Latest / Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage / Leaving Las Vegas vs Joe

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Leaving Las Vegas vs Joe · Cage Match: A Roundabout Way of Meeting Nicolas Cage

• 0:00
  What you are listening to is real. The participants are not actors. They are real people with a case pending in Podcast Court.
• 0:10
  Hello, I'm Producer Peter and welcome to Cage Match, a roundabout way of meeting Nicolas Cage, Podcast Court.
• 0:15
  Today's case is between a drunk with a good heart and a drunk with a good heart.
• 0:21
  Oh God.
• 0:22
  Oh my God.
• 0:31
  Fuck!
• 0:41
  So I think my cat's gone completely deaf.
• 0:44
  I was going to say it wouldn't be a regular Cage Match episode without you yelling at Taco at some point.
• 0:48
  Oh, Jesus, I'm just testing at this point. So she's gotten really she's gotten really good about screaming the songs of her people at all hours of the night.
• 0:59
  I'm woken up at least three times a night by this cat.
• 1:02
  Pete and Rico have a new thing. Speaking of songs of their people, they've just been sitting at the bar going, I chihuahua.
• 1:10
  Holy shit. Oh my God.
• 1:13
  Why does Pete think that he can do that?
• 1:15
  Well, technically, Pete was doing it first and Rico started.
• 1:21
  Yeah, OK.
• 1:23
  Because they're both stupid and I love it.
• 1:26
  So I just recently was reminded of the term Flanderization.
• 1:31
  Hmm. So are you unnecessarily left hand something or?
• 1:36
  Yeah, right.
• 1:37
  No, it's like in in a long running show where a character just gets like simplified down to like its most basic premise and then just becomes like that Flanders.
• 1:47
  I mean, that's where it comes from. It's just like all of us, you know, a three dimensional character becomes like just the one thing.
• 1:54
  And that happened to Rico real quick.
• 1:56
  And now he's a person.
• 1:58
  I miss the hat mostly.
• 2:00
  So Carlos, these are people that you don't know at all or give a shit about.
• 2:04
  So that's great conversation, right?
• 2:11
  OK, cool. Well, Carlos, welcome. Thank you for being here.
• 2:14
  It's good to see you again. Yeah, thank you for.
• 2:17
  And yeah, man, it's been a while. It's been a few years, man.
• 2:20
  Yeah. Ever since you decided to leave me for DocuSign, we were going to make you sign a DocuSign and then thought it was maybe too rude.
• 2:27
  We're going to send you an NDA.
• 2:29
  It's it's OK. DocuSign dumped me, so don't worry about it.
• 2:34
  Certainly no hard feelings. Right. Right. No, not at all.
• 2:38
  After eight years. So how do you and Nick know each other?
• 2:43
  We go back to the Hollywood Lights days.
• 2:48
  Yeah, we were warehouse office schlubs schlubs schlubs schlubs. Right.
• 2:53
  Yeah, I moved to Seattle back in 2015, 2014, and then started working at Hollywood Lights and met Nick.
• 3:02
  You know, he he showed me the ropes. Was it the right way? I don't know.
• 3:07
  I've been calling my penis the ropes for at least nine years.
• 3:11
  I'm learning that today. God, I hate that. That's a good joke.
• 3:17
  Oh, man. It's all downhill from here.
• 3:22
  So, yeah, that's how far back we go now.
• 3:26
  But you're back down in California where you have avocados and you don't have to endure the months of rain that we're currently starting up.
• 3:36
  No, I know exactly. It's it's been nice having sunshine for 300 days out of the year.
• 3:42
  Having fruit trees in my backyard. Got to love it. Yeah, that's that's how we know each other.
• 3:47
  We work together. Great. Good job. Nice. Nice introductions.
• 3:53
  We work. We work and drink together. Yeah.
• 3:57
  But before we work together, you've done other like cool things.
• 4:02
  So like, OK, I'm always excited because you used to work with IMAX like.
• 4:09
  Like screening films or something, right? Like, how did that job like really work out?
• 4:14
  I like to talk about this one because it's super weird because you watch the movies for a living.
• 4:19
  No, that's cool as fuck. I want to know all about that.
• 4:22
  No, absolutely. No, I worked. I worked for IMAX and their post production digital post.
• 4:28
  So we did all the 3D 4K conversion for all their feature films.
• 4:34
  So basically, I sat there and did all the conversions to DCPs and digital certified packages, our sort of digital cinema packages.
• 4:42
  I've got a certified package. I bet you do. It's analog, though.
• 4:49
  We basically had to see them, basically watch them, make sure there wasn't any sort of digital hits.
• 4:55
  I definitely specialize in more in the subtitle aspect of it.
• 4:59
  So I have to watch the movies in multiple language subtitles, sometimes four times a day.
• 5:07
  Sometimes the same way. Same movie.
• 5:11
  Did you know all the languages?
• 5:13
  No, we just we had a script in that language and we just followed it along.
• 5:18
  Oh, OK. You didn't just like stare at it and kind of go, yeah, that makes sense.
• 5:23
  Yeah, I'd buy that one.
• 5:25
  Like, I don't know. It's got all the right curves.
• 5:29
  After a while, you do recognize, you know, you recognize, you know, wait a minute, this isn't Japanese.
• 5:35
  You know, Cyrillic isn't really Asian.
• 5:40
  So, yeah, you know, you start recognizing the characters and you know when something doesn't seem right or fit.
• 5:47
  What's the worst movie you had to watch multiple times in one day?
• 5:52
  And why was it leaving Las Vegas?
• 5:57
  Probably, I would say either Australia with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.
• 6:06
  Oh, fuck, that's right. Right. Yeah. OK.
• 6:09
  I mean, that was also like critically panned, too.
• 6:11
  It's like one of those things where it's like, yeah, bad movies are bad movies.
• 6:14
  I want to know what your least favorite movie was that you had to watch multiple times that people thought was a good movie.
• 6:20
  We definitely did the anniversary for Titanic and I had to watch that because it was converted to 3D, right?
• 6:29
  And the three subtitles and that movie is long.
• 6:33
  So I had to watch that movie, I think, three times in one day.
• 6:36
  That's kind of suffering.
• 6:38
  That is more than an eight hour a day.
• 6:40
  How do subtitles work in 3D?
• 6:42
  Do they like, do they come at you?
• 6:43
  But like, they can't just stay in the background if shit's in front of it.
• 6:46
  No, they so in the beginning, we had we had to manually adjust them on the screen because they had to be in the right axis.
• 6:54
  Right. And then after a couple of years of subtitling companies,
• 6:59
  they figured out the formula and how to how to make those subtitles land on the right axis on the screen.
• 7:05
  So it's not behind. So when I first started, actually, I talk about bad movies.
• 7:10
  The first movie I had to work on was Green Hornet with Seth Rogen. Oh, nice.
• 7:16
  I had to sit there and manually adjust just about every subtitle that popped up because you had to make sure they were not sitting behind, you know, the picture.
• 7:25
  They had to be in front of the pictures. Yeah.
• 7:27
  But yeah, it was watching movies over and over again.
• 7:31
  What are the what's it called?
• 7:33
  Lone Ranger was another one out of what's the Johnny Depp with fucking the people leader.
• 7:40
  Yeah, I love that both of them are like people like old TV remakes or old like radio play.
• 7:48
  Yeah, movie remakes are just like nightmare stories.
• 7:52
  I had a friend who I think we're going to have on eventually who his first job was working at a video like a local video rental store.
• 7:59
  And they got like eight copies of Halle Berry's Catwoman in and they had to make sure they all worked.
• 8:04
  So his first like week of work was just watching Catwoman.
• 8:08
  Hmm. I'm pretty sure they were fucking with them.
• 8:11
  But that's what he got paid to do for a week. God, that's so bad to just ordering a fucking white Russian hold the everything.
• 8:19
  It's like you just want milk. Yes.
• 8:22
  I love the concept of getting up to change the movie and just swapping out one Catwoman DVD for the next Catwoman DVD.
• 8:31
  It's like, oh, finally, it's over. Let me just put in the next film.
• 8:36
  And she she begged me that movie, too.
• 8:40
  Oh, that's rough.
• 8:44
  I'm surprised they didn't get her Catwoman into the flash. Oh, God, that would have been so bad.
• 8:53
  I mean, it couldn't have hurt that movie. No, fair enough.
• 8:57
  OK, so back to IMAX 3D films.
• 9:02
  Nicholas Cage has done two 3D films in Drive Angry and Ghost Rider 2.
• 9:08
  Did you get to watch either of them? Nope.
• 9:11
  I don't think they made an IMAX version of those. It's a shame.
• 9:15
  They a lot of them weren't made in IMAX version.
• 9:17
  They would just so they would shoot them in 2D and then we get all the reels and convert them digitally to 3D.
• 9:24
  So, oh, OK. Yeah.
• 9:26
  So we would get reel by reel and then we would we would go in and import all the files and they'd start basically sinking.
• 9:36
  It's it's it's double it's double images, right? You have a left eye and a right eye.
• 9:41
  So once we get those those files and don't tell me what kind of eyes I've got to write eyes.
• 9:50
  And then we would start basically compressing them, the files, and then having a left eye and right eye being compressed.
• 9:56
  And that can take overnight.
• 9:59
  So hopefully you compress them correctly.
• 10:01
  The next day, somebody gets those files and starts ingesting them. Otherwise, you fucked up.
• 10:06
  Oh, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, it happened.
• 10:08
  That's that's before I moved to Seattle.
• 10:10
  That's where I bought I bought a clip because it happened with with a Clash of the Titans, the remake, the reboot.
• 10:18
  It was classic times.
• 10:21
  That would have been Malcolm McDowell just bustin.
• 10:25
  Was that the one that like notoriously just had the worst 3D ever?
• 10:29
  Like it just like didn't work.
• 10:32
  Caligula.
• 10:33
  Yeah.
• 10:34
  Just one doesn't translate.
• 10:39
  It's always weirdly inverted.
• 10:42
  Jumps back and forth.
• 10:47
  I mean, there's no there's no good place to put this in.
• 10:51
  So I'm just going to put in a welcome back to cage magical and around about what you're doing.
• 10:55
  Nicholas Cage, my co-host, Nick, I'm Nick and our producer, Peter.
• 11:04
  Hello. What is going on right now?
• 11:06
  Joined by Carlos.
• 11:08
  Did you just get quiet or is that just me?
• 11:10
  We got sadder, I think.
• 11:13
  Yeah. Once we moved on from.
• 11:16
  Yeah. Now we have to actually talk about real shit.
• 11:18
  Fuck.
• 11:20
  So kind of like the
• 11:23
  so Carlos, have you seen leaving Las Vegas before?
• 11:26
  I have. And as a matter of fact, I'll be completely honest.
• 11:30
  I just did a rewatch last week.
• 11:32
  Oh, I knocked it out first thing this morning.
• 11:35
  And that is a weird one to wake up to.
• 11:38
  I'm like, well, I've got some chores, but I'm going to be sad during them.
• 11:46
  Yeah, no, I had seen it when it first came out and 3D and 3D.
• 11:52
  Yeah. He had a left and a right eye.
• 11:55
  Whoa.
• 11:59
  So everything stereoscopic. It was amazing.
• 12:03
  What year did this movie come out again? I think it was 90s, 95 or 96.
• 12:08
  So what did you think about it the first time you ever saw it?
• 12:11
  Because this one completely missed my radar when I was that age, because I was 11.
• 12:16
  Yeah.
• 12:18
  This would be a weird movie to take an 11 year old to.
• 12:20
  My seven year old loved it.
• 12:23
  Yeah, but he's cool.
• 12:25
  Right.
• 12:26
  Yeah. So what was the the post theater reaction to something like that?
• 12:31
  I mean, I like it back then. I thought it was really good.
• 12:35
  I thought Nicolas Cage was awesome in that movie.
• 12:38
  And then, you know, you rewatch it, but almost 20 years later, no, 30 years later.
• 12:43
  Jesus Christ.
• 12:46
  And I'm like, why Elizabeth Shoe? Why? Why can why that casting?
• 12:50
  Yeah, I mean, she kind of embodies empty inside.
• 12:54
  And I guess that works. But I mean,
• 12:58
  you're not wrong, but that's like a that's a brutal statement.
