Moranis Fest - Streets of Fire (1984)

HP. Let me paint a picture for you if I may. It's June of nineteen eighty four. You've sat down at your local cinema. It's before the movie is started, so there's nothing going on.

There's no commercials. If you're lucky, you have some colored lights on the screen. Finally, the time comes in, the lights drop halfway and the trailers begin. You get some pomp whatever you get ready, the movie begins to lights dim all the way. The universal logo comes up, and this rock and roll fable that you're excited to see.

You saw the woodblock movie poster advertising what a fucking cool, interesting rock and good time you're about to have? And then this music plays. I feel like I'm being ushered into a land of imagination and fantasy. Boy. James Horner really loves the shakrahachi Japanese flute, doesn't he?

He does. Everyone was into the shakrahachi around this time. They seem to think it aided the sound of synthesizers in some way, having an unnatural sound over there, unnatural sund It's. A mantle that Peter Gabriel picked up with the Sledgehammer song. Do you remember that?

Do you remember these soundtracks of the film Manhunter. It's all over that. I think Wendy Carlos broke open the floodgates for the synthetic score married to the orchestral natural instruments score. And they're all running wild with it. Here.

I can see what James Horner was going for here, because I think he's looking for kind of a noir. That's exactly it. He's going for a fifties noir. He got the brief as far as this is going to be a nineteen fifties meets nineteen eighties mashup, and in his mind he thought, ooh, gritty crime, nineteen fifties noir. And the more I listened to this, the more I don't think that it's such a far fetched score.

It's weird because obviously Streets of Fire is iconic for those Jim Steinman and Rye Cooter songs, But this would have been interesting. I would have given this a chance. Not so weird now that I've listened to it a little more. Really, now, think about the opening titles of this film and ry Kudu's fucking greasy guitar. Sure, if you're going by the subheading of the movie, which is a rock and roll fable.

This doesn't fit in with that in the lead. I think it's a total failure. I could only imagine what Walter Hill was thinking when he heard it, like married to the image for the first time, or just as a demo. Wait is he kidding? It's probably a little too a tonal for me.

There's a lot there's no real discernible theme in the music that I just lied to. So look, at the end of the day, he made the right decision to go with ry Coooter over this. Now here's something funny. Right around the time, maybe, but a year before, Burt Reynolds starred in a movie called stroker A's directed by Hal Needham. I remember, yeah, Hal Needham wanted a country type score for his thing, so he hired renowned slide guitar hero Ry Cooter to write a theme and an entire score for stroker A's.

He hands that score in and Hal Needham says, are you crazy? This isn't not anything I asked for? And he then replaces him with Charlie Daniels. I believe he's like, he really meant country when he said a country scar. He was Yeah, he was not expecting the fucking the onslaught of Ry Cooter's disastrous guitar work.

So what happens is Walter Hill throws out the James Horner score, calls his buddy ry Cooter says, do you want to score this movie? And ry Cooter says, Hey, you know, I wrote this fucking rockabilly score for this other movie that this guy didn't want. Here you can have it. And that's the score for Streets of Fire, originally star arted as a NASCAR comedy starring Burt Reynolds and Anthony Michael Hall whatnot. So it works, And in fact, you could levy the same accusation at Jim Steinman because we'll get into it, but certainly nowhere fast.

There's a ton of stuff in there that would appear on his Bad for Good solo album and in other meat Loaf compositions. I believe that whole god Speed bit that's right from the song bad for a lot of that stuff. If Al Needham had just had a little bit of vision, then there would have been one redeeming quality of the film stroker Ace right now. Unfortunately he went with his original plan, which is zero redeeming quality. I beg to differ there's at least one redeeming quality.

Two words, Lonnie Anderson. Speaking of beautiful dames. We're here in the nineteen fifties and we got a corncobea of Ladies on display. I can't tell you how fucking formative in rewatching this film, how formative this was my tastes in Ladies. We're talking about Streets of Fire, everybody, if you give you some stance, here's the trailer.

I'll be coming for her, and I'll be coming for you too, Sure you will, and I'll be waiting. You are about to enter a world unlike any you've ever seen before, where rock and Roll is king, the only law is a loaded gun, where the. Beautiful fancy, the show is really good. The brutal. I want Tom, Tony and the Brave all meat.

From now on. It's for real in the streets of Fire. Anything. I just got a feeling that it's stopping to us. To get a ribbon and put it to use.

And I don't know, And I say, you know, when you all get there, he is there me tonight. I'll be bad for tonight thinking. You don't have the back ready to go, don't having me to know? God, you going no. Ma, Solder, have me gone yet away from the past?

I start the looming, going nowhere paper, come the shirt and going nowhere past, and such fis gone. From my shoulders. I got just a fast going the web paper. I'm shut and don't know where. Now.

