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Heartbreaks & Jailbreaks at the Movies - No Escape (1994) vs. Rushmore (1998) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Tonight on Meet Your Double feature, imprisoned Marine John
• 0:13
  Robbins battles a maniacal warden and island cannibals in
• 0:17
  the sci-fi action thriller No Escape.
• 0:20
  Then teenage Academy student Max Fisher grapples with painful
• 0:24
  loves and unlikely friendships in the coming of age comedy
• 0:27
  Rushmore. It's an almost entirely
• 0:30
  unrelated double feature, and it starts right now.
• 0:41
  Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature, a double-blind
• 0:44
  movie review podcast. My name is Thomas, joined as
• 0:46
  always by my brother Frank. Frank, how are you today?
• 0:49
  I'm so excited. He's so excited.
• 0:51
  He's like that song, so excited. I was thinking of Saved by the
• 0:55
  Bell. Oh yeah, when she's on the
• 0:58
  caffeine pills. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 'cause in that
• 1:01
  she's actually scared, as she says afterwards.
• 1:02
  Anyway, welcome to the show. If you've never joined us before
• 1:06
  here at MEET Your Double Feature.
• 1:07
  This is a back-to-back movie review podcast with a bit of A
• 1:10
  twist. The way it works is that Frank
• 1:12
  and I have both selected a movie for the other to watch and
• 1:15
  review today that neither of us had seen previously.
• 1:18
  We're just making our best guess about what the other person
• 1:20
  might like. We're going to review both of
• 1:22
  those films, give each one a score out of 10, and whoever
• 1:24
  gave the better blind movie pick for this episode will be
• 1:28
  declared the winner. We're also going to keep track
• 1:31
  of scores as we go in Season 1 so far, which this is episode 9,
• 1:35
  I'm still ahead by like 4 or five points, I think.
• 1:38
  But Frank, you did win our previous episode for the first
• 1:41
  time in a while. You got a big win.
• 1:43
  So maybe the the turn around starts now.
• 1:44
  What do you think? Oh I, I know.
• 1:46
  So the momentum is going my way. The momentum's going While back,
• 1:51
  he gave himself a halftime pep talk that appears to have been
• 1:53
  paying dividends. We'll see if I can I can cut him
• 1:55
  off or if he will win the day once again, Frank, that actually
• 1:59
  leads us right into our first review.
• 2:00
  So you're going to kick us off with the movie I asked you to
• 2:03
  watch, which was 1994's No Escape starring Ray Liotta.
• 2:08
  I cannot for the life of me remember anything about this
• 2:12
  movie, which is a common problem we run into here.
• 2:14
  I think it's a science fiction film.
• 2:16
  And I don't know, I just like Ray Liotta.
• 2:19
  And I like the idea that a couple years off of something
• 2:21
  like Goodfellas, like, you know, like a very high art mafia
• 2:25
  thriller. It's like, you know what?
• 2:26
  What if he was like a spaceman? Yeah, yes.
• 2:30
  Well, that's my first note that I have written down here about
• 2:34
  this movie. Is weird to cast Ray Liotta in a
• 2:38
  movie that's not? Goodfellas question mark.
• 2:40
  Yeah, like any other movie, I think he should just stay where
• 2:44
  he was in Goodfellas. Which that that being said,
• 2:48
  Raylo is a great actor. It's just like it was like, I
• 2:52
  don't know, I haven't seen him in much else like so it was like
• 2:55
  almost off putting to see him and just like standard sci-fi
• 2:59
  action movie. It's a weird.
• 3:01
  Fit it is. It is, and we'll get into it if
• 3:04
  it works for him or not. But I believe from some of my
• 3:09
  reading, I was doing that after watching the film that it was
• 3:12
  something that he wanted to do. Like it.
• 3:14
  Oh, OK Was like a goal of his to be like, you know, the lead in
• 3:19
  like a action film where he gets to play the hero.
• 3:23
  What's the what's the line from Goodfellas for?
• 3:25
  He's like, ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a gangster,
• 3:28
  but he's like, Nope, spaceman. Spaceman Yeah, this doesn't take
• 3:32
  place in space, actually. Are you messed up, Leota?
• 3:39
  I mean, he didn't. He didn't say that.
• 3:42
  Oh, OK. Sorry, I'm imprinting.
• 3:46
  You just want to be action hero man.
• 3:48
  Ever since I was a kid, I wanted Ray Leota to be a spaceman.
• 3:53
  To Infinity and beyond. Ray Liotta.
• 3:57
  Yeah, OK, we're on Earth. We're on Earth then.
• 3:59
  But it's still are we in the future?
• 4:01
  Yeah, so I'm this is this is the other thing I wanted to so the
• 4:04
  film opens with which these are always funny.
• 4:07
  Those films that were made in like the 80s, nineties and and
• 4:12
  they would always pick like a future date.
• 4:14
  You know, it's like the year is is this one is 2022.
• 4:19
  Oh recent. Yeah, well, that's, it's funny
• 4:21
  because I'm going to read it's it's short, so I'm going to read
• 4:24
  it verbatim. The the opening text, this one,
• 4:30
  it just might be the most. I think they they nailed it
• 4:32
  actually. So, so the phone just opens and
• 4:35
  it says in the year 2022, the international prison system is
• 4:40
  operated by private corporations.
• 4:43
  Criminals from all over the world are exploited at a profit.
• 4:47
  Prisons have become big businesses.
• 4:49
  That is 100% factually correct. Yeah, that's a, that's a news
• 4:54
  article that they've made. Yeah.
• 4:57
  No notes. They got that.
• 4:59
  No notes. Probably the most accurate one
• 5:04
  of those I've ever seen. Yeah, the prison industrial
• 5:08
  complex is a thing. Bummer.
• 5:11
  Bummer. So that was right away.
• 5:15
  Like I was just like, oh man. Cuz then the movie begins and,
• 5:19
  and, you know, it has a sort of like sci-fi aesthetic to it.
• 5:22
  And they're throwing Ray Liotta in this like futuristic prison.
• 5:25
  And, and there's like, like a robotic warden voice saying, you
• 5:30
  know, you're you're going to be here forever and all this stuff.
• 5:33
  And I'm like wow, I'm in for a fun time.
• 5:36
  Yep, who loves? Who loves anything more than a
• 5:40
  good old fashioned depressing prison movie?
• 5:44
  Yes it doesn't stay there though.
• 5:46
  It it goes to a different place. So we'll we'll get into that.
• 5:49
  But I mean, yeah, just right away I was like, Oh my God.
• 5:51
  Just like on a personal level, I'm like, this is one of my
• 5:54
  worst nightmares. So I'm.
• 5:56
  Like, Oh, yeah, just to be, to be, you know, convicted of all
• 6:01
  your crimes and to face justice or allegedly, allegedly,
• 6:06
  allegedly, allegedly. I just can't imagine actually
• 6:11
  paying for what I've done. Listen, listen.
• 6:18
  Yeah, Yeah. We can talk about that off
• 6:19
  airplane. We'll cut that.
• 6:20
  We'll cut. That off, yeah, yeah.
• 6:23
  But no, it was it was just like I was prepared to be horribly
• 6:28
  depressed the entire time watching this film.
• 6:30
  But then it like really early on just makes an interesting twist
• 6:35
  where and I'll I'll just kind of briefly get into the beginning
• 6:39
  of the story, I guess. But like, you know, really he's
• 6:42
  thrown in this in this future tech prison and he like right
• 6:46
  away has beef with like the warden and the warden to punish
• 6:52
  him. This is like his first, like
• 6:54
  step one. He's like, all right, this guy
• 6:56
  stepped out of line, throw him on the island, and then they
• 7:00
  just immediately take him out of this prison and drop him off on
• 7:04
  like a forest island nearby. And I'm like, Oh well, this is
• 7:10
  100 times better like. Yeah, that seems like a
• 7:12
  significant improvement. Yeah, I was like, why would you
• 7:15
  ever like this? Is the punishment like you get?
• 7:18
  Yeah, if you act out of line one more time, we're going to let
• 7:21
  you go. Exactly.
• 7:23
  I was just like, I was like, wait, this feels really
• 7:27
  backwards. This is a really pretty island
• 7:28
  he's on now, like, and that's where the rest of the film takes
• 7:31
  place. So I was like, OK, good.
• 7:33
  OK, all right. This is great.
• 7:37
  Yeah, relax. Nothing else bad will happen.
• 7:40
  Yeah, yeah. And then and, you know, and
• 7:42
  then, then it, it, it gets into things and you see why that's
• 7:45
  that's a bad thing. But I couldn't help thinking
• 7:47
  that the entire time I was waiting for that point where I
• 7:50
  was like, yeah. But like, personally, at what
• 7:52
  point would you rather be back in that prison?
• 7:55
  You know what I mean? And I was like.
• 7:56
  I don't think I ever really got there.
• 7:58
  I'm going to assume there's some other side to this where it's
• 8:01
  like you're on an island full of dinosaurs or mutant monsters or
• 8:05
  something, but Even so, fresh air can't beat the fresh air,
• 8:08
  dude. Fresh air, lush greenery, like
• 8:11
  you're just like, especially because of the way that they
• 8:16
  like literally as these prisoners are being LED in,
• 8:18
  they're like, you're going to die here.
• 8:19
  You're never leaving. And it's like, right, Well, I
• 8:22
  mean, yeah, I guess I'd rather like, live my last moments on
• 8:26
  this beautiful island than in that.
• 8:28
  Disgusting. Prison cell.
• 8:29
  They forgot to show the part where they're like, if you're on
• 8:31
  your best behavior, you'll die in prison.
• 8:34
  Yeah, exactly, exactly you. Step out of line.
• 8:40
  I swear we're going to send you on the first train out of here.
• 8:42
  And they're like, no, wait. Oh, no.
• 8:44
  So, yeah, yeah. So that was that was good.
• 8:51
  That was good. I was, I was immediately, I was
• 8:53
  like, I was, I saw the, I saw the, the points total going
• 8:56
  down. You were like quickly spiraling
• 9:00
  towards grifter's levels. And then I was just like, OK,
• 9:02
  all right, all right. That has been the implicit
• 9:05
  threat in our episode so far, is you towing the light of making
• 9:08
  me watch weird art films and me just giving you really sad
• 9:12
  movies. Yeah, yeah.
• 9:15
  I was like you do. You got me again.
• 9:18
  Take that making me watch fallen angels I'm.
• 9:24
  Going to keep them coming. Yeah.
• 9:26
  So anyway, that is is where we go from there.
• 9:30
  OK, so no escape, not a huge bummer, just that's a that's an
• 9:34
  inciting action as he goes to jail and then goes to some sort
• 9:36
  of prison island. Yes, which I get like, I don't
• 9:40
  know, maybe the movie was marketed that way actually, but
• 9:43
  going in blind, like that's not the direction I expected to go.
• 9:46
  And he's like, oh, we're it's no escape from this island and like
• 9:51
  to get into it. The danger of this island that
• 9:54
  he encounters immediately is all the other prisoners that have
• 9:59
  been sent there have sort of formed like gangs on the island.
• 10:04
  And they're like cannibalistic because it's sort of revealed
• 10:09
  through the story that like this prison ward.
• 10:12
  And this is not, this is like something he does for fun or to
• 10:16
  like punish these prisoners. Like he's not supposed to be
• 10:18
  doing this. But this is his kind of like
• 10:21
  special form of punishment or entertainment for himself.
• 10:24
  Is is sending these prisoners out onto this island and just
• 10:27
  letting them fend for themselves.
• 10:29
  Yeah, he's just doing a little Squid Game or something on the
• 10:31
  side, just. On the side, just a little side
• 10:33
  action for the word. Side he gets his paperwork done.
• 10:37
  OK, jeez. Somebody that gets it done.
• 10:41
  Yeah, it gets done, I guess. But you know, just let me have
• 10:44
  the Squid Game. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 10:47
  So right away Ray Liotta encounters these these group of
• 10:51
  of cannibalistic prisoners that have been left behind on this
• 10:54
  island. And the leader of this group
• 10:58
  that he encounters. I, I want to highlight him right
• 11:00
  away because he is without a doubt the highlight of the film.
• 11:04
  OK, is it's the actor's name is Stuart Wilson.
• 11:09
  And from his first line of dialogue, I was like, that's the
• 11:12
  bad guy from Ninja Turtles three.
• 11:15
  Wait, what? Yes, he was.
• 11:18
  He was. Walker was his name in that film
• 11:20
  in. Oh, the white guy bad guy from
• 11:22
  Ninja Turtles 3. The guy with the birds.
• 11:24
  The guy selling them the gunpowder and stuff, OK.
• 11:28
  Interesting. Yeah he was also probably more
• 11:31
  like well known for being. I think he was also the bad guy
• 11:35
  in the Mask of Zorro. That's arguably more well known
• 11:38
  than Ninja Turtles 3. Of them, I'd say exactly.
• 11:41
  I know my audience. I know who I'm talking to here,
• 11:43
  yeah. Exactly.
• 11:44
  Ninja Turtles. Let's hone in on that.
• 11:47
  Yes, yes. And he's great in everything.
• 11:51
  I've seen him in actually all three of those films.
• 11:53
  So like. There you go.
• 11:56
  But he's so good in this. I mean, he he walks that line so
• 12:01
  well. But between being just like the
• 12:04
  kind of fun, goofy villain while still being genuinely
• 12:08
  intimidating, which is is a narrow and difficult line to
• 12:11
  walk. Actually, like some villains,
• 12:15
  you know, especially with their performances, they might if you
• 12:18
  just sway just a little bit. It's like this guy's too
• 12:19
  likable. He's too fun, you know, or he's,
• 12:21
  you know, or he's being too wacky and it's just like not
• 12:25
  landing anywhere really. But he's like perfect in this.
• 12:29
  And I was like, oh, this is awesome.
• 12:30
  He just brings so much charisma to this whole thing, which is
• 12:34
  this film really needed. So like, that's why I just
• 12:37
  wanted to get to him right away because I'm like, he holds this
• 12:40
  whole thing together with his. Character and his performance,
• 12:45
  because again, we're always picking based on casts.
• 12:47
  And I knew that I thought you were going to talk about Lance
• 12:50
  Hendrickson because he's in this, right?
• 12:52
  Yes, yeah, Lance Hendrickson is great.
• 12:54
  What? What are you most familiar with
• 12:57
  him for? For me Lance Hendrickson is kind
• 12:59
  of just sci-fi franchise guy. I think he has some sort of
• 13:03
  accolade where he's like the only actor to be killed on
• 13:07
  screen by a xenomorph, the Predator and some other famous
• 13:13
  sci-fi. Oh, maybe it's the thing or
• 13:16
  something like he has been. Killed in so many, like famous
• 13:19
  sci-fi movies that it's like he's checked, he's checked a
• 13:22
  bunch of boxes. Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:24
  He he yeah, he's he's great in this as well.
