PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Airlocks, Sensors & Rayguns Vol 1. - The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Welcome, midnight viewers, to the... Well, welcome, Patreon viewers, listeners. One of those. Welcome to a brand new series here on the Patreon channel. This is actually a sister series to buttons, switches, and consoles over on the regular feed.

This is Airlock Sensors and Ray Guns, where we're exploring old tech, but through a much more, let's say, lenient lens. We're going to allow the idea that the internet can make you psychic. Sure, that's possible. And we're going to do a lot of that today. And who's we?

Why, it's me and award-winning filmmaker and one of the hosts and editors of the Silent Writing Happy Hour in New York City at Pete's Candy Store. This is Laura Grillo. Say hi to everyone, Laura. Hi, everyone. There we are.

There we are. And to kick off our inaugural episode of the wackier aspects of old technology, we're going with the, oh, it's the top of the heap. I think the only place to go to is down after this. The grass heap. From 1992, which seemed ridiculously early to me, honestly.

For this film? Yeah, for this film. I mean, I know I saw it when it came out in the theater, but for some reason, my mind pegged this at 1995, and this was a follow-up to his film Virtuosity, when it's exactly the opposite. Yeah. Anyway, this one came out in 1992, The Lawnmower Man.

From the imagination of Stephen King comes the story of a man. Go! Come on, boy, let's go. Grass is waiting for you. With the mind of a child.

Yeah, Cyboman. He came to see me. Cyboman? Comics, right? Yeah, Cyboman.

And a doctor. Virtual reality holds a key to the evolution of the human mind. With a vision of the future. I have a game in my house that you might like to play. Would you like that?

Yeah? Okay. That was really bad. I have different games. I even have one that could help make you smarter.

Now, Job Smith is about to enter the world of virtual reality. Ah, it's gonna hit me! No, no, no, Job, just relax. It's gonna be like being up there with. The stars, Job.

Like going to another planet. His mind is like a clean, hungry sponge. I just graduated to the next level, Job. You're not the one for me. You've certainly changed.

I don't know how you did it, but I approve. I absorbed Latin yesterday in less than two hours. A world where the normal course of events can suddenly turn... inside out you realize dr angelo that my intelligence has surpassed yours the imaginary becomes. Real trying to get inside my head joe you can't. Hide anything from me dr angelo in reality.

You have no idea what he's gonna do is all. In your mind stephen king the lawnmower man. Written by Brett Leonard and Gimel Everett, based on the short story The Lawnmower Man by Stephen King. We'll discuss that in a second. And directed by Brett Leonard.

This one stars Jeff Fahey, Pierce Brosnan, Jenny Wright, Jeffrey Lewis, doing the worst Irish accent I've heard in so long. Abominable. And that last action hero's own Austin O'Brien. Okay, I'm going to kick it to you. Did you see this movie before today?

I've never seen it before. Oh, my God. So as for me, like I said, I saw this movie back in 1992. I was newly a projectionist in Santa Monica. And at the time, every theater gave grace to every other theater.

And you could just call up and say, hey, I'd like to come see the movie. And they'd say, come by. And so I got to see every movie that came out. This was one of them. And that's pretty much my reaction.

This was one of those movies I saw in 1992. Did you like it when you saw it? Oh, no. No, I didn't. And perhaps I should tell you why.

Initially, anyway. I am a Stephen King fanatic, have been for as long as I've been cognizant and able to read. I've been doing that with Stephen King. I am his typical constant reader. I own everything the man has ever written.

And I'm of the mind that King is always at his best when he's writing short fiction. And the type of short fiction he was pumping out in the 1970s is some of the most visceral and vital and genuinely frightening in both concept and execution that he would ever do. Lawnmower Man is one of those stories. The story as presented is just a man calls a lawn service and this corpulent fellow shows up with his lawnmower. And when the guy who called him looks out, he notices that the lawnmower is running on its own and the man is stripped naked and is crawling behind it and eating the grass. as it flies out from beneath the lawnmower.

And it turns out that this is either the most modern interpretation of the god Pan or one of his acolytes. And the man tries to interrupt, the one who hired the lawnmower man tries to interrupt this and becomes part of the ritual, and the lawnmower chews him up and evidently gets eaten as well by the man behind him. And there's a line in it where they say, the cops afterwards say... God, there were parts of him even in the birdbath, which is the only piece of that original story that has survived to the screenplay of this film. Because nothing else, other than there are lawnmowers and a death by lawnmower, this has nothing to do with that short story.

