to me. Yes. Is that he has set all of this in motion, but including putting his own head in the guillotine with Corsini, which...
00:34:44
Speaker
And he doesn't even have his ringer lined up to agree to this fight. He's basing it all on his own, like putting, you know, you got to bet on yourself first.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah. And and everything comes down to him having the confidence to be able to convince Palmer to come out of retirement to run one last scam.
00:35:08
Speaker
and And he knew that the best way to convince him was to be in hock to Corsini. And I think that's why he went to him first. That's how I read that. Yeah. oh Of course, Roy is ah initially a little reluctant to leave his nice wife in their not so nice house.
00:35:28
Speaker
I love the detail of hearing the highway really close because I read a book about them putting in the highway system in the United States. And like people really complained a lot about the noise.
00:35:39
Speaker
The highway was like right at the level of the houses and it was hard to do anything. And I was just like, they really knew their stuff with this one. So eventually Roy agrees to help out the next day.
00:35:53
Speaker
roy is training in an old barn. One of the few pieces of land Guillaume did not buy in Diggstown. And in there, there's a boxing ring that used to be Diggs is boxing ring.
00:36:04
Speaker
And Roy asks a farmer about Diggs. I heard he's a vegetable now, Roy says. And the farmer confirms that, yes, he is a vegetable now. That afternoon, Gabe heads out to say hi to Wolf's dogs like he said he would.
00:36:20
Speaker
And then he runs into Wolf's sister, Emily, played by Heather Graham, who says that she knows Cain is up to something. He asked her to keep her suspicions to herself before running off to meet with Guillaume to negotiate the finer details of their bet.
00:36:39
Speaker
The most salient parts of their negotiation, and this was a cool scene, this little sit-down scene. I'll give it that. The salient parts are that Kane wanted specifically for it to be a 24-hour day to beat the 10 challengers, and Guillaume wants anybody from the county to qualify as a Digstown man.
00:37:01
Speaker
Maybe Digstown is the county seat. Who can say? yeah And that, I think, is where you get the midnight stings. Right. Because the bat runs from midnight to midnight. now Right. That makes sense. Yeah.
00:37:19
Speaker
And so they both agree.
00:37:22
Speaker
Then we had the rare boxing training montage that is not particularly good.
00:37:31
Speaker
it's shit It's not good or bad, I suppose. no It was serviceable. yeah You know, it certainly is a montage. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the the only really salient part of the montage is that unlike unlike the streets of Philadelphia, ah Honey Roy Palmer's running and sweating and whatever. takes him past ah the digs facility where he sees digs out on the balcony, like immobile every day in his wheelchair with like a, an aid at his side is so he, so every day he runs and sees the, you know, the, the guillons plotting, you know, as a kind of motivational tool.
00:38:24
Speaker
It was also one of the most rundown buildings I've ever seen from the outside. And so it had like a feeling of it being like the old man in the haunted house. It's like it's digs. It's like, but that's supposed to be an actual facility that is a functioning one that other people could also attend. That was really weird. gardens Yeah. It's weird.
00:38:45
Speaker
Poor fella. We are old fighters deserve better. They sure do.
00:38:51
Speaker
So meanwhile, Guillaume finalizes his lineup of fighters while duck hunting from the front seat of a parked convertible. Nice touch. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
He's a man that enjoys the finer things. A local named Corny, but is affectionately referred to, I think, as Rusty?
00:39:14
Speaker
Rumby? I think it was Rusty. I don't remember for sure. I got to make sure. Because I love that. It's Corny Buster Robbins. Buster. That's His name is... How can your name be Corny and you still get a nickname?
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah. They got... Corny is your government name? Come on, man. So... ah but but but but but but So yeah, Corny brings him some bad intel on Ray's training regimen. You know, ah Gabe told him to give him some bad information and it leaves Guillaume feeling very confident.
00:39:54
Speaker
Later, when Roy is training with Gabe, ah you know, in the ring and asks him what he knows about what happened to Diggs. Gabe reluctantly admits that he heard from Wolf that Guillaume dosed him with poppers in the middle of a fight since Diggs refused to take a dive.
00:40:13
Speaker
Guillaume made his fortune on that bet, and whereas most of the town lost its money betting on Diggs. And Diggs himself wound up in a persistent vegetative state.
00:40:26
Speaker
Next thing we know, Emily's in the movie again. Nice to see Emily. Mm-hmm. oh Her brother Wolf's dead body is found nude in a crate at the train station.
00:40:37
Speaker
Pretty harsh moment.
00:40:40
Speaker
Shocking. Yeah. Gabe tells her that this was probably to keep him from spilling the beans about Guillaume disabling digs. Now it's personal.
00:40:53
Speaker
Emily wants in on the con. Yeah. Luckily, Gabe has a very important job for her. to go to her job at the bank and find out how much money Guillaume has.
00:41:04
Speaker
Wild stuff. Yep. And she does it's also I think it's also clear at this point that fundamental to the con was that...
00:41:17
Speaker
That Wolf was supposed to be a guy that was going to take a dive against Honey Roy Palmer. Because the beginning the movie opens with him in a prison fight.
00:41:29
Speaker
prison fight yeah He's losing it, but he is like obviously a seasoned fighter. And so he is supposed to be like a Digstown guy who Guillaume puts in the ring only to have only to get double-crossed.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, that makes some sense. Layers and layers. Yeah, yeah there's ah it's a chess match between these two con men, I think.
00:41:59
Speaker
So... Emily finds out that Guillaume has about three quarters of a million dollars. Then she doesn't really do anything else for the rest of the movie.
