Latest / Movie Meltdown / 238: This Clutter of Genre Stuff in my Head

Transcript

238: This Clutter of Genre Stuff in my Head · Movie Meltdown

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hi, this is Tom Adkins, or Detective Ray Cameron.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: You're listening to Movie Meltdown. Thrill me, baby. It's showtime.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: and parental discretion is advised. Our nuclear reactor pumping out
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: one million kilowatts of power.
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: Science is real.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Monsters are not.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I'm Brian.
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: And I'm Greg.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And we are coming to you live via digital recording
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: from Fandom Fest. We've been wandering around... What's your take
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: on it so far, Greg?
• 1:37
  Speaker 5: Confusing.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: It's kind of confusing.
• 1:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah. It's spread out. And a map would be nice.
• 1:45
  Speaker 5: And I've wandered a lot.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It's downloadable on the internet.
• 1:48
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I wonder how many people actually did that. Or the
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: rest of us that just wandered around like we did.
• 1:53
  Speaker 5: I didn't plan ahead. Yeah. We're in a room for
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: body art. We have our own conference room.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: We look like celebrities. They have water and tables with
• 2:06
  Speaker 5: tablecloths set up for us.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: We are kind of celebrities. I mean, you had your
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: picture taken earlier.
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: I had a random person walk up to me and
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: ask if they could take my picture. I don't know
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: if I should be insulted.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
• 2:19
  Speaker 7: I don't... Yeah, I know.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Because for those of you listening, he's not wearing a
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: costume of any sort, really, except the normal dork costume.
• 2:26
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: But, like, not really in cosplay mode, as they would say.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: You're just.
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: jeans and t-shirt and a baseball cap yeah yeah and
• 2:36
  Speaker 5: i guess here that's so weird it's like a novelty
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: and they were just like dude can i take your
• 2:41
  Speaker 5: picture he must be somebody.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Well you're that guy from movie meltdown right international sensation right.
• 2:51
  Speaker 5: Maybe that maybe they did you know speaking of people
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: recognizing i've got two stories since you know i'm taking
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: over the show.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Please do because we've passed by a few people today
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: but most of the other crew has disappeared or who
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: knows where they are this week so feel.
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: Free they're out they're out doing real things um i
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: am uh i work at a big facility and there's
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: a lot of people there and there's been a couple
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: of times where this individual has that i don't know
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: has kind of waved and awkwardly kind of like said
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: hi all right and um i didn't know where i
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: knew them from like they knew me but i didn't
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: know them and apparently they listened to the show and
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: that's it i said like yeah like um they got
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: one of our flyers at one of the movie theaters
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: and and probably listen to the, it was the, and
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: they listened to the show and then I guess saw
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: picture online or something and knew it was me. So
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: it was kind of weird, like almost celebrity moments, you know?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just, it's interesting because yeah, it's celebrity,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: but no, far from. So, but I mean, it is,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: it is the weird world that we live in now
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: that you, and we've, we've brought this up before that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: like you can, know people and never come in contact
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: with them, you know? Like, I mean, even as simple
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: as your Facebook friends may live on the other side
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of the country or the other side of the world,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: but like you might talk to them every day and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: like you may be way more engaged in their life
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: than your family that lives here in the same town,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: you know? So there's that aspect, but there's also, especially
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: when you get into podcasting, because it's such a one-way thing,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it's like you, like I realize how much I yammer
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: on about my own feelings and stories. And I'm just like,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes there's somebody out there that knows way
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: more than they probably need or want to, but like,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: it's because I do it with other shows too. And
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, I will talk about stuff that happened
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to this person as though they told me personally about
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: this story. They didn't, they just talked about it on
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: their show. So it does give you this weird intimacy
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that like, it's also extra weird because it's like one
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: directional most of the time. So it's very strange.
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: Before I actually started on the show, I listened a lot.
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: And I remember referencing to someone at work about, we
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: were talking about movies, a guy that loves movies. And
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: I mentioned, actually, I wrote into the show talking about this.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: I think I remember this.
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: I said, oh, yeah, my friend Rod said something about
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: this movie. And it was this wave of, oh, my God,
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: I'm telling a story. about a person that I've never, and,
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: and you know what? I've still never met the guy.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: He's downstairs.
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: That's the thing. I still never, never met the guy
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: on the same podcast as he, and, um, and referenced
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: him as my friend, but it is, you get to
• 5:44
  Speaker 5: learn so much about people that you, um, especially when
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: you're listening.
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 5:51
  Speaker 5: And you think you've had these conversations with them and
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: you haven't.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: You've, you, I mean, you do, you experience them in
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a weird way. It is something that like we, we,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that's why I think our brains are just going to
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: break because I, I mean, there's so much stuff that's
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: happened in these last 25 years that like, I don't
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: know if our brain is designed to handle that. Cause
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I've brought it up with media before. I'm just like
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: in media in general, like, you know, when it was
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a hundred years ago and every once in a while,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a newspaper roll around with a story in it, you know?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And like, that's all you got. Whereas now if you
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: turn on the news or the internet and like you
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: were just bombarded with information, like, for like live this
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: very second from around the world in multiple places and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like it's almost overwhelming like it's kind of too
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: much information and too much horror sometimes for your brain
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: to handle so it's like I don't think on that
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: level we're not really ready to handle that much information
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: also the personal stuff it's like I don't know that
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: our brain like we do have these weird relationships with
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: people that we're not physically in contact with and I'm
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: wondering if in years to come, that's going to have
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: some sort of psychological aspect, you know, some sort of
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: like effect down the line that like something will come
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: out of the fact that you, we, we've lost a
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: certain part of our interaction. That's like a real world thing.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: Well, it's preparing us, at least for me, it's preparing
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: me for space travel because.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: It's preparing me for my cyborg body.
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: Right. Currently working on when I'm traveling, you know, uh,
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: seven year round trip to Mars and back to be
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: the first person ever to land on Mars. Um, I'm
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: going to be able to, I'm going to want to
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: be able to stay in contact with people. And I
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: can be, I mean, when you say all over the world, Hey,
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: I could be on another world and still finding out
• 7:43
  Speaker 5: what people had for breakfast on Facebook.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So, um, it does feel like another world. Sometimes some
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: of these people on Facebook, not you guys, other weird.
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: People, those that don't listen to the show. but that's
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: almost like that overwhelming. You talk about the overwhelming of
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: sensations and media. That's almost like what it is here too, though,
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: when you do get into the convention.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Halls, especially for geeks that don't leave the house very often.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And I'd say both of us fall into that category.
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: You have all of this, not only I'm talking about
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: with the vendors and all the material that they have,
• 8:14
  Speaker 5: but just the people. And you're just getting bombarded with, Oh,
• 8:18
  Speaker 5: that's from that thing. Oh, that's from that thing. I
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: don't know what that's from. Is that from a thing? It, it,
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: it's your, your sensors are kind of overwhelmed.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Um, what was that came up with on the way here? Um,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: is that fancy Bane? He had sort of a Bane
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: mask on, but like a top hat and a cane.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, what? I'm not sure what you're going for.
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: Bane's going out on the town.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Fancy Bane.
• 8:40
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: So, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's a bit overwhelming, um,
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: at places like this. And, um, yeah, you just, I
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: can't take it all in. I can't take it all in.
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: There's a lot to deal with.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, we discuss having that weird, like, connection
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: with people on occasion, and sometimes when you leave the house,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: that actually happens. It happened earlier today, and in a weird,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: in a way I didn't expect exactly. A little while ago,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I talked to Fred Decker, and he's one of those
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I've kind of, like, thought we should talk to just
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: because we like you know, his movies and we've discussed
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: his movies in the past. And like, he had such
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: an impact on like a specific group of people, almost
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that generation. And that, that weird resurgence had had, and
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: it kind of hit the pop culture in a weird
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: way that I was like, you know, if nothing else,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: just talk to him about that. But there was also
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: sort of a shift in his career that I was
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: always sort of puzzled by. And I wanted to hear
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: his take on it. So as we get into this,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: like he gets, really honest like and that's kind of
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: what I like I mean we've had that with a
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: few other interviews lately and like people will just that's
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: why I like the show to be as conversational as
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: it is and not to be an annoying interview but
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: like to actually just sit down and talk to people
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: and even if it's just in the middle of a
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: convention like sometimes they actually stop and like have a
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: conversation and like talk about what is really going on
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: in their lives or what's really happening to them in
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the real world and like it's kind of nice when
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: people do that so that was I was surprised how
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: like open and honesty was about these situations that came about.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: So I think we'll take a break here and when
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: we come back, we will get into our little, we're
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: doing that continuing directors thing and we will, we will
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: do our focus on Fred. I don't want to go home.
• 10:34
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 7: Oh, yeah.
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• 13:41
  Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. Usually with this segment, I kind
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: of try to sit down with directors and just sort
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: of get into... Usually I like to start at the
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: very beginning and see what was your cinematic inspiration. When
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: you were a kid, what was it you were drawn to?
• 14:09
  Speaker 7: My dad was a big movie buff, so I didn't
• 14:12
  Speaker 7: have a problem like I think young people do now
• 14:15
  Speaker 7: with watching old black and white movies on TV. So
• 14:18
  Speaker 7: I discovered the original King Kong and... mostly fantastic films,
• 14:25
  Speaker 7: the Universal monster movies. I didn't have a problem with
• 14:31
  Speaker 7: watching old movies. I also fell in love with a
• 14:34
  Speaker 7: lot of the great comedians, W.C. Fields and the Marx
• 14:37
  Speaker 7: Brothers and Abbott and Costello. And I remember learning about
• 14:44
  Speaker 7: Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein and And then seeing it
• 14:47
  Speaker 7: and that being kind of the holy grail because it
• 14:49
  Speaker 7: combined those two genres in one, the great comedians and
• 14:56
  Speaker 7: the universal monsters.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: It planted a seed you didn't even realize.
• 14:59
  Speaker 7: That's right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Was there stuff you started looking at
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: as far as like visually that sort of made you
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: want to go into it from, you know, the directors
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that somewhere down the line you wanted to actually direct
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: like from that? cinematic standpoint well i think.
