Steele Talking Cars with Evan Ball

I'm starting to think that we're the only two people in the whole state who have yet to make eleven. That car, I think someone's shooting at us. Who because we're kissing. Someone always shoots at us when we're kissing. So pretty the city.

Hello and welcome to eighties TV ladies. I'm Susan Lambert Adam and my favorite cars are my keya Nero and my old college car, the nineteen eighty Toyota Corolla Wagon. And I'm Sharon Johnson. My favorite car that I've owned is in nineteen eighty ninety clips and the favorite car that I've ever driven is my brothers Aston Martin. What.

Yes, we took it on the highway. I went over one hundred miles an hour get out of town as fast, get out of town fastly. That is amazing. It was so much fun. What is it feeling to drive an Austin Martin at one hundred miles an hour?

Well, terrifying for me because I'm not used to driving that fast and it wasn't my car, so I wanted to make sure that nothing happened to be a little careful, right, But other than that, it was exhilarating. That is amazing. I'm trying to think of the fanciest car I've ever been in, but I can't right now, but maybe maybe we'll be able to find it. I certainly hope that where you are, you're finding joy wherever you can. Whether it's in an Austin Martin going one hundred miles an hour, we're in your little keya Nero driving past the gas station going never have to be there again, hopefully you are also enjoying finding joy listening to us today.

We have a really cool guest stopping by. We've talked a little bit about cars of Remington Steel before, but we wanted to take a closer look. So I called my friend Evan Ball, who is a TV writer and producer, and he's a huge car guy. Evan loves cars and TV and movies and the cars that are in TV and movies. Evan was a writer on Stargirl and most recently on Colin and Black and White, the drama about Colin Kaepernick during his high school football years and how he became an activist.

All right, welcome Evan to eighties TV ladies. We're so happy to have you on the show. Oh I'm happy to be here. This is when you brought up to me. Initially, I was like, oh, yeah, cool, I'm excited about coming on your podcast.

It'll be fun. I have a good little chat. And then coming in here and seeing that you have the entire setup, multiple microphones, multiple computer, sound engineer, producer, all the whole thing. This is a much more professional setup than I was prepared for. And still I am pumped.

What we want to make you feel like you're coming to some place you know that's pulling out the stops. Yeah, just for you, just for you. How are you doing and what's your what's your story? Evan? Oh, my goodness, my story?

Well, you and I know each other because I worked with your husband Rich on the show called Titans, a show that was originally on DC Universe as now HBO Max. And we got along very very well there and have since done many a movie screening and hang out and all that, and that's where I got to know you. And it's been absolutely fantastic. And I initially wanted to only write feature length screenplays, and it wasn't until I was in school that I realized that TV was super fun. And I think, as our discussion may prove, it's a really interesting way to explore characters and dynamics in depth over a long time.

You know, movies are great to kind of hit a key point or tell a concise story, but you only have two hours, I mean, but with television, you know, you have anywhere from six to twenty two hours, which is probably too much first season of television, but a lot of these eighty shows lean into that, so we get to have some fun there, and it allows you to really really deep dive and explore and play with theme in ways that I think you don't get too as much in movies. So um, I'm a wholehearted TV lover now. And then I worked on Colin in Black and White, the Colin Kaepernick Show on Netflix. Then I worked in a couple you know, you do mini rooms and things that kind of don't go anywhere. I'm learning that there's a lot of that, yes exactly.

Let's talk about the favorite car you've ever owned or currently own. Oh ever, well currently and ever this may fit in with this podcast. I have a nineteen eighty seven Mazda RX seven that I have owned for about twenty years now, and it barely runs and I'm throwing way more money at that car than it's worth. Like I said, I bought it for four hundred. I could probably sell it right now without an engine.

Four I don't know, let's say six thousand, because it's the niche market. Now, there's a lot of people who are into it. But I probably have at least twenty five thousand invested in it and it still doesn't run. So this is the project of my life, straight out of the eighties. Like all the shows, you guys talk about what is it about this car that makes it your favorite?

What is it that speaks to you about this car? Okay, Well, there's two things. One, I'm a big fan of the Mazda rotary engines, and that was that's like a unique thing that they do. It's kind of a small, high reving engine that you could kind of get a lot of power for a small engine. But it's a quirky thing, and I think I like the quirk of it.

But the main thing, too, is that when I got it and I got in a little bit over my head, I didn't have the money, I couldn't figure out how to do it, and during my time of production and all that, there were a lot of times where I just like I was struggling to pay rent and I was trying to figure out what to do, and it kept coming up, Okay, do I sell this car? Do I sell this car? And I never wanted to do it because I was like, if I sell this car right now to pay this month's rent and then next month I'm struggling for rent money, I'm just going to be mad at myself that I gave up on this thing that I've been wanting to do this whole time. So I promised that, you know, when I quote unquote made it, I was going to restore this car to like the max capacity.

And so I've really kept it with me as kind of a symbol of I'm going to get down, I'm gonna get there, and it's it's kind of come along with me as I've moved different places and try to make this career happen. And now that it's finally unfolding in my career is working the way I wanted tune it's progressing, I'm like, yeah, now it's time to treat the car, and I fulfill that promise to myself. So it's it's very sentimental. Oh my god, that is so beautiful. It's like the car is a metaphor my favorite thing for television, physical metaphor.

Yes, it is. It is a special it's a symbol. Yeah, the symbol of the struggle. Struggle is real. It is and it looks like you could see the struggle over the car.

And I love that. It's from the eighties. Yes, just like me. In the eighties, cars and vehicles were one of the special effects. Yeah.

Right, And if you're gonna, you know, be cool. You wanted to flip a car, burn a car, I don't know your car as to talk. He's kind of super cool something like that. You got to have the rolling sexy car shots. It was.