• 13:27
  Like the first thing I thought because his voice is so
• 13:29
  distinctive. And again, another sci-fi
• 13:32
  property he's connected to is he's he's the voice of Admiral
• 13:35
  Hackett in the Mass Effect games.
• 13:38
  Oh yeah, I never placed that. But you're right, that's totally
• 13:41
  him. Yeah, yeah.
• 13:42
  So like, I was like, again, like the first line, he spoke.
• 13:45
  I was like, Oh yeah, that guy. Like people would probably be
• 13:48
  most familiar with him from the Alien films I think.
• 13:51
  Cuz he was in the second one. He was an alien, so he was their
• 13:55
  like Android guy. Yes.
• 13:56
  Which people love aliens both as a statement and as the title of
• 14:01
  a movie. Right, right.
• 14:03
  Yeah, just generally speaking. Just generally, they're a fan.
• 14:06
  OK, cool. So I'm glad that the cast helps
• 14:09
  'cause I will say it's a coin flip for me whether Ray Liotta
• 14:12
  would add or detract from this particular movie 'cause he's a
• 14:15
  great actor. But I could see him not meshing.
• 14:17
  So here's the thing with with with Ray, our good buddy Ray, he
• 14:24
  his performance was reminding me, especially in the first
• 14:27
  half. He kind of there are some
• 14:29
  moments where he sort of breaks free from this.
• 14:31
  But it was reminding me of exactly what you said about
• 14:34
  Bruce Willis in the Jackal, where his character is, is for a
• 14:40
  majority of the film just sort of this like silent brooding
• 14:44
  type. And it just looks like Ray Leona
• 14:48
  just showed up and stared at the camera that day, like.
• 14:51
  You know what I mean? I've seen that in many other
• 14:54
  films too. You need, you need either very
• 14:57
  competent directing or something communicated to the audience
• 15:02
  that lets you know what they might be thinking about for that
• 15:05
  to ever work. Because otherwise it does feel
• 15:07
  like they're just not really invested in the performance.
• 15:09
  Like, I'm sure Ray Leota had a lot of thoughts in his head
• 15:11
  about what this guy's going on about, but if the movie doesn't
• 15:15
  set you up, you're just like, what's he doing?
• 15:17
  Why isn't he talking? Yes, exactly.
• 15:20
  And the way the movie is structured and like, given the
• 15:23
  premise to that, these are all people that have wound up in
• 15:26
  this prison facility. There's like several characters
• 15:30
  along the way that you meet. And then a few of them have
• 15:34
  scenes where they kind of reveal why they got sent there in the
• 15:38
  1st place. And, you know, people are kind
• 15:41
  of trying to figure out why Ray Liotta got sent there.
• 15:44
  They do say actually in the beginning of the film that he
• 15:48
  was in the military and he killed his commanding officer
• 15:52
  and that's why he got sent there.
• 15:56
  And then there's a lot of dialogue about him, you know,
• 15:59
  being very anti authority, which is why he gets it into it with
• 16:02
  the warden right away at the beginning of the film.
• 16:05
  But they don't, it's not till the end of the film where it's
• 16:08
  kind of revealed like why he did that and why he kind of has this
• 16:12
  like PTSD. And so it's kind of like, like
• 16:16
  looking backwards it, it informs why he's acting the way he is
• 16:20
  for most of the movie. But for the front half of that
• 16:24
  movie, it's just like Ray's just giving you nothing, you know?
• 16:27
  It's nothing. Yeah.
• 16:30
  You need to have like, louder characteristics surrounding the
• 16:33
  performance too. Like, I think an example of this
• 16:35
  that works is Kurt Russell in Escape from New York, the snake
• 16:41
  Plissken character. Yeah.
• 16:42
  Because absolutely is really quiet, very Moody.
• 16:47
  There's a bit and escape from New York like somewhere in the
• 16:50
  second act where he's like in a similar boat.
• 16:52
  He's in like a prison island essentially trying to track
• 16:55
  somebody down and he just finds like a folding chair and just
• 16:57
  sits in it because he's just tired.
• 16:59
  And he's just like man. But it works.
• 17:01
  It's like unspoken charisma. But that's partially because
• 17:05
  he's like kind of cartoonish in how he's portrayed over all.
• 17:09
  He feels like an anime character.
• 17:11
  If it's too grounded, like sounds like maybe Ray Liotta is
• 17:14
  indefinitely with the Jackal, when I talked about that, you
• 17:18
  just have nothing to latch onto. It's not cool, it's not like
• 17:21
  brooding. It's just nothing.
• 17:23
  Yeah, yeah, 'cause like an Escape from New York.
• 17:26
  I, I just love that movie. That's that's like one of my all
• 17:28
  time favorites, like, and, and it's exactly like you said,
• 17:30
  it's, it's cartoonish. It's like, can't be in a way,
• 17:32
  because something that helps in that situation with Kurt
• 17:37
  Russell's character is everywhere he goes in that
• 17:40
  movie. People know him or have heard of
• 17:42
  him like even. Though it's like the point of
• 17:44
  absurdity. To the point of absurdity.
• 17:46
  It's like, this is a prison. Why would anyone here know who
• 17:49
  he is? But instead, every single
• 17:51
  person, they're like, oh, Snake Pliskins here.
• 17:52
  Like, you know. Man, but yeah, and even people
• 17:56
  who shouldn't be excited about anything, it's like, oh, we, we
• 17:58
  found our own like, cannibal corner over here.
• 18:00
  But like the head cannibals, they're like, ah, snake.
• 18:02
  I love that guy. No, you don't.
• 18:03
  Why? Why?
• 18:04
  Yeah, like it's. It's insane.
• 18:08
  Even we talked in an episode not long ago about the movie
• 18:11
  Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze, and he's another one who's like
• 18:14
  a fairly quiet character, but his reputation precedes him.
• 18:17
  People are talking about him ripping throats out for some
• 18:19
  reason. There's lore about him.
• 18:23
  And then the characterization is like, how much of that is true?
• 18:26
  Do we get anything for Ray Leona from the other character's
• 18:28
  perspective, or is he just some guy?
• 18:30
  No, it's it's like from the beginning of the film, it's like
• 18:34
  the warden has his eye on. It's like literally the the
• 18:37
  beginning of the film is, is they're like taking like a train
• 18:39
  full of these prisoners into this sci-fi complex.
• 18:44
  And he's like looking over his profile and he's you know, like,
• 18:47
  oh, you know, this guy has all this combat experience and you
• 18:51
  know, it sets him up as like action military man.
• 18:54
  And some of the other characters comments on that too.
• 18:58
  And then you kind of see it with the, with the way like,
• 19:00
  especially once he gets to the island and even before then,
• 19:03
  like, you know, the, the warden, there's a scene where he's
• 19:06
  trying to like get Ray Liotta to like fall in line and he kind of
• 19:11
  takes his, his cellmate and, and wants Ray Leota to like tase him
• 19:16
  with this thing, you know, to like punish him.
• 19:19
  And then Ray Leota like quickly like takes one of the guards
• 19:22
  guns and like holds it up to the warden's head, You know, so it's
• 19:25
  like you see right away that he that he has this kind of like
• 19:28
  how capable he is in that manner.
• 19:31
  But it's it's it's nothing like like those other films we're
• 19:36
  describing where it's like both of those sort of existed in a
• 19:41
  cartoonish universe, whereas this one tries to play it more
• 19:44
  grounded. So it just doesn't do as much of
• 19:49
  that heavy lifting to inform his character.
• 19:51
  I. Think right, so it definitely
• 19:52
  sounds like they tried to communicate character through
• 19:55
  action, but if you then drop him into a space with other
• 19:59
  charismatic performers and he still has to just be that guy.
• 20:03
  That's kind of a recipe for failure for your lead character.
• 20:06
  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, he gets to show
• 20:09
  later in the film like his character has this this PTSD.
• 20:13
  And so it's there's kind of like several scenes where we're in
• 20:16
  wherever he sees things like on fire, it's sort of like triggers
• 20:19
  that for him. And so he has these moments
• 20:23
  where he gets to emote, you know, and, and it's all just
• 20:26
  very like visual, like facial performance.
• 20:30
  And that's good. I'm like, well, this is what you
• 20:31
  bring Ray Leona in for? Right, a legit dramatic actor.
• 20:35
  Yeah, exactly. But it it yeah, it's just in
• 20:38
  those other moments, it's hard to get behind him as this sort
• 20:43
  of heroic lead because he's just not saying anything.
• 20:50
  You know, it's a kind of like you have no idea.
• 20:52
  And and I think that was kind of something I was thinking about.
• 20:54
  This movie, generally speaking, is like, you know, it's set in
• 20:57
  this sci-fi universe, but it doesn't do enough in my opinion
• 21:03
  to kind of show you like, like how this world works, you know,
• 21:07
  like what's going on. Especially since we spend the
• 21:10
  entire film just on this island and then that brief like time in
• 21:14
  the beginning where they're just in this sci-fi prison place.
• 21:18
  It's like, I don't understand what this world is, you know,
• 21:22
  like, or where. So it's like, I don't even know
• 21:24
  where this character is coming from.
• 21:26
  So I don't have enough. There's just very little to
• 21:28
  latch on to and clock the time to book.
• 21:33
  This one was in the opening credits.
• 21:35
  It said it was based on a novel. Yeah.
• 21:38
  Gosh, I think I've given you almost nothing but book movies.
• 21:41
  I I'm not even doing that on purpose.
• 21:43
  Well, it's a common thing. I mean, that's, I mean, we've
• 21:45
  said it before, like, you know, that's since the history of
• 21:49
  cinema they've been adapted from, you know.
• 21:52
  Man, on paper this looks like such a like action movie script.
• 21:55
  It did not look like a book treatment.
• 21:57
  That is actually a surprise for me.
• 21:59
  I. Will say from what I saw I it I
• 22:02
  don't think it's like a 1 to 1 adaptation though.
• 22:07
  I think it was maybe loosely adapted from a book and maybe
• 22:12
  that's where things kind of got lost almost because.
• 22:17
  I could see that. It just feels like a confusing
• 22:19
  world, you know? It's like, I, I just don't
• 22:22
  understand, like actually to, to kind of get into once he's on
• 22:27
  the island, you know, he, he, he encounters Stuart Wilson Walker
• 22:33
  from Ninja Turtles and his, his kind of band of cannibals and he
• 22:37
  escapes from them and then he finds the other camp, which is
• 22:41
  where Lance Hedrickson and Ernie Hudson are.
• 22:44
  Oh, Ernie Hudson's here. I forgot we got a Ghostbuster.
• 22:47
  Yeah, he doesn't do much. He just kind of shows.
• 22:50
  Up. He doesn't.
• 22:50
  He doesn't bring his proton back.
• 22:52
  No, I mean, he's fine. Actually.
• 22:53
  He's he's just gives a very serviceable performance and and
• 22:58
  he's great. You know, he he just has sort of
• 22:59
  a natural charisma to him. So it was, it was nice to kind
• 23:02
  of have him be a part of the your little good guy group.
• 23:06
  But he meets up with them and and they're on the part of the
• 23:09
  island where, like, the prisoners there have formed like
• 23:12
  a little community. They've like built little huts
• 23:15
  and they're sort of living off the land and like farming.
• 23:17
  And they're like, oh, yeah, You know, like we kind of are almost
• 23:20
  at war with this other clan over here that the the cannibals and
• 23:28
  Ray Liotta's like, I got to get out of here.
• 23:29
  I got to go off this island, you know, And they're like, well,
• 23:31
  why not just stay here? I mean, you know, you have this
• 23:33
  little community here and throughout the whole movie, I'm,
• 23:37
  I'm thinking the same thing that they're saying.
• 23:39
  I'm like, yeah, why not just stay here?
• 23:40
  Like, I don't know what the outside world is.
• 23:42
  I don't know. You know, it's like you.
• 23:43
  Are that's a great point. You can't make a prison story
• 23:46
  and not strongly communicate what is just outside that
• 23:50
  barrier for the characters. Like you need to know what
• 23:54
  they're envisioning as. Like as soon as I get out of
• 23:56
  here, I'm going to go, you know, to this place or to see this
• 24:00
  person. Yeah.
• 24:01
  And it's like we have no idea what this cuz, you know, this
• 24:03
  this film was made in the 90s, but it's set in this future,
• 24:06
  2022 that they've envisioned. What does the rest of that world
• 24:09
  look like outside of where we are in this story?
• 24:13
  And it's revealed at the end, the reason that he really wants
• 24:18
  to get off the island is to sort of reveal to the world, to the
• 24:22
  public the reason that he, you know, went AWOL and killed his
• 24:26
  commanding officer was because his commanding officer, like,
• 24:31
  ordered him and his troops to go do this horrible thing.
• 24:35
  And like, that just felt kind of weak to me, you know, cuz it's
• 24:38
  like not revealed up until the end.
• 24:40
  And it's like you spend the rest of the time trying to
• 24:43
  understand, I guess, the perspective of this character
• 24:47
  and what he's aiming to do because he's just constantly
• 24:50
  saying, like, I got to get out of here.
• 24:52
  And then the other characters are like, why?
• 24:54
  And then as the audience, I'm asking the same thing, you know,
• 24:57
  like it's not. Yeah, it's not really personal
• 24:59
  enough. Like I know like logistically,
• 25:01
  yes, that is a good reason. But that's something you could
• 25:03
  reveal earlier on. And I feel like you need like
• 25:06
  it's, it'd be an easy thing to do, but it should just be like,
• 25:10
  I got to get back to my daughter or something, you know?
• 25:13
  Yeah, exactly. Give him something.
• 25:14
  Give him something relatable like that, you know, that that a
• 25:19
  general audience member can attach to and he just has
• 25:22
  nothing like there's nothing to kind of like latch onto with
• 25:26
  this character. And so I, I think it suffers for
• 25:29
  that. Yeah, for sure.
• 25:31
  Because it just had me sitting there asking so many follow up
• 25:33
  questions in my head, you know, just trying to like understand
• 25:37
  the, the world of the film. Yeah, which that's a problem
• 25:40
  with editing to like that's so much the rhythm of a film
• 25:44
  arrangement is like giving the audience a question to Mull
• 25:47
  over, but then giving them the answer in the right amount of
• 25:50
  time so that they're not like. Distracted thinking about it.
• 25:53
  Totally, totally. Yeah.