• 15:14
  Speaker 7: There comes a point for every filmmaker where they where
• 15:18
  Speaker 7: they make that transition from the the viewer to wanting
• 15:23
  Speaker 7: to kind of kick the tires and see how it's
• 15:26
  Speaker 7: made for me that was actually jaws which remains my
• 15:30
  Speaker 7: favorite movie to this day i i went and saw
• 15:33
  Speaker 7: that movie the first time and i was just blown
• 15:35
  Speaker 7: out of my seat Because it was the first time
• 15:38
  Speaker 7: that I saw, that I could see the fingerprints of
• 15:41
  Speaker 7: the director. That I felt like there is a vision
• 15:43
  Speaker 7: and a voice here. And that's what I want to do.
• 15:47
  Speaker 7: Because I'd already been making my little Super 8 stop
• 15:51
  Speaker 7: motion animation and getting my brother to have a fake,
• 15:54
  Speaker 7: you know, carry this gun and run down the street
• 15:56
  Speaker 7: and you're a secret agent. I'd done that since I
• 15:58
  Speaker 7: was 11 or 12 years old. But Jaws, suddenly I went, oh,
• 16:03
  Speaker 7: you know, it's not that different from being a novelist
• 16:06
  Speaker 7: or a poet or whatever. You actually control the recipient's experience.
• 16:14
  Speaker 7: And that was really revelatory for me. So that's when
• 16:17
  Speaker 7: I became really interested in shots and how you use
• 16:21
  Speaker 7: the medium to tell a story. It isn't just setting
• 16:25
  Speaker 7: the camera up in a wide shot and having the
• 16:27
  Speaker 7: actors act. It's like a close-up has a meaning. There's
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: a reason for using a close-up. There's a reason for
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: moving the camera. There's a reason for editing quickly or
• 16:39
  Speaker 7: editing slowly. A wide shot is different than a tight shot.
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: So that vocabulary became interesting to me. And then the
• 16:49
  Speaker 7: door opened and I was a goner.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: It is interesting with Spielberg that that's such an early
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: movie in his run that he was already that established.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's almost his first real feature. The other
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: one sort of went out in theaters, but that was
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: kind of his first big movie.
• 17:07
  Speaker 7: Well, I'm a Spielberg nerd, so I have to take
• 17:09
  Speaker 7: issue with you. Sugar Land Express is amazing.
• 17:11
  Speaker 6: I do.
• 17:11
  Speaker 7: It's an amazing movie.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: I always put Duel before.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: That, but I forget.
• 17:14
  Speaker 7: But even Duel is kind of a miracle because it
• 17:17
  Speaker 7: was only made in, like, 12 or 14 days, and
• 17:22
  Speaker 7: compare that to any thriller of its kind, and it's
• 17:25
  Speaker 7: shocking how fully formed a vision and a talent he
• 17:30
  Speaker 7: was at that time. So I was aiming pretty high.
• 17:33
  Speaker 7: I'm sure the generation before me was looking at Hitchcock
• 17:36
  Speaker 7: and Orson Welles and guys like that, so that's a
• 17:40
  Speaker 7: pretty high watermark.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: When you watched, with sort of a Spielberg tie-in, when
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: you watched Super 8, did it seem a little nostalgic
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: for you, running around with the camera like that?
• 17:52
  Speaker 7: Sure, absolutely. That was my life. That was exactly my
• 17:54
  Speaker 7: life for quite some time.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Well then, I guess, at what point did you get
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: into it as looking at it to be sort of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a profession, or taking it somewhat seriously, at least?
• 18:05
  Speaker 7: Just before I started looking for colleges... you know, what
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: college are you going to go to and what is
• 18:10
  Speaker 7: your major going to be? So I immediately gravitated towards
• 18:13
  Speaker 7: LA because I knew I wanted to do it for real.
• 18:16
  Speaker 7: And to make a career, I'd have to probably start there.
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: So I applied to USC and I applied to UCLA
• 18:22
  Speaker 7: and I wanted to go to the film schools there.
• 18:25
  Speaker 7: And neither school accepted me into their film program. Both
• 18:30
  Speaker 7: universities accepted me, which was you know, frankly, kind of
• 18:34
  Speaker 7: a coup for me because I'm, you know, it's not
• 18:35
  Speaker 7: like my GPA was through the roof. So I ended
• 18:37
  Speaker 7: up going to UCLA and I was an English major,
• 18:40
  Speaker 7: but I started making my movies and making the friends
• 18:42
  Speaker 7: who I still have to this day, many of whom
• 18:45
  Speaker 7: are in the industry and just sort of started carving
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: my way.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Well, that was that boom. I mean, it probably was
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: impossible to get into because after Spielberg hit and Lucas
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: hit and Coppola and like Once those guys all became big,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: then suddenly.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: It became the thing for everybody to do.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: From what I heard, yeah, the USC and UCLA, the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: film schools were just impossible at that time because that.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Became the thing to do, and everybody wanted to do it.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: So then, I guess, at what point do you start
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: writing exclusively, or were you doing simultaneously, like planning to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: direct somewhere.
• 19:19
  Speaker 7: Down the line? Well, it's a little known.
• 19:23
  Speaker 7: Actually, it's a well-known secret... among those close to me,
• 19:27
  Speaker 7: I've never wanted to be a writer. I was never
• 19:29
  Speaker 7: interested in it and I don't enjoy it all that much.
• 19:31
  Speaker 7: But at that time, that was the way in.
• 19:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: Guys like Larry Kasdan and Coppola, as you mentioned, and
• 19:38
  Speaker 7: Paul Schrader had carved careers as directors through being screenwriters. Nowadays,
• 19:44
  Speaker 7: if you're in the effects business, if you own a
• 19:46
  Speaker 7: little digital effects house, that's your way into being a director.
• 19:49
  Speaker 7: In those days, it was writing. So I started writing
• 19:52
  Speaker 7: in college, and everything I wrote was terrible, and I
• 19:56
  Speaker 7: threw away the first three screenplays that I wrote, and
• 20:00
  Speaker 7: I would really strongly encourage anybody listening to this who
• 20:02
  Speaker 7: wants to be a writer, the first or the second
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: or the third, they might suck, guys. gals, just accept
• 20:10
  Speaker 7: that and be willing to accept that and say, you know,
• 20:14
  Speaker 7: but the third or fourth or fifth might be good.
• 20:16
  Speaker 7: So my third or fourth or fifth, it was actually
• 20:18
  Speaker 7: my fourth, was, I'm not saying it was good, but
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: I felt like, okay, I'm ready to show this to somebody.
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: And I was out of college and I showed it
• 20:27
  Speaker 7: to a friend of mine, Ed Solomon, who had just
• 20:31
  Speaker 7: broken in. He's since written Men in Black and directed
• 20:35
  Speaker 7: Levity and written Now You See Me. And I mean,
• 20:40
  Speaker 7: he's a big deal on the Bill and Ted movies.
• 20:42
  Speaker 7: And Ed had just broken in. He was writing for
• 20:45
  Speaker 7: Laverne and Shirley. And I said, I need an agent.
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: And he had met somebody who he liked who he
• 20:49
  Speaker 7: hadn't signed with. And I said, great. So I just
• 20:52
  Speaker 7: followed that lead. And that became my agent who I'm
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: still with to this day.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So which number was house? As far as just coming
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: up with stories. Because I guess really that wasn't even screenplay,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: was it?
• 21:07
  Speaker 7: House came from a period when myself and my college
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: buddies were very enamored with the Twilight Zone. And the
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: Twilight Zone movie had come out and we said, hey,
• 21:19
  Speaker 7: let's all, each of us will write and direct a
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: little segment. So my contribution to the group's effort was
• 21:27
  Speaker 7: this story of a Vietnam vet who was having kind
• 21:30
  Speaker 7: of post-traumatic flashbacks. And is it real or is it
• 21:34
  Speaker 7: not real? And that kind of was the seed for
• 21:38
  Speaker 7: what became House. And then I said, I want to
• 21:40
  Speaker 7: be a director, so I'm going to make a real
• 21:41
  Speaker 7: cheap movie. And what's cheaper than shooting at your parents'
• 21:44
  Speaker 7: house with one actor? And my parents actually owned a
• 21:48
  Speaker 7: Victorian house up in Marin County in the San Francisco area.
• 21:54
  Speaker 7: So I said, okay, guy goes into a house at
• 21:57
  Speaker 7: the beginning, comes out at the end, and in between
• 21:59
  Speaker 7: is just the scariest shit I can come up with,
• 22:01
  Speaker 7: and a Ford. So that was the idea, but I
• 22:04
  Speaker 7: never wrote the script. And Steve Miner hired me to
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: write a Godzilla movie. He had the rights from Toho
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: to do Godzilla, and he wanted to do it in 3D.
• 22:13
  Speaker 7: This is how forward-thinking Steve Miner was. 1984, he wants
• 22:16
  Speaker 7: to do a 3D Godzilla movie, which you'll see in
• 22:19
  Speaker 7: theaters next year, by the way, that he didn't make.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: The 85 mini-comeback before he bastardized it again.
• 22:25
  Speaker 7: Right, exactly. Godzilla comes in cycles. But it was a
• 22:28
  Speaker 7: very exciting first opportunity, and I met some great artists.
• 22:31
  Speaker 7: I met... William Stout and Dave Stevens and Doug Wildey,
• 22:36
  Speaker 7: who were doing storyboards and designing the movie. But it
• 22:39
  Speaker 7: was never made. But Steve was my boss. And my
• 22:41
  Speaker 7: friend Ethan Wiley, who was my college roommate, said, listen,
• 22:44
  Speaker 7: if you're not going to write that house movie, let
• 22:45
  Speaker 7: me do it. So he wrote the screenplay. I showed
• 22:48
  Speaker 7: it to Steve. Steve said, I want to make this.
• 22:51
  Speaker 7: And they made the movie. So that was my first
• 22:53
  Speaker 7: screen credit.