From the creators of forty eight Hours, Universal Pictures presents Michael Perey, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, and Amy Madigan in a Walter Hill film, Streets of Fire. That's right. Streets of Fire, released on June the first, nineteen eighty four, written by Walter Hill and Larry Gross, directed by Walter Hill, produced by Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver. Joel Silver the start of his megalomaniac career here this is the first failure. They had a huge hit previously with forty eight Hours, which is how Walter Hill got the keys to the goddamn Kingdom with this movie.

The movie stars Michael Perey, Diane Lane, Rick Moranis. Oh did I mention Rick moranis? This is a Miranus fest movie. Woo, and of course the amazing everyone's hip to her now Amy Madigan, HB. When was the first I'm not going to ask if you just saw it for the first time.

When was the first time you saw Street? In fact, it was yesterday. Was This played on cable quite a bit when you and I were kids, but never. I can't ever claim to have seen the movie in its entirety. I saw a little bits and pieces.

I saw enough of Willem Dafoe to be scared of him when I was a child, because of his weird face and his expressions that he would make. But no, the first time I watched this from beginning to end, it was literally yesterday. Five. Wow. That's rather shocking.

I agree. Everyone of our age saw this movie one billion times thanks to the miracle of cable television. I probably I definitely saw the video for I Can Dream About You that many times because it played. That was the If there's any big hit to come out of this movie, it was that single. It was that song.

But I saw it like like a lot of movies I saw when I was a kid. I saw Piecemeal. I didn't really my head wasn't really in the sort of Walter hill bag as it were. I probably saw Warriors much the same way at that point, So I can't say that I ever watched it all the way through until. Now that is shocking.

I'll tell the story here because it's really fucking simple. It's the most simple of any movie we've reviewed ever. Hometown Girl Hometown Guy. They were in love. At one point, he went off and joined the army.

She became a rock star. She's come back to do a benefit concert. A biker gang shows up. This is the nineteen fifties, eighties mashup. I should say the time period is another time, another place.

This is the early nineteen eighties when filmmakers finally figured out, Hey, I can build my own world, and I can populate it and it can be its own thing. So in this world, in the Richmond that's the district that we start out in, ellen Ames giving a concert, gets kidnapped by a biker gang led by Raven played by Willem Dafoe. Then Riva, who played by Debra van Volkenberg, who has witnessed to the crime, and a local diner owner, writes to her brother Tom Cody, who was ellen Ames's former flame, and letting him know that he needs to return home immediately so she can set him on the path to save the girl. The end, he's ex military though, that's oh yes, I told you, well, I said you left to go join the army.

Oh I didn't hear that part. I think you're under selling the sort of setting of this whole movie because it in some ways it's almost like a post apocalyptic vibe to the whole thing, because it's always raining, it's not always nighttime like Blade runnering, but it's there's definitely the cadence of people talking. Everybody talks like they're out of a like a like a Private Eye, a Private Dick novel from like the fifties. But again there's elements that put it into the early eighties, which would have been current day at that point. But it's that's one of the big appeals for this movie is how weird the setting is and how it doesn't really jibe with me.

If he had had the budget and back loot, I have no doubt that this is the same world the Warriors would have been bomping their way out of. Yeah, that was my big first impression of this was this, this may as well have been a continuation of The Warriors, because it's that heightened reality that he got so well in The Warriors. Different vibe, but ultimately the same kind of thing. The level of fantasy was due to the fact that they shot this entirely on the Universal back line, and because they didn't want to go into quadruple overtime, and because most of the movie takes place at night, they actually stretched giant tarps over Universal to turn day into night for all the exterior scene. It's like Copola level craziness at work because I read that too, and the fact that it would flap in the wind, which caused a lot of sound problems, and also birds would nest tim tarbs and it sounds looney Tunes now, but that's this is filmmaking back then.

Yeah, okay, let's talk about the title for a second here. I'm sure there's a little bit of trivia here. So it's Streets of Fire, which is a Bruce Springsteen's. So the initial plan was that they're gonna at the final concert, Ellen am is going to perform Streets of Fire. They actually went and filmed that ending before getting the rights from Bruce Springsteen, who was appalled to learn that somebody else was going to be singing his song.

He had initially given this right, given the permission to use the song, thinking oh, they're going to use it over the end credit. So they had to, at the cost of a million dollars, go back and reshoot the ending with a new song that they said to Jim Steiman, can you give us a song? And he said, oh yes, I can recycle any of my songs. That's Jim Steinman for you. Rip.

Let's talk about the casting a little bit. Can we do that? Absolutely to the now top of the bill. It's crazy now to look back, but Michael Perey got top billing over Diane Lane, Amy Madigan, Rick Moranis it seems silly. Bill any of these it's crazy.