• 13:04
  I watch her act and I just think nothing.
• 13:08
  I kind of forgot how jacked she is in this, though, like she's really fucking fit.
• 13:13
  Oh, sure. I still look at that.
• 13:16
  The cover you did, Peter, of Nick and I.
• 13:21
  And I look at those are I look like the arms and I'm like,
• 13:25
  I wish my arms looked like that's what I'm saying.
• 13:28
  Yeah, those are good arms. Good arms.
• 13:31
  Strong enough to lift a Nick Cage, probably.
• 13:34
  Do a hundred Nick Cage benches.
• 13:36
  You just got to start working out your arms six inches at a time
• 13:40
  for a good 30, 40 minutes a day and you'll have great arms as well.
• 13:44
  There you go. That's a jerk off joke.
• 13:48
  Sorry, that's a hand job joke. Yeah, it's still a job.
• 13:53
  And in today's America, we need all the jobs we can get.
• 13:58
  I got to get my job.
• 14:02
  So, Carlos, you saw it originally.
• 14:05
  I mean, it didn't make like a major impact on you,
• 14:08
  but you did think that it was a good movie.
• 14:11
  What was new for you on rewatching it 30 years later?
• 14:17
  Why Elizabeth Shoe?
• 14:20
  OK, fair.
• 14:23
  No, definitely a little bit over the top at times.
• 14:30
  The whole Russian mob thing.
• 14:33
  I was like, what what what is this all about?
• 14:37
  That is a kind of weird thing to just have in there. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
• 14:42
  I was amazed at how many faces I'm like, oh, he's in this movie.
• 14:45
  Oh, he's in this movie.
• 14:47
  Did you see French Stewart? Oh, yeah.
• 14:49
  Like when Dedric Bader shows up in the beginning, Danny Houston,
• 14:52
  there's just like a lot of fucking faces. Yeah.
• 14:55
  Wait, you mean French Stewart, right?
• 14:57
  French Stewart. Yeah.
• 14:59
  Dedric Bader is not in this movie. No, no.
• 15:02
  The other one, they're the same.
• 15:05
  One has eyes open. One has eyes squinty.
• 15:08
  One was on the Alien show. One was on the Drew Carey show.
• 15:11
  It's fine. One still has a career.
• 15:14
  Yeah.
• 15:16
  Also, I think Dedric Bader is going to be in the Hallmark
• 15:18
  original Chiefs related football Christmas special as well.
• 15:22
  So obviously nailing it.
• 15:27
  OK, so he's made some some choices in life and now he needs money.
• 15:31
  I see what it is. Don't we all? Yeah.
• 15:34
  But you're right.
• 15:35
  Like Laurie Metcalf is the landlady at the fucking hotel.
• 15:39
  You know, like that's these are all great castings for that time period, too.
• 15:43
  Richard Lewis went before. Oh, yeah. Richard Lewis. Right.
• 15:47
  You're like, holy shit, he looks alive.
• 15:52
  The guy from Wings, right? He's in there. Yeah.
• 15:55
  Steven Weber. Yeah. Hmm.
• 15:57
  Which one's a Steven Weber? I've never seen Wings.
• 16:00
  He was also in the remake of The Shining, the made for TV remake.
• 16:05
  You're not helping Nick.
• 16:07
  I haven't finished watching the original Shining.
• 16:10
  What? It's long. Watch it in 3D to check the subtitles.
• 16:15
  That might be what I need to do.
• 16:18
  Steven Weber. He was one of the guys that was with.
• 16:22
  He was a guy with having dinner with Richard Lewis.
• 16:25
  Lewis was an agent and Steven Weber was, I guess, a new client.
• 16:29
  And they're getting up those checks of dinner.
• 16:32
  Yeah, I know. I mean, there's a lot of things that I saw.
• 16:35
  And I'm like, wow, I don't know if this really holds up nowadays.
• 16:38
  I still think Nicolas Cage is awesome in it.
• 16:41
  Yeah, his performance is, I mean, understandably incredible.
• 16:45
  Well, yeah, he won the Oscar for it.
• 16:48
  I know Nicolas Cage, just the way he delivers his freaking just any character.
• 16:56
  You know, he's gung ho, man. I don't know. I know he gets a lot of shit,
• 16:59
  but I think he's fucking great whenever he gets the right, the right role.
• 17:03
  Even the wrong role, to be honest.
• 17:05
  You know, he deserved that Oscar for that role.
• 17:08
  Well, I was thinking about that this week with his like just there is the
• 17:13
  if you're not an aficionado of Nick Cage, you have there is the oh, Nick Cage is a bad actor.
• 17:18
  He's just a guy who makes like and loud noises.
• 17:22
  Do that one again, please. Look at a role like this or you look at the other movie we watched, Joe.
• 17:28
  It's just like there's so much depth to what he can do.
• 17:32
  And then you get a character like this in Leaving Las Vegas,
• 17:35
  where it's such a good and subtle performance at times that really does allow for him to just like scream and throw tables.
• 17:42
  And it's kind of the best of like everything he has.
• 17:46
  Yeah, no, I think I think he approaches everything, you know, fearlessly.
• 17:51
  I mean, I think he's just like, I'm going to do it.
• 17:53
  I'm going to do it. You know, and that's that's, you know, coming from an acting background.
• 17:58
  That's the guy that can do.
• 18:00
  I think, you know, there's been other performances where I've watched him and I'm just like, where where do you come up with that shit?
• 18:07
  Even just little like roles like in kick ass.
• 18:11
  I fucking love them as a dad and kick ass. Big daddy.
• 18:14
  Yeah. Yeah. A little subtly easy.
• 18:16
  But yeah, this movie was was definitely, definitely different from previously what he had done.
• 18:22
  So seeing all this when I first saw it definitely blew me away.
• 18:26
  And watching him again, I'm like, yeah, he deserves it for that role.
• 18:29
  There were two things that really stood out to me. And we've talked about it before in the past.
• 18:32
  But like his ability to play drunk in a scene is second to none.
• 18:37
  I mean, like Colin Farrell spent most of his early acting career being fucking blasted, drunk and acting.
• 18:44
  That's because he's Irish, though. Right.
• 18:46
  And then he got sober and he still is a great actor and cage.
• 18:50
  You know, in this case, he like did all this deep fucking dive work on getting super drunk.
• 18:56
  And like what he was able to do is actually turn that into something that is real and feels accurate.
• 19:02
  And the second thing that I was going to say is that this this really does kind of blow me away every time is that like you shouldn't like him.
• 19:11
  Like he is a guy who fine, your wife left you because you are a drunk and you lost your job because you are a drunk.
• 19:18
  And you decided to kill yourself because you are a drunk and you're still kind of like rooting for him.
• 19:24
  And that that's a testament to I mean, some of it is script, but, you know, some of it or most of it is him.
• 19:30
  You know, he fucking just crushes it as this character that you have sympathy for and empathy for for whatever reason,
• 19:36
  even though he's like not a good dude, necessarily.
• 19:41
  He's not necessarily a bad dude. No, no, not a bad dude.
• 19:44
  Just like a lost fucking soul.
• 19:48
  You know, like and he's kind of a shit bag to her.
• 19:51
  You know, he doesn't have to try and fuck that prostitute.
• 19:54
  Sorry, sex worker.
• 19:56
  He chooses to do that in one of his drunk fugue states.
• 20:00
  And that like is what fractures his relationship with her.
• 20:03
  That's a shitty thing to do.
• 20:06
  But he still has all these other things about him that seem to redeem him.
• 20:11
  It's an interesting role for sure.
• 20:13
  No, no. And, you know, and you get that in the beginning when he's being let go from from the agency,
• 20:20
  when he's like, you know, this is too generous and like we like having you around, which goes to show that he was he was a like well, like guy.
• 20:28
  You know, it's some rock bottom depression.
• 20:32
  And the thing is, we know, I mean, did his wife leave him because he was a drunkard?
• 20:35
  Has it ever, you know, discussed that she left him?
• 20:38
  Right. He even poses the question like twice of like, am I drinking because she left me or did she leave me because I was drinking?
• 20:46
  Like, so it's always kind of open and I never I've not finished the book.
• 20:53
  Clearly, I got 20 pages into a scene that was like way too heavy.
• 20:56
  And I was like, I'll come back to this. This isn't a lunch break story.
• 21:01
  And closed forever out the window.
• 21:04
  I know sitting next to my computer at home.
• 21:06
  I know we've talked about his performance of this and how he like studied his own mannerisms when he was drunk, which is why I think it is so naturalistic.
• 21:14
  It's one thing to like act like, oh, this is how a drunk person acts.
• 21:17
  It's another thing to videotape yourself blacking out so you know how you act when you're drunk.
• 21:23
  It's like a dancer, right?
• 21:25
  You you dance in front of a mirror to see if you're hitting that move, hitting that, you know, that point.
• 21:31
  So same thing with acting. You know, you you definitely want to, you know, get in front of a mirror, see yourself, see if it's if it's being delivered, you know, believable, believable.
• 21:40
  You know, there's a lot of stuff that he's done in the past that impressed me so much.
• 21:44
  And as far as his ability to act and sometimes people just look at him like this crappy actor who's not that great, you know, just is a one note actor.
• 21:54
  But I disagree. I think he's he's has so many levels to him in that vein.
• 21:59
  I think it's kind of like unfortunate that he gets so maligned as like a bad actor because he's in movies like this.
• 22:06
  But then, like, if you say Christopher Lee, everybody's like, oh, yeah, Christopher Lee, he's a great actor.
• 22:11
  Well, fucking Christopher Lee is in season of The Witch.
• 22:14
  That was a weird, sad one.
• 22:16
  Like, like he's a working actor also. He's just in garbage movies all the time.
• 22:22
  Well, and again, I don't think we have that.
• 22:24
  We don't really have that concept of a working actor in this country.
• 22:28
  Like Hollywood has made it like, you know, you have to be a star.
• 22:32
  There's no credit given to just outside of TV, just people who are just do the who just do the job.
• 22:39
  Right. And that's the thing.
• 22:42
  It's like I've heard more people say, I don't want to be an assar.
• 22:45
  I just want to be an assar, working actor.
• 22:47
  I just want to work for my craft, get paid for my craft.
• 22:50
  Well, sure, you got to say that for a little while because you're not a star.
• 22:53
  Like you don't want to look like an egotistical asshole.
• 22:56
  You're just like, no, I'm in it because I love doing it.
• 22:59
  It's like, no, motherfucker, you want to get paid to I want to get paid.
• 23:02
  Absolutely. You want to get paid, you know, trying to get that big podcast money.
• 23:07
  Yeah. I'm next to Rogan. Watch out.
• 23:10
  I can't wait to sell out. I'm going to.
• 23:13
  People are going to be talking to us in a make or break presidential situation in 28.
• 23:19
  Trust me on that. You can take that to the bank. Russell Brand, 2028.
• 23:24
  We're calling it now. Let's go.
• 23:27
  Let's elect an English person.
• 23:29
  Fuck the rules.
• 23:31
  I heard rules don't matter anymore. There are no more rules.
• 23:35
  Who cares? Whatever.
• 23:38
  OK, so we agree.
• 23:41
  Nicolas Cage is a pretty good actor. Agreed. He did it this time.
• 23:44
  He did. He kind of nails it. Yeah.
• 23:46
  Yeah. I'm finally sold on it now.
• 23:48
  It only took us three years, but we got there, guys.
• 23:51
  Yes.
• 23:54
  But what do you think of the movie in general?
• 23:57
  The movie in general? Yeah. Direction, cinematography, anything, music, music.
• 24:03
  Oh, yeah. Mostly music. Let's get that out of the way real quick.
• 24:06
  Yeah. Both Sting songs sucked.
• 24:09
  They shit. It's definitely dated, man.
• 24:12
  Oh, my God. It's so hard.
• 24:15
  Like as soon as the music came back on and Josie was like, OK, I got to go.
• 24:19
  It's like, fuck, I wish I could leave.
• 24:22
  It's like Mike Figg is playing sax is not the fucking vibe that I need for this movie.
• 24:28
  OK, what's worse as a repeated song in a soundtrack, this Sting song or the Black Eyed Peas in G-Force?
• 24:35
  G-Force Boom Boom Pow. Oh, God. I don't know.