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: Very cool.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: So were you already at that point working on Night
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: of the Creeps?
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: In your head?
• 23:00
  Speaker 7: Yes. On paper?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Yes. Was it fully formed as what it became, or
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: did it sort of change as you went along?
• 23:11
  Speaker 7: It was much like the movie, kind of a hodgepodge.
• 23:14
  Speaker 7: I've only recently become interested in cooking. I was never
• 23:18
  Speaker 7: much in the kitchen, but lately I've become interested in it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 7: It's taking different flavors and different foods and combining them
• 23:28
  Speaker 7: in an interesting way. I had this clutter of genre
• 23:31
  Speaker 7: stuff in my head. whether it's zombies or sorority girls
• 23:35
  Speaker 7: or two-fisted gum shoes. And I just started putting things
• 23:40
  Speaker 7: into the stew. And actually, the Tom Atkins character was
• 23:43
  Speaker 7: the first thing I came up with. And his line
• 23:45
  Speaker 7: that everybody loves, thrill me, that was actually the first
• 23:47
  Speaker 7: thing that I wrote. I said, that's a real attitude
• 23:50
  Speaker 7: kind of guy. Who is this? And I decided he
• 23:52
  Speaker 7: was a detective. And I just sort of built from there. Like, okay,
• 23:56
  Speaker 7: now he needs a reason that he's a detective. So
• 23:59
  Speaker 7: what's he detecting? So then I came up with, well,
• 24:03
  Speaker 7: I want to have college kids and have, you know,
• 24:05
  Speaker 7: I was very influenced by Animal House.
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 7: And it just sort of came together, all these disparate elements.
• 24:11
  Speaker 7: And I'm actually shocked that the movie's coherent at all.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I do remember when I went back and watched
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: it in recent years that I was like, it is
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: amazing how it kind of hits so many different genres.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Like it really does kind of like, it's a little
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: of everything and it does tie together nicely. So yeah,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: I guess we're all impressed that it worked out. Because
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: it actually does work. It does.
• 24:32
  Speaker 7: It's kind of coherent.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It comes through. Well, I guess, did you get
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: funding for that at that point? I mean, that was
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the first real feature going in.
• 24:42
  Speaker 7: Well, Hollywood was totally different in those days. Nowadays, it's
• 24:46
  Speaker 7: all based on, is it based on pre-existing material, a
• 24:50
  Speaker 7: video game, a toy, a bar of soap? Is it
• 24:55
  Speaker 7: a brand name that everyone recognizes? A. B. Can we
• 24:59
  Speaker 7: market it? C, can we spend as much money as possible?
• 25:04
  Speaker 7: That's the way movies are made now. In those days,
• 25:06
  Speaker 7: just an interesting script you could send to a studio
• 25:08
  Speaker 7: and they'd go, oh, hey, maybe we'll make this.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Now I'm just throwing off on your idea. I'm just
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: picturing the trailer for Lifebuoy this summer.
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: Exactly.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: That's pretty much what it's come to now.
• 25:18
  Speaker 7: It has. The Quaker Oats guy, you know. It's a prequel.
• 25:22
  Speaker 7: How did he get on the Quaker Oats box?
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Bill Paxton is the Quaker Oats guy.
• 25:27
  Speaker 10: Exactly.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I can see that. Well, then I guess you get
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: into that one. Does it seem like it's going well
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: at that point?
• 25:36
  Speaker 7: Well, I wrote that script. I was being paid as
• 25:39
  Speaker 7: a writer. I was in the Writer's Guild. I wrote
• 25:41
  Speaker 7: that script, and I was incredibly full of myself, wanted
• 25:44
  Speaker 7: to be a director, threw it to my agent, said,
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: I'm directing this one.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: That was the deal?
• 25:49
  Speaker 7: It's on the market, but they have to let me
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: direct it.
• 25:51
  Speaker 6: Nice.
• 25:52
  Speaker 7: And a wonderful guy, a producer named Charles Gordon, who
• 25:56
  Speaker 7: produced Die Hard and Field of Dreams and a lot
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: of great movies... He really liked the script, and he
• 26:01
  Speaker 7: took it to Jeff Seganski, who was running TriStar Pictures,
• 26:04
  Speaker 7: and he said, you've got to read this. The way
• 26:06
  Speaker 7: Chuck tells the story is, you've got to read this
• 26:07
  Speaker 7: tonight because we have a lot of offers from other studios.
• 26:10
  Speaker 7: Of course, he hadn't shown it to anybody.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: That's how they work.
• 26:13
  Speaker 7: And Jeff loved it, and he said, has Fred shot anything?
• 26:18
  Speaker 7: And I had a little 16mm film I'd done that
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: wasn't even finished. It was only like five minutes. And
• 26:23
  Speaker 7: we sent the film over, and they said, let's go.
• 26:27
  Speaker 7: Let's do it.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I guess, how did you get to that cast? Did
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: you have your detective already mapped out as far as
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: who you wanted or dream casting? You know, no.
• 26:38
  Speaker 7: I was interested, I loved Hal Holbrook because he had
• 26:41
  Speaker 7: done a couple of movies that I loved and I
• 26:42
  Speaker 7: thought he might make a good detective Cameron. But I
• 26:46
  Speaker 7: think what I've learned and I kind of knew then
• 26:48
  Speaker 7: was even though it's a star-driven business and the actors
• 26:52
  Speaker 7: are the most important thing in the movie, you can't
• 26:55
  Speaker 7: go in assuming, like being too preconceived about about the
• 26:59
  Speaker 7: performer because someone may surprise you. You can't close yourself
• 27:02
  Speaker 7: off to surprises. In the case of Tom Atkins, he
• 27:06
  Speaker 7: walked in and he read the lines and I went,
• 27:08
  Speaker 7: that's him. I turned to Eileen Starger, the casting director.
• 27:12
  Speaker 7: He left the room and I said, that's him.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: We're done now.
• 27:15
  Speaker 7: We're done. That doesn't always happen. In fact, it happens rarely.
• 27:18
  Speaker 7: So that was a no-brainer. And we auditioned a lot
• 27:23
  Speaker 7: of people for that movie, but we finally cobbled together
• 27:25
  Speaker 7: the cast we have.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Well, did that one lead directly into? Because it's a
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: pretty quick turnaround on Monster Squad. Did they just, one
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: kind of flow into the next one for you?
• 27:37
  Speaker 7: Yes, because I was starting, I was prepping to shoot
• 27:41
  Speaker 7: and I had this crazy idea that we talked about
• 27:43
  Speaker 7: earlier about the little rascals meet the universal monsters. And
• 27:47
  Speaker 7: I had a dear friend in college named Shane Black
• 27:51
  Speaker 7: who had never written screenplays. He read a lot of
• 27:56
  Speaker 7: crime novels. He was interested in like, books. He read
• 28:00
  Speaker 7: a lot of books. And he said, what's this deal
• 28:03
  Speaker 7: with screenwriting? I said, it's pretty easy compared to writing
• 28:05
  Speaker 7: a novel because you don't have to get inside characters' heads.
• 28:08
  Speaker 7: You just write where they are and what they do
• 28:10
  Speaker 7: and what they say. And I said, and I have
• 28:12
  Speaker 7: this idea for Little Rascals Meets Monsters. You want to
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: do it with me? And he goes, great, okay. So
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: Shane basically wrote the first draft of Monster Squad while
• 28:20
  Speaker 7: I was making Creeps. And towards the end of production,
• 28:23
  Speaker 7: we were finished and I'd taken a pass at this
• 28:25
  Speaker 7: script and Shane turned out to be a fairly gifted
• 28:29
  Speaker 7: screenwriter as it turns.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Out as it turns out now.
• 28:32
  Speaker 7: So I can say I discovered him because he wasn't
• 28:34
  Speaker 7: doing it until I asked him and we we set
• 28:40
  Speaker 7: it out and because Creeps had yet to open and
• 28:43
  Speaker 7: fail I was hot the script clearly was pretty good
• 28:48
  Speaker 7: I have to give Shane his due he really made
• 28:51
  Speaker 7: it sing and we made the deal before Creeps was
• 28:54
  Speaker 7: even finished so I went directly from one to.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: The other Did you come up with, like, designs and
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: stuff as far as, like, that Gilman is awesome? Like,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: did you sort of come up with those in your
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: head beforehand, or did that get done in, like, production?
• 29:08
  Speaker 7: No, that was very me being a director in that case.
• 29:11
  Speaker 7: It's like, who's the best guy we can find to
• 29:13
  Speaker 7: do this? And at that time, there were guys like
• 29:17
  Speaker 7: Dick Smith who wouldn't do it because his arena was different.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: He'd already taken off at that point.
• 29:21
  Speaker 7: There was the Rick Bakers, and there was this guy
• 29:24
  Speaker 7: named Stan Winston.
• 29:25
  Speaker 6: Who we.
• 29:27
  Speaker 7: All just kind of loved. And he hadn't quite broken out.
• 29:31
  Speaker 7: He'd done The Terminator, and he'd done some great makeups
• 29:34
  Speaker 7: for television, and he'd done some stuff, but he also
• 29:39
  Speaker 7: happened to... be, as it turns out, a big Monster fan.
• 29:42
  Speaker 7: He loved the old Jack Pierce Universal Monsters. So we said,
• 29:45
  Speaker 7: how can we make them different enough so that we
• 29:48
  Speaker 7: don't get sued by Universal? That becomes the plan, yeah.
• 29:53
  Speaker 7: But still cool. And so we hired Stan. And, you know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 7: once you've hired Stan Winston and his incredible team, it's
• 30:01
  Speaker 7: kind of not a lot of, there's not a lot
• 30:04
  Speaker 7: to design or think about. You just let them do it.
• 30:07
  Speaker 7: He'll show me pictures and I'll go, that's great. And
• 30:09
  Speaker 7: then he'll show me more pictures and I'll go, that's great.
• 30:11
  Speaker 7: And I didn't have that much to say because everything
• 30:16
  Speaker 7: they brought me was so fantastic.
