Latest / All The Right Movies / The Towering Inferno (1974) | Ep. 76 - Part 1

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The Towering Inferno (1974) | Ep. 76 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

• 0:04
  All the right movies. What do we got here, Cathy?
• 0:07
  Fire started. 81st floor storage room.
• 0:11
  This is a bad Smoke is so thick we can't tell how far it's
• 0:14
  spread. What about your exhaust system?
• 0:16
  Well, it should have reversed automatically.
• 0:17
  It must have been a motor burnout or something.
• 0:19
  Sprinklers. They're not working on 81.
• 0:23
  Why not? I don't know.
• 0:27
  The fire blaze is out of control, threatening the world's
• 0:30
  tallest skyscraper and the great and the good who have come to
• 0:33
  visit on the night of its grand opening.
• 0:35
  As the fire rages, an architect and a Fire Chief must put aside
• 0:38
  their differences to save the day.
• 0:41
  Owen Allen set Hollywood on fire with the Tower and Inferno in
• 0:44
  the mid 70s. He assembled the biggest cast
• 0:46
  ever, put them in the biggest disaster movie ever.
• 0:49
  Cinema goers blew a fuse that the blockbuster that proved that
• 0:51
  one tiny spark could become a night of blaze and suspense.
• 0:55
  My name is Luke and the two fellas with me who always wanted
• 0:58
  to die in bed are Matt. It's a fire, Mr. and all fires
• 1:01
  are bad. And Westie.
• 1:03
  What for? We got a fire.
• 1:05
  Here, all the right movies are taking the express elevators of
• 1:08
  the 135th floor. Hope the wire ends up the court.
• 1:30
  Hi everyone, welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast on
• 1:32
  classic and hit films that we figured would never burn.
• 1:35
  Nice. Here we are.
• 1:36
  Here we are. Yes.
• 1:38
  Telling the story of Hollywood one film at a time.
• 1:40
  And this time we're headed to the top floor.
• 1:43
  It is Paul Newman. It is Steve McQueen in the
• 1:45
  Ultimate Actor face off the Citizen Kane of disaster movies.
• 1:49
  It is Towering Inferno. It is, Oh yeah, a very, very,
• 1:54
  very big explosion on our hands here.
• 1:56
  Very big. But before the party starts,
• 1:59
  it's that time. Time to talk about becoming an
• 2:00
  ATRM patron. Let's do it.
• 2:02
  Every two weeks we put out a brand new episode of this show,
• 2:05
  a deep dive into a classic or hit film, the most recent 20
• 2:08
  year available wherever you listen to podcasts.
• 2:10
  And beyond that, we have an archive of over 110 episodes
• 2:14
  that you can unlock by becoming an ATRM patron.
• 2:17
  You can do that on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and
• 2:20
  Patreon. Lord of Choices.
• 2:22
  One episode per floor. Yeah, exactly.
• 2:24
  More floors than the glass tower.
• 2:26
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Skip episode 81.
• 2:30
  That's where it all starts. I wish this was episode 135.
• 2:34
  Imagine. It's 132 I think.
• 2:36
  Oh goodness. Oh no.
• 2:39
  On top of that, if you signed up on YouTube or Patreon, you also
• 2:42
  get access to two additional podcasts every month.
• 2:44
  That's the watch list, where we review new releases and Double
• 2:47
  Feature, where we cover films that haven't quite made it to
• 2:49
  the main show yet. They're on their way.
• 2:52
  They're. On their way.
• 2:54
  Think of it as the penthouse suite of podcast content.
• 2:57
  Yeah, and unlike the glass tower, everything completely
• 3:00
  above board. Yes, absolutely no shortcuts.
• 3:03
  No, it's all the. Code yeah.
• 3:06
  Sign up at patreon.com/all the right Movies, where you can also
• 3:09
  vote for the films that we talk about, the scores that they get.
• 3:12
  And you can also ask us questions which will answer live
• 3:14
  on the show, and you'll be here in a few of those later on.
• 3:17
  Yeah. You will indeed.
• 3:19
  So if you can support us, we'd love to have you.
• 3:21
  Thanks everyone. Yes.
• 3:22
  Thank you so much guys. OK, Westie, this one is your
• 3:25
  baby. They've referenced it many times
• 3:28
  and the pod, you've referenced it even more in the last 25
• 3:32
  years that I've known you. Yes.
• 3:33
  Why do you want to talk about the Taran Inferno?
• 3:36
  I feel like I've already done this podcast, I've talked about
• 3:39
  this film that fucking much, and I'm absolutely fine with it.
• 3:42
  It's so easy to make notes, so easy to watch again, so easy to
• 3:45
  revisit. I I mean The Taran Inferno is
• 3:48
  the best film ever made. You've said that before.
• 3:55
  Greatest film ever made. It's just wonderful.
• 3:58
  It just sits just right with me. I mean, long time listeners will
• 4:01
  know that my dad was in the fire brigade for 30 years.
• 4:04
  This came out, you got to see it for free because he was in the
• 4:06
  fire brigade when it came out. Wonderful.
• 4:08
  And it was one of those that was just so relevant in the house.
• 4:12
  If it was on, it was on and everyone was watching it.
• 4:15
  Everyone had to pay attention to it.
• 4:16
  He had a lot of respect for it because he said it was just, it
• 4:19
  was very realistic and it just ticked all the boxes and it took
• 4:21
  everything very, very seriously. It's a classic Sunday for me.
• 4:25
  It's the original yellow credits film.
• 4:27
  It's where it all started. Now I see every film with yellow
• 4:30
  creditors. A masterpiece.
• 4:31
  Not all of them, but the pretty close.
• 4:33
  It's a good barometer. It has some huge actors.
• 4:35
  At the time when I was a kid, it was like Steve McQueen and Paul
• 4:38
  Newman are in this. Yeah, DMA.
• 4:40
  William Holden as well at the time, Robert Vaughn.
• 4:42
  My dad loved the Man from Uncle series.
• 4:44
  We used to watch that. It was all of these things
• 4:46
  coming together and it was just one of those that really stuck
• 4:49
  with me and it was just a huge, huge influence growing up.
• 4:52
  I just loved every single minute of it, and I still do.
• 4:54
  I know there's lots of issues with the film.
• 4:56
  I know that if I come to it now I'd have a very, very different
• 4:59
  opinion. But everything I'm going to say
• 5:00
  in the next few hours is for little Westie.
• 5:03
  It is for little me who never really had a voice about this
• 5:06
  and couldn't really see anything because my dad would boom over
• 5:08
  the top of us. So now it's my turn because it
• 5:11
  was a long run time, which meant a later bedtime and that was
• 5:14
  always a good thing for me. So it's Put the Tower Inferno
• 5:17
  on. It was a good little move.
• 5:18
  I love this film from start to finish.
• 5:21
  I won't suffer any kind of criticism whatsoever from you
• 5:24
  guys on it. It's a perfect.
• 5:27
  OK, right. No Christmas.
• 5:28
  Shall we just tune out now? Just.
• 5:30
  Tune out. Let me go for two hours.
• 5:31
  There's half me. No, it's gone.
• 5:34
  I mean, obviously it's a wonderful thing.
• 5:36
  I'm really looking forward to talking about it.
• 5:37
  I'm really looking forward to seeing what you guys thinking
• 5:39
  about it because I am just baked in nostalgia with this one.
• 5:42
  Yes, it's fantastic stuff, but yes, I kind of wait to talk
• 5:44
  about it. Grace Yeah, Well, I want to talk
• 5:46
  about this one because I really want to know what all the fuss
• 5:48
  is about from your point of view.
• 5:49
  Westie Fair enough, because of course I've seen it before, but
• 5:53
  haven't seen it for many years. Yeah, it was a staple on TV in
• 5:56
  the 80s and 90s, particularly around, like, bank holidays.
• 5:58
  Like you said, Westie, it's a Sunday film.
• 6:00
  It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:01
  But it never really stuck with me, and I've always been a
• 6:04
  Poseidon Adventure kind of guy. Oh, wow, it's standard.
• 6:07
  Yes. All right.
• 6:08
  Elvis or The Beatles. This isn't it.
• 6:10
  Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:14
  It's got this huge reputation. Obviously, it's a damn good
• 6:16
  adventure film, but has it aged that well?
• 6:19
  We'll discuss, of course, Westie, and you know, yeah, take
• 6:23
  with a pinch of salt all of our comments.
• 6:25
  We don't really go easy. I mean, I know a lot of it's
• 6:28
  aged like milk, but we'll see. But what is in no doubt is that
• 6:34
  behind the scenes story, it's incredible.
• 6:36
  Multiple camera crews, multiple directors, multiple stars,
• 6:39
  multiple millions. It really is a landmark film and
• 6:42
  it's well deserved of its place on the podcast and I'm very
• 6:45
  excited to dive into all of that.
• 6:48
  Lovely. Yeah.
• 6:48
  I mean, I've got a lot of nostalgia for this as well as he
• 6:51
  beats in into screams Bank Holiday Monday afternoon film
• 6:54
  when I was a gay just always seem to be beyond.
• 6:56
  And the weird thing is it probably shouldn't have been on
• 6:59
  during the daytime because like every disaster film, it has
• 7:02
  this. It's like reputation of, yeah,
• 7:04
  it's a bit cheesy at times. It's a great spectacle, but
• 7:07
  there's nothing much below the surface.
• 7:08
  Having said that, that's overlooking how brutal this film
• 7:11
  does get. I mean, it does have an end to
• 7:13
  it. And there's more.
• 7:14
  It's genuine and absolute horror in this.
• 7:16
  I think that shouldn't be on during the day when kids should
• 7:19
  be watching. It's terrifying at times.
• 7:22
  Threads. Yeah, exactly.
• 7:24
  What a double deal that is. Yeah, sleep tight, everyone.
• 7:28
  But then I can watch it as an adult and I can take away the
• 7:31
  nostalgia factor and I think there's still lots to talk
• 7:34
  about. Me not cast a legend of the
• 7:36
  screen in pretty much all the main roles, shattered the
• 7:39
  boundaries of what could be captured on screen in terms of
• 7:41
  the effects. It defined the genre.
• 7:43
  And I can put this on now. And yes, some of it is a bit
• 7:45
  soap opera with the dialogue and some performances which we'll
• 7:48
  get to, but I don't care because 5 minutes of this, I'm not
• 7:51
  turning this off unless there's an actual fire in my house.
• 7:55
  Fantastic. OK, I can see what I'm up
• 7:57
  against here. I love it.
• 7:59
  See how that plays out. Yeah.
• 8:02
  Oh God, looks like we're in the scenic elevator.
• 8:07
  Magic. Yep.
• 8:10
  Hanging on by a fucking. Cable, there's a helicopter
• 8:12
  coming for you, Sir. The Towering Inferno was written
• 8:17
  by Sterling Sullivans, directed by John Gearman, with a little
• 8:21
  help from Owen Allen, who also produced the film for 20th
• 8:23
  Century Fox and Warner Brothers. Distributed in theaters on
• 8:27
  December 16th, 1974, it was shot on multiple sound stages and at
• 8:31
  various locations in San Francisco.
• 8:33
  It's as a glitter and who's who of talent including Paul Newman,
• 8:37
  Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Jennifer Jones,
• 8:39
  Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner,
• 8:41
  Robert Vaughn and many more beautiful.
• 8:44
  Many, many more. Including he who shall not be
• 8:46
  named. Yes, yes, yes, eliminated.
• 8:49
  Which is good because he disappears for half of the
• 8:51
  fucking film. We don't know where he is.
• 8:53
  He does he just when he gets Mrs. Albright right.
• 8:55
  I'll see you later. I'm cooking offline, sorry
• 9:00
  naughty. So the guests are arriving, the
• 9:03
  champagne is flowing, and somewhere on the 81st floor
• 9:05
  something is starting to smell a little smoky.
• 9:08
  Let's head to the Glass Tower for the orb and act of the Tower
• 9:11
  and Inferno. We will never love like this
• 9:15
  again. The beginning.
• 9:24
  A blister in open end of the film.
• 9:25
  Paul Newman in a helicopter sweeping over the skies of San
• 9:28
  Francisco, scored by John Williams.
• 9:31
  It doesn't get better than this. Doesn't matter.
• 9:33
  It certainly doesn't. I mean, this opening credit
• 9:35
  sequence is so unnecessarily massive and massively
• 9:39
  unnecessary. I mean, it's telling her from
• 9:42
  the off this film is going big. Look how massive those titles
• 9:46
  are booming that soundtrack. Yes.
• 9:48
  And Wesley, I'm so glad you've confirmed This is why your love
• 9:50
  of Yellow title started, because it was going to ask you.
• 9:53
  Everything is massively. I mean, how fucking long is this
• 9:56
  helicopter journey? Where's he coming from?
• 9:58
  He's flying over the coast. He's flying over mountains, over
• 10:01
  woods, over the Golden Gate Bridge.
• 10:03
  And then at one point, just for the sheer ego of this opening
• 10:07
  sequence, he's flying next to a boat on the river.
• 10:09
  Like, I'm no expert, but flying that close to a board for
• 10:13
  absolutely zero reason is surely illegal or at the very least
• 10:16
  found upon. And it's like, Nah, get it down
• 10:19
  there. Get it in there and it's a
• 10:20
  helicopter shooting a helicopter.
• 10:23
  Outrageous. 2 helicopters, 0 health and safety concerns here,
• 10:27
  and then we get that first shot of the tower.
• 10:29
  Newman's huge grain when we see it, and then we're introduced to
• 10:32
  Duncan, their convoy. That sets their characters up
• 10:35
  really well because we've got 2 tropes here.
• 10:37
  This is Doug's last day in the job, and this is the greatest
• 10:39
  achievement of Duncan's career. Great and fine.
• 10:42
  I know who these two guys are immediately and where their
• 10:44
  story's going straight away. But then we go into Doug's
• 10:47
  office and he's harassed by everyone there because they've
• 10:49
  all got questions. Doug, what about this?
• 10:51
  What about that? And this then the secretary is
• 10:53
  just, are you taking any calls? Because you know, you know, she
• 10:57
  knows what's up. Because then we meet Susan
• 10:59
  exactly within two minutes. Just drag them into bed.
• 11:02
  And what kind of office is this with the pimps bedroom out the
• 11:06
  back? It's absolutely outrageous.
• 11:10
  Fantastic. But honestly, if that was me and
• 11:13
  I knew, I've got half a dozen people with lots of questions,
• 11:16
  I've got a secretary 100 yards here who knows exactly what I'm
• 11:18
  doing. Don't think I could concentrate
• 11:20
  on the job at hand, even if it is fair done away.
• 11:23
  But you know, that's why he's poor and human and I'm not.
• 11:27
  Yeah, outraged dialogue as well, where he's being dragged into
• 11:29
  the bedroom. I've got about $140 worth of
• 11:32
  vulgar underwear for you. Yeah, 140 dollars.
• 11:36
  Yeah. Really specific.
• 11:38
  Catherine Ross, Raquel Welch and Natalie Wood were all offered
• 11:41
  the role of Susan Franlin before Dunaway snagged it.
• 11:44
  Wood turned it down because she was pregnant and she said the
• 11:47
  script was mediocre. Wow.
• 11:49
  Ouch. Yeah.
• 11:51
  You know, I can, I can see where she's going.
• 11:53
  I. Can see where she's coming from
• 11:54
  and being, yeah, I mean being, being pregnant's a problem.
• 11:56
  Yes, All right. No, that's not the script, you
• 11:59
  know. No, I thought that, yeah, I, I
• 12:03
  think it's kind of sorry to start off here, but I think it's
• 12:06
  kind of the epitome of too many cooks.
• 12:08
  The cast is crowned with talent, and Faye Dunaway is right at the
• 12:11
  top of that cast. But this material is, it's weak.
• 12:15
  It's weak for her. Yeah, it doesn't serve very
• 12:17
  well, does it? Doesn't at all.
• 12:19
  In certain promotional material she was even referred to as the
• 12:23
  girlfriend. Wow.
• 12:25
  Yeah. Crazy, yeah.
• 12:30
  And an article published by Warren is at the time of release
• 12:32
  claimed that the glass towel was the building of the future.
• 12:35
  Not just the exteriors, but the interiors, which are, they said,
• 12:38
  dominated by eye-catching geometrical patterns and
• 12:41
  designs, feature many of the architectural IDs and plans of
• 12:44
  tomorrow in TV. Furnishings are both
• 12:46
  contemporary and futuristic. Well, just.
• 12:50
  Orange. Yeah, a lot of orange.
• 12:51
  Yeah, that's. Orange and brown, Orange and.
• 12:53
  Brown fucking get it. So dated it was dating as soon
• 12:59
  as it was shot. Yeah, after we get, you know,
• 13:02
  the the deeds been done. He's concentrated on.
• 13:04
  It's Paul Newman after all. It's going, it's going to get,
• 13:06
  it's going to get done probably twice.
• 13:08
  Let's be honest with you. Yeah.
• 13:11
  And then we get a phone call straight out of there.
• 13:13
  A man's got to do what a man's got to do.
• 13:15
  Can I just say that this film is quintessentially 70s?
• 13:17
  It's so 70s. It's ridiculously 70s.
• 13:20
  And it's so masculine, it's almost hard to watch with
• 13:24
  anybody else. But just me sitting there just
• 13:26
  saying this is a great film, right?
• 13:27
  And yeah. Yeah, it is Wesley.
• 13:28
  I know it is Wesley. It's great watch it with anyone
• 13:31
  else and trying to justify it, as I'm going to have to going
• 13:33
  through this podcast is going to get progressively more
• 13:35
  difficult. But I want to highlight it now
• 13:37
  that I am aware of how unbelievably masculine and how
• 13:40
  unbelievably stupid most of this film is.
• 13:42
  So I'll just leave that there. So he turns up this outfit when
• 13:45
  he's walking through. I mean, come on, Flair.
• 13:47
  It looks an absolute treat, right?
• 13:49
  Still doing his covering straight out of the urgency at
• 13:52
  the Duncan's office. It's absolutely fantastic, the
• 13:55
  dialogue here. And it's just like, he's so like
• 13:57
  condescending and just so brilliant at his job, Doug,
• 14:00
  isn't he? He's like, well, how many did
• 14:01
  you say? How many?
• 14:02
  How many do I have to? You know what I mean?
• 14:03
  It's just I want to talk to that son.
• 14:04
  And Laurie owes his genius. It's obviously not my problem.
• 14:07
  Wagner comes in. Dan Bigelow, right?
• 14:10
  What a guy. Dan Bigelow, go wait until you
• 14:15
  see this. Just massive scissors.
• 14:19
  What's so good about that? The box is more impressive than
• 14:21
  this is, as I always thought that.
• 14:24
  And then it's like, you get that, but we almost had a fire
• 14:26
  and yeah, a fire. But as the audience, you know
• 14:28
  for a fact, there's going to be a fucking fire.
• 14:30
  So you're like, yes, but there's going to be 1 and everyone's
• 14:32
  already annoyed. The fact that there's going to
• 14:33
  be a fire, it's amazing. And then Will's really worried
• 14:36
  about safety, so you know he's going to be the first one out of
• 14:38
  there. We should have put this back a
• 14:40
  couple of months. It's like, yeah, well, he's
• 14:41
  fucked. What's going on?
• 14:45
  So that's absolutely brilliant. Simmons is out.
• 14:47
  It can't wait. This is too much of an
• 14:49
  emergency. So obviously Doug's just
• 14:52
  straight out of there. Gets a taxi.
• 14:54
  Classic San Francisco estate class.
• 14:57
  Looks a beautiful house. It looks absolutely incredible.
• 14:59
  Tells the taxi to wait. He doesn't know how long he's
• 15:01
  going to be. There's some of the money this
• 15:02
  guy's got. How much stamp this guy's got on
• 15:04
  the whole world. Don't go anywhere.
• 15:05
  The taxi driver as well, obviously, that's Doug.
• 15:07
  The architecture. I'm going fucking no way.
• 15:08
  I'm waiting here all night. Absolutely amazing.
• 15:12
  And then he has a little bit of a chat, comes in, He's not going
• 15:14
  to tell her because she's a woman.
• 15:16
  She wouldn't understand. Yeah, even though it's Duncan's
• 15:20
  daughter, like the guy who just just very aware of what's going
• 15:23
  on. Who's going there tonight as?
• 15:26
  Well, yeah, she's going there tonight.
• 15:27
  And Simmons is, you know, that's her husband.
• 15:29
  She's she was quite aware, but she's just not telling her what
• 15:31
  he's doing. What did you do at work today?
• 15:33
  You shut the fuck up. It's like, no, I'm not telling
• 15:36
  you. Where did you get that wiring
• 15:37
  from? B&Q.
• 15:38
  I'm not telling you Wicks doesn't go into any event.
• 15:43
  You just shoved in the corner. It's absolutely class.
• 15:45
  But then it's just this real kind of machismo back and forth
• 15:47
  and you're not having a drink right now.
• 15:49
  What are you drinking? He's like, that's very far,
• 15:51
  isn't he? You bet you.
• 15:52
  I love that. But he just, and it's just this
• 15:55
  confrontation between the two of them and he just shows Simmons
• 15:58
  up right in front of his wife. It's going to take someone with
• 16:01
  a little bit more clout than you to make us do my office. 9:00
• 16:03
  tomorrow. Bye.
• 16:04
  See you later. He's like, oh fuck's sake.
• 16:07
  Sitting next to her, he's just shown right up.
• 16:08
  He's just made an absolute fool of himself.
• 16:10
  And she actually turned. Well, we need some reasons to
• 16:13
  stay married. And he just ignores the question
• 16:15
  completely. Oh, OK, we're going to be late,
• 16:18
  idiot. Of course we're going to stay
• 16:19
  married or else you're going to do.
• 16:21
  It's just, again, really condescending.
• 16:23
  But he just says he doesn't need God's help.
• 16:25
  He doesn't need our old man's. I'm not going to jump over time.
• 16:27
  Daddy barks. And you can tell this character
• 16:29
  is just set up so slimy, but so quickly.
• 16:33
  It's like you're not giving a chance.
• 16:35
  No point in trying to bond any kind of relationship or any kind
• 16:38
  of character depth. You know who everybody is.
• 16:40
  It's so on the surface, but I just fucking love that.
• 16:44
  Nothing else. No, no bullshit.
• 16:47
  He's a Dick. He's a hero.
• 16:48
  Gee, that's it. Straight down the line.
• 16:50
  No Shades of Grey whatsoever. No, nothing.
• 16:52
  What's it's a black and white. It's a catastrophe fill and
• 16:55
  orange. You know exactly where you're
• 16:57
  coming from. The black, white, orange, brown,
• 16:59
  yellow, brown, even the helicopters orange.
• 17:01
  Doug's wearing orange. He's wearing aviators.
• 17:03
  He's not even flying the thing. I, I mean, I couldn't adore this
• 17:06
  anymore. And we're only like, what, 15
• 17:08
  minutes in? Yeah, yeah.
• 17:10
  So with all of this going on in the background, it's night time.
• 17:14
  The gala evening starts. We're told the entire city is in
• 17:17
  holiday mood. Leaders of government show up,
• 17:20
  stars a screen in television. Robert Vaughan shows up as the
• 17:23
  senator. Absolute joy to see that.
• 17:26
  Brilliant, He's. Great in this as well he's.
• 17:28
  Amazing. So it's all smiles for the
• 17:31
  crowds and the camera, but what Gearman does as director and his
• 17:35
  cast do very well as well as portrayed the rising concern
• 17:37
  that's going on just under the surface.
• 17:40
  The relationship between Duncan and Simmons seems strained to
• 17:43
  begin with, even without this. Yeah, I guess nobody is good
• 17:47
  enough for his daughter. Especially not this greasy idiot
• 17:51
  clown. Yeah, greasy is the word.
• 17:52
  And that suit, that brand suit. Horrible.
• 17:56
  Didn't realize I was on such a tight leash.
• 17:58
  Yeah, that bit of licorice in the licorice, all sorts that you
• 18:00
  always leave that brown one. That's the guy that's amazing.
• 18:13
  So this is a great set of for the for the showdown that they
• 18:15
  have in the the third act and the little niggle and arguments
• 18:18
  that they have all the way through the narrative.
• 18:21
  Really good dialogue. Great delivery from Horton.
• 18:23
  When I get the time, I want to ask you a few questions and I
• 18:26
  expect some straight answers. Yes.
• 18:28
  Come on. No nonsense.
• 18:30
  And then Mayor Ramsey shows up with his wife.
• 18:32
  His wife is played by Sheila Matthew Allen, Irwin's wife.
• 18:36
  That's right, A. Little bit of nepotism in there.
• 18:38
  Very. Nice.
• 18:40
  And then the big reveal. The lights go on, the skyline is
• 18:42
  forever changed and Williams music blows up into something
• 18:46
  quite spectacular. It's triumphant, but because we
• 18:49
  know what's rumbling under beneath the 135th floor, there's
• 18:52
  this horrible sense of dread. These luminaries are effectively
• 18:56
  being taken to their doom. Yeah, there's a real sense of
• 18:59
  dread building here. And when we do get into the
• 19:01
  party, some really wonderful wide shots, which almost feels
• 19:04
  like there's something or someone stalking the guests that
• 19:08
  they're not aware of. Whether that's intentional or
• 19:10
  not, I'm not too sure, but it works an absolute treat.