It was definitely a big thing. I mean, it's weird because I, um, you know, I was I was born in the eighties, and even my parents were surprised that I was so much of a Miami Vice fan throughout my life because I remember it from when it was first aired, and I mean when it was first aired it was probably in syndication, but I remember it from when I was very, very very young, and they could never understand there, like you weren't really paying how did you know you were literally two three years old or whatever, And I just remember the Testarossa. I just loved the Testa Rosa. And so for the rest of my life, I was it brought me back to Miami Vice and so, I mean, now I've watched the whole series so many times, but things like that Night Rider, for example, with the with kid the trans am, that was something that got me as a kid as well, and I was like, okay, cool, yeah, the guy with the talking car.

I want to watch that show. Yeah, cars that era specifically a team stuff where they had, you know, the big eighteen vehicle. Everybody's in and out. It's supposed to be utility, but you know, like there was something about that era that was really highlighting the cars in a really cool way, and it just spoke to me. I totally get that, I mean because there was I was a total eighteen fan, a little bit older than you, but you know that's okay.

But also hardcast McCormick. I love that frigging car that apparently was like paper. They just could not keep that car together. Oh wow, the car and hardcasting, you know, in the car and hardcast McCormick. No, it was his like race car, Like he's a race car driver.

Right, So a retired judge teams up with a convicted X race car driver who's been repossessing cars and gone to jail for that, because sometimes it's always not legit. And so the judge is going to basically track down people who got out of his courtroom on a technicality and he's going to get them on a new crime so he can send them to jail because they're bad people. The premise of that show sounds so Reagan War on Crime like era, so and so much of it. What do you think about the pairing between cars and detectives. Yes, was very leaning into we got it.

We got to stop these people at all costs, and we're gonna look cool while we do it. Yeah, a police in all ways, Yes, And I will be my own justice, Yes, exactly, because I am an old white man. I could go vigilante with it. That's perfectly acceptable as long as I get the guy who did the minor crime whatever. You would love the car stuff though, oh yeah, they I think it was the first TV show to do the under the under the truck, under the truck, under the It was pretty impressive.

That's amazing to do that practically and at that time. And if this car, if this car was built like paper, like you're saying, that is incredibly dangerous because they should be having full heavy role cages in them. I am blanking on the star of the show who I love dearly. He's great judge or the judge Brian Keith. Brian Keith, He's fantastic in that show.

Brian Keith is fantastic in that show. You have to watch this show. It's great. And he hated that car because he had to eat the doors. It was a race car.

He's a big guy. You had to climb in. He had to climb in. He's a big dude, and he was seventy when he did the show, and he had to do that every time, every time they jumped in the car to race after the bad guys. Oh man, that is literally the show that Rich and I were watching during pandemic, in the early days of pandemic, when we were watching seventies and eighties shows that I was loving so much, but I was also mystified.

I love Stephen Cannell shows of the eighties, the eight Team, Hardcast, McCormick, Rip Tide. There are no women in those shows. There are women that start off in those shows, a few little side characters, and by the end of the first season they're gone, they've packed up a move to help their sister, or they're just kicked out of the van because George Poppart didn't want to hang out with them, I don't know, and they I was like, why could he not have cool women in these shows? It would it would make me sad because I love these shows, but there are no women in their shows. There's something about the um the detective car thing that is just you realize you're just watching masculine fantasy over and over and over again.

But then along comes Remington Steel and Laura Holt and her cars. Because I realized when when I was sort of prepping this, I'm like, oh my gosh, all the cars in the show that are, you know, part of the laurea of the show, not the one off guest star cars belonged to Laura Holt. Oh, they were all her personal cars. Well, they were all her personal business cars. So because she owned the agency, the cars belonged to her.

Yeah. That makes I just I guess that's not something that you would have to put together. But that's perfect. Yeah, that's great. I got very excited because I was like, I think it's the only one that I know of.

I can't think of anything else. Yeah, I'm gonna say Cagney and Lacy they had they had their own police cars, but they belonged to the police depart right. Yeah, they weren't hers her like her character's property or business. So I should we talk about the cars and steal because because they're kind of characters, they're kind of um, you know, their story definitely story points to them, and they're and they're a little bit character defining at least, I would say, Yeah. It was.

Speaking of which, it was really funny when I was rewatching because it's kind of hard to stream right now, so I had to go through uh we'll say channels methods to try to get to stream it. And so where I was where I was watching the episodes to kind of avoid copyright issues, the whole episode was mirrored. So I'm watching, I'm watching these episodes and I'm like, why is everybody driving on the right side? And it took me as second I'm like, Oh, it's because they're flipping the screen. Funny thing.

That is so funny, and that goes in and out. There's some places you can see season one and two, but none of the others. Yeah, and it's never consistent. It's like some whatever network or streaming platform will have it for a short amount of time, and so if you try to get watching and you don't, just burn through it really fast, next thing you know, it's gone and off of that platform, and I just like, Okay, I have to find it somewhere else again. Well, because especially since we've gotten so used to everything being available somewhere, and that is just not the case with all of those shows, especially from the eighties and the seventies to a certain extent.

But I did find all the seasons of Remington Steel on DVD, and I still have a DVD player at the library. Oh that makes sense. It hits all the things that I love about this type of the genre, right. It has a really fun comedy to it, and like really like a very specific kind of clever wit that you feel like you're always on the inside Joe as a as an audience member, that I just really appreciate because you know they're they're whether they're like double entendres style dialogue or the things that aren't as corny as James Bond, but they're like adjacent in some ways, Like you can see how Pierce got a lot of practice that delivering these kind of lines before he becomes Bond. But then also in the initial watch just being like, oh, yeah, there's there's some cool cars in this like this this is a legit detective spy thing.

In the way that I was telling you, I was drawn to those types of stories before, like when we we talking about the other ad shows. Yeah, and again it's not flashy like you know, like the A Team or Broadcast McCormick or The Night Writer. It's more subtle. But what I liked, So the car that lore whole or personal car, right, I looked it up because I wouldn't know from the outside because I'm not a car person, But basically it was a Volkswagen Rabbit convertible, which is not again a sexy car, right, it was a fun car. It's a fun car.