00:42:10
Speaker
Meanwhile, Fitz pays five grand to two boxing brothers, Slim and Ham. It's paying them to take a dive in their fights against Roy. They agree.
00:42:22
Speaker
Ham's like, I don't know. Slim's like, yeah, the money's going to be great. They take the money. Finally, it's the big day. In their respective locker rooms, both gamblers try to motivate their fighters.
00:42:34
Speaker
And Guillaume, he lays out his strategy. He wants the first two fighters to go for his eyes and cut him. He wants the third man to work his body. And then once he's blind and out of breath, the rest can sort of clean up from there.
00:42:47
Speaker
And I think he actually mentions bashing the brain out of his skull. Yes. He then invites his fighters into a prayer circle and says, Dear Lord, please give us the strength to tear this man limb to limb, which I thought was a funny moment. That's pretty good. That was a good gag.
00:43:07
Speaker
And then the clock strikes 12.01 a.m. The day starts and so do the fights. The first fight, Roy flattens the guy before he can get that cut above the eye he was supposed to.
00:43:20
Speaker
The second fight is against Slim, and Slim takes a dive, albeit unconvincingly. Yeah, he just runs away. He runs away the whole time. He doesn't throw any punches, even to the point where Lou Gossett Jr. is begging him to make it look real in a clinch.
00:43:38
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and he just he just doesn't know how to do it. It's not in his skill set, unfortunately. No, no. ah The third fight, Roy's opponent has ah powerful, fast-acting laxatives put in his water bottle.
00:43:53
Speaker
And after a couple of hits to the bread maker, the guy shits his pants and runs out of the ring. Yeah. The fourth fight is against a high school kid played by Jim Caviezel, who calls Roy the N-word and then gets knocked the fuck out for his trouble.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yeah. I did not know that was Jim Caviezel. I never that. Yeah, it was little baby Jim Caviezel. Well, I like that scene even more now. Yeah. ah The next fighter, ah let's see.
00:44:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah and then it's on fighter number five.
00:44:27
Speaker
Fighter number five is Slim's brother, Ham. Gion, before the fight, bring Ham was in the first half? I don't think so. Yeah, Ham was the last one of the first half.
00:44:37
Speaker
He definitely is. Oh, okay. Because didn't they take Ham aside before That's what's happening right now. Oh, gotcha. ah Yes, Guillaume does take him aside to the locker room for a quick chat.
00:44:53
Speaker
He tells him that he found the 5K that he and his brother took. And also his brother is now hanging from a noose at gunpoint. Yeah. Guillaume says that if Ham does not beat Roy, then Slim dies.
00:45:11
Speaker
So fight number five starts and Ham comes out swinging. Obviously, Roy is a little confused. These two brothers clearly don't know how to take a dive. But after coming that after overcoming this initial confusion, Roy beats him too.
00:45:28
Speaker
As soon as Ham hears the 10 count, he runs backstage to find his brother swinging from the ceiling. He has been lynched. Yeah, this is pretty rough.
00:45:39
Speaker
yeah This was very intense. Real intense. Very surprising. It felt like it totally shouldn't be in this film, frankly. Yeah. It's like they they literally killed him just to move the plot in a very weird way. Because it yeah course this is what I mean when I'm like, I could see why it failed.
00:45:59
Speaker
I think, you know, this is like an absolute tonal boomerang. That's insane because there's like now in the middle of this goofy boxing fight, there's real pathos, right? Ham. Ham is freaking out because his brother is dead.
00:46:15
Speaker
Guillaume is like flaunting it by showing the the ginned up suicide note about him being really sad about not getting the knockout bonus or whatever. And it's super grotesque.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yeah. I would also argue that it's an attempt at pathos. I don't think it succeeds at generating it. Yeah. No, but I mean, yeah I think that's right, but it fucks the vibe of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. you know It really like hits you like a baseball bat in the chest. like Yeah.
00:46:50
Speaker
Yeah. Really harsh imagery, really weird context to be putting it in with just, yeah, this goofy kind of sports con film going on. Mm hmm.
00:47:02
Speaker
But anyway, they're halfway through the fights and the lynching has kind of put a damper on things. So they agree now is a good time to take a break. And they'll pick this up the next night.
00:47:16
Speaker
During the day, the stakes get raised, you know, and also at any given point and any given conversation, you know, James Woods will be like, let's make it a hundred thousand. You know, he's luring him in for more and more.
00:47:30
Speaker
He's getting his hooks in. But the stakes get raised in other ways, too. First of all, Paolo, Corsini's second-in-command, threatens Gabe and, you know, messes him up a little bit.
00:47:44
Speaker
And then Guillaume has learned that ah local boy, corny Buster Robbins, has been working for Gabe and has him beaten and stuffed into a locker.
00:47:55
Speaker
I didn't understand who that was. He was also inmate. That was corny Buster Robbins. Buster, the guy who gave the false... No, no, I mean, now that we say it, but what do you mean at the moment? Because what happens is like Guillaume gets a fax and like hits it because he sees this face.
00:48:11
Speaker
And then the next shot is a white is a guy like falling out of the locker with like a white thing tied around his mouth. And I was just like, so that's the guy from the paper. But who's the guy? Now that you say it's Buster Corny or Corny Buster, whatever, it all makes sense to me. But at the time, I was just like, oh, it's a new character that they have for some reason and stuffed in a locker. And I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about this sudden new person.
00:48:36
Speaker
And even now that I know it's a buster, it's also just like, sure. Yeah, I guess they got corny Buster. Yeah. It's more about how, you know, Guillaume is very rough with. Yeah. No, I mean, i I mean, it's a little it's a little odd that Slim is dead and Buster is not. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's racial politics are not the greatest.