• 19:13
  It does, yeah. I don't, I really don't think
• 19:15
  that's intentional. But now you mention it does have
• 19:17
  this kind of creeping feeling to it.
• 19:19
  It's like, yeah, it's prowling around just in the.
• 19:20
  Background It's when all the lights go on, if you turned all
• 19:23
  of the lights on in your house before and how unsettling that
• 19:25
  feels like all of the big lights.
• 19:29
  And the glass tower itself all 138 floors of it was built as a
• 19:34
  70 foot miniature at the Fox Ranch in Malibu constructed at
• 19:37
  half inch scale and that's roughly the height of A5 story
• 19:40
  building, which gives you some sense of the scale that we're
• 19:43
  working at evening miniature that's.
• 19:45
  Crazy five story building. A miniature of this build that's
• 19:49
  that's some construction that's massive.
• 19:51
  The centerpiece of the whole production was the the promenade
• 19:54
  deck, the rooftop party era where all the party that well,
• 19:57
  the 135th floor. Yes, it covered more than 11,000
• 20:01
  square feet of sound stage and cost over $300,000 to build.
• 20:07
  And it was completely destroyed by thousands of gallons of
• 20:10
  Russian water in the final scene, just 300 grand down the
• 20:13
  drain. Destroyed the way Destroyed.
• 20:15
  I mean, there was everything, but eight of the sets were
• 20:17
  destroyed or something. Wasn't that?
• 20:19
  Yeah. That's right, just.
• 20:20
  Destroyed. What do you think?
• 20:21
  And that set being so big, they had to build a 10 foot off the
• 20:24
  ground so the water had a run out.
• 20:26
  So not only was it that big that had to build a 10, just 10 foot
• 20:29
  up. All right, no problem.
• 20:31
  Make it even harder. That's crazy.
• 20:35
  I mean, there are stories about the construction and the special
• 20:38
  effects, which Hollywood firsts all the way through this.
• 20:40
  Film Ludicrous. And to give the impression of
• 20:43
  being 135 stories above San Francisco, it was encircled by a
• 20:47
  340 foot cyclorama painting. And the flickering lights of the
• 20:52
  city below were achieved by punching small holes in the back
• 20:55
  end and placing the lights behind them.
• 20:57
  The shimmer on the water was created by cutting thin slits in
• 20:59
  the canvas and hanging silk strips behind them as well.
• 21:02
  Moved by actual wind fans. I mean, Thailand has taken an
• 21:06
  influence from that of the stars.
• 21:08
  Just pin holes in the curtain of night.
• 21:10
  That's exactly what he references here.
• 21:12
  Who knows? I.
• 21:14
  Can't believe, I cannot believe. Westie, you've managed to get a
• 21:17
  Highlander quote in the can you not Highlander quote can.
• 21:21
  You not. The Matt Payton of San Francisco
• 21:26
  skyline created for the film was later reused as the backdrop of
• 21:30
  Kirk's apartment in Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan, and three,
• 21:33
  The Search for Spock, Right, A little shout out for John there.
• 21:37
  Yes, he'll love that. His fear for a bit.
• 21:39
  Yeah, yeah. In Taught, the film was shot
• 21:42
  across 57 sets spread across 8 of Fox's largest sound stages.
• 21:47
  I mean, Epic doesn't come near it.
• 21:50
  Yeah, it's huge. Massive.
• 21:51
  Like we'll keep saying, yeah, everything about this is
• 21:54
  massive. So the party in full swing, the
• 21:56
  champers is spilling all over the place.
• 21:59
  But that's not the only thing. No.
• 22:03
  The relative calm of the party isn't mirrored downstairs as
• 22:06
  Doug is getting more and more animated.
• 22:08
  The fire quickly spreads out of control, and we're talking about
• 22:11
  the efforts to stifle the blaze and the introduction to the King
• 22:14
  of Cool. Over to you first though, Matt.
• 22:17
  Oh right, not me first. Though.
• 22:21
  We'll build up to that though, so we'll start at the bottom
• 22:23
  with Matt. Fair enough.
• 22:25
  That is understandable. Just to be clear though, Matt
• 22:28
  the King of Cool isn't on this short.
• 22:30
  I'm making reference just in a quick.
• 22:32
  Super quit, obviously, yeah. Yeah, it's McQueen.
• 22:34
  It's not Westy. Yeah, Although, you know, pretty
• 22:35
  cool. Thanks mate, I mean I didn't
• 22:38
  expect it to be, that would be ridiculous.
• 22:41
  King. Cool.
• 22:42
  But firstly you'll have to do with Matt.
• 22:44
  Oh yeah, Matt. Here we go, here we go.
• 22:47
  That's fair enough. It's how matter of fact this
• 22:49
  starts though, because that security guard, it goes to
• 22:51
  unlock the door because he sees the smoke coming out the bottom
• 22:54
  of it. And you understand him because
• 22:56
  if you don't know about these things, you would assume, well,
• 23:00
  that looks like it's just going to be a relatively small fire
• 23:02
  and it's not going to rush out of the door out yet.
• 23:05
  Yeah. And you mentioned like upstairs,
• 23:07
  those kind of creeping camera movements.
• 23:09
  Like at times it almost feels like this has got the structure
• 23:12
  of a slasher. It's like hiding around the
• 23:14
  corner to jump out at people. Definitely in this moment.
• 23:17
  But the key thing here is it's setting its stall out early as
• 23:20
  to what they're going to show you because will, as we've said,
• 23:23
  he he's been mocked for death from as soon as we've seen him
• 23:26
  and he comes to the rescue to push the guard out the way.
• 23:28
  And you get that quote from Norman Burton, who plays well,
• 23:31
  then obviously to the stuntman put the stuntman gets set on
• 23:35
  fire in the next shot itself. It doesn't cut through him
• 23:38
  already been on fire, which is a bit of a cheat, an
• 23:41
  understandable one, but is a bit of a cheat in this film is
• 23:44
  saying no. Were you going to set people on
• 23:46
  fire? In short, to an extent you've
• 23:48
  never seen before, and this is only the start of it.
• 23:51
  And I think that's just so important to the success of the
• 23:53
  film and how impactful it still is.
• 23:56
  And then we're into classic disaster movie tropes.
• 23:58
  Dog trying to tell Duncan to move the party.
• 24:00
  Duncan nor have none of it. He's just got the kind of
• 24:03
  corporate concerns. You know, it's outline of
• 24:05
  dialogue. I'm not going to concern myself
• 24:07
  with the finest story of 81 because it can't possibly affect
• 24:10
  us up here. I mean, that's the Hubis for you
• 24:13
  that you just know that's going to be punished.
• 24:16
  He's going to regret saying that so much.
• 24:17
  But you know, is it on the North?
• 24:19
  Yes. But I don't really care because
• 24:21
  this is the genre. And when it's Paul Newman and
• 24:23
  William Holden having this back and forth, they can make
• 24:26
  anything work. Yeah, exactly.
• 24:27
  Great moment. And now we know we're mean
• 24:29
  business as well with that fire blaze, Yeah.
• 24:32
  Yeah, so from there, the fire, it started, and it's a real
• 24:35
  problem. All fires are bad, but we need
• 24:37
  the introduction of the guys who are going to come and try and
• 24:40
  fix this horrible problem. So we've got this incredible
• 24:43
  moment. Absolutely love it, on the back
• 24:44
  of the fire truck where we've got these two that we're going
• 24:46
  to follow through the whole film.
• 24:47
  Yeah, they're not just these faceless people who are just
• 24:50
  going into it and they've actually got a personality and
• 24:53
  they set that up from the start. And then we go Halloran coming
• 24:56
  in. And every time this happens,
• 24:57
  every time that car drove in, my mom would just say he is the
• 25:00
  guy. Every single time.
• 25:03
  Absolutely love McQueen in this. My dad, my dad, like, shuffle in
• 25:08
  the chair. Here he is.
• 25:09
  He has the boy. Brilliant.
• 25:11
  That's me. That's me on screen.
• 25:12
  That's me right there, yeah. That's why your mom liked this.
• 25:18
  In Gateshead Dad, it's just absolutely fantastic the way he
• 25:24
  comes in and there's just that dynamic he's already got with
• 25:27
  Newman, and McQueen and Newman are already paid each other.
• 25:30
  There was this real ego clash, but you can see it here.
• 25:33
  But I think it really works for the characters because he comes
• 25:36
  up, Kathy comes in with this is Roberts, he's the architect.
• 25:39
  And he just ignores him completely.
• 25:40
  He said what we got and he's wants to talk to his boy and
• 25:42
  what I've forgot, you tell me what's going on.
• 25:44
  But I do feel sorry for Doug here because it isn't his fault.
• 25:47
  No, it's saying he's done everything that he should have
• 25:49
  done. But then again, he should have
• 25:50
  been off fucking gallivanting wherever he was gallivant.
• 25:53
  And you just get that great moment in the lift, that moment
• 25:56
  of quiet, and you just get the fact to say there's no way for
• 25:58
  us to fight a fire over the 7th floor.
• 26:00
  And that just hits home. And just think of how many
• 26:02
  buildings have over 7 floors in this world.
• 26:05
  And it's like everything's unsafe.
• 26:06
  And you get that return line from Doug's that you're here to
• 26:09
  take me on the fire, which I think was like, the whole
• 26:11
  production is like, who's going to win this?
• 26:14
  Is it me or is it you? And it's a real good mirror of,
• 26:17
  you know, art reflects life. Life reflects art.
• 26:18
  It's really, really brilliant. When they get the 79th floor,
• 26:21
  which is like 2 floors below the fire, that's where they're going
• 26:23
  to set up the forward base. And he goes down and McQueen
• 26:26
  looking over these whole blueprints and I just love that
• 26:29
  you saw, look, he's got the actual architects there with
• 26:31
  him. Like the architects not in the
• 26:33
  party. Like he's actually there with
• 26:35
  him. He could go over the full
• 26:36
  schematics 12345 and names everything and rattles all this
• 26:40
  shit off and you don't know what he's talking about.
• 26:42
  They're talking about pipes and the ceiling and all this and
• 26:44
  they're just going at each other and you just think this is
• 26:46
  great. I don't know what to talk about.
• 26:47
  The sound like 2 absolutely professionals, like the
• 26:49
  dialogue's brilliant. And then we get that moment with
• 26:52
  audio. Simpson comes in and he's like,
• 26:53
  well, it's all right, Everyone's been evacuated.
• 26:55
  I want to know who they are, not where they are and why is that
• 26:57
  important Now this always reminds us of me Dad.
• 26:59
  I'm sorry I'm not mentioning that all way through it, but
• 27:01
  there's just absolutely reminds us of it when he just, he would
• 27:04
  always have an answer for something where it's like, is
• 27:06
  there any wool or silk manufacturers will or silk give
• 27:08
  off silent gases? Is there any ping pong
• 27:09
  manufacturers? Do you give off toxic gas?
• 27:10
  Do you want to keep going on the line?
• 27:12
  And he always had that answer for something else where he just
• 27:14
  think, all right, and you're humbled immediately.
• 27:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just really hit home,
• 27:18
  like the professionalism of this guy, the heroism of this guy.
• 27:21
  They both know the jobs that both need to get on.
• 27:23
  But there's this conflict between them.
• 27:25
  And that's why I really love them both meeting.
• 27:27
  Grace yeah, great interplay between the two, really good
• 27:30
  setup and you can feel that all the way through the rest of the
• 27:32
  film as well. Yeah.
• 27:34
  So with O'halleran calling the shots, he goes up to the 135th
• 27:38
  floor to speak to Mr. Duncan. The image of him coming out of
• 27:41
  that elevator, short sleeve shirt, blue collar worker, he
• 27:44
  looks so out of place amongst these rich types, but he's not
• 27:48
  fazed by that in the slightest. Duncan, one of the most powerful
• 27:52
  men in the city, I would imagine.
• 27:54
  Yeah, but O'halloran has him for breakfast.
• 27:56
  Yeah, he. Really does great dialogue here
• 27:58
  as well. Like we've talked about how bad
• 28:00
  is it? It's a fire, Mr. and all fires
• 28:02
  are bad, yeah. Brilliant.
• 28:04
  Yeah, put that in the trailer. Yeah, O'harran just will not
• 28:07
  relent Duncan at all, who's just trying to flex his muscles, and
• 28:10
  he basically just dismisses everything.
• 28:12
  I see the mayor's out there. Do you want me to pull rank on
• 28:15
  you where there's a fire arrow? Everybody here.
• 28:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really great delivery, no
• 28:19
  history. Onyx.
• 28:20
  Cool delivery, puts Duncan right in his place.
• 28:22
  Yeah, and he concedes to address the crowd, but not before Dragon
• 28:26
  Simmons away from his table to give him another going over.
• 28:29
  Another grill. But they said, I mean, he's just
• 28:33
  as plain as Dave Duncan says is the fires caused by anything
• 28:36
  that you did. I'm going to hang you out to dry
• 28:38
  and then I'm going to hang you. Different delivery style of
• 28:41
  McQueen, but just as memorable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:43
  But Simmons, just admit straight away.
• 28:45
  Did you change some of the electrical specs of the
• 28:47
  building? Yes, I did.
• 28:49
  You know why I. Certainly did.
• 28:51
  It's horrible. Isn't he fucking?
• 28:54
  Dick drunk already. Prick.
• 28:58
  Duncan's rattled, but he addresses the crowd with
• 29:00
  absolute confidence. The going to move the party to
• 29:02
  the Continental Room, but he promises that dinner will not be
• 29:05
  delayed. Yeah.
• 29:06
  Don't make promises. You can't keep that.
• 29:08
  Yeah. That's gonna be fucking burnt.
• 29:11
  Well. Done really well done that
• 29:14
  steak. So this is great story beat it
• 29:16
  establishes or Halloran is the one in charge of choice.
• 29:19
  The cracks in the father son-in-law relationship.
• 29:21
  And Duncan's address puts the crowd in the picture as well.
• 29:24
  Yeah, some great conflict and images of the party in full
• 29:26
  swing upstairs and the fire raging downstairs just to
• 29:29
  reinforce the threat. It's common for you.
• 29:32
  Yeah. Really, really good.
• 29:34
  Yeah, it's brilliant. I love Halloran's intelligence
• 29:36
  here as well. He takes off that uniform in the
• 29:38
  lift, so he doesn't spark any kind of panic.
• 29:41
  He just takes everything off. It just goes in normal.
• 29:44
  I love that. So Halloran seems to have the
• 29:46
  situation under control, with Duncan eventually listening to
• 29:49
  Sense, but at what cost? And what cost indeed the
• 29:56
  director? The story of the director on the
• 30:01
  Terran Inferno is a complicated 1.
• 30:04
  John Gem and his creditors as the official director, with
• 30:07
  producer Irwin Allen directing the action sequences.
• 30:10
  Quarter of what? Very good laser beam.
• 30:16
  So I suppose we're talking about the direction as a whole here
• 30:19
  and we'll get into the weeds of the behind the scenes story in a
• 30:22
  little while. Yeah.
• 30:24
  Firstly, Westy, yeah. Your thoughts on the direction
• 30:27
  on the Tower and Inferno? John Gillman, Did he direct it?
• 30:30
  Feels to me like a poltergeist situation.
• 30:33
  I think he did the best he could with what he had.
• 30:35
  I mean, there's not a lot to have a lot of time to develop
• 30:38
  characters or relationships or the emotional beats come from
• 30:42
  the action sequences. I guess you are the deaths that
• 30:44
  are in there, a lot of the aftermath of the action
• 30:47
  sequences. So he has to kind of understand
• 30:49
  how they've been shot, where they're coming from, so we can
• 30:51
  deal with that. I mean, he does really, really
• 30:53
  well with some of them. I think the most important
• 30:55
  relationship is the one of Fred Astaire with Mrs. Mueller.
• 31:00
  I think that's that's a wonderful reflection of that.
• 31:03
  You know, they think they're too old for all of this shenanigans
• 31:06
  of Dayton and being together. And he's a con man with a heart
• 31:10
  of gold and he can't go through with it.
• 31:12
  And she's trying to make him into a good person.
• 31:13
  And she is naturally. And they've just got this such
• 31:16
  like a beautiful bond together immediately that really works
• 31:20
  for me as like as a real human relationship in the middle of
• 31:23
  them. But then you've got, you know,
• 31:25
  Doug's relationship. And like you say, if he had done
• 31:27
  away, that's just his girlfriend, that'll do.
• 31:30
  You've got just friends with his wife.
• 31:32
  She'll do. You know, there's all of these
• 31:35
  moments where it just, it feels a little bit convoluted where
• 31:38
  these relationships don't really matter because everyone feels
• 31:41
  kind of expendable to the point where there's so much going on,
• 31:45
  you can't really care about one or the other because they're
• 31:47
  not, they're not given enough time.
• 31:49
  And I think another really good thing, if this is directed by
• 31:51
  two different people, you cannot really see them apart from an
• 31:53
  obvious action sequence like an explosion.
• 31:55
  Bang right now and stop everything.
• 31:57
  He takes over, press play again. I don't think that's the way
• 32:00
  it's gone on, but I think with this being 2 DPS as well, the
• 32:03
  non action sequences do complement the action sequences
• 32:06
  in the way that the look and the way that the feel and the way
• 32:08
  that the shot. There is a little bit of moving
• 32:10
  camera in there. There is the same, it's the same
• 32:12
  lens choice, it's the same kind of wide angle, it's the same
• 32:14
  kind of skulk around. It doesn't feel like 2 separate
• 32:17
  directors. It doesn't feel like 2 separate
• 32:18
  films. I think it's a real, real work
• 32:20
  of technical prowess and to be honest, watching it, it probably
• 32:23
  needed to direct us. Yeah, yeah, that big.
• 32:27
  It's huge, yeah, particularly with the cast.
• 32:30
  Richard Chamberlain, who plays Simmons, some of the production,
• 32:33
  he said the way Erwin got all the stars is that he paid them a
• 32:36
  lot of money. The set was like a perpetual
• 32:39
  analyst party. I've never seen so many glitter
• 32:41
  people in one place. Nice.
• 32:43
  From a cash point of view, it's probably the biggest that
• 32:47
  there's ever been up until that point at least.
• 32:49
  Up to that point, yeah. It's competing for certain.
• 32:53
  Yeah, it's up there. Yeah.
• 32:54
  For me, the directing story of the Tower and Inferno is really
• 32:57
  a story about what Gammon was up against.
• 32:59
  I think very similar what you say in Westie when you lay it
• 33:02
  all out. An enormous cast, older man in
• 33:04
  their moment, multiple storylines simultaneously affect
• 33:07
  sequences of a scale that never really been attempted before,
• 33:10
  and the small matter of sharing directorial duties with your
• 33:13
  producer. The remarkable thing isn't that
• 33:15
  the film's got flaws, it's that it's held together very, very
• 33:19
  well considering all of these, like, too many cooks, as we
• 33:22
  mentioned earlier. And that, I think, is down to
• 33:25
  game. And he's the glue that's
• 33:27
  bringing everything together. Yeah, the tension builds
• 33:29
  methodically once the fire takes hold, and it never lets up.
• 33:32
  He keeps the sticks clear even when we're cutting between half
• 33:35
  a dozen different storylines. And.
• 33:37
  And he makes the glass tower feel like a real living,
• 33:40
  breathing place before a single thing goes wrong.
• 33:43
  This feels like a real location. It does, yeah.
• 33:47
  It's really important that the geography of it, you need to
• 33:49
  understand the building to feel its scale before you can feel
• 33:51
  the danger. And I think he nails that before
• 33:53
  the fire starts raging. Yeah.
• 33:55
  I'm going to skirt around things, Westie.
• 33:58
  I'll try and soften the blow, OK?
• 34:00
  But I'm going to have to be honest at certain points, all
• 34:02
  right? Yes, you are.
• 34:03
  I'm I'm aware of that. It is an enormous, bloated toad
• 34:11
  of a film, bursting at the seams with actors who really have no
• 34:14
  business here. When you've got Newman, McQueen,
• 34:17
  Holden, Dunaway, Jones and a Stair all needing their moment
• 34:20
  in the sun, something's got to give.
• 34:22
  Like I've said, Dunaway feels particularly like she's wandered
• 34:25
  in from a slightly different film and there are some sort of
• 34:28
  plots that you feel the weird of really, why are they here?
• 34:32
  Why are we doing this? The film's 2 1/2 hours, it could
• 34:35
  be slimmed down. And I know that's me saying
• 34:37
  obviously Mr. 90 Minute, but it could do with a tune up
• 34:41
  specifically you seen coming later that that I'll mention.
• 34:44
  Yeah, yeah, I can't argue that. I mean, that's absolutely, yeah.
• 34:48
  That's the absolute truth. Course it could.
• 34:49
  OK, fine. OK.
• 34:50
  Exploded. Didn't want to be harsh.
• 34:52
  Yeah, but using, you know, references like Toad doesn't
• 34:55
  really sit well with me, but that's fine.
• 34:58
  Mr. Toad. Mr. Toad.
• 35:00
  So I'd argue that the bloated nature of the production, it's
• 35:04
  less a directorial failure and more an inevitable consequence
• 35:07
  of the deal that had to be made to get this film off the ground.
• 35:10
  I think Guillermo was handed a pretty much impossible brief
• 35:14
  from Erwin Allen. The fact that the Tarrant
• 35:17
  Inferno is as coherent and as tense as it is, given everything
• 35:20
  working against it, I think is a real achievement.
• 35:22
  John Gammon doesn't get nearly enough credit for that, and I
• 35:25
  think it's about bloody town that we give him it so.
• 35:28
  Yeah, absolutely. Matt, what about you?
• 35:30
  Direction on the film, wherever it's coming from.
• 35:33
  Well, that's the thing, it's difficult, isn't it?
• 35:34
  Who was exactly responsible for what?
• 35:37
  It's tricky to pass it, particularly when you look at
• 35:39
  this filmography. You know he's such a journey
• 35:41
  when this is such a unusual film on his filmography.
• 35:44
  Mean he's doing death on the now, which I like a lot, but
• 35:47
  very much also now you've got Shaft in Africa and Tarzan goes
• 35:50
  to India. So yeah, we're unlikely to talk
• 35:54
  about him again. Yeah, you know.
• 35:57
  Don't get your hopes. Well known character goes
• 35:59
  somewhere else, yeah. For a poor sequel, Poor.
• 36:05
  Sequel. Yeah.
• 36:06
  So it's clearly a journeyman, but that's maybe what you need
• 36:09
  here. It's not, you know, you don't
• 36:10
  need an author here. It's not about imprinting their
• 36:13
  particular vision. It's just the type of film this
• 36:16
  is. It has a template, and Gullibin
• 36:18
  follows that template to AT however much really actually did
• 36:21
  or not. The actors look great when it
• 36:23
  needs to gather pace. Does the tension really works?
• 36:26
  He doesn't go straight in with a huge explosion to kick this
• 36:29
  thing off. It starts so innocuously, and it
• 36:31
  just gets worse and worse and bigger and bigger until everyone
• 36:34
  is in peril. And that's really effective
• 36:36
  because he just keeps an audience on a very tight leash.
• 36:39
  And you can't overestimate what a grand scale he's working on
• 36:42
  here. You know, once that fire gets
• 36:43
  out of control, it is set piece after set piece and every single
• 36:47
  one of them is nailed, even if it is Owen Allen who had the
• 36:49
  kind of bigger control over them.
• 36:51
  And it's worth remembering they're genuinely working with
• 36:53
  actual fire here. This is not CGI.
• 36:56
  It's well before that, so there's no fakery.
• 36:58
  So when you see like Dan's office really go up, that first
• 37:02
  shot of it is terrifying because it looks so out of control and
• 37:06
  it's so big. That wide shot, if the fireman
• 37:09
  trying to douse it down, it's incredible.
• 37:11
  So no, we're not going to sit and say this is really personal
• 37:13
  filmmaking and there's a story to get into, but not every film
• 37:17
  has to be personal. What every film has to be
• 37:19
  something that stands the test of time.
• 37:21
  And if it does, and I think it does, then Guilleman deserves a
• 37:24
  lot of prayers for that. Absolutely.
• 37:25
  Hear you, hear you. Props at last.
• 37:29
  Definitely. Now, we've mentioned them a
• 37:31
  number of times and we'll continue to.
• 37:33
  Oh, and Alan, producer, director of the action sequences.
• 37:36
  He had form in the genre already.
• 37:38
  He'd already made a name for himself on TV, creating gems
• 37:41
  like Voyage, the Bottom of the Sea in Lost in Space.
• 37:43
  And in 1972, he produced The Poseidon Adventure.
• 37:46
  You know, classic cruise ship disaster flick Gene Hackman,
• 37:49
  Ernest Bognine, a very wet Shelly Windows.
• 37:52
  It was a smash. So for his next one, he went
• 37:55
  much bigger. But the way the Tower and
• 37:57
  Infernal came together is one of the strangest stories in
• 38:00
  Hollywood history. I think it's very lucky that it
• 38:04
  even exists. So both Fox and Warner Brothers
• 38:07
  had independently been developing skyscraper disaster
• 38:10
  movies at the same time Warner's had got their first If I Were In
• 38:13
  Richard Martin Stearns novel The Tower in April 1973.