• 25:54
  Because like I said, they're doing this with all the
• 25:55
  characters. You know, it's kind of like,
• 25:57
  like Lance Henrickson's character is sort of like the
• 26:01
  leader of this this village community that they've set up on
• 26:05
  the other side of the island. And everyone kind of like, you
• 26:08
  know, reveres him. But like the characters talk
• 26:11
  about like, oh, they say he killed his wife, but he claims
• 26:15
  he didn't. And so then there's a scene
• 26:17
  between him and and Ray Leota later where he like admits that
• 26:21
  he did, you know, and he kind of has scenes with several of the
• 26:24
  characters where they're like revealing their back story that
• 26:27
  way. And then you get Ray Liotta's
• 26:29
  version of that like near the very end.
• 26:31
  I will say I don't like the trope where the people in prison
• 26:34
  all did a bad thing except the POV character who like did a
• 26:37
  morally justified thing. I think he should have also done
• 26:40
  a bad thing. Well, that's something he kind
• 26:42
  of did because. Yeah, I guess he kind.
• 26:45
  Of he was ordered to do it, but he did do it and that like
• 26:50
  that's why. He did do the war crime.
• 26:53
  He did. Oh, for sure, he did.
• 26:54
  Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought he was like, no.
• 26:57
  And then he he shot the guy. So he did the war crime and then
• 27:00
  OK, never mind retraction. Yeah, his.
• 27:02
  Version of the story that he tells in the film is like he was
• 27:07
  like him and his guys were ordered into like just like a
• 27:10
  peaceful village and they like massacred everybody there and
• 27:16
  he's like, oh, I knew, you know, I tried telling my commanding
• 27:19
  officer that, you know, there was no enemy troops here and
• 27:22
  that we shouldn't do this, but he ordered us in anyway.
• 27:25
  And so then him and his men, they actually went and did it.
• 27:28
  And then when he came back, that's when he like killed his
• 27:32
  commanding officer and then. Sounds very Vietnam coded.
• 27:37
  It felt that way, which again though, but it's like, what is
• 27:39
  this world that we're in? Like tell me more, you know?
• 27:42
  And was. This was this our world, but
• 27:44
  just further in the future? Or was it a world where like
• 27:47
  that progressed completely differently and that's where I
• 27:50
  won Massachusetts. OK, is.
• 27:52
  Massachusetts even a thing? Did it ever in?
• 27:54
  Massachusetts there. Can I go there now?
• 27:57
  Is that where he's going? Where is she?
• 27:59
  Is she safe? She.
• 28:02
  Well, that was that was Anakin. That was his.
• 28:05
  Oh, oh, oh, OK, OK. Sorry I.
• 28:07
  Missed a perfect a good Star Wars reference?
• 28:09
  That's on. Me just left me hanging there.
• 28:12
  It's fine. I'm sorry I.
• 28:13
  Thought you were just really personifying Massachusetts and
• 28:15
  she and I was like, all right, sorry, please continue.
• 28:19
  It's fine, it's fine. But that to me felt like I like
• 28:24
  again, I just felt like felt myself asking these questions
• 28:27
  and I was like, was this lost in translation from the book?
• 28:29
  Was literally like more of a back story given here and like
• 28:32
  is when this is adapted to film? Is that what we're losing?
• 28:35
  But anyway, I don't want to, like, harp on that too much, but
• 28:38
  it was just something I felt like kept coming up throughout
• 28:41
  the film. Yeah, I guess I'm trying to, I'm
• 28:45
  trying to encapsulate my understanding of the film so
• 28:47
  far. I think we've touched a lot on
• 28:48
  performances and character motivations.
• 28:52
  Is it like a just scene by scene?
• 28:56
  Is this like an action sci-fi movie or is it more of just like
• 28:58
  a drama? No, it's for sure an action
• 29:00
  sci-fi, and that's something I wanted to get into because there
• 29:03
  are like epic action sequences in this.
• 29:08
  Yeah, yeah. And those are actually really
• 29:11
  well done. They're really well shot, really
• 29:12
  well executed. Great 90s like stunt
• 29:17
  performances, explosions, like all that good stuff.
• 29:23
  And you know, it comes from these kind of like warring
• 29:26
  tribes essentially on this island.
• 29:30
  And there's a lot of like back and forth with like Ray Liotta
• 29:33
  and Stuart Wilson's character, the leader of the the enemy
• 29:37
  group. So it does set all that up for
• 29:43
  like if that's what you went in looking for, you would not be
• 29:46
  disappointed. You get plenty of.
• 29:47
  OK, good that say you don't care about these characters and
• 29:52
  plots, you just want to see action.
• 29:55
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was genuinely,
• 29:57
  there was like some camera moves, especially where I was
• 30:01
  like, whoa, that like there's caught me off guard because they
• 30:03
  were so like fun and interesting.
• 30:04
  Like at one point there's like Ray Liotta, like there's this
• 30:07
  dude, like running at him and like, the camera is like
• 30:10
  following behind the guy and like Ray Liotta like grabs his
• 30:13
  head and like slams it into like a pole.
• 30:15
  And like the camera like moves with the person who like as he's
• 30:19
  being thrown. And it was, I'm just like, this
• 30:21
  is great. This is action that is
• 30:23
  incredibly well shot. Especially for the time, that's
• 30:26
  easy to do now with camera tech and drone shots instead.
• 30:30
  But to do that with a camera rig in 1994, that's impressive.
• 30:35
  Absolutely shot on film and just in what looks like, you know, I
• 30:39
  don't know where this location was, but visually, I mean it
• 30:43
  was, you know, they were they were in like a jungle or forest
• 30:46
  of some kind, like as it was supposed to be this island and
• 30:50
  with really impressive like set design too, because you know, it
• 30:54
  was like this kind of makeshift community that they built up.
• 30:57
  So it was like like amazing production design there.
• 31:00
  Awesome. OK, cool.
• 31:01
  See, I, I hadn't got, I hadn't gleaned that yet because we
• 31:03
  focused a lot on narrative, but I'm glad that the, the sci-fi
• 31:07
  elements kind of kind of landed. Totally.
• 31:09
  And and to touch on that a little bit more too with like
• 31:12
  how well the action was shot. The director of this film is
• 31:16
  Martin Campbell, who was the director of both Goldeneye and
• 31:21
  Casino Royale 2006. Casino Royale, which is.
• 31:24
  Oh. OK, an amazing like that's like
• 31:27
  the best James Bond movie for me.
• 31:30
  Personally, I would I would say it's maybe the only good one
• 31:33
  I'll put that on. Goldeneye.
• 31:35
  Goldeneye is fun too, but but maybe Goldeneye is more
• 31:37
  associated with like the video game.
• 31:39
  I think some of the movies are fun, but in terms of ones that
• 31:42
  actually are just like good films, good to great films,
• 31:45
  Casino Royale for most 6 is like the best.
• 31:48
  Anyway, I'll get off that soapbox.
• 31:49
  Please continue. No, I don't that's I don't
• 31:52
  entirely disagree. But as as I mentioned too that
• 31:57
  you know, he did Goldeneye as well, which is perhaps more well
• 32:00
  known for the video game adaptation.
• 32:02
  This movie, which might be a first for the podcast, has a
• 32:05
  video game adaptation. Funny, really.
• 32:09
  Yeah, on the Super Nintendo. Super Nintendo.
• 32:12
  OK, don't mind me, I'm just Googling Super Nintendo ROMs. I
• 32:17
  was, so I haven't looked up any like footage or anything yet,
• 32:21
  but I was like, no kidding. There's a No Escape video game
• 32:25
  that's really interesting. Okay, we should we should put a
• 32:29
  pin in that and we should, if we have time, take a look at the No
• 32:33
  Escape video game, maybe for a future like update.
• 32:36
  Yeah, right. Like I was like, I kind of want
• 32:38
  to play that like. Of course I want to play that.
• 32:40
  I wonder if Ray Leota does the voice work.
• 32:42
  I love when they make film actors, like step into a trailer
• 32:46
  for 30 minutes to do all the dialogue for the game adaptation
• 32:48
  and they're just so sleepy. Like, what was it?
• 32:52
  I think it was the Spider Man games with like Tobey Maguire,
• 32:55
  Spider Man, If you play those, he delivers all his lines.
• 32:57
  Like he's just like half asleep. Is it actually Toby doing the
• 33:01
  lines? Yeah, they brought them in
• 33:03
  probably while they were filming for whatever the movie was.
• 33:05
  And then he's just like, I'll get you, Goblin.
• 33:09
  Well, it's funny to bring that up too, because like again, I
• 33:11
  was looking up Ray Liotta. I was like, so other than
• 33:13
  Goodfellas this man has done other roles I assume.
• 33:17
  Probably. Probably not just Goodfellas.
• 33:20
  Yeah, yeah. But he's he's one of the the
• 33:23
  main characters in one of the GTA games.
• 33:26
  I want to say like San Andreas maybe.
• 33:30
  Oh, he. Is.
• 33:31
  I knew that actually, I'd just forgotten.
• 33:33
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure that that's come across
• 33:35
  my desk at some point, but I just and also.
• 33:39
  News from the front Ray Liotta is in Grand Theft Auto.
• 33:44
  Yeah, back in 2002, yeah. Your desk was small because you
• 33:47
  were like 14. But yeah, I was like, oh, that's
• 33:52
  fun. So a lot of like unexpected
• 33:56
  video game tie into this like. OK.
• 33:59
  And if you look at the cover art of this film, it almost does
• 34:02
  look like I'm like, I feel like you could just easily just take
• 34:05
  that, put it on the box art of a video game and sell it based on
• 34:09
  that alone. Because I doubt there was many
• 34:13
  people that like, went and saw this film and then were
• 34:16
  clamoring for like, wow, I can't wait till the game comes out,
• 34:18
  obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:20
  It's more so it's always the afterthought of like, oh, I did
• 34:22
  see that movie. I guess I'll play this nest
• 34:25
  game. You know what I'm going to do?
• 34:27
  I'm going to be, I'm going to give myself some work.
• 34:28
  When I put out, when we put these out on YouTube, we have
• 34:31
  the video version. I will try to splice in a couple
• 34:34
  of quick screenshots from No Escape the video game just so
• 34:37
  people can see what that's about, because I've not yet
• 34:39
  looked at it, but I'm sure it's funny.
• 34:41
  Yeah, yes, please do. We'll we'll both do some
• 34:44
  independent research into. I'd love to actually play it
• 34:47
  honestly. That would be like just really
• 34:49
  fun. We'll start up our Meet Your
• 34:52
  Double feature Twitch account and we'll play Noah.
• 34:56
  Exclusively just that one. Just any other film that has a
• 34:59
  video game adaptation, we'll just add that on there.
• 35:03
  I wonder if any of them do like was there like a soldier game?
• 35:07
  Not from what I saw, I mean I usually try and do some like
• 35:11
  extra research after I watch the films and so I didn't see any
• 35:16
  soldier video game tie insurance.
• 35:19
  OK, good to know. I'm that is kind of a tangent,
• 35:22
  kind of not because it's about to fill, but now I'm just
• 35:24
  thinking about the game. No, yeah, it's super.
• 35:26
  Interesting though. Yeah, I was just like, wow,
• 35:28
  that's like I said, maybe a first for the pod.
• 35:30
  I think it is. Possibly a first.
• 35:32
  Unless Rushmore has a video game adaptation.
• 35:34
  Rushmore. Has a video game.
• 35:36
  A visual novel of some kind. The point and click Wes Anderson
• 35:40
  game. OK so now the other to do for
• 35:44
  editor me is to get the Twitch account Meet your double feature
• 35:47
  before somebody snipes it. Sure.
• 35:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true.
• 35:51
  That's true. We got to jump on that.
• 35:53
  Got to get on that. OK cool.
• 35:54
  OK, OK, to recap my understanding.
• 35:58
  Some good performances for No Escape.
• 36:01
  Maybe a disappointing lead performance from Ray Liotta.
• 36:03
  Not really his fault, just not enough material.
• 36:06
  Awesome sci-fi action. A video game adaptation.
• 36:10
  Yes. Those are the the tenants so
• 36:13
  far. Is there any other like area of
• 36:16
  the filmmaking or or just the movies plotting that you want to
• 36:19
  go through? What?
• 36:20
  Well, one other thing that is for sure a first for the
• 36:23
  podcast, maybe a first for me ever in a film that I've seen,
• 36:29
  is this movie does not have a single woman in it in any
• 36:36
  capacity at all like on screen. Wow.
• 36:40
  That. Just zero.
• 36:44
  And, and so from what I read when they were shopping the film
• 36:50
  around to some of the major studios, that was the reason
• 36:55
  that the film got shut down like this.
• 36:58
  This this film was pitched to to some of the like, you know, to
• 37:02
  to be a major kind of blockbuster release because
• 37:05
  that's the type of film that it is.
• 37:08
  But the studio heads or producers or whoever was in
• 37:12
  charge of making this decisions was like, there's no women in
• 37:15
  the film at all, period. Like, so they're like, they
• 37:18
  passed on it because of that. Yeah.
• 37:21
  And so it forced them to go with in independent film production
• 37:26
  company that had only done like two other films up until that
• 37:29
  point. It was called Savoy Pictures.
• 37:33
  Interesting that yeah, I can't think of an example.
• 37:37
  I understand that there are stories that are about groups of
• 37:40
  men for very specific reasons, but to not even have like I'm
• 37:44
  picturing like flashbacks to Ray Leona's wife on a beach and then
• 37:47
  under a bed sheet or something. You know, just the usual imagery
• 37:51
  for like, dead wife, yes. Or or like running along the
• 37:55
  beach with some kind of like scarf or something flowing.
• 37:57
  Behind yeah, like a big flowy dress and then they're just
• 38:00
  like, but can you tell me anything about your wife?
• 38:02
  And then he's like the dress and the hair.
• 38:04
  It's like but what what she like?
• 38:06
  And she smelled like seagulls smell.
• 38:10
  Like. Wait, what?
• 38:15
  Took a minute to register? OK, I, I just really, I just
• 38:20
  thought about that now that that's how men in movies like
• 38:23
  think about their dead wives is not anything they said.
• 38:26
  Usually these scenes are muted. It's just like, ah, she was
• 38:28
  talking about something, but she she was on the beach.
• 38:33
  Yeah, none of that. Nothing like.
• 38:35
  And it's like there was an opportunity too.
• 38:38
  Like there's like, because while they're on the island, it's sort
• 38:41
  of cutting back and forth at times between this like control
• 38:45
  room where like the warden of the prison is like monitoring
• 38:47
  them and there's people working there in that control room.