But let me ask you this, Okay, not spoil thing, but what you have seen this movie a lot more over the years that I have, obviously, what's your take on Michael Perey? Father Alom'm genuinely curious that you have to say here what you have to say. I think Michael Pere is a giant chunkle. I think he is a detriment to this film, in any film he's He's easily the worst part of this movie, no question. They took a movie where they've decided all of the characters are going to be archetype, and in that way, you look at him, and yeah, that's the guy that is probably described in the script if you were to say the ex military guy coming to save his girl from the evil biker gang.

Is that him? Definitely until he opens his mouth and he just sounds like a fucking moron. I there was something bugging me. I'm watching him after he makes his appearance in the movie, the first appearance, and I'm like, what he reminds me of somebody? And then I hit upon it.

He reminds me he's like a cross between Sylvester Stallone and Ellen Mitchell Smith from Weird Science. There's something in his face that and this kind of smirk that he has on his face through the whole movie, as if he knows something that no one else knows, like he's above it all. But he sounds like Sylvester Stallone too, and he's beefy like sly Stillone. I agree with you, he looks the part, but he's so out of his element here. But this brings me to my next question, Father, what are the potential choices for Tom Cody?

How would you have recasted Tom Cody if you weren't going to use Michael Pere in that time period? I want to hear what you have inside Baseball. I would have postponed production until Tom Cruise had finished all the right moves, and then let him take the role as was originally plaid. I didn't know that he was supposed to be in the movie, but he would have been one of the obvious choices. But I don't see that my I actually had.

I have three choices that I wrote down. One is a fantasy purely, and I'll get to that in a minute. But the first choice that I would have made to recast is Michael Beck. He was already on Hill's wavelength from the Warriors. We know from him playing Swan that he could play stoic and tough.

He didn't have to be a muscle bound meat, had to be capable in this type of sit What do you think of that? I think that's a great one. I think the better one, and it must be Choice number two is from the same gene pool. I would cast what's his name, Ajax. That's I didn't have that because I didn't want to go crazy with the Warriors, but he would have been great too.

The number two on my list, and I think he might have been a little too old, would have been Kurt Russell. Yeah, I thought of Kurt Russell immediately, but he had already done this part. He wouldn't have done it. The final sort of wish pie in the Sky choice would be it would have been a young Nick Nolty. I think going back to forty eight hours, I think he would have been good, tough.

Guy if yeah, you're talking like seventies Nickall. Yeah, not Nick Nolty from forty eight hours. It would have been much younger than you know. It would have been an interesting choice, honestly, is Amy Madigan's new husband, Ed Harris. Ed Harris would have been good, You're absolutely.

Right, would have been really interesting. It would have been good because he's a tough guy, but he's got you can tell there's he's got a brain too. Oh, Lance Henrickson, Now you're talking boy, because he could have actually been. Kind of nineteen eighty three Lance Henrickson, right, terminator time there. He's a little old, he's he's a little balding, he's little, but he could have.

Pulled I think he could have pulled it off. Maybe again a younger Lance Hendrickson, but he could have. He would have had an edge helmet, none of these guys. Could they could have let Bill Paxton do it. I know he's known for goofy and everything, but watch him in near dark when he's severing, he can be just as menacing as anybody.

Oh he's brutal. In near dark, he's scary. You put him up against Willem Dafoe. I would have believed it. I believe that guy would have gone up against him.

Not the guy, not the guy he's playing in this movie. He's a buffoon. But Bill Paxton as Tom Cody would have been great. Once I understood that Michael Perey was not going to be good in this movie, that my mind immediately went to who would you have? Who would you have cast?

If not for him? But I mean, what are you gonna do? And I guess I had been reading. I'm sure you read these same sort of interviews that he didn't get along with Rick Moranis, which I thought was funny. I read that.

I think that's hilarious. I think he probably felt real intimidated. Yeah, that he's like the center of this movie with a bunch of real actors. And I bet Rick Moranis was merciless in teasing this guy. In fact, I know that's the case.

The interview I read, or the little excerpt Michael Parrey said that Rick Moranis said something to him like, are you really cool or are you just acting cool? Just really poking holes in this guy's whole masculinity trip, you know, I could It was actually surprising because I wouldn't think Rick Moranis would be somebody to poke the bear bully someone a little bit. Because this guy this, I don't know if this was that's not true. I know that Michael Perey had already made Eddie and the Cruisers, but that hadn't come out yet, so ostensibly this was what his second movie. Yeah, so he was still pretty green.

I'm surprised that I don't know Rick Moranis from anybody, but I'm surprised. It shocks me to think that he would be so merciless, unless Michael Poray was giving off a vibe that he just didn't really agree with, which is possible. I would love to hear mister Moranis as part of the story. I'm sure once the Spaceballs movie comes out and you give us some interviews, maybe we can get a crack at him. That's true.

What was your experience on Streets So Fire. Ago I did reread. Diane Lane did a random rolls for a V club and they asked her about Streets of Fire. Not a fan, not a fan at all, which is not surprising because her character has absolutely no agent in this whole movie. No, she's a damsel in distress.