00:48:59
Speaker
No. and Yeah. it's ah And it's a shame that Guillaume has the monopoly on violence. You know, yes they never they never take one of his. Yeah. I guess except in the ring.
00:49:11
Speaker
Which is not quite the same. No, because they're sort of agreeing to it when you step in there. Yeah. So at 7 p.m., the fights start again. Guillaume's six-fighter is a guy named Sonny who fights in jean shorts while smoking a cigar, and Roy puts him down with one punch.
00:49:29
Speaker
He's very, like, When I saw the guy in the jeans after everything that happened, I wrote, I hope he hits him once and he's down. And then that's exactly what happened. And I was just like, thank Christ.
00:49:42
Speaker
i I got to say, putting Ham five and Sonny six is when you don't know that Ham is on the take, a very disappointing coaching decision.
00:49:58
Speaker
like what mean he found a decent break around Like, what are you getting out of Sonny if ham goes down? I guess that's fair. Yeah.
00:50:10
Speaker
Sonny is sort of just cannon fodder at this point. He clearly doesn't have the cardio. He's not taking this seriously. Glass jaw. ah So. Backstage, Guillaume tells his son, Robbie, to drop out of the fight before he even gets in the ring, which Robbie clearly finds very insulting.
00:50:30
Speaker
But he does it anyway because he doesn't want to let down his is pappy. He also negotiates headgear for his son. Another yeah further humiliation.
00:50:41
Speaker
And for Jim Caviezel. Yeah, because they're both kids. yeah Now, ah fight number eight is against a local lunkhead from the bar.
00:50:53
Speaker
And this guy hits Roy in the nuts. And Roy responds by knocking him out.
00:50:59
Speaker
Fight number nine is a very big guy named Tank. Takes two rounds, but Roy eventually knocks him out too. None of these go to the judges. He is knocking dudes out. He's got some heavy hands.
00:51:15
Speaker
So for fight number 10, Guillaume has brought in a ringer named Hammerhead Hagen. He was the only man to beat Roy back in his professional days. Gabe accuses Gion of breaking the rules of their bet, but Gion explains that it's all kosher because he brought Hammerhead into town before they made that agreement, after he knew that they were going to make an agreement that in that little window.
00:51:42
Speaker
You know, this is what he was doing while Kane was off tracking down Roy. He was tracking down a guy to beat Roy. And so then the fight starts.
00:51:56
Speaker
Hammerhead immediately starts beating the shit out of Roy. But then ah Roy, he looks out of the crowd and he sees Diggs is out there. He's watching the fight.
00:52:07
Speaker
Old man Diggs. And Diggs, who's completely canatonic, manages to wiggle his pinky. And Roy says, I'm going to do this one for Diggs.
00:52:19
Speaker
And Gabe tries to throw in the towel. And ah Roy just grabs the towel out of the air and throws it back at him. And he gets back in there and he rallies and he defeats Hammerhead Hagen.
00:52:33
Speaker
It's a great moment.
00:52:36
Speaker
And they celebrate their victory until... Until... Gion has one more trick up his sleeve. Mahahaha!
00:52:48
Speaker
ah Since his son never entered the ring, that fight didn't count. he has a one more fighter, Minoso Torres, the underground fighting champ from the same prison Gabe was in at the beginning of the movie. He was Chekhov's underground fighter. That's right.
00:53:10
Speaker
And they and it was kind of i He was very, very ignored. But at the beginning of the movie, he beats the hell out of the wolf in the prison yeah fight.
00:53:23
Speaker
Like that is the scene opens with Tex Cobb getting the shit kicked out of him by ah this heavily tattooed a Latino man who is big guy. Yeah.
00:53:39
Speaker
Yeah. yeah ah But of course, we found out that that fight was, you know, that Wolf was on the take. It would make sense that Gabe would be working both sides of a fight, especially if he was using it to orchestrate and escape. Because we find out that Gabe does indeed fix fights with Minoso. And he has fixed this fight with Minoso. Boom. And he gives the same thumbs down that Guillaume gave at the beginning of the movie as like an in your face. And Guillaume was like,
00:54:10
Speaker
Oh, no. He really feels like an idiot. Sure does. ah Guillaume says, you beat me fair and square, which is a very funny way to describe what has happened. Yeah. Honor a among thieves. Yeah. Within the context of what they're both trying to do. It is accurate.
00:54:33
Speaker
ah But then he rushes off to grab a cop's gun and is about to start shooting when his son first is like, hey, don't shoot everybody. And then Roy grabs him and lets Ham knock him out with one punch. So Ham at least gets to punch the man that had his brother killed. That's got to at least feel good. Probably broke his jaw.
00:54:53
Speaker
He was an old guy. That'll probably never heal. ah Then Gabe and Roy. He can't even afford health care anymore. No, no, he's lost everything. And I imagine Corsini is going have a thing to say to But yeah Gabe and Roy share a laugh in the stands of the ah empty boxing arena.
00:55:15
Speaker
And then the credits roll. The end. yep We made it. We did it. So, final thoughts. Five-star ratings on our unique watchability and weirdness scale.
00:55:29
Speaker
Greg, what do you give this for watchability and weirdness? Okay, so my thoughts on this film is that it's trying to be too many films. Earlier I was talking about how like sometimes it's like a sports comedy, sometimes it's con man drama sport. It's like you can try to label this as a drama, you can try to label it as a comedy, you can label it as a sports film, you can label it as a con man film.
00:55:51
Speaker
But one of the things by doing all those things is it misses some of the beats that you would typically have in some of these movies. ah So the questions that I have is like, did Did Gabriel Kane have any idea that this man owned the entire town and he's trying to win back the property for everyone? Because it seems like kind of in the end that's what he's doing, but I don't think he did.