• 38:17
  After a fierce bidding war, Warner's eventually paid
• 38:20
  somewhere between 350,000 and 390,000, depending on which
• 38:24
  account you believe. Either way, serious money for an
• 38:27
  unpublished book in 1973. Huge money, yeah.
• 38:30
  And Fox haven't missed out, submitted a second novel 8 weeks
• 38:34
  later, Thomas N Scotia and Frank M Robinson's The Glass Inferno.
• 38:38
  Allen was on board to produce, considering his track record,
• 38:41
  and when he read the book, he was immediately sucked by the
• 38:43
  narrative. He described it as having the
• 38:45
  same sort of characters, the same locale, the same story, the
• 38:48
  same conclusion as the tower. And Fox paid reported $400,000
• 38:53
  for it. Of course, this left Alan with a
• 38:55
  headache. 2 Studios, 2 books, both about a skyscraper on fire.
• 38:59
  If they both made their films and released them around the
• 39:01
  same time, they'd kill each other at the box office.
• 39:03
  Yeah, yeah, he'd seen it happen before, he said to Oscar Wilde
• 39:06
  Biopics in 1960. Neither of which did the
• 39:09
  business either might have done on its.
• 39:11
  Own. Yeah, yeah.
• 39:12
  So instead of a race, he broke out a partnership, something
• 39:15
  Hollywood never seen before. First of its kind.
• 39:18
  Fox and Warner's agreed to split the costs evenly, pool both
• 39:21
  source novels into a single script in Co produced the film.
• 39:24
  Fox took domestic distribution, Warner's got foreign
• 39:27
  distribution. Incredible.
• 39:28
  Your groundbreaking stuff. It really was, yeah.
• 39:31
  Reportedly, Warner studio head Ted Ashley played tennis with
• 39:34
  Fox studio head Gordon Stulberg and they broke the deal between
• 39:38
  sets. Yeah, nice.
• 39:39
  First joint production between two major studios in Hollywood
• 39:42
  history. Great stuff.
• 39:44
  And Alan wanted to direct the whole thing himself, so he went
• 39:47
  to Fox president Gordon Stolberg and asked for that.
• 39:49
  But Stolberg refused, aware that directing actors was not his
• 39:53
  fault here. But he wasn't offered a
• 39:55
  compromise, though. Alan could direct all the action
• 39:57
  sequences and a second director would be brought in to handle
• 40:00
  the dramatic scenes with the cast.
• 40:02
  Yes, that's right. The arrangement was similar to
• 40:05
  how the Poseidon Adventure had worked with Alan and Ronald Neem
• 40:08
  Sharon duties there as well, right?
• 40:10
  Right. So the man brought in as the
• 40:13
  official director, as we've discussed, was John Gillman.
• 40:15
  He was hired because of his 25 years in the business directing
• 40:18
  films like Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, Sky Jacket and as
• 40:22
  Matt said, Shaft in Africa. What a classic.
• 40:24
  Similar to that Poseidon director Ronald Neem.
• 40:26
  He was a no nonsense British director who ran a good tight
• 40:29
  ship. So Guilleman directed all
• 40:32
  dialogue, character development, drama and non action narrative.
• 40:35
  This included the party scenes, the discovery of wiring
• 40:38
  problems, Newman and Dunaway's romance, the corporate tension
• 40:41
  between Holden in Chamberlain and a stairs courtship of
• 40:44
  Jennifer Jones. Yeah, brilliant.
• 40:46
  All the boring stuff. Allen, on the other hand, he's
• 40:49
  directed all fire sequences, explosions, stunt work, the
• 40:52
  elevated disaster, the helicopter crash and the
• 40:55
  detonation of the water tanks. I'll do all the good stuff.
• 40:58
  Yeah, yeah, while firing a fucking handgun into the
• 41:01
  ceiling. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 41:03
  Yeah, he did. I'll get a reaction from you.
• 41:07
  Get that underway out of the suitcase.
• 41:16
  But the collaboration with Alan left deep scars.
• 41:18
  Varieties original review praised the film as a personal
• 41:22
  and professional triumph for producer Owen Allen and more
• 41:25
  subsequent press treated as an Irwin Allen film.
• 41:28
  In the 1977 LA Times interview, Yemen said.
• 41:31
  I wanted to fight it because, damn it, I made that picture.
• 41:34
  But I let the studio talk me out of it.
• 41:36
  They said it would only hurt business.
• 41:38
  But I was wrong. I should have fought.
• 41:41
  Tricky one. He's been compromised, hasn't
• 41:43
  he? Unfortunately, yeah.
• 41:44
  And as we're talking about classic disaster movies, we're
• 41:47
  talking about the likes of the Tarrant Inferno, the Poseidon
• 41:50
  Adventure. We're going to segue into our
• 41:52
  first Patreon question, which we mentioned at the top.
• 41:55
  Our first one comes from Gareth Binmore.
• 41:57
  Hi, Gareth. Gareth.
• 41:58
  Gareth says when you compare the classic disaster films like the
• 42:01
  Tarrant Inferno to modern spectacle driven movies like San
• 42:04
  Andreas or 2012, do improve visual effects actually make the
• 42:08
  film better? Or do the old movies feel more
• 42:10
  tense and believable because they relied on practical effects
• 42:13
  and strong characters? Which style of disaster movies
• 42:16
  works best for you? Great question, Gareth.
• 42:19
  Yeah, good one. Thank you, Matt, over to you.
• 42:23
  What do you think? I mean, I think I know the
• 42:24
  answers from all three, but. Yeah, I mean, come on.
• 42:28
  Yeah, it's practical all day long because he wanted rooted in
• 42:31
  believability. I mean, just saying that the
• 42:33
  build the promenade 10 foot off the floor for the water already
• 42:37
  the actors are going to be tense because you're going to be like,
• 42:38
  oh God, don't get near the edge. I'm 10 foot from the fall.
• 42:41
  That's going to feed into the performance.
• 42:43
  Not really. And you know, I'm not trying to
• 42:44
  be an old farty and just hop on, but the good old days before CJ
• 42:48
  because it does just have a place where it has a place where
• 42:50
  it needs to be something that can't be done practically or it
• 42:53
  doesn't matter if it doesn't have the tangible leave
• 42:55
  practical effects or the use of CGI and Lord of the Rings.
• 42:58
  So Star Wars, that's fine because that's fantasy.
• 43:00
  The clues in the title. So, you know, when I watch
• 43:02
  Return of the King, I don't need to believe Dennah thought is on
• 43:05
  fire and that in the same way I need to believe Dan Bigelow is
• 43:08
  on fire in this. It's two different things.
• 43:11
  And that's the key. People here genuinely on fire
• 43:14
  because it's practical effects and therefore you know how
• 43:16
  dangerous that is. And that's what gives it that
• 43:18
  edge and that believability. Similarly, for me, it's
• 43:21
  practical effects every time, and I hope my hands up are like
• 43:23
  the old fart thing that you said, Matt.
• 43:25
  It's almost certainly because of my age, which I grew up in the
• 43:28
  80s, and the films I fell in love with were built on
• 43:31
  ingenuity and craft. Real locations, real stunts,
• 43:33
  real consequences. When something goes wrong on
• 43:35
  screen, you feel it because on some level, you know, it
• 43:38
  actually happened in front of the camera in some way or
• 43:40
  another. There is a wonderful little film
• 43:43
  called Roller Coaster Disaster Film.
• 43:45
  George Siegel. Yeah.
• 43:48
  If you haven't seen it, seek it out.
• 43:49
  I mean, it's as rickety as the roller coaster cut themselves,
• 43:53
  but every imperfection is visible.
• 43:54
  It's a real location, real effects.
• 43:56
  And that goes on enormous, where you're genuinely on the edge
• 43:59
  because the danger feels tangible.
• 44:01
  Yeah. And compare that to something
• 44:03
  like San Andreas, where entire cities are crumbling, inglorious
• 44:06
  CGI and just don't feel the same tension.
• 44:09
  It's spectacular, course, But spectacular intense, I think,
• 44:12
  are two different things. Yeah.
• 44:13
  When everything is possible, nothing really feels dangerous.
• 44:16
  Exactly. What about USC hat Rick?
• 44:19
  Yeah, it absolutely is a hat, Rick.
• 44:20
  But I think there's reasoning behind this now.
• 44:22
  And I don't think it's as simple as to dive back in and say
• 44:25
  things aren't the way they used to be and they should be,
• 44:26
  because I don't think they can be.
• 44:28
  I think there's been, there's been, yeah, there's been gaps
• 44:31
  bridged between certain elements of these things actually coming
• 44:35
  together and really working and remembering when they really
• 44:37
  came together to work were absolutely groundbreaking.
• 44:40
  I think the problem is there's just this illusion now of the
• 44:43
  practical, and I think that's been overtaken and people don't
• 44:46
  quite know where to draw the line.
• 44:47
  I think audiences are too savvy now.
• 44:49
  They know too much about production.
• 44:50
  There's too much behind the scenes going on.
• 44:52
  They know that everything is CGI, then everything's VFX.
• 44:55
  I think if you use it where it bridges the gap between the two
• 44:57
  of them. And the two most notable films
• 44:59
  that I can remember see and I was Jurassic Park, which is a
• 45:01
  disaster film whether you like it or not.
• 45:04
  And that bridges a gap beautifully between computer
• 45:06
  effects and practical effects. That works lovely.
• 45:08
  And the one that I think was the last great disaster film was
• 45:11
  Titanic, which was 97. And that bridges a gap
• 45:14
  beautifully between practical and computer effects.
• 45:17
  You don't really know what's what and where that works.
• 45:19
  And I think there is a place for it, but don't try and world
• 45:22
  build, build your world physically and add the elements.
• 45:26
  That can't be done because it's too dangerous, not because it's
• 45:29
  spectacular visually. There's no reason why they can't
• 45:32
  use practical effects up to the point where it's unsafe and then
• 45:35
  replace. That was something else.
• 45:37
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great question, Gareth.
• 45:40
  Yes, thank you. Yeah, good to be.
• 45:41
  Thank you. Yes, a good one, yeah.
• 45:43
  And that wraps us up on the director under difficult
• 45:45
  circumstances, Junkie Emmon alongside her when Allen created
• 45:49
  box office gold with consistency, huge movie stars
• 45:52
  and incredible special effects. Indeed, the cast.
• 46:01
  The cast of The Terran Inferno is a fascinating mix of the old
• 46:04
  and the new face of Hollywood, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones and
• 46:07
  William Holden versus McQueen, Newman and Dunaway.
• 46:09
  We're covering both camps here, starting with Paul Newman as
• 46:13
  Doug Roberts. Over to you, Matt.
• 46:15
  I mean, he's Paul fucking Newman.
• 46:17
  What else needs to be said? Paul de Vogan Newman, by the
• 46:20
  way. I mean.
• 46:21
  They're like fucking by. The.
• 46:24
  Way, the reason why the custom works so well in terms of the
• 46:31
  big names here is because none of them should be here in this
• 46:34
  like this type of film should be below them all.
• 46:37
  Newman, McQueen, Dunray, Holden, all of them have such critically
• 46:41
  acclaimed creates at this point. I mean, obviously apart from I
• 46:44
  imagine a sizeable paycheck, you do go a little bit.
• 46:47
  Why are they in this? That's the master circle.
• 46:51
  Because it's material. They think, well, they wouldn't
• 46:53
  normally go near this, but because they do, they bring an
• 46:55
  element of weight and class to it.
• 46:58
  And that's certainly true of human.
• 46:59
  I mean, let's face it, on the page, he's a walk in cliche, you
• 47:02
  know, the driven architect, incredibly handsome, beautiful
• 47:05
  woman on his arm leaps into action without a second thought
• 47:08
  when the shit hits the fan, scrambling up, you know, the
• 47:11
  devastated stairwell and all that.
• 47:13
  There's nothing new here really. But you give it a human and it's
• 47:16
  just magic on screen. Whose Newman is that perfect
• 47:19
  combination of? He was a genuinely great actor,
• 47:22
  but he was also a true movie star at the same time.
• 47:25
  And he could modulate between the two whatever the material
• 47:27
  needed. So this is Paul Newman is movie
• 47:30
  star rather than great actor because that's what it needs.
• 47:32
  He's got such magnetism, such gravitas, like your heart is in
• 47:36
  your mouth when he's dangling off that room staircase because
• 47:38
  he makes you believe in the peril.
• 47:40
  Because if Paul Newman is committing to this, you commit
• 47:43
  to it as an audience as well in terms of your investment.
• 47:45
  So is this top five in human performances in terms of
• 47:49
  complexity or depth? Absolutely not.
• 47:51
  But it's iconic and the film wouldn't work without them.
• 47:54
  Because this is Paul fucking Human we're talking about.
• 47:57
  Absolutely. He takes architecture.
• 47:59
  It makes it cool. Like an.
• 48:00
  Exactly. Yeah, a friend of mine is an
• 48:03
  architect. I mean, Paul Newman runs the
• 48:04
  show. We may couldn't run a fucking
• 48:05
  bath. I'm telling you, I wouldn't want
• 48:07
  it anywhere in the area. Obviously you can't talk about
• 48:12
  Paul Newman without talking about Steve McQueen, and we will
• 48:15
  be getting to him later, but they are interlocked and there's
• 48:18
  a fascinating story. This isn't the first time the
• 48:20
  two acting Titans had appeared in a movie together.
• 48:23
  McQueen made his uncredited debut in the 1956 box and biopic
• 48:27
  Somebody Up There Likes Me, in which Newman played Rocky
• 48:30
  Graziano. It was a small blink and you'll
• 48:32
  miss it role and McQueen allegedly never forgot being in
• 48:35
  Newman's shadow. So when the two of the mended up
• 48:38
  as Co leads on the tower and Inferno who was never going to
• 48:41
  be. Straightforward.
• 48:42
  No. No, because originally McQueen
• 48:44
  was set to play Doug Roberts. Through all that eventually went
• 48:46
  inhuman and the fight chief has written.
• 48:48
  The first draft was a much smaller part and had been
• 48:51
  earmarked for Ernest Bognine, fresh off the Poseidon venture.
• 48:54
  But McQueen had other ideas. Yes, yes, that's right.
• 48:57
  John Kierman said. Steve felt the role of architect
• 49:00
  was pierced together. He said if somebody of my
• 49:02
  caliber can play the architect, I'll play the Fire Chief, right.
• 49:06
  And that's where the idea that has Paul Newman gave me, Yeah.
• 49:09
  Before that, though, McQueen had apparently suggested Clint
• 49:11
  Eastwood, Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford as possible Co
• 49:14
  leads before Newman came aboard. Yeah, just who's the biggest
• 49:17
  actor of the time? Yeah.
• 49:19
  Who can you think of one of those?
• 49:21
  Yeah. Amazing.
• 49:22
  By taking the Fire Chief, McQueen insured that his
• 49:24
  character didn't appear until about the 45 minute mark.
• 49:27
  Newman had burned through almost half of his lines before McQueen
• 49:30
  even walked on screen. And from that point on, McQueen
• 49:33
  dominated, Calling all the shots, ordering, dug around.
• 49:36
  Yeah. Genius move, he.
• 49:37
  Orchestrated it all? Yeah, clever.
• 49:39
  And Newman later admitted he'd been out manoeuvred, he said.
• 49:42
  For the first time I fell for the goddamn numbers.
• 49:45
  I did this Turkey for 1,000,010% of the gross but it's the first
• 49:49
  and last time I swear. Right.
• 49:51
  Calling this a Turkey, it's quite, quite something.
• 49:54
  It is like the billing situation was its own diplomatic incident
• 49:59
  as well. McQueen demanded.
• 50:00
  Equal billing, equal lines, equal pay, $1 million and then
• 50:05
  record for both and an equal percentage of the box office
• 50:09
  profits, Right. The Sterling Sullivan counting
• 50:12
  Newman's lines and wrote McQueen 12 additional ones to match.
• 50:16
  Yeah. That's equal for you, apparently
• 50:18
  brought him back off vacation to write 12 lines.
• 50:23
  Counted the middle of the script.
• 50:24
  These trailer, get back here, get me 12 lines.
• 50:26
  If you think of the lines McQueen has one of them is.
• 50:28
  That's what I'm worried about over there.
• 50:30
  All that glass and those beams. That's one of these lines.
• 50:32
  Yeah, yeah. Filler.
• 50:36
  Lying about ping pong balls. Not King Kong's balls.
• 50:44
  I would have loved that in there so it's satisfied.
• 50:49
  Both actors in the credits. Mcqueen's name was on the left,
• 50:52
  Newman's on the right, but was positioned slightly higher so
• 50:55
  the technically they could both claim top spot depending on
• 50:58
  whether you read top to bottom, which was Newman, or left to
• 51:01
  right which was McQueen. Very explicit memoirs from
• 51:04
  Warner's head office spelled out the precise measurements down to
• 51:07
  the last millimetre. Wow.
• 51:09
  Yeah, for movie marquees. Incredible.
• 51:12
  And the post it was called diagonal billing and I think
• 51:14
  they use it all the time now. And Newman's friend A A Hochner
• 51:18
  in his book Paul and Me, claimed he visited the set and witnessed
• 51:22
  Newman. Colin McQueen a chicken shit
• 51:24
  because McQueen insisted on having the last line in the
• 51:26
  movie regardless of whether it actually made sense in narrative
• 51:29
  terms. Don't care what, you're right,
• 51:33
  just I'm seeing it all right? It could have been anything.
• 51:35
  Made sense in narrative terms off of the town and Ferno.
• 51:38
  It's not. It's not a complex narrative.
• 51:40
  Not really. I mean you could put anything in
• 51:42
  there. See you later mate.
• 51:45
  See you later. A Newman's son Scott has a small
• 51:50
  role in the film as a young firefighter with a failure of
• 51:53
  heights that's. Right.
• 51:54
  Yes, yeah, yeah. His only on screen appearance
• 51:56
  alongside his father Scott, struggled, unfortunately, with
• 51:59
  addiction in the years that followed me.
• 52:01
  He did, yeah. Unfortunately, he died of an
• 52:02
  overdose in 1970 years. Sad times, yeah.
• 52:05
  Yeah, he was young, as well as about his mid 20s.
• 52:07
  Yeah, he was. Yeah.
• 52:08
  Yeah. To end on Newman, he is a quote
• 52:10
  of his about the Terran Inferno. He called it a very
• 52:13
  distinguished junk movie, he said.
• 52:15
  I knew he was going to achieve what I wanted to achieve and
• 52:18
  that was to frighten people. Was it?
• 52:20
  Did it? Did that, Yeah.
• 52:24
  Next, it's the cooler King McHugh himself.
• 52:27
  The eagle has landed. It's Steve McQueen as
• 52:29
  firefighter. Michael o'halloran, this is your
• 52:33
  boy. It is my boy.
• 52:35
  What a boy legend. Love this performance.
• 52:37
  I think he just leaps off the screen.
• 52:39
  It's just absolute. Just got this such confidence to
• 52:41
  it. And I don't think it's
• 52:42
  egotistical either. I think he really puts himself
• 52:45
  in the hero's spotlight and knows exactly how to do that and
• 52:48
  knows how to put himself in the center of the frame and knows
• 52:51
  where the lightness and knows how to move and fill the frame
• 52:54
  just with a hand coming up to his head.
• 52:55
  You know, that little hand that that thought process of should I
• 52:58
  take this uniform off before I go into the promenade?
• 53:01
  That's thought process. Just that little bit.
• 53:03
  It holds the screen longer. That's great.
• 53:05
  So he knows it's going to get an extra couple of seconds of
• 53:07
  screen time and it doesn't feel like it's pretentious at all.
• 53:10
  I don't want to think it feels that he just really cares about
• 53:12
  being on screen and about doing a really good job and being
• 53:17
  recognized for being really good at what he is good at.
• 53:20
  And I think, but someone like Newman, he feels that is just a
• 53:22
  threat not only to his ego, but also to his talent.
• 53:25
  And the people might not recognize how talented he is or
• 53:28
  how much he's actually putting into the role.
• 53:29
  It's really, really good. And it really elevates the
• 53:32
  material, as Matt was saying, to have these guys in there because
• 53:35
  it is a disaster film at the end of the day.
• 53:37
  And having these two guys in these roles and everyone else on
• 53:41
  the cast as well, but specifically these two is I
• 53:44
  think personally what started putting it up for Oscars.
• 53:47
  It started to get recognized. This whole genre changed.
• 53:50
  It was all taken a lot more seriously because of the heft
• 53:53
  and the weight that these guys brought to it.
• 53:55
  But McQueen cannot put a foot wrong in this film at all.
• 53:59
  He is just constantly excellent. He's constantly the guy with all
• 54:03
  of the answers, and even when he hasn't got the answers, you know
• 54:06
  he's going to come up with them eventually.
• 54:07
  He's completely selfless, completely fearless.
• 54:10
  There's no anxiety in the character.
• 54:12
  He's just completely straight down the line and just one of
• 54:14
  them characters like hilts. It's like you don't want to be
• 54:17
  that guy. He's just the but here he's the
• 54:20
  everyman hero. He's not an architect.
• 54:23
  He's not as somebody with loads of money.
• 54:25
  He's an everyman with a wedding ring on, with a car that he just
• 54:28
  drives in and he's like, look, I'm the same as everybody else.
• 54:31
  Blue collar guy. I'm married, I've got a family
• 54:33
  at home probably. I've got to make all these
• 54:35
  decisions. I've got to eat the smoke.
• 54:36
  I'm not a big shot. I'm not comfortable in any of
• 54:39
  these situations. I'm just like you are, and I'm a
• 54:41
  hero. Everything is really understated
• 54:43
  performance here. There's no like, overblown
• 54:45
  performance. He plays a classic McQueen,
• 54:47
  really cool. Yeah, and McQueen had genuine
• 54:50
  hero moments on the production. During filming he got word that
• 54:53
  the Goldwyn studios had caught fire, so he accompanied the
• 54:57
  technical advisors to real fire chiefs who were consultant on
• 55:00
  the film up to the scene and without telling his wife, Ali
• 55:03
  McGraw put on a helmet and gear and just weirded in to help.
• 55:07
  Isn't amazing. Check this out though.
• 55:08
  A fireman working alongside OF eventually clocked who he was
• 55:11
  and shouted over Steve McQueen. My wife will never believe this.
• 55:15
  And then McQueen replied. Neither will mine.
• 55:17
  Amazing. Wonderful McQueen, as ever, did
• 55:23
  his own stunts. Against Alan's strenuous
• 55:25
  objections, he insisted on performing this.
• 55:27
  Don't wear his character leaps from the helicopter onto the
• 55:29
  roof of the burning building himself.
• 55:31
  Of course he did. Yeah, yeah.
• 55:33
  Loves it. Yeah.
• 55:35
  Alan objected, of course, and McQueen just did it because he's
• 55:38
  Steve fucking McQueen. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:41
  Classic McQueen loves doing stunts, yeah, and appears to be
• 55:44
  slightly narcissistic. Yeah, they were incredibly
• 55:47
  similar tales on the production of The Great Escape, if you
• 55:49
  remember. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:51
  Yeah, yeah. Thinks quite fragile deep down,
• 55:53
  isn't he? Yeah, I think so.
• 55:55
  Yeah. Absolutely, and The Tower and
• 55:57
  Inferno turned out to be Mcqueen's last film for four
• 55:59
  years. The intensity for the
• 56:01
  production, combined with burnout and a desire to focus on
• 56:04
  his passion for motor racing led him to step away from Hollywood
• 56:07
  almost entirely. Yeah, he came back in 1978 in An
• 56:11
  Enemy of the People, which isn't huge, and only made two further
• 56:15
  films before you start passing the 1980.
• 56:17
  Yeah, so this was this was his last great for.
• 56:20
  His last great role, yeah. So despite the behind the scenes
• 56:24
  reports, McQueen does what he does best in Infernal.
• 56:27
  Ultra cool and saving the day without breaking sweat.
• 56:33
  Finally, it's the head honcho William Holden as James Duncan.
• 56:36
  And you know, we've talked about Newman.
• 56:38
  We've talked about McQueen. 2 legends.
• 56:40
  Yeah. But the greatest of respect to
• 56:42
  both of those, for my money, the best performer in this it's
• 56:45
  William Holden. Big bill.
• 56:47
  OK, nice. She's thinking about what he's
• 56:49
  up against. T and Newman, McQueen, Astaire,
• 56:51
  Faye Dunaway, some of the biggest names of the industry is
• 56:54
  ever produced. And Holden not only holds his
• 56:57
  own, he stands above them. For me, there's a reason he was
• 57:01
  one of the defining stars of the golden age of Hollywood.
• 57:04
  This film is a real reminder of that old Hollywood very much
• 57:08
  alive and kicking here. Yeah, he's got that
• 57:10
  authoritative voice, that quiet command that you just you can't
• 57:14
  fake. And I don't think anyone has
• 57:16
  looked better in a burgundy velvet.
• 57:19
  Forget about it. He looks incredible.
• 57:21
  Huge glasses as well. Them huge glasses.