It's ridiculous. Look we're talking it's made up. Like they call it a rock and roll fable. This isn't a fable. There's no lessons being learned here.

This is a rock and roll fairy tale. If it's anything, and keeping with fairy tale tropes, it does have a damsel who does nothing but get taken away just so the hero can show up and take her back and then punch her in the face, like all good fairy tales. I was shocking that moment. That's what I literally threw up my hands and said, this is crazy. What are we doing here?

Yeah, how about just tell her I'm gonna go back and fight the guy you're gonna go with McCoy. Nope, we're gonna knock her unconscious. I gotta give her a little bit of damn it. It's insane. But having said that, I like you.

You led with this about how this really formed a formative idea of these women in this movie. And I agree with you, Diane Lane, for all of the shortcomings of her part, she's gorgeous and she really sells these songs nowhere fast. It's she lips, she's lip syncing. She's not singing these songs. But we've seen a million movies where a million people lip sing poorly.

She did a really good job. She looks great. It's all lit very well, it's all very stylized. Everything looks good. The concert stuff I thought was fantastic and I wanted more of that.

That's not what the movie's about, but it really the movie really cooked when she was up on stage with the what was it ellen Aim and the Attacker? Is that the name of her band absolutely a fake band lip syncing to a song by a fake band, Fire Incorporated, the band made up just for this movie. Yeah. Ellen Ames's voice is a mixture of two ladies voices who were singing different parts for her, and sometimes they're singing together to form her voice for it. Completely agree with you.

I would happily sit through an entire concert of Llenae and the Attackers. This is Walter Hill's concession to the musical. He wanted to make a musical, clearly couldn't commit to it. He could commit to a brand new setting where nineteen fifties cars are rolling around the street and MTV is playing on a television in the nearby electronics store. But he'll only go so far.

She's just perfect in the opening here. It's unfortunate that she does get sidelined. It doesn't do anything for the rest of it. But the final performance is good too. Now I do have a little bit of insider information.

I have a friend named Carti Talkington, and he made a movie called Love and of forty five back in nineteen ninety three. And I was on the set of that movie quite a bit, not to know the wardrobe people quite well. One of the wardrobe ladies also worked on Streets of Fire, and I picked her brain because of course I love streets And she said, I'll tell you the most hilarious part of the making of them. She said, first of all, it was a really tough shoot. But the most hilarious part is that Diane Lane has zero rhythm, zero none.

If you watch closely in the movie, you will notice that her feet are taped to the stay so that she will not move the part where she dances. If you watch it again, you'll notice it's just five random cuts of hers just waving her body a rhythmically around, So her dancing to any sort of beat is entirely based on the rhythm of the editing, So that always tempers my enjoyment of the performance a little bit. Nevertheless, as fictional bands go, you could do worse than Llename in The Attackers. She's just radiant in that the way it's lit. She's wearing this crazy like half red half black dress.

I didn't know that she had no rhythm because at one point she's even pumping her fist and it's like a great moment at the end of the song. But it bothers me now that she there's no real musical apparently all. But but what I kept thinking about is we talked about this when we talked about Night on Earth, how Winona Ryder was like every gen X males fantasy at the time, everybody. She was the it girl. In my opinion, you can I'll keep win Ona Rider, Diane Lane.

She was just gorgeous in this. She a great actress, She had a hell of a run of movies. Back then, she was in all those Copola movies, she was in this, and then when she got a little bit older, she did Unfaithful with Adrian Lynn and all this stuff. Fantastic actress, beautiful. If you're a fan of Diane Lane, let me recommend this film.

Probably haven't seen it, but you fucking definitely should. Lady beware. It's a film about Diane Lane. I believe it takes place in Pittsburgh and she is a window decorator for the Giant department store downtown and she picks up a crazy stalker and it's this twisted and it is really good. Lady beware.

This movie has a couple of ladies that I've fallen completely in love with. Later on in the film, eg Daily shows up as a groupie out of nowhere, my career and rewatching. At this time, all I could think was, Yep, I've definitely attracted to Diane Lane. That was formative. Definitely attracted to eg Daily.

That was formative. And then when we're in the bar and the blasters are warning us about one bad stud moving into our neighborhood, there is a female dancer like a go go dancer kind of a thing. But she's clearly a trained dancer, and her sort of lie the dancer body like that. Any attraction I have to that is from this fucking movie as well. God damn you.

Walter Hill. Eg Daily was a surprise to me. I love her too. Obviously. She was in Pee's Big Adventure.

I loved her in one of my favorite movies, Fandango with Kevin Kostner. That's she's great in that too. Valley Girl, y'all. Exactly she in this movie, though her care is inexplicable. She spots ellen Ame as they're hustling her through a bar in as part of this escape, and she says, oh, hey, you're ellen Ame, and she just hangs out with She just piles around with them for the next I don't know, third of the movie.