Rabbits kind of legendary, is it. Yeah, it has like a low key cult status, okay, because they so, I mean, look, the volks Black and Rabbits were something that at the time were that kind of affordable, sporty coup thing, right, and so it was something that's like a lot of people could get their hands on and have fun with. They were like beach cars and they were things to like cruise around on the highway with and have a good time. So there's it's weird. Volkswagen always has a kind of like diehard group of people who are just like fans forever and know everything in and out and all that.

But yeah, if you look at from old Beatles to Rabbits to almost the vans, the buses, buses, the volks black and buses, like, I think it's in there. It's not quite as esteemed as those two. But there's there's definitely a whole Rabbit fan base that there a whole Rabbit fan base. I'm excited. I wouldn't know that either.

What I will say that we learned from Stephanie Zimbalist Laura Holt. When we interviewed her the car was what she was driving. They just basically said, oh, that that looks cool. Laura Hart, would it would be driving that car? I don't know if it was her personal car because they do trash it a lot.

Particularly. I think at some point it was just like, okay, we got to get a car for the show, like a show car. Yeah, but I liked that it felt like it defined Laura Holt's character in a way, in a specific way that was very Los Angeles. And that was one of the things in rewanting the show that I realized, like, oh, this is like a it's super La. It's super La, and it's so exciting, and it felt kind of cool, like a cool little car for Los Angeles.

It didn't, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't just a sedan. It wasn't. It was cool but not flashy if you will, you know, it wasn't like some convertible sports cary kind of thing. It felt and maybe it just felt like her, maybe just felt like Laura.

I'm not sure. Yeah, I think so too. It's not magnum p I. We're not going ferrari it. We're going like a very practical car and yet sporty, yeah and cool.

So I have I do have a little thought on that. And this is this is me probably putting things together that didn't exist. But the show is very clearly a fan of a lot of film noir and those pieces is constantly referencing all Grant movies and stuff like that, and if you look at a lot of the film to our movies set in the forties and things like that, there's a ton of convertibles. There are a ton of just like mellow convertible sedans that are just around because that was like the thing to have. And so it actually makes sense to me that she drives around and like the eighties ish version of something like that.

That's not the sportiest of the sports car, but it is just sporty enough that you're like, yeah, a detective would drive that. Now that you talk about that, I'm thinking of like, what's the Carry Grant movie with the plane by Northwest? He tried he gets drunk and look they send him trying to send him off the road in the convertible. I'm like, oh, you we're right. I mean, maybe a happy accident, but it was one of those.

It's one of those things. It's like, oh, that's cool. It's also easy to film. You can see a character much easier, much easier. Um, I love that.

Okay, I think we have to take a little break and then we're going to come back and talk about what I think are the two other very important cars in the show. But then I also realized in the pilot there's a whole car story. We'll come right back, and we're back. We kept talking about cars and television shows during the break. We didn't stop.

There's so many cars in television shows to talk about, but Remington Steel and Remington. So you got a thought, What was your thought? I did have a thought because we were talking about that, and I was thinking about how, even growing up as a kid, how many shows where there was always an iconic car. Right, There's always the Batmobile. There was like the turtle Van, Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a turtle Van and I had to get the little Turtle Van toy with the figures because that was a thing.

And just thinking about how instrumental um even uh X Men, like the X Men cartoon, they didn't have a car until the movie when they drove a Mazda or X They an X Men two, but they had the SR seventy one Blackbird, which was their thing. So there was all there's always the iconic vehicle. Yes, I was thinking about that because I was like, you know, I'm sort of now then leap back to like, okay, what other women in cars and women female driven television shows did did did the Ladies get to have a cool car? Wonder Woman? I don't think she had a car, but she had the plane.

And they did it in the show, and I couldn't remember how they did it, and so I had to go look up how they did it. And it basically looks like a glass plane. It's pretty freaking cool for seventies. Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, that was cool. It's also a random thing.

So you have I mean, you have a character who can fly, who travels around in an invisible jet and it's not it's not there's nothing about Themiscara that makes you think military jet. But she flies around in a military jet and it's super cool. It is super cool, and and it's invisible, which always felt weird because you're like, okay, she's not she's not invisible plane. The thing, it's not a cloaking device. It's just seat through so there's just a person sitting there flying through the air.

I mean, maybe it wouldn't be picked up on radar because people might not be picked up. I don't know how radar works, but it is weird. It would just freak you out, Like if you're another plane and you see, just see a person that would be very strange. I'm still a little lost this how she got away with that, but it's still very cool. It's still very cool.

But did she did wonderfu woman have a car? Does she have that? I know I don't. Nothing had to be several cars on the show, but maybe there was in one car. Well, how do you how does the car compare or compete with the invisible plane?

I mean if in the show you can't, can you have an invisible car? I mean, like that's where I'm going, like you know, and then she's just cruising, illustrating, just sitting. And what was interesting to me is if Pierce Brosen had never walked into the show, the character of Remington Steel would have been represented by that limo. Interesting, that's probably what happened before Pierce Brosen, and as Remington Steel showed up in Laura's life, that this car was there, it existed, and people just sort of represented him. She basically got a limo, put our Steel on the license plate, and had Fred the show for her drive that car around.

So people thought Remington Steel existed. That gag was going on before Pierce Brosen relorks into the show. Oh yeah, it's such a fun concept. Like the concept of the show being they're not going to take a woman seriously, so we got to create this. And it's funny because the idea of Remington Steel being like the ultra masculine man and then Pierce Brawston being not unmasculine.

He's very masculine, but he's the British. He's like the charming, pretty gentleman type. Right, And it's like, when you think of what Remington Steel I think was kind of parodying in the in the concept she made up of him, it's the other things I was talking about, right, It's like, all it's the bullet type characters. It's those things you're like, oh, yeah, it's gonna be this like man's man type of guy that's probably wealthy, that's glamorous, heart to heart guy. Yeah, it's the heart.