• 24:38
  I think I'd rather have Boom Boom Pow.
• 24:40
  If they had slipped one Boom Boom Pow into this, I would have been OK.
• 24:43
  Like the jazz precursor to Boom Boom Pow.
• 24:46
  Yeah, that's it.
• 24:51
  It was just so overdone.
• 24:54
  It was like, all right.
• 24:57
  Like I said, it was definitely dated for the time, you know, watching it now.
• 25:01
  I'm just like, Jesus Christ, it's almost as bad as an 80s movie with the freaking music video montages.
• 25:08
  I can't say the back then. Yeah, they did a good job of depressing us early.
• 25:13
  So that way we were ready to be depressed later.
• 25:17
  True, true.
• 25:20
  The the ending also, I don't know.
• 25:22
  Oh, like ghost hand job or her last words.
• 25:29
  I love them like, Jesus Christ.
• 25:33
  Like, all right.
• 25:35
  Yeah, I mean, their relationship is a tough one for me to swallow.
• 25:38
  Like I can get into it tough one.
• 25:40
  It hurt to swallow. All right.
• 25:42
  I stepped in that one. I'm sorry, everybody.
• 25:47
  It's like I get that she's you know, she's had trauma in her life and all these things.
• 25:51
  And he's sort of this doting doofus.
• 25:54
  But like, I just don't understand why she is so smitten with him so fast.
• 25:58
  Like I get why he is with her. She's sort of this angelic creature that is taking care of him and interested in him, even though he's in this like suicide spiral.
• 26:10
  But like, why the fuck does she give a shit about him? I just I don't I don't get it.
• 26:15
  Yeah, it's certainly not because he is uninterested in sex, but interested in her the person.
• 26:22
  It's like, no, I mean, like he's just incapable of sex and he talks about it enough.
• 26:28
  Clearly, he's not looking past her profession.
• 26:33
  What if he was actually really good at fucking?
• 26:36
  He did tell the girl in the bar that he was.
• 26:39
  And drunk people never lie.
• 26:41
  I fucking love that scene, too.
• 26:43
  That scene is so good. I'm very good at sex.
• 26:46
  Trust me, it's going to be good. I promise I'm very good at sex.
• 26:52
  That's how I got married. I just wanted to talk to you because you're so good looking.
• 26:58
  I love growling my compliments at a drink and hoping some lady hears it and just gets juiced up.
• 27:07
  I was dating, Sean.
• 27:09
  I don't like the term juiced up in this.
• 27:14
  You've podcasted with Nick for fucking years.
• 27:17
  You know this was coming.
• 27:19
  Speed dating's fun. It's a it's a great way to try out material, especially on like record day.
• 27:23
  I'm like, OK, go like try out the worst stuff and I can see what gets a laugh.
• 27:28
  Well, next time you can try out juiced up.
• 27:31
  Good work. Hey, girl, I'm just here.
• 27:33
  I got a one minute to get you juiced up.
• 27:37
  Let me hit you with some of these bangers.
• 27:41
  God.
• 27:43
  But Carlos, you actually do have a good perspective as somebody who has watched a lot of films.
• 27:48
  What do you think about the overall direction of this movie in general?
• 27:52
  Because my biggest concern or biggest challenge with this one is like, I think the performance fucking rules.
• 27:58
  I think the movie kind of sucks.
• 28:00
  I can I can I can understand that.
• 28:03
  And it's funny because I forgot it was Mike Vegas.
• 28:05
  But then I'm like, what else can you fucking do?
• 28:07
  And what's his production company again?
• 28:09
  It's like Red Mullet or Magic Mullet.
• 28:11
  Yeah, Red Mullet. Right. Yeah.
• 28:13
  Yeah, it was it was I I didn't think it was that great as far as the direction goes.
• 28:19
  You know, I think I'll say that like with the direction, there was one thing that this rewatch I found they do a pretty decent job.
• 28:29
  Like, I mean, the story has been rearranged a bit for, you know, good narrative reason.
• 28:35
  But they do a pretty decent job of like easing you into how shitty of a time you're about to have.
• 28:41
  Like they start you out with like, oh, let's like he's drunk.
• 28:46
  Let's have a laugh at the drunk guy.
• 28:48
  And the laughs get a little smaller and smaller until like you're just not having a good time anymore.
• 28:55
  That's a hard one. Like, why do why do people like this movie when it's like, I'm going to ease you into being just upset for like.
• 29:03
  And you're upset for over an hour by the time the last stop.
• 29:07
  It's like, no, we're solidly into just like this is bad.
• 29:11
  They can't all be Schindler's List. OK. Hey, man. Stop it.
• 29:16
  I can't even mention that movie without getting me. Come on. Come on.
• 29:21
  I have a serious talk about sad stuff. Coming here is Schindler's List.
• 29:25
  We watch Reckon for a Dream. That's exactly what I was thinking, too.
• 29:29
  That's funny, because as Nick was talking about that, I was like Requiem for a Dream.
• 29:33
  It's like that movie is beautiful and so well done, but it's like, oh, right.
• 29:37
  Suffering. So the day we leave for our guys weekend this Friday,
• 29:44
  SIF is doing what they're calling their Unstreamable series.
• 29:48
  It's just movies that can't be seen or shouldn't be seen elsewhere.
• 29:52
  And they're kicking it off with gummo. Oh, my God.
• 29:56
  And I'm like, oh, man, do I do I want to be late to guys weekend so I can see gummo in theaters?
• 30:03
  I mean, you probably should. So when I there was a period of time where I was doing the faux
• 30:07
  hawk and the first time I did it, I was like feeling kind of good. I was like, I'm glad I did this.
• 30:11
  And I walked into the lion and Pete was there and he just goes, what's up, gummo?
• 30:15
  I was like, fuck you, Pete.
• 30:19
  Carlos, did you have like a favorite scene or anything from this movie?
• 30:23
  The the motel scene, they she crashes onto the table and she seems so apologetic and genuine.
• 30:31
  And the motel manager comes up with like, yeah, you can get the fuck out now.
• 30:36
  We know a lot of fuck ups who come through here. Yeah.
• 30:40
  Hmm. It was it was just so demoralizing more so than any other scene for me, because I'm like,
• 30:45
  oh, she's trying to be human for once. And this lady's like, no, no.
• 30:50
  Yeah, I know who you are. You can leave now. Get the fuck out.
• 30:53
  And that goes back to like you were saying earlier, you know, why why was she so, you know, in love,
• 31:00
  quote unquote, with this guy? But I just didn't buy as as good as decent performance that she had.
• 31:06
  I just didn't buy the grittiness in her as far as a hooker.
• 31:10
  I think I think the casting choice was not the best, to be honest.
• 31:14
  I could have been somebody different that I would definitely believed that sort of personality
• 31:19
  and those choices more so than with her. All right. Top three, Sarah choices.
• 31:24
  What do you got? I probably I probably would have gone with Juliet Lewis.
• 31:30
  Good choice. OK. Probably back then.
• 31:34
  I see 96. Who was who was back then?
• 31:37
  Helen Hunt was in a lot. It was in everything back then.
• 31:40
  We just saw Twister last night. That's funny.
• 31:46
  Pretty much like the same thing.
• 31:49
  Oh, I was going to say a Bernhardt would be interesting, but like not hot enough for that.
• 31:56
  Yeah, Bernhardt. No, I think at that point, maybe her age would have been appropriate
• 32:02
  because she was awesome. And, you know, King of Comedy playing sort of the same role,
• 32:06
  which is one of my favorite comedies.
• 32:08
  We got to be a pretty interesting choice. I'd probably throw Christopher Lee in there.
• 32:12
  Christopher Lee, he definitely could have done it. He would have taken the role. He needs to work.
• 32:16
  Working actors, man, you know, Christopher Lee needs another summer house or whatever the fuck.
• 32:22
  Actually, you know, just put enough makeup on him.
• 32:24
  He would pull off that like mid 90s Vegas hooker look.
• 32:29
  I think you just give him the whole syphilitic thing, you know. Oh, yeah.
• 32:33
  Oh, just straight up like he's got the plague. Yeah, why not? That's fair.
• 32:37
  You're looking for a good time.
• 32:41
  I can't wait until another hooker knocks on my window and I mistake it for somebody just trying to hang out.
• 32:48
  That's that's a life goal.
• 32:51
  Yeah. What's going on tonight?
• 32:53
  It's like, well, I got to go home. I just got off work. But if there's parties, I need to know.
• 32:59
  Yeah, man. What's popping? I'm an idiot.
• 33:03
  So this is more a question for our side of things.
• 33:06
  Was there something that you guys really felt was new and fresh this time?
• 33:10
  I mean, this is our third official watching of this movie.
• 33:13
  Mm hmm. Uh, I mean, I think my decline into dread was a little more fresh this time.
• 33:21
  It does kick off like kind of jovial enough.
• 33:26
  Like he doesn't he whistle in that supermarket? I don't know.
• 33:30
  I was whistling. But yeah, then it's like, oh, my God, oh, my God.
• 33:34
  And then like something would happen in the movie.
• 33:36
  I'm like, oh, my God, we haven't even gotten to like the gang rape scene.
• 33:40
  Oh, I forgot about that scene. I totally forgot about that scene.
• 33:44
  That is in the first 30 pages of the book. Really?
• 33:49
  I mean, the book is fairly short, but yeah, it's only like 150 pages.
• 33:53
  But it's still like that. That happens fast. Yeah.
• 33:56
  That's where I set it down because I was like, well, this is my lunch break. So I don't like this.
• 34:02
  Yeah, I mean, we're starting to get closer and closer to rewatches now.
• 34:06
  And it's one of those things where it being as fresh as it is, like Nick said, it's kind of.
• 34:12
  I think the dread is just starts at an earlier place because I'm so aware of what's happening.
• 34:20
  I think I focus a lot more on the individual performances for this one more than I do like the actual story,
• 34:29
  because as we've said, it is it is rough.
• 34:32
  This is not like something that is necessarily fun to watch and fun to rewatch.
• 34:38
  Yeah. You know, I noticed that it's a lot harder to drink along with him at seven in the morning.
• 34:43
  Yeah, that's true. So I try to strive for authenticity.
• 34:47
  My only takeaway is that the other times I've watched this, I've been like so checked out for the beginning.
• 34:53
  Twelve minutes or whatever it is before the actual title card shows up where it's like it doesn't feel like it matters all that much.
• 34:58
  I mean, it's this fuck up guy, you know, but this time I watched it again.
• 35:02
  I was like, these really do set the stage for why I care about that guy a little bit more.
• 35:07
  Those are the last moments where you get to like absorb whatever history and life he has.
• 35:14
  Right. It mattered more to me this time seeing those.
• 35:19
  It's the only time you get to like see photos of his wife and child. Right.
• 35:24
  Carlos, had you watched the movie Joe that this one's going up against or have you watched?
• 35:30
  I have not. There's an R&B artist named Joe who's going to be playing up in the Seattle casino areas.
• 35:38
  Recent like soon. What a fucking power play to just claim Joe.
• 35:42
  Yeah. All the commercials have been like something, something, something and Joe.
• 35:47
  And it's like, Joe. Yeah, I was I was driving back from Tacoma where my wife's parents live.
• 35:53
  And it was just a big sign that said Joe and I was like, fuck Joe.
• 35:57
  Is that is that is that fat Joe's new name now because he's not that anymore.
• 36:01
  No, Fat Joe still I think Fat Joe or maybe he's like reformed Joe.
• 36:07
  Well, this guy was an average Joe.
• 36:12
  What would be your like push for this movie?
• 36:16
  Like, why do you think that this movie belongs in the upper echelon of cage movies?
• 36:20
  You know, it sounds like you've got a good experience with cage movies in general, good experience with movies in general.
• 36:25
  What why do you think that people should give a shit about leaving Las Vegas and watch this movie?
• 36:30
  I think it's one of his top performances.
• 36:34
  I think, you know, top, top three next to adaptation, which I thought he was freaking awesome adaptation.
• 36:42
  One of my favorite movies in which role.
• 36:46
  Yeah, which coffin, which coffin did you prefer? Which one really sold it for you?
• 36:51
  And why Donald and why Donald? Exactly.
• 36:55
  You guys, you guys knew that about Tim Burton and Superman with Nicholas Cage.