She doesn't really her character doesn't really serve any real purpose. She's just there and you could have taken her character out and it would have made zero difference to the plot or anything. At least, the dou Wop group had a bus the Cerels Robert Townsend, one of the sirel before Hollywood Shuffle. Before the Five Heartbeats, which kind of moves in the same waters of the Douop groups and all that. You know what's interesting about Robert Townsend as I'm watching him in this, he was clearly so young in them, But I don't know, He's just one of those guys who always looked old, you know what I mean, Like he just has that face.

The mustache doesn't hurt. And remember he immediately took to wearing a fedora and a long like camel hair coat. So he was cultivatd I'm an old man from almost to the immediate as soon as he immediately got to fame. You know what was it that Robert Townsend and his Partners in Crime or something like that, Partners. In Crime, the HBO thing.

Yeah, he that guy had a moment. But you don't really hear much about him nowadays, but he made a serious bid for stardom back then. Father tell us about the time in the ghetto was one of his stand up bits. Robert Towns and everybody. That was great Hollywood shuffle, fantastic.

Classic work at the Post Office. Oh, filmed almost entirely on the back lock, but any of the the l sequences filmed in Chicago on that same platform that they film all the movies Chicago, and they did some footage there on Lower Whacker Drive when he's driving around that fifty one merk Coop, the greatest car ever met. That car is luminous in this movie. That's the car that he steals from the Punk gang at the beginning, right the Roadmasters. That's see, like the Warriors, the gangs all have their own personality and they're kind of their own little I mean, every gang is a click by definition, but this is a little more heightened.

Not quite as much as the Warriors, but the gang that William Dafoe's gang is called the Bomber, and lee Ving is also his second in command. We didn't mention that yet, and. I was sinking, let's get out of here. He's great in that he's i mean, he doesn't have a lot of lines, but he just looks good. You go ahead and take that money.

See it's nice to hear him and not have poppy from Seinfeld coming out of his mouth. So, my god, they'd actually trusted the actor that they hired to speak. So we talked about this biker gang coming in and kidnapping Ellen Ames right off the stage. They're all on motorcycles. This isn't like a mad Max situation where some of them are in ATVs and some of them are in cars.

They're all on motorcycle. They kidnap this woman and they spirit her away on a motorcycle. How does that work? Fatherm alone, How is it possible that she couldn't just jump off the motorcycle. It doesn't make sense to me.

She's not enclosed by anything. She's just on a motorcycle. Didn't get that rock and roll fable. I guess suspension of disbelief. Well, yeah, let's suspend some disbelief.

Sorry, trigger warning everybody. Basically, she's been taken away to be raped for however many weeks until they're done with her, and then he's going to return her. That's the plot of this move. When we find her, she's tied to a bed. Willem Dafoe in his weird plastic waiters comes in and assures so that they're just going to fall in love for a little while.

But luckily he hasn't touched her yet. At the club Torches, which I think wasn't that the club in forty eight Hours? It's the club in every Walter Hill move there used to be a Torchies. I believe it was on Sixth Street in downtown Los Angeles, and that was really divy in the nineteen seventies and early eighties. And clearly Walter Hill was a customer of Torchies because he has been memorializing it ever since.

That's cool. Let's talk about Rick Baranas. Oh yeah, let's talk fresh Ah Billy Fish. Goodness, my favorite part of this movie might be Rick Moranas's Billy Fish, the only straight shooter in the entire movie, the only one telling it like it is. And I got to say, hb this is my first This was my introduction to Rick Morans, was this character in this role.

So for me, Rick moranis was a dramatic actor first, and then I saw him in Ghostbuster and I went, oh, that guy can be silly as well. So you didn't even have any Bob and Doug McKenzie experience before this, You didn't. This was the first time I saw Bob and Doug McKenzie. I didn't see until television, until it was on cable, and even then I wasn't all that interested in it. And so after Ghostbusters, Yeah, that's when I started seeking out Rick Moranis's stuff and realized, you know, he had this big old comedy career, but thanks to this film.

Like to me, he's always a dramatic guy, Like I'm always waiting for him to do more dramatic stuff. Interesting because I had the opposite experience because all of my experience with him really started with Ghostbusters and Bob and Doug mcken, the Strange Brew that kind of stuff. So for me, I just expected him to be another Nebbish in this, like an intefectual comic reliefy kind of guy. But his characters is very hard boiled in his attitude and especially his language, and like you said, he's the straight shooter. He tells them like it is and he doesn't mince words at all.

I really liked him in this because he really had an edge that I didn't expect from the actor. Yeah, I'm gonna let him off the bullying Michael peret hook here by saying he was being method. That's the big excuse. Anytime a big actor acts like an asshole on set. Well, Billy Fish probably would have been just that way to Michael Perey as well.