It's heart, mister Hart. And then to bring in a guy who, in his character in the show is a criminal who's like suave but who does a con man. Yeah, Like it was such a fun way to kind of subvert that. Yeah, I thought it was great. And yet he sort of slides into that character and obviously makes it his own.

But it's it's interesting that that he fits, you know, both he both fits and then is the opposite of everything she wanted that character to be. Yeah, you know, I'm going to invent the perfect man to be the head of my agency. And he's perfect because he doesn't exist. He listens to me, he takes me seriously, he lets me take the lead on things, all that, and then like, oh, here's the actual guy. Now, now we have some friction.

Yeah, there's a show. And that is so funny. So the the Limo was a nineteen seventy six Cadillac Fleetwood. Do you know what that means? I know, people idolize the Fleetwoods as being like an iconic thing of the time, I mean for limos, but I don't.

I'm not up on limos. I don't. The Limo doesn't do a lot of stunts. They do a lot of following people and and traveling you know, Remington from place to place and Laura and Remington talking in it, talking at it. Yeah, um, you know, figuring things out, having romantic moments.

Um. But they don't flip that Limo. But they do flip her her rabbit. Rabbit. They drive her rabbit into a lake in season one, and then then and then the rabbit gets like pushed down a hill and rolls.

Um. I don't know that they ever completely destroy it. I mean, they clearly destroy it in those I mean there's several, you know, versions of it. Yeah, I don't. I don't think it ever got that badly.

Damnos, the big full explosion where you're just like, this car is done. Yeah, definitely, not like not like Scarecromaces King when they blew up Remington Steel. Wasn't a let's blow things up kind of show. It happened occasionally, but it wasn't a big part of the show, and it happily they left her car alone for the most part. Yes, And so we were talking about in the pilot.

Yes, that I was reminded when I went back and looked at the pilot that the pilot is all about a car. It's about jewels and a car. And that was really interesting because I had forgotten. And it's about like Remington Steel Agency has been hired to protect some very expensive jewels, which you're going to be part of the revelation of this brand new, fancy car, and then things go awry. You know, as they do in a pilot.

And Remington Steel or whatever his name is, really, yeah, Remington Steel in the pilot doesn't exist as a person. Here is fake, fake, made up person. Yeah, that's the fake boss. And I yet this fake Remanton Steele is trying to steal the jewels and inserts himself into this whole process, and yeah, it's it's so fascinating. I mean, they're they're really clever in the way they kind of unfold it.

When he meets Laura and he's pretending to be like the South African agent, right, and so he folds into that. But then he goes somewhere else and he's trying to work with the people, other people who are coming after the Gems, and he's pretending to be someone else. And then finally the person who doesn't trust Laura because he's the guy's like I gotta see a man walks in and is like, Remanton Steele has to be here or I'm walking away from the case and for because it's the pilot, they gotta figure something out shenanigans. And then next thing you know, he's just there like, Hi, nice to meet you, I'm mister Steele and He's like, whoa wait, what happened? It's so great?

It really is is really fun, and she has to go with it, and then and then ultimately realizes that the success of her agency has hit a point where she needs a Remington steel. She can't pull off the ghost game anymore. It can't just be the limo our steel, and so maybe sort of have to. But we have talked about the fact that even though that's the coolest idea for a pilot, it is actually the thing that probably ruins the female driven aspect of the show. It definitely changes the nature, but it also shines a light on what women then and even now today have to go through that there's always a man who's who's going to be there to try to or people are going to listen to because it's a guy and it's not a woman.

You know, I certainly lived through some of that myself. I think you probably have to h and sadly it's it's happened then and it's still happening today. For a certain extent, they actually talked about it the women that worked in the Obama White House in the administration, because there were a lot of women he hired a lot of women hired a lot of people of color, but the women in particular realized that they were literally not being listened to, and so they off site went we gotta isn't They started like going, well, you know, she has a really interesting point. And they were literally in backing each other up in their meetings to make sure that they were being heard and that then their ideas weren't being taken by a guy in the room.

And it's the Obama ways. You're like, oh, well, that should be the friendliest female. You know, it wasn't. It's just still culturally ingrained blind spots. It's it's so bad.

And you know, back back to the show. The thing that I hear your point about it right by by having a physical, actual Remington Steel, you are conceding the idea that you need this man to be there when it was just her own ship. And the show does a really good job I think of going back and forth in highlighting how capable she is at this and not letting it just be oh, mister Steele, Pierce Brosnan can just kind of charm his way through everything and get everything done. Like she has to do a lot of the legwork all the time to figure these things out, and you know he has his skills too, and that's the kind of fun back and forth of it. But I'm happy at least, and this is the lowest possible bar that they didn't just abandon that and let it just be like, oh, well, now he's the lead detective and she's actually kind of the secretary, right, like, it's not that no, and you're right, and it teetered everyone were now having watched it, you're like, oh well, okay, all right, And then that's a I think a testament to both the creators because they listened.

But also, you know, I think to Stephanie Zimbalist, who you know, in researching sort of the season one to season two and sort of some of the rumors of they're not getting along, you know, his star, I mean, he was going to become James Bond, which is always challenging when you know you have then two stars and one has just become the most famous star that's shooting up into the sky and everybody loves um. But she was also in season two. There's interviews with her in like TV Guide and things like that. She was just saying, please remember the premise of the show. Point of the show is that Laura is driving this ship.

Is the detective, is the detective, and and so she really in season two worked to write that ship and they were like, oh, you're right. They were able to hear it and see it. And then they started bringing more woman writers on and Robin Bernheim. But they talked about that like that that there was it was important to stay true to that because that was the concept of the show. And it was even if it wasn't like they weren't going, we're making a feminist show.