• 57:23
  The hair if the buildings gotta go up in flames.
• 57:27
  He's going out in style. He looks amazing.
• 57:29
  That's the best bet about his performance.
• 57:30
  He's actually tied to one of the pillars.
• 57:32
  There's glass and shit everywhere.
• 57:34
  Takes his glasses off safety first.
• 57:39
  Fantastic. The character reminds me a
• 57:42
  little bit of Mayor Vaughan in Jaws.
• 57:44
  Yeah. Duncan's the man who's built
• 57:46
  something he's enormously proud of.
• 57:47
  And when things start to threaten lives, his first
• 57:50
  instinct is to protect his reputation rather than the
• 57:52
  people. Yeah.
• 57:53
  I think it's a very recognisable kind of vanity.
• 57:55
  The key difference is that Duncan comes to a sense as a
• 57:57
  whole load sooner than Mayor Whatever did.
• 58:00
  Yeah. He does.
• 58:01
  Yeah, and he's he's going to make sure he was the last one
• 58:03
  out of there as well. Yeah, exactly.
• 58:05
  Yeah, he made some of the ship. Yeah, you'll.
• 58:07
  Get everyone else out first, yeah?
• 58:09
  Yeah, that's great. There's a real honour and
• 58:11
  nobility in that. Once he realizes and he plays
• 58:15
  that transition really, really well, that slow, horrible
• 58:17
  dawning of of his own responsibility.
• 58:19
  And then there's his interplay with his son-in-law, Roger
• 58:22
  Simmons, an absolute slime ball of the highest order.
• 58:24
  We've talked about a man who cooked corners and got people
• 58:27
  killed. When Duncan finally squares up
• 58:30
  to him, we'll talk about it in depth.
• 58:32
  And he slugs and one right in the gut.
• 58:34
  That's one of the great moments of the film.
• 58:37
  Brilliant. Incredible.
• 58:39
  So for me, William, holding his own and coming out on top of
• 58:42
  you. Very nice, very good.
• 58:46
  You write that one. You write that?
• 58:50
  One, and believe it or not, William Holden didn't really
• 58:53
  want to do the film. He thought the script was lousy,
• 58:55
  and his specific complaint about his character was that he spent
• 58:58
  the entire film on the telephone.
• 59:01
  I mean, there's a lot of it. He's on the floor.
• 59:03
  There's a lot of it, yeah. Yeah, he took the part lightly.
• 59:06
  For the door. He got $750,000, his biggest
• 59:10
  payday in years. Yeah, and he pushed hard for top
• 59:13
  villain, but obviously that's never going to happen.
• 59:19
  He instead settled for a better percentage of the box office,
• 59:22
  which meant he ultimately earned more than any of his core stars.
• 59:25
  Smart guy. He lost the battle but won the
• 59:27
  war. Yeah, and he allegedly got very
• 59:30
  upset with Fate Dunaway on set. She kept in, waiting two hours
• 59:33
  for an important scene, and when she arrived, he grabbed her by
• 59:36
  the shoulders, shoved her against the soundstage wall and
• 59:39
  told her. You do that to me once more and
• 59:41
  I'll push you through that wall. Wow, well, that's quite
• 59:43
  unpleasant, isn't? It yes.
• 59:45
  Come on, William, that is old school.
• 59:47
  That is old Hollywood. Don't.
• 59:49
  Want that? No set workers noted that done
• 59:51
  away his punctuality improved considerably after that.
• 59:54
  Right. And she later wrote in her
• 59:56
  autobiography that she and Holden had courts brushed up
• 59:59
  against each other briefly on The Terran Inferno and.
• 1:00:02
  That had left a bad taste in his mouth.
• 1:00:04
  Right, OK. Right.
• 1:00:06
  But I mean, they did star. I mean there were lovers in
• 1:00:08
  network 2 years later. No, absolutely right.
• 1:00:10
  Of course they are. Yeah.
• 1:00:12
  So a huge cast, the cream of the Hollywood crop.
• 1:00:15
  We'll be talking about Jennifer Jones and Fred Astaire later
• 1:00:17
  with McQueen, Newman and Halden. Inferno has got star power to
• 1:00:21
  burn. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:29
  All right, movies. We'll be right back.
• 1:00:31
  Thank you for supporting us by listening to the sponsors for
• 1:00:34
  this episode. Thank you for listening to our
• 1:00:37
  sponsors. And now it's back to the show.
• 1:00:42
  The middle. The second axe sees the fire
• 1:00:47
  taking hold of the 81st floor and those around it.
• 1:00:49
  The party goers are ready in to move downstairs, but the
• 1:00:52
  elevator is out of bounds over the USD.
• 1:00:56
  Out of bounds, the fires move towards the main shaft.
• 1:00:59
  What's going to happen? It could open on the floor where
• 1:01:02
  the fire is, but they don't know how big the fire is.
• 1:01:04
  I mean, this is just, yeah, you would, wouldn't you?
• 1:01:05
  You just if you were right next to elevate, you'd be straight in
• 1:01:08
  there. I'm not listening to anybody at
• 1:01:09
  this point. I'm absolutely going for it.
• 1:01:11
  But this for me, is the moment where it, like, really hits
• 1:01:14
  home. Like, this could happen to
• 1:01:15
  anyone at any time, anywhere. We don't know, really know.
• 1:01:18
  We're not in control of this narrative, as you can call it a
• 1:01:20
  narrative. We're not in control of these
• 1:01:21
  action sequences as we think we are.
• 1:01:23
  It's been an elevator opens on the floor and it's it's
• 1:01:26
  Mcqueen's reaction. There's that slow zoom in.
• 1:01:29
  She's got Mrs. Mueller going in the first elevator and she makes
• 1:01:32
  it and then she's going back on the door.
• 1:01:34
  So you've got that level of tension.
• 1:01:36
  They've called for backups, so there's more of them arriving.
• 1:01:38
  It's getting more and more out of control.
• 1:01:41
  When that elevator opens again, you're kind of forgotten about
• 1:01:43
  what's happening. You don't quite know where it's
• 1:01:45
  going. You just think it's going to
• 1:01:46
  stay there. But that opens again.
• 1:01:48
  Everyone's dead inside of it. That guy's stumbling out of it.
• 1:01:50
  Man. That is absolute nightmare fuel.
• 1:01:53
  It's. Just ridiculous.
• 1:01:55
  And every time I saw that you just as that fall and it seems
• 1:01:58
  like his head's coming off like if you watch it again, the way
• 1:02:01
  that lands, I don't know if it's a piece or something.
• 1:02:03
  I don't know what it is, but it seems like head comes off but
• 1:02:05
  obviously doesn't because we see you later.
• 1:02:07
  But when the state puts his quarter and that's a lovely call
• 1:02:09
  back later when he said me Jack was needed elsewhere.
• 1:02:11
  Absolutely love that. Yeah.
• 1:02:13
  It doesn't play up what he's doing or anything.
• 1:02:15
  You know, we'll talk about the day pays.
• 1:02:16
  But this is probably one of the reasons why it looks a bit like
• 1:02:18
  air by airplane looks like this. And you've got that's this great
• 1:02:22
  moment. But I can't help but be taken
• 1:02:23
  out over the moment slightly because we're just based.
• 1:02:26
  We've got this track and shot and it comes past all of the
• 1:02:29
  people of the party and their reactions to it.
• 1:02:31
  And it's the woman on the floor and they just slap on her face
• 1:02:33
  as if she's passed out. It's really airplane that way.
• 1:02:36
  They're just like a. Baseball bat.
• 1:02:38
  Yeah, just wait. It gets the whole he's just like
• 1:02:41
  this. It does quite come across all of
• 1:02:47
  their expressions. And it's great because you get
• 1:02:48
  this, like, real sense of fear. But it's just her on the floor.
• 1:02:50
  And the tapping on the face kind of pulls out a little bit.
• 1:02:53
  But it does land on Duncan at the end.
• 1:02:55
  And he gets this real sense of like, oh, shit.
• 1:02:58
  Like this is more serious than I gave it any kind of credit for.
• 1:03:01
  We are in trouble now. Yeah, really UPS the stakes.
• 1:03:04
  Yeah. Because of the dangerous working
• 1:03:06
  conditions, over 30 members of San Francisco, Ellie and Fox
• 1:03:09
  Studio fire departments were brought in as consultants.
• 1:03:12
  A dedicated fireman was assigned to each member of the cast for
• 1:03:16
  any scene involved and potentially dangerous effects.
• 1:03:19
  They took it seriously. Yeah, massively.
• 1:03:21
  Stunt coordinator Paul steered and put it plainly.
• 1:03:24
  In most films, if something goes wrong, a stuntman would get
• 1:03:28
  hurt. In the terrain inferno.
• 1:03:29
  If something had gone wrong, a stuntman could have been killed.
• 1:03:32
  Wow. Despite the risks, Alan claimed
• 1:03:34
  that not a single hair on any of these actors was singed.
• 1:03:37
  Pretty remarkable considering the period, if you think of the
• 1:03:39
  injuries on the set of the likes of The Exorcist, for example.
• 1:03:42
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:43
  That was only a couple of years before, wasn't it?
• 1:03:45
  Yeah. And as we've been talking about
• 1:03:47
  this elevator scene, there was a cut scene which created a big
• 1:03:50
  plot hole because of its excision after the opening
• 1:03:52
  ceremony in the scenic elevator, there's a couple of lines where
• 1:03:55
  Duncan admits to the mayor that will be one of the three scenic
• 1:03:58
  elevators is actually functional.
• 1:04:00
  Yeah. So with those lines not making
• 1:04:01
  the final cut, it's quite confusing why during the
• 1:04:04
  evacuation of the of the promenade room, everyone is
• 1:04:07
  queuing up for a single elevator with a temper capacity when
• 1:04:09
  there are two others sitting right there.
• 1:04:11
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, not important.
• 1:04:14
  Yeah, not important. I've never questioned it, not
• 1:04:16
  until now to be honest. Is that an action sequence?
• 1:04:19
  No, not important. Let's go, let's go.
• 1:04:22
  They won't remember. Not the one.
• 1:04:27
  Yeah, and then we get to the same where it really ramps up
• 1:04:29
  for me when we go back to Dan and his secretary because this
• 1:04:33
  is the only thing. Yeah, this films not messing
• 1:04:35
  around and you're going to see every penny on screen because it
• 1:04:38
  is ruthless and it's harsh and it's horrible, but the build up
• 1:04:43
  to it is so good. That smoke curling under the
• 1:04:46
  doors that they're completely oblivious to until it's too
• 1:04:48
  late. You realize Dan has basically
• 1:04:51
  condemned them both to death because he's had the phone
• 1:04:53
  disconnected so they could have a bit of housey father without
• 1:04:56
  being interrupted. Once you get over that, it's one
• 1:04:58
  of these scenes that just sits in my stomach and you feel sick
• 1:05:01
  for them because you just know there's no way out and it's just
• 1:05:03
  a matter of time. You know, one thing I think
• 1:05:05
  we'll end up seeing a lot, some of the dialogue is very soap
• 1:05:08
  opera, and some of the moments are quite like he.
• 1:05:11
  Like Lori Sin. I did always want to die in bed.
• 1:05:14
  Did you? Not the time to say that.
• 1:05:17
  No. You mean you want to die making
• 1:05:19
  love to Dan Bigelow is what you mean?
• 1:05:21
  Come on Dad, one more time. Dan Bigelow, male gigolo.
• 1:05:30
  Yeah, it's that kind of stuff. Doesn't that like when Dancestra
• 1:05:33
  like or I didn't tell you I disconnected the phones because
• 1:05:35
  I wanted to make it easy for you.
• 1:05:37
  How? How does that make it easy for?
• 1:05:39
  Her. I would have knocked him out.
• 1:05:41
  Yeah, absolutely. Moron, you've killed us both.
• 1:05:45
  And then that bit where he turns back and looks at it for one
• 1:05:47
  last grin before he charges out there, you know that's she's on
• 1:05:50
  toast. But other than that, it's so
• 1:05:53
  brutal. I mean, Dan makes a good
• 1:05:54
  argument about how fast he can run, but it doesn't matter.
• 1:05:58
  It doesn't matter that he will know his office so well that in
• 1:06:01
  any other circumstance he could close his eyes and walk from one
• 1:06:04
  end to the other with no issue because this is the circumstance
• 1:06:06
  that just can't control or beat. And the horrific thing is he
• 1:06:10
  doesn't even come close to making it, which would be the
• 1:06:14
  thing. Like he nearly gets to the door,
• 1:06:17
  but he does fall to the last. No, that's it.
• 1:06:21
  It's 1 little stumble into the chair and that's it.
• 1:06:23
  He's fucked, he's gone, he can't recover.
• 1:06:26
  And this is what I mean by putting the money on screen.
• 1:06:29
  I mean the stunt work, the size of the flames he's got to walk
• 1:06:32
  through, the way it just holds on them and it doesn't cut away
• 1:06:35
  like the size of the area, the spread across the ceiling
• 1:06:37
  collapse on them. It's genuinely like jaw-dropping
• 1:06:40
  stuff. How they've pulled this off, how
• 1:06:41
  dangerous it looks and then just prove a lorry.
• 1:06:44
  I mean, it's just a likable character.
• 1:06:46
  And it just feels really sadistic how her death gets
• 1:06:48
  drawn out. And same for done, to be honest.
• 1:06:50
  To me, when the flames burst through that shriek she gives,
• 1:06:53
  it's just pure despair and horror.
• 1:06:55
  And it's so effective. And you can't blame it for that
• 1:06:59
  desperation of just, well, if I smash the window open, I'll get
• 1:07:02
  out that way. I mean, we know what's going to
• 1:07:04
  happen with the fire once it meets all that fresh oxygen.
• 1:07:07
  We've seen it happen. Well, and it's 1000 times where
• 1:07:10
  I say you're like, this scene is genuinely terrifying.
• 1:07:12
  You think it's just taking all prisoners from this moment on.
• 1:07:15
  Yeah. I'll tell you where they did cut
• 1:07:17
  the extra 4 million out of Doug's budget windows because
• 1:07:20
  they're easy fucking put out of them.
• 1:07:22
  Yeah, all of them. Just a chair and then the one in
• 1:07:26
  the elevator just pushed that out and that's no problem.
• 1:07:29
  Just die. People dive and through the
• 1:07:30
  windows, no problem. And.
• 1:07:32
  Apart from that, mean what? A sequence from a stunt?
• 1:07:35
  I'm like, it's unbelievable. It does hit but I'm sounds like
• 1:07:40
  I'm going to be controversial here on my own, but this is what
• 1:07:43
  I was talking about earlier. This seems a little bit like
• 1:07:46
  cheap thrills to me. I think this could have been
• 1:07:48
  rewritten as important characters because I don't know
• 1:07:51
  who the hell these two. People.
• 1:07:53
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's fair.
• 1:07:54
  These people are just fodder. Yeah, he's having an affair and
• 1:07:58
  she's a secretary and that, that's about as deep as advice.
• 1:08:00
  It's soap opera, yeah. It really is.
• 1:08:02
  When I came back to watching this, I was thinking, who the
• 1:08:05
  fuck are these two guys? Well, I'm covering these these.
• 1:08:08
  Scissors didn't even work. Properly when they cut the
• 1:08:11
  fucking thing. I mean, you could basically cut
• 1:08:13
  these characters out of the film and it makes no difference
• 1:08:15
  whatsoever apart from the check and the watch.
• 1:08:17
  That's it. Yeah, but emotionally I do get
• 1:08:20
  it. And it really is brutal.
• 1:08:21
  It really is unexpected from a film like this.
• 1:08:23
  Yeah. Well, I think that's why it's in
• 1:08:25
  there. You need someone to die at that
• 1:08:26
  point in a really nasty way before it gets to the
• 1:08:29
  characters. You.
• 1:08:31
  Care about, Obviously. Robert Wagner plays Dan Bigelow,
• 1:08:35
  named as a tribute to a Fox employee called Don Bigelow.
• 1:08:38
  A miscommunication somewhere along the line meant Don became
• 1:08:42
  Dan. Right.
• 1:08:44
  Easy mistake to make, isn't it? Isn't it?
• 1:08:46
  I love them Dan Brookhimer films.
• 1:08:51
  Dan Corleone, Imagine. Dan.
• 1:08:57
  Dan. Dan.
• 1:09:01
  So the news comes through that there's still people on the 87th
• 1:09:04
  floor, Mrs. Albright and her two children.
• 1:09:07
  Doug goes up with the head of security, Harry Jernigan, to
• 1:09:10
  save the day. Not too sure that OJ Simpson is
• 1:09:12
  the person you really need in a crisis such as this.
• 1:09:14
  Nobody seems game and off they go.
• 1:09:17
  And because we've seen Bigelow and Laurie bite the dust, I
• 1:09:20
  think that really feeds into this scene.
• 1:09:22
  We could have more bodies in our hands here as soon as we make it
• 1:09:25
  into that room. Now, you know, moving mechanics
• 1:09:27
  dictate there's no way anybody could die in this scene.
• 1:09:29
  Not in back-to-back scenes, no, when he's thinking about
• 1:09:32
  children, but because it is children and it is a vulnerable
• 1:09:35
  woman. Mrs. Albright is deaf.
• 1:09:37
  The emotion really comes through.
• 1:09:39
  I mean, they do really lay it on thick.
• 1:09:41
  In the earliest scene, she signs to her daughter that she doesn't
• 1:09:44
  go to party since the death of her husband.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah. Give us a break.
• 1:09:47
  It's devastating. Bowler laughs.
• 1:09:49
  Yeah. It is a little too quick how
• 1:09:50
  Mrs. Albright is saved and then just whisked off.
• 1:09:53
  OJ just fucks off after his old tricks, I imagine.
• 1:09:59
  Very convenient for the rest of the plot after this scene, but
• 1:10:02
  Doug clambering through the smoke Riddle bedrooms to save
• 1:10:04
  the helpless kids is a great visual.
• 1:10:07
  It's really affected and like I said, because there's a lot at
• 1:10:10
  stake here and really, really hits, Yeah.
• 1:10:13
  And there's a very familiar face among the younger cast members.
• 1:10:16
  Michael Lookland, better known as Bobby Brady from The Brady
• 1:10:19
  Bunch, played young Philip Albright.
• 1:10:21
  I love him. In the earlier scene where the
• 1:10:23
  talk about not going to parties, he's wearing those cut and edge
• 1:10:27
  cans. You're amazing.
• 1:10:29
  It's great. Yeah.
• 1:10:31
  The aerial. Aerial, yeah.
• 1:10:34
  Massive aerial. Great, so the children are safe
• 1:10:37
  from harm for now, but there's a perilous road ahead.
• 1:10:40
  There is a death defying climb to safety requires stout hearts
• 1:10:46
  and trim waist lines. Good job.
• 1:10:48
  Paul Newman is on the case in that right, Westie.
• 1:10:50
  That's absolutely right. It's a ruptured gas line.
• 1:10:51
  Get back. Amazing, right?
• 1:10:56
  I mean, the sequence, I used to hate it when I was kicked.
• 1:10:58
  It was just so intense, like I just couldn't really take it.
• 1:11:01
  Now I quite enjoy it, even though it's ridiculous.
• 1:11:04
  It's I mean, it's it's, it's the moment when humans like I'm
• 1:11:06
  definitely doing that. I'm definitely part of that.
• 1:11:09
  But the original kind of sliding down the whole metal stairwell
• 1:11:13
  Bannister thing. I mean, that's really slick from
• 1:11:14
  the stuntman. He's given this everything he's
• 1:11:17
  got. He's rolling over it and
• 1:11:18
  bouncing down it and holding on to it.
• 1:11:20
  And then when it gets to the bottom, you just got Newman
• 1:11:22
  holding on to it. It's really good as a setup
• 1:11:26
  because you just think, well, that's the one way down.
• 1:11:28
  He's going to have to get these guys down.
• 1:11:29
  Now, if that was me and Philip shouted down, I could do it.
• 1:11:33
  I wouldn't say get them to try. I'd say sorry guys, I can't help
• 1:11:37
  you. There's no more I can do.
• 1:11:42
  Just wait there. I'll see you.
• 1:11:43
  I can get, because there's no fucking chance I'm getting any
• 1:11:46
  of you 3 down from that. But it's the way that he adds
• 1:11:49
  this maturity to the kids. The character of Dougie trusts
• 1:11:52
  Phil to get down. He trusts them.
• 1:11:53
  Let them try. There's no other choice, you
• 1:11:55
  know? He lets them come down and he
• 1:11:56
  treats them like an adult and that's brilliant.
• 1:11:58
  He does really well to get down that Doug has climbed back up
• 1:12:01
  and he's great with Angela. The way he just moves it around
• 1:12:04
  was like, I was fine getting up and I'm going to have loads of
• 1:12:06
  trouble getting down. Can you help us?
• 1:12:07
  Can you tell us what to do? Makes her feel part of it,
• 1:12:09
  doesn't pull her around, doesn't push her around.
• 1:12:12
  I think that's brilliant. You would have made an
• 1:12:13
  incredible dad. How do you have had the time to
• 1:12:15
  be 1? I think it's just shows how
• 1:12:17
  Karen, the character is. He's absolutely brilliant.
• 1:12:19
  But I mean that metal is going to be hot.
• 1:12:21
  There's a few occasions in this film where I think that metal is
• 1:12:23
  going to be hot. Chamberlain grabs it at the end
• 1:12:25
  when he tries to go down. It's just some kind of takes us
• 1:12:28
  out a little bit and then it's like right, Mrs. Mueller is
• 1:12:31
  going to come down. Can you do it?
• 1:12:32
  I wouldn't get Philip, the young boy to hold me belt.
• 1:12:36
  Like hold on to the pillar. Can you support my weight there,
• 1:12:40
  Brady Munch? I don't think you can grab me
• 1:12:45
  belt. No, just stay there.
• 1:12:46
  I'll see what I can do here. But she comes down, It's
• 1:12:49
  excellent, the way she struggles all the way down it and there's
• 1:12:51
  that tension. She has to.
• 1:12:53
  Swing towards. He's like, can you swing towards
• 1:12:55
  and grabs her and hugs her. And you just realise that you
• 1:12:58
  get so much relief that these guys are OK and it's such a
• 1:13:02
  setup for what happens to her character later on because he's
• 1:13:06
  so unfair that you've had to go through this.
• 1:13:09
  And it lays such a landmine. It's like you're watching them
• 1:13:12
  lay a landmine in front of it. And you think, well, I'm glad
• 1:13:15
  I've avoided that. And then you walk towards it
• 1:13:17
  without knowing that you don't step on it later on and you
• 1:13:19
  don't realize what's going to happen.
• 1:13:20
  And it just, it bonds you to these characters.
• 1:13:22
  It bonds you to these four. It's a really excellent
• 1:13:25
  sequence. And I think the film really,
• 1:13:26
  really needs this in there. But I see what a setup for that
• 1:13:29
  good punch later on. It is, yeah.
• 1:13:31
  It really does feel as though Mrs. Muller could go at any
• 1:13:34
  moment here. It's perilous.
• 1:13:35
  Yeah. Definitely.
• 1:13:36
  Loads of time afforded to this this scene to really ramp that
• 1:13:41
  tension up. Yeah, it's a good 10 minutes.
• 1:13:43
  Easy 10 minutes. Yeah.
• 1:13:45
  Yeah. So Doug leaves the kids and Mrs.
• 1:13:47
  Mueller at the service door of floor 135 after they make it out
• 1:13:51
  of there. I mean that cement blocking the
• 1:13:53
  door is just plot servicing at the highest order.
• 1:13:57
  Wonderful. What are they building up there?
• 1:13:59
  Yeah. Ridiculous.
• 1:14:00
  Yeah. What do you think they're eating
• 1:14:01
  over there? Really.
• 1:14:03
  Really. Alvida's in pet.
• 1:14:06
  Really. Just leave it.
• 1:14:11
  There's a moment here where Doug leaves him and he climbs through
• 1:14:13
  the air vent, which is a visual right out of Die Hard.
• 1:14:16
  It's really impressive stuff, especially when combined with
• 1:14:18
  John Williamson's kind of like industrial motif playing over
• 1:14:21
  the top. Yeah, which matches the Dead
• 1:14:23
  star as well. And you've got that shot of Alec
• 1:14:25
  Guinness going over the same chasm.
• 1:14:26
  It's got that same type of music design.
• 1:14:28
  Do it. But Doug makes it back to the
• 1:14:30
  party and dials in that the South stairwell is blocked with
• 1:14:34
  cement. It is remarkable that with a
• 1:14:36
  fire agent, the phone lines remain free from damage.
• 1:14:39
  Yes, they really do. And then the saying says the dog
• 1:14:42
  says the dog there, how did you get anything?
• 1:14:43
  I'll give it to you later. Me, I'll be like, well, I've to
• 1:14:47
  say these three fuckers, I'll tell you what happened, right?
• 1:14:51
  So the firemen make it to the top and the blow the door and
• 1:14:54
  the cement, The Smithereens if there weren't enough explosions
• 1:14:57
  and balls of fire in this building.
• 1:14:59
  I know, I know. They're creating some more with
• 1:15:00
  the dynamite. I just don't know about you
• 1:15:02
  guys, but this feels just a little reckless considering
• 1:15:05
  what's rumbling underneath. What do you use for your
• 1:15:08
  explosive? C4 or blow hole in anything?