He Yeah, he's very no nonsense no matter who the fuck he's talking to, even if it seems like he's gonna get his fucking face pounded in, he does not care. Yeah, he lunged at the bombers when they're kid in the process of kidnapping ellen Am. He didn't run and hide like you might expect some nerdy guy to do. He ran it right up on the stages and hey, you can't do that. And he got his ass kicked.

He got punched a few times and thrown off the stage bodily, So I you know. And the thing of it is, in a movie like this, I think the audience is supposed to want Tom Cody and ellen Ames together at the end because they're the sort of star crossed lovers, and you're supposed to not like Billy Fish because he's the wedge. But I didn't. You never get the sense that Billy Fish doesn't really care for ellen Ame. Ellename.

He's no nonsense and he's her manager, make no mistake. But there's nothing that he does or says that makes you actively hate the character, which is surprising in this kind of romantic triangle. Yeah, I mean, he comes off as a minor antagonist in that the lead has to keep bumping up against him to get results out of him. But it's not like we ever see a side of him where he reveals like he's treating Ellename just like a meal ticket, or he's exploiting her in some way, like when he starts the movie, we should be selling tickets to this. She should be making some real money here.

This is ridiculous that we're doing a benefit here. This place is the shits. Yeah, he's very direct with his language. He is yes, and at the end there's a grudging respect between Tom Cody and Billy Fish Like you. I just love that they didn't make him this worthless scapegoat that you learn later he's just in it for the money.

I really appreciated that, whereas tom Cody definitely was just in it for the money, and the only time he gives it back is when he finds out that when he discovers Ellen is mad at him for taking them. And who can. I mean, look, she should be happy that he rescued her, But at the same time, I would maybe be a little offended too if I had a history with this guy and the only reason he came and tried to help me was because of the dollars, so I can't really blame her for it. No, I'm on her side. I think Tom Cody is a terrible character played by a terrible actor.

It's the gaping hole at the center of this movie. But here's the thing, HB that I finally conton too while watching the film this last time. When the movie came this is nineteen eighty four. You can watch the movie now, and I don't think modern audiences would bat an eyelash at the editing style here. But this movie was pilloried as being an MTV movie.

Like people said that with disgust they would spit it Outugh, this new breed of MTV type filmmaking, quick cutting and unmotivated musical moments. I don't think this was the intent of Walter Hill, but this is what the result. This isn't a case of style over substance. This is the style is the substance. Everything you're seeing is the story.

There's not any characters you can actually relate to here. He intended them to be archetypes, and unfortunately, thanks to the fucking terrible performance of Tom Cody and he's the center of the film, we can't ever really relate to anybody. We're just now watching a play at work. We're just watching characters moving on the screen, and that's okay because everything else is so fucking fabricated and gorgeous as well, that it all just plays like a comic book. He thought making The Warriors a comic book would be more appropriate by adding panels and splash pages.

What do you doing, Walter, You already made a comic book movie. Here it is with all those wipes. And transitions in this This, to me is him achieving that goal of making a true comic book movie up there in the screen. And I could see this being you either love it or hate it proposition. Either you can hang with the movies vibe and appreciate it for what it is, or it's just something that's just not going to click for you.

It's just one of those movies that I'm not going to use the phrase acquired taste, but it's just something that you either love it and get on board early, or you just sit there and go this is just this is all empty calories to me. I know, I fell into the former category. I was entranced by the world that they had created, and because I had already been preconditioned from the warriors to Walter Hill lead me through whatever weird environment that he had cooked up. So I was already ready for that, and I knew that this was going to be a quote unquote fable or a fairy tale. I just I don't know.

I loved experiencing it finally as good as I had expected it. I've mentioned this moment on other podcasts, but I have to mention here because we're specifically talking about the street so far. There's a moment when Tom Cody and McCoy have infiltrated torchies. So she's infiltrated torchies. He's up top and he's going to start shooting up the motorcycles where she has lured one of the bombers upstairs in order to get close to Willem Dafoe's card game.

The speed with which she draws her pistol and places it against the guy's skull is It's one of my favorite moments in cinema, honestly, because it's so quick and it's so unexpected, and it's so professional. And you know me, HP, if there's anything I really love in a movie, it's professionals acting professional. Do you really get the sense that, yeah, she says that she was in the military, and yeah she's proven and she was probably in the motor pool, but oh, she's also got fucking mad training. I don't know that she's my favorite thing in the whole movie, but she certainly, let's say, top three, Amy Madigan, I thought, because she sells herself to Tom Cody saying she was in the army and I can help you, and hey, man, I know all this stuff.

And I think as filmgoers were conditioned that people in movies make a lot of boasts, and then when she hits the fan, it's not so rosy. But that scene in Torchies where she is the one who goes in first to infiltrate the biker bar in order to keep these guys at bay while they rescue this ellen a. She is tough, real tough, and you really get a sense that she's a badass just on the level of Tom. She's extremely capable in these situations. She doesn't bat an eyelash when these guys are medicing.