To the point where, as the movie was being released, Stephen King sued... and won $ 2. 5 million and had his name removed from all advertising. They allowed that it could still stay in the credits, but they couldn't advertise it, couldn't put it in the poster art, couldn't put it on the box art. And then he sued them again because as soon as it came out on video, they put his name back on the box. Ah.

So I was predisposed to kind of hate this movie. Well, it wasn't necessarily a flop. It was made for $ 10 million, but made $ 32 million. That's a hit. That's a hit, which is amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, to thank 32 million. Do they say that today? And they go, what a terrible thing. Supergirl only did 32 million this weekend.

Right, yeah. That was like a flop. Oh, yeah, because it didn't hit a billion dollars within a week. Those are the metrics we're working with these days. I remember when nobody even gave a shit what the fucking movie did for its box office in the weekend.

They'd go, oh, that was good. How'd that do? I don't know. Oh, I don't think that ever existed that time. Not for you and me, perhaps, who are a little more cinematically inclined.

But there was a time when Entertainment Tonight was a new thing, where people were suddenly clued into entertainment news for no good reason. You could always get the entertainment news. You could get Variety or Fangoria or Starlog magazine to figure out what's going on. In the world. But it wasn't as readily consumed by the public.

Like when John Tesh came out. On the scene. Yeah, he ruined everything. It's all John Tesh's fault. That Frankenstein synthesizer man.

Oh, come on. You love a Frankenstein type. I love a Frankenstein, sure. Yes, yeah. Well, then I like the Frankenstein type.

Okay, then I'm not making fun of him. I'm just saying his participation in entertainment tonight. Poor John Tesh. There was somebody before him. Didn't he have a side jazz gig, I think?

I think that was his main gig. Wilford Brimley? I think he has a record. Yeah. You're kidding.

I'm not. I need to hear the Wilford Brimley. Might have to pause this. Country. Oof.

Okay. I get off this horse onto a smaller horse. And then onto a smaller horse after that. And then a pony. And then a baby pony.

What they've done here is, okay. Oh, you didn't mention that Jenny Wright. Is in it. I did mention Jenny Wright. You did?

Yeah. I feel bad that Jenny Wright is in this movie. I feel bad for so many reasons. It bums me the fuck out that she's in the movie. For so many reasons.

Yeah. I mean, are you saying you're bummed out for many reasons from this movie or Jenny Wright's involved? From this movie. It's not just because it's a bad film that I'm bummed that she's in it. You think this is a bad film?

Well. You're right. I know. We are talking about David Koresh's favorite. The lawnmower man.

Oh, my God. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. He had a well-worn copy of it on VHS that they found. Was it charred?

Perhaps. I think the reason why I feel the most sad for her being in this film is the virtual reality rape. I think that was... I've never seen anything of its kind. No it was what's funny is that that particular sequence ended up getting included in like this uh showcase for computer animated uh graphics that was playing in like art houses all around the.

World that's so upsetting. Look at this amazing technology look what we're going to be able to do folks Oh, God. Put on your bodysuit. So look, this is a movie written and directed by this fellow, Brett Leonard, who went on to make that movie Virtuosity, which I think is actually a really good movie with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, where a virtual reality character gets out into our world and has to be dealt with. Obviously, he has a lane.

And so what had happened was him and his co-writer... went to some CNET type convention where they witnessed VR helmets and body suits and gyroscopes. And they went, that's the future. And then they went off and wrote this Jekyll and Hyde VR for Algernon type story where that had nothing to do with Stephen King's. And it's one of those scenarios where a studio says, hey, we've got this property. Can you do anything with it?

And they go, yes, here's our script. And they go, oh, can you maybe put some Stephen King in this? And they're, oh, yeah, okay. So what they did put in from Stephen King is the concept of the shop, which is this government organization that's sort of above the CIA while technically being below them. They're the ones who turned Charlie or, yeah, turned Charlie McGee into a fire starter.

And anytime any sort of government agency shows up in a Stephen King novel, it's usually the shop. So that's why they're in here. But it's not in any way from the lawnmower man. And I don't know. I guess they thought that was enough.

I guess so. But they were schooled. They were schooled because instead we get slow human. Let's say that. Well, I was pleased because I finally found out what Ben Stiller's inspiration for Simple Jack was.

It definitely is this, right? I didn't know that. It's because of the hair, the straw hair. The overall everything. He needed a cap with like holes in it and like a flower sticking out of it.