• 38:51
  And I'm like, there was a an opportunity for even an extra in
• 38:55
  this scene to be a woman, but Nope, it is.
• 38:57
  All None. Yeah.
• 38:59
  Yeah. Have we looked at the crew?
• 39:00
  Were there any women in the crew?
• 39:02
  I would I would assume as much. But it wasn't just a mandate,
• 39:06
  no. Yeah, in terms of all a mandate,
• 39:09
  yeah, it was definitely mandate. It was all men.
• 39:11
  But in terms of like. Dates.
• 39:14
  That's why there's no. Way.
• 39:16
  Yeah, exactly. In terms of on screen
• 39:18
  characters, no. Which, wow, yeah.
• 39:21
  I was like, man, maybe, like maybe there's some obscure art
• 39:25
  film I've seen that that had the only men in it, but this might
• 39:29
  be the first movie I've ever seen in terms of a feature
• 39:31
  length film that was strictly all men.
• 39:34
  Now I get why you called Massachusetts a she You were
• 39:36
  just trying to get some inclusion.
• 39:38
  Yes, yes, exactly. I was like, no, no, there's too,
• 39:43
  too much testosterone in here. Yeah, can a movie fail the
• 39:46
  Bechdel test if there's no women in in the first place?
• 39:49
  Wow. Oh, wait.
• 39:51
  No, Yeah, yeah. Because that's the first part.
• 39:53
  That's the part they usually get, because that's the what is
• 39:56
  it? It's you pass the Bechdel test
• 39:57
  if there's more than one woman in the story, which no escape
• 40:02
  has already failed. And then it's supposed to be, do
• 40:04
  the women talk to each other? And do they talk about something
• 40:07
  other than a man or a relationship?
• 40:09
  And no escape was like, well, we're not going to clear those
• 40:11
  other two hurdles, so let's just skip this first.
• 40:13
  One just completely bypass the whole conversation.
• 40:16
  What? That's weird.
• 40:17
  I I again, I get it's based on a book.
• 40:20
  I can't imagine the author was like, if I see a woman in this
• 40:24
  movie, you're getting your, you know, IP rights revoked.
• 40:27
  It just seems. Weird.
• 40:29
  What? I mean, it was enough of a
• 40:31
  sticking point that like, the studios rejected the film.
• 40:33
  And I can't say I blame them at all because it's noticeable.
• 40:36
  Like very early on. It's like, wow, this is just all
• 40:40
  dudes, like just nothing. But I'm like, I get that it's.
• 40:46
  That's not even good from an advertising perspective.
• 40:48
  I'm thinking of the movie cynical, cynical version of like
• 40:52
  a studio executive who would probably look at this movie
• 40:55
  that's marketed towards a male audience because it's like
• 40:57
  sci-fi action and would probably be like, well, we need like a
• 41:00
  woman to put on the cover. And then they'll go see, you
• 41:04
  know, that's like the most base marketing for a movie like this.
• 41:07
  And they said, no, we're in it for the craft.
• 41:11
  We're not in it for cheap, cheap advertising purposes.
• 41:15
  This is about dudes going to jail.
• 41:17
  This is about man dates. OK Man dates on the 1st, 1st
• 41:22
  Manosphere film 1994. Just it was.
• 41:27
  Really. Like, yeah, I don't know.
• 41:30
  It was, it was kind of shocking, honestly, like.
• 41:34
  Even we've done better than that.
• 41:36
  My wife does our introductions at the beginning of our
• 41:38
  episodes. This is a two person show and
• 41:40
  we've had a woman on it. Yes, yeah.
• 41:46
  I was just like, I was like, wow.
• 41:49
  Like, like nothing like I was expecting at some point because,
• 41:54
  you know, again, it's like, like you were saying, it's it's that
• 41:57
  action movie formula. Even even if you're being very,
• 42:01
  like, cynical about it, it's just like, yeah, like, you would
• 42:05
  have thought they would have maybe tried to adapt the story
• 42:09
  in some way to include at least one woman in the film.
• 42:12
  But. Yeah, no, it feels like a
• 42:15
  reflection on the original author.
• 42:16
  Now I want to see what was going on with them.
• 42:18
  I mean, it's like, I guess, but they're like, they're like no
• 42:23
  prison. No, it's all dudes prison.
• 42:25
  Science fiction Future prison islands can't have women.
• 42:29
  But hey, you know, like I said, we don't know what this world
• 42:32
  is. Maybe there is no women in this.
• 42:33
  Maybe there's no universe. That's a good point.
• 42:36
  Like the year is 2022. Women have collectively had
• 42:39
  enough and have gone away. They.
• 42:44
  Just. They're like, Nope, can't.
• 42:46
  Yeah, I'm done with this. Yeah, we got not interested.
• 42:51
  OK, that's crazy. What a huh?
• 42:56
  Right. Isn't that, isn't that
• 42:58
  something? No escape.
• 42:59
  No escape from all the men that you have to talk to non-stop.
• 43:02
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. OK, that's no escape, not what I
• 43:07
  expected. I feel like I think that every
• 43:09
  time we talk about one of these, I think that's not what I
• 43:11
  expected, and this is no exception.
• 43:13
  Hey, you know what? That's one of the advantages of
• 43:16
  the show I. Guess yeah.
• 43:18
  OK. Any any closing thoughts on no
• 43:22
  escape? I'll just say like, it was an
• 43:26
  interesting film because it was a film of firsts in some ways,
• 43:29
  you know, like, yeah, it, it had a uniqueness to it and I didn't
• 43:36
  hate watching it, but I didn't love it so.
• 43:39
  Yeah, yeah, that doesn't bode well for scoring later on.
• 43:46
  OK, well, I'm I'm you've stunlocked me with this, with
• 43:50
  this series of descriptions about more escape I can't even
• 43:53
  think of. I can't even think about a
• 43:55
  transition. How do you encapsulate this?
• 43:57
  Yeah. Yeah, anyway, we're going to go
• 44:00
  to our intermission now anyway. Yeah, just a big old.
• 44:04
  Anyway, we're going to go into our intermission now, and when
• 44:06
  we return, I'll be talking about a movie that I promise has at
• 44:10
  least one woman in it. Stay tuned for Rushmore,
• 44:12
  everybody. OK, coming back now on the other
• 44:25
  side of the break, Frank, it is time for me to talk about the
• 44:27
  film you asked me to watch, 1990 Eights Rushmore.
• 44:31
  Do you recall why you asked me to watch Rushmore?
• 44:34
  Yeah, well, I mean, I I was just saying this off air, but this
• 44:37
  this felt like A to me, it's felt like a slam dunk, you know,
• 44:41
  like early Wes Anderson, like kind of establishing his style
• 44:47
  or maybe prior to him finding his kind of filmic voice and the
• 44:51
  cast as well. I mean, just like, is Bill
• 44:55
  Murray, I believe is, is in this one, Bill Murray and Owen
• 44:59
  Wilson, like just seemed hard to go wrong with this.
• 45:02
  So I'm curious to see what you actually thought of it.
• 45:06
  Yeah, yeah, it was. It was interesting for me for
• 45:08
  that same reason. I have seen not all of Wes
• 45:12
  Anderson's movies but some. I know you and I both really
• 45:14
  like Grand Budapest Hotel, which he made much later.
• 45:19
  My wife adores Fantastic Mr. Fox, that's like one of her
• 45:22
  favorite movies. So I definitely have stuff in
• 45:24
  his catalog that I'm really familiar with.
• 45:25
  But I've never seen anything he made like before 2000.
• 45:28
  And for this one, I think it's his second film that he
• 45:32
  directed, second like main effort.
• 45:35
  And actually he brought up Owen Wilson.
• 45:37
  He is not in the movie but he Co wrote the screenplay.
• 45:39
  Oh OK, I just saw his name attached to it so I just.
• 45:42
  Assumed he was a part of it. The Wilson brothers, Luke, Luke
• 45:46
  and Owen Wilson, were like collaborators with Wes Anderson
• 45:48
  from the beginning. And we do get a very small role
• 45:51
  from Luke Wilson in this one. But I guess, yeah, they weren't
• 45:54
  always in them. What's that?
• 45:55
  I started just, I was like, I like Luke Wilson.
• 45:57
  I feel like he's like underappreciated, especially
• 46:00
  compared to his brother. But like, he's usually great,
• 46:03
  especially when he shows up in like these types of movies.
• 46:05
  Yeah, for some reason I thought you said how old is Luke Wilson?
• 46:07
  Like that was just like your name.
• 46:08
  Live interrogation. How old is that guy now, 40?
• 46:12
  Tell me that right now. 42 Can we stop?
• 46:14
  Can we look up how old Luke Wilson is?
• 46:18
  Great. He does not have a lot to do
• 46:19
  here. The main cast is Jason
• 46:22
  Schwartzman, who is another Wes Anderson collaborator.
• 46:26
  But it's really he's really young.
• 46:27
  I don't know if this is like his first feature, but he's like
• 46:29
  1718 when this movie was made. And then Bill Murray is one of
• 46:32
  the other leads. And then, oh gosh, I'm
• 46:34
  forgetting the name of the third lead.
• 46:37
  Let me look that up really quick before I forget.
• 46:38
  Should. I just guess in the meantime.
• 46:41
  We can guess it's a it's a woman.
• 46:43
  So we've passed the rush, the no escape test.
• 46:47
  Is there a woman anywhere in the movie?
• 46:49
  Is it Oprah Winfrey? Oprah Winfrey?
• 46:53
  Is that what you said? Yeah.
• 46:55
  Is not Oprah Winfrey. Not Owen Wilson again either,
• 46:58
  but it is Olivia Williams. So you had the initials, right?
• 47:01
  Oh cool all. Right, which I mean really,
• 47:03
  that's pretty good. That's pretty good.
• 47:05
  I was getting like a psychic message there, you know?
• 47:07
  Yeah, you were doing like a hot read.
• 47:09
  You were like, I'm I'm sensing Oprah, Oprah, Olivia.
• 47:12
  And then they're like Olivia and you're like, yeah, that's
• 47:14
  exactly right. Anyway, yes, Olivia Williams,
• 47:19
  she's like the other lead. I don't know her from anything.
• 47:22
  She's done a lot of like British film and TV, it looks like.
• 47:25
  So that's your main cast. It's not really like a huge
• 47:27
  ensemble like a lot of later Wes Anderson movies, but it is just
• 47:31
  nice to see Bill Murray in a starring role.
• 47:33
  I'm a big fan of his, like most people, but I just don't.
• 47:36
  I don't think I've seen any of the Wes Anderson movies he's
• 47:38
  been in before this one. Yeah, right.
• 47:41
  I think I've seen Life Aquatic, maybe one other one.
• 47:44
  But yeah, I mean, he he usually appears in like like he's not
• 47:47
  always like one of the main. Characters.
• 47:49
  Yes, it seems from my brief review looking at it, he seemed
• 47:54
  to be like a frequent collaborator in the first half
• 47:56
  of Wes Anderson's career and then has appeared more
• 47:59
  sporadically since then. But he's definitely like
• 48:02
  probably the, you know, second or third lead in this one.
• 48:06
  So that part is interesting. This does, to your point, feel
• 48:09
  like a not yet formed Wes Anderson in terms of style.
• 48:13
  And that's a lot of what I like about it.
• 48:15
  I think that his more recent works, a lot of which have
• 48:18
  gotten very like middle of the road reviews to some extent
• 48:21
  because it's just more of what you've seen.
• 48:23
  And I think his style has become so specific and so one note in a
• 48:28
  way that it's both very creative and very familiar, which makes
• 48:32
  it less interesting. Whereas Rushmore, it feels
• 48:35
  primarily like it takes place in a real space.
• 48:38
  Does that make sense? Yes, but elaborate on that.
• 48:41
  So like newer Wes Anderson production design, I would say
• 48:44
  anything from like the 20 tens onward for him is done in a way
• 48:49
  that's very intentionally A facade.
• 48:51
  A lot of the sets look like paper thin walls.
• 48:54
  It looks like there's no ceiling.
• 48:56
  It's designed to either resemble a stage play or like a pop up
• 49:01
  storybook or something. And that's not because he
• 49:03
  doesn't know what he's doing. It's it's an intentional effort
• 49:06
  to create a sense of like surrealness in those stories.
• 49:10
  I also think that the character dialogue is very distinct in Wes
• 49:13
  Anderson movies. They all talk in this sort of
• 49:15
  unrealistic way that's kind of stilted and verbose at the same
• 49:19
  time, which Rushmore smartly only does for its main
• 49:24
  character, Jason Schwartzman in It talks like a Wes Anderson
• 49:27
  movie character, and nobody else does, which is quite nice.
• 49:31
  Oh, sure. Yeah, that's that sounds very
• 49:33
  refreshing actually. Yeah, it's weird to go backwards
• 49:36
  to find the kind of reinvention, because I've seen his work, but
• 49:40
  it's so hard for me to place what this movie must have felt
• 49:43
  like in a world that did not previously have Wes Anderson in
• 49:46
  it, you know? Yeah, Yeah, that was well put
• 49:49
  too actually, because I, I feel like to to that point too, that
• 49:52
  feeling like a like a real world like as opposed to a sort of
• 49:58
  visual production like what we might have touched on that a
• 50:01
  little bit when we were talking about Tim Burton last week,
• 50:04
  because I feel like that's a he has a very similar.
• 50:07
  That's right. Stylistic choices in a very
• 50:10
  different way than Wes Anderson, but it it kind of like sort of
• 50:14
  leads to a similar result. They're very, I think if I'm, if
• 50:18
  my film school memory is returning to me, I think you
• 50:21
  would call them both expressionistic because they
• 50:23
  focus a lot on reminding you of the space.
• 50:27
  There's a lot of geometry and attention being drawn to the
• 50:30
  facade of the film in the filmmaking, whereas by contrast,
• 50:34
  something more. What's the opposite of
• 50:37
  expressionistic? Impressionistic looks like
• 50:40
  internalistic. That's not it.
• 50:44
  The one that's like inside your head, you know, that focuses
• 50:47
  more on like if that's like French New Wave stuff, you know,
• 50:51
  things that are very much about breaking film form and rhythm
• 50:53
  and it's all about close-ups and emotion.
• 50:55
  Expressionist to filmmaking is that kind of intentional
• 50:58
  distance, which I think a lot of people would observe in Wes
• 51:01
  Anderson's work because of how the people talk like they are
• 51:04
  cold in a way. And again, I think that is still
• 51:07
  here in Rushmore, but it's blended into a more traditional
• 51:12
  piece of filmmaking and I really like that element about it.