00:56:13
Speaker
And if that was his intention, that was never made clear, so it just sounds like he stumbled into becoming Robin Hood kind of? Yeah. if It feels like they cut a lot from the book. Yeah. And then also there was a while there i was like, God, is he going to kiss Heather Graham? Because I don't see a lot of chemistry here. But luckily they don't.
00:56:31
Speaker
So thank God there was no romance angle in this. But one of the things about the whole like man owns the town scenario is you have to set up how awful that man is right from the jump.
00:56:46
Speaker
And so like Roadhouse is a movie I'm going to use as an example, but at the same time, it's also still not a great example because one of the things I love about Roadhouse is it becomes far too violent by the end and because you're just like, why did we get to this point?
00:56:58
Speaker
ah And so I think this has some more parts like that. So for me, I thought this was kind of a fun little kind of whatever. I would say that it's pretty watchable, but for me, not my thing, but I could see how someone would like it. But then the lynching happened and I really lost a lot of faith and fun in this film and kind of just wanted it to be over because it felt like it went wrong.
00:57:26
Speaker
Like, we can show him being a racist without having to do any lynching, which they kind of did a little bit, but not enough to establish this imagery. I don't think they handled it with enough...
00:57:39
Speaker
whatever you need, there's a certain amount of gravitas and just like nuance and experience and things you have to bring to that kind of a statement. And they're just kind of like, yeah, he lynch people anyway. It's like, no, no, that's not an anyway. Like that, that's a much bigger issue than just like, here's a little beat in a fun comedy. It's like, this is a huge, huge thing that sits really weird for me at this point.
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah. So for watchability, I'm probably going to go like a one, I think. I think it could be higher if it didn't have that and it took a little more time trying to figure out what kind of movie it was.
00:58:16
Speaker
But at the same time, if it didn't have that scene or if they could just establish him being bad or evil in some other way. I think it could be pretty watchable, but that really just sticks out like a sore thumb to me.
00:58:32
Speaker
And I also didn't find it very weird, so I'm just going to half a star. Okay, fair enough. I gave this one two stars for watchability.
00:58:43
Speaker
ah You know, I thought it was understandable enough, but I think... it was mostly just not particularly interesting. I don't think a lot of interesting choices were made. I think all these characters kind of underwritten.
00:58:56
Speaker
I think con movie like this really relies on the charm of its lead. And I've seen James Woods be more charming than this. Yeah. He was not very compelling in this movie.
00:59:08
Speaker
And from there, yeah it was just sort of a collapsing house of cards. You know, that that's a load bearing failure for a con movie. ah For weirdness, I gave it two stars in that it is weird to have a con movie based on such a stupid con.
00:59:25
Speaker
Their plan revolved around them having a 48-year-old man beat at least six boxers in a 24-hour period. That's insane.
00:59:36
Speaker
Yeah. It also, right was the entire time was like, what are they trying to achieve? Because it just doesn't seem like a solid con. I think, and this is you know, this is me putting on my lawyer hat to defend this film that I like very much. No, no, tough of year. I defend the stupidity of the con by placing it in, i think, the context that the book places it in. which is to say that there are a bunch of boxers in this town, but they kind of all suck shit.
01:00:10
Speaker
Like there isn't a good one among them. They are wannabe nobodies and their only glory took amyl nitrate in the third round of its title fight, right? And so there is no real competition.
01:00:26
Speaker
And the competition is Honey Roy Palmer was a guy who was at some point a contender, though not good enough to like reach the upper echelon because Hammerhead.
01:00:41
Speaker
beat him twice and effectively ended his legitimate boxing career. And then the rest of his life was money fights like this, where he goes to podunk towns and knocks out the rubes who thinks that, who think that they're at all capable of hanging. You know, it's like, it's like if, uh, it's like if, um,
01:01:08
Speaker
Shohei Otani retired to go win home run derbies in towns around the country. Yeah, to just go to different softball leagues. Like people who didn't know, you know, not Shohei Otani, but some guy who tapped out AAA, like tours the country ripping up beer league softball or whatever. And so that's who he is. His whole job is a con beating these suckers who don't know how useless they are.
01:01:41
Speaker
right yeah so I could see that in there, but I feel like the movie didn't show me. 100%. No, I'm not disagreeing with that. i'm I'm contextualizing it in where I kind of figure the book was a little richer.
01:01:57
Speaker
Have you read the book? No. No, okay I assume that it sets the milieu better. Sure. This is a movie where you can color in the corners. Yeah. But it asking you to do that. Yeah, yeah. It's definitely left some space empty.
01:02:11
Speaker
And so I enjoy it despite what I see some very obvious flaws. Number one, they kill off Wolf and that, you know, is just like, okay. Like it seems a bit much and then they kill off slim and that's like way over the top for what's necessary. um You know, especially since they all, they don't then kill off poster, you know, like, I guess they couldn't think of a plausible suicide. I don't know. That said, I still give it a really high rating, even though I know why ah people wouldn't.
01:02:51
Speaker
Right. Like I still could, if I sat down right now, I would watch it again. And so I give it four on watchability because it hits, i mean, it hits my sort of dumb, like my dumb nerves where I don't spend too much time. thinking about like all of the failures and I do take the sort of really clanging moments as a way of understanding why it definitely doesn't appeal and to anyone else. um and weirdness, it depends on how you define weird. no But to me, I would have defined the weird as higher because the tone And intent seems to be all over the place. Like, I figure this movie got rewritten and recut 800 times. That would make some sense. You know, like, I don't know that it did, but like.