They were like, we're making entertainment, but we're doing so with a female character like you've not seen before. And I think they cast right because it was somebody who fought for that vision that was the show. But we're a little off of cars. The concept car in the first show, in the first episode, I'm going to tell you what the car was in the show. It's called the Hunter Jetstar six thousand.

That's a pretty good name. It's actually it was actually the Vector W two. Do you know this, No, I didn't know that manufactured by Vector Aeromotive as a concept car in nineteen seventy eight. It went into limited production in the early eighties. Yeah, the company sees production on all its car models in the mid nineties.

Okay, and then of course, spoiler work. The businessman is doing this to basically he's made a plan to steal the diamonds to save his car company and fund his car And weirdly enough, you know Pilot aired October first, nineteen eighty two. October nineteenth, we just looked up. Nineteen eighty two, John DeLorean, famous car manufacturer, was arrested for allegedly trying to buy large amounts of cocaine in order to finance his struggling car company. Now Evan do about the Delisle.

Yeah, so the Delorian as being, if not the most, one of the most iconic cars and on screen history, right and from you know, from the car guy side of things, it's a vehicle that has such a mythology about it. Everybody loves the specific Delirian vehicle, but everybody has like different myths and ideas about like what happened to the company, because you know, the with the owner falling into legal issue after legal issue after legal issue, there's always the like, oh well, some other company's going to scoop them up or something else. Is going to happen, Like this is too hot of a property and too unique of a car that today is still really heavily sought out, but nobody really knows why. There can't be anything else coming from it, right, there's nobody else bought the property.

You still the cars are super hard to find. They're very well maintained for the most part, but it's it's it's just shrouded in mystery, and it's like, I think that adds to the appeal, the fact that the owners having so much drama. Yeah, we were talking about hardcast McCormick and the race car that they use in the show because it wasn't holding together very well in like season two or three. They basically just converted some deliriums to look like the car and they use that for jumping because it was a better car. It's a tank, I mean, it's a stainless steel vehicle.

Like most I mean back in the day in the eighties, people were still making cars out of metal, but you know, they were painted and all that, and this was very specifically it's just like this is raw, stainless and maybe had a clear coat on it. I don't actually know if that's true, but it was. It's a very unique, specific vehicle that was heavy, that was almost bulletproof. So I could totally see them being like, yeah, sure, let's use it as a stunt car for something else. But then, as as a fan today, who knows there's such a very limited amount of them, and that if I ever see one, it's like I have to stop and take a picture and like like, okay, so there's one in this neighborhood, and now we know that there's another one in California that exists and all that.

It just breaks my heart to hear that they were just throwing it. Oh my god, they were shut like flying it into the air and landing really hard. One can only hope that it ended up in the hands of somebody who's gives a lot of TLC and take very good care of you know. But they threw those cars around in the eighties real hard. Yeah, because they had they You have to do things practical.

I mean, if there's anything I missed now about I understand safety concerned and all that. When it comes to doing stunts and being able to have a practical car chase scene with real stunt drivers and real cars just feels completely different than anything else. It's so much more fun, all right. So the other big car they basically bring a special car in in the middle of Remington Steel season two, episode seven. It's called Love among the Steel and it introduces the car they will basically use or the rest of the show.

For reasons it was cool. I think that was probably Do you remember what the car is? No, I don't. It's the nineteen thirty six Auburn Boattail Speedster. Oh do you remember this when it could?

You remember that? When it came in the show. It was this whole episode about it where the agency is hired to find a missing car that holds the key to something precious or special, and yet also it's a car that keeps showing up driverless and trying to run them down. It's like a ghost car. It's like a ghost car.

And she's like, I'll take that. Well, it's so funny because then it like there's also this legend that has to do with like romance in the car and if you you know on they tracking down all the owners of the car and the mystery of if you're involved with the car, then love is in the air and something fabulous, you know. Anyway, there's a there's a sort of every past owner has a personal and romantic connection to that car, and then somehow, at the end of the day, the Remington Steel Agency ends up with it, or Pierce Brosnan's character and still but I'm assuming the Remington Steel Agency bought it for him. Yeah, I mean where else is he doesn't have money. He doesn't have any money anywhere else.

I'm often like, where does he really live? I mean the agency pays for his apartment, the agency pays versus if all this is gone, he's just bouncing around because he talks about it in the in the Pallette when he's like, oh yeah, I may follow the Gems to San Francisco or like the whatever tour they're on. It's like, do you have a home to go to or do you just go from job to job? That's the whole one of the character, that's the mystery and heartbreak of the character is he's a con man without a home and without a place, and then he finds Laura and then he becomes you know, he has to live up to the perfect man and you know, in order to win over Laura home. That's what you gotta do out in the world.

That is way more detailed and a much more severe endeavor than swipe right. Yes it is, Yes it is. But there was something you said earlier about film noir and cars of that era that made me realize or made me think that maybe that has something to do mabe with maybe how that car got in the show, because it's very much of that film noir era, and it feels very much and so all the film references and all the other that they constantly do, this this feels perfect for this show. I don't know that it would feel right in almost any other show, but because of that, it feels really right for this show. Oh there's somebody out there who's like, oh, yeah, that was in you know, scene nineteen in the Big Sleep and blah blah, blah blah.

Right now that we're like, we don't have that, and I'm kind of upset that. I don't know if there's that connection there, but it feels like the kind of car that would have that, that would have that. And again I did a little bit of a dove but maybe one of our listeners knows and you can let us know. But I was sort of I was really curious about like other women and female driven shows or movies that get to drive cool vehicles. And I wasn't sure if you we talked about Wonder Woman, but I wasn't sure if there's something else You're like, oh, this one, Well not so.

In comics, Black Canary a DC character, and she's like known for having a motorcycle and that's her thing. So it's not a car, you know, she's got it. She has an iconic kind of it goes back and forth. It's it's mostly like Harley ish um, but not you know, not like a big handlebar thing. But she's a biker girl and so she does a biker thing.