• 37:00
  I wish that would have come into fruition. That would have been awesome to see.
• 37:03
  It would have been incredible. I'm a little less thrilled about the long hair from the like production stills or like the costume stills we saw.
• 37:14
  It's prime Superman mullet era, though Superman had her hair in the comics.
• 37:19
  Yeah, it just like I've seen better mullets.
• 37:23
  Yeah. Listening to Tim Burton talk about why he cast Nick Cage, his reasoning was, well, Nick Cage is a fucking alien.
• 37:29
  So you get him to play an alien. Right.
• 37:32
  It would have been awesome to see. I guess to see what you're going to do with it.
• 37:35
  Oh, I would. You know, I don't often argue for reboots or remake some movies, but I would do a Nicholas Cage led K Pax.
• 37:46
  I think I could get into that K Pax. I forgot about that.
• 37:49
  I would watch him like just bite into a banana sideways or.
• 37:53
  Well, we can't watch. We can't watch the original K Pax anymore, so we might as well remake it.
• 37:58
  On the blank check podcast, they were talking about how there should have been a recasting.
• 38:02
  So John Travolta was in a movie called Michael, who plays like a fallen angel who like sucks and fucks and smokes and drinks and all that kind of stuff.
• 38:12
  I know the life. Yeah.
• 38:13
  And they were thinking like what they really should have done is cast him in City of Angels and let Nick Cage play Michael and Michael.
• 38:20
  And it would have been both better for both actors and their careers.
• 38:23
  And I can totally see that it would have been better for me because then I would have had to watch City of Angels, which did have Nick Offerman.
• 38:30
  And that's pretty cool. It did have Nick Offerman and Meg Ryan.
• 38:33
  Meg Ryan was that who was Ryan Ryan Ryan got hit by a fucking logging truck.
• 38:39
  Pancakes by a logging truck. That movie sucks.
• 38:44
  It's so bad. No, yeah, no, I think his performance is probably the main reason to watch it.
• 38:50
  I think, you know, back then it was a breakthrough for him back then, even though I thought, you know, you know, I got to raise in Arizona already.
• 38:57
  He Moonstruck for me is one of my favorite roles that he's done.
• 39:03
  You know, Peggy Sue got married. Freaking love him in that movie.
• 39:09
  And I wasn't a fan back then until I saw him in that movie.
• 39:12
  And I was like, OK, this guy's fucking hilarious. He's great. Oh, Peggy Sue. Peggy Sue turned you. Yes.
• 39:18
  Peggy Sue turned me. Wow. Yeah.
• 39:22
  Peggy. Yeah, that's awesome.
• 39:33
  That's a good one to to make you a Nicolas Cage fan. I like that.
• 39:38
  Absolutely. But yeah, I mean, that's that's my top, you know, reason why you should watch it.
• 39:43
  We love Las Vegas. I mean, I'm sure it's fucking depressing, but it is an incredible performance.
• 39:50
  Yes. And for somebody who's known for his performances to provide something that is just so like just raw and clean.
• 40:01
  Right. If you can you be raw and clean? I mean, isn't that what exfoliating is for?
• 40:07
  There you go. Yeah. Skin's freshest layer. Yeah. I just hit it with that pumice stone.
• 40:12
  That's about to say a loofah. Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:19
  Still a great performance, still just one of his top performances and just one of Hollywood's just best performances, in my opinion.
• 40:28
  Yeah, I'm really so satisfied to be sad. Right.
• 40:34
  Yeah, no, agreed. I think one of the best performances he's had in his career, you know, that led him to be able to buy in a castle.
• 40:42
  So there you go. Things went well and then didn't.
• 40:49
  Things went well, but not that well, not castle well.
• 40:54
  Yeah, you were you were a superman or action comics one castle and Tyrannosaurus Rex skull successful for a little bit.
• 41:02
  Oh, not long to King Cobras and two King Cobras.
• 41:05
  Now he doesn't have one King Cobra. He only has one raven. To be fair, even after he bought them, he was often only in possession of one King Cobra.
• 41:15
  Fair enough. That's like you're talking about the beer, the molten liquor.
• 41:19
  Now he bought some Cobras and they kept getting out. So his neighbors complained because they were just loose Cobras.
• 41:26
  Stop having open air vents, man.
• 41:31
  Well, Carlos, thank you a lot for coming on. I know I know scheduling with me is just the worst, but now we can get back to not texting each other the way friendships are meant to be.
• 41:43
  Perfect. Absolutely. The best friendship to have.
• 41:48
  All right, guys, it was a pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.
• 41:53
  So Nick Horn quack, officially first time on the podcast.
• 41:58
  Yes, last year, I mean, probably.
• 42:03
  Let's just start off with facts. Yeah, I wanted to impress you to think.
• 42:09
  Well, I mean, how long did it take you to actually listen to us? Actually, let's go back to the beginning. All right.
• 42:14
  Let's tell me about the original listening experience to cage match, because obviously we were in our darker days being our starting times.
• 42:22
  But yeah, short version is I first listened to your second episode, I think was adaptation.
• 42:29
  And I forgot the other one.
• 42:31
  Army of one army of one. Remember that name? Yes. OK.
• 42:35
  And I was so upset over how you treated adaptation that I vowed never to listen again and to find better friends.
• 42:45
  Neither of those things happen. And then you proceeded to do nothing but go to the same bar.
• 42:52
  Yeah, yeah, that'll happen.
• 42:54
  And it turns out meeting people is hard when you do the same thing every day.
• 42:58
  And so I just eventually just do what I do. Skip town.
• 43:03
  Now, thinking about it, actually, I was pretty sure you learned that from Hornback.
• 43:08
  It is true. I have done this move before. Just closer.
• 43:13
  But but yeah, anyways, yes.
• 43:15
  So I first listened to the adaptation episode and army of one one and and and then I was very upset.
• 43:25
  It's kind of the short version. And but no, recently I've listened quite a bit more and enjoyed it.
• 43:32
  And I was like, oh, I should probably hang out with you guys.
• 43:36
  So I'm glad that this podcast is what made you feel like you wanted to hang out with us.
• 43:41
  Yeah, that's the worst reason to decide to be our friend.
• 43:45
  Not the five years of friendship, but just listening to us talk in a room without you.
• 43:51
  Yeah, about dumb nonsense. It made me miss you guys.
• 43:55
  So all right. Yeah.
• 43:58
  And then you got the joy of coming on for arguably the most depressing head to head that we've had so far.
• 44:04
  Oh, no, I'm excited about this, actually. I truly am.
• 44:07
  I've always kind of loved just depression moods in general.
• 44:12
  I knew sadness would be the hook. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
• 44:15
  And both these are obviously really sad movies.
• 44:18
  As I was walking over here, it was a really dreary November day.
• 44:22
  And it really just set the mood right for both these films.
• 44:26
  And ultimately, I do strongly believe that Joe is a much more depressing movie than leaving Las Vegas.
• 44:32
  And so for that reason, I thoroughly enjoyed both.
• 44:37
  But Joe is by far better. Wow. Getting right into it. All right.
• 44:41
  That's nice and strong. I will I will agree that Joe definitely comes out arguing to be a stronger, sad film
• 44:52
  because you are told from the beginning that Nicolas Cage is going to kill himself through drinking and leaving Las Vegas from the beginning.
• 45:02
  Like you just know. So if you're upset at the end that he does exactly what they tell you he's going to do, it's like, well, you need to change your expectations.
• 45:12
  It was on the 10. Stop trying to fix people. Right.
• 45:17
  Yeah. But, you know, also, Joe is very depressing from the beginning as well.
• 45:22
  And, you know, it's like, you know, this is not going to be uplifting, especially with how many times they have happy uplifting scenes.
• 45:30
  You just know, oh, man, this is all this isn't going to work out.
• 45:34
  I mean, there's a couple, but ultimately, just about every scene I do find is just soul crushing and sad in that movie and in the movie, Joe.
• 45:45
  And whereas I would say leaving Las Vegas is a, you know, it's a sad subject matter, but it plays to me like some kind of Hollywood romance where you have like, will they or won't they, you know, is she going to save him?
• 45:59
  And, you know, it felt like, you know, just this Hollywood movie is depressing. It's it's it's really depressing.
• 46:06
  But at the same time, Joe plays like it's just a slice of life in the world's most depressing town in the universe.
• 46:15
  Man, that is so accurate. Like we've talked about it in the past, too, but like the biggest drama for the most part of this.
• 46:21
  And one of the central dramas of this movie for the most part is this assumed issue between the fucking guy who went through the windshield at 4am.
• 46:32
  He doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't give a fuck. No, not at all.
• 46:36
  And it's like he got slighted because he got slapped in front of ladies and gentlemen.
• 46:40
  And it's like, bro, this is your issue. Like, get the fuck over it.
• 46:45
  I like, of course, he's part of the downfall of Joe. You know, it's like, that sucks. But that fucking that fucking guy.
• 46:53
  But I think that that when you look at it, Joe is equally easily slighted by the dumbest fucking shit and, you know, the drunker he gets, the more he just wants to react and cause problems.
• 47:06
  To me, Willie is just about as bad as Joe is in this movie.
• 47:11
  As far as like role models, I read the book for this thing, by the way, and it gets into some some more background to this.
• 47:19
  But Joe is not a good person. I mean, he's good to some people in the film, but he's a very bad person.
• 47:29
  Not not a role model, of course, better than Wade or G dog, as I like to call him, as we all like to call him.
• 47:37
  Yeah. Yeah. Which that was, man, what a good casting choice on that. I still can't believe that.
• 47:43
  That they not only did the casting on that, but then stuck with it through like clearly dealing with a very severe alcoholic.
• 47:52
  Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was very true to him.
• 47:57
  You know, the thing is, and right at the beginning of the movie, you find out that this guy is just an absolute piece of shit.
• 48:04
  And I just love that opening scene where, you know, Gary is calling him out on it, this nice exposition. And then you never find out, by the way, what they want to beat him up for.
• 48:15
  But it's something and it's probably because he's a real piece of shit.
• 48:19
  And there's a there's a lot of filler scenes in the book where he's, you know, later on, you find out he's he like beats a homeless man to death.
• 48:27
  And in this like book scene, he's like he robs him, takes his like money and food stamps and stuff, goes to the store and doesn't even spend the money just shoplifts from the store to get like more booze.
• 48:41
  Can't use food stamps on booze. Yeah. Well, actually, maybe that was it. Yeah. I'm sure at this grocery store you could like that. That's not a well run.
• 48:49
  It is. That's true. That's a good point. They probably were like, these are bananas.
• 48:55
  But yeah, you know, so when you're looking at all of the scenes in this movie and all the characters in it, there's very few redeemable characters as far as, you know, not being pieces of shit.
• 49:07
  There's obviously the Dorothy was. Well, that's hard to be angry at her.
• 49:13
  Yeah. Is her character different in the book? They don't flesh her out much.
• 49:18
  She's not. She's basically not a character. I mean, she's silent and, you know, just meant to be sad. There is another daughter in the book, though, Faye.
• 49:27
  And she's about 17 or 18 and actually gets her act together and just leaves.
• 49:32
  And, you know, that's one of the things like I there's the mother in the story. And you always got to wonder, why is she sticking with this piece of shit?
• 49:42
  Like she is making her children miserable because she's sticking with him. And so for that reason, I think she's also a bad person. Yeah.
• 49:51
  My take on it is looking down like two dead end roads. It's like, well, yeah, do I leave and be nothing or stay with this guy and be nothing?
• 50:00
  I mean, definitely from the movie performance, I definitely, you know, there's a sense of meth there.
• 50:06
  Oh, yeah, she certainly has some kind of like substance issue in the film. Yeah. But who doesn't? Yeah.
• 50:13
  And Gary, well, and he gets drunk. He does. Yeah.
• 50:17
  That was such a fucking good scene. He drinks many beers. I think it's the yeah, it's the abridged version of it.
• 50:24
  First beer and and, you know, obviously just hanging out with Joe as Joe gets drunker and drunker and drunker.
• 50:32
  And then like, so, you know, they just have their shenanigans together and go and looking for that dog.
• 50:39
  And after a while, they're not even looking for the dog anymore. They're just like buddy.
• 50:43
  Yeah. I would argue that they were looking for the dog initially.