• 30:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Well, then, I guess as both of those come out,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: were either what you expected as far as box office? Because,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're putting together two good movies, but then,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it seemed like they didn't take off
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: at the time the way they later would.
• 30:37
  Speaker 7: Creeps, for reasons I'm not entirely clear about, had a
• 30:40
  Speaker 7: regional distribution in the United States. So it didn't open
• 30:43
  Speaker 7: in L.A., but it did open in New York.
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: Uh.
• 30:46
  Speaker 7: it opened worldwide it was a big hit in germany
• 30:49
  Speaker 7: it was you know there were parts of the world
• 30:52
  Speaker 7: where it was really responded to quite well uh... but
• 30:55
  Speaker 7: it was spotty spot only released in the u s
• 30:59
  Speaker 7: and was largely a disaster and monster squad was a,
• 31:07
  Speaker 7: as opposed to a, what did I call it, largely
• 31:09
  Speaker 7: a disaster, Monster Squad was a crushing disappointment. I mean,
• 31:12
  Speaker 7: they both tanked. These movies both just hit the pavement
• 31:16
  Speaker 7: directly out of the gate.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: That's got to be rough for you. I mean, putting
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: that much of yourself into it.
• 31:21
  Speaker 7: Oh, my God. I mean, my heart is clearly in
• 31:24
  Speaker 7: both of them. I think Monster Squad hurt more because
• 31:27
  Speaker 7: we all knew that there was a sweet spot. that
• 31:31
  Speaker 7: you aim for and rarely hit. And we felt like
• 31:34
  Speaker 7: we had hit it.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And it's such a beloved thing. Like, you can see
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: it when you watch the movie. It really is part
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: of you. And I think everybody in the cast and crew,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, it really does hit that part of, you know,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: we were all those kids that love monsters. And it
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: really does feel that way when you watch it.
• 31:49
  Speaker 7: It's a very sincere picture, but it also, I think,
• 31:51
  Speaker 7: works as just an entertainment from that era in the
• 31:54
  Speaker 7: Amblin mold.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Speaker 7: It might have been marketing. I think more than that,
• 32:01
  Speaker 7: it was timing. It was not the time in the
• 32:05
  Speaker 7: world for the Monster Squad to appear. Because you can
• 32:08
  Speaker 7: make a great movie at the wrong time and nobody
• 32:11
  Speaker 7: will see it. You can make a lousy movie. There's
• 32:14
  Speaker 7: no predicting. It's like chemistry. You never know what the
• 32:20
  Speaker 7: chemical alchemy is going to be.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is sort of that idea, like it
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: hits or it doesn't. And even looking at an example
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie didn't do that well.
• 32:31
  Speaker 7: Big bomb movie.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: A few years later, that's all it took, and it hit.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And that same idea people love.
• 32:37
  Speaker 8: Exactly.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it must be all timing, really. Well, then I
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: guess what led you to RoboCop 3 after that?
• 32:44
  Speaker 7: Well, these two movies bombed. I was basically... Out of
• 32:50
  Speaker 7: work and the phone wasn't ringing. And then I got
• 32:52
  Speaker 7: a call from Joel Silver, who I had sold a
• 32:54
  Speaker 7: script called Ricochet to.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Which I really like, by the way. I love the
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: story for that.
• 32:58
  Speaker 7: Yeah, that was actually originally a Dirty Harry movie. I
• 33:02
  Speaker 7: wanted to do Cape Fear by way of Dirty Harry.
• 33:05
  Speaker 7: What if Harry sent somebody up the river and they
• 33:06
  Speaker 7: were pissed?
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I saw that in the theater and I like it
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: quite a bit.
• 33:09
  Speaker 7: Well, so I had a relationship with Joel and Shane
• 33:12
  Speaker 7: at that point had written Lethal Weapon and The Last
• 33:14
  Speaker 7: Boy Scout. And he had a relationship with Shane. I mean,
• 33:17
  Speaker 7: with Joel. And Joel called me and said, Bob Zemeckis
• 33:21
  Speaker 7: wants you to write the first story in an anthology
• 33:25
  Speaker 7: show we're going to do called Tales from the Crypt.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 33:28
  Speaker 7: And I dropped the phone and fell on the floor
• 33:30
  Speaker 7: because I'm a huge Bob Z fan.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:32
  Speaker 7: And so I wrote the very first episode of Tales
• 33:34
  Speaker 7: from the Crypt and then did a couple more after that.
• 33:37
  Speaker 7: I directed one and I wrote, I think, five in total.
• 33:40
  Speaker 7: And that kind of kept me going until the call
• 33:44
  Speaker 7: from Orion Pictures came. who were trying to adjust RoboCop
• 33:51
  Speaker 7: for a wider audience. Because the Verhoeven movie is a
• 33:55
  Speaker 7: very dark, it's a comic book, but it's a real grim, dark, satirical,
• 34:00
  Speaker 7: bitingly satirical comic book. And the second movie was even
• 34:05
  Speaker 7: more harsh in a way. It's more violent, and it
• 34:09
  Speaker 7: doesn't seem to have the focus that the first movie had.
• 34:11
  Speaker 7: It's just violent for the sake of being violent.
• 34:13
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: And it loses some of the satire.
• 34:15
  Speaker 7: It loses the satire, or it's misguided satire. And what
• 34:18
  Speaker 7: Orion found was, well, kids are watching these movies on video,
• 34:22
  Speaker 7: and they're making toys, and you know what? Maybe we
• 34:25
  Speaker 7: should refashion this character for a family audience if we can.
• 34:31
  Speaker 7: And in retrospect, it was a fool's errand. It was
• 34:35
  Speaker 7: a suicide mission. But I also couldn't say no. They
• 34:38
  Speaker 7: offered me Robocop 3. As a director, at that time,
• 34:39
  Speaker 7: I was like.
• 34:43
  Speaker 7: This is a real great opportunity.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: And, I mean, he is a great character, and it
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: is a great idea. I mean, how much control over
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: what they wanted to do with it did you have?
• 34:54
  Speaker 7: Well, I think the notion of trying to make him
• 34:57
  Speaker 7: more family-friendly was the fatal mistake. I also feel that
• 35:02
  Speaker 7: the character's arc was completed in the first movie. If
• 35:07
  Speaker 7: you know the movie, he's a cop who is murdered,
• 35:11
  Speaker 7: and who is resurrected as a cyborg and solves his
• 35:14
  Speaker 7: own murder and at the end of the movie says
• 35:18
  Speaker 7: my name's Murphy which is the name that he was
• 35:20
  Speaker 7: when he was human so he's come full circle and
• 35:22
  Speaker 7: reconciled so the truth is it's not like he's James
• 35:25
  Speaker 7: Bond or Batman or these characters that can you know
• 35:29
  Speaker 7: repeatedly be you.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: Can't tell that same story at that point it just
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: becomes a one-off kind of tale.
• 35:35
  Speaker 7: He's just a guy clanking around shooting things and doing
• 35:38
  Speaker 7: you know wisecracks but the truth is as a character
• 35:42
  Speaker 7: he's kind of complete.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: You've told the important story in his life yeah yeah
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: so i don't know does that what does that do
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: career wise because it seems like after that you you
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: change things up quite a.
• 35:53
  Speaker 7: Bit the movie actually i think did better in in
• 35:59
  Speaker 7: its initial release than anything i had done but it
• 36:01
  Speaker 7: was sort of universally loathed and i'd always had a
• 36:04
  Speaker 7: pretty good defense mechanism with emotional stuff and that one
• 36:08
  Speaker 7: i just I think I just kind of sucked it
• 36:11
  Speaker 7: up and went, okay, let's move on. And I continued
• 36:14
  Speaker 7: to write and I made a deal with Fox, an
• 36:15
  Speaker 7: overall deal. And I wrote more scripts and tried to
• 36:18
  Speaker 7: reinvent myself. But the truth of it is I was
• 36:21
  Speaker 7: deeply depressed. And I only realized this years later. I
• 36:24
  Speaker 7: was really depressed. It's like I put my heart and
• 36:26
  Speaker 7: soul into these movies. All of which, like them or not,
• 36:31
  Speaker 7: are sincere. They all have a heart to them.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they definitely.
• 36:34
  Speaker 7: And I got the shit kicked out of me. So,
• 36:37
  Speaker 7: in a way, I've been struggling ever since.
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: But.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Just to find the drive to do that, or to
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: find the right story, or.
• 36:47
  Speaker 7: To redefine myself. Because in retrospect, I think apart from
• 36:51
  Speaker 7: Monster Squad, I probably made the wrong movies. If I
• 36:54
  Speaker 7: had my first movie to do over again, it probably
• 36:56
  Speaker 7: would have been a romantic comedy, or something American graffiti,
• 37:00
  Speaker 7: coming of age, something that... allowed me to be to
• 37:03
  Speaker 7: go in a cameron crowe direction instead of what i
• 37:06
  Speaker 7: did which was kind of a george romero john carpenter
• 37:08
  Speaker 7: direction and even those guys will tell you it's it's
• 37:11
  Speaker 7: a pigeonhole.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: It definitely yeah i mean as you find out at
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: these places like that that your hardcore fan base loves
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: you but it's a very limited little window exactly it
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: does not always cross over in the mains.
• 37:22
  Speaker 7: Exactly and and my heroes are guys like spielberg and
• 37:25
  Speaker 7: robert wise who who did one of.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Everything zemeckis exactly.
• 37:31
  Speaker 7: So I've been a bit hampered, but I've always had
• 37:34
  Speaker 7: something kind of in development. I wrote something that I
• 37:39
  Speaker 7: was kind of pleased with that Jim Cameron's company was
• 37:43
  Speaker 7: interested in producing. And then I went from him, from Lightstorm,
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: to another company that wanted to do it. And that
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: one nearly came to be made... many times over about
• 37:54
  Speaker 7: a 10-year period. So, you know, it's luck, it's timing,
• 37:59
  Speaker 7: it's the right place at the right time. And in
• 38:01
  Speaker 7: a way, I kind of had too much luck when
• 38:04
  Speaker 7: my career started.