That's cool. Um, so that's pretty cool. I'm trying to think of, you know, in the in the Fast and Furious movies at different times, Um, the female characters have specific cars. But now that I think about it, I can't track that there's in the way that Dominic Toretto and Diesel's character always drives a charger. I don't know that there's a female character that always drives this specific thing in that.

So Michelle Rodriguez like, did what do you know what she's in the what does she drive. She goes back and forth. So in the first one, I think she drives and Nissan to forty SX, and then later so she because her character and Vin Diesel's character become like an item. She starts adopting some of his and she drives a lot of his style cars. She drives like a Himy Kuda some point other things.

But then later she moves into being a motorcycle girl too, and she's on motorcycles every You'll see everybody else in a car and you'll see her on a bike just ahead of them. That might be deVie Evans love it quite honestly. So you know, I was just thinking, m Thelma and Louise Iconic convertible. I have no idea what it is, but Alma and Louise. That's a great one.

But they that's the only one I can come up with. At this point. I can't think of any other movie or TV show that that has a car that's that tied to the show, tied to the female characters in the same way. There is a friend of mine that I was talking to that we were talking about Thelma, Thelma and Louise, and it's one of my favorite things that I probably remember forever where we were talking about Thelma and Louise and how much how great it was, and then she's like, well, my favorite part was just when they flew off at the end. Okay, that's your takeaway from Dollman and Luis.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that was good because I just couldn't. I'm like, that's that's what she thinks happened, and because that's what she wants to have happened. They flew off just in the car, flew into the sunset, flew into the sunset, and God bless her, why not if that's what she wants to believe and take away, then okay. So of course I did a little research because I was like, okay, we gotta figure out. We looked at Scarecromis Can, we talked about Lee Stetson drives a Porsh three five six and an eighty four Corvette.

Amanda King drives this LTD station wagon and it's very iconic. I remember that, like I remember that look of a station wagon from the seventies and eighties. My mom had a green station wagon. That's what we rolled around the back without seatbelts, like hanging out parts of It kind of defined the era between muscle car and like the Japanese invasion of the eighties. It was just these station wagons because man, they were tanks.

And I had I had a nineteen eighty Toyota Corolla Wagon station wagon Wow, in my last two years of college and the first couple of years of grad school. And I love that thing. I was so embarrassed when I got it because I needed a car and I couldn't afford much. This was what I could afford and I needed room because I was in film school, and I was like, okay, it was such a great car. I say, it was probably that you were everybody's friend.

You could carry everything, so many c stands into that car. I couldn't I even I couldn't believe it. I could pack that car with everything. It had this high wheel base, I think it's what they call it, so literally, we took it out to the desert. We were off roading with that thing.

It was fantastic that car. It had these little rain guards which I've never seen I'm sure over the like, so when you you could roll down the windows during a rain and it wouldn't come into the car. Wow. It was stolen twice from USC but you got it back. I got it back.

The first time it just had like clearly joy riding and enjoy ridden and they like took the battery or something. Sure, I'm like okay. The second time it was gone for like ten days, and finally I called my mom and I'm like, I told her that the card been stolen it, which is the worst. Like I just couldn't. I just like I didn't even know how to tell her.

And the next day they called me and they said, your car is down in in you know, Long Beach, next to the harbor. It's in a storage place. You got to pick it up by five or one or or they're going charge you another sixty dollars a day, which they've been charging you. And I was like, oh no. And then I get down there and it had been stripped.

No. They had taken the luggage rack on the top of the car, they had taken the rain guards. They had taken literally pieces of a nineteen eighty Corolla wagon in order to fix a nineteen eighty Corolla wagon somewhere else. And they left us but it was still drivable. I had to get another battery.

It had wheels, but I had to get the battery before they closed it five or that was going to be charged for another day. Star car. Oh my god, heartbreak upon heartbreak of Los Angeles. Good Lord. Anyway, I did get it out, but that car lasted for two hundred and fifty thousand miles.

I sold it to at mine after I moved on from it, and she drove it back to Georgia and drove it until it was in the ground. Wow. Write this car wound no offense to my keya Niro, which is fabulous. I love say. But that was That was why the Japanese cars dominated the eighties, was because suddenly they're cheaper and way more reliable.

You're getting two hundred thousand miles out of them without a sweat with is minor maintenance. And it's like American companies like wait, wait what now that great gas milage for the time? Yep, it was amazing, all right. So I also looked up Cagney and Lacy. They drive basically they're sort of police car.

You know, I don't know the sedans. According to Internet Movie Car Database, it's the Kashmere Dodge Diplomat four door Sedan that they're mostly driving. They do a lot of car stuff and Cagney for sure. Yeah, Yeah, it's fun. It's very realistic.

It's not, you know, crazy, They're not getting goofy with their car chases. Although in the movie, the TV movie, there's a great gag the very beginning of the TV movie where she's driving and Lacy is driving and sees a guy running out an apartment with a bag that he's clearly stolen something out of that building. So she pulls over and starts chasing him right and then she has to get out of the car and start chasing him, and he dodges into an apartment building, and so she jumps out of her car, tries to get the door before it closes behind him, but doesn't make it, and then has to start buzzing New York City apartments in order to get somebody to buss her in in order to chase this guy. And she's trying to do that, and meanwhile some other guy in the street jumps into her police car and steals it.

It's such a great gag, It's really I thought it was a lovely introduction to that character and the world. It was just really wonderful. That's awesome. All right, So Charlie's Angels do they have cool cars? And Charlie's Angels do you know did you ever watch?

Oh? I never caught up, like you know, we had Charlie's Angels. I remember when the Karen Diez movies came out, that being a thing, but that was you know, that was chasing the whole like Kung Fu wire combat thing like that was just a different, different era than the old school Charlie's Angels was. Tell me, tell me about it. I'm well, so the only thing I remember is that Fara Fawcett, the Farra Fawcett character, I think, had a cool car.