• 51:15
  Yeah, that sounds great that that was kind of what I was
• 51:17
  hoping for. I might may have not articulated
• 51:20
  it exactly that way, but like that's was my intention with
• 51:25
  trying to recommend something early in his career like that.
• 51:27
  Or I guess more so my hope because I haven't seen a lot of
• 51:30
  those films either, so. Yeah, it's fun.
• 51:32
  It's definitely an interesting. I can imagine going to the
• 51:36
  movies in the 90s and seeing these early Wes Anderson films
• 51:39
  and being like, wow, they just have really great
• 51:41
  cinematography. There's such a fun quality to
• 51:43
  this when it's like a novel thing.
• 51:46
  I guess to just explain like the base premise for Rushmore, it
• 51:49
  takes place at some sort of like fancy prep Academy that's for
• 51:54
  like elementary through high school, it looks like.
• 51:58
  And your main character, played by young Jason Schwartzman, is a
• 52:01
  15 year old student named Max Something God.
• 52:06
  What is it with the names today? Max?
• 52:08
  Headroom. Max Headroom.
• 52:11
  What is this man's name? Max Whatever.
• 52:19
  HBO Max. HBO Max is a student at the
• 52:23
  Academy, which is called Rushmore, and the think they
• 52:27
  communicate to you right off the bat is that he is deeply
• 52:30
  involved in activities at the school.
• 52:31
  There is a montage early on that shows that he has founded like
• 52:35
  two dozen clubs and is the president of everything,
• 52:37
  including these super like niche and esoteric things.
• 52:41
  He's like head of the debate team.
• 52:42
  He leads the beekeeping club. Just anything you can think of
• 52:45
  he's doing, which is supposed to create this impression that he's
• 52:49
  like some sort of Uber genius or something.
• 52:51
  But right away, after being introduced to this information,
• 52:54
  you hear from, like, the headmaster of the school, and
• 52:57
  they're just like, yeah, Max is kind of an idiot, really.
• 53:01
  Like, he's doing really poorly in school.
• 53:04
  He's at risk of being expelled for bad grades.
• 53:07
  Oh, I see, because he's so involved in these
• 53:09
  extracurriculars. Well, that's what's interesting.
• 53:11
  When the movie starts, we we open on a goodwill hunting esque
• 53:17
  dream sequence where he's in the back of a class and there's like
• 53:19
  a math equation on the wall that the teacher says no one's ever
• 53:22
  solved. And they're like, man, if
• 53:23
  anybody can figure this out, no homework for the rest of the
• 53:26
  year. And then he like, struts up and
• 53:27
  like solves it. But then you realize he's
• 53:29
  dreaming. And I thought I was like, oh, it
• 53:31
  is just that he could be doing better, but he's not applying
• 53:35
  himself because he's too distracted or there's an
• 53:38
  impression that he just wants to stay at this school forever,
• 53:41
  which is true. It's like his comfort zone, but
• 53:43
  the movie never directly says that.
• 53:46
  This isn't partially that he's just not doing well.
• 53:48
  Like I think he isn't trying hard enough, but it's not like
• 53:51
  if he tried it'd be easy. He inherently is just not smart
• 53:54
  enough to do great. Well, I mean, that's an
• 53:57
  interesting character flaw for, you know, the film.
• 54:00
  It is because he carries himself.
• 54:03
  He. He's basically like a little
• 54:04
  teenage boy trying to carry himself like an adult who's
• 54:07
  bigger and older than he is. He walks around, he's got his
• 54:10
  fancy blazer on at all times. He is in charge of everything,
• 54:13
  and he's always trying to communicate to other adults in
• 54:15
  the story as if he also is 1, which is where a lot of the
• 54:17
  comedy is supposed to come from. And so that's like your big
• 54:22
  introduction to Max is like, he's not doing great, but also
• 54:25
  he's kind of doing great because he's so well known and like does
• 54:28
  so much around here. But he has a couple of early
• 54:32
  interactions with Bill Murray's character, who is essentially an
• 54:35
  alumnus from the school that I'm trying to think how to easily
• 54:38
  summarize Bill Murray's character.
• 54:39
  He's essentially a successful rich alumnus who's like, down on
• 54:44
  his luck in different ways where his sons go to the school, but
• 54:47
  he like does has no relationship with them because they're both
• 54:49
  just like jocks. And he doesn't like, he wanted
• 54:52
  smart kids essentially. And so he ends up bonding with
• 54:55
  Max as like, you're kind of who I wish my kids were like.
• 54:59
  Oh, OK. And their relationship is
• 55:01
  bizarre because the whole movie is filled with these age gap
• 55:05
  friendships. Where Max's two friends at the
• 55:09
  beginning of the story are this younger kid, there's like
• 55:12
  elementary age kid who follows them around and it's like his
• 55:14
  assistant and then Bill Murray, who's like much older than him.
• 55:17
  And yet they speak to each other with no like authority tone
• 55:21
  behind it. It's they just kind of talk like
• 55:23
  they're friends the whole time and then they turn into like
• 55:25
  romantic rivals as the story goes on.
• 55:27
  It's very. Romantic rivals?
• 55:29
  Whoa. Yeah, because I'm trying to
• 55:32
  remember off him. I watched this movie late last
• 55:34
  night, so forgive me, but there's a couple of beats early
• 55:36
  on. Where Max has a great line that
• 55:39
  kind of sums up his like perspective when the movie opens
• 55:43
  where he says, and this is a quote actually, I think you just
• 55:46
  got to find something you love to do and do it for the rest of
• 55:49
  your life. For me, that's going to rush
• 55:51
  more. So that's his like headspace at
• 55:53
  the beginning. But after being threatened with
• 55:55
  expulsion for not doing well enough with his actual
• 55:57
  coursework, he tries to like, reevaluate his approach and
• 56:02
  rather than take the obvious out of just stop doing so many clubs
• 56:05
  and activities, he for some reason decides his problem is
• 56:08
  that he's not focused enough on getting girls.
• 56:12
  OK. That's kind of a pivot.
• 56:14
  He essentially, in order to avoid confronting the real
• 56:16
  problem, just decides that it's, you know, he's like, that's what
• 56:19
  I see all the other guys here doing and they're all doing
• 56:21
  fine. Nobody's threatening to expel
• 56:23
  them. And he ends up coming across a
• 56:25
  quote like written in the margins of a book at the school
• 56:28
  library, like some kind of Half Blood Prince thing.
• 56:31
  And he finds out that the person who wrote it was this young
• 56:34
  teacher at the school. And so the real crux of the
• 56:37
  movie, from a certain point onward, is that Max has fallen
• 56:39
  in love with this adult woman who teaches at Rushmore.
• 56:42
  Like he actually fell in love with her or he just sort of like
• 56:47
  decided like, I'm in love with this person now.
• 56:50
  You just figured out the whole plot of the movie before he did?
• 56:52
  Yeah, that's what happened. He fell in love with the idea of
• 56:55
  a relationship and a woman that he barely knows and spends the
• 56:59
  entire film trying to win her over while also having some side
• 57:03
  plots that involve the other characters.
• 57:06
  And I got to say, this is where the movie moves into more muddy
• 57:10
  territory for how much I liked it, because everything that's
• 57:13
  happening here is done with a lot of intention.
• 57:15
  The movie frames Max's efforts to, like, doggedly pursue this
• 57:18
  woman as stupid and wrong because he's 15, as they keep
• 57:23
  saying. But I think you're also supposed
• 57:27
  to, from the film maker's perspective, find his efforts
• 57:30
  kind of charming because it's silly.
• 57:34
  Like, he's constantly coming up with these schemes to get alone
• 57:37
  with this woman and profess that he wants to be with her.
• 57:39
  But then he'll backtrack when she, like, pushes him away, only
• 57:41
  to try again later. It culminates later in the movie
• 57:44
  with him, like, faking an injury outside of her house so that
• 57:47
  she'll let him inside. And then he tries to, like, kiss
• 57:48
  her on the mouth. And she has to be like, get out
• 57:50
  of here. So it writes this line the whole
• 57:54
  time of being like awkward and uncomfortable versus like silly.
• 57:59
  And I do think that for the time it's supposed to mostly land on
• 58:03
  like Max is misguided. But it is hard now not to watch
• 58:05
  this and be like Max is a creep. Yeah, I can.
• 58:09
  I can see that. But it also doesn't sound like
• 58:11
  you're supposed to be like, like you said, you're maybe supposed
• 58:13
  to find his antics charming, but you're probably not supposed to
• 58:17
  be, like, rooting for him to succeed in these.
• 58:21
  Like no. That's correct, You're supposed
• 58:24
  to be rooting for him to figure things out and leave this woman
• 58:27
  alone. But the way it's portrayed, this
• 58:30
  comes up a lot with filmmaking where you want something to be
• 58:34
  more visual, so you add an action to it that immediately
• 58:36
  crosses the line if it actually happened in real life.
• 58:38
  Like, there's one thing with him professing his love for this
• 58:41
  woman and trying to make her date him, but at one point
• 58:44
  towards the middle, he literally is trying to like, force himself
• 58:47
  on her. He's like grabbing her by the
• 58:48
  shoulders and trying to like, kiss her mouth and just like,
• 58:50
  shove him away. And it's like, I understand that
• 58:53
  that's more visual and maybe gets the idea across, but that's
• 58:56
  like such an escalation of like a small kind of violence in a
• 59:00
  way where it's like, that's not funny, you know?
• 59:03
  It's, it's just like, it's one of those things where I'm sure
• 59:05
  you could recut the trailer for this movie.
• 59:07
  It's like a horror film. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like
• 59:12
  he's obsessive enough that you could perceive it that way, that
• 59:17
  he's relentlessly pursuing her. It would be funnier, like they
• 59:20
  try to play this angle where she is so clear and firm.
• 59:24
  She's not like oblivious. She gets ahead of it
• 59:25
  immediately. She's like, Max, I feel like
• 59:27
  you're trying to form a relationship here and obviously
• 59:30
  that's not going to happen. I need you to stop.
• 59:32
  And he always kind of plays it like, like, he misunderstands or
• 59:35
  isn't quite sure what she's getting AT.
• 59:36
  And then he just keeps trying, which can work if you do it in a
• 59:40
  very specific way. But I do think that at times in
• 59:42
  this one, I was just like, ah, we've leaned too far.
• 59:45
  We've leaned too far. And it makes Max less pitiful
• 59:48
  and more just aggressively creepy.
• 59:51
  So I don't know. I think that's a really like,
• 59:53
  that might vary person to person watching the movie.
• 59:56
  Some people might just take it more for what it's clearly
• 59:57
  trying to be, which is not a realistic situation at all.
• 1:00:01
  But. If you're sensitive to that kind
• 1:00:03
  of thing, you know, like I'm picturing somebody watching this
• 1:00:05
  movie who's maybe been like relentlessly pursued by some man
• 1:00:09
  in a very uncomfortable way. And I don't think anything about
• 1:00:11
  this would read as funny to that person, you know?
• 1:00:14
  Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  But it almost, I guess having not seen it, I'm not sure that
• 1:00:21
  was perhaps the actual in intention that like you're
• 1:00:25
  supposed to be uncomfortable like with him and his character
• 1:00:29
  this way. You're supposed to be in at
• 1:00:32
  times and in specific ways. But again, if you want the movie
• 1:00:35
  to still read as kind of like quirky and funny overall, you
• 1:00:38
  have to be very mindful of how you try to make that story land.
• 1:00:42
  And it's so there's so many instances of him pursuing this
• 1:00:46
  woman and it gets so like, weird at a few points that it just
• 1:00:50
  like, for me, felt like it tipped over the edge of what it
• 1:00:53
  was. It was like a tightrope act
• 1:00:55
  tonally. And they kind of fell off
• 1:00:56
  towards the end. Is it all mostly towards the end
• 1:00:59
  or is it just like because I guess how much of the film is
• 1:01:03
  him pursuing this woman? I mean, most of it, I'm trying
• 1:01:06
  to think of the overall rhythm here.
• 1:01:08
  So he gets obsessed with this woman.
• 1:01:11
  He ends up going around because she's a teacher at the school
• 1:01:13
  and they do have like a friendship because in her words,
• 1:01:17
  she's like a young woman. But she already had her husband
• 1:01:19
  pass away from some sudden thing.
• 1:01:21
  And she talks about how Max kind of reminds him of a younger
• 1:01:24
  version of her husband. And then so they spend a lot of
• 1:01:27
  that movie together. But then because Max is also
• 1:01:30
  friends with Bill Murray's character, he just ends up
• 1:01:32
  getting roped along at times like, and it feels like he, the
• 1:01:35
  kid is taking these two adults out to do activities in a way
• 1:01:38
  where you're just like, why would when would this ever
• 1:01:40
  happen? Like, it's that's the heightened
• 1:01:42
  realism of the whole thing. But as far as plotting, Bill
• 1:01:45
  Murray also eventually falls in love with the same woman, which
• 1:01:48
  is why again, they become romantic rifles by the time like
• 1:01:50
  the second act starts. Yeah, it's interesting,
• 1:01:53
  especially because, like, from HBO Max's perspective, it's a
• 1:01:59
  like, it's a adolescent, like misinformed type of attraction
• 1:02:06
  that he's confusing. And it almost sounds like, you
• 1:02:11
  know, he just set a goal for himself to find romantic
• 1:02:15
  partnership and just like, latched on to this first person
• 1:02:18
  that, you know, he decided. Would.
• 1:02:22
  Fulfill that for him because the character is very young, like I
• 1:02:25
  was. I was actually surprised when he
• 1:02:26
  said that at the beginning that he's 15, that that's that's a
• 1:02:29
  very, very young POV character. Which is probably also supposed
• 1:02:33
  to soften the whole thing because he is very short and
• 1:02:37
  small and like not there's nothing physically intimidating
• 1:02:40
  the the woman is like much bigger than him.
• 1:02:43
  Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I mean, if I mean, if it was
• 1:02:47
  off putting to you, it's off putting.
• 1:02:49
  That's just. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:02:52
  I can't. I can't thinking about that
• 1:02:54
  after I was done watching it, I was like, I don't know.
• 1:02:56
  I, I understand there's a lot of stories about this, this kind of
• 1:02:59
  like you said, it's like an adolescent thing of a young boy
• 1:03:02
  trying to fill the role of what he thinks a man is.
• 1:03:05
  And in his mind, for Max, it was like pursuing this woman and
• 1:03:07
  having a relationship, even though we all know he doesn't
• 1:03:09
  know what that means. Like, there's a a scene where
• 1:03:13
  the woman Miss Crossed, as they call her throughout most of the
• 1:03:16
  film, she gets so fed up with it.