• 38:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 38:05
  Speaker 7: So maybe I'm paying the piper now.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess, I mean, as rough as that period
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: was after that, like, you hit that era, I guess,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: maybe DVD, or at what point was it? But, I mean,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: at some point, all these people rediscovered your movies, and, like,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: this whole new wave of I would assume, you know,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: from what I've seen, these movies, you know, Monster Squad
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and Night of the Creeps have just become fan favorites.
• 38:29
  Speaker 7: Yeah, no, it's very gratifying. They found their audience 20
• 38:32
  Speaker 7: years later.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: So I don't know, I guess, what is it like,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: you know, for stuff that you worked on, you know,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: 20 years or more ago to have people that then
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden discover it and love it is...
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: It's got to be kind of weird.
• 38:45
  Speaker 7: It's depressing in the sense that I haven't made as
• 38:47
  Speaker 7: many movies as I could have because those movies weren't
• 38:49
  Speaker 7: commercially successful and Hollywood's very mercenary. What have you done
• 38:54
  Speaker 7: for us lately and how much did it make? But
• 38:56
  Speaker 7: I've always believed that film is an art. I've never
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: thought of it as something that's disposable and that's based
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: on pop culture and based on the flavor of the minute.
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: I've always felt that a movie is something that you
• 39:11
  Speaker 7: can go back and look at it again and again
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: and if it's good it will continue to reward you
• 39:17
  Speaker 7: all my favorite movies do that so it's very gratifying
• 39:20
  Speaker 7: to watch these movies and I see all the mistakes
• 39:23
  Speaker 7: I see all the the bumps and warts but but
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: I also see them hitting some kind of note that
• 39:29
  Speaker 7: everyone responds to and that's really great because that's what
• 39:35
  Speaker 7: I see in the movies that I love and I'm
• 39:37
  Speaker 7: happy that I managed to pull off in a small.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Way I guess that keeps sort of driving you do
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: you have stuff that you want to sort of Do
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: you have anything to get out there as far as
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: stuff you're working on that people should look for?
• 39:51
  Speaker 7: I don't have anything that I can mention right now,
• 39:53
  Speaker 7: but just know that I'm behind closed doors noodling and
• 39:58
  Speaker 7: trying to come up with the next thing. And I'm
• 40:01
  Speaker 7: pretty certain, I'll probably regret saying this, I'm pretty certain
• 40:04
  Speaker 7: it will be completely different than anything I've done before
• 40:06
  Speaker 7: because that's what I'm interested in doing.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, you definitely have such a love for it
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: that you need to be doing it.
• 40:14
  Speaker 7: It's all I've wanted to do since I was 12
• 40:15
  Speaker 7: years old. So the last 20 years has been really hard.
• 40:19
  Speaker 7: But I'm determined to get back on the horse.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm all for it.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: I say don't count you out.
• 40:29
  Speaker 7: Thank you for your support.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: All right. Anything else you need to pass along to
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: people or any....
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: Um stop going to remix stop going to remix because
• 40:41
  Speaker 7: the more you go the more the studios go oh
• 40:45
  Speaker 7: people are going so let's keep making.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Them or just badly written stuff like i just look.
• 40:50
  Speaker 7: Well but you don't know it's you don't know it's
• 40:52
  Speaker 7: badly written until you.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: See it trailers and i'm just like i'm like i
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: don't see any good especially comedies comedies are so bad
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: now and i'm like i don't see anything good in
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: this trailer like if you can't come up with a
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: good joke in like a three or four minute trailer
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: like how is the movie gonna be any better than.
• 41:07
  Speaker 7: I'll tell you this I mean this seriously here's my
• 41:10
  Speaker 7: here's my advice to to film goers just take some
• 41:15
  Speaker 7: time and think about this what if you went to
• 41:18
  Speaker 7: movies that you would never otherwise go to movies that
• 41:21
  Speaker 7: challenge you that are different that don't have anybody that
• 41:25
  Speaker 7: you want to see in and that don't have special
• 41:27
  Speaker 7: effects that actually are the opposite of what you would
• 41:29
  Speaker 7: normally go see Because that will change the paradigm. The
• 41:33
  Speaker 7: problem is that we're all sort of in this Lemmings,
• 41:36
  Speaker 7: you know, rats following the Pied Piper. And when Sony
• 41:40
  Speaker 7: markets a movie, they're going to jam it down your
• 41:42
  Speaker 7: throat and you're going to go, I guess that's what
• 41:43
  Speaker 7: I'm going to go see. Ignore that instinct. Find the little,
• 41:48
  Speaker 7: you know, multiplex that's playing the independent films, you know.
• 41:53
  Speaker 7: Look for, you know, the Brit Marling movies and the
• 41:58
  Speaker 7: really obscure little dramas and things like that and stuff
• 42:02
  Speaker 7: that they make in england and i think you'll end
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: up stumbling upon stuff that's more rewarding to you than
• 42:10
  Speaker 7: the big budget temples well.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: And that's what i think is interesting now in the
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: film scene is the fact that because of the technology
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: shift in the last 10 years i mean everybody is
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: making movies and on the one hand it i mean
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: there's so much stuff out there you'll have to wade
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: through a lot of stuff that's not so great But
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: it also gives so many people the opportunity to make
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: a film that's not overpowered by the studio, that they
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: really do have the freedom to make what they want
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: to make. So, yeah, I think that's the way for
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: people to go about it.
• 42:39
  Speaker 7: Because once you do that, once you start paying attention
• 42:41
  Speaker 7: to the Little Engine that could movies, they're going to
• 42:44
  Speaker 7: take off. There's going to be more power there. The
• 42:46
  Speaker 7: giant apes are going to start to die. And you'll
• 42:49
  Speaker 7: hopefully reboot the whole movie business.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: So if they threw a remake at you for any
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: of yours, you're not okay with that? You know what
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I want to remake?
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: I'm serious. I want to remake Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me
• 43:02
  Speaker 7: the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: They're working on a wild bunch, I hear.
• 43:06
  Speaker 7: Yeah, sadly. See, if a movie's perfect, don't remake it.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Don't remake it.
• 43:12
  Speaker 7: If it's a great idea and has great stuff in it, granted,
• 43:16
  Speaker 7: you can't replace Warren Oates, so that's a terrible idea.
• 43:19
  Speaker 7: But no, I would not remake one of my movies.
• 43:21
  Speaker 7: I only made three movies. That would be pretty pathetic.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I can see not even you, but if the studio
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: comes at you, hey, we want to remake Night of
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: the Creeps, we've got these people signed on. Do you
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: still have rights to tell them no on something like that?
• 43:36
  Speaker 7: Do I have the right to tell them no? Well,
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: first of all, they're probably not going to come to me.
• 43:40
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what I'm saying. I wonder if it had
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: been passed on at this point.
• 43:42
  Speaker 7: And if they did, it would have to be either
• 43:45
  Speaker 7: a lot of money or some compelling... Really compelling reason.
• 43:50
  Speaker 7: I mean, the main reason that I would consider making
• 43:53
  Speaker 7: a sequel to Night of the Creeps is to work
• 43:55
  Speaker 7: with Tom Atkins in that role because I think that
• 43:58
  Speaker 7: was so special and cool that that would be reason enough.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Well, we're changing him. I mean, he's James Franco now.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: You know that.
• 44:07
  Speaker 7: I actually like Franco quite a bit.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: He's a lot of fun.
• 44:09
  Speaker 7: He's a very good actor.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: He seems like a good guy.
• 44:12
  Speaker 7: All right.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that was the bulk. I think we
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: got into a lot of really good stuff. So I
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: do want to thank you for sitting in with us here.
• 44:18
  Speaker 7: It's been a blast.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, anything you've got in the works, let me know.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: I'll be glad to forward it on to people and
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: help get the word out.
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: Perfect.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to what you have coming in.
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: Cool.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: We'll be right back. I'm Dangerous Jamie.
• 45:18
  Speaker 8: Joining me as always is Sarah. And we're going to
• 45:21
  Speaker 8: talk to you about why you should be listening to
• 45:22
  Speaker 8: the Gold Press broadcast.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Let's do that.
• 45:24
  Speaker 8: Let's indeed. Why should they be listening to the Gold
• 45:27
  Speaker 8: Press broadcast?
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Well, firstly, because it's awesome, obviously.
• 45:30
  Speaker 6: Obviously.
• 45:31
  Speaker 8: I mean, that's a given or a given.
• 45:32
  Speaker 6: A given, yeah.
• 45:33
  Speaker 8: You can expect nonsensical puns like that. Yeah, with zero context.
• 45:39
  Speaker 7: Absolutely zero context.
• 45:40
  Speaker 8: But also, we review horror films.
• 45:42
  Speaker 7: Mostly, we review horror films, I would say.
• 45:45
  Speaker 8: Well, yeah, that's probably the bulk of what we do.
• 45:48
  Speaker 8: We also look at new releases, top five lists. We
• 45:52
  Speaker 8: cover theme months.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we do some horror news.
• 45:54
  Speaker 8: Yeah, tell us about the theme months that we've covered.
• 45:56
  Speaker 8: We have done Horror Behind Bars. Yeah, we did Clown
• 45:59
  Speaker 8: Town where we looked at clown movies.
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: We did.
• 46:01
  Speaker 11: We've done Trash Kings.
• 46:02
  Speaker 12: Trash Kings where we looked at the films of Fred Olymbray,
• 46:04
  Speaker 12: Jim Wynorski and David Ducato.
• 46:06
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: We've done a bunch of stuff.
• 46:08
  Speaker 12: We've got Revenge Month in the works, Trauma Month.
• 46:11
  Speaker 8: So yeah, loads of stuff like that. Loads of stuff.
• 46:13
  Speaker 8: So if you like horror films you should probably listen
• 46:15
  Speaker 8: to the Girlfriend Scorecast.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 46:17
  Speaker 8: We're here and we're ready to believe you. So that's
• 46:21
  Speaker 8: not all you can get.