• 1:15:10
  What the fuck don't do that. And he's like, you've got about
• 1:15:15
  20 seconds understood what a dog's like, not understood, and
• 1:15:18
  he has understood and blows dog away.
• 1:15:21
  I know you've got 20 seconds and that's it.
• 1:15:23
  There's no stopping it. Well, just calm down, yeah?
• 1:15:26
  It's all right, you know. It can be 60 seconds if you
• 1:15:29
  really wanted to. Massive explosion.
• 1:15:33
  Crazy. But it does create a very nice
• 1:15:35
  moment of reunion. Doug's back with Susan, Mrs.
• 1:15:38
  Mueller's back with Claiborne, and there's a really lovely,
• 1:15:41
  romantic, swelling John Williams score.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah. Yeah, it's very nice, Yeah.
• 1:15:45
  And then that's all undercoat when Duncan tells the crowd that
• 1:15:47
  there's absolutely no way of getting now via the stairwell.
• 1:15:51
  And there's a really, really nice sour note in the music that
• 1:15:53
  accompanies, and it's hilarious where Doug delivers that line,
• 1:15:56
  delivers the bad news, and then just fucks off, just walks away,
• 1:15:59
  right? See you later.
• 1:16:02
  If it was me, I'd be going straight Simmons me like, get
• 1:16:05
  out that way if you want to. Yeah, so everyone's reunited.
• 1:16:10
  We're talking about Simmons. He's boozing away, which is the
• 1:16:13
  only relatable thing about him in the entire film.
• 1:16:15
  I'd like, yeah, I'll just be at the Hammond at this point.
• 1:16:17
  Like, no chance to be doing this.
• 1:16:20
  So he decides to make a run for it, even though they've all been
• 1:16:22
  told it's impossible. And I think Richard Chamberlain,
• 1:16:25
  out of everyone in this cast, I think he's the one that sets the
• 1:16:29
  standard of this type of character in this type of film.
• 1:16:32
  You know, the sleazy corporate guy.
• 1:16:34
  He's responsible for it all somehow, and he's going to turn
• 1:16:37
  a code at the end and leave everyone to the fate.
• 1:16:39
  Like you didn't talk about the Poseidon Venture go well, is
• 1:16:42
  Gene Hackman better than Paul Newman in this?
• 1:16:44
  Maybe no one's been better than Richard Chamberlain doing this
• 1:16:48
  type of role in this type of film.
• 1:16:51
  And the great thing is the film could so easily kill him off at
• 1:16:53
  this point when he's going down the stairs because they could
• 1:16:56
  collapse, could debris could fall on him.
• 1:16:58
  And the fact it doesn't happen. That just said, you know,
• 1:17:01
  they've got a really nasty death coming up for him later on and
• 1:17:05
  it's going to be the one death you can feel good about and it's
• 1:17:08
  going to be worth waiting for. So he comes back, he has an
• 1:17:12
  argument with Patty and. And this is one of those ones.
• 1:17:14
  Again, it's just all a bit soap opera at this point.
• 1:17:17
  I mean, she's such a limp lettuce of her character.
• 1:17:19
  And I don't think this this performance by Susan Blakey is
• 1:17:22
  great. I mean, the line deliveries are
• 1:17:24
  a bit wanting from her. You know, I came over to you now
• 1:17:26
  because I thought you might need me.
• 1:17:28
  It's all just a bit, right. Yeah.
• 1:17:30
  OK. Yeah, this.
• 1:17:33
  Is the melodrama what you've got?
• 1:17:35
  In contrast, though, is just this really charming and really
• 1:17:39
  sweet, beautifully acted scene between Fred Astaire and
• 1:17:42
  Jennifer Jones. It's the best acted scene in the
• 1:17:44
  entire film by some distance between these two.
• 1:17:47
  You know, when he says I'm just a cheap tin horn, a 2 bit con
• 1:17:50
  man. And it's great when he's talking
• 1:17:52
  about the fake certificates for those shares that he's
• 1:17:54
  happening. You know, I think you'd have
• 1:17:56
  admired the artwork. Beautiful engraving.
• 1:17:58
  Because even when he's been honest about his dishonesty,
• 1:18:00
  he's still got this little twinkle in his eye.
• 1:18:03
  And the great thing is she doesn't care about him being
• 1:18:05
  dishonest, just still falling for him hook, line and sinker.
• 1:18:08
  And you watch the scene and you just sit there and you go.
• 1:18:11
  I really hope these two make it out OK because they really
• 1:18:14
  deserve a happy ending. But you know, we'll see.
• 1:18:17
  We will see. Don't we?
• 1:18:19
  Will Fred Astaire was over 40 years into his career by this
• 1:18:22
  point and by all accounts was delighted to be on set.
• 1:18:25
  Oh, bless him. Yeah.
• 1:18:26
  He said that his role as con man Harley Claiborne.
• 1:18:29
  If you're going to do a cameo, that was a good one to do
• 1:18:32
  because it stood out. The other guys in the picture
• 1:18:34
  said. Hey, I wish I had that part.
• 1:18:36
  Cameo Well. Yeah.
• 1:18:39
  Suppose if you're not the lead, you're the cameo, yeah?
• 1:18:41
  Well, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:18:42
  How many cameos are in this film 15?
• 1:18:46
  And he was 75 at the time of release, and it became the first
• 1:18:50
  and only Oscar nomination of his career for Best Supporting
• 1:18:52
  Actor. But he did lose out to Robert De
• 1:18:55
  Niro in The Godfather Part 2 which?
• 1:18:58
  That's on balance, yeah, yeah. You're kind of awful at that.
• 1:19:00
  Can you tough? Competition.
• 1:19:02
  Fred Astaire lobby to write a song for the film himself, but
• 1:19:05
  his submission was deemed too old hat.
• 1:19:08
  Alan wasn't having any of it at all, right?
• 1:19:10
  More than we will never love again.
• 1:19:12
  Like, really Contemporary number, Yeah.
• 1:19:16
  Yeah, so Maury Mcgovern's performance of Joel Hirshhorn
• 1:19:18
  and Cashes the Morning After on the Poseidon Adventure won an
• 1:19:22
  Oscar and she was drafted back in to sing another Hirshhorn
• 1:19:25
  Kasher number. We may never love like this
• 1:19:28
  again. This again.
• 1:19:30
  Beautiful. She appeased in the party scene
• 1:19:32
  singing the song, and that song also went on to pick up an
• 1:19:35
  Oscar, right? Yes, good choice.
• 1:19:37
  Yeah, fair enough. And despite a desperate desire
• 1:19:40
  to leave for all involved, we're still on the 135th floor where
• 1:19:44
  fear and emotions are running high.
• 1:19:46
  Absolutely. The crew.
• 1:19:54
  A stacked crew on the Terran Inferno included 3 Oscar
• 1:19:57
  winners, all bona fide legends in their field.
• 1:20:00
  Possibly the most talented crews we've ever had on the shore.
• 1:20:03
  We're starting off with Sterling Sullivan's legendary writer of
• 1:20:06
  small and big screen, who received an Academy Award for
• 1:20:08
  his writing on In the Heat of the Night some years before
• 1:20:11
  this. Amazing.
• 1:20:12
  Yeah. Matt, over to you, the writing
• 1:20:15
  on The Tarrant Inferno. I mean, there's a lot to say
• 1:20:17
  about it, isn't there? I suspect a lot of negativity
• 1:20:21
  will come from you, Luke. I think so, which you know, I
• 1:20:25
  will agree with. I mean, it's also been saying,
• 1:20:27
  look, it is very melodramatic. It is very has been saying it's
• 1:20:30
  so popular this clandestine affairs sleazy some of the
• 1:20:34
  cutting corners nice old couple who are going to be tragically
• 1:20:36
  torn apart. But I'm going to try and put a
• 1:20:38
  more positive spin on it because this is the template and this
• 1:20:41
  establishes the template for the right.
• 1:20:43
  And no, it's not Chinatown, but it's not trying to be in would
• 1:20:46
  be foolish to even attempt to be that and what you've got in Halo
• 1:20:50
  in the right and it's just as a real relatability because every
• 1:20:53
  disaster movie since kind of takes its template.
• 1:20:56
  But what they get wrong is missing that relatability.
• 1:20:59
  You know this is a building on fire.
• 1:21:01
  People are trapped inside and that's all you need in terms of
• 1:21:03
  stakes to understand it. This kind of links into what
• 1:21:06
  Gareth is asking about in his question.
• 1:21:09
  Disaster movies thesis think the skills have to be apocalyptic in
• 1:21:12
  size and the dawn. So you can watch stuff like San
• 1:21:15
  Andreas where the entirety of LA is being destroyed because
• 1:21:19
  there's an earthquake and the tectonic plates are shifting.
• 1:21:21
  You go, but that's not believable.
• 1:21:23
  I'm not worried that that will ever happen to me in my
• 1:21:26
  lifetime. Yeah.
• 1:21:28
  Whereas I watch this and I go working in a building that could
• 1:21:31
  catch fire. That's so relatable because I
• 1:21:33
  have worked in that type of place where I think, God, if I
• 1:21:35
  was on, even if I was on the 4th floor and there's a fire blow,
• 1:21:38
  that's terrifying because I'm trapped.
• 1:21:40
  Yes, I mean very tragically in this country we have the ground
• 1:21:43
  and fell fire a few years ago and you watched that unfold on
• 1:21:46
  television. You go that's terrific and
• 1:21:48
  that's the fear that the tone infernal tops and do.
• 1:21:51
  So that's the main thing about the writing for me.
• 1:21:53
  It's the reliability of it which is so scary, and that's the
• 1:21:56
  aspect that pretty much every disaster movie has missed since.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah, it really hits home I. Think Sterling Sullivan has a
• 1:22:03
  hell of a job to do. He's combining 2 novels.
• 1:22:06
  He's got to make it make sense. He's got pressure from 2
• 1:22:08
  studios, he's got pressure from 2 leads.
• 1:22:10
  He's got a lot of ego to battle with.
• 1:22:12
  He's got some dialogue to come up with in the middle to make it
• 1:22:15
  sellable and make it believable. But a lot of this, I mean, it's,
• 1:22:18
  let's just say it's 80% action sequences and what do you write
• 1:22:22
  in the screenplay? You know, falls, falls down some
• 1:22:26
  stairs and then has to make that something else entirely.
• 1:22:30
  I mean, it's safer to Owen Alan to make.
• 1:22:32
  Exactly. It's like what was Irwin Alan
• 1:22:34
  had to put into this script? And a lot of the feedback that
• 1:22:37
  we got from actors wanting to be in it or we were interested in
• 1:22:40
  it is that the script was lousy. It didn't work.
• 1:22:42
  It was, you know, it wasn't entertaining enough, wasn't
• 1:22:44
  engaging enough. And I think the script in itself
• 1:22:46
  does serve a purpose. But I think that purpose was
• 1:22:49
  just to get the film made and then over and on would take over
• 1:22:52
  and knew for a fact it was going to be very, a very, very visual
• 1:22:54
  film, which it is. It is a very visual film.
• 1:22:57
  You don't take much away from this in regards to characters or
• 1:22:59
  relationships of characters you don't see.
• 1:23:01
  How do you remember that romance in Town Inferno?
• 1:23:03
  Like it doesn't, it doesn't sit, it's not important.
• 1:23:06
  So I think he has a hell of a job of doing.
• 1:23:08
  I think he does all right. I mean, it is the 70s.
• 1:23:10
  It's quintessential 70s. It's not pulling up trees trying
• 1:23:13
  to be something different. He kind of knows exactly what
• 1:23:16
  the tone is and I think the tone does stick and it does deliver
• 1:23:19
  to a certain degree. Yes, it is soap, but watching
• 1:23:22
  this in the cinema in 1974, it would probably land and land
• 1:23:25
  really well. I think the relationships that
• 1:23:27
  know the way they taught each other would have been
• 1:23:29
  believable. I don't think it would have
• 1:23:31
  seemed cheesy. I think it's just a real product
• 1:23:33
  of its time and I think it's a really good product of its time.
• 1:23:36
  I do think the right and serves the purpose of what he was
• 1:23:38
  trying to accomplish with this. And like Matt said, it is the
• 1:23:41
  believability of it, the grounding of the characters, the
• 1:23:44
  human nature of the story, the fact that you can actually
• 1:23:47
  replace any of these characters in any of these situations as
• 1:23:50
  yourself. And I think that is even more
• 1:23:52
  terrifying. I think a lot of it is, look,
• 1:23:54
  we've got this source material, can you make it work so it's
• 1:23:57
  coherent? Can you make it work?
• 1:23:58
  So it's an action film, Can you make this work?
• 1:24:00
  So it's an Irwin Allen film. And that's that job you had to
• 1:24:03
  do. And I think from that viewpoint,
• 1:24:05
  I think he does really well. I think Stern Sullivan's got one
• 1:24:10
  of the hardest jobs on production, if the hardest, and
• 1:24:14
  I think it's worth acknowledging that before we get into it.
• 1:24:17
  There are negatives here, Matt put.
• 1:24:19
  I'm not going to go all in because, you know, I think he
• 1:24:22
  was working with his hands behind his back, very much like
• 1:24:25
  the director. But Sullivan's got to introduce
• 1:24:29
  and service an enormous cast. Multiple storylines build
• 1:24:32
  tension across a single night and keep the audience oriented
• 1:24:37
  in an incredibly complex physical space as well.
• 1:24:40
  Yeah, that he manages all of that without the whole thing
• 1:24:42
  collapsing in on itself is really impressive.
• 1:24:44
  The architecture of the script, the bones of it, they are solid.
• 1:24:48
  Yes. The best writing in the film is
• 1:24:50
  the dynamic between O'halleron and Roberts.
• 1:24:52
  For me, there's a real ideological clash at the heart
• 1:24:55
  of that relationship. The man who builds them and the
• 1:24:57
  man who has to fight them. And I think the right it gives
• 1:25:00
  it real teeth. The final exchange between the
• 1:25:03
  two of them is earned and it lands because the groundwork has
• 1:25:05
  been laid throughout. Yes, but and it's a significant
• 1:25:09
  but. Yeah.
• 1:25:11
  The dialogue we've mentioned is how many in places it is, and I
• 1:25:15
  think we all know that. I've always wanted to die in
• 1:25:18
  bed, dear me. OK.
• 1:25:21
  Cross that out of the script immediately.
• 1:25:24
  That, I mean, that just tells you kind of like what the script
• 1:25:27
  thinks about its characters, that really that's a bad
• 1:25:30
  reflection on like, I don't care about this person, so I'm going
• 1:25:33
  to give them the shittest line that anybody's ever had.
• 1:25:36
  And I don't buy it. I feel as though they're kind of
• 1:25:39
  archetypes rather than people moved around the board with
• 1:25:42
  efficiency, but rarely with genuine emotional depth.
• 1:25:46
  And I think the emotion of the characters should stop you in
• 1:25:48
  your tracks. It really only kind of hits when
• 1:25:51
  Mrs. Mueller dies, I think for me.
• 1:25:53
  Yes, yeah, yeah. There's no room to dwell.
• 1:25:55
  There's no room to grieve, really, because you know, we're
• 1:25:57
  already on to the next part and the next explosion.
• 1:25:59
  And that, I think, is the root of the problem.
• 1:26:01
  You get the sense that certain scenes exist not because the
• 1:26:03
  story demands them, but because a star needs their moment.
• 1:26:07
  The writing is frequently in service of the cast.
• 1:26:09
  Like we say, there's a lot of cast service and plot service
• 1:26:12
  and convenience in the right. Nothing.
• 1:26:15
  Silifon keeps the plates spinning, but there's I think
• 1:26:18
  there's a leaner and a more emotionally resonant version of
• 1:26:21
  this script that could have been written.
• 1:26:23
  As mentioned, the film is based on 2 novels, The Tower and The
• 1:26:26
  Glass Infernal. The Tower centre is on fictional
• 1:26:28
  125 Storey skyscraper. The World Tower building
• 1:26:32
  position right next to the North Tower of the real World Trade
• 1:26:35
  Centre, which was still under construction at the time of
• 1:26:37
  writing. Yes, yeah.
• 1:26:38
  Both books were directly inspired by the World Trade
• 1:26:41
  Centre building. Yeah.
• 1:26:42
  But The Glass Infernal is the one that contributed many of the
• 1:26:45
  film's most memorable plot points.
• 1:26:47
  The cost cutting on building materials and a climax with the
• 1:26:50
  blowing up of the rooftop water tanks to douse the fire.
• 1:26:53
  Yeah. Alan said of the decision to
• 1:26:55
  combine them. It was a sensible solution and
• 1:26:57
  I'm quite sure it's the first of many future films to be created
• 1:27:00
  in tandem by major companies. Yeah, confident in his own, in
• 1:27:03
  his own methods. Absolutely.
• 1:27:05
  Yeah. And Sullivan had the unenviable
• 1:27:07
  job of weaving both novels into a single coherent script, as
• 1:27:10
  we've talked about, while also carving them up mathematically.
• 1:27:13
  The Super Queen's Eagle, as we've talked about, which he
• 1:27:16
  developed over a six to eight-month period.
• 1:27:18
  And he described his work more as logistics than artistry.
• 1:27:21
  What you were not doing is writing.
• 1:27:23
  What you were doing is juggling. And I love this bit because he
• 1:27:26
  called the fire itself my favorite character in the
• 1:27:28
  script. Brilliant.
• 1:27:30
  Yeah, it's brilliant. Yeah.
• 1:27:31
  It is. It's the main antagonist, isn't
• 1:27:34
  it? It's a good bad guy.
• 1:27:35
  He actually spoke quite dismissively of the film, saying
• 1:27:38
  in a group jeopardy film, the person who's most in jeopardy is
• 1:27:42
  the writer. Wow.
• 1:27:43
  Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what we thought, isn't it?
• 1:27:46
  Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is kind of like a gun
• 1:27:48
  for hire thing, isn't it? Definitely.
• 1:27:50
  I mean, he's done in the heat of the night and then he's doing
• 1:27:53
  this exactly. He's going to be slightly down
• 1:27:55
  on it, isn't he of? Course he is.
• 1:27:56
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:27:57
  And he held more reverence for his writing on The Poseidon
• 1:28:00
  Adventure because it came from one source novel with more
• 1:28:02
  interesting characters to adapt to the screen.
• 1:28:04
  He said, yeah, OK. But that's the reason that Erwin
• 1:28:07
  Allen recruited him to write this, because of his writing on
• 1:28:10
  The Poseidon Adventure. Of course.
• 1:28:12
  Yeah. He also claimed that he only
• 1:28:14
  read one of the two source novels when writing the script.
• 1:28:16
  Amazing that. And could remember, couldn't
• 1:28:18
  remember which one. That's even better.
• 1:28:20
  But his biographer, Nat Segalov, went through Sullivan's papers
• 1:28:23
  after his death and found extensive research notes drawn
• 1:28:26
  from both books, as well as interviews with firefighting
• 1:28:29
  experts from across the country. Yeah.
• 1:28:31
  So I think he clearly put a lot into it.
• 1:28:32
  Despite his reservations, it is still the best parts of both
• 1:28:35
  books and stripped away the rest, retaining the strongest
• 1:28:38
  characters in the most compelling situations.
• 1:28:40
  He took 7 characters from the novels for the screenplay,
• 1:28:43
  though many of the names were changed along the way,
• 1:28:44
  obviously. You know, we've mentioned Dan
• 1:28:47
  Bigelow, yes? Lovely.
• 1:28:48
  And research conducted for the film made Silly Fan change his
• 1:28:51
  habits. He later admitted that whenever
• 1:28:54
  he ended the building, he would always find a seat directly
• 1:28:56
  beneath the sprinkler head because a firefighter he'd
• 1:28:59
  interviewed doing his research had given him that tip.
• 1:29:01
  I'm going to be taking that forward, absolutely.
• 1:29:04
  Yeah, as long as the work. Yeah, So as we're talking about
• 1:29:10
  the writing and as we're talking about the era, we've got our
• 1:29:13
  final Patreon question. This one comes from Lou
• 1:29:15
  Pellegrino. Lou Lou says, I suppose you
• 1:29:19
  could argue that the disaster films of the 70s were a
• 1:29:21
  reflection of the uncertainties Americans felt about themselves
• 1:29:24
  and the USA during that decade. Vietnam, Watergate, the energy
• 1:29:28
  crisis, etcetera. One of the film genres clearly
• 1:29:31
  reflect the anxieties of the time in which they were made.
• 1:29:34
  Thanks as always for a great podcast.
• 1:29:36
  Thank you for the support. Yes, Thank you, Matt.
• 1:29:39
  Yeah, I think a very thoughtful observation.
• 1:29:41
  I think you're right. There's a strong argument that
• 1:29:43
  the disaster movie is the definitive American genre of the
• 1:29:46
  70s, not just as entertainment, but as a kind of mirror held up
• 1:29:49
  to the nation that was deeply uncertain about himself.
• 1:29:52
  Yeah, I immediately thought of two different genres.
• 1:29:55
  The first would be the paranoid thrillers of the same era, The
• 1:29:59
  Parallax View, All the President's Men, 3 Days of the
• 1:30:01
  Condor, kind of drawn from the same well, as Lou describes, the
• 1:30:05
  enemy isn't a foreign power, It's the government, it's the
• 1:30:07
  corporations, it's the people in the tall buildings making
• 1:30:10
  decisions that get ordinary people killed.
• 1:30:12
  Yeah, it's the little man as well, isn't it?
• 1:30:14
  Yeah. Yes, exactly.
• 1:30:15
  Yes, that's right. Yeah.
• 1:30:17
  And then I think, jump forward a decade in the 80s action movies,
• 1:30:20
  and you see something completely different happening.
• 1:30:23
  Top Gun, Ramble, Red Dawn, These are films about America licking
• 1:30:26
  its wounds over Vietnam, over the Iran Contra debacle and
• 1:30:30
  deciding it's time to feel good about itself again.
• 1:30:33
  Yeah, Aggressively, jingoistically good.
• 1:30:36
  It's almost the equal and opposite reaction to the
• 1:30:38
  paranoia of the 70s. One decade couldn't trust
• 1:30:40
  anymore. The next decade trusted America
• 1:30:42
  above everyone else. Fuck yeah.
• 1:30:44
  Yeah, two sides of the same coin.
• 1:30:46
  Yeah. What about UST?
• 1:30:48
  I think that this is relevant with no matter what genre you
• 1:30:50
  look at or no matter what decade in which you look at the cinema
• 1:30:54
  in which it was made. To be fair, I think there's a
• 1:30:56
  lot that you can tap into. That definitely is one of the
• 1:30:58
  most obvious. And again, like you said, like
• 1:31:00
  the paranoia of, of that time. And I think if you go back the
• 1:31:03
  like 50s and 60s, you've got the sci-fi, the nuclear age and the
• 1:31:07
  communism and space travel. But I do think that ultimately
• 1:31:10
  from the birth of cinema, what they've always addressed is this
• 1:31:13
  fear of technology, this fear of advancement, this fear of where
• 1:31:17
  are we going and what are we actually doing.
• 1:31:18
  And I think one of the best genres that does that, that
• 1:31:21
  always taps into the fear of it is the horror genre without a
• 1:31:23
  shadow of a doubt. I mean, we've got Night the
• 1:31:25
  Living Dead. Yeah.
• 1:31:27
  It's first of all who talks about, you know, racial, racial
• 1:31:29
  tensions over everything else? We are, but what are we doing?
• 1:31:32
  And then Fast forward a little bit and we've got the kind of
• 1:31:34
  zombie post apocalyptic themes of the 2000s.
• 1:31:37
  You know, we've got 28 Days Later, we've got The Purge.
• 1:31:40
  We've got all them kind of fear of, you know, these kind of
• 1:31:42
  social situations that we're getting in.
• 1:31:44
  And then the action genre kind of taps into that as well.
• 1:31:47
  The late 90s and early 2000s, we've got the likes of The
• 1:31:50
  Matrix and Dark City and even Children of Men, which is
• 1:31:52
  ultimate later. But this real paranoia about
• 1:31:55
  technology, where we're going, what we're doing, it's these
• 1:31:58
  fears that we've all got as humans that tap into and make a
• 1:32:00
  really sellable film. And it's gone even further and
• 1:32:03
  it's getting further again. I think a 24 would be nothing
• 1:32:06
  without the paranoia of what is happening right now.
• 1:32:08
  And we think about Get Out and Hereditary, Annihilation X Mac
• 1:32:11
  and you know, Civil War. All of these films are really
• 1:32:13
  tapping into exactly. You're just making it more and
• 1:32:16
  more obvious. I think back in the 70s they
• 1:32:18
  tried to hide it a little bit, the disaster films actually
• 1:32:21
  about that, but you didn't put two and two together.
• 1:32:24
  Now we're actually getting two and two and we're getting four
• 1:32:26
  and we know exactly what the 2 is and what the other two is.
• 1:32:28
  So cinemas using it obviously is more of a reflection on the
• 1:32:32
  time, but I think the audiences are now a lot more aware of
• 1:32:35
  that. Very much self aware.