• 50:48
  Joe really loves dog, though. But he hates he hates the dog at the whorehouse and does not see any irony in that whatsoever.
• 50:57
  So like his dog, I love dogs, just not that dog that dogs in a hole. Yeah.
• 51:02
  And his dog isn't in a hole. Come on.
• 51:05
  Like, yeah. What were your first beers? Oh, man. I had a Paps Blue Ribbon.
• 51:11
  It was my buddy's uncle. I actually went to that guy's funeral.
• 51:16
  I think mine was also PBR. Oh, yeah. You guys drink good stuff.
• 51:20
  I remember being at the grocery store with a person with a fake ID and we got Milwaukee's best because of the beast.
• 51:28
  We thought it was the good. The best. I mean, it's the best for Milwaukee. Yeah.
• 51:33
  And I remember we were just having pizzas and beers and, you know, we crack open the pizzas and I'm like, oh, this is awesome.
• 51:42
  But why do you get to ruin it with beer? Can we just get some Mountain Dew?
• 51:45
  Which one did you have to chew more? Oh, man. Yeah. Bad times. Bad times.
• 51:54
  We're going to put an actual timer on you. Oh, two minute summary. OK. Of Joe. Do you want to get a timer? Sure.
• 52:01
  I'll do the timer. Yeah. Oh, OK. All right. Now. Oh, crap. Oh, crap.
• 52:05
  OK. So you start off, you meet Wade and Gary and family and you just you get to see that they got issues.
• 52:15
  Then we see Joe and he's hanging out with his tree destroying crew because fuck biodiversity and groundwater.
• 52:25
  I mean, who needs any of that? So so then, you know, Gary's looking for work because he's a broadcast teenager and wants to get the hell out of there.
• 52:35
  Ends up hanging out with Joe a bit. You know, Joe doesn't really care one way or the other.
• 52:41
  But all of a sudden sees that Gary's doing good work and, you know, pays him for the day.
• 52:47
  And he's, you know, Gary's like, hell, yeah, I got some money. And so, you know, then he goes home and, you know, dad beats him, takes his money.
• 52:55
  And then Gary's all like, well, you know, maybe you can work, too.
• 52:58
  And so goes back and we find out that Wade is an absolute piece of shit.
• 53:03
  OK, I'll have to go faster. And then and then through then Joe and Gary start to develop a friendship,
• 53:12
  mainly because Gary's a hard worker and Joe just needs, you know, needs hard work done.
• 53:19
  Then Joe's, you know, doing shit, feel sorry for Gary, you know, tries to give him a better life,
• 53:27
  fails mostly, but, you know, helps him out a little bit, gets him a new truck.
• 53:32
  Dad steals the truck. Bad things happen with Willie and, you know, then everybody's sad at the end and mostly dad.
• 53:44
  OK, how was that? I mean, you got 15 seconds if there's anything you need to put a cap on it.
• 53:49
  Oh, man. Yeah, probably.
• 53:53
  Five, four, three, two, one.
• 53:56
  Willie goes through windshield and doesn't give a fuck.
• 53:59
  Nailed it. Yeah. Stuck the landing.
• 54:02
  Any notes? No, that was pretty much it. Nailed it.
• 54:06
  Good job, Nick. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
• 54:08
  I love when bad things happen with Willie and nobody has a good time.
• 54:14
  From my experience. Yeah.
• 54:18
  Willie's Willie's definitely a bad one.
• 54:21
  Oh, yeah. His character is just. Yeah, he's he's repugnant.
• 54:25
  He's repugnant. That's a perfect word for it. That was rolling in my brain at that moment.
• 54:29
  I was I did some stage acting for a while in college and I played a racist redneck in this play called The Foreigner in Missouri.
• 54:38
  I was in Massachusetts. There's racists there, too.
• 54:42
  And they're everywhere. Yeah.
• 54:46
  I played this character and he's just like sort of a I mean, he's very he's a smart character, but he's a really fucking stupid at the same time.
• 54:55
  And you get to really play that up and it's very satisfying playing villains.
• 54:58
  But one of the things that my director chose to do was paint a bunch of my teeth with that stuff that makes your teeth look fucking rotten.
• 55:04
  And like seeing my mouth look like that, I was like, oh, no. God. Fuck.
• 55:11
  And then seeing Willie, it's just like that's exactly what his face looks like.
• 55:15
  You see him and you're like, oh, yeah, definitely don't want that to happen.
• 55:20
  Like the ladies and the gentlemen do not want that near you.
• 55:23
  Yeah. So I guess we're a seat belt then.
• 55:26
  Nah, man, I'm a coward. Yeah, this is fucking America. Come on.
• 55:30
  We're free. Re watching this film.
• 55:33
  I was really taken with just the weird small town politics like Joe smacks Willie.
• 55:39
  Willie shoots Joe in the shoulder.
• 55:41
  Willie shows up at the bar and it's just like, so we're even right.
• 55:45
  Like just that's how shit's done.
• 55:47
  Yeah. That's hey, man, we're all tired of this back and forth.
• 55:52
  It's like, well, you shot me.
• 55:55
  And maybe I took it too far.
• 55:57
  You know, we're cool, right? Yeah.
• 56:00
  It's all square, right? Yeah. Yeah. What is your vibe on this town?
• 56:04
  We were talking about this with the Red Rock West episode where it's like Red Rock West has 1200 people in town,
• 56:10
  but they also have a hospital like a pretty functional hospital. Nice.
• 56:14
  Like what what size is this town?
• 56:18
  Um, I feel like it's like 500 people tops. Yeah. Yeah.
• 56:24
  The level of like disrespect that's felt by Willie that feels like a 500 or less town.
• 56:32
  Yeah, there's a small I don't know the actual demographics for it, but there's a small town next to the town I grew up in that literally all I've ever seen there is two trailers and a bar.
• 56:47
  Yeah. And that is the town. Yeah. I mean, you know, your vibe at that point, right?
• 56:52
  Yeah. So, you know, honestly, that's one of the reasons I think the overall villain in this story is the town itself, because there is absolutely nothing to do other than get shit faced.
• 57:02
  And that's kind of what happens to all the major characters in the story.
• 57:07
  And, you know, there's even one scene I love or it's all like, you know, Joe is hanging out with this colony lady just and she's all, oh, you know, we should go somewhere.
• 57:18
  And he's like, there ain't nothing to do. Let's just let's get drunk and get home and watch the weather. Yeah.
• 57:25
  And I mean, that's the highlight of their day, pretty much. And, you know, and then I was thinking, oh, yeah, one of my absolute favorite scenes is like, she is in bed with him.
• 57:37
  And yeah, yeah. And then, you know, she's like, I just had the craziest idea that maybe we could go out for dinner sometime, you know, and she's saying this earnestly like, wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could go out to dinner?
• 57:56
  And then I'm like, well, I do that like every day. That's because you don't cook. Well, yeah, but nobody knows how to do that.
• 58:03
  So dinner is complicated. Nobody. Nobody can do that.
• 58:09
  Do you own own a pan, Nick? I've never asked you this. I feel like I should have. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I own a pan. I've made eggs before.
• 58:20
  Now, flipping them. I mean, come on. Scramble. Yeah. Yeah. It's just no matter what you endeavored to do scrambled eggs every time I've got a side up.
• 58:30
  Yeah. But yeah, yeah. So they're never going to go out to dinner because there is absolutely nothing to do in this town and they're just going to get shit faced.
• 58:41
  And, you know, and that's totally accepted and normal. And that, you know, reminds me of another thing that was just freaking hilarious in this movie is how absolutely worthless the cops are in this in this shit.
• 58:55
  I love that. I just slapped that fucking rookie around.
• 59:00
  Yeah. Like knocks that out. And by the way, like, you know, he's he's all like giving him shit because it's like, I didn't do nothing.
• 59:08
  You know, I'm totally cool. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking right, dude. He's like he's he's pounding whiskey.
• 59:14
  And you are definitely drunk driving right now all over the fucking road. And, you know, he of course, he doesn't realize it.
• 59:21
  So, you know, I choose to believe that this cop absolutely should have tried to get this guy off the road.
• 59:27
  Now, to be fair, he might have been driving erratically because he just got a hummer.
• 59:31
  Yeah, yeah, that's true. Just got blown. Yeah. Yeah.
• 59:37
  Oh, man, that was such a weird scene, too, when he when he was like trying to. What's your favorite color? Yeah, I don't know.
• 59:43
  I'm just going to focus on that snowflake on the wall. You want some intimacy.
• 59:46
  Yeah, I choose to believe that he's desperately searching for a connection with, you know, a human being.
• 59:52
  I think the only person he's actually like interested in is the owner of the whorehouse.
• 59:58
  Murl or whatever. Yeah. Boy, what an unfortunate name.
• 1:00:02
  That is not a good prostitute name. It's a good smile. I don't care if you're the madam.
• 1:00:07
  That's actually a good madam name, though. Murl. I don't know. There's something about it.
• 1:00:11
  Fuck with the Murl. You're not going to fuck with the Murl is right. Thank you, Sean.
• 1:00:15
  Yeah, I'm not going to fuck a Murl either.
• 1:00:18
  Well, I don't think that's a problem. I don't think he wants to.
• 1:00:20
  Most people don't want to fuck them out. Yeah. Yeah. He does. He does. Joe does. Joe's old fashioned.
• 1:00:26
  Yeah. Maybe it's a maybe it's just a Texas thing. He's got like Murl Haggard on the mind and he's just like hard.
• 1:00:33
  Do you think he puts Murl Haggard on while getting down with? Absolutely.
• 1:00:38
  What's the horniest Murl Haggard song? I wish there were more songs about like people named Nick.
• 1:00:45
  So that way I could listen to Nick based music while getting down.
• 1:00:49
  I feel like Christmas is coming up. We got a whole lot of old saying Nick.
• 1:00:54
  Yeah. You can only get down to Christmas. A lot of Christmas coming stuff. So yeah, that's tough.
• 1:01:01
  The only way I can do it for me. That's a hard riff like Jingle Bells is a hard rhythm to keep it keep up to.
• 1:01:08
  There's no way you're right. There's a rhythm. Everything has a rhythm.
• 1:01:14
  I mean, no, no, no, Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells does have a rhythm.
• 1:01:19
  It's just a weird one to fuck to. Nick's into that experimental jazz.
• 1:01:26
  That's true. Now the bass is going to take a walk.
• 1:01:30
  You can't fuck jazz. You can fuck to anything. Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  All right. I like silence.
• 1:01:39
  I love banging in silence. I want to hear my own noises.
• 1:01:44
  Set up the noise canceling machines all over.
• 1:01:49
  It's just white noise. Yeah, that's what I refer to as refer to myself as.
• 1:01:59
  What new shit did you guys notice this time?
• 1:02:02
  I actually do have one because I watched it a couple of times. Sure. Preparation. Yeah.
• 1:02:07
  So the first scene when when Gary meets Joe really stuck out at me.
• 1:02:13
  You got Joe Whittle in a night or sorry, Joe sharpening a knife.
• 1:02:17
  And then Gary Whittle and his stick.
• 1:02:21
  And then it's just like Gary's like a younger Joe at this point.
• 1:02:25
  And I think that's sort of one of the main themes of the movie.
• 1:02:29
  And I think that one scene was a really, really good foreshadowing of that.
• 1:02:34
  Right. He's also a hope for a better Joe. Yeah.
• 1:02:38
  In Joe's mind is like, oh, he doesn't have to be a fuck up like me.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah, I think that's how to use the lighter. He can.
• 1:02:46
  No, I think that's true, though.
• 1:02:49
  That's the optimism of this movie that kind of gets lost in something like leaving Las Vegas
• 1:02:53
  is that there is this sort of like hope that Gary cannot fuck up as badly as Joe did.
• 1:02:59
  And it's a manufactured scene, but they put a bookend on it in the end of the film
• 1:03:04
  with him now planting trees to live instead of killing trees.
• 1:03:09
  Right. So yeah, but I'd also say that, you know, toward the end of the of the film,
• 1:03:16
  you know, Gary's he wants to do the justice,
• 1:03:20
  which means he's going to go away and get into a life of crime.
• 1:03:25
  He wants to be the one to do it.