• 1:03:18
  And she's just like, Max, what do you think is supposed to
• 1:03:19
  happen? She's like, do you think we're
• 1:03:20
  going to have sex? You don't know what that is.
• 1:03:22
  You don't know what you're doing.
• 1:03:23
  Like, it's a very, like, pointed takedown that he's just
• 1:03:26
  fantasizing and it's ultimately fruitless.
• 1:03:29
  And in the meantime, he's bothering a lot of people.
• 1:03:32
  Sure. Because I, I feel like it's
• 1:03:34
  similar to the scene you described at the beginning, the
• 1:03:36
  Goodwill hunting scene where he just has it like this dream, you
• 1:03:40
  know, that he, he's just going to, with no knowledge or
• 1:03:43
  preparation, he's just going to walk up and, and do things
• 1:03:46
  perfectly. Exactly.
• 1:03:48
  So again, all of this is intentional.
• 1:03:50
  It's not a case of the writing and directing trying to achieve
• 1:03:54
  a goal and not hitting it. It's just about whether that
• 1:03:57
  makes the movie approachable for like a wider audience.
• 1:04:01
  Like this movie feels like it's so much about a young man's
• 1:04:03
  experience. And while it's not no escape,
• 1:04:05
  there are women in the story. I, I don't, it doesn't feel
• 1:04:09
  catered towards like a web, it's perspective at all, which is
• 1:04:13
  totally fine. Not everything needs to be both,
• 1:04:15
  but we're all, you know, gender perspectives.
• 1:04:18
  But it is narrow, like Rushmore has a very narrow view because
• 1:04:22
  of what it's choosing to focus on.
• 1:04:24
  And I found that element interesting.
• 1:04:25
  Sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:04:27
  And I don't know how much of Wes Anderson's, the rest of his
• 1:04:30
  filmography focuses on similar ideas.
• 1:04:33
  Or, you know, given that this was one of his earlier, because
• 1:04:36
  he wrote this film as well, right?
• 1:04:37
  Him and Owen Wilson, yes. Simon O Wilson, Co wrote it.
• 1:04:39
  I think he's written probably almost everything he's directed.
• 1:04:42
  Yeah. So I would have to assume some
• 1:04:44
  of this comes from first hand experience on.
• 1:04:46
  On I think so I think it is a reflection of some sort of lived
• 1:04:50
  experience. The thing that I'm not haven't
• 1:04:54
  gotten to yet is that obviously this movie is a comedy.
• 1:04:56
  It's a very dry comedy in the way that a lot of Wes Anderson's
• 1:04:59
  movies are. And I I don't think there's
• 1:05:02
  really anything in the movie that gets a huge laugh because
• 1:05:04
  it's not trying for that. It feels like a predecessor to
• 1:05:08
  that kind of late 2000s like indie comedy drama that you've
• 1:05:12
  seen 1000 of where it's like all amusing in a way, but it's not
• 1:05:16
  really trying to like, make you, you know?
• 1:05:18
  Guffaw. Yeah, there's no guffawing here.
• 1:05:21
  There's, there's like breathing through the nose kind of laughs.
• 1:05:25
  Yeah, it's a, it's a humorous environment, not like.
• 1:05:29
  You know it's a hike. Realism.
• 1:05:31
  It's not, yeah, there's not really like heavy punch lines.
• 1:05:34
  There's like silly qualities to the whole thing.
• 1:05:36
  But I do think that, again, it's hard to evaluate this
• 1:05:40
  retroactively. You know how people talk about
• 1:05:43
  like, there's a phenomenon where some people think the sitcom
• 1:05:46
  Seinfeld isn't funny because they've seen 20 plus years since
• 1:05:50
  of things influenced by what it invented.
• 1:05:53
  And so when you go back to the source, it's like not as
• 1:05:55
  interesting. I couldn't have disagreed more,
• 1:05:57
  but this one? No, no, no.
• 1:05:59
  We don't think Seinfeld isn't funny, but that's like a named
• 1:06:02
  thing. Like once you've seen the later
• 1:06:04
  influences, if you go back to the source, it doesn't feel
• 1:06:07
  novel, so it doesn't feel interesting, even though you
• 1:06:10
  have to remember it's like before this there was nothing
• 1:06:12
  like this. And I think having seen a lot of
• 1:06:15
  later Wes Anderson movies, that's a quality about Rushmore.
• 1:06:17
  It's like the comedy and the comedic styling of the whole
• 1:06:21
  thing isn't making me laugh because I've seen it a lot.
• 1:06:24
  Whereas if you'd never seen anything like this, I think you
• 1:06:26
  would find like rhythm of the editing and the shot
• 1:06:29
  compositions to be like inherently funny just because
• 1:06:31
  it's a bit unique. But the uniqueness has worn off
• 1:06:34
  for me because I've seen like 7 of this guy's movies.
• 1:06:36
  Sure, sure. Do you like generally speaking
• 1:06:40
  those types of films though? Like like the ones you describe
• 1:06:42
  or compared it to the the sort of quirky late 2000s like indie
• 1:06:48
  comedy dramas. I find those all to be a coin
• 1:06:50
  flip, you know what I mean? Like I, I can't say I
• 1:06:54
  universally like or dislike them.
• 1:06:55
  Even among Wes Anderson's filmography, I think I really
• 1:06:58
  liked a couple and felt nothing towards the rest.
• 1:07:01
  So it's a type of comedy that has to like find a very narrow
• 1:07:05
  thread to like tickle you. And then if that works, you're
• 1:07:08
  going to like the movie quite a bit.
• 1:07:10
  But if you don't ever like find that way in, you're just kind of
• 1:07:12
  watching like, OK, OK. And it's it's done.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah, especially because it's especially this one, it's, it's
• 1:07:19
  like a, it's like an uncomfortable type of humor.
• 1:07:23
  You know, it's, it's, it's like a type of humor where it's like
• 1:07:26
  you, you're almost, you laugh because you don't, you're so
• 1:07:30
  uncomfortable. You don't know what else to do
• 1:07:31
  in some situations. Yeah, there's a there's a cringe
• 1:07:34
  comedy element here for sure. Like I'm trying to think of a
• 1:07:36
  representative sequence. So one of Max's big things is
• 1:07:40
  that he's like a play. He directs plays.
• 1:07:42
  That's like one of his main callings amongst all of the
• 1:07:44
  clubs and things he participates in.
• 1:07:46
  And there's a silly bit at the beginning where even though this
• 1:07:48
  is like a school full of mostly young children, they're putting
• 1:07:51
  on like, a stage play rendition of Serpico, the Al Pacino movie.
• 1:07:55
  So it's them talking about like, gangsters and guns and stuff.
• 1:07:58
  Like, it's all intentionally ridiculous.
• 1:08:01
  And then as it goes, like towards the end of the movie, he
• 1:08:04
  puts on a big play that just looks like Platoon.
• 1:08:06
  It's like a Vietnam War thing. So these bits are very silly.
• 1:08:10
  But he has an interaction where he invites this teacher, lady
• 1:08:13
  Miss Cross to the play and then she brings Luke Wilson along who
• 1:08:17
  she's clearly like seeing. And they had this dinner plan
• 1:08:20
  for afterwards. So then we cut to the Super
• 1:08:22
  awkward dinner that's like Max and Bill Murray and the teacher
• 1:08:25
  and Luke Wilson. And Max is like, again, he's 15,
• 1:08:28
  he's tiny as heck. He's trying to like essentially
• 1:08:30
  out alpha Luke Wilson. Throughout this whole
• 1:08:32
  conversation he keeps like acting like he doesn't remember
• 1:08:34
  his name. Like they say it like 6 times
• 1:08:36
  and he's just like what? What's his name again?
• 1:08:38
  I don't recall. That's funny.
• 1:08:39
  That made me laugh. It's funny on paper, but the
• 1:08:43
  scenes not really that funny. Like, the rhythm of the scene is
• 1:08:46
  not. It doesn't culminate in a big
• 1:08:48
  laugh. It culminates in, like, an
• 1:08:50
  awkward outburst because, again, the movie is making a point that
• 1:08:52
  Max is like an emotional teenager where he ends up just
• 1:08:54
  getting really mad and yelling at this teacher for being like
• 1:08:57
  you. You know, you knew how I feel
• 1:09:00
  after saying for the whole first act that he just wanted to be
• 1:09:02
  friends. He's like, you knew I was in
• 1:09:03
  love with you. Why did you bring this horrible
• 1:09:05
  man here? That's like, yeah, maybe if
• 1:09:07
  you're hearing these descriptions and you're like, I
• 1:09:08
  love that kind of stuff. I love awkward, cringe teen
• 1:09:11
  comedy. Go for it.
• 1:09:12
  But everything I liked about Rushmore was more so like the
• 1:09:17
  filmmaking. I I did not connect with the
• 1:09:21
  script I guess very much. I can actually, I can understand
• 1:09:26
  that, like, because I guess I would maybe feel similarly in
• 1:09:32
  your situation because I, I also like generally speaking, like
• 1:09:36
  the sort of coming of age comedy type stuff, comedy, drama, you
• 1:09:43
  know, it either, I feel like it either hits when you're at a age
• 1:09:47
  where you can relate to it directly, or you can like look
• 1:09:50
  back on it and, and, and connect with it that way, like with your
• 1:09:53
  own experiences. But I feel like that's a, it's
• 1:09:56
  difficult to land that you know, and, and actually, and, and like
• 1:10:00
  in a satisfying way. I can think of some great
• 1:10:03
  examples. Like I, I love the movie
• 1:10:04
  Superbad. I think Superbad.
• 1:10:06
  Is Superbad, Yes, a lot of people love Superbad.
• 1:10:08
  Yeah, that's a great example, again, of tackling the
• 1:10:12
  awkwardness of being a child and having to deal with all these
• 1:10:15
  like, rising adult emotions. But it makes genuinely funny.
• 1:10:21
  It's not trying to be the same thing as much more, but it makes
• 1:10:23
  a very memorable comedy out of that bit.
• 1:10:26
  It heightens it in a way that makes it work as a movie for any
• 1:10:29
  audience. Yeah, totally.
• 1:10:30
  So it's not like a fair one to one comparison, but it they're
• 1:10:33
  at least in the same ballpark, so to speak.
• 1:10:35
  So it's like, yeah, it it's, you know, it's it's kind of just
• 1:10:38
  interesting to see how you can approach that similar concept
• 1:10:42
  and see one like that lands in such a big way for most people.
• 1:10:47
  And then this one, which is kind of, I'm sure there are people
• 1:10:50
  that love this movie. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:10:53
  It's, it's, I'm trying to give my reaction while also framing
• 1:10:57
  how it might read to other people 'cause there are some
• 1:10:59
  movies that are about coming of age stories that are probably
• 1:11:03
  most impactful if you're coming of age still yourself.
• 1:11:06
  But there's ones that I had not seen when I was a kid that I
• 1:11:09
  still liked. I mean, the first movie you
• 1:11:10
  asked me to watch for our show was Pump Up the Volume, which
• 1:11:14
  was a coming of age like dark comedy drama.
• 1:11:18
  Again, not even remotely trying to be the same thing as this
• 1:11:20
  with Anderson movie. But it's not a movie I saw as a
• 1:11:23
  teenager. But I still really liked it
• 1:11:26
  because the I I just think as a piece of art and as a story, it
• 1:11:30
  was like well put together and I could see how it would speak to
• 1:11:33
  someone who was growing up around that time.
• 1:11:36
  Rushmore is just feels like an incomplete draft of something
• 1:11:41
  that Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson as writers got better at
• 1:11:45
  later I think. Yeah, that's that's probably a
• 1:11:48
  good way to put it because you know, that that's just kind of
• 1:11:50
  the blind nature of these pics almost.
• 1:11:53
  Because if I had known, I guess more So what this movie was, I
• 1:11:57
  probably wouldn't have recommended it because it
• 1:11:58
  doesn't sound like something I would have liked that much
• 1:12:01
  either. Yeah, I'd be curious what I
• 1:12:03
  think their first film, maybe I'm messing up this timeline,
• 1:12:06
  but I believe their earliest film is called Bottle Rocket,
• 1:12:09
  which is from 1996. I have no idea what that one's
• 1:12:11
  about. I know that a lot of later Wes
• 1:12:13
  Anderson movies are about a huge variety of things and usually
• 1:12:17
  about an ensemble of characters. This one is much more focused.
• 1:12:20
  It's primarily about Max. And then the other, probably
• 1:12:24
  most critically acclaimed element of the story at the time
• 1:12:26
  was Bill Murray's performance as a like a supporting actor.
• 1:12:29
  Yeah, and like, obviously Bill Murray's great.
• 1:12:32
  And like, it's really hard to miss with Bill Murray.
• 1:12:36
  That is worth talking about though, because sorry you
• 1:12:38
  finished your thought. Oh no, tell me more.
• 1:12:41
  Did he did? Did we miss with Bill Murray?
• 1:12:43
  We did not miss with Bill Murray, but this was again, part
• 1:12:46
  of the struggle of reviewing this movie in retrospect because
• 1:12:49
  I have seen the full scope of Bill Murray's career past 1998.
• 1:12:53
  And I actually had to look up afterwards to get some context
• 1:12:57
  for why this performance was celebrated at the time in the
• 1:13:00
  way that it was because I think he got a Golden Globe nomination
• 1:13:03
  and was just, it was a big movie.
• 1:13:05
  There's a lot of trivia about how Bill Murray read this
• 1:13:07
  screenplay and like, was desperate to be a part of it.
• 1:13:11
  He loved it. He agreed to take almost no
• 1:13:13
  salary to be in it. He ended up even using some of
• 1:13:15
  his own money to like, finance elements of the production.
• 1:13:18
  He was like a huge supporter of this film and in turn, became a
• 1:13:21
  collaborator with Wes Anderson for years afterwards.
• 1:13:24
  And I was like, why? You know, Like, I can't
• 1:13:27
  immediately place what element there was, but you have to look
• 1:13:32
  at it from where he was because Bill Murray's earliest successes
• 1:13:35
  were all the same type of character.
• 1:13:37
  It was like the guy in Ghostbusters, you know, he was
• 1:13:40
  this, like, snarky, sarcastic, cynical comic figure.
• 1:13:45
  And apparently he had been trying for a couple years at
• 1:13:47
  this point in 98 to play a larger variety of roles and not
• 1:13:51
  really had any big successes yet.
• 1:13:53
  So this role for him in Rushmore was akin to watching, like Jim
• 1:13:56
  Carrey and The Truman Show. It was taking a comic actor
• 1:13:59
  known for one type of performance and seeing a very
• 1:14:03
  different one that people really attached to.