01:03:46
Speaker
The title change is a bad sign. Yeah. yeah Heather Graham totally wasted. i think that they really did have good rapport. Lou Gossett and James Woods and even Oliver Platt, I thought, like really showed like a a lot of charisma in a very, very small role compared to what it could have been. You know where he's gallivanting around the bar fake drunk because he's not actually drunk.
01:04:16
Speaker
Right. He's taking mysterious pills that prevent the intoxication, but not the hangover, which is a hilarious little detail. Yeah. um And yeah, so the next day he's a total wreck, but he was able to like run. ah he was able to hustle everyone in pool ah while he was theoretically hammered by just pretending to be drunk.
01:04:42
Speaker
um Yeah. And so I don't know. that There's just a lot that I really liked about the movie. Yeah. you know, what is the name of the guy who plays Guillaume? He was Bruce Stern, right? Bruce Stern. Yeah. Yeah. So like they got people who can act, you know, yeah let them choose scenery and stuff. And I don't know.
01:05:04
Speaker
I think the problem that I had was that I kept on butting into the movie that I wanted it to be. see this cast. I see this premise. I'm like, this could be really good. Yeah. Instead, it's like ah airport novel good. Yeah. you know Yeah.
01:05:20
Speaker
i guess So ah I felt like it was very bizarre that this man took literally everyone's property in town and seems to run it. And everyone's pretty cool with him generally.
01:05:31
Speaker
yeah They don't have much of a choice. I don't usually I don't usually i mean, look at America, Greg. Yeah. My thing is, why isn't it sort of entirely understood that he. Yeah, that's what I mean, is it seems like that be that's wrong. Once again, look at America. Yeah, if they're killing Wolf so that he doesn't, because they're afraid that he knows the truth, right? And it's unclear how Wolf does know the truth in a provable way.
01:06:07
Speaker
i But if they're killing Wolf because he knows, everyone else, you would think, has to suspect Right. That the guy ended up with everything the next day. yeah I also think to like your point, I don't know what it's like in the book. Like, I don't know if he's Robin Hood in the book. Right. I don't think he's Robin Hood.
01:06:28
Speaker
In the movie, like the movie, they up the stakes, but Corsini's still backing him. And I guess is Corsini still backing him just because he has to throw good money after bad?
01:06:45
Speaker
You know, you like, is Corsini now like, it's like, what is the old saw? if if i if i owe you ah If I owe you $1,000, that's my problem. If I owe you a million dollars, it's your problem, right? And so now, like, he now that he has raised the stakes in a way that fucks Corsini, Corsini kind of has to have his back.
01:07:12
Speaker
You know, even though he's going to take these additional spoils and distribute them to the rest of the town. I don't know. That's very unclear. I'm imagining him maybe selling the land back at a low price. Yeah. I don't know. no I don't want to run a fiefdom. I just want some fast cash. How about you give me what you can afford and I can move on? Yeah. It's a little unclear how good a person he is or whether he's just trying to stick it to Guillaume.
01:07:41
Speaker
Yeah. i'm tall But i I love a movie that has problems. I admit that. That's fair. Speaking of we don't know how good a person he is, let's move on a brand new segment, o The Actor Spotlight.
01:07:58
Speaker
Oh, boy. Yeah.
01:08:12
Speaker
Hey, hey, you're a good actor, but a bad person must be something better than being Me and my co-hosts, we put it all together in this next segment.
01:08:36
Speaker
Actor Spotlight.
01:08:44
Speaker
That's right. It's our new segment, Actor Spotlight. This week, we're talking about James Woods. So James Woods is a fantastic actor. He's turned in Oscar-nominated performances in Salvador and Ghosts of Mississippi.
01:09:00
Speaker
Listers might also know him from Videodrome, The Virgin Suicides, Disney's Hercules, or probably more likely with our audience, John Carpenter's Vampires. Hmm.
01:09:12
Speaker
What you should also know about James Woods is that he is allegedly kind of a garbage person. He's also known to be quite litigious when it comes to slander, defamation, and libel. Charles, do you have any tips for me as a lawyer before I proceed through this segment?
01:09:27
Speaker
Just stick with the allegedly's. All right. Anything that is an obvious opinion. For instance, you don't have to say allegedly he's an asshole. You can say, i believe him to be an asshole based on everything I've heard about him. But do not say that you know he does cocaine.
01:09:50
Speaker
No, that is who that is literally what he sued someone for and pursued his state after his untimely death. Yes, I have got.
01:10:01
Speaker
Yes. Well, first of all, there's a lot of reasons why one might think he was a garbage person. Relevant to our discussion, he did date Heather Graham during the production of Digstown, despite the fact that he was 45 and she was 22. Okay. oh You know,
01:10:19
Speaker
now I can't watch the movie again. Yeah. You're like, oh, man, get away from him, Heather Graham. Get out of there. You were on Twin Peaks. Come on.
01:10:31
Speaker
Uh, now knowing that he has a predilection for women less than half his age, it's no surprise to learn that James Woods is also a conservative and vocal supporter of Donald Trump.
01:10:45
Speaker
I wouldn't even really bring it up, but in 2022, the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public listed him as the number one high-profile account who had highly retweeted tweets in several distinct misinformation stories, specifically among stories that functioned to sow doubt in election procedures or election results. Sure.
01:11:12
Speaker
Their metrics put him in front of names like Jack Basobiec, Cat Turd 2, Praying Medic, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk RIP, and Rudy Giuliani.
01:11:23
Speaker
He was the number one sower of misinformation on Twitter during that period.
01:11:30
Speaker
But the main story I wanted to tell about Woods was also Twitter related. In July 2015, he sued an anonymous Twitter user named Abe List for a tweet saying that Woods was a cocaine addict.