• 1:03:27
  And so I think ultimately Joe saves him from this,
• 1:03:31
  but otherwise he would not have been successful at, you know, maybe living a better life.
• 1:03:36
  I really like was paying attention to the scene where Wade kills the homeless, the other homeless guy.
• 1:03:41
  Just I never really looked at how a brutal scene.
• 1:03:45
  Yeah, but just like how like the buildup to that, like I've either forgot or just missed like
• 1:03:50
  the slow intentionality behind it, like him, like kicking the dirt off the chunk of metal that he can grab.
• 1:03:56
  And really how like that wasn't an act of desperation for alcohol.
• 1:04:00
  That was just like he saw something he wanted and took it.
• 1:04:04
  And it's one of those things where you have the scene with him, like too drunk to get up.
• 1:04:08
  So he's just trying to like amuse his son, the popping and locking scenes, like charming drunk, you know.
• 1:04:14
  Nice guy who, you know, probably means well enough when he's sober.
• 1:04:19
  Now, just fucking monster. Just really.
• 1:04:22
  Not every angry drunk is angry all the time.
• 1:04:25
  Nothing he does is for anyone but him.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah, yeah, that's very true.
• 1:04:31
  The other thing, just in terms of Nicolas Cage, this is just one of those films that Nicolas Cage just disappears into like.
• 1:04:39
  It's him. You see his face, but it's just like, that's not Nick Cage.
• 1:04:42
  That's Joe. Like it's one of those characters he just you can just lose the actor in a really good point.
• 1:04:49
  And I think that fits for both of these movies, too.
• 1:04:51
  He does really embody these two characters in a pretty powerful way.
• 1:04:55
  And he has a wildly different physicalities for both of them.
• 1:04:59
  Totally. Yeah.
• 1:05:00
  To put them up against each other.
• 1:05:02
  This is one of our bigger Joe or bigger Nicolas Cage is in Joe.
• 1:05:05
  Right versus more of a wasting away.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah.
• 1:05:08
  Jaundiced, falling down kind of style.
• 1:05:12
  Yeah, real Pete styles.
• 1:05:14
  One of my biggest critiques of this film and I had this I know I had this last time where it was just like there's a lot of the group improv lines, just the quick like try more naturalistic lines that are just bad and really do take me out of the movie at times.
• 1:05:30
  Like when he's talking to his work crew and every other word is just Joe, we do in this Joe Joe to Joe Joe.
• 1:05:36
  The scene that stood out to me in not like a wow, this is a powerful scene, but in a complete throw away.
• 1:05:43
  And I was like, What the fuck is this about?
• 1:05:45
  There's a moment kind of two thirds the way through where he has his new truck.
• 1:05:49
  It's right before he gets pulled over by the cops.
• 1:05:51
  And he pulls up to a stoplight and he rolls the window down because there's a woman and a guy in a car next to him.
• 1:05:57
  And apparently and maybe this is a question for the book reader of this apparently that's supposed to be his ex wife and her new partner, but they never touch on it.
• 1:06:08
  They're supposed to the director said, Oh, we want people to just assume that understanding that that's who that is.
• 1:06:14
  And you don't you're just sort of like, What the fuck is this little minor interaction?
• 1:06:19
  Is he going to try and hit on this lady or something?
• 1:06:22
  But, you know, there's this acknowledgement between these two people and then he rolls the window back up and drives on and then gets pulled over.
• 1:06:29
  Well, that's interesting. I actually had no idea.
• 1:06:32
  And yeah, he does have an ex wife in the book and does not have a very good relationship with her.
• 1:06:39
  He is, you know, trying to get on her good side and be friendly.
• 1:06:43
  She clearly wants nothing to do with them.
• 1:06:45
  It's actually interesting because there's a good parallel to the, you know, leaving Las Vegas here.
• 1:06:51
  Leaving Las Vegas, he's in one of his drunken, stupor kind of moments.
• 1:06:58
  He's all like, I can't remember if if my wife left me because I was drinking or if I was drinking to to get over my wife.
• 1:07:07
  And in a lot of ways, very true with with Joe, you find out, you know, kind of in the pages of the book that actually, you know, he drinks way too much.
• 1:07:20
  And she was trying to escape that. And so he's not living a good life without her.
• 1:07:25
  And then I guess you have the scene and the truck where he's got where she's got like this new partner.
• 1:07:32
  And that would be devastating for him. So now he's probably going to go on a bender.
• 1:07:37
  And I actually had no idea that that that was that it played out that way in the movie.
• 1:07:42
  So that was really interesting.
• 1:07:44
  But the dialogue in the book, especially between Gary and Wade, it reads like Cletus from The Simpsons.
• 1:07:53
  Like they are very, you know, redneck hicks.
• 1:07:56
  You know, another thing about it that is just really awesome.
• 1:08:00
  You get a lot more into Wade and kind of his adventures wandering around and so many adventures of him just trying to tag along with people for the sole purpose of getting booze.
• 1:08:12
  But yeah, I say it largely plays out like the movie, though.
• 1:08:18
  There's definitely no smile through the pain, you know, cool face thing.
• 1:08:24
  I'm not sure where that came from, but that was that was such a good scene. I like that.
• 1:08:28
  Let's talk about that scene because it's one of my favorite scenes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Sean, you're nailing it right now.
• 1:08:35
  No one smiles through the pain like Sean. You've got a lot of pain. I know that that scene in particular is so fun.
• 1:08:41
  Because I mean, it's paired with that whole like we're on a little buddy adventure kind of a thing.
• 1:08:45
  But like just how goofy that concept is of like, feel the pain, suffer grimace.
• 1:08:53
  Now smile. No, no smile on top of it.
• 1:08:56
  It's like, what the fuck are you talking about, dude?
• 1:09:00
  That's how you make a cool face. That's how people know you're down to fuck.
• 1:09:05
  What? Yeah.
• 1:09:07
  This is maybe a loaded question because, you know, the book is obviously going to have more depth to characters, backstories, all sorts of different things.
• 1:09:17
  Somewhat. Yeah. How what would you prefer between the two of them?
• 1:09:23
  Oh, wow. That is a good question.
• 1:09:27
  I think the movie did a better job of portraying, you know, this.
• 1:09:33
  I mean, the book felt like kind of slice of life. It kind of downplayed the relationship of Gary and Joe.
• 1:09:39
  And that was kind of hand up a little bit for the major plot point of the movie.
• 1:09:43
  I think that worked. It was it was really, really well.
• 1:09:47
  Like, you know, definitely in the book, that's a major theme.
• 1:09:52
  But a lot of it is just the characters around town and how they interact.
• 1:09:56
  And then Gary didn't even meet Joe until like 30 percent of the way through the book or so.
• 1:10:03
  And so that was kind of weird. The movie ties it together much better than the book did.
• 1:10:08
  The book is great, but that was such a weird read.
• 1:10:13
  Trying to think of other things that are that are so amazing about this movie.
• 1:10:17
  I kind of actually I'm curious about your notes. Yeah, you have a lot of things written down.
• 1:10:21
  OK, so what what I did is point at one and you just read it. Yeah, sure. Yeah.
• 1:10:26
  Give me that part. Oh, yeah, that was right.
• 1:10:30
  Why are you pointing at his ding dong? So you did read the deck.
• 1:10:35
  I already sort of mentioned this one.
• 1:10:37
  It was my favorite scene of the movie when, you know, Connie and Joe are just in bed together.
• 1:10:42
  And, you know, she is she's just like, oh, I just want to go out to dinner.
• 1:10:47
  And then it's all like, no, not not going to happen, not ever going to happen.
• 1:10:51
  And it just underscores to me like just how how depressing this town is, how nobody has hope for a better future.
• 1:10:59
  The only way to do that is to leave. Actually, come to think of it like that's definitely why Gary wants that truck so bad.
• 1:11:06
  He is just trying to get his sister and get the hell out of there. Yeah, I agree.
• 1:11:11
  I feel like that's his goal is that he is just going to take her and they're going to get the fuck out and find a way.
• 1:11:17
  Like he's scrappy. Yeah. Do work. Yeah. He's he's not afraid to get his hands dirty.
• 1:11:22
  Very good worker. Although, interestingly, he didn't really care about getting all that poison on him, whereas Wade did not want to get poison on him.
• 1:11:31
  Dude, that poison is just going fucking everywhere.
• 1:11:34
  Yeah, it's wild. I forgot. And Gary's like pumping poison out of the bucket at one point. And there's like fumes and shit.
• 1:11:41
  It's like it's like totally contaminating the groundwater.
• 1:11:44
  I don't think those pines are going to live, actually, at the end of the movie.
• 1:11:48
  And I don't think that's even like the same site.
• 1:11:51
  I think that's the whole circle of that story. But yeah, I mean, it probably is not the exact same site.
• 1:11:56
  I mean, they most likely killed a bunch of plants, killed a bunch of trees three years ago over there and then waited, let it go fallow and then play new shit.
• 1:12:07
  But I was I was reading stories about like tree poisoners because I was all like, this cannot possibly be credible, be a real thing.
• 1:12:14
  And then, like, you know, some person got caught a few years ago trying to clear out some trees with with some poison to get a better view on their property.
• 1:12:24
  And they had to do this whole like big soil reclamation project where, you know, they had to like, you know, totally dig up like tons of it, tons of the soil.
• 1:12:35
  Literal tons. Yeah. Because otherwise, like nothing would ever grow there because like this poison.
• 1:12:40
  And so I don't think they care. I don't think Joe gives a shit about any of this because he's not a moral guy is the thing.
• 1:12:48
  Like, you know, he treats people around him that he likes. Well, as long as they don't have a dog.
• 1:12:56
  But so it's not that dog. Yeah, whatever. I think every that dog pisses him off. Probably.
• 1:13:03
  Yeah. Well, then how do you OK, so how do you feel about the two immoral characters of these two movies?
• 1:13:09
  Like you have one who is self destructive. You have one who is more actually destructive.
• 1:13:16
  So in leaving Las Vegas, he's self destructive for sure.
• 1:13:19
  But he warns he warns his love interest, you know, and, you know, and to a certain extent, I can understand that because like he's got his plan.
• 1:13:30
  You know, he's doesn't have any money left after this.
• 1:13:33
  He all he can do is move forward on his journey off this mortal coil.
• 1:13:39
  Yes. I mean, he's he's going to die and that's going to happen. But, you know, he's obviously not trying to take anyone down with him.
• 1:13:47
  So it's all like, you know, not trying to leave a mess for this lady.
• 1:13:51
  But of course, they they kind of get into it anyway.
• 1:13:54
  Well, you still want to surround yourself with yes, man, too.
• 1:13:56
  Like you don't want to like take somebody in who's going to fight you in your last couple of months of drunkenness.
• 1:14:02
  Like you just want to die. I hear that. So anyways, then then you have our laughter about that.
• 1:14:11
  Please just let it be sad. OK.
• 1:14:15
  Wade would be obviously the worst person in this, probably even worse than Willie, I think.
• 1:14:22
  Yeah. Willie's obviously a very bad guy, but he's bad in like the way a child can be bad.
• 1:14:29
  Well, I mean, you know, at the end, he's doing some unscrupulous things that's true.
• 1:14:35
  That's true. Well, I wouldn't want I don't know.
• 1:14:38
  Wade is just such a piece of shit.
• 1:14:41
  Like, think of think of like the absolute worst person that you've ever met in your life and then imagine that they're now having a family and then give it like 15 years later from that.
• 1:14:51
  And that's what this movie is.
• 1:14:53
  I knew a guy like this in high school that like, you know, had a bunch of kids with some hit with his girlfriend or whatever and with like Bader and, you know, just be like a total drunk piece of shit.
• 1:15:06
  And all I can think of is this guy older now, a total sociopath, you know, kind of person with like a battered wife and children.
• 1:15:17
  And like, it feels very real to me. Like there is no redeemable qualities to Wade.
• 1:15:24
  I'm still wondering where that G dog sweater came from.
• 1:15:27
  It's so cool. I wish I had a little cool.
• 1:15:30
  I'm pretty sure that is so that's not part of the book.
• 1:15:33
  All right. Yeah, no, I have no idea. No, I think that is just tied to the actor.
• 1:15:37
  That's awesome. Like that's what he auditioned in.
• 1:15:40
  Pretty sure. So I choose to believe he beat another homeless dude to death.