But they didn't do a lot of showing up, and I don't remember we did a lot of undercover. Oh yeah, Melissa's given us a nod. Okay, they had three cool cars. Okay, okay, so Melissa's not a Mike, so one of them drove a Mustang because we gave her Mike to Evan. Um.

So yeah, they so was the Angels got some cars. That's cool. I was like, oh, and then and then heart to Heart I think Stephanie powers Uh. They were mostly driven around by Matt Acts and I don't know what that car was. But Stephanie Powers gets to drive around into Mercedes sl for fifty That seems about right.

Yeah, they're they're rich, so I would hope she'd be driving sometimes. And it's a it's a convertible. I think, well, it's also a it's got a good engine and some good some good giddy up in that. So if you needed to get somewhere with that one and still kind of have a big tank in front of you, that's the way to go. Well, all right, we should get Stephanie Powers on the show.

I added to the adder to the list. Okay, I was like, well what about what about murder? She wrote? And Jessica Fletcher. So I went and looked her up because I was like, okay, what is she driving Colombo car?

Right, here's the gag. Jessica Fletcher didn't drive and murder, she wrote, She always took a bike, a cab, a train, or caught a ride with somebody to get where she was going to solve the crime. And Angela Lansbury told the LA Time she liked it because it precluded the need for car chase. Well there you God cut out the most interesting part of anything. It's in any detective show.

No, I mean, we're not sure. It was fantastic, but uh, I couldn't imagine. Isn't that's very like a high speed car chase. No, not at all. No, because she's like Colombo doing it.

Did Columbo have a car? Yeah, such a bad car. He had just a bad car for some reason. I I don't know anything specific, but I think shlape when I think of Columbo. But maybe that's because of how he was dressed.

He didn't. It was not exactly, you know, a swab dresser like our Remington Steel. No, yeah, that was Colombo was very much the anti Remingtons, at least in well in always. Actually, yes, Columbo was a good detective. He didn't necessarily rest as well as Remington Steel did.

Yeah, why would he drive? Why wouldn't he drive a car as rather nondescript unlike Remington Steel? Who's so? Do you know what that car is? Evan?

Yeah? I mean, if so, this is Charlie's Angels and Sarah Fast. It's car looks like it's a Is that a Shelby? I can't tell if it's it's a Ford Cobra Forward mustaing Cobra, it looks like which is a hell of a car. I mean, especially you're talking about the era.

That's really cool. I'm seeing different pictures though, because I'm seeing both a hardtop and a convertible. But I don't know if that's oh, that's the later one. Okay, No, it's good because I'm a fan of the hardtops. As someone who enjoys racing, you want you want the hardtop, you want the rigidity it gives you and all that.

So when I see if I'm casting cars for various characters, right, I'm judging based on like how they operate, what they do, what their interests are and all that. And like some characters you want a hardtop because you know they're going to drive it off a cliff and you know that that like they assume that when they're in the car, that's their skill to get to outmaneuver the other person. And some people are like I need people to see me. I need to look good when I do this. I need to or it's a commuter car, whatever it is, right, you have different things, and I think hardtop versus convertible is a really important decision.

I think so too. For a brief moment in the late nineties, my boyfriend at the time and I had a We bought a Mustang convertible, one older Mustang convertible, and then when we broke up, we both agreed that he should take it because the goal was that he was gonna fix it when we drove it around because it needs a lot of work, and so I was like, yeah, Johnny, take that. But it was it was a brief fun moment when I lived in Venice and had a Mustang convertible. That's perfect. I mean Steve McQueen and I want to say in the Thomas Crown Affair has the like beach buggy at the end, and that's the whole cool thing of it.

And you get something like that, you're on the beach, like, yeah, you want a convertible. You want to see, but it's so hard on your hair. I never understood the hair stuff. I don't know how you'd do a do any kind of long hair in a convertible. I don't have that problem.

I keep my hair pretty short. Did you see It's a lot of women in movies I don't know about in real life wearing some sort of scarf if they're in a convertible, So maybe that's how they deal with the hair thing. But you know, I've always lived in the valley since I've lived in Los Angeles, and I would not want to convertible. I would never be able to use feel like i'd want to use it. I wouldn't want that no way sun beating down on me.

But the beach is perfect. Yeah, that's a great place to have a convertible. It was fun. We thought we were cool, or about three months. Then I went back to my practical cars.

Also tell us about your cars, what cars you have, and then my other two cars. My two thousand and six Rixaight was kind of my It was just my daily driver for a very long time. And then ultimately as it was wearing out, I said, this is the car to beat up on the track. So that's what that's for. And that one isn't is down right Now, take to a race track and yeah, you just do track days and stuff like that.

Just does track days days, Okay, Yeah, it's a good time. No, there's there's always various groups that are renting out tracks for a day, or there's different events where you just get to go and hires and drive your ass off. Pardon my language. That. Oh my god.

So that so you you go and actually race and drive fast? Yeah, I mean I'm not racing directly against other people. You know, it's not like there's a start line and we're chasing each other in that way. But you're trying to get the fastest lap you can. So while there will be other people on track, you know, if someone's on a hot lap, you're going to try to stay out of their way, and then when you're on your hot lap, they're going to try to stay out of your way.

So you're you're racing the clock and you're being competitive against people on the time sheet. All right, good, be safe place. What's up? What are you working on now? What's coming next?

Oh? Okay, so right now I am working on. I'm riding on season two of Mayor of Kingstown. It's a Paramount Plus show starring Jeremy Rinner, created by Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon. It's a show about basically, there's a town that we're playing.

It's a fictional town in northern Michigan that there's ten prisons within twelve square miles, and so the lead character the show really has to negotiate between the people on the outside of the prison the people on the inside to kind of make sure that everything in the town's running smoothly. So it's a really fun show. It's very if you like Cicario, if you like wind River, if you like Yellowstone, like Taylor Sheridan's stuff, it's gonna be right up your alley. It's a really cool show. Diane West is a very fabulous eighties TV ladies who's also on Mayor Kingstown right, yes, she is.