• 1:32:37
  Your thoughts on that, Matt? Yeah, I think I'm similar in the
• 1:32:40
  fact that I don't think it is a particular genre such.
• 1:32:43
  I just think it's examples of different genres can all do it.
• 1:32:48
  I mean, obviously the 70s film as you all mentioned it, but you
• 1:32:51
  can spill that in the 80s with the likes of Blowout, I think
• 1:32:54
  very much in same field. But yeah, definitely Horace as
• 1:32:58
  well. I mean, if you think of Texas
• 1:32:59
  Chainsaw Massacre, you know, it has that radio sequence at the
• 1:33:02
  start where the news is everything that's going wrong
• 1:33:05
  with society and it's all not feeds into the rest of the film.
• 1:33:08
  It feeds into the betrayal of this horrific all American
• 1:33:11
  family, you know, that family unit which is so messed up
• 1:33:14
  beyond belief. And I think that just, you know,
• 1:33:17
  that reflects a lot of the kind of unease America had with
• 1:33:19
  itself at the time. And I'd also agree with Wesley
• 1:33:22
  mentioned and get out because that, you know, it reflects
• 1:33:25
  racial anxiety. But the twist is, what if the
• 1:33:27
  enemies to be in black that don't come from the right in
• 1:33:30
  America? You know, with the Burma crosses
• 1:33:33
  and the white hoods, whatever comes from the people on the
• 1:33:34
  left who claim that the friends, but they're not.
• 1:33:36
  Actually, that is one of the most perceptive films ever made.
• 1:33:40
  Really. Incredible.
• 1:33:41
  Get out. Yeah.
• 1:33:42
  Because. A great question, Lou.
• 1:33:44
  Thank you very much. Got us thinking.
• 1:33:46
  Yes, very nice. Yes, love that.
• 1:33:47
  Question. Thank you.
• 1:33:49
  And that draws a close to the writing on The Terran Inferno.
• 1:33:52
  Sterling Sullivan working with severe restrictions, he produced
• 1:33:55
  a script that was functional. Good story beats, dialogue,
• 1:33:59
  little bit honey. Yes.
• 1:34:03
  Next, a legend. Before he was a legend, despite
• 1:34:07
  already been an Oscar winner for his work on Fiddler on the Roof.
• 1:34:10
  It's the one and the only John Williams who provided the
• 1:34:13
  musical score for The Tarrant Inferno.
• 1:34:15
  Now, this isn't the John Williams we know and love today.
• 1:34:19
  Mr. Movie Music himself, the man who would go on to give us Joe,
• 1:34:23
  Star Wars, Superman, Raiders, The Last Star, Jurassic Park,
• 1:34:26
  Home Alone, Harry Potter. Yeah, all of that was still
• 1:34:29
  ahead of him in 1974. No.
• 1:34:31
  Yes. Ridiculous.
• 1:34:32
  Yeah. But he was already an Oscar
• 1:34:34
  winner for Fiddler on the Roof. Imagine being an Oscar winner
• 1:34:36
  and still having the most iconic music left in your holster to
• 1:34:39
  pull out over the next 50 years. Yeah.
• 1:34:43
  He's the most ridiculous person ever.
• 1:34:45
  He's just like, how can someone be that good at anything?
• 1:34:49
  It's unbelievable. What he delivers here.
• 1:34:52
  For me, is is one of the strongest elements of the film.
• 1:34:55
  It's not vintage Williams. It doesn't have the iconic
• 1:34:57
  melodic hooks that would later make him the most recognizable
• 1:35:00
  film composer of the planet, but it's tremendously effective
• 1:35:03
  work. It's purposeful, It's
• 1:35:05
  atmospheric. It's very much in service of the
• 1:35:07
  film rather than stealing the spotlight, unlike a lot of the
• 1:35:11
  other elements working in the film.
• 1:35:13
  Yeah. That opening theme in the
• 1:35:15
  credits, Yeah. That is such a high point.
• 1:35:18
  It sets its own beautifully grand sweeping with just a hint
• 1:35:22
  of unease underneath. It tells you what kind of film
• 1:35:24
  we're about to watch, and it does it with so much confidence
• 1:35:27
  in craft. I think he was.
• 1:35:30
  I mean, he was already very good at this point, and it's a real
• 1:35:33
  point in time when he was on the cusp of becoming an bona fide
• 1:35:37
  legend. It's really fascinating point in
• 1:35:40
  his career, this. I mean, I always forget Sean
• 1:35:43
  Williams, to be honest. I have to remind yourself
• 1:35:45
  precisely for those reasons you mentioned.
• 1:35:47
  I think music is really clever because it ties in with the
• 1:35:50
  theme of the film. If it has a theme, it is about
• 1:35:52
  mankind's hubris and how that hue this has taught a lesson.
• 1:35:56
  And the soundtrack really reflects out because I say that
• 1:35:58
  opening is so bombastic. It's so try open it.
• 1:36:01
  So look how big this building is.
• 1:36:05
  Isn't it amazing? Yeah.
• 1:36:07
  But then it brings it down in this moment of real tension in
• 1:36:10
  that and what's investing. And I will always highlight this
• 1:36:12
  in the film because I love it when it does.
• 1:36:14
  This is the music becomes sparing.
• 1:36:16
  And once that fire is out of control, a lot of the set pieces
• 1:36:19
  play out with no music whatsoever.
• 1:36:22
  And I think that's such a smart choice because all that
• 1:36:24
  cockiness and arrogance in that open music that's been wiped
• 1:36:28
  away. And all you can do is watch
• 1:36:29
  these scenes without that music. And the rest of the film just
• 1:36:32
  plays out in this mute horror, and you can only kind of watch
• 1:36:35
  it happen in front of you. And yes, there were the bits and
• 1:36:37
  pieces along there. Some of the romantic sofas may
• 1:36:40
  be laid on a little thick. I know what you mean.
• 1:36:43
  The Orbits I really punch home the music for the countdown to
• 1:36:46
  the water tank explosion, that's incredible.
• 1:36:48
  But yeah, it's almost where the choice to not use music it's
• 1:36:51
  just as important as when it is used.
• 1:36:53
  Absolutely. And when it's somebody like John
• 1:36:55
  Williams who can just create the most beautiful music in the
• 1:36:58
  world, him showing restraint is something else.
• 1:37:01
  Yeah, yeah. Really is.
• 1:37:02
  Wesley, your thoughts on Williams's music?
• 1:37:05
  I think this is John Williams worst score, and that's
• 1:37:08
  something because I do feel like it is quite generic.
• 1:37:12
  I think it's massive. I think it sets the tone.
• 1:37:15
  I think it's perfectly fine. But I think it is very much a
• 1:37:19
  70s disaster film. Like you put this on and it's a
• 1:37:22
  70s, you know, imagine this and first day of coming back,
• 1:37:29
  sticking this on in vinyl and just walking in with a chicken
• 1:37:31
  kebab with that big tune coming on.
• 1:37:33
  It's not going to set the tone, is it?
• 1:37:35
  People are thinking what's what's the house is going to
• 1:37:37
  explode. It's absolutely insane.
• 1:37:39
  But it is an excellent score and it's because he's done so much
• 1:37:42
  more since this is This doesn't feel personal to me as a it
• 1:37:46
  feels like he's. Doesn't have his identity, does.
• 1:37:49
  Not at all. I mean, George is the year after
• 1:37:51
  this. And that is just two notes and
• 1:37:53
  it's his exact tone. And he's like he's telling the
• 1:37:56
  story here. He's not telling a story.
• 1:37:58
  This could be stock, he could have recorded this.
• 1:38:00
  And this could be used on anything in the 70s.
• 1:38:02
  It could be used on any of you know, it could be an episode of
• 1:38:05
  Columbo where he goes up a highlights and there's just that
• 1:38:08
  there on the score. And it works.
• 1:38:09
  It's fantastic. But it's one that you just won't
• 1:38:11
  remember. It's one that's there and it
• 1:38:13
  really sets the tone. And like Matt said, I mean,
• 1:38:15
  you've got the countdown to the explosion.
• 1:38:16
  So when them explosions kick off, there's nothing, there's no
• 1:38:19
  music whatsoever. It sets a precedent, It sets a
• 1:38:21
  tone. It seems to me it just
• 1:38:23
  soundtracks John Gilliman's work, his moments, his drama,
• 1:38:28
  his bits. And then when it comes to and
• 1:38:30
  all, he's like, I've got sound design here.
• 1:38:31
  The fire itself, the sound of the fire itself is terrifying.
• 1:38:34
  It's almost like this kind of squawk and it's all over it.
• 1:38:40
  And I think that's the whole point.
• 1:38:41
  It feels a little cut and paste. It feels a little bit Poseidon
• 1:38:44
  Adventure. It could be, you could put this
• 1:38:45
  on in the pub quiz and people would go on.
• 1:38:47
  Fuck me, Earthquake, Poseidon Venture, Airplane, Media, Media,
• 1:38:53
  the Swarm. You can scratch on your head
• 1:38:55
  think it could be any of those things and it really works and
• 1:38:57
  that's fine. But to me, it's a product of its
• 1:38:59
  time. It's great, but it's not a lot
• 1:39:02
  of trees. No, no, it's not.
• 1:39:03
  It's not. But I mean, we didn't know what
• 1:39:05
  he, what he was really capable of.
• 1:39:07
  Exactly. That's what I mean, doing this
• 1:39:09
  and this, he's falling this in, to be fair, and it's still
• 1:39:12
  massive. And this, if this is his worst
• 1:39:14
  score, I mean, that's not, that's not a bad thing, is it
• 1:39:17
  really? Not to be sniffed out, yeah.
• 1:39:18
  Definitely. Not all.
• 1:39:20
  And Williams actually said the Towering Inferno was a turning
• 1:39:22
  point. Up until then, I'd never been
• 1:39:24
  offered a spectacular 5 minute overture belonging exclusively
• 1:39:28
  to image and music. And for a long time, people
• 1:39:31
  would say to me, ah, see, you're the composer of the town
• 1:39:33
  Inferno. Nice.
• 1:39:35
  A long time. I mean, Jaws came a yearly.
• 1:39:37
  Yearly. Yeah, truly.
• 1:39:39
  It's so you're the composer. Jaws, just those two notes.
• 1:39:43
  I mean, isn't. The tower and what?
• 1:39:44
  Sorry, Yeah, yeah, he said. The opening credits was his best
• 1:39:48
  work on the film, of course, but he did have to fight Owen Allen
• 1:39:51
  for it. Williams insisted that the
• 1:39:53
  ambient sound was stripped back to allow for his music to take
• 1:39:56
  center stage. And then, yeah, I think it
• 1:39:58
  really benefits from. Yeah, and that's his wonderful
• 1:40:00
  story about Allen here and Williams main title for the
• 1:40:03
  first time. Allen listened, declared that
• 1:40:06
  something wasn't right, but he couldn't put his finger on it,
• 1:40:08
  and he ended up storming off the scoring stage.
• 1:40:10
  Yeah. So Lionel Newman, head of Fox's
• 1:40:12
  music department, took Williams to one side and told him the
• 1:40:15
  solution. It bought 86 of the sequence.
• 1:40:18
  When Allen's producer credit appeared on the screen at a
• 1:40:21
  cymbal crash, Williams did it. Allen came back, heard it again
• 1:40:25
  and said, well, that sounds great.
• 1:40:27
  What's different? That's not actually on when they
• 1:40:34
  released the soundtrack. It's not actually on the
• 1:40:36
  soundtrack. You took the cymbal crash off
• 1:40:37
  from the soundtrack. Lovely.
• 1:40:45
  Aside from the main theme, there are love themes in the film that
• 1:40:47
  accompany the scenes between Newman and Dunaway, Astaire and
• 1:40:50
  Jones. Both are introduced early in the
• 1:40:52
  film as kind of gentle background music, almost
• 1:40:55
  incidental, easy listening numbers you'd be given for
• 1:40:58
  missing them. But by the end credits, Williams
• 1:41:00
  transforms them into kind of full orchestral statements,
• 1:41:03
  something he adopted throughout his career.
• 1:41:06
  Yeah, they don't slap you in the face, but they're there if
• 1:41:08
  you're listening. Yeah.
• 1:41:09
  So a legend before he was a legend.
• 1:41:13
  Solid work from John Williams, but he had a lot more to give in
• 1:41:16
  the future. Absolutely.
• 1:41:17
  Yeah. OK, so now it's where it gets
• 1:41:22
  complicated. Yeah.
• 1:41:23
  Officially, the film has two credited DPS, Fred J Conan Camp,
• 1:41:28
  who had been in the movie biz for around 10 years.
• 1:41:30
  Coming off the likes of Patton and Papillon.
• 1:41:34
  Joseph Barack was an old hand going back to his work behind
• 1:41:37
  the camera on It's Wonderful Life all the way up to Airplane.
• 1:41:41
  Six years after this, Yes, yeah, a very career.
• 1:41:45
  We'll get to the story behind their work in a moment, but
• 1:41:47
  first, Westie, your opinion on their cinematography?
• 1:41:51
  I think it's a great combination of talent of old and new of
• 1:41:57
  these two kind of real non egos. And we'll talk about non egos in
• 1:42:00
  the film. I think the crew didn't have
• 1:42:02
  room for any egos. What people need to understand
• 1:42:04
  is most films do have two, especially action films that
• 1:42:08
  will have two DPS. They'll have a second unit, a
• 1:42:11
  lot of action, and they'll have a second unit director, and
• 1:42:13
  they'll have a second unit DP who will communicate a lot with
• 1:42:17
  the main DP on the film. But it's good that they're both
• 1:42:19
  credited for this. It's great, the Oscar for this.
• 1:42:22
  I think it's fantastic. I think there's some really good
• 1:42:25
  interplay between them. Like I've mentioned before, I
• 1:42:27
  think the use of hard light sources, especially on dialogue
• 1:42:29
  sequences at the start of the film, really sets the tone and
• 1:42:31
  sets the contrast. I think the set design and the
• 1:42:34
  light and then the color work is really good because the contrast
• 1:42:36
  ratios remain the same. There's a lot of fire in this
• 1:42:39
  film. Before there's fire, there's a
• 1:42:41
  lot of discussions. There's a lot of orange, there's
• 1:42:43
  a lot of yellow, there's a lot of red.
• 1:42:45
  Even Doug says when the elevator closes, come outside and watches
• 1:42:48
  Burn Me Black Tie. And it's just, you know, at the
• 1:42:50
  end of it all. Then there's all of these little
• 1:42:52
  things that are put in, but they're also put in visually.
• 1:42:55
  I think there's a great movement of the camera.
• 1:42:56
  You don't really feel that the camera is moving in this film.
• 1:42:59
  It feels like a character, feels like an observer.
• 1:43:01
  You feel like you're part of everything that's going on when
• 1:43:04
  you they have to communicate with lens choices, They have to
• 1:43:06
  communicate with, like I've said, camera movements, how fast
• 1:43:08
  or how slow that's going to be put together.
• 1:43:10
  It doesn't feel like it goes to a completely different second
• 1:43:12
  unit and they haven't got a clue what's going on.
• 1:43:15
  I think these guys work very, very well together.
• 1:43:17
  And I think it was a partnership and I think they were, they
• 1:43:20
  would have spent many a night sit and go on.
• 1:43:21
  Look, I know everyone wants this and this is what I'm doing.
• 1:43:25
  How are you going to match it? How are you going to light it?
• 1:43:26
  How are you going to shoot it? Because I'm going to do the same
• 1:43:28
  type of thing. And the credit to both of them
• 1:43:31
  is that you can't tell. This is 2 DPS and I think that's
• 1:43:33
  the best honorary credit you can give to them really.
• 1:43:36
  Because you shouldn't be able to tell and you can't.
• 1:43:39
  I mean, 2 directors, 2 DPS. Really, there were more than two
• 1:43:44
  DPS. We'll get to that in a moment.
• 1:43:46
  On paper, it could be a recipe for visual chaos, like you see
• 1:43:50
  in Westie Colin Camp working with Gammon on the drama Beer
• 1:43:54
  Rock working with her without on the action sequences.
• 1:43:57
  Two different men, two different approaches, two different crews.
• 1:44:00
  The potential for this film that look like it was stitched
• 1:44:01
  together from completely different productions, Enormous
• 1:44:04
  potential for that. Absolutely.
• 1:44:05
  Yeah. It's it's more likely that that
• 1:44:07
  would have happened than not. Yeah.
• 1:44:09
  Absolutely. But it doesn't at all.
• 1:44:12
  And that for me, I think that's one of the most under
• 1:44:14
  appreciated achievements of The Tower and Inferno, pouring all
• 1:44:18
  of all of these elements into this.
• 1:44:20
  This film shouldn't look like this.
• 1:44:22
  No, it should be a mess. But it looks consistent for
• 1:44:26
  beginning around the spectacle of the action sequences.
• 1:44:28
  Feel at one with the drama that surrounds them and crucially,
• 1:44:30
  the effects workers incorporated seamlessly into both.
• 1:44:34
  When the fire is raging, the building is coming apart, you
• 1:44:37
  don't feel the join and I think the practical effects of the
• 1:44:40
  photography are locked in together and that's it.
• 1:44:42
  Really difficult to pull off at this scale as well.
• 1:44:45
  Yeah. And remember, this is 74 in the
• 1:44:47
  shooting film with real fire in front of you.
• 1:44:49
  This is, you know, it's not easy.
• 1:44:51
  It's perfect. Very very very considered this
• 1:44:55
  approach. It is, and I'm not sure,
• 1:44:58
  cinematography. You won't find many frames here
• 1:45:01
  that you'd hang on your wall. Of course.
• 1:45:03
  Conan, Cabin, Barack. I think the obviously understood
• 1:45:06
  the brief. Again, to serve the story, not
• 1:45:08
  to serve themselves, to serve the spectacles and make it feel
• 1:45:12
  all like 1 cohesive film. Job done.
• 1:45:15
  Matt, your thoughts on the cinematography here?
• 1:45:18
  Yeah. Cohesive is the word, isn't it?
• 1:45:19
  I mean, but not just between those two.
• 1:45:22
  I think cohesion with the production design because those
• 1:45:24
  sets are incredible and I think they've obviously designed with
• 1:45:27
  how they're going to be shot in mind because there's so much
• 1:45:29
  depth to them. And as well as depth as levels
• 1:45:31
  like Dan's office, it goes up, there's a second level and then
• 1:45:34
  it goes behind into like his kind of more personal area.
• 1:45:37
  And that just means, you know, this more space for the fire to
• 1:45:40
  spread into gives them better coverage for the shots that they
• 1:45:42
  want to get out of it. And as well, it's the cohesion
• 1:45:44
  of the effects work. I mean, it's such an obvious
• 1:45:47
  thing to say it, but it has to be set for this film.
• 1:45:50
  That's just genuine rage and fire that the shooting there,
• 1:45:53
  it's incredibly dangerous. That should not be underplayed.
• 1:45:57
  And there's so much cohesion with the effects work.
• 1:45:59
  You know, getting close to the fire, those incredible wide
• 1:46:02
  trots of the tower where you see how much of it has gone up.
• 1:46:05
  And then you see all the floors just explode in the flames.
• 1:46:08
  And you've said that you can't see the joints and you can't
• 1:46:11
  like when to go back to when Laurie dies, her dive out of the
• 1:46:14
  window where it's the stunt woman or stuntman.
• 1:46:17
  But then the cut to the effect Rockware must just be a model
• 1:46:20
  plunging down the side seamless Looks incredible.
• 1:46:23
  It really is. Yeah.
• 1:46:25
  Another thing to mention as well in in this bit about the
• 1:46:27
  cinematography, like if you've ever tried shooting fire, like
• 1:46:30
  if you're on the beach and you've got a little fire there
• 1:46:32
  on the night time or if you're at a BBQ or something with the
• 1:46:34
  compression of the lens, with a compression of 35 mil film as
• 1:46:38
  well. If you shoot normal fire, it
• 1:46:39
  looks tiny. You have to make that huge for
• 1:46:43
  it to make an impact through that compression.
• 1:46:45
  It has to be incredible. So on that set, the fire would
• 1:46:48
  have been twice the height of a normal person.
• 1:46:51
  And if you imagine facing that with a camera, I mean, that's
• 1:46:53
  going to be to make it look as impressive as they do.
• 1:46:56
  That's really dangerous stuff. So yeah, that's another job.
• 1:46:58
  That's another thing to mention. It needs to be huge to look
• 1:47:01
  huge, and it must have. Been.
• 1:47:03
  Yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 1:47:04
  We talked about Irwin Allen. He went big all the way along. 2
• 1:47:08
  directors, 2 source novels, 2 DPS, 4 camera crews, and enough
• 1:47:12
  fire to melt the equipments. We said that there are two
• 1:47:15
  credited DPS, but there were actually 4 DPS on production.
• 1:47:20
  Baroque Conan camp. And then Jim Freeman headed up
• 1:47:23
  an aerial crew for helicopter sequences.
• 1:47:25
  And then special effects guru Bill Abbott, who actually came
• 1:47:28
  out of retirement to oversee the special photographic effects and
• 1:47:32
  these included the miniatures, Matt paintings and blue screen
• 1:47:35
  work. Wow, incredible.
• 1:47:36
  The fire scenes were all shot on in closed sets, sealed ceilings,
• 1:47:39
  and at least three walls. The fires themselves were fed by
• 1:47:42
  propane through valve control controlled hoses, and the LA
• 1:47:46
  Fire Department allowed them to burn for a Max of 20 to 30
• 1:47:48
  seconds at a time. Wow.
• 1:47:50
  Under those conditions, Barack was routinely working with up to
• 1:47:53
  8 cameras simultaneously, trying to ensure every angle was
• 1:47:56
  covered in a single take before the set was destroyed.
• 1:47:59
  Wow. Wow yeah the heat was intense
• 1:48:03
  enough to melt 3 matte boxes during filming.
• 1:48:05
  Smoke from plastic curtains and rubber cement used on costumes
• 1:48:08
  built up so quickly it was affecting exposure readings mid
• 1:48:11
  tick. Yeah, yeah, it will do.
• 1:48:13
  Baroque solution and most of these problems was to shoot as
• 1:48:16
  much footage as possible and then just sort it out there.
• 1:48:19
  Fair enough. Fair enough.
• 1:48:20
  Yep. To stretch out the most intense
• 1:48:22
  action sequences, B Rock shot at up to four times the normal
• 1:48:25
  frame rate at 96 frames a second.
• 1:48:28
  A 32nd burn will be stretched to up to two minutes on screen.
• 1:48:31
  And we've mentioned the special effects and there were no mean
• 1:48:34
  feats, probably the greatest special effects in Hollywood at
• 1:48:37
  that time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:48:40
  Yeah. The special effects were the
• 1:48:41
  responsibility of the aforementioned LB Abbott lend to
• 1:48:44
  his friends. He'd been in the game since the
• 1:48:46
  late 20s and spent most of his career at Fox.
• 1:48:49
  He was a four time Oscar winner for visual effects with credits
• 1:48:52
  including Tora Tora Tora Journey, The Center of the Earth
• 1:48:55
  and Logan's Run. Nice Abbott central challenge
• 1:48:58
  was fire at miniature scale. A 138 story building at half
• 1:49:02
  inch scale comes out at 70 feet. Already an enormous model to
• 1:49:05
  build and manage, but fire doesn't scale down to the way a
• 1:49:08
  building does. Obviously miniature flames on
• 1:49:11
  notoriously lazy and transparent.
• 1:49:13
  As Abbott put it, they look fake.
• 1:49:15
  So we engineered a solution from scratch.
• 1:49:17
  Yes. Behind each window of the
• 1:49:19
  miniature he built, a metal firebox 8 inches deep comes in
• 1:49:22
  and three separate jets, 1 emitting a blue butane flame
• 1:49:26
  with no smoke, one emitting Acetylene which gives an orange
• 1:49:29
  flame and black smoke, and one admitting air to agitate the
• 1:49:32
  flame and to stop bunching up. Right, And each jet had its own
• 1:49:36
  spark plug igniter. By adjusting the valves, Abbott
• 1:49:40
  could in the exact colour and smoke density needed for any
• 1:49:43
  given shot. After three days of testing, he
• 1:49:45
  had a formula that worked, which he filmed at 72 frames per
• 1:49:48
  second, three times normal rate. So the miniature fires look
• 1:49:52
  convincing. Amazing.
• 1:49:53
  I mean, ingenious it do. Yeah.
• 1:49:55
  What he hadn't entirely accounted for was what would
• 1:49:57
  happen when the whole system fired at once.
• 1:50:00
  When the time came to shoot the tower fully ablaze, the igniters
• 1:50:02
  didn't respond immediately. And after about 10 seconds, they
• 1:50:05
  did. And the result was, in Abbott's
• 1:50:07
  words, one hell of a big explosion.
• 1:50:12
  So debris flew everywhere, A4 inch by 4 foot piece of l-shaped
• 1:50:15
  metal embedded itself in the ground 6 inches from Abbott's
• 1:50:18
  right foot. Nobody was hurt.
• 1:50:20
  But from that point of the crew made sure there was always a
• 1:50:23
  roof over the heads during effect sequences.