• 1:15:44
  And that was the sweater he was wearing. He could have.
• 1:15:47
  It's also like a letter. Highline. Yeah, exactly. There can be only one.
• 1:15:52
  Oh, by the way, you had mentioned how like deliberate that was. Yeah, plays out that way in the book.
• 1:15:57
  He is he is like inching closer and closer and, you know, definitely on a mission to grab the bottle.
• 1:16:05
  But for whatever reason, he's going to do it by killing him.
• 1:16:10
  And well, he's got a wolf in him and you can work.
• 1:16:15
  He can work. He can swing if he wants to. Yeah.
• 1:16:20
  I love how he mounts off to the to the, you know, guy when he was trying to do legitimate work.
• 1:16:27
  And he's like, I've done all the work. I'm going to do today.
• 1:16:32
  You ain't done shit.
• 1:16:34
  I know. I love how he just talks back to that guy.
• 1:16:36
  Fuck you, man. I didn't ship a drink. My water.
• 1:16:40
  Why am I not getting paid? Fuck you, Gary.
• 1:16:44
  Just wow. It's it's it almost felt a little bit unbelievable if I didn't know somebody kind of like that.
• 1:16:52
  Oh, yeah. People with substance problems like that are so hard to work with.
• 1:16:59
  I've done it a few times and it's never good because they suck and they don't believe they suck.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah, I mean, that's a huge part of like being that far gone is the inability to like see the forest for the trees.
• 1:17:13
  Like your reality is so different from the reality other people have dealing with you.
• 1:17:21
  I mean, going back to like Joe Joe's morality, I think it's the difference between.
• 1:17:26
  I mean, really, the difference between both these characters and leaving Las Vegas and this is, you know,
• 1:17:31
  their circumstances, leaving Las Vegas, you know, successful, you know, really does have, you know,
• 1:17:39
  did kind of have it all, but was an alcoholic and had lost complete control to the point where his life fell apart.
• 1:17:47
  And there was only one way out, whereas, you know, Joe was just trying to get by.
• 1:17:51
  And I think he is trying to do the best he can.
• 1:17:55
  But like you said, like the town is the villain. So what do you do when you have no other way out?
• 1:18:01
  You just survive. And I think that's what most of the characters in this movie are doing.
• 1:18:05
  But he also seems to pride himself on being able to like help his crew, help this kid.
• 1:18:11
  His like, but his quote unquote girlfriend in this film is just he's the place she goes to when.
• 1:18:17
  Her drunk mom's boyfriend shows back up and, you know, clearly has a history of molesting her like
• 1:18:24
  or assaulting her. So like, you know, Joe is, you know, that's I think Joel's Joe's lot in life that he's given himself.
• 1:18:32
  That's his cross to bear is, you know, he can't escape himself, but he can like help other people escape their situations.
• 1:18:38
  So I think Joe is a moral person, just that morality has to be viewed from where he's at, rather from like where we're at.
• 1:18:46
  What is the most small town shit you guys have ever gotten into?
• 1:18:53
  I mean, I never really small town, but suburbs broke into whatever broke into houses under construction to smoke weed and came away with a bunch of like drywall shit all over me.
• 1:19:09
  And, you know, yeah, we were definitely not supposed to be there, but yeah, broke into houses under construction.
• 1:19:16
  So it's nice. Boy, I have a lot of small town shit and the weed theme.
• 1:19:24
  I used to like smoke weed on top of a church because it was accessible without ladders.
• 1:19:31
  And sometimes like, I don't know why, but we'd always like bring a bong up there and climbing with a bong is just the hard.
• 1:19:39
  And one time the pastor or whatever came out and like, so we were like sitting there on the roof, like trying to be discreet with a bong.
• 1:19:50
  We did not get caught.
• 1:19:53
  I don't know that I have any small town stories. I'm a city boy.
• 1:19:57
  Oh, we you can you know, small town stuff in a city.
• 1:20:01
  Just in the same vein of going someplace I shouldn't have gone just like for, you know, mild amounts of control controlled havoc.
• 1:20:09
  San Francisco used to have this like abandoned hospital, which I think is now condos.
• 1:20:14
  But this old abandoned hospital that, you know, we just fucking go break into and just wander the halls.
• 1:20:21
  I think they filmed was that MTV show where like they send a bunch of kids to like a haunted place like.
• 1:20:28
  I can't remember the name of it. I know exactly what you're talking about, though.
• 1:20:31
  But they filmed a season of that there every time we got every time we had to get in there, though, because like the cops would come around and like seal up entrances.
• 1:20:39
  So it would get progressively more and more sketchy to get into this place.
• 1:20:43
  I remember the last time we went, we had to like monkey bar climb up a fire escape like stairs kind of like backwards and like hoist ourselves up onto like the third story ledge outside a window.
• 1:20:57
  And like crawl into a window like three or four stories up.
• 1:21:01
  Oh, I would have just found somewhere else to party.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah, that seems like way too much work.
• 1:21:06
  Oh, we had we had a we had a friend fall from I wasn't there when I think we stopped.
• 1:21:11
  They stopped. My friend stopped going after like somebody who fell only from like the second floor.
• 1:21:17
  But yeah, it was pretty sketchy.
• 1:21:18
  We met some nice unhoused people who were like stripping copper wiring out of the walls one time.
• 1:21:24
  Nice. Wow.
• 1:21:25
  And I peed off the top of the place. That was fun.
• 1:21:27
  That's nice.
• 1:21:28
  I do. I do have one more where my friends in high school were my friend Tony, who thought of himself as like a young Scorsese.
• 1:21:36
  So like I wanted to be a filmmaker.
• 1:21:39
  And I remember one time we were out on the edge of like just a little cut out on like a little mountain road that got really backed up with traffic.
• 1:21:48
  And somebody thought we had a gun and like called the cops. So all our friends like went off and like were like filming something in this like restricted area.
• 1:21:58
  The rest of us are just sitting by the cars like on the side of the road and like six squad cars pull up and just cops jump out with guns and like throw us to the ground.
• 1:22:06
  My buddy Tony comes running out who has a fake mustache on because we're fucking 17.
• 1:22:13
  I know 17 year olds who could grow real mustaches.
• 1:22:16
  Tony's talking to the cops and hands him his ID and the cop looks at the ID and looks at Tony.
• 1:22:21
  Tony's like it's a fake mustache and the cop just rips the mustache off.
• 1:22:25
  So wonderful.
• 1:22:30
  That was fun. We went to Denny's after that.
• 1:22:33
  Yeah. Perfect.
• 1:22:34
  Where else would you go?
• 1:22:36
  Yeah. 17. It's Denny's.
• 1:22:38
  Denny's.
• 1:22:39
  No, sorry. It was an IHOP.
• 1:22:40
  OK. It's one or the other.
• 1:22:42
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:22:43
  Sounds about right.
• 1:22:45
  Nick, give us your your big pitch why this movie should win and move forward.
• 1:22:50
  OK. Yeah.
• 1:22:51
  Sure thing.
• 1:22:52
  Both are very good movies.
• 1:22:54
  Both are very depressing movies.
• 1:22:57
  Leaving Las Vegas plays a little bit like just a Hollywood romance with some depression thrown in.
• 1:23:04
  This is what it is.
• 1:23:06
  I've seen more depressing.
• 1:23:07
  It's fine.
• 1:23:10
  Joe, on the other hand, is just it keeps hitting you over and over and over again.
• 1:23:16
  Just how awful everything is and how nothing will ever get better.
• 1:23:20
  And you throw into it this real hornback vibe.
• 1:23:25
  You throw into it this relationship that Gary and Joe has and it feels like an actual movie.
• 1:23:32
  It feels like something interesting is happening.
• 1:23:34
  You have characters, you have people that are real and they're behaving like kind of normal people would in these horrible circumstances.
• 1:23:45
  There's so much flavor to this.
• 1:23:48
  Everything from the things that they buy at the grocery store, if you can even call that a grocery store, to the kind of work that they do.
• 1:23:57
  Like the best work around town is poisoning trees.
• 1:24:00
  And so everything that happens in the movie, Joe, just underscores, man, this is just awful.
• 1:24:10
  Whereas in leaving Las Vegas, it feels like, yeah, this guy's out to destroy himself.
• 1:24:16
  And yes, that's very sad and all of that.
• 1:24:20
  But it just feels like a Hollywood movie.
• 1:24:23
  It almost feels like more of a rom-com than anything else, like a twisted rom-com.
• 1:24:30
  But that's kind of how I see it.
• 1:24:32
  And so when I saw Leaving Las Vegas, I felt, OK, yeah, it's a movie, whatever.
• 1:24:39
  When I saw Joe, I actually felt something.
• 1:24:43
  I felt what I want a good movie to have.
• 1:24:47
  I truly believe that it's a better movie because I think about it way more than I do leaving Las Vegas.
• 1:24:58
  That's my pitch.
• 1:24:59
  Yeah. The struggle of man versus society versus man versus self is oftentimes more enjoyable or more enduring,
• 1:25:08
  especially when the man versus self is like, I'm sad.
• 1:25:14
  Well, it's hard. I do understand that.
• 1:25:17
  She didn't love me. Now she's in a Jeep Wrangler having fun.
• 1:25:22
  Listen, I look good. Yeah, I would.
• 1:25:26
  Everybody looks good in a Jeep Wrangler. Of course, they do.
• 1:25:29
  The top comes off. Come on.
• 1:25:31
  It's part of the appeal. My ex is just in a Subaru or a gazebo.
• 1:25:37
  Well, yeah. What? Yeah.
• 1:25:40
  When they're not in a gazebo.
• 1:25:45
  I hate to just completely cut this off, but we do have to do our wrap up section before I have to be back on parent duty.
• 1:25:52
  OK. Goodbye. See you later forever.
• 1:25:54
  Yeah. I'm glad you were here, Nick. Thank you for that was a nice clean get out of my basement.
• 1:25:59
  And I'll get out of your basement. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine.
• 1:26:02
  Do you have anything you want to pitch before you go?
• 1:26:04
  Oh, yeah, I do have something that I need to pitch.
• 1:26:07
  Everybody needs to use the Firefox Web browser and Linux. Oh, Linux Linux.
• 1:26:14
  OK. Do we have time for this? No.
• 1:26:19
  You've got one minute. OK.
• 1:26:22
  So when you look at operating system kernels, I'm cutting you off.
• 1:26:28
  Wait. OK. Just tell me about a barcode real quick. Just one.
• 1:26:31
  Give us your favorite barcode. Data Matrix is by far the best barcode.
• 1:26:35
  OK. Yeah, that's a solid ending. Thank you very much for coming. Thanks for being here, Nick.
• 1:26:40
  Everybody data matrix is matrices. Yeah, it is what you want.
• 1:26:45
  And Joe and Joe, Joe, Firefox, Firefox, data matrix.
• 1:26:51
  These are QR codes. QR is bullshit. Yeah.
• 1:26:58
  We'll wait until we can talk about mad shit.
• 1:27:01
  Oh, fuck that guy. He's terrible. Now is the mad shit time.
• 1:27:05
  We'll wait till they leave for the compliments. Exactly.
• 1:27:08
  No, that was good, Nick. Nice job.
• 1:27:12
  Crushing it, brother. Yeah. Nick went to the inaugural meat bucket.
• 1:27:17
  And, you know, oh, man, they had a hard time.
• 1:27:23
  Nick came to the mushroom party. Yeah, because we had this.
• 1:27:27
  That's right. Yeah. Nick did not like the massage chair.
• 1:27:31
  Yeah. I mean, it was pretty aggressive. I liked it. It got in the butthole.
• 1:27:35
  Once it locks your calves and forearms in and it goes straight for the butthole and you're just like, this is the worst electric chair ever.
• 1:27:44
  Death. I'm dying, but coming.
• 1:27:49
  Little anal shiatsu.
• 1:27:52
  I learned a lot about myself on that trip. And what I learned was I like butt play.
• 1:27:56
  I thought Nick did a good job. Nick did a great job.
• 1:27:59
  I think both guests did a good job. I feel like we didn't give leaving Las Vegas as much attention that we did with Joe.
• 1:28:07
  But we had the benefit of Nick having read Joe and having something new to bring to the table rather than just talking about the film itself.