Like Jethro? Yeah. We see a lot of Pierce Brosnan's chest hair. Post-Remington pre-Bond chest hair. Do you think he was told as a character he has to smoke, or was he creating this himself, doing his due diligence of what he thought this guy would be?

I think Pierce Brosnan is an actor who, if he's given the opportunity to smoke, will smoke in every fucking frame. And I bet I bet at one time he did smoke and then no longer smoked. So anytime he's given that opportunity, he jumps on it with both feet. It's not me. It's my work.

It's almost distracting how much he smokes in this movie. Anytime somebody wakes up in bed with another human and lights a cigarette, I'm like, could you go to the fucking window? What are you doing? Okay, but it's Pierce Brosnan, though. Yeah, but you know what?

Let me tell you about Pierce Brosnan. She was a bitch. She. She was not. She needed to go to the city.

She needed to go to the city. She wanted him to take her. And instead he's down in the basement fucking around on a swing fuck chair and a fucking VR helmet. I'm not saying he was the perfect man, but he still wanted to have sex with her. She'd go do her other stuff.

Pierce Brosnan can either be squeaky clean or oily and gross he has no in between but he was. Trying to do a rumpled prince thing with like his whole sweater over his flopsy collar and his shorts apparently you wear shorts in those important government agency. Oh yeah those shorts were voluminous and terrible with socks very matchy matchy he had like this the blue top white shorts blue socks and. Yeah. I mean, I think he had a real, he was going for something there.

By the way. He was my favorite Bond. He is my favorite Bond. Okay. We all have opinions.

Oh my goodness. On things. He's the worst one. Are you kidding? Timothy Oliphant's the worst.

Not Oliphant. Okay. Timothy Oliphant is not a Bond. And if you're about to say, no, I'm not cutting. If you're about to say Timothy Dalton, I'm going to reach through.

And strangle you. He thought he was in Shakespeare instead of having a good. Excuse me. Timothy Dalton was saddled with the worst two Bond movies, and he still was Bond. He was a terrible Bond.

You are out of your gourd. Okay, look, I'm not defending him as the best Bond. Everyone knows the best James Bond is Roger Moore. You know, I think he just didn't have... I'm still going to go with.

You didn't want to fuck Roger Moore, and you did Pierce Brosnan. Be honest. Listen, we all wanted. I know, everyone wants to fuck Pierce Brosnan. I think what I like the most is that he made fun of it while he did it in a way that it felt, I don't know.

Not campy? Yes, whereas Roger Moore was extreme. All camp. Thank you for making sense of what I meant. But I love the camp aspect of Roger Moore.

Yeah, yeah, it's fun. Because I can't take Bond seriously in either plot or characterization. But I think Pierce Brosnan also does that in his way, brutally. He does. Oh, I'm not going to say anything again.

I like those movies just fine. I feel like that's something I need to prepare for if we're going to have this discussion. A Bond discussion? Yeah. I think there's got to be some preparation.

No, you should have your Bond arguments ready at all times. Well, I mean, I'm steadfast in what I think. I just. Don't know how to articulate it? Apparently, at the moment.

Because I just didn't think that we were going to talk about Bond. I just. Job. Job. I'm not going to say.

What does that have to do... Obviously, it's a biblical reference, but it has nothing to do with Job. Well, okay, first of all, it's not spelled like the biblical Job. They put an E on the end. So.

That makes all the difference. They've absolved themselves of that. So they don't have to follow the Job plotline. I do contend, though, that it is with purpose. And in this case, the character of Job is a stand-in for the audience.

Because this is a fucking trial and it never ends. And if you curse God, you'll lose. This movie, I'm going to point out, the movie you all saw in theater and on DVD and VHS, let's face it, it was VHS, that you saw this movie was 108 minutes. 108 minutes, Laura. We watched a two hour and 20 minute director's cut of this movie.

Yes, we did. We pieced together. What the fuck? Everything was essential in his mind? Well.

We got to watch Pierce pacing around and drinking yet another bottle of Bushmills? And do all those recordings. All the recordings. There's so many recordings. And we know because the television says recording.

Recording. My favorite part of the film was the first five minutes. The monkey business? Yes. Project X with murder?

Talk to Matthew Broderick. The monkey walking and getting ready to kill with the camera on top of his head, getting his vantage point, walking down the hallway. Oh, yeah, their attempt to cover up the fact that they couldn't in the amount of time with the budget they had train a chimp to do all of these complicated things that they wanted him to do, like use a key card or run down a hallway. Instead, someone, a little person in a monkey suit. They definitely had a little kid in there at one point.