• 1:50:25
  And this explosion was so like visceral and visually stunning
• 1:50:28
  that they kept it in and they've kept it in the trailer and
• 1:50:30
  they've kept in I think the middle part of the film where
• 1:50:32
  that big explosion happens. The gas, it just, it was left
• 1:50:37
  for too long and it just kind of blew out.
• 1:50:39
  So the the best shot in the film is actually this accident.
• 1:50:42
  Wow. Incredible.
• 1:50:43
  Looks amazing It does. Yeah, and outside of the
• 1:50:46
  explosions, Abbott also came up with a great solution for the
• 1:50:49
  shot of Fred Astaire's character looking up at the full height of
• 1:50:52
  the tower from street level, the perspective that was impossible
• 1:50:55
  to achieve by pointing a camera up at a 70 foot model in a
• 1:50:58
  normal way. Instead, he laid an angled
• 1:51:01
  mirror on the ground outside and filmed the miniatures reflection
• 1:51:04
  given a convincing worm's eye view without ever needing to get
• 1:51:07
  a camera beneath the structure. Well, if you could go back and
• 1:51:11
  watch that shot. Yeah, she doesn't notice that.
• 1:51:14
  It's not. It's a miniature.
• 1:51:15
  No, not at all. No channels.
• 1:51:17
  Real. It's.
• 1:51:17
  Incredible the whole day for quite a while as well.
• 1:51:19
  That shot they. Do Yeah, they really do.
• 1:51:21
  And there's something else in the shot as well.
• 1:51:23
  There's another building in the shot as well from the
• 1:51:25
  perspective. It's it's like lean back as well
• 1:51:29
  how far it leans back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:51:31
  So that really sells it. It's.
• 1:51:32
  Brilliant. Yeah, it does sell it, You're
• 1:51:33
  right. And Abbott spent the better part
• 1:51:35
  of a month in San Francisco before production began,
• 1:51:38
  shooting the city skyline just after sunset, when the city
• 1:51:41
  lights are on, but there's still enough reflected light in the
• 1:51:43
  sky to give buildings detail and depth.
• 1:51:46
  The magic out. Yes, indeed.
• 1:51:48
  He matted these together with the miniature tower to create
• 1:51:50
  the establishing shots of the building against the real San
• 1:51:53
  Francisco skyline. He has worked for his money
• 1:51:56
  here. He sells the whole thing.
• 1:51:59
  Yeah. So a red hot plot, red hot cast,
• 1:52:02
  red hot crew, the music is wonderful, the cinematography a
• 1:52:05
  miracle, and a decent job at bringing it all under 1
• 1:52:08
  screenplay, yes. The end.
• 1:52:17
  Into the third act and we're playing a game of high rise
• 1:52:19
  roulette. 12 lucky people are the 1st to make it out of there.
• 1:52:22
  But will they make it in one piece?
• 1:52:25
  1 big flat piece? Maybe it's over to you first.
• 1:52:30
  Yeah, well, we'll get to that bit.
• 1:52:32
  I mean, before this all, they've got the plan.
• 1:52:34
  They're going to send a chop rope that's going to send the
• 1:52:36
  line in, which is basically shooting this massive harpoon
• 1:52:40
  into the promenade room. Does no one think to tell Carlos
• 1:52:44
  that's going to happen though? The pure bar?
• 1:52:45
  He's just Fanny and about he's. Just stood there polishing the
• 1:52:49
  glasses and that thing mainly takes his fucking head off.
• 1:52:54
  Carlos. I really appreciate the work
• 1:52:57
  ethic, but you've got bigger things to worry about.
• 1:53:00
  But then you get the bit, which, no pun intended, this has just
• 1:53:03
  been seized under my brain since that first viewing as a kid.
• 1:53:07
  The scenic elevator come in a cropper and Poor and Mrs.
• 1:53:10
  Mueller fall into it. I mean, Jennifer Jones is so
• 1:53:14
  good in this film. What?
• 1:53:16
  This film understands is whatever you want to call it,
• 1:53:19
  Mother Nature, accidents, whatever.
• 1:53:21
  In a film like this, they don't care how good a person you have
• 1:53:24
  been. It doesn't care that you've
• 1:53:26
  spent this entire film looking after two kids.
• 1:53:28
  Whether you're a good person, whether you're a bad person, it
• 1:53:31
  doesn't matter. It'll come for you regardless.
• 1:53:33
  And for a film of this kind to hit as hard as it does, it's got
• 1:53:37
  to kill people if you really like, and it's got to kill them
• 1:53:40
  off horrifically. And as Wesley brilliantly put
• 1:53:43
  it, it's the landmine that's being set up in that early scene
• 1:53:46
  where she comes down the room and stairwell because you think,
• 1:53:49
  oh God, she's okay now. That's it for her.
• 1:53:51
  And it's just that horrible irony that she's only in the
• 1:53:54
  elevator to begin with because Doug insists that she goes
• 1:53:58
  because she's being a good person and rescued the kids.
• 1:54:01
  And it's is everything about that.
• 1:54:03
  Once those explosions happen and that window shatters, her
• 1:54:06
  instinctive reaction is still save the kids, just pushes them
• 1:54:09
  into the fireman's arms out second thought.
• 1:54:12
  And that's it. What makes it hit him extra hard
• 1:54:15
  is it avoids that cliche where, you know, she hangs on for a few
• 1:54:19
  seconds so she can have a goodbye speaking.
• 1:54:21
  Yeah. Tell Harley I'll miss him.
• 1:54:23
  Would have had a good life. None of that.
• 1:54:25
  It's so blinking. You miss it, you have to go.
• 1:54:28
  Does she really falling out if I've just seen that?
• 1:54:30
  Does that really happen? Yeah, it's that cut to the White
• 1:54:33
  show when she hits the buildings.
• 1:54:36
  That's the most horrendous bit of all, hitting that ledge on
• 1:54:38
  the way down. It's just beyond cool.
• 1:54:40
  It's it's unbelievable how tough this scene is to watch.
• 1:54:43
  Yeah, it is. A great The Town Inferno was
• 1:54:46
  Jennifer Jones final film early in her career.
• 1:54:48
  She won the best actress Oscar for The Song of Bernadette in
• 1:54:51
  1944 and she was she was amazed back in the day, absolutely much
• 1:54:55
  amazing than this. Just to be honest.
• 1:54:57
  You were an absolute mess. There's been our last film, To
• 1:54:59
  Be Honest, and the story goes that she was cast because her
• 1:55:03
  husband, millionaire Fox stockholder Norton Simon, had
• 1:55:07
  helped secure the role for her, but also lent 4 Picassos for use
• 1:55:11
  on set decoration. Did they survive?
• 1:55:16
  That's a crazy choice. Yeah, there.
• 1:55:19
  You go. The scenic elevator explosion
• 1:55:23
  sequence is shot at night on the Fox back lot, where the crews
• 1:55:26
  constructed a three story replica of the elevator.
• 1:55:29
  Of course, you know another three stories.
• 1:55:32
  Len Abbott was in charge of the blast and when Allen directed
• 1:55:34
  it, several cast members were inside the elevator for the
• 1:55:37
  shot, including Fate Dunaway, Jennifer Jones and Sheila
• 1:55:39
  Matthews. When the explosion went off, it
• 1:55:42
  was so powerful that it set fire to trees behind the set.
• 1:55:46
  Matthews told Allen that the women in chiffon clothing could
• 1:55:48
  feel the heat coming off the blast.
• 1:55:50
  Thank you. Nailed it in one take.
• 1:55:52
  Right, Because it could have just all been barbecued.
• 1:55:54
  Yeah. Wow.
• 1:55:55
  But an incredible sequence, yeah.
• 1:55:57
  So from there, we've got a bit of a trouble with the scenic
• 1:56:00
  elevator. It's hanging by a cable at
• 1:56:01
  least. Yeah.
• 1:56:02
  And it's the 70s and it's full of women, so they're not going
• 1:56:05
  to be able to do anything about it either.
• 1:56:06
  So we've got to get. Let's get Mike in there.
• 1:56:08
  Let's get back in there. The scenic elevators hanging by
• 1:56:10
  a cable. And he just sits down and he's
• 1:56:12
  like, right. He's.
• 1:56:13
  And then he comes over, he kneels the front.
• 1:56:14
  He's like, how many people are in it?
• 1:56:15
  He's like, Laura, that's about 12.
• 1:56:17
  Is that right? That's exactly right.
• 1:56:18
  And he said, what you're going to do?
• 1:56:19
  He's like, I would just turn around and say, well, you just
• 1:56:21
  get on me fucking face like this has been a really, it's just
• 1:56:25
  been a really long day. You're asking me you're what are
• 1:56:29
  you going to do? What can you help us out here?
• 1:56:31
  What's up? And then he just like shouts at
• 1:56:33
  the guy, right? Can you get us around?
• 1:56:34
  I'll meet him on the PLS building in like 10 minutes.
• 1:56:36
  This is another abuse of time. 10 minutes just to be on the
• 1:56:39
  other building on the other side again on the helicopter.
• 1:56:41
  We're working on the bridges, boy.
• 1:56:43
  We're seeing that. And I'll be honest with you,
• 1:56:45
  you're not going to expect to hear this from me, but this
• 1:56:47
  whole sequence I can do without. Really.
• 1:56:51
  I'm fine with Mrs. Mueller get going out of there, but she
• 1:56:54
  could have died on the breachers boy with Simmons trying to get
• 1:56:57
  in there and invade nut space and her dying tragically because
• 1:57:01
  of that. There's room there for that to
• 1:57:02
  happen. I just think the scenic elevator
• 1:57:05
  is just a huge settle for McQueen needs a set piece.
• 1:57:08
  Newman's gone down the stairs on the on the banister.
• 1:57:10
  He needs something to be center stage and he needs it to be
• 1:57:13
  bigger again. And I could do without this
• 1:57:15
  because I think the effects on this part really suffer a little
• 1:57:18
  bit. It takes you out the film a
• 1:57:19
  little bit and I just think it's just a little bit too
• 1:57:23
  heavy-handed. You could chop all of this
• 1:57:25
  sequence out and it makes no difference because I mean,
• 1:57:28
  Mike's busy enough as it is. He doesn't need to be going up
• 1:57:31
  there. They've got the breachers boy
• 1:57:33
  over there. We're working on that.
• 1:57:35
  That's enough peril. We're singing.
• 1:57:36
  The shots of the overhead shots of that one.
• 1:57:38
  You know, when they're coming out of it is incredible.
• 1:57:40
  It's like, right to get the first one over.
• 1:57:43
  Wow, unreal. But then this bit when he's
• 1:57:46
  hanging with the fireman off it and it's like it comes off the
• 1:57:49
  thing and he's like, right, And he's holding him and it's of
• 1:57:51
  course he's going to be all right when you just see Miss
• 1:57:53
  Mueller died. So it just adds a little bit.
• 1:57:55
  And I could totally do without the sequence.
• 1:57:56
  So I mean, the scene's totally worth it just for Mcqueen's
• 1:57:59
  reaction when he gets to the ground, when he gets on the
• 1:58:00
  ground and he sees the other fire, when he's like looks it
• 1:58:03
  and then shakes his hand and then gives him a nod, and then
• 1:58:05
  he's released back in there, you know, straight.
• 1:58:08
  Back in. There, that would be enough for
• 1:58:09
  anyone just to go home. After that, he's straight back
• 1:58:13
  in there and he's always blow the water tanks later on.
• 1:58:15
  But for me, I think this takes it just a little bit too far
• 1:58:18
  out. Yeah, I think the we've all got
• 1:58:20
  our little gripes about the narrative and some of the scenes
• 1:58:24
  here, haven't we? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:58:25
  And a radio controlled miniature helicopter was used for wide
• 1:58:28
  angles in the scene. But when filming, a sudden gust
• 1:58:31
  of wind sent the Tropic crashing to the ground near the building.
• 1:58:34
  A special effects medic on standby, who was called Dorothy,
• 1:58:37
  sprinted to the crash site, scooped up the Steve McQueen
• 1:58:40
  doll that had been attached to the cable beneath the
• 1:58:42
  helicopter, wrapped it in gauze and cried off.
• 1:58:44
  Don't worry, Steve, I'll save you.
• 1:58:46
  And apparently the entire crew applauded her.
• 1:58:48
  Amazing. Great.
• 1:58:50
  The best part of that thing? Yeah.
• 1:58:53
  So after this, I'm skipping over to a very short but pivotal
• 1:58:58
  scene that follows when the structural engineer tells
• 1:59:00
  O'halloran that they only have around 17 minutes left.
• 1:59:03
  Those people are going to die up there.
• 1:59:05
  Yeah, drastic times call for drastic measures, which everyone
• 1:59:09
  seems to be in on apart from O'halloran.
• 1:59:11
  Even the fireman grunt busts in and says there's a trouble
• 1:59:14
  waiting for to take him to his almost certain doom.
• 1:59:18
  Even on the wiser. Brilliant. 1,000,000 gallons of
• 1:59:21
  water is sitting right at the top of the building, ready to be
• 1:59:24
  released in this very situation. Very, very convenient.
• 1:59:28
  It's a suicide mission, but the decision has already been made.
• 1:59:31
  There's only two people who can do this, and the other fella is
• 1:59:33
  fucked off, so it's down to you. All right mate, see you later.
• 1:59:37
  Outrageous pressure. Guys just brought them down like
• 1:59:41
  10 minutes ago. His tea wasn't ready, man.
• 1:59:45
  But he's got a hospital, hasn't he?
• 1:59:46
  He's smoked off the burns unit. He needs to go selfish.
• 1:59:52
  Put some ice on it. But this is where the film, I
• 1:59:54
  think it lets itself down a little bit because it's set up
• 1:59:57
  here that O'halleran warned me to get out of there.
• 2:00:00
  How will I get back down? And then the Stony silence.
• 2:00:03
  It sees it all. But then I don't feel like this
• 2:00:06
  jeopardy is followed through in the following scenes.
• 2:00:09
  I don't know if I'm alone and thinking that, but this feels as
• 2:00:11
  or you're going to certain doom and if you're going to get out,
• 2:00:14
  you're going to go through a terrible time to get out.
• 2:00:16
  But I don't think it does as much as anybody else really.
• 2:00:19
  That is a bit of a shame for me. But this is a great bit of
• 2:00:22
  backwards and forwards here. McQueen as in Flat Bull as
• 2:00:25
  always, even though he's been sent to a perilous situation.
• 2:00:29
  And there's a nice little cameo from Dabney Coleman in there as
• 2:00:32
  well. Yeah.
• 2:00:33
  He's great. Yeah, another cameo in a list of
• 2:00:35
  long cameos. Yeah.
• 2:00:36
  Yes, loads of cameos. Loads of cameos.
• 2:00:39
  Word up this lovely. Wow.
• 2:00:51
  So options seem to be running out, but there's one more death
• 2:00:54
  to fire and Hail Mary to be thrown.
• 2:00:56
  Yeah. We're wrapping this up with
• 2:01:00
  Newman and McQueen teaming up in the face of adversity.
• 2:01:03
  But first, one of the more satisfying deaths you could
• 2:01:06
  think of. Yes, Westie.
• 2:01:07
  It's fantastic. Everyone knows what I'm going to
• 2:01:09
  talk about. If you've seen the film, it's
• 2:01:11
  Simmons, man. He's squaring up the dunk and
• 2:01:13
  he's giving it the big and he's like, you know what a Dick.
• 2:01:16
  The women are gone. We're going next.
• 2:01:18
  You and who these guys? Yeah, these guys got your back.
• 2:01:22
  They're fucking T birds clicking the fingers right?
• 2:01:25
  West Side Story. Absolutely ridiculous when he
• 2:01:28
  tears his thing up and throws it and then he just looks at him,
• 2:01:31
  stares him down, then just that boom right The gut.
• 2:01:33
  That punch is amazing. Come on.
• 2:01:36
  Turns him into a 7 year old child and just throws him behind
• 2:01:39
  him. You know he deserves to be in
• 2:01:41
  the front view. He's just there whimpering in
• 2:01:43
  the background. There's just no remorse from
• 2:01:45
  Simmons for what he's done. He doesn't try to help anybody.
• 2:01:48
  He doesn't try to to redeem himself at all.
• 2:01:51
  He believes he's made the right decision.
• 2:01:53
  He believes he's cut the corners and that's what he does
• 2:01:55
  regardless. And he's going to do this again,
• 2:01:57
  you know, that he would do it again.
• 2:01:58
  Just self preservation that he has this selfishness.
• 2:02:01
  It's disgusting. Now.
• 2:02:02
  I think that's what really highlights this character and
• 2:02:05
  it's really great because Duncan's still fucking furious
• 2:02:07
  about The Wire. He's still furious.
• 2:02:11
  You are government's way. And I'm the last one with my
• 2:02:14
  son-in-law over there. And I love the way that
• 2:02:15
  son-in-law is just spat by Dougar.
• 2:02:19
  Yours was the electrical engineer and genius, yours.
• 2:02:22
  It's absolutely fantastic. And don't get to the call.
• 2:02:25
  It's out of control. It's coming your way.
• 2:02:28
  I love that line which put in the trailer.
• 2:02:29
  That's all right. You said you've got about 15
• 2:02:31
  minutes. Now, if anything's going to take
• 2:02:33
  the piss out of time, it's this 15 minutes.
• 2:02:36
  But he says in the foot, they want to try something.
• 2:02:39
  Want to try, it's blown the water tanks above you.
• 2:02:42
  And he's given this the dog straight down the phone, like
• 2:02:44
  where you've got about 15 minutes, but they want to blow
• 2:02:46
  the water tanks above you. Someone's going to have to bring
• 2:02:48
  C4 in a helicopter drop on the roof, go down.
• 2:02:50
  You're going to have to meet us up there with the BA set on.
• 2:02:52
  Then we're going to have to bring all the charges.
• 2:02:54
  How long we're going to set that for maybe about 5 minutes and
• 2:02:56
  then we're going to come down. Then we're going to wait to tie
• 2:02:58
  ourselves down and blow the water tanks.
• 2:02:59
  That's going to come back. We've got 15 minutes.
• 2:03:00
  That's going to take an hour and a half.
• 2:03:02
  Mike, that's easy. Going to take an hour and a half
• 2:03:06
  for you to land on the roof. Let's be real about this. 15
• 2:03:09
  minutes. Love it.
• 2:03:10
  Fire then bursts in the back corner.
• 2:03:11
  Simmons loses it, right? We're all out of here.
• 2:03:13
  And what's Vaughn doing? It's always involved.
• 2:03:17
  Stay out the fucking argument. What do you just do?
• 2:03:20
  Crazy bastard. Get that line.
• 2:03:22
  Leave the line. Don't get it.
• 2:03:24
  What you getting it for? Just leave the line.
• 2:03:26
  Let him fall. It's a really good visual
• 2:03:28
  though. It's a.
• 2:03:29
  Brilliant. Thing and.
• 2:03:30
  They're all clean on. You can't all fit on it.
• 2:03:32
  He's pulling them off and he's just kicking and punching
• 2:03:34
  everybody. Simmons just taking everybody
• 2:03:36
  out. He would just really set that
• 2:03:38
  whole room on fire. He could escape just the
• 2:03:40
  selfishness of it. But that death when that line
• 2:03:43
  goes and well, Vaughn goes and you just think, all right, well,
• 2:03:46
  that was a heartbreak up, but maybe you shouldn't have got
• 2:03:49
  involved, you know? Yeah.
• 2:03:51
  But then it's out with when the whole line goes and the bridges
• 2:03:54
  boy goes and they just you hear him screaming all the way down.
• 2:03:57
  To. Say like he's suffering all the
• 2:04:01
  way to the fucking ground, like he gets no remorse or
• 2:04:04
  whatsoever. He's so all the way down and I
• 2:04:06
  just love Wento. Goes back on the phone.
• 2:04:08
  We've lost the breaches, boys. But a panic up here.
• 2:04:09
  It's under control. Everything's absolutely fine.
• 2:04:16
  So a problem. Have you lost anyone?
• 2:04:17
  Doesn't matter. It's under control again.
• 2:04:19
  Airplane, you could just have Mike on the phone.
• 2:04:20
  Right? It's under control now.
• 2:04:22
  OK, I'll bring it up. This body just slams into the
• 2:04:24
  ground behind him. But yeah, great.
• 2:04:31
  Good setup for the end in 15 minutes.
• 2:04:33
  I don't think so. No.
• 2:04:35
  Yeah, so unlikeliness of this 15 minute time limit aside, this is
• 2:04:39
  one of the most stressful scenes in the film for me.
• 2:04:42
  Plant your charges. And it's stressful because I
• 2:04:44
  would be absolutely crap in that situation if I was like, I can't
• 2:04:49
  follow instructions just by listening to them.
• 2:04:51
  I need them written down. I want half an hour to go
• 2:04:55
  through them in the head. Maybe have a little practice one
• 2:04:57
  first. I don't need the deadline of,
• 2:04:58
  well, 10 minutes. Do this or we will all die.
• 2:05:01
  And it gets worse for me because when or Halvan starts giving out
• 2:05:04
  the instructions, you're running instantaneous.
• 2:05:06
  I'm running delayed. Well, first of all, what does
• 2:05:08
  any of that mean? I don't understand yet why do we
• 2:05:10
  have different dead inators when or Halvan pulls the wire out and
• 2:05:14
  then just throw some of it away? Why have you done that?
• 2:05:16
  I don't understand anything you do and that I'm supposed to
• 2:05:18
  mimic here. And he says to him, take your
• 2:05:20
  detonator, pull the plug, toss it.
• 2:05:22
  Got it. Definitely not, no.
• 2:05:24
  Like I've got none of this in any way, shape or form.
• 2:05:28
  Can you just do mine for me, please?
• 2:05:30
  Like, I don't know what I'm doing here.
• 2:05:33
  So it's a good thing humans doing because he can pull this
• 2:05:36
  off. And I just think that it's a
• 2:05:37
  really great countdown sequence. Like the tension is just ramping
• 2:05:41
  up off the scales. That clock is countdown.
• 2:05:44
  As I said, for music, he's incredible and everyone slashed
• 2:05:47
  themselves to something because yeah, this might put out the
• 2:05:49
  fire, but it might also kill everyone.
• 2:05:51
  Yeah, it might sweep everybody to their death.
• 2:05:53
  Exactly. But that's it's like it does
• 2:05:55
  even at this moment, it's still killing people off.
• 2:05:58
  And those explosions mean the sound of them are amazing, mean
• 2:06:01
  massively overactive. I mean, there's about 17
• 2:06:04
  different explosions here. It's.
• 2:06:07
  Not an. Excess.
• 2:06:08
  I mean I'm sure the use Freder says reaction about 3 different
• 2:06:11
  times as well. Yeah.
• 2:06:12
  That gets for use and then, yeah, as we're saying, you know,
• 2:06:16
  it's work, but people are still being thrown through the
• 2:06:18
  windows. The bit that always gets me here
• 2:06:20
  is poor Carlos, that bartender, like a small role, but he's
• 2:06:24
  really memorable. He's been such a stand up,
• 2:06:26
  helpful guy and you think, oh, he's going to be OK, he's going
• 2:06:29
  to get through this. But it's that last minute twist
• 2:06:31
  of the knife that the film has. Like I said, it has no mercy on
• 2:06:34
  anyone, no matter how good they're being.
• 2:06:36
  No, but how helpful. And it's just really good when
• 2:06:38
  you see him. He just gets crushed by that
• 2:06:40
  stunt. You've fallen on him right at
• 2:06:42
  the last minute. So I think he's going to be OK.
• 2:06:43
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:06:45
  Obviously it was a very challenging set piece to pull
• 2:06:48
  off. 12,000 gallons of water held in overhead tanks directed
• 2:06:52
  down through shoots into the set below, controlled by a wheel to
• 2:06:55
  manage the pressure and additional high pressure fire
• 2:06:57
  hoses to extend the flow. Cast obviously shackled the
• 2:07:01
  columns and rear lens below 10 feet above the ground.
• 2:07:04
  Yeah, a camera is in position. None of which could get wet
• 2:07:08
  without risking the electrical equipment.
• 2:07:10
  One drop of water on a hot lens was enough to just shatter the
• 2:07:13
  glass. Yeah, and Joseph, Barack himself
• 2:07:16
  nearly ended up in the short Q in that sequence.
• 2:07:18
  He'd spotted a chair out of position just before Allen
• 2:07:21
  called action and went to move it.
• 2:07:22
  Or he discovered it was made of rawhide and we'd considerably
• 2:07:26
  more than it looked. And Allen had called action
• 2:07:28
  before he could get clear, and Barack took a good sulking.
• 2:07:33
  Yeah, incredibly, the only actual injury or reported injury
• 2:07:36
  on the production was the studio Fire Chief cutting himself on
• 2:07:39
  broken glass, which. Wow.
• 2:07:42
  Right. Yeah.