Diane West is fascinating in that it's almost as though she knows she's a legend, like in her in her DNA though I'm not saying she acts any sort of sort of way or that she's a diva. I think the opposite. In fact, she's very about her craft and we would hear all the time questions she had or things she wanted to kind of dive deeper into for her character and things that she was interested in brain because she's she is a full on professional, and I think it. I think it shows and everything she does and if anything, the goal is always like can we just give her more? Is there anything else we could do for her?

Because she's she's almost too good to be true. She's incredible. One of my goals in my career was to be able to write on kind of high level premium cable slash streaming crime shows again just like Miami Vice of course, and so you know, it was it was. It was really a thrill for me to be on that show, and our writer's room was fantastic. All right, Three questions, So question number one, what's the eighties ladies driven TV show that has resonated with you?

It's actually probably Rematon Steel because it's I came on to so many of these shows so late, and the ones that I did come on were very masculine based. Like I said, it was very cars were my entryway into a lot of the eighties shows, but with James Bond being an entryway into Remitting Steel and to being like, oh, Laura Hole is really really cool and it playing into just my sensibilities for the detective genre and like a lot of the who Dune It stuff, and especially with the way that I think it um it plays with comedy against all the other things that I've seen that don't they're not that funny. Like allthough the shows I love like I love Miami Vice. I will watch my Miami Vice over and over again.

It's not a super funny show. It has its little moments, but it's not a funny show. Whereas I feel like when you're watching Rematon Steel, you're all there's always like a little wink at you here and there, and there's all these little things that like keep it like hard and keep you on your toes that I really love. That's fantastic. I think we kind of agree with all of that.

Yes, all right, can you name any of your favorite current twenty first century female driven television shows? What are you watching now that it's led by women? Oh, let's see, let's see. Let's see. Well, Mayor of Easttown, which is not the show that I'm on now, Mayor of Kingstown, but Mayor of Easttown was fantastic.

I really loved The Americans, which is not currently airing, but I rewatch a lot and Carrie Russell, she was incredible. Those are pretty good ones. I mean, I was a huge Buffy fan, but that's like a different, oh, different world. And the Josh Weeding conversation and we are going to have um Jane Espenson, oh on the show which will be really fun. But what's the most action hero kind of vision moment, A moment where you went is this scripted?

Like, how how can I in how can I put this in the script moment that you've had? Oh there's a few of this, um one of them? Okay, So on on on topic. There was one time I was with my friends. We were leaving a car show and it was late at night.

We were driving down Highway ten. I mean at this point it must be one thirty ish in the morning, and a car flies by us and it's it's like an early nineties BMW three series coup and everybody looks at it because those are cool cars. So we're like, oh, yeah, it's nice. It's weaving in and out of traffic, and everybody's just like, oh, this is gonna be a problem. We need to ease up.

And sure enough, it almost hits the guardrail in the middle of the freeway, and then to avoid that, swerves back into the road, tumbles over several times, immediately lights on fire as we're passing it, and it was just one of those things where like, that's not real, and it took us a moment to realize that it actually happened because we were all just kind of sitting there and shock as we're like driving past it, and everyone's like we should stop and help the guy, right, like we need to do something about this. And as we look back, there's all these people getting out of their car that are like that we're behind that had stopped in help, and so we kept going. We felt really bad about it, but we kept going.

And it was just one of those like I guess that happens. Like you don't really just see cars explode in front of you ever in real life. That's just not a thing. And a lot of car guys will say like it takes a lot to get in a circumstance like that, and it just went right up. It was crazy.

That's crazy. That is that is That's a good one. I mean a bad one, but a good one. A bad one, but I see it so visually. I just can never forget it, just seeing the swerve pass us, us hitting the brakes, goes sort of middle almost has a crash.

There comes back rolls over we're trying to swerve and avoid him. It was just it's this whole slow motion thing was wild. Wow, all right, that's saying that. Yeah, yep, yeah, there we go. We are gonna wrap up.

Thank you so much for being on. This has been so much fun. Oh it was my pleasure. I'm really. First of all, it was just an excuse to rewatch the show again, but also great catching up with you and just having a good time.

I mean, I love I love what you guys are doing, and I am very excited to come back when stunt woman is here. Debbie Evans love it. Oh god, it'll be so cool. I am. I am if we're even if I can't come back, I'm happy that I will be listening very closely to that.

We will. We will have you back on. We We just want to have everybody on every week. We're gonna have a just a I don't know, a convention of our guests because it's been so much fun to do this. Thank you so much, it's been great.

Thank you. Today's audioography includes the website Internet Movie Cars Database, which I did not know existed until this week when I was researching cars. Nor did I. I guess there must be an Internet database for just about everything. It is so great.

You can look up by movie, TV show, or buy a car wow that you want to see what it's been in. They've got an entire list of the cars that were in Remington Steel. Like and buy episode and sometimes I have a little picture. It's very exciting. That's fantastic.

I was like, I could spend hours on that site. I also want to shout out that Colin in Black and White is available now on Netflix. Check it out. Okay, And because we are in favor of abortion rights, I'm going to shout out a book today, Reproductive Justice Introduction, written by Loretta, Jay Ross and Ricky Salinger. It's a great introduction to reproductive justice, which is important for us all.

It will really help us if you give us a shout out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all the social media's let us know you're listening. And if you're liking the podcast, please rate and review us. It helps us out a lot. And check out our website eightiestv Ladies dot com for more information on our show. Thank you guys so much for listening.

You did great today. We want to wish you a happy new year twenty twenty three. You know, it's been a long few years and so we are hopeful that twenty twenty three will be a new beginning. For a lot of a lot of people and healing time, more healing time, and more joy and laughter. I think we need incredible, powerful joy and laughter experiences to heal us in community.

In community, that's what we're missing. We hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century. The city and so pretty down into the city