She's fantastic. Amy Madigan came in to read for the part of Ariva, Tom Cody's sister, and said, Hey, this guy part, you've got here, McCoy, I might be good for that, and they went, oh yeah, let's do that instead. It was written apparently for an overweight ex military guy. He was supposed to be so overweight and dumpy that you don't think he can pull off any stuff. I just think it's good for her.

It's a masterstroke that they hired her because she brings this unique flavor to the part that you don't really expect. And I don't know. Again, it makes me sad because if only the main character was better and a better actor, better suited to the role man this movie could have been. It's great as it is, don't get me wrong, I'm fine with it, but boy. Here's a better movie HP just based on the cast that they have.

Llena gets snatched, Billy Fish hires McCoy, McCoy calls in this specialist who can who's really good with a rifle to cover them. But what's the connection between the McCoy and Ellen ame anything? Or no? Just cared? Why do they need that?

I guess they really don't. How about it's just a lone drifter who's arrived in town and gone, what's going on here? Oh? They stole that girl the other day. Oh, did they let me talk to the manager?

That would have worked, That could have worked. I think they wanted to work in that romance single, although it doesn't. Again, there's no chemistry, and in retrospect it's a little weird because Diane Lane was something like eighteen years old. Yeah, she made this, and clearly Michael Peret is older. I don't know, he's probably pushing thirty at this point.

So that was a little hinky for me to think about that. Originally it was going to be Daryl Hannah and some scheduling, just like it was going to be Tom Cruise. There was a scheduling snafu and she was not able to take the role. At the last second. They went with Diane Lane, which is fine for Diane Lane because she's great in the role, except there is no role.

But Daryl Hannah would have solved that weirdo age gap because there's supposed to be lovers from a long time ago. Yeah, Diane Lane is clearly nineteen years old here, so that would be I mean when he looked maybe twenty five and she was fifteen or something. I don't know. It's all yeh, it's it's. A little bit creepy.

And at one point he pulls out this old picture of her from his wallet and it looks like an old like dagger type or something. It looks like this ancient black and white picture. And I'm like, did they take that picture when she was ten? Because it's supposed to look old and weathered and you know, evidence of their past romance. But there's the math just doesn't work another time, another place.

Even Lawrence Gordon, the producer of this movie. We've talked about mister Gordon before when he produced a Predator movie. Even he knew that Michael Perey was wrong for the movie and was quite vocal about it. But too late, you roll the. Dice and that's it came up snake eyes for them.

It's unfortunate and it was, I mean, what is it. The movie was a flop when it was originally released. I think it made like what like eight million off of fourteen and a half million budget something like that. Not great, Yeah, I mean really, the only lasting legacy of it for all long time was the I Can Dream About You song, which was a huge hit and the video. If you remember it was one of those movie tie in specials where it's just performance from the movie cut to other scenes of the movie, that song enticing no one into the theater.

That song, to me was like the best holl of Oats song that they didn't actually write. And in fact, I know Dan Hartman offered it to them at some point, but for one reason or another, they didn't take him up on the offer. And eventually though they did cover it. I think it was in the early or the mid two thousands, they put out a covers album and this was one of the songs, so it kind of came full circle. But I got to say I always loved the song.

I thought it worked well for that sort of like eighties meets fifties doop sort of thing. I thought it worked Gangbuster. I thought the song is great. I don't know if it was up for it feels to me like it should have been up from sort of a war because it was such a an iconic song from that time. But it was a big hit for Dan Hartman for sure.

I owned this soundtrack album of course, ran out and got it like I did every soundtrack at this time and place. But the song Nowhere Fast at the beginning of this movie is one of my favorite songs of all time. Just think it's a fucking triumph of Jim Steinman's work. I think it's Jim Steinman's best song of all times. It accomplishes everything that guy was obsessed with, which is teenage rebellion and teenage loss and nineteen fifties adolescents and such, and all of that is in this song.

But it doesn't take twenty minutes to get there, and there's no Phil Wizudo in the middle, and it doesn't deal with the politics of aftermath. This is about being young and in love and getting the fuck out together. I was never and remain not a big fan of either Meet Low for Jim Steinman or a bat out of the hell any And forgive me, I know people a lot of people love that stuff. It just was never for me. That sort of fifties pastiche meets Bruce Springsteen sort of vibe just never clicked for me.

But I will say, in the context of this movie and having that band put together, that fake band that you mentioned, Fire Inc, I think they do amazing things with it might be the first Jim Steinman's song I can honestly say that I was actually grooving to a little bit. It just it felt right because it's it has an environment to the movie, the subtext of the movie to carry it through. For me a little bit. But it's a great song, and I think it the message of the song is appropriate for the movie, so I don't have I think it's I think it's pretty cool. But again I'm not a big Steinman.