01:11:44
Speaker
After a year of trying to find the identity of the user Abe List and Abe List countering with an anti-slap motion, if I'm using that terminology right. who You are. Yeah.
01:11:57
Speaker
Yes, Abe List's attorney revealed that they had, at some point during these proceedings, died. so after that, Woods settled out of court in exchange for a letter from the attorney saying that before he died, Abe b List regretted that he had posted that James Woods was a cocaine addict and also regretted any damage that he might have done to his career.
01:12:20
Speaker
I did not realize that settled in that way. I thought it was, like, much more slash and burn against his... His widow. um That is how I recalled it. I do not state that as fact.
01:12:33
Speaker
I am glad to be corrected, James Woods. um Yeah, I'm sure that it was not a he didn't seem like he was holding back in this lawsuit initially. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like ah he was just one of those guys like Ron Silver, I guess, who like hit the psycho switch ah when Obama got elected um and their politics, which it's very hard to imagine someone as conservative as James Woods being the lead in Mississippi Burning. Yeah.
01:13:10
Speaker
like it just it boggles my mind but all of them got like completely you know him the two of them dennis miller like a bunch of people went you know like 9 11 was like getting hit in the back of the head with a hammer and it just it changed their views on important foreign policy things and then made them uh, drift towards everything that the people who believed fucked up foreign policy stuff also believed. They just, yeah you know, they bought, they bought the value pack.
01:13:48
Speaker
Yeah. Once, once that sort of stuff gets its toehold in you, it just more just starts creeping in. And all of a sudden you look around at all your friends, you're like, okay, I'm at Rob Schneider's party. I guess that's what's up. Yeah.
01:14:04
Speaker
Well, do you guys want to play a game? yeah Sure. right, we're going to play a little This Guy Played That Guy.
01:14:19
Speaker
This guy played that guy. Yeah, this guy played that guy. This guy played that guy. a fair...
01:14:38
Speaker
That's right. We're playing this guy, play that guy. We're doing it with the films of Mr. Lou Gossett Jr. Yes. so what I'm going to I'm going to give you a title of a film and a brief plot description and the names of three characters that appear within the film.
01:14:54
Speaker
and I want you to tell me which one was played by Lou Gossett Jr. This is a buzz in game. You'll buzz in by saying your own name. And if you get it wrong, your opponent will have the chance to steal.
01:15:05
Speaker
Is everybody ready? Yeah. Yes. Okay, question number one. Hands on buzzers. Undercover grandpa. Nice. When the girl he likes goes missing, Jake enlists the help of his grandpa and grandpa's former special ops buddies.
01:15:25
Speaker
Did Lou Gossett Jr. play wolf, rabbi, or mother?
01:15:34
Speaker
Uh, Greg. Yeah. ah Charles? I think he played mother.
01:15:41
Speaker
That's correct. You're on the board.
01:15:45
Speaker
Question number two. Very similar, this one. Pride of Lions. Four retired ex-military personnel and another retiree attempt the unthinkable and dust off their old uniforms for one last explosive mission to rescue their grandchildren.
01:16:04
Speaker
Hmm. Did Lou Gossett Jr. play Lou Jones, Vic Skinner, or Razak? Greg.
01:16:17
Speaker
Greg? Vic Skinner.
01:16:22
Speaker
No, I'm sorry he didn't play Vic Skinner. I think he played Lou Jones. You're correct. Question number three. Solar attack. A little too much grease on Razak there.
01:16:36
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I was selling him a little too hard.
01:16:41
Speaker
Question number three, solar attack. When the sun's increasing expulsions of plasma threaten to ignite the methane in our atmosphere, international tensions rise while scientists race for a solution.
01:16:56
Speaker
To save their grandchildren. Did Gossett Jr. play Admiral Lawrence, President Ryan Gordon, or Brad Stamp?
01:17:10
Speaker
Greg. Greg? Admiral Lawrence?
01:17:15
Speaker
No, I'm sorry. Man. Wow. i think I think this seems like a good presidential role for Lou. Absolutely correct, Charles. You are on a roll. Yeah.
01:17:30
Speaker
Question number four. Did you bring in a ringer, Chris? Is that what this is? He was in the county. All right. Fair juice.
01:17:41
Speaker
The Fuzz Brothers. Two black police officers who are brothers battle crime in a rundown part of L.A. Okay. Did Lou Gossett Jr. play Luther Fuzz, Francis Fuzz, or Flowers? Okay.
01:18:00
Speaker
Charles. Charles? Luther Fuzz.
01:18:07
Speaker
No, he wasn't Luther Fuzz. What a great name, though. Yeah, I'm going to Francis Fuzz. You're on the board, Greg. I figured it was going to be, i figured, I thought once I got it wrong, it was going to be flowers.
01:18:22
Speaker
No, I mean, admittedly, was torn. And that both fuzzes were made up. yeah All these names are real characters within the film. That much I will promise you. Oh, interesting. Okay.
01:18:36
Speaker
Question number five. Ray Alexander, a menu for murder. San Francisco Cafe owner Ray Alexander moonlights as a detective.
01:18:48
Speaker
His new case has him looking into the murder of a judge. Did Lou Gossett Jr. play Ray Alexander, Frank Darnell, or Uncle Phil?
01:19:03
Speaker
Charles. Charles? I feel like this was his movie. I'm going with Ray Alexander. You're correct. He had a series of TV movies where he played Ray Alexander.
01:19:15
Speaker
no
01:19:19
Speaker
Iron Eagle, On the Attack. fighter pilot Doug Masters teaches at his flight school for teens in trouble with the law.