• 46:22
  Speaker 12: You can also get Extra super bonus content when you
• 46:25
  Speaker 12: subscribe to the feed.
• 46:26
  Speaker 8: Tell them about it, Sarah. Tell them. Tell them now.
• 46:28
  Speaker 6: We do the.
• 46:29
  Speaker 12: Gorepress Gorementry, which is basically us shamelessly ripping off Mystery
• 46:32
  Speaker 12: Science Theatre.
• 46:33
  Speaker 8: Yeah, basically getting drunk, chatting over the top of.
• 46:36
  Speaker 11: A film, and hopefully being quite entertaining, I think.
• 46:39
  Speaker 12: There are two ways to find the show. You can
• 46:40
  Speaker 12: find us over at iTunes by searching for the new
• 46:42
  Speaker 12: Gorepress Gorecast.
• 46:43
  Speaker 10: You can indeed.
• 46:44
  Speaker 8: Or you can go to gorepress.com.
• 46:46
  Speaker 12: And read all the great reviews, news, interviews, and everything,
• 46:50
  Speaker 12: all there alongside the podcast. So come on, subscribe to
• 46:54
  Speaker 12: the new Gorepress Gorecast. Tune in, drop out, stay spooky.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I'd recommend this show to anybody.
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: Anybody who's into smut.
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: Hello, creeps. It's me, the Crypt Keeper.
• 47:24
  Speaker 13: And you're listening to Movie Meltdown, the greatest movie geek
• 47:27
  Speaker 13: show on Earth.
• 47:39
  Speaker 5: It's part of your problem, you know.
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: You haven't seen enough movies.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
• 47:44
  Speaker 5: And now, on with the show.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: All right, we are back. So thank you once again
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: to Fred. That was an awesome interview. I have to say,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I really kind of liked how cool he was about
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: it all and just was so open about it. So that's, yeah,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: very cool. And we'll look for whatever he has on
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the horizon. So now let's roll into some geek activities.
• 48:25
  Speaker 6: All right.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Aside from the fact of hanging out at a convention.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: And the... And a tugboat going by.
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: That would be the steam engine.
• 48:34
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 48:36
  Speaker 5: Boat yep steampunk yo steampunk boat all the they should
• 48:40
  Speaker 5: put all the steampunk on the steam engine boat that
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: would be awesome they really should i mean that's where
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: they belong right they're like.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Oh this is dirty yeah then they get there be
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: like this is messing up my outfit.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: Maybe i don't like steampunk i never intended to make
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: fun of them i'm sorry I did, but I make
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: fun of everybody's stuff.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I don't mean anything extra to make fun of you guys.
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: I mean, essentially a lot of that stuff is cool.
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: I think it's just the... It is.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: It's a lot of work is what kills it for me.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I'm like, that's awesome, but I don't have the patience
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: to like put that together or even put it on probably.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Like it's just.
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: I think the whole attitude... kind of gets gets to
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: you eventually but i think everybody's beat that into the you.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Know it depends i mean that's true of any of
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: the costumed people is how seriously they take themselves like
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: i understand being super serious and dedicated to what you're
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: doing like that's awesome but like if you then take
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: yourself so seriously once you put the costume on. I'm like, okay,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: now you're going a bit far. That's just me. I
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: know people have different takes on their costume characters.
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: And do they see the Wild Wild West as their
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: Holy Grail film?
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: They're the only ones.
• 49:53
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think anyone else is bothered to work that
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: into their favorites.
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: There was an episode of Doctor Who where they had
• 50:01
  Speaker 5: a whole steampunk Cyberman. And that episode kind of was
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: just kind of.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Ah, the review of Wild Odd West once again.
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: It was a thing.
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: It was a thing.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: There was some mechanical-y stuff and some high-paid actors.
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: Anyway.
• 50:21
  Speaker 11: Yeah.
• 50:21
  Speaker 9: Okay.
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: Sorry. Geek activities.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: So, did we decide we should go ahead and bite
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: the geek bullet and talk about Pacific Rim? Yes.
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: I decided that this was the The big, loud, obnoxious
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: film of the summer that I was going to take
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: my kids to.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Have they been to those type in the past?
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: They've never been into a theater for the big release.
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: It's always been, you know, I took them to the
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: 3D Phantom Menace, which was horrible.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's bad anyway, but 3D is not going
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: to make it any better.
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: It was a chance for my kids to see Star
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: Wars in the theater. Even though it was the worst one,
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: it's still Star Wars in the theater. So we went
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: to that. I get it. And my kid, six at
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: the time, he loves the pod racing. I don't get it.
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: He loves it. So anyway, we went to this.
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: And um there were they were the only kids in
• 51:25
  Speaker 5: the theater wow that's sad i had waited for the
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: online reviews to see if there's anything that's the new
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: one oh that's not yeah not star wars okay pacific
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: i was like that's sad if no kids went to
• 51:35
  Speaker 5: see star wars yeah no uh this was pacific grandma.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: Pacific grandma i would think even at least some younger
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: maybe not a kid a.
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: Kid about 12 or 13 because.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: To me that seems like that's a perfect target audience
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: like It is a 12 year old brain through and through.
• 51:49
  Speaker 5: I think the PG 13 scared people away.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe, maybe.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that's not a great trailer. I'll be
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: the first to say that trailer kind of makes it
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: look dumb. And I mean, some will argue that maybe
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: it is, but like, I think it makes it look worse.
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: Let's put it that way.
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: I think the trailer dumbs it down a whole lot
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: more than even the movie ends up being.
• 52:08
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: It simplifies it too much. It is simple. I told
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: them ahead of time, I said, it's going to be loud,
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: it's going to be fights, but it's going to be fun.
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: That's all we really need to go into it for.
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: It was loud. It was really loud. There were a
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: lot of people that thought, hey, I think they thought,
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: I could see it on their faces, like, why are
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: you bringing a seven-year-old to this?
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: But See, I wouldn't think that with that one. There's
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: so many, like, other movies that I feel would be inappropriate. But, like,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: The three-year-old at Predators that we went and saw.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: That was fine. Or the kid that was at the
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Friday the 13th remake that we went to. There were
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a couple of those. That was the same family, by
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: the way.
• 52:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 52:53
  Speaker 7: So, yeah.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of other things that I'm like,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: what are you doing? But, like, that's not true of
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: that movie. Like, that's just a big, dumb, fun movie. Like,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: kids should be able to enjoy that.
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: It really should have gotten a PG. It's not a
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: PG-13 movie.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: It's not really, no.
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: There's no sexuality in it. There's no... There's some cursing,
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: but that didn't even have to be there. They could
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: have probably taken out one or two words, and it
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: easily would have been... Maybe it was graphic... But it
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: was cartoonish.
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, robots and very unrealistic monsters, they're awesome. But,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're not like it's any sort of life
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: form in the real world. So, like, to me, that
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: makes it all very cartoony. And, like, it seems like
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: it's something that no kid would really have a problem,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: no kid I know would have a problem with.
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: It really isn't much more than Power Rangers.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: That's what I was just thinking. I mean, it really
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: is just like them– becoming the big robot and fighting
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: giant monsters, which is what they did pretty much every episode.
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: But the only thing is there are deaths, real deaths. And,
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: you know, I was traumatized a little bit in Star Wars.
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: I mean, not Star Wars. Man, Transformers. When everybody was dying.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: That's true. You didn't see that coming in the old
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: school Transformers. Not the new horrible thing. He's talking about
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: the animated one.
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah. The others don't exist. I mean, Michael Bay's Transformers
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: don't exist. I'm talking about Star Wars. Yeah. 1986. Transformers. Transformers.
• 54:29
  Speaker 9: What?
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Star Wars?
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: What is wrong with you?
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: I don't know. Transformers. Not Star Wars. Yeah, 1986 Transformers.
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: And Bumblebee cursing, that kind of traumatized me a little bit.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, that one did seem like it
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: was pushing the envelope. Like, it was almost trying to
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: be like, hey, kids. It was almost flaunting it. But,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of expected what I got out
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: of Pacific Rim. Yeah.
• 54:57
  Speaker 5: Like I said, I knew it was going to be.
• 54:59
  Speaker 5: I wasn't disappointed in any of it other than it
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: might have been a tad long.
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: To me, it did seem like there was a part
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: in the middle where they did stop fighting for a while.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And like, that's kind of what you were at that
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: movie for. But like, I don't know. Like if there
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: was one thing I think it could have used, it
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: could have had a little more like characterization. And I mean,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: we have kind of one backstory and one sort of
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: relationship thing going on. But like the rest are kind
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: of glossed over. Like so many of those side characters,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: like the other robots, we either don't know anything about them.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: Or we know the most basic thing about them, you know? So,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, they just fall into the categories of, oh,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: we need this person or this type of person here.
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: Well, really, they fall into stereotypes. We're going to have
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: the high-technology Japanese brothers working together, and then we're going
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: to have the low-technology Russians. You know, it's we're going
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: to put this up, and you're going to fill in
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: your 2D characters with your 3D racism.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Which again is kind of what happens in movies
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: that are sort of dumbed down. I mean, I didn't
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: expect that kind of stuff going into Del Toro. Like
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: he's just, he usually puts a lot of time into
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: his character. So I think that's the only part I
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: was sort of let down with was just the fact
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: that nobody really has much character. I mean, I guess
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: our female pilot has the big backstory and has like
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: the arc sort of. And because even our main guy, like,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It doesn't seem like it puts any
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: effort into him. Like he just seems like he's just
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: there cause they need a guy.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: And right.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: They already covered the brother story in the first opening scenes.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's like, I don't know. We just don't
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: get much from most of the people in there.
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: Now the, the, um, and I can't remember his name. The, um,
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: the head, uh, guy from, yeah. Idris Elba.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Idris Elba.