• 1:14:04
  It's like, wow, look at the range on Bill Murray.
• 1:14:07
  Oh, sure. Yeah, totally that.
• 1:14:09
  And that happens to a lot of like comedic actors where they
• 1:14:12
  try and make that sort of dramatic turn.
• 1:14:15
  It's also interesting that it sounds like he was sold
• 1:14:18
  completely on the script, because it that kind of brings
• 1:14:21
  up an interesting point. Like people talk about like how
• 1:14:24
  a how a script reads basically, and it it's almost just like
• 1:14:29
  what we just went through where you, like, you explained the
• 1:14:32
  joke of that scene to me and it was funny in my head.
• 1:14:37
  But then you like when you actually see it on screen, how
• 1:14:40
  like you didn't find it that entertaining.
• 1:14:42
  You know, it like it, it transforms when it's actually
• 1:14:45
  like produced into a film because I can see like Bill
• 1:14:50
  Murray, like reading this script and and like seeing the
• 1:14:53
  dialogue, like you mentioned, where these like young
• 1:14:55
  characters are speaking like adults and the thematic
• 1:14:59
  elements, thematic thematic elephants.
• 1:15:03
  What are what are thematic elephants, thematic elephants,
• 1:15:07
  thematic elements of the film and like, you know, resonating
• 1:15:13
  with that. So it's so it's interesting, you
• 1:15:14
  know, that Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson as writers that like
• 1:15:19
  that was enough to sell him on this project.
• 1:15:22
  Yeah, I do think that that's that's the part to me, I'm like,
• 1:15:25
  man, I think in 1998 this would have hit a lot stronger because
• 1:15:28
  it you just couldn't see what had come next.
• 1:15:30
  And it arguably influenced the careers of someone like Bill
• 1:15:32
  Murray in a way where you don't even question now that he could
• 1:15:34
  play characters like this. But I'm trying to find.
• 1:15:37
  I had read an article. It was like snippets of an
• 1:15:39
  interview he gave, I think around the time the movie was
• 1:15:41
  released, he said. Where does the quote begin?
• 1:15:46
  Precise. A lot of Rushmore is about the
• 1:15:47
  struggle to retain civility and kindness in the face of
• 1:15:50
  extraordinary pain. And I felt a lot of that in my
• 1:15:53
  life. I play a guy who's aware that
• 1:15:55
  his life is not working, but he's still holding on hope
• 1:15:57
  things something will happen. And that's what's most
• 1:16:00
  interesting in life. You never have to completely
• 1:16:02
  quit. So it's almost like an
• 1:16:03
  optimistic reading on both his characters, kind of like
• 1:16:08
  failures in the story and the, like, dogged pursuit from Max
• 1:16:12
  because maybe the most generous reading you could give And what
• 1:16:15
  the movie is sort of intending is like this kids 15.
• 1:16:19
  He's pursuing an adult woman who's a teacher at his own
• 1:16:22
  school. This is inappropriate and will
• 1:16:24
  never work. But at the same time, the
• 1:16:26
  emotions he's feeling are real and to be batted away so
• 1:16:31
  carelessly as to be like, get away from me.
• 1:16:35
  This is stupid. Hurt him anyway.
• 1:16:37
  And I think at some level, the movie is asking you to be like,
• 1:16:40
  hey, guess what? That still hurts, even if you're
• 1:16:41
  being told that your idea was stupid in the first place.
• 1:16:44
  Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, I guess.
• 1:16:47
  What was Bill? Murray's character then, because
• 1:16:49
  like, we haven't really talked about much what he goes through.
• 1:16:51
  Yeah, I feel like I need to make sure to to cover that.
• 1:16:53
  So Bill Murray is at the beginning of the.
• 1:16:55
  Story again, he's like a rich but kind of listless alumnus of
• 1:17:00
  Rushmore Academy. The first thing you hear, like
• 1:17:03
  the first thing that's implied about him and his relationships
• 1:17:06
  is that his wife is seemingly cheating on him and has no
• 1:17:09
  relationship with him. He has his two sons who were
• 1:17:11
  both just like airheads that he has no strong connection with.
• 1:17:15
  He finds like a compatriot in Max, but then their friendship
• 1:17:20
  gets strained by the fact that they both have feelings for this
• 1:17:23
  same woman. And so he eventually kind of
• 1:17:27
  falls on his face because even like it gets revealed that he
• 1:17:30
  does have a relationship with Miss Cross for a time and it
• 1:17:34
  causes him to get divorced and he loses a bunch of his money
• 1:17:38
  and starts living out of a hotel.
• 1:17:39
  So we kind of end up with like a classic like down on his luck,
• 1:17:43
  dishevelled Bill Murray performance that has maybe some
• 1:17:47
  of the funnier beats in the movies, although they're all in
• 1:17:49
  the movie, although they're all very like, small.
• 1:17:51
  But in the end, he ends up in kind of the same position as
• 1:17:55
  this 15 year old. They both are just struck down
• 1:17:58
  by an effort to achieve the same thing.
• 1:18:00
  Oh yeah. I mean I that that seems like a
• 1:18:03
  juicy role. Like.
• 1:18:04
  Especially like you said, if he'd been doing strictly
• 1:18:09
  Ghostbusters esque comedy roles prior to that.
• 1:18:12
  Like there's a lot for him to dig into there I think.
• 1:18:15
  Again, I'm still looking at the same article which I'll have to
• 1:18:17
  link in the description for this.
• 1:18:19
  Episode so as not to take credit for anything here.
• 1:18:22
  He also said that he felt the script quote showed how a smart
• 1:18:26
  aleck young man could grow into a world weary middle-aged man,
• 1:18:29
  which I think is interesting. It's almost like his character
• 1:18:31
  in Rushmore is the end result of being the like Peter Venkman,
• 1:18:36
  smart ass guy for the first 30-40 years of your life and how
• 1:18:40
  it leaves you just kind of bitter and alone because you
• 1:18:44
  won't open yourself up to anybody.
• 1:18:47
  So it's like a the borderline meta narrative role for him.
• 1:18:51
  And it is a juicy role in the sense that there's a lot to pull
• 1:18:54
  from, but man is it minor. Every expression from him is
• 1:18:58
  pretty small. And I mean really, I think the
• 1:19:02
  the most outlandish. Thing in the whole movie.
• 1:19:04
  Is that there's a part where Max and Bill Murray are talking on
• 1:19:08
  the phone? I don't remember Bill.
• 1:19:09
  I think his name is something Bloom.
• 1:19:11
  He's talking to Max on the phone and trying to convince him to
• 1:19:13
  stop pursuing the teacher woman because he's like, come on, this
• 1:19:16
  is unrealistic. This is there's no reason for
• 1:19:18
  you to do this. You need to let it go.
• 1:19:20
  But at the same time you're seeing that he's like camped
• 1:19:22
  outside the school and it's like he's now peering on this woman
• 1:19:25
  like through a window. But then at one point he's like
• 1:19:27
  walking across the lawn and there's these kids, like little
• 1:19:30
  kids playing with this like 2 foot tall basketball hoop.
• 1:19:33
  And while he has his phone in one hand, one of the kids goes
• 1:19:35
  to shoot the ball and he just like swats the ball really
• 1:19:38
  aggressively all the way to the ground.
• 1:19:39
  And that just keeps going. Like he didn't do that.
• 1:19:42
  It's such a like what? Like that's one of the more just
• 1:19:44
  like goofy bits in the movie. But it's such a like explosion
• 1:19:47
  of energy from such a like, quiet character that it is kind
• 1:19:50
  of funny. That's fun that that is fun.
• 1:19:53
  And that's why you bring in Bill Murray.
• 1:19:55
  To make like something like that work and like a character like
• 1:19:58
  that work. That's what I mean.
• 1:20:00
  I've I've said this with other films that we've reviewed on the
• 1:20:02
  show, like I can't. Assail the movie for failing to
• 1:20:04
  do what it was trying to do, everything Rushmore wanted to
• 1:20:07
  be. It is.
• 1:20:08
  And clearly it was a big enough success that it helped continue
• 1:20:12
  the launchpad for Wes Anderson's career.
• 1:20:14
  So yeah, like it. Not all of the story elements
• 1:20:16
  worked for me, but I think there is still something real being
• 1:20:20
  communicated by it, which is why I would not go as far as to say
• 1:20:22
  like, oh, this movie's bad. I'm like, no, it's pretty good.
• 1:20:25
  I just don't. I wouldn't recommend going back
• 1:20:27
  here unless you're doing it for very like scholarly reasons.
• 1:20:31
  I I think that's a good way to put it, that there's something
• 1:20:33
  real being expressed. By the film at least in its
• 1:20:38
  intention. And that's worth noting.
• 1:20:42
  Like even if it didn't resonate with you or you didn't like it.
• 1:20:46
  Yeah, absolutely. I think that's kind of the job
• 1:20:48
  as a reviewer, you want to be like, here's how this.
• 1:20:50
  Landed for me. Here's why it got there for me.
• 1:20:53
  But that's not to say that's the only experience you could have
• 1:20:55
  watching it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:57
  Like I said, I I if I'd known a little more about it.
• 1:21:01
  Before, probably wouldn't have recommended it.
• 1:21:04
  Probably would have just recommended like maybe a
• 1:21:06
  different Wes Anderson movie from that similar time period.
• 1:21:11
  Oh well. Oh well.
• 1:21:15
  Oh. Fisher, Max.
• 1:21:17
  Fisher. That's his name.
• 1:21:18
  Oh, I was like what I remembered.
• 1:21:23
  HBO Max. Fisher, HBO.
• 1:21:25
  Max Fisher. Yeah.
• 1:21:27
  Anyway, that's it. That's Rushmore.
• 1:21:29
  OK, good. Yeah.
• 1:21:34
  All right. Frank I think it's time we moved
• 1:21:36
  into final scores and then our. Picks for next time.
• 1:21:40
  You went first today with No Escape, so I guess over to you.
• 1:21:44
  Final thoughts, Final score. Well, yeah, like I closed out
• 1:21:47
  the review. I didn't hate No escape.
• 1:21:50
  But I did not love it, so scoring it is a little tricky.
• 1:21:57
  There were things I really liked about it, as I mentioned Walker
• 1:22:02
  from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3.
• 1:22:05
  Fantastic. Love seeing people pop up.
• 1:22:07
  You're like, I didn't even know I was waiting to see them again,
• 1:22:09
  but here. They exactly.
• 1:22:10
  That's a good way to put it. Yes, yes, you've been good with
• 1:22:13
  turning. A phrase this episode.
• 1:22:15
  I'm the best. Remember when I couldn't think
• 1:22:17
  of the guy's name? That was my favorite part.
• 1:22:22
  So yeah, he was great like. The action sequences were
• 1:22:26
  surprisingly fun and like well shot and well executed, which
• 1:22:30
  I'm always a big fan of like well shot action sequences
• 1:22:35
  because I think it's something that like often might get
• 1:22:38
  overlooked. You know, like there's many ways
• 1:22:41
  to shoot people punching at each other and explosions and
• 1:22:44
  whatnot, and there's a way that that really elevates it.
• 1:22:48
  And this did that, even though that wasn't a lot of the movie.
• 1:22:53
  I, I, I do have to give it points for those.
• 1:22:57
  I feel like I'm drifting towards a four.
• 1:22:59
  I think I'm landing on a four for this one, which, oh gosh, I
• 1:23:03
  thought you were heading higher than that.
• 1:23:05
  I it's tough. It's tough like.
• 1:23:09
  I can't. I can't influence the the the
• 1:23:11
  the ranking but. No, no.
• 1:23:13
  It's just I feel like the problem is I didn't I didn't
• 1:23:15
  rate grifters low enough. I didn't create.
• 1:23:21
  A low enough should have been. The floor should have been like
• 1:23:24
  a 0. Yes.
• 1:23:25
  It should have been lower than it is because I feel like a. 4
• 1:23:29
  seems harsh for this movie, but it's not a harsh 4 it's not like
• 1:23:34
  it's not a harsh 4I OK for context because yeah, our
• 1:23:37
  scores. Have now become like a
• 1:23:38
  comparative scale. I gave double impact of four a
• 1:23:42
  long while ago and I still kind of like that movie.
• 1:23:44
  Totally exactly that. And that's how I feel here too,
• 1:23:47
  like and I mean. Like I gave, I gave shoot
• 1:23:50
  fighter a nine. So like, you know, so you're
• 1:23:54
  just the, you're just the dumb guy.
• 1:23:57
  We're just, you know. It's like, like we've said, this
• 1:24:01
  is not something we normally. Do it's.
• 1:24:03
  It's very difficult to just like, take all your mixed
• 1:24:06
  feelings and encapsulate it into a number like this.
• 1:24:09
  If nothing else, Meet Your Double feature proves that
• 1:24:12
  ranking systems. Out of 10 are nonsense yeah,
• 1:24:16
  they're just a difficult thing to do, but.
• 1:24:18
  And so it. It winds up like, you know, kind
• 1:24:21
  of being vibe based towards the end when we get to this point
• 1:24:25
  and and I think it will be interesting.
• 1:24:26
  We've mentioned this maybe on air off before to like go back
• 1:24:30
  later and just I I think kind of discuss some of these films like
• 1:24:35
  at the end of the season and then just maybe see which ones,
• 1:24:40
  like you said, like, hey, you know what, actually I really did
• 1:24:41
  like Double Impact when I scored solo, something like that.
• 1:24:44
  So yeah. But that being said, it's not.
• 1:24:48
  It's not. A strong. 4 It's a four.
• 1:24:52
  I thought it was a strong four. It's a whatever.
• 1:24:55
  It's a four, and thus is how the. .5 was invented.
• 1:25:02
  We're no, we're not doing that, sticking to that.
• 1:25:05
  Like I said, like I said, I should.
• 1:25:06
  Have set a lower. Floor.
• 1:25:08
  To this whole thing. We were too nice, The grifters
• 1:25:11
  at the beginning. Yeah, that movie should have.
• 1:25:13
  Been a one. OK, great.
• 1:25:15
  So that's a four for no escape. That's fine.
• 1:25:19
  I can handle that. I'll bounce back.
• 1:25:22
  Rushmore. I similarly would say that I
• 1:25:26
  thought Rushmore was OK. I didn't hate it.
• 1:25:27
  I didn't love it. But I do think that the thing
• 1:25:31
  that tipped the scales a little bit in its favor is what we
• 1:25:34
  closed in on towards the end of the review, which is that for
• 1:25:37
  all of its shortcomings, Rushmore was speaking to some
• 1:25:40
  kind of real feeling. And that is actually somewhat
• 1:25:45
  rare in a movie, you know? Oh, yeah, totally.