01:19:30
Speaker
Boy. In a number of... I've read that so strangely. No, just also the ah the idea, like, we've got to keep these kids out of trouble with crime, so let's teach them how to fly planes. it's So it's a jump.
01:19:41
Speaker
It's a real interesting technique. I hope it pays off. We don't have money. We canceled the midnight basketball program, but we have an F1 sitting around. That's the wonderful thing about our you know ah military surplus that we've got. yeah That's right.
01:19:58
Speaker
So, ah in an emergency landing on a deserted Air Force base, the kids uncover a plot to wage chemical warfare. Did Lou Gossett Jr. play Doug Masters, Chappie Sinclair, or Peter Kane?
01:20:15
Speaker
Charles. Charles. He played whoever was running the flight school, right? Masters? Doug Masters? Yeah.
01:20:27
Speaker
No, I'm sorry. He didn't play Doug Masters. Can I get the other two again? Chappie Sinclair or Peter Cain? Peter Cain.
01:20:38
Speaker
Sorry, he was Chappie Sinclair in the Iron Eagle series of films. I have seen at least two of those and somehow I could not get that. Well, maybe you'll get this next one. Question number seven. Y2K.
01:20:55
Speaker
A missing nuclear missile is hidden deep in the jungle, and now the American military must race to stop it before it's triggered by the Millennium Bug. who Did Lugasa Jr. play General Seward, Gumball, or Morgan?
01:21:14
Speaker
Greg. Greg? You know what I'm picking. It's Gumball.
01:21:21
Speaker
I'm sorry, Greg. He wasn't gumball. Listen, and I was going to pick it no matter what. Yeah, I think you got at least say it out loud, but I'm betting he was a general. He played Morgan in that one. oh yeah I can't believe he played someone without a last name.
01:21:38
Speaker
Yeah, and without a rank. Yeah, it's weird. Question number eight. Delgo. An adventurous but naive teenager must rally his group of friends to protect their world from conflict between the Lachni and Norin people in this animated fantasy. And they're all elves or something.
01:22:02
Speaker
it's sex so I was like, this is an animated movie, right? Yes. Did Lou Gossett Jr. play Bogardus, King Zahn, or Spig Charles.
01:22:19
Speaker
Charles? I'm leaning away from always making him the the guy. I'm going to say Bogardus.
01:22:29
Speaker
No, sorry. Of course, Val Kilmer was Bogardus. Oh, Val. No. Greg. Was it was it Stig? Spig? it Spig.
01:22:43
Speaker
No, it was not Spig. Had to try. was King Zahn. King Zahn. I just wanted to say Spig, even though I didn't say it correctly the first time. You got there.
01:22:55
Speaker
ah The Miracle of Tony Davis. Oh, I like that title.
01:23:03
Speaker
Tony Davis was shot five times and died for 30 minutes. While he's dead, he meets God, and God says, it's not your time.
01:23:15
Speaker
Did Lou Gossett Jr. play God, Tony Davis, or Detective Smith? Greg. Charles?
01:23:27
Speaker
I think he played the detective. Yeah. Oh. No, I'm sorry. Strong guess. Greg, what do you think? God. He played God. yeah You go out with a bang, Greg, but that wasn't enough to come back. Charles, you're the big winner. Congratulations. Thank you so much.
01:23:48
Speaker
Guess what? It's time for the Batty Awards.
01:23:58
Speaker
Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Now you're on asshole with the Batty Awards.
01:24:14
Speaker
Congratulations to all the nominees.
01:24:20
Speaker
That's right. Congratulations to all our nominees. It's the Batty Awards. The awards that we give out. Greg, do you have a Batty Award? I do. I have an
Noteworthy Mentions and References
01:24:30
Speaker
honorable mention. i i hesitate to say because i hope no one else had this. But at one point, Bruce Dern is giving a speech and he mentions Tidwell's goat. That's not anything.
01:24:39
Speaker
I looked that up. that's not that's That's a reference to nothing. People online are like, tit well Tidwell, Tidwell. Don't know what that's about. But my actual award is going to go to the referee.
01:24:51
Speaker
played by, ah I'm probably not pronouncing this correctly, so I do apologize, but Benny Urquides, who yeah who, and like I saw him and it was immediately just like, you're the assassin in Gross Point Blank. He plays Felix Lapubelle.
01:25:10
Speaker
in gross point blank and it turns out that that is because he is actually a stunt guy he had a whole career martial arts and various types of fighting and then eventually retired to do film work for stunts and became an actor in it he acted in raging cajun which i know you and i have watched together chris yeah um He was also he was in in so many things. like I was shocked when I realized that this guy's had a pretty strong career.
01:25:38
Speaker
ah And it was just nice to... like To just see him out there in the ring doing I was counting and I realized that possibly he does that because he can help with the fights, help with the stunts. don't know That's hearsay on my part. I admit that, but it makes sense to me. he was He was the fight choreographer in this as well yeah because I looked him up too. Yeah, it makes sense that you probably wouldn't be bad to have that guy in the ring if you could to help. And he's there and he does. he Every time I've seen a ma him act, I'm always just like, yeah, he's doing, he's good.
01:26:08
Speaker
So shout out to you, Benny or Katie's. Shout out to you. I'm going to, first of all, Anna gave me a batty award that they wanted me to hand out. And this to our first ever inductee to the four timers club. And we missed every previous instance. Oh, we have someone who has been in four of our movies, fully almost 4% of the films we've covered. Uh, James Newton Howard, the composer who also did the score for a lady in the water.
01:26:40
Speaker
The Devil's Advocate. Okay. And Picture Perfect. Wow. This is a quadruple, quadruple threat of films. Of a four mildly forgettable Hollywood films from the That's right. That's right.