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: There we go. He's, uh, his backstory is a little bit.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: That's what I was going to say. Like, he's the
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: only other one that has a little like, but his
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: comes into play with hers. And like, at the same time,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: he's so good. Like he's just acting wise is amazing.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: But like, I wish they would have gave him more.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: I wish they would have given him more to go into. Like,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: he just seems like he's so busy being like, I
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: don't want to talk about my past that like.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: We don't get any of it.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, I guess that is his character, but
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: it seems like they're, Could have been more with him,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: and he definitely could have made it work no matter
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: what they did because he's just– anything I've seen him in,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: he's amazing.
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: Another thing I was very happy with– I always pay
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: attention to how the female character is treated in these stories,
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: especially when I'm showing my nine-year-old daughter.
• 57:41
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: And I really appreciated that they introduced her as– Really
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: the smart one. The intuitive one. And then she basically
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: can kick the lead character's ass. And so, hey, we've
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: got a triple threat.
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: Oh, yeah.
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: And she's beautiful. All at the same time. And then
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: they copped out. Yeah. And they had to have the
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: big fight between the two blonde guys basically over the
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: girl or in defense of the girl.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:10
  Speaker 10: When.
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: I kept going, okay, just have her step up and
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: kick the guy's ass. Have her do it. Have her
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: do it, please. And then you have to go into
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: her backstory where she was, again, saved by another man.
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: I was okay with the backstory because, again, that's more
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: of the history with her and the other guy. So
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: it's like I was okay with that, but it does
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: sort of– when you add both of those into the
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: same character, it does kind of weaken her a little
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: more than she needs to be.
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: Right. So I was like they had this kick-ass female–
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: And then pulled the rug out from under her and
• 58:45
  Speaker 5: made her weak in a sense. And even when she
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: went into their fight, they kind of almost made it like, oh, well,
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: is she really going to have trouble with this or not? And, again,
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: it all works out in the end. But it's those
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: things that are just planted in there that they feel
• 59:04
  Speaker 5: like they have to. Oh, well, we gave her this
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: much power. We we can't let her, you know, get through.
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Without, which is also unusual with del Toro because he's
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: so well known for like, not only like he works
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of children into his stories and a lot
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: of females and like, he's usually makes them very strong
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: characters and like very independent characters. And like, it's, it's
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: weird that this one seems so conventional for him and
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: I don't, I wonder if because it's become such a
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: big project now and because there's so much studio involvement
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: that these are like notes coming from them or if
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: maybe he just wasn't all that concerned about that and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: was busy designing kick-ass monsters because they are. But yeah,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: it seems like it's at the expense. It just gets
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: a lot more mainstream cinema than I have ever seen
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: him do before. Even in his most popcorn kind of
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: movies like Hellboy, he's still– does things very differently. He
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: seems like he goes out of his way to put
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: his own spin on everything and add his own personalization
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: to the characters and a lot of that felt like
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: it was missing in this. I still liked it. I
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: still felt like it did everything it needed to do
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: on the giant robots versus monster part, you know, and
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the effects are good and the monster design is awesome
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: and There's so many good things about it, but there's
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: still kind of that hole in it that it feels
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: like it just needed to be fleshed out a little
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: more character-wise.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: A little more depth, yes. Yeah, it had that opportunity.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: I will say this. The report from my kids, their
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: favorite part was the kaiju birth. That was kind of fun.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: It was pretty cool. And I thought it was a
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: good death to a good character, too. I thought that was.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Sort of. Did you hang around?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 7: Oh, no, we didn't. So, see?
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: For those of you at home, if you haven't seen
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: it yet, hang on to the end of the credits.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: Well, we tried to hang out, and they got too bored.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 5: That's the problem with having children. They get bored and
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 5: need to run out quickly, so they can't sit through
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 5: full credits.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Well, at the end, spoiler alert, Samuel L. Jackson shows up,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: and the Kaiju have a mission. They're taking them in
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: on our side now. We're going to send them off as,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: you know, When the world has no one, the kaiju
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: will come together to do this.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 5: Oh, God, I hope not. I did see The Avengers, finally.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 5: I haven't been on here since I saw The Avengers.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: See, that's a good tie-in because I've watched it again,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: and I've watched it again since then.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: So I would like to get your take on it
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: since we haven't discussed this.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 5: It sucked.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: See, I am totally on the opposite side. I have
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: major issues with it, but I love the writing in it.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: And I love the character development. To counterbalance Pacific Rim,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: I think that's what, to me, it's the opposite. I think, like,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: the big grand story with the villains and all that
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: is pointless. Like, it's just there to fill in a hole.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: It's just there because we need an end point. We
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: need this. But along the way, I think everything that
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Joss Whedon does with the characters and with the dialogue
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: between the characters is amazing.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: I think it's good. No, okay, here. Let me put
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 5: it this way. I, I enjoyed, um, the Whedon part
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: of it.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 5: I'm very much, I'm a very strong.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 6: Yes. No.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: Um, he probably made it as palatable as anybody, but.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I definitely think he saved it. Like it hadn't been
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: handed to anybody else.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: Probably.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: It might've just been a train wreck. Like it really
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: could have gone down horribly in flames. And like he,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: not only made it successful box office wise, but I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: think he did add a lot to it that nobody else.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: Would have done. But I think, I think to me,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: there's a certain amount of what is on the line. Um,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: and granted, yeah, I know the world could be destroyed,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: but your heart is really with the superheroes, not really
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: the world. Because if you were concerned about that, all
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 5: of the bodies being thrown around should be the concerning part. so, but,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 5: and people just, the, The people, all the millions of
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: people that died in the film, those are the concerning parts.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: But I think it's when we've already established that Thor
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: is pretty much unbeatable and that the Hulk is pretty
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 5: much unbeatable.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: The Hulk steals that damn movie.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 7: He does.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: For having two unsuccessful movies, it's amazing how much that
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: character comes in and steals this movie. popular movie away
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: from everybody else got a good actor finally they do
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: that's that's one of my favorite things i love his
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: portrayal of banner and then they actually do it is
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: funny how much they actually still make him look kind
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: of like him like they really you can tell they
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: did use the cg like i thought maybe they just
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: you know cartooned the whole thing in like they could
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: half-ass it and like not really use him with the
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: dots they could just insert the image in there but
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: they really did like put the dots on him he's
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: in those scenes doing it and it does kind of
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: look like him. Like they kept just enough that you
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: can see that it's really the actor in there. So again,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: technically there's so much good going on too.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 5: I think the problem I have with it is that
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: there's so much that has to be forced into the
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: film to make it an Avengers film. Because you have
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: to have all the characters and all of them have
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: to have a role or a reason to be. Like
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: Captain America, him even being in it, like at one
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: point he has to save something, push a button for
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: Iron Man. That's his only part of the story at
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: that point is he has to push a button so
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 5: that Iron Man can save the day. Um, and it's just,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: it's just weak. I thought I, I, I, Which part?
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Just the trying to force him into that?
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 5: Trying to force him in.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Because I think, I don't know, to me, I like
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the way that they work everybody into this scenario. Like,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: it does, and re-watching it, that's what I realized. I
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: was like, I forgot it doesn't just happen. Like, it
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: really is, they pick up these guys, and then this happens,
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: and then this, and like, it takes them, you know,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: two-thirds of the way into the movie before everybody's really...
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: especially once they steal one of our characters. And like,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: it really is the end of the movie before we
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: get the whole team together. So it, I don't know.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: I thought that happens natural enough that I was okay
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: with it. But I mean, it does, it is weird
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: trying to mix superheroes together in the same, like it's,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's what always annoyed me with the DC
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: world is the fact that.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: Superman can do whatever he wants.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Batman is just a dude with a plane. And like,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: he just feels so like grounded to the real world
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: where Superman's like a God and, So I think that's
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: what I was, like, I was never all that into
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Thor because it kind of felt like that same thing.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: I'm like, why does he just get to do everything? Right. And, like,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: you know, Captain America is a guy in a suit,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: you know? I mean, granted, I mean, Iron Man is
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: really the Batman of the bunch, but his suit is
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: so badass. Like, it kind of puts him par with
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: most of the other guys. But, like, Captain America, like,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: he is a super soldier. Like, he is a superhero,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: but it is funny how much, like, he just doesn't
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: have– all these other powers that these other guys do.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, he holds his own, but yeah, I was
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: just like, and then it's funny, like mixing in like
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: the two humans, like, you know, Scarlet has a gun. Like,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the Black Widow is sitting there like firing
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: tiny little bullets and like everybody else is like using
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: massive superpowers and like she's just unloading a clip on
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: these guys. I mean, she's like the Jason Bourne or
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Tomb Raider.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 5: But yeah, her character is not.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: See, I disagree.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: I really like her character in this. I think it
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: like again and going back to like having a good.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: female in there i mean she's the only girl to
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: represent girls in this movie sure and thankfully joss really
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: liked writing strong women because her character is especially as
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you go back and watch it and watch how much
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: she really is in control of every situation that she's
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: in with the exception of that hulk scene like she
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: is never not in control of what's going on around
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: her and like she doesn't totally rely on the fact
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: that she's super hot, but she uses it when it's
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: necessary because it's an attribute. And it's one more, you know,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: thing in her arsenal there. I mean, she's badass and
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: she's strong physically, but she's also like smarter than half
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the people, you know, in this movie. So it's like,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I think they use her really well. I would almost
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: like to see like a movie of her. Like we've
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: got all these other side movies that some of which
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not all that thrilled with, but I would love
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: to see a Black Widow movie.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it would be too much of a... What was
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: that Soderbergh... The one with the boxing hero.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: It would be, okay, that's probably selling her character short.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: But that's, or, you know, like a Tomb Raider or
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: like a.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I think, especially if you gave it
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: to Joss. Like, if Joss was in charge of it,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: I think it would work.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: It could go horribly wrong, you know, once again, if
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: you just hand it to any old director. But, yeah,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: I think if you let him be in charge of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: her character... You would have a great movie there.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 5: And I don't know. I was annoyed by it. Samuel L.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: Jackson looked like he barely even woke up to play it.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Well, he's done a lot of these movies now.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: He's got to turn up in every damn one of them.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 5: So I don't know. And I wondered why Robin Schabowski's
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 5: character was even in it. She just seemed– it's almost
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: like they– she had a– a contract to be in
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: a big movie or something.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Some of that.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 5: Um, but it didn't matter, uh, to the movie to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: have another character. It didn't have to be her. And
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 5: it didn't happen.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: And I think what it is, I think with some
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: of that stuff, I think they're just setting things up.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: Like maybe down the line, she becomes a way bigger
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: part of the next movie or a spinoff movie or
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: the TV series, which he actually just is putting together now. So,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, there could be a lot of other ways
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: that they're just, again, I mean, they're not stupid up
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: at Marvel Studios. They've mapped out. so much of this
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: plan that like you do go back and look at
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: a movie from three years ago and you're like, oh,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: they really were setting this up to be part of Avengers.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: So like maybe they really do have it mapped that
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: far down and they want to get somebody in there
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: that they know is a recognizable name that they can
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: hand another franchise to or something.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: It could be on TV.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: You could, yeah, you could bring in an audience with
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: just the person, you know, the recognizability of this character. So,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, that may be what it is. Cause I
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: feel kind of the same way. I'm like, she has
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: a scene at the beginning. And then after that, she
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: just sort of stands around and tells things to Samuel L. Jackson. Right.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: So I don't know. I, I think there's way too
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: much good.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 6: In there.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I think the only thing that's a weak spot for
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: me is, is that like the villains just don't matter.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: But like almost in a way that I, like I
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: don't even, it's not even a strike against it. Like
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: we needed a villain who cares what it is. We
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: need that big battle scene at the end. And it's awesome.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: It's weird, faceless aliens that do not matter at all
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: to the plot, but like it still works. It makes
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: for an awesome battle scene regardless.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: I couldn't even describe to you what they can. Now
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 5: that I think of it, I couldn't even describe to
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: you what they looked like. If I saw a toy
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: from it, I wouldn't know.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: Where it was from.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 10: No, it was.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: A generic insert alien you stole out of a video game, basically.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: Maybe that's part of it. Because the one thing my
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: kids always notice is with my old toys or old
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: cartoons and stuff like that, they're always like, Daddy, you
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 5: like the bad guys better than the good guys. And
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 5: if you don't have really cool... Like, Loki was lame.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 5: If you don't have really cool bad guys and charismatic
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 5: bad guys, it kind of detracts. That might have been...