• 1:25:49
  So with that in mind, I. I don't think I can rate
• 1:25:53
  Rushmore. Any lower than a six out of 10.
• 1:25:55
  OK, because respectable 6. I think that surmises all of the
• 1:25:59
  feelings It's. I was a little.
• 1:26:02
  Sleepy watching it, and not just because it was late and I was
• 1:26:04
  sleepy when I started. It has stuff going for it.
• 1:26:08
  I would certainly not recommend anybody go back to Rushmore.
• 1:26:12
  Just pick up with whatever Wes Anderson movie you've seen and
• 1:26:15
  liked and then go forward. You know, we don't need to look
• 1:26:19
  back. I don't know.
• 1:26:22
  There are some ones some of his films.
• 1:26:24
  That I personally want to go back.
• 1:26:25
  And watch just based on the ones of his, like what's the cut off?
• 1:26:29
  You said you saw Life Aquatic. Was that a good one?
• 1:26:33
  Long pause there. I I liked it.
• 1:26:40
  I did not love it. I, I'm, I'm, there's one I've
• 1:26:43
  mentioned to you before that it's been on my watch list for a
• 1:26:46
  while. You know, you have like a
• 1:26:47
  backlog of like films I'll get to eventually.
• 1:26:49
  It's what's the 1:00 where they're on the train where it's,
• 1:26:54
  that's the one that the Wilson brothers are both in, it's
• 1:26:56
  called. The Darjeeling Limited, yes,
• 1:27:00
  very interesting name and, and it's Adrian Brody as well too, I
• 1:27:02
  think. So the pianist.
• 1:27:08
  I don't know why. That got me so good.
• 1:27:12
  He won Best actor. For the pianist, it's just.
• 1:27:16
  The way he said, like the pianist, like he's peeing in it.
• 1:27:22
  But. Sorry, that one.
• 1:27:27
  Like I have high hopes for that one and I've been wanting to.
• 1:27:30
  Watch it for a while. So that'll be like my test, I
• 1:27:33
  think, cuz I'm going to go back at some point, watch that one,
• 1:27:36
  make a definitive decision on Wes Anderson and then never
• 1:27:39
  speak of him ever again. Never speak of him again.
• 1:27:42
  OK. We, yes, I think what that is.
• 1:27:44
  Is we need to find where Wes Anderson reaches equilibrium.
• 1:27:47
  You know, like where can we reach the point where it's like
• 1:27:49
  just stay here, you can go ahead, but do not look back.
• 1:27:53
  Yes, yeah, sure. And we will maybe bring that up
• 1:27:56
  again. Someday, right after we finish
• 1:27:58
  playing No escape. For SNES.
• 1:28:01
  OK, so that is a. 6 for Rushmore a. 4 for no escape.
• 1:28:07
  Frank, this is exciting. You have won the episode.
• 1:28:10
  I told you. I told you all.
• 1:28:15
  He did, actually. Oh man.
• 1:28:18
  I should cut that you've won twice in a row.
• 1:28:25
  The streak is completely broken now.
• 1:28:26
  You won the 1st 2:00 and then I won several and now you are
• 1:28:29
  back-to-back again. Not only that, if we look at the
• 1:28:32
  Season 1 rankings, you've crawled all the way back.
• 1:28:35
  We are one point apart in overall like cumulative scoring
• 1:28:39
  all season. I have 53 points for my films,
• 1:28:41
  you have 52. Wow.
• 1:28:43
  Don't call it a comeback. I can't believe this this.
• 1:28:46
  Is so good for ratings as we head towards the end of season
• 1:28:49
  1. We're going to have to figure
• 1:28:51
  something out. There is a possibility.
• 1:28:52
  To sense in a tie so we'll. See Knowing Knowing our history
• 1:28:59
  of playing video games. For, you know, 30 years.
• 1:29:02
  Yeah, Probably will somehow end in a tie.
• 1:29:06
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:29:07
  Oh yeah. Just like the Halo.
• 1:29:08
  Days just like the Halo days. Yeah, I think we decided.
• 1:29:13
  I don't remember if this made it on air, but there was so much
• 1:29:15
  talk about the prophecy movies last time that I think whoever
• 1:29:17
  loses season 1 has to watch all 5 prophecy movies.
• 1:29:21
  I guess if we tie we just both have to do it man.
• 1:29:25
  Yeah, like I'm equal parts like. Looking forward to and dreading
• 1:29:30
  that if it winds up being me, Yeah, that'll be mixed emotions.
• 1:29:33
  You'll like cheer if you don't have to do it, but then you'll
• 1:29:34
  be like, I don't get to. I don't.
• 1:29:36
  I can't. Yeah, that should be if you win,
• 1:29:37
  you're not allowed to watch the prophecy, man.
• 1:29:41
  Like, but then we'd get to like. Cuz then you'd get to like rank
• 1:29:44
  them too and be like, man, well OK, so we all remember Prophecy
• 1:29:46
  3 and then yeah. And you'd have to be like, no, I
• 1:29:48
  wasn't allowed to watch it. Oh man, but.
• 1:29:54
  That's exciting for the folks at home again, and maybe I'll I
• 1:29:57
  should. Episode's full of graphics.
• 1:29:58
  Check out the YouTube version. I'll put up like a leaderboard
• 1:30:01
  with two names on it. Again, I am ahead by the lowest
• 1:30:07
  possible. Margin one.
• 1:30:08
  Point this is episode 9. We've got 3 to go.
• 1:30:10
  So at the end of three more episodes, we'll see who the
• 1:30:12
  overall winner is. But yeah, I guess now let's move
• 1:30:15
  into I I legit I almost wrapped up the episode.
• 1:30:18
  We haven't picked movies. We haven't even finished.
• 1:30:22
  Why don't you just tell me what? Movie you want.
• 1:30:23
  Just tell me what movie? Yeah.
• 1:30:27
  OK. So Frank as the.
• 1:30:28
  Winner for tonight's episode of Meet Your Double Feature.
• 1:30:30
  You get to select first for for next time.
• 1:30:33
  OK, good. I'm glad I'm going first because
• 1:30:34
  I have a question. OK.
• 1:30:39
  Clarification of the rules here because.
• 1:30:42
  If I'm remembering. Correctly, I think this film
• 1:30:46
  that I'm looking at you and I maybe caught like 20 minutes of
• 1:30:50
  this movie on TV together once. So I'm wondering if that
• 1:30:56
  disqualifies it because I would be curious to make you watch the
• 1:31:01
  whole thing. OK, this is a good this is a
• 1:31:04
  good rules conversation. Put up the rules.
• 1:31:06
  Logo editor me put up a Rules logo.
• 1:31:11
  Let's go to Rules. Can we go?
• 1:31:12
  Let's go to the can. We get the interactive.
• 1:31:14
  Rules graphic up please. It's going to be the leaderboard
• 1:31:19
  again. So I think the way that you.
• 1:31:22
  And I handle things. We, we, we keep track of all the
• 1:31:24
  movies we watch just in general, even before the show, we just
• 1:31:26
  write them down in order. And I don't write a film down.
• 1:31:28
  If I didn't like watch the whole thing, even if I was in the
• 1:31:31
  room, but I clearly wasn't paying attention and wasn't
• 1:31:33
  actually like engaged, I won't count that as a viewing.
• 1:31:36
  So I think this is fine. I think if we saw part of it,
• 1:31:38
  but neither of us just actually saw the movie, that's totally
• 1:31:41
  OK. Also, I think I know what this
• 1:31:43
  is. Do you want to guess?
• 1:31:46
  Well, there was one time. Do you know the title?
• 1:31:50
  Shoot, I'm trying to remember the title I.
• 1:31:52
  Remember one time. I flipped on.
• 1:31:54
  To some channel that was showing old movies and we both were so
• 1:31:58
  flummoxed because we just, we usually know.
• 1:32:00
  No, I know what you're thinking of.
• 1:32:02
  It's not actually. It's not 13th.
• 1:32:04
  Floor. It's not 13th floor.
• 1:32:06
  I didn't, I thought. I knew what I was considered
• 1:32:08
  13th. Floor Yeah, No, this goes back.
• 1:32:11
  If I'm remembering correctly. I think this was on one of our
• 1:32:14
  family trips to Indiana and this was on TV and we saw part of it.
• 1:32:18
  I don't know if that helps or hurts.
• 1:32:20
  No, not just tell me the name. Why don't you just tell me what
• 1:32:23
  movie you want? Me to watch.
• 1:32:28
  Yes, this is 1998. Sci-fi psychological thriller
• 1:32:35
  film Sphere Sphere Yes, starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and
• 1:32:41
  Sam Jackson. OK, I've I don't have this
• 1:32:44
  memory. When was this?
• 1:32:46
  When did? We watch this was I listen I
• 1:32:50
  could be totally wrong about. This but I think this came on.
• 1:32:52
  TV one time we saw Liev Schreiber is in it too, if that
• 1:32:55
  helps at all. I mean we like Liev Schreiber
• 1:32:58
  but OK. I mean it definitely.
• 1:33:00
  I can do it for the show. I have no memory of this.
• 1:33:02
  That's funny that you're like, remember sphere Just like, I
• 1:33:07
  don't know this guy. This was maybe this this.
• 1:33:09
  This could have been 20 years ago.
• 1:33:10
  That this happened. Like.
• 1:33:13
  Was I like really little? Who knows?
• 1:33:16
  Who knows? OK, anyways, Fear 1998, let me
• 1:33:19
  write that. Down.
• 1:33:20
  That down, write that down. Oh gosh, what a load of build up
• 1:33:23
  to me. Not even knowing what we're
• 1:33:24
  talking about. That's it.
• 1:33:25
  That's. No, that's fine.
• 1:33:26
  That means it's fine. It's good for the show, Yeah.
• 1:33:29
  OK, sci-fi. I haven't really.
• 1:33:31
  Have you given me a sci-fi movie?
• 1:33:33
  Yet. Or is this the first one?
• 1:33:35
  I think it is. Wow, that is shot.
• 1:33:37
  What restraint on my part? Yeah, seriously.
• 1:33:39
  Again, when this show started, I thought I was going to be Now
• 1:33:42
  you watch. This 90s.
• 1:33:43
  Sci-fi action Bee movie. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:33:46
  Which wouldn't be mad about, but here we are.
• 1:33:50
  OK, great. Sphere 1998.
• 1:33:51
  No idea what that is. We.
• 1:33:53
  Almost let the audience in on a cherished family memory, except
• 1:33:56
  I forgot. Well, that's.
• 1:33:58
  It'll be interesting to see if like at.
• 1:34:00
  Some point maybe? It'll wait a minute.
• 1:34:03
  Yeah. So that's my pick for next time
• 1:34:06
  going in a completely. Unrelated direction, our next
• 1:34:09
  episode is going to air on Thanksgiving Day, so if you are
• 1:34:13
  frustrated having dinner with your family and don't want to
• 1:34:15
  talk to them, go ahead and listen to our episode where I'm
• 1:34:19
  going to discuss Sphere and Frank.
• 1:34:21
  You're going to talk about 1990s World War 2 movie Memphis Belle.
• 1:34:27
  What? Look, you're always coming in
• 1:34:32
  here. With your interesting varied
• 1:34:34
  genres. I've done 2 sci Fi's.
• 1:34:37
  You had none. So yeah, you got to watch a
• 1:34:38
  World War Two movie. All right.
• 1:34:40
  I'm not sure what your strategy is here.
• 1:34:43
  Points. But it's not.
• 1:34:45
  I don't know. I think it's OK.
• 1:34:47
  I don't think it's OK. No, no, no.
• 1:34:48
  You're right. You're right.
• 1:34:49
  My phone auto filled that title as.
• 1:34:52
  Mephistopheles. So that's interesting.
• 1:34:55
  Mephistopheles, Bill. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:34:57
  I just thought like. What's a Thanksgiving?
• 1:34:59
  Atmosphere movie and I was like, I'm just picturing some, I don't
• 1:35:03
  know, people are parents age just caring a lot about World
• 1:35:06
  War Two stories. No, that's hey, you don't have
• 1:35:09
  to. You can do whatever you want.
• 1:35:11
  Oh, you know why somebody recommended it in like a Reddit
• 1:35:14
  thread or something? Because.
• 1:35:15
  They said Eric Stoltz is in it. Remember Eric Stoltz?
• 1:35:19
  Not particularly, but now? Oh, he was the original.
• 1:35:22
  Casting for Marty McFly. And Back to the Future and he
• 1:35:26
  actually filmed, Yeah, he got. Fired though, right?
• 1:35:30
  He they just. Bend him, but not for like a
• 1:35:32
  weird. They basically were just like,
• 1:35:33
  yeah, he's not. Playing as well as we thought
• 1:35:35
  like they filmed for a couple weeks with Eric Stoltz playing
• 1:35:38
  too tall. That's true.
• 1:35:42
  Go check out our. Michael J Fox equals short.
• 1:35:45
  King reel that we have up on our socials for more on that yes, so
• 1:35:52
  I don't know. I just was like, man, I've never
• 1:35:53
  seen him in anything else. Well, what's he up to?
• 1:35:55
  And I just think that we definitely have not covered
• 1:35:58
  World War 2 drama yet on the show.
• 1:36:00
  What's he up to? Eric Stoltz, What does he know?
• 1:36:04
  Does he know? Things.
• 1:36:05
  Does he know things? The Stoltzter?
• 1:36:07
  So yeah, I guess. Man, that's two very different
• 1:36:10
  films for next time, huh? Hey, we always find some
• 1:36:13
  commonality. I don't know if we did this
• 1:36:14
  time. But there's usually some what
• 1:36:17
  was the same? Let's let's meditate on this.
• 1:36:19
  Yeah. Do we know things?
• 1:36:20
  Let's find out. It's about, it's about women, I
• 1:36:24
  think, Or a lack of women. A lack of women, Yeah.
• 1:36:28
  And mandates. Mandates.
• 1:36:31
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:36:33
  So I guess like, do we rap now? Or should we just end on
• 1:36:36
  silence? Actually, yeah, it's a good
• 1:36:39
  point. Everybody after this.
• 1:36:41
  Pause whatever player you're using before it just plays
• 1:36:44
  something else. And we're going to we're going
• 1:36:46
  to meditate for a while on who really won World War 20.
• 1:36:53
  No, Oh no. Coming up next, it's sphere,
• 1:37:10
  followed by. Memphis Belle on Meet Your
• 1:37:14
  Double feature.