01:26:57
Speaker
yeah ah But my Batty Award is going to go to Wayne A. Finkelman, the costume designer, who I think made the most interesting choices in the film when they were selecting James Woods' shirts. Yeah. And some really great textiles on James Woods' shirts. Yeah.
01:27:15
Speaker
Charles, do you have a Batty Award? Anything you want to call out? Okay, what ah how are we defining this? I'm not sure I quite understand the category. Is there... Well, just any little moment, any little detail that didn't come up organically, but something that you just wanted to say, hey, i like this thing. i think it should get a little out your work. Okay. Then that's that. I did that is how I understood it before. I was like, wait, am I supposed to identify a small character in another? OK, no, that just happened. my My moment. There are two there are two ah moments to me, but ah that I think are like James Woods, just really i James Woodsing it up.
01:28:02
Speaker
And okay the one that I am going to mention is we talked a bit about the scene where they renegotiate. Oh, no, maybe it was the original negotiation, but they're sitting on that long table and, you know... um
01:28:21
Speaker
Guillaume, I guess, slides a bottle of whiskey down to James This was great moment. And, you know, they're talking. It's the whole thing where they're like, a day has 24 hours. He's like, well, okay whatever. the ol of it did It is Oliver Count.
01:28:40
Speaker
And he opens the whiskey with just his thumb licking the side of the screw top and it just pops off cleanly and skitters down the table.
01:28:57
Speaker
And it's impossible to not sound corny when he does it. And it even looks a little corny. when he does it but it is a cool when you're like i don't know 21 22 the first time i saw that scene as a kind of very practiced cool that is like a moment of very practiced cool like he's leaning back in his office chair at the end of this long conference table feet maybe up on the table though i don't recall for sure feels like they were up
01:29:33
Speaker
That level of comfort at the very end. Yeah. yeah You know? And he just flicks the bottle cap off, and I'm like, all right. I hope this guy doesn't turn out to be a world historic asshole in real life.
01:29:49
Speaker
Yeah. yeah C'est la vie. yeah So that is my moment. That is moment. That is a beautiful chosen moment. It was a great moment. think the funny moment where he's trying to rev, um he's trying to rev Lou Gossett up before Minoso Torres comes in.
01:30:12
Speaker
Right. He has just beaten Hammerhead and he has gone from the exaltation of knowing that he won to learning that he in fact did not win and that he has been tricked by Guillaume and his con man best friend has been duped and Minoso Torres comes in and James Woods is acting terrified of Minoso Torres and he psychs him up and he's like, he did this and he did that and he did the other thing, but you're black.
01:30:50
Speaker
And Lou Gossett Jr. is like, what the fuck kind of motivation is that? And it was just to me, like really very funny because I mean, James Woods knows what he's doing. He's about to fix the fight, you know, so he doesn't actually have to psych him up at all. So he's just yanking his chain with the whole thing.
01:31:13
Speaker
And Lou Gossett Jr. is pissed enough To like actually yell at James Woods about being like real bullshitter who's gotten him way out over his skis before, ah you know, he actually fixes the last fight as Minoso Torres drops to the mat and winks at the warden.
01:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, who that was a good moment. I like that Minoso seemed to mostly be doing it out of spite. Yeah. You know, he winks at the warden who specifically brought him in because he's like a compadre of Guillaume's. And so he's very happy to join Guillaume in ruining ah Gabe Kane.
01:31:59
Speaker
ah But no, it is not to be.
Reflections and Future Projects
01:32:02
Speaker
The double crosses have been triple crossed. It's true. There's a lot of moving parts. It does have a lot of delights for a con fan. Yeah.
01:32:13
Speaker
And I just, like I said, I kept on thinking of this could and should be better than it is. And it just left me feeling bad. But this episode left me feeling great. Thank you so much, Charles, for coming and hanging out. It's been so much fun. Thank Thank you for making us watch Digstown, a movie I think I never would have watched. Yeah.
01:32:36
Speaker
Well, I mean, I thank you so much for inviting me on. I appreciate it. And, you know, this is very cool. This is very yeah I appreciate the experience.
01:32:50
Speaker
No, no, a real pleasure. And you where should people find you? What are you up to? you What do you have to plug? Uh, well, I, uh, have to plug, just my blue sky at you Garls, U G A R L E S. Uh, keep your eyes posted there because, uh, we have, I have a new podcast project coming out, uh, with the guy who I do city, St. Country, St. With El Ron Mexico. and Patrick Cosmos, um who is now semi-famous for the everyone is 12 theory. um So the three of us have something coming out soon. Awesome.
01:33:27
Speaker
And and then when football season starts a again, City St. Country St will be back. So so that's it. Those are our things. All right. right Oh, everybody. And if you've got a podcast, bring me on because I am in a death match. to be on as many podcasts as I can be. And while I am overstuffed for March, once April and May hit, I'm going to be out with my, rattling my tin cup again.
01:33:56
Speaker
All right. Listeners follow Charles on blue sky, shoot him a message, have him on your podcast. Also listeners come back next week.
Engagement and Community Building
01:34:05
Speaker
We're going to be talking about the good girl with Kate Hutchins.
01:34:09
Speaker
ah Never seen that one either. Another random mid nineties studio movie. So we'll see what's up. Yeah. And of course, please like subscribe. Give us that five stars. Find us on blue sky and Instagram. You can find our link tree. Come join our discord. We're watching Tyler Perry's the oval. We're watching movies.
01:34:35
Speaker
And, uh, and follow our sub stack. We're writing about movies. You can find links to all about it in, uh, the link tree that's in the show description. And, uh, until next week, be good and Goodbye.
01:34:50
Speaker
goodbye