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 5: that's one of the reasons why that's.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: Part of the problem is, yeah, it's, I mean, they
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: had to come up with a main evil force and
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: they had to find a way to get it here.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: And like they, yeah, they totally were already pulling the
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: strings and Thor movie to be able to use Loki.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: But Loki, again, really doesn't have that much to do.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And like, I, and I don't blame that guy. I
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: think he actually gives a really good performance as him,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: but Loki's character is always been weak. Like he's weak
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: in Thor and, And he's not really... If you have
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: a big force for all of these guys to come
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: together against, it doesn't seem like a Loki. He's just
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: not a formidable enough villain to really bring this whole
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: team to their knees. Which, by the end, he's not.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: In a way, that leads to some of the best
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: jokes of the bunch. You get Robert Downey Jr. just
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: kind of putting him in his place. Or you get
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: the Hulk scene is priceless. It has its moments that
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: are pretty fun, but Yeah, I mean, he's not the
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: grand villain that you need, and maybe that's still coming. Like,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: maybe that's part of where it's going. So, yeah, again,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: he's not the big villain we need for that movie. But, again, like,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: that's the fill-in-the-blank part for me. It's like we just,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: we needed a villain, we needed a battle at the end.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter who it was, doesn't matter how it happens.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: It's like as long as we get everything else awesome
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: along the way, so. To me, it all makes up
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: for it in the writing and the character development.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 5: I think it was buildup for me for over a
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 5: year since it was released, though. So many people said
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: how good it was. And so my perspective was, I'm
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 5: going to sit down and finally get to watch it.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: And I was, you know, it's another superhero movie.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm drawn to the part that nobody else is.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: And maybe that's what makes me even more weird, even
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: amongst weirdos. It's like everybody else. And I mean, that
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: battle scene is awesome. But I am like, so, and
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: that's what sucked me back into that second viewing. Like
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: I was just sitting around and I was like, I
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: kept thinking about that whole part in the middle. And
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: that's the part I even heard people bitch about is
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: once they get on the ship, it's like this big
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: long scene and there's no fighting. And like, I'm like, no,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: that's my favorite part. Like when they get on the
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: ship and all the like dialogue starts and all the
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: scenes between everyone and everybody kind of gets their little
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: conversations back and forth. It's like, that's my favorite part
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: of the movie. And like that, I went back specifically
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: to watch that again. Within a week, I turned around
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: and watched it, which I never really even get a
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: chance to watch a movie again. It's like usually we're
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: just doing so much for the show. I'm just like,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: all right, got to watch this for the next thing.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: And like that one, I was like made a point
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: to go back in because I just like that dialogue
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: and those characters as they play together. And Robert Downey Jr.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: is so damn good in that. Like he just is
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: Tony Stark now. Like you can't– he's such a smartass. And, like,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: makes it work. He has just become that character now.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: And the fact that he, like, I mean, it is, like,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: such a juggling act for Joss to put that together
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: because he should have stole that movie. And it's arguable. Like,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, he definitely steals a lot of the scenes. But, like,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: you know, again, Hulk kind of does. But, like, everybody
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: else sort of has their moments. Like, I think, you know,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: Chris does a good job with Cast in America. It does,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: you know, it is harder for him to sort of
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: hold his own against some of the other superheroes. But, like,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: I think he has some really good scenes.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 6: Along the way.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: And like I said, Scarlet is sometimes not really, you know, a.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 5: She's been much worse.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: She's been, that's the thing. Like she's been in stuff
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: and I've been like, oh God, what is she doing here?
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: Like she's done some stuff that doesn't hold up to,
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: you know, the caliber that she's at now. The A-list
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: roles that she's given sometimes, occasionally she'll turn in a
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: pretty rough performance, but like. this wasn't it. Like, I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: think she stepped up on this on a, on a
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: silly superhero movie, you know, but she almost brings more
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: to this than some of the way bigger, you know,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: high end properties that as far as like more dramas
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that, I think she brings easily as
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: much depth and character to this than she has in
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of other roles. So I don't know. I
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: think it's, it's got so much there in that, that
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: it makes me like it more now, the more I've
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: watched it.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 5: Maybe I need to watch the second time.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, forget the villain part. Just sort of cruise through.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: Just gloss over the villain stuff because who cares?
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 5: Yeah, just gloss over the whole reason to have them
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 5: together anyway.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's true. All you want is to get
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: them together. Who cares why?
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 5: Just get them together. We don't need a reason for
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 5: a party. We're just going to have a party.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: Damn right. We're throwing our own damn party. We'll tear
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: up the city all by ourselves. We don't need aliens.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: That's right.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, kids, get out your decoder pins.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 3: For you members of the secret circle. All right.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: So we will be back next week with a movie
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: and this is your chance to go watch it now
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: because it's, it's worth the end next week. We will
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: be back with the film sorcerer from director William freaking.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 6: Oh, okay.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: It was, yeah. One of those I needed to see anyway,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: they need to check all those off the William freaking list. So,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: one I've heard of, didn't know much about. So it
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: will be an interesting conversation. So this is your chance.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: Go watch it now. Don't complain later that you didn't
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: know it was coming because you just heard about it.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: And we may, we just may have a special guest
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: sitting and talking about it. So come back next week.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 6: Oh Lord.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: All right. I think we've probably hammered on about superheroes
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: and giant monsters and robots. And I guess we're definitely
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: at the right place for that. So, um, I think
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: that will round out this episode.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 5: Sounds good to me.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 14: Many times I walked the line, I rolled the dice
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 14: and questioned my life. Many times I sacrificed and dealt
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 14: with the pain. I've been down this road before where
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 14: the dead ends are, it rains.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 10: And it pours.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 14: I've been down below and it's the past that I paint.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 10: Well, I know.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 15: How it feels when you have to start again.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 9: Now there's no one to save me.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 6: I know how it feels.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 15: When the world is gonna end But they'll see I'm
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 15: gonna make a comeback I'm gonna dig six feet up
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 15: tonight I'm gonna get it all back.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 10: I'm gonna make a comeback this time.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 13: Looking to my eyes to see a graveyard filled with
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 13: dirt and defeat Looking to my eyes to see the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 13: weight on my soul Where the fallen angels sleep, the
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 13: crooked hearts and the crossroads meet Where the haters say
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 13: my name and carve it in stone I.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 10: Know how it feels when I haven't got.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 6: A friend Even.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 9: When they're standing beside me But they'll see I'm gonna
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 9: make a comeback I'm.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 10: Gonna dig six feet up tonight I'm gonna get it
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 10: all back I'm gonna make a.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 9: Comeback this time.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 6: Risk it all, I'm gonna.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 14: Risk it all I'm gonna break my back and risk
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 14: it all I'm gonna pick my.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 6: Spot, take my shot Swallow my pad and risk it
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 6: all I'm gonna risk it.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 10: All And I won't look back I'm gonna.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 6: Pick my spot, take my shot.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: Swallow my pad and risk it all.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 15: The lights on the last round the dark horse keeps
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 15: on fighting.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 14: I'm gonna make a comeback I'm.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: Gonna dig six feet up tonight.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 10: I'm gonna get it all back. I'm gonna make a
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 10: comeback this time.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna make a comeback.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 7: I'm gonna dig six feet up.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 9: I'm gonna.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 10: Make a comeback this time. I'm gonna make a comeback
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 10: this time. Yeah.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: Comeback. A comeback. Make a comeback this time.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna come back.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna come back.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 12: I want to come back.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 14: I'm digging up six feet tonight.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: This summer.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 5: Lifebuoy.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: I told you not to use Lifebuoy. This episode is
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: more on how to sponsor or support the show, email
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: producer at moviemeltdown.com.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 7: Talk hard!