• 1:28:15
  So there was more there to digest, I feel. Carlos just has like industry conversation.
• 1:28:21
  I forgot to talk to Carlos about his Johnsonville Brat commercial.
• 1:28:25
  OK, wait. So your homework now is to ask him about that and give just a side recording and we will just insert it at some point.
• 1:28:32
  I've talked to him about it so many times. It's something that he did while we were working together.
• 1:28:38
  Fucking awesome. Yeah. Then every day when I would see him, I'd be like, Carlos has Johnsonville Brats.
• 1:28:44
  He's like, I didn't have a speaking role. I was just there. I enjoyed them.
• 1:28:48
  I was just a dad whose family left him for Brats.
• 1:28:53
  All I did was bring regular hot dogs like a fool.
• 1:28:59
  Well, shit, I don't know. This is a tricky one for me. I've kind of waffled back and forth the last couple of days.
• 1:29:05
  I watched both these movies recently talking to both these guys. It was interesting.
• 1:29:11
  I could be swayed either way. Sure.
• 1:29:14
  I think, you know, one has like a fucking award winning performance and one is a movie I like more, even though it's depressing as fuck.
• 1:29:23
  No, that's a pretty relatable take on it.
• 1:29:26
  Leaving Las Vegas is, you know, critically Nicholas Cage's best performance.
• 1:29:32
  He does such a really good job. It's just at times I wish the role was broader.
• 1:29:39
  I get a little tired. I'm exhausted from watching it. I mean, it's a terrific film. He nails it across the board.
• 1:29:46
  You're watching a guy be a fucking mess all the time. There isn't like moments of getting it back together.
• 1:29:52
  So it's like a real slog with with Joe.
• 1:29:57
  I mean, he's a mess, but there's times where he's a role model or, you know, he's a hero.
• 1:30:05
  He like there's just other things to grab on to for the character.
• 1:30:11
  It's not so much a just slide with him into oblivion.
• 1:30:17
  Oh, no, I saw I saw Sean Blink. They're still there. We know you're still there.
• 1:30:20
  Yeah. You can't pretend that the Internet froze.
• 1:30:23
  No, I was just trying to put my thoughts together.
• 1:30:26
  It's watching both these movies in both these performances.
• 1:30:30
  I think we touched on this a bit with Nick about how just the real difference in terms of like, I mean, they're both shitty people.
• 1:30:36
  But I mean, the characters are both shitty people, but their circumstances about Nick's.
• 1:30:42
  Oh, yeah. All Nick's are bad.
• 1:30:45
  We've got a we've got a moment of confusion now.
• 1:30:48
  Every Nick is a jerk.
• 1:30:51
  Still sounds like a fucking like bad slur.
• 1:30:55
  Well, especially when you say it like that, these fucking chicks.
• 1:31:00
  Yep. That's not good. I don't agree with that.
• 1:31:04
  And leaving Las Vegas, you know, he's a drunk who's out to kill himself.
• 1:31:08
  But he's also clearly a personality people enjoy and people like having him around, which in my experience with actual alcoholics tends to be the case to a point to that point.
• 1:31:21
  Whereas, you know, Joe is more of a heroic figure, whereas Joe's life is shit.
• 1:31:26
  But he tries to actually actively uplift other people and just try and stay out of trouble while he can do it.
• 1:31:33
  Like the job of a role model is kind of foist upon him.
• 1:31:38
  No, and it's really hard watching both these great characters and having to decide what should go forward.
• 1:31:46
  And I think for this one, for me, it's really going to come down to which movie I enjoy more at this point.
• 1:31:52
  You touched on the ultimate outcome for both characters a little bit there.
• 1:31:57
  And I really enjoy that both characters have the same kind of like inciting incident for what makes them so depressing.
• 1:32:07
  It's like both of them is like, oh, my wife left me. Great.
• 1:32:10
  One of them actually is trying to do something about it to move on with their life or, you know, continue to live a life with it to be alive.
• 1:32:18
  And one of them is actively just trying to kill himself.
• 1:32:21
  Actually, is it actively trying to kill yourself?
• 1:32:25
  I guess it's kind of a passive one. Yeah, I mean, you're choosing to do only it is a choice.
• 1:32:31
  Like they're like, I'm going to kill myself with.
• 1:32:33
  I mean, he's choosing to kill himself. He's just decided to take the slow way.
• 1:32:37
  Slow, slow boat.
• 1:32:39
  Oh, could I whack myself off to death? Probably.
• 1:32:42
  If you consumed nothing and only were expelling.
• 1:32:46
  Yes, dehydrate yourself eventually.
• 1:32:49
  I mean, right. Yeah.
• 1:32:51
  Imagine how rough the skin would be from like dehydration and friction all the time.
• 1:32:58
  I'm just imagining like the weird puff that comes out of powder.
• 1:33:02
  I often wonder about the puff that comes out of powder also, but I'm always thinking about albinos.
• 1:33:11
  Hey, if we've got any albinos listening to the show, please let me know so I can shut up.
• 1:33:17
  Tell us about your puff.
• 1:33:19
  Tell us about the movie Powder and how it changed your life.
• 1:33:23
  Right.
• 1:33:24
  But I will say watching these movies again, I really I the thing I walked away from these movies with this time is how much despite how heavy the subject matter and Joe is, it is done in such a more entertaining way than a lot of leaving Las Vegas.
• 1:33:41
  I can I can sit with this movie longer than I can with leaving Las Vegas, leaving Las Vegas.
• 1:33:47
  Maybe it's how personal that journey is that just makes me uncomfortable in my own skin, but it's just it's not a movie I can sit down again and just.
• 1:33:58
  Struggle with my history of being a hooker and watching leaving Las Vegas.
• 1:34:03
  My problem is that I just I hate jazz so much.
• 1:34:09
  I just fucking sting continuing this tradition of never completing. Yeah. Completing joy for me and his music.
• 1:34:17
  Well, OK. And here's what you know, this is what it usually comes down to for us.
• 1:34:20
  This is which one of these movies would you recommend?
• 1:34:22
  And if we're just going to say, you know, and either one of these movies I can recommend for Nicolas Cage, like his performance.
• 1:34:29
  If I need to recommend a movie for someone to watch and, you know, with the caveat, like this is going to be rough. Joe, I think I could more easily and safely recommend in a lot of cases.
• 1:34:41
  Each movie has their own, like, triggering scenes.
• 1:34:46
  Byer beware. Yeah. Yeah. Like whether it's both of them are going to have alcoholism problems.
• 1:34:52
  Yeah. Physical trauma.
• 1:34:54
  Both of them have assault, sexual assault. One of them has, you know, animal abuse.
• 1:35:01
  Yeah, just one. Unless you count college people as animals.
• 1:35:05
  Those guys were animals. Yeah. Put them down.
• 1:35:09
  You know, I'm going to agree with you.
• 1:35:12
  I think in like this situation of like, am I going to tell somebody to watch A or B?
• 1:35:17
  We've gotten to a point where it's like, we know that leaving Las Vegas is an award winning banger of a performance.
• 1:35:26
  Joe is a movie that I would recommend to people.
• 1:35:30
  We had Requiem for a Dream. Beautiful film. I haven't seen it. I'll back to back it with gummo and kids.
• 1:35:37
  Oh, God. You're going to have a fun day.
• 1:35:40
  Yeah. I'll wake up in the morning and watch romper stomper and brick afterwards.
• 1:35:45
  But hey, man, some people live for the weekend.
• 1:35:50
  OK, don't don't neg on me for this. Don't rain on my parade.
• 1:35:55
  But Joe is a movie that I would recommend to people for the movie and for Nicolas Cage.
• 1:36:02
  Embodiment of character is something that Sean brought up earlier that I think is really powerful in both these movies.
• 1:36:09
  But if you are talking about like, what's a holistic movie that like you could recommend, it has that and he does.
• 1:36:16
  He is Joe. Like, there's no fucking question about it.
• 1:36:19
  Yeah. One thing that I recently started to think about is and this, you know, doesn't have any bearing on anything is the opposite of environment and the like social depth that the character has.
• 1:36:38
  That won't make sense until I say like Nicholas, like leaving Las Vegas, Nicolas Cage is in a highly metropolitan metropolitan area.
• 1:36:45
  He's surrounded by people all the time. Very isolating role.
• 1:36:49
  Joe very much a very rural area, not around like a big urban area, but has a community around him all the time.
• 1:37:00
  Very interesting. Just in looking at that for the two roles.
• 1:37:07
  So unanimous then. Yeah, Joe, I think we're ready to move on.
• 1:37:11
  Leaving Las Vegas will always be an award winning role. Joe is a fantastic film.
• 1:37:18
  Agreed. Hell yeah.
• 1:37:21
  Well, it goes up against Pig next. So that's a that's a cool head to head.
• 1:37:27
  I mean, I think anything at this point, you know, as you were saying to Josie the other day is like these are all good movies now. Like we're in the mix of the best of the best.
• 1:37:38
  Yeah, we got rid of national treasure. So we're good.
• 1:37:41
  Sorry, Ross.
• 1:37:44
  But, you know, it's an interesting thing to look at this and be like, who watch both.
• 1:37:50
  I mean, you know, come argue with us. Tell us that we're wrong. Like, that's what's interesting about this discourse at this point is that we're not talking about, you know, some of the schlock that exists in his, you know, overall uvra.
• 1:38:04
  It's like these are inarguably his best movies, you know, I mean, there are maybe some that people would say should still be in the mix, but it's all good shit at this point.
• 1:38:15
  So watch both. And, you know, our pick is Joe. And I don't disagree with you guys. I think, you know, I've waffled back and forth all week.
• 1:38:25
  And I think that Joe is still the movie that I would want to watch.
• 1:38:29
  Yeah, it's it's tough having these feelings early on and being like, but how do I just not vote for the Academy Award winning role.
• 1:38:39
  But we did rip that bandaid off in very early. So we should be ready for it. It's fine. You know what? Don't watch leaving Las Vegas. I'm going to fuck it.
• 1:38:49
  You know what? Fucking forget my number. Michael Figgis. We're not doing this anymore. I'm not I'm not playing your games.
• 1:38:58
  You can no longer play sax outside of my window. Mike Figgis. Yeah. Not at least not on weekends. Weekdays are still fine.
• 1:39:08
  Weekday Figgis. Weekday Figgis just sounds wrong. It does sound like a sex act somehow, but also still involving a saxophone.
• 1:39:19
  Wouldn't it be so cool if Paul Newton did a movie with Michael Figgis? Paul Newman? Yeah. He said Newton. But oh, sorry. I was thinking about Fig Newton.
• 1:39:29
  Oh, yeah. But we could have as you do to get some Paul Newman like Fig Newton's but with Michael Figgis. So some Figgis Newman's. My brain just fucking melted.
• 1:39:43
  I love to say things that are so dumb. That one took me a second. All right. Anyway, a lot of work into getting dumber. Thank you all for listening.
• 1:39:55
  Thank you for being part of CageMatch. If you want to chat with us at all, we are on social media at cage underscore match underscore pod.
• 1:40:01
  If you want to support us on Patreon, we are at CageMatch pod. Special thanks to our Sparkle buddies Josh, Sean, Josie, Rico, Matt, Adam, and Bill and to our cage dancers Ira, John, Freeman, Lance, Nathan, and Cameron.
• 1:40:14
  I did it. Kind of. Asterisk. Once you edit all the bad parts out. Oh, it's going to be great. I'm so good at that.
• 1:40:24
  Yeah, I'm just going to leave this part at the end. Yeah. Figgis Newman.
• 1:40:32
  There was a no more. We're already dead. Bye bye.
• 1:40:38
  Bye bye.
• 1:40:48
  We could probably throw it in the Patreon, but there's the time that I was filming that video at the car wash with the vacuum sucking me off and the cop had to like pull over.
• 1:41:04
  And he waited. He waited till we finished. Oh, those generous.
• 1:41:10
  And then he comes up. He's like, you guys have permission to be here. And we're like, like from the owner. No, but we paid for the vacuum.
• 1:41:21
  And the guy was like, yeah, I saw that I had to pull over. I was laughing too hard.
• 1:41:28
  And we were like, we'll carry on elsewhere. And then we left and he left. But I have the video still. We could throw that in the page.