If you want to see something funny. By the way, folks, if you ever want to, like you know, feel secondhand embarrassment to the end degree, go on YouTube search up Jim Steinman Bad for Good, which was the song the title track off of his only solo album, Bad for Good. It'll turn your head around, It'll make you feel all sorts of cringe. It's insane and if you're going down that particular rabbit, hold and check out his Batman music. Actually, some of the songs off of Bad for Good were originally earmarked for a musical he was going to make based on Peter Pan's The Lost Boy, which was another pet obsession of him for a time.

Apparently, let me get way too personal about that song nowhere fast for a moment. There was a time once where my late wife Jessica and I were in a heated argument a couple of days, a disagreement, and we were driving stonily in silence everywhere we went, and one time, after things had thought just a little bit this song I put on. I would say I came on the radio, but the song doesn't come on the radio. You have to play this song if you want to hear it. And there is a line in the song that I was able to turn and sing to her, which is my favorite line in the song, which is and I don't know where I ever got the bright idea that I was cool, so alone and independent, but I'm dependent on you now and you've always been the only thing that I just can't be without.

And singing that to her completely broke that argument to pieces, and it was actually a turning point in our relationship. I can't overestimate the importance of this movie ultimately to me. I don't know how you're going to follow that out, HB. I don't know where I go from there. But that's a great story.

And obviously I can picture that knowing both of you and I could see I can imagine her cracking up finally, like you get it. You puncturing that wall of stony silence that I can imagine that very easy. The only thing I just want to throw out there, just as a because we talked about all the crazy, interesting people that this movie is peopled with, even in minor roles. I did want to make another mention of the Serels that not only do they feature Robert Townsend later to do Hollywood Shuffle, but Michael T. Williamson, who played Bubba and Forrest Gump.

He's one of the singers Stony Jackson, who I don't know a lot. He was in roller Boogie with Linda Blair, but that's about the only thing I can think of right off the top of my Oh, he was in what was that Wildcats with Goldie hawn Right. He was in that too. He was also in Trespass, Walter Hill's Trespass. Oh okay, that's another good tie in.

And also the fourth member of the Surrels is a guy named grand Bush that the name won't mean a lot to people. I've seen him in everything, Everybody, everything. He was in die Hard, he was Robert Dovey's FBI partner in that. He's just in a bunch of stuffs. Adan Johnson.

No, the other one, No, the other one. Yeah, he's I was in junior high. Dickhead, Dickhead. He's part of the squad in all the lethal Weapon movies, murtog and and Riggs's little group, core group of cops. He's always in those.

Walter Hill always seems to cast the same people or a lot of the same people in little bit parts or you know, you can see in this like there's low lifees in forty eight Hours who are in this as like gun dealers and mechanics and all this kind of stuff, And it's almost I just like that Walter Hill has this little repertory company of actors that he relies on for in little bit parts. But anyway, in particular the Currels, I thought all of them pretty much went on to do bigger and better things after this, So I would have been remiss not to bring that up. And I love, like I said, I'm a big fan of the song. I love the sequence in the movie, which, by the way, in the movie it was not sung by It's a different version than the one that became the hit.

In the movie, it's sung by a guy named Winston Ford. But the single the big hit version that we've all heard a million times is the Dan Hartman and I think there's some differences in the arrangement. Yeah, lip syncing. The song, of course of the movie is Stony Jackson. I know I mentioned a couple of the movies that he was in, but I want to mention the television series that I remember him from, which was The One Hundred Lives of black Jack Savage.

He played the ghost of a buccaneer who was teamed up with a con man who was trying to avoid going to hell and realize that they needed to save a hundred souls. Look, the series did not last long, but it is It is notable because not only is it a Stephen J. Cannell production, it was written by Glenn Morgan and James Wong, my two favorite television writers of all times. Never heard of that, Never heard of it. It's terrible.

All right, that's where we end here on moranas Fest. What's our next Miranusfest movie? HP Parenthood? Perhaps? No, what's the Hockey one already?

Can we get to the Hockey one? The Hockey one, the wholeson We're doing a Morana's Fest. Oh, this was his hockey movie. It's a Canadian movie. Yeah, yeah, I'm not familiar with this, but I'm looking forward.

To Ladies and gentlemen. I love this movie so much. I have no idea what it's called. Write in and tell me what the name of that hockey movie is with Rick Morannas until next time. HP does a show called Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast.

He also does a show called Noise Jonkies, which is his infrequent music show, and you can check them out at HP music Place dot bandcamp dot com. I'm doing your plugs. I was gonna say, what this is new? You can do about it nothing. I'm not a goddamn thing.

Until next time, I will check you out. I'm a man ins fest. Everybody sitting in the. Mid the back of the way. It's gonna be so a.

House you always good, you know. Where rut so, but depending. On you know, I get me out a mile you tonight, I'm going out. You don't. You don't have.

Me, You no. Got get away from the baths. The moment going the welling mom shows to go with the wheel fast. It's going to weld them Finding fast because moment go with the weam showing to going the well past,