• 2:07:43
  So yeah, what Matt was saying about that heartbreaker from
• 2:07:45
  Carlos buying at the end, the studio put pressure on for an
• 2:07:48
  important character to buy in the scene for emotional impact,
• 2:07:52
  and they were seriously considering killing off McQueen
• 2:07:55
  Newman Holden's characters. Until storyboard artist John
• 2:07:58
  Musial pointed out that Alan had already killed off Gene Hackman
• 2:08:01
  in The Poseidon Adventure, and the critics would have a field
• 2:08:03
  day if he did it again. Yeah, so Musil's solution was
• 2:08:07
  Carlos the bartender, as he said Matt, sympathetic enough to land
• 2:08:10
  emotionally, disposable enough not to cause a diplomatic
• 2:08:14
  incident with the stars. Yeah, Alan went for it.
• 2:08:16
  And you know, it does hit emotionally as.
• 2:08:18
  Well, yeah, does work. Yeah, and it's a successful
• 2:08:21
  mission and now the final moments where the majority have
• 2:08:24
  made it to safety. But this really is changed with
• 2:08:26
  melancholy because of the lies lost.
• 2:08:29
  Mrs. Mueller's out of there damn big low lorry obviously and any
• 2:08:33
  number of firemen and staff caught up in the blaze.
• 2:08:35
  Loads of people in the burns unit, loads of people on the way
• 2:08:37
  to hospital. This film may have quite a safe
• 2:08:40
  reputation, but really plays for keeps.
• 2:08:43
  All that body bags and shot as well when McQueen turns around.
• 2:08:46
  Exactly. Oh yeah, that's really effective
• 2:08:48
  shot that. Yeah, Yeah, it is.
• 2:08:50
  And when Harley's looking for Mrs. Mueller and he's told that
• 2:08:52
  she didn't make it, your heartbreak and stuff, he's
• 2:08:55
  calling her name out. Yeah, if that wasn't bad enough,
• 2:08:58
  he's now got the responsibility to look after a fucking cat as
• 2:09:01
  well. Delivers.
• 2:09:03
  Selfish little. Yeah.
• 2:09:07
  Unfortunately, though, the film does double down under its
• 2:09:10
  utilization of Fate Dunaway. Newman's got a great line about
• 2:09:14
  leaving it all as a shrine to all the bullshit in the world.
• 2:09:17
  Really good line. But Fate Dunaway doesn't have
• 2:09:19
  one single line. She doesn't utter any words, any
• 2:09:25
  response, anything at all. That is great.
• 2:09:28
  That's great. I just don't understand that
• 2:09:30
  decision. It's.
• 2:09:31
  Criminal. Yeah.
• 2:09:32
  She's just there to comfort them, to comfort the hero at the
• 2:09:34
  end. We mentioned the film once
• 2:09:37
  already, but outside, this really feels like Die Hard,
• 2:09:41
  Clean and power coming together free from harm.
• 2:09:44
  There's clear influence here. Oh, absolutely, yeah.
• 2:09:46
  The animosity is eroded, there's a mutual respect and an
• 2:09:49
  agreement to make a change for the better.
• 2:09:51
  A really nice message to leave on.
• 2:09:53
  Mcqueen's final line does make narrative sense.
• 2:09:56
  It does, but this does feel like a missed opportunity for me.
• 2:09:59
  This is wide open for a sequel. Dugan o'halleran.
• 2:10:03
  Take a down shoddy contractors all along the West Coast and
• 2:10:07
  tune in for that. Sounds amazing.
• 2:10:11
  Yeah, like Backdraft do it on purpose.
• 2:10:14
  Yeah, yeah. So we end with emotional
• 2:10:18
  reunions all over the place, sending the audience out with a
• 2:10:21
  lump and a throat and hope for the future.
• 2:10:23
  So long architect. Nice reception under wards.
• 2:10:32
  Father and son editing team Harold F Kress and Karl Kress
• 2:10:35
  had the job of stitching together footage from 4
• 2:10:38
  different camera crews, two different directors and to make
• 2:10:40
  it look consistent. Their work was praised by
• 2:10:42
  critics and they were rewarded with the Best Editing Oscar.
• 2:10:45
  Very well deserved. Thanks very much though.
• 2:10:48
  And The Tower Inferno premiered on December 16th, 1974 at the
• 2:10:53
  AVCOR Centre in Los Angeles, followed 3 days later by a New
• 2:10:56
  York Premier at the National Theatre.
• 2:10:58
  The New York Fire Department showed up in force with six fire
• 2:11:01
  engines displayed outside for an hour, but this actually drew
• 2:11:04
  some criticism in the press about whether those engines
• 2:11:07
  would have been available to respond to actual emergencies.
• 2:11:10
  Yes, a fair comment. Point.
• 2:11:12
  Yeah, I mean 1. Fair enough.
• 2:11:14
  One for set dressing, Yeah, 6 is excessive, Yeah.
• 2:11:17
  The firefighters union across the US organised screenings of
• 2:11:20
  it as cautionary tale about high rise safety.
• 2:11:23
  Alan himself never want to undersell his work, told the New
• 2:11:26
  York Times that year. I don't make message movies per
• 2:11:28
  SE, but as it turns out, I've got the hottest message in the
• 2:11:32
  world in the Tower and Inferno. Too true.
• 2:11:34
  Yeah, yeah. Following release, the reviews
• 2:11:37
  were a bit of a mixed bag. The New York Times Vincent Canby
• 2:11:40
  acknowledged that the script succeeds in presenting dozens of
• 2:11:43
  incidents without noticeable overlaps and collisions, and
• 2:11:47
  that the cast upgrades a secondary form of movie
• 2:11:49
  melodrama. But The Hollywood Reporter was
• 2:11:52
  less generous, calling it more ordeal than entertainment.
• 2:11:55
  In suggestion, it overwhelms the spectator like a bully playing
• 2:11:59
  on the face of a society trapped in its own burning affluence.
• 2:12:03
  Wow, that's a bit too high bro, to be quite honest.
• 2:12:06
  A little bit, yeah. A.
• 2:12:07
  Little bit Pauline Kael in The New Yorker was the harshest,
• 2:12:11
  saying that a film which bores us and insults our intelligence
• 2:12:14
  for close to three hours shouldn't preen itself on its
• 2:12:16
  own morality. No punches there, Pauline.
• 2:12:20
  Yeah, and as we always end Roger Ebert, what do you think he gave
• 2:12:23
  it out of four chaps? I don't think this went down
• 2:12:26
  well with the critics that I'm going to say 3.
• 2:12:28
  I'll go four. I think it might be the odd one.
• 2:12:30
  I would love to fall 4. Straight in.
• 2:12:33
  Maybe that's ambitious. No, you were right, Wesley.
• 2:12:36
  It's three. Yeah.
• 2:12:37
  He called it a brawny blockbuster of a movie, by far
• 2:12:40
  the best of the mid 70s disaster films and Hollywood commercial
• 2:12:43
  movie making at its finest. He loved it.
• 2:12:46
  Yeah, there you go. And now the film has seven out
• 2:12:48
  of 10 and IMDb and a Rotten Tomatoes 69% from critics, 72%
• 2:12:53
  from audiences. Quite consistent, yeah.
• 2:12:55
  But despite the lukewarm reception at the box office,
• 2:12:57
  Inferno was a massive hit. Blaze and Saddles, also shot by
• 2:13:01
  Joseph Barack and released back in February, was the biggest
• 2:13:04
  grossing film of the year with 119.6 million.
• 2:13:08
  But Inferno, opened in December and running well in 1975,
• 2:13:11
  eventually grossed 203.3 million in total on a 14 million budget.
• 2:13:17
  The investment in Star power and cutting edge effects work had
• 2:13:20
  paid off considerably. It certainly had, yes.
• 2:13:24
  And at the Oscars, in a year dominated by The Godfather Part
• 2:13:26
  2, The Taran Infernal held its own with eight nominations,
• 2:13:31
  including Best Pitcher and Best Supporting Actor, which was
• 2:13:34
  never going to win. No, but it did pick up three
• 2:13:37
  that we've talked about. Best Cinematography, Best Film
• 2:13:39
  Editing, and Best Original Song. Yeah, and Fred Astaire did win
• 2:13:43
  best supporting at the Baftas and the Golden Globes.
• 2:13:46
  John Williams picked up a BAFTA for his work here, coupled with
• 2:13:48
  his work on Jaws as well. I think Inferno maybe was the
• 2:13:51
  tag along on that award. Yeah.
• 2:13:55
  Yeah. And Susan Flannery playing Paddy
• 2:13:59
  Simmons Duncan starter, was awarded new start of the the
• 2:14:02
  Golden Globes despite being in movies and TV for over 10 years
• 2:14:06
  at that point. Yeah, a little behind the times
• 2:14:08
  there, just a bit. Yeah.
• 2:14:09
  So someone expected awards recognition.
• 2:14:11
  Made. Maybe, but there's no surprise
• 2:14:12
  that a film on the cutting edge of special effects tapping into
• 2:14:15
  audience and societal fears swept the box office despite a
• 2:14:18
  mixed reception from critics. Yeah, sequels and influence.
• 2:14:27
  A number of Hollywood firsts for the Terran Infernal.
• 2:14:30
  Some immediate impacts the film had before we go into its long
• 2:14:33
  term legacy. The film triggered genuine
• 2:14:36
  change, stricter building codes, upgraded fire safety regulations
• 2:14:39
  and the re examination of sprinkler requirements in tall
• 2:14:42
  buildings across multiple cities.
• 2:14:44
  I mean, that's an impact. Huge.
• 2:14:46
  And the film had a more personal effect on a few people directly
• 2:14:49
  involved as well. Allen moved his New York hotel
• 2:14:52
  suite from the 30th floor to the fifth.
• 2:14:54
  Newman allegedly stopped visiting his dentist, whose
• 2:14:57
  office was on the 14th floor, and McQueen was made an honorary
• 2:15:00
  Los Angeles firefighter for his troubles.
• 2:15:03
  Very nice, yeah. Very nice.
• 2:15:05
  So in the since its release, where have we seen the Tower
• 2:15:08
  Inferno's influence and legacy? Wesley, what are your thoughts?
• 2:15:12
  I mean influence and legacy, there's a lot.
• 2:15:15
  I don't think anything of this scale is ever going to be done
• 2:15:18
  again. But the ensembles again,
• 2:15:20
  bringing together big names, the combination of studios, the use
• 2:15:24
  of miniatures. I don't think Lord of the Rings
• 2:15:25
  will be go without the miniatures that we used here.
• 2:15:27
  I think it pioneered that. It had a lot of visual, visual
• 2:15:30
  effects. It pioneered a lot of people
• 2:15:31
  working together. I think Urban Island was a real
• 2:15:34
  pioneer not only of the disaster genre but also like the huge
• 2:15:37
  epic sweep of the film of cinema and how to make that big and
• 2:15:41
  engaging and powerful and human. This really said, this is what a
• 2:15:46
  big film is, hasn't been touched since.
• 2:15:48
  I think it has, but not to this degree of like real danger.
• 2:15:52
  I think it's a brilliant thing. Yeah, real balls to the wall.
• 2:15:55
  Film it is, absolutely. Yeah, it really is.
• 2:15:58
  Yeah. I mean, it's legacy as this is
• 2:15:59
  how you do this type of film, this is how you do with that
• 2:16:02
  tactile physicality. It has fired genuinely out there
• 2:16:05
  on set, not added in post, which makes so much difference.
• 2:16:09
  But I think there's really individual little bits that
• 2:16:11
  remind me as well. I mean, we've mentioned, you
• 2:16:13
  know, if you Die Hard references already, but the helicopter
• 2:16:16
  exploding on the roof, that is what happens to Johnson and
• 2:16:19
  Johnson in Die Hard. Yeah, it looks like the Nakatomi
• 2:16:22
  building, doesn't it? Looks.
• 2:16:23
  Like it? Yeah, and I think on James
• 2:16:24
  Cameron as well, I think that bit after they've planted the
• 2:16:27
  charges and they've kind of rushed through the fire when or
• 2:16:30
  Halloran has to take his suit off because it's burning.
• 2:16:32
  That always reminds me if you know when aliens when Hicks
• 2:16:35
  shoots the. Aliens on.
• 2:16:38
  His arm, and Ripley has to take it off for him.
• 2:16:41
  I think that feels like it, and it has to be a deliberate
• 2:16:43
  reference. But the bit we've talked about,
• 2:16:46
  about Mrs. Mueller falling out the elevator and then hitting
• 2:16:48
  the ledge in Titanic, you've got the bit where the person falls
• 2:16:52
  off, hits the propeller and spins into one in exactly the
• 2:16:55
  same way. That can't be a coincidence.
• 2:16:58
  No, not at all. That has to be a direct
• 2:17:00
  reference, I think, to Jennifer Jones.
• 2:17:02
  In terms of legacy, I think you've got to start with what
• 2:17:04
  this film represents is just a Hollywood landmark because the
• 2:17:07
  list of first is is extraordinary. 2 Studios Co
• 2:17:10
  producing a film together, two source novels combining or a
• 2:17:13
  single screenplay, 2 directors splitting duties, and a budget
• 2:17:17
  that at the time was the largest ever committed to a single film.
• 2:17:20
  Yeah, and diagonal building as well.
• 2:17:21
  That was the AS. Well, yeah, absolutely.
• 2:17:24
  So any one of those things would make the Tarrant Inferno
• 2:17:27
  noteworthy. But five of them making one of
• 2:17:30
  the most audition productions in Hollywood history?
• 2:17:33
  Yeah. And I think that doesn't get
• 2:17:34
  remembered. No, it doesn't know.
• 2:17:36
  But the legacy goes beyond the logistics.
• 2:17:38
  For better or worse, every superhero film, every action
• 2:17:41
  spectacular, every disaster move you've seen the last 50 years
• 2:17:44
  has the Tarrant Infernals fingerprints somewhere on it.
• 2:17:47
  Definitely. I mean, Roland Emmerich is
• 2:17:49
  covered in And finally, we've talked about this a number of
• 2:17:54
  Times Now, but novelist Roderick Thorpe saw The Tower and
• 2:17:58
  Inferno, and that same night had a dream about a man being chased
• 2:18:01
  through a skyscraper by armed assailants.
• 2:18:04
  That dream became his 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever.
• 2:18:07
  Nothing Lasts Forever was adapted for the big screen
• 2:18:09
  that's Die Hard in 1988. Legacy Nailed Forever.
• 2:18:14
  And if you want even more evidence of that influence,
• 2:18:18
  there's an exchange between Holly and John Mcclane in the
• 2:18:22
  bathroom right at the start. He's talking about Kathy Roberts
• 2:18:25
  retiring out here. That is a direct reference to
• 2:18:28
  Doug Roberts, who's called Kathy in this film.
• 2:18:31
  Paul and his character. Yeah.
• 2:18:32
  Yeah. Pomona.
• 2:18:34
  Pomona, Pomona. Pomona, Pomona.
• 2:18:37
  So yes, a film with a huge reputation, a film with a huge
• 2:18:42
  legacy, one that maybe doesn't get talked about as much as it
• 2:18:45
  should, and I think we've righted a few wrongs here with
• 2:18:48
  that. Absolutely all the right movies
• 2:18:54
  ranking. OK, it's time to give our
• 2:18:57
  summary and score for the Tower and Inferno.
• 2:18:59
  Wesley, you chose it, so why don't you go first?
• 2:19:02
  I have a lot of love for this film.
• 2:19:03
  I have a lot of admiration for this film.
• 2:19:05
  I have a lot of time, a lot of emotion, a lot of nostalgia.
• 2:19:08
  It's the ultimate film that I'll just put on.
• 2:19:09
  If I'm doing something, it's just there.
• 2:19:12
  It's long enough that I can always come back to it.
• 2:19:14
  There's always a sequence that I want to watch in it.
• 2:19:16
  There's some I had to put the academic head on and the kind
• 2:19:19
  of, you know, the technical head and go, yeah, you know, as a
• 2:19:22
  film, it's not one that I'm going to recommend to everybody.
• 2:19:25
  I know it's aged like milk. I know for a fact that there's
• 2:19:27
  problems with it. I know that it's not a perfect
• 2:19:29
  film by any stretch of the imagination.
• 2:19:31
  I'm not going to give a perfect score, even though I'd love to.
• 2:19:34
  Me hard. It is A10.
• 2:19:35
  If it was, you know, little Wesley sitting here, it's at 8
• 2:19:38
  and nine years old, they'd be like that's a 10 on 10.
• 2:19:40
  I've not seen anything better. Maybe Commando, but that's the
• 2:19:43
  definitely A10. It really feels like home.
• 2:19:46
  This whole film. It's got it's got a lot attached
• 2:19:48
  to it. I really, really do love it.
• 2:19:49
  But I can understand where all the issues come from it and I'm
• 2:19:52
  not going to defend it. I do love it and I do love it
• 2:19:54
  with all my heart. It only loses 1 mark for all of
• 2:19:58
  the things that was spoken about.
• 2:19:59
  It definitely gets up there for me.
• 2:20:00
  It's a nine on 10 for me. 9 out of 10.
• 2:20:03
  Very nice. What about you, Matt?
• 2:20:05
  Yeah, I mean, this is one that is on rotation a lot for me and
• 2:20:09
  Weedley, considering everything that happens in it, it's a bit
• 2:20:12
  of a comfort watch for me. And I think even nostalgia sites
• 2:20:15
  how much this still hits the mark.
• 2:20:16
  I mean, in terms of the actors nor no one's put in any of their
• 2:20:19
  work here in a top five of whoever you pick.
• 2:20:22
  But just the sheer movie star presence of Newman McQueen,
• 2:20:25
  Holden Dunaway, Astaire gives a real level of dramatic weight
• 2:20:28
  that really needs to think the set pieces still really work.
• 2:20:32
  This will put my heart my mouth at times.
• 2:20:34
  Special effects are horrifying and the stunt work is still
• 2:20:36
  spectacular. And everyone's really plugged
• 2:20:39
  into what this film is trying to deliver.
• 2:20:42
  But as we've been seeing some of the dialogue, some of the plot
• 2:20:45
  lines, the, you know, the constraint from a daytime soap
• 2:20:48
  opera in Saudi or some of the other kind of support
• 2:20:50
  performances. And obviously this genre does
• 2:20:53
  come with certain boundaries or limits to it that a con really
• 2:20:56
  suffered or overcome to that extent.
• 2:20:58
  But it's getting an extra half. Mark me for nostalgia and the X
• 2:21:02
  half mark is because this is for me.
• 2:21:05
  It's still the best in class for this genre.
• 2:21:07
  Nothing in need respect for that.
• 2:21:10
  So I'm also giving it A9. Wow, 2 nines.
• 2:21:14
  Well, I said at the start I preferred Poseidon when I came
• 2:21:17
  to revisit in this, and I still do by some distance.
• 2:21:20
  It just feels a lot more whole less bloated.
• 2:21:23
  It feels there's more at stake and I just a better film for me.
• 2:21:28
  OK, but there's a lot to love about Inferno, an amazing
• 2:21:31
  spectacle with incredible talent on each either side of the
• 2:21:33
  camera. But it's in front of the camera
• 2:21:35
  that I've got probably the biggest problem with.
• 2:21:37
  I've mentioned that the character Dan Bigelow and his
• 2:21:40
  mistress Snip. Get that out or apply that to
• 2:21:44
  somebody that I care about. Right, OK.
• 2:21:47
  Yeah. Faye Dunaway.
• 2:21:48
  I mean, come on, I've said enough and I'm broke the record.
• 2:21:52
  I agree. Unforgivable.
• 2:21:54
  Not to give her any lines in the last scene or not.
• 2:21:58
  To be acknowledged by Stephen Mcqueen's character is crazy.
• 2:22:04
  Yeah. So the writing, although I think
• 2:22:05
  it was a poisoned chalice from the outset, that could have been
• 2:22:08
  much better, much tighter, more emotionally resonant with
• 2:22:11
  characters we care about. Maybe was the leading actor ego
• 2:22:14
  trip that caused a ripple effect throughout.
• 2:22:16
  Possibly talked about the restrictions.
• 2:22:18
  Yeah, there's a lot of control here.
• 2:22:20
  Yeah, make no mistake though, John Williams score is a
• 2:22:23
  highlights, as are the special effects John Glaman's should be
• 2:22:28
  singled out for. Prayers for keeping everything
• 2:22:30
  afloat and God bless Irwin Allen.
• 2:22:33
  He's been a bit of a laughable figure, but God the balls on
• 2:22:36
  this man. Absolutely.
• 2:22:37
  He had in mind what he wanted and he went after it like a
• 2:22:40
  crazy man and he pulled it off. Pioneer of the blockbuster?
• 2:22:43
  Incredible. Biggest ever budget at the time
• 2:22:45
  as well. Completely unfair.
• 2:22:46
  Is 200 million of the box office just like that.
• 2:22:49
  It's a real success story despite things are going against
• 2:22:52
  it, but the behind the scenes story doesn't necessarily give
• 2:22:55
  the film high marks. It's jumbled and spectacular.
• 2:22:58
  Great to look at but bloated to bursting point.
• 2:23:01
  This is the definition of a mixed bag for me, but I've very
• 2:23:03
  much admire the craft. I'm going for a 7 out of 10.
• 2:23:06
  OK, that's too low. That's fine though.
• 2:23:11
  I mean. Is it fine?
• 2:23:13
  Okay, great. I'm glad.
• 2:23:14
  I'm glad. It's fine, yeah.
• 2:23:15
  It's fine. We'll do it beside an adventure
• 2:23:18
  next month. See what happens then.
• 2:23:20
  Yeah, 66.5 Our 4th and final score for The Tarrant Inferno
• 2:23:29
  comes from our Patreon community.
• 2:23:30
  They've had plenty to say. Here are some thoughts.
• 2:23:33
  First, OK, Daryl Van Horn said a disaster flick that actually has
• 2:23:37
  some edge. Characters actually die button
• 2:23:39
  versions played safe. So in the context of the genre,
• 2:23:42
  9 out of 10 plus Newman and McQueen, yes yeah, yeah, fair
• 2:23:45
  enough. David Barry said this is the
• 2:23:47
  granddaddy of disaster movies. Always a blast.
• 2:23:51
  What a cast. Super cool McQueen and human
• 2:23:53
  effects that still look great. Thrilling John Williams score 9
• 2:23:57
  out of 10. Understood.
• 2:23:59
  Bismarck said. I grew up on 70s disaster
• 2:24:02
  movies, Poseidon, Adventure, Earthquake, etcetera and for the
• 2:24:05
  longest time Tower and Inferno was my favorite.
• 2:24:07
  But having recently rewatched it, I was disappointed in most
• 2:24:10
  of the scenes that didn't have fire effects and stunts.
• 2:24:13
  I didn't care about most of the characters aside from Steve
• 2:24:16
  McQueen who was fantastic Fire Chief.
• 2:24:18
  Haven't grown up with Tower and Inferno as a 10.
• 2:24:20
  I'm sad to say it is now a six. Wow, okay, that's what I mean.
• 2:24:26
  You say it hasn't aged well. No.
• 2:24:27
  Yeah, watch it once a week from when you're 7.
• 2:24:29
  Years old as a kid. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:24:32
  Then then tonight. Then it's tonight.
• 2:24:34
  Easy, yeah. So there's an honest spread of
• 2:24:37
  opinions. Thanks Bismarck for keeping us
• 2:24:40
  on our tours as well. Don't think the Bismarck
• 2:24:42
  whatever you do. So what do you think that
• 2:24:45
  averages out of 10 from our Patreon community?
• 2:24:47
  Definitely think it's going to be more on your end to be
• 2:24:50
  honest. I'm going to be optimistic
• 2:24:52
  though and saying 8. I'll say 7.5.
• 2:24:55
  Oh, Wester, you're right is 8 out of 10.
• 2:24:58
  OK, enough. I'm happy with that.
• 2:25:00
  Yeah, yeah. Meaning that overall, Italian
• 2:25:02
  Infernal scores 33 out of 40, right?
• 2:25:06
  A solid score. Very solid, very understandable.
• 2:25:08
  Yeah, respectable. Good.
• 2:25:09
  Yeah. All the right movies will be
• 2:25:11
  back in two weeks when John Westy and Matt will be going
• 2:25:14
  behind the scenes on Back to the Future Part 2.
• 2:25:16
  Hoverboards, power laces and all.
• 2:25:18
  That one is going to be an awful lot of fun, for sure.
• 2:25:20
  Yeah, it's gonna. Be great that one.
• 2:25:22
  Look forward to that. For that, for our studio head
• 2:25:24
  and directors chair patrons, the latest episode of The Watchlist
• 2:25:27
  came out last week. 6 great reviews there.
• 2:25:30
  And next week we'll put an Alan Rickman in the double feature
• 2:25:33
  chair with Galaxy Quest and Dogma.
• 2:25:35
  That's going to be a very good episode.
• 2:25:37
  Very nice. Love Rickman.
• 2:25:39
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• 2:25:40
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• 2:25:42
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• 2:25:45
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• 2:25:47
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• 2:25:49
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• 2:25:50
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• 2:25:53
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• 2:26:10
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• 2:26:24
  And that's a wrap, everyone. We're all off to check the
• 2:26:27
  wiring on the 81st floor. Yeah, thank you very much for
• 2:26:30
  listening and we'll see you in two weeks for Back to the Future
• 2:26:32
  Part 2. Yes.
• 2:26:34
  Thank you so much for listening guys.
• 2:26:35
  Take care. Easy guys.
• 2:26:36
  Make sure them sprinklers work.