When the monkey's on the roof and they're shooting fucking air pistols at it. And they really shoot it dead. Oh, man. So many shots. That monkey needed to go.

Yeah. Speaking of old tech, my favorite bit of that is that he's wearing a VR helmet that when he starts his murderous rampage, it has like a clear space for his eyes that a little mirrored thing slides over, blocking his eyes out like he's the Terminator. Like he just put on some mirrored shades and now he's out for some killing. Okay, yeah. I didn't notice that.

Original title for their screenplay was Cyber God, which, you know, there are themes of religiosity. We've got a Jesus stuck to a carburetor in Job's domicile. And we've got, you know, Job is cleaning Jesus at one point and eventually. He becomes Jesus. Yes.

Yes. And the cross makes an appearance at the end. And we're all on it. Because we spent our time and effort analyzing the lawnmower man. Whatever problems I had with the net, at least had Sandra Bullock in it.

I mean, look, Pierce Brosnan is good to look at. And I mentioned in our episode of The Net how fucking jacked Jeff Fahey ends up being. Yes. And but we unfortunately we see that when he still has the mind of child and he's getting oh that's true whipped by the priest. Okay to be fair i maybe i was looking away because i only saw his back when he i only saw his back when he was being whipped later on when he takes the shirt off that's when i was like whoa what's joe been up to is the vr helping with that because sign me the fuck up i mean he's cut Yeah, yeah.

But it's just so off-putting. Did you notice that as the more his brain augmented and got smarter and he develops all these powers, the sweatier he gets? Yes. He's so sweaty. It's just gross.

Knowledge is perspiration after all. It is. That makes sense. I love that they signify his increasing knowledge by showing you, how many CD-ROMs he's ejected from the machine. He's absorbed all of the knowledge you could possibly pack into a CD-ROM, all 456 megabytes.

Yes, yes. All those ROMs. They just keep shooting out. I'm like, what are they trying to indicate to us here? That's a level smarter?

Every unmarked CD that flies to the floor. By the way, Later on in the movie, I'm jumping around. We're going to jump around on this show, everybody. Job angrily gets in a car and he puts in a CD and this like rockin' tune comes on. But the CD he puts in, if you look real close, is clearly Celine Dion.

Is this true? Yeah. Yes. Well, you know, there were ways you could record over CDs back then. No.

No, you couldn't. I had a CD plus minus R, whatever the fuck it was. Of course you did. Of course I did. But it didn't have a production label on it that said Celine.

I mean, I guess you could have made that at home. Yeah. You can cut this out, but there's a bar in LIC, the Baroness, and the bathroom is coated with thousands and thousands of pictures of Celine Dion. So if you ever wanted to pee near her. If I ever wanted to lose my mind.

Yeah. Yeah. I can come in and stare at all the salines. It's actually really fun. Anything in profusion could be.

Like anything small. Anything small becomes adorable. Well, not technology. Look at this guillotine. Oh, my God.

It fits in the palm of my hand. Little baby guillotine. Baby guillotine. Baby thermonuclear war, Ed. It'll only blow off a finger.

It's not so bad. It's kind of cute. You've thought this through before. I haven't. Oh, I have thought that tiny things are adorable.

Oh, yeah. No question. Because anything shrunk down becomes cute. It just happens. Okay.

Chastity belt, cute. Oh. Any kind of medieval torture device. Just becomes adorable. There's so many.

Put it in like a little egg and come it out of a gumball machine. Anthrax. There's an old tech. They're playing a show and I couldn't get tickets. Who is?

Anthrax. Anthrax? I was talking about the horrible virulent disease. I know. I know.

The band. Old tech. Here's a favorite moment of mine. These are all terrible moments of this movie. This movie is not good.

But I like that in order to show that Job has now been experiencing a boost in intelligence, he's reading a math book and he turns to Jeffrey Lewis and he says, did you know that the square of the hypotenuse? And then the priest comes out and he's like, oh, shh. Do you know that the square of the hypotenuse... Here's a fascinating thing I've been learning. It shows I'm smart.

Hypotenuse. This is a movie about the future of technology. Written by a couple of dummies who went to a fucking tech convention. Well, what bothers. Also, in the opening crawl, they spelled millennium wrong.

They spelled millennium wrong. I didn't see that either. It's amazing. This is a movie about increased intelligence. You don't think they would have fixed that at the back end?

Maybe when they were taking Stephen King's name off of it, they could have replaced the word millennium with the proper spelling. They didn't do anything now. Maybe back then. They just couldn't. I'm sure Shout Factory released this, which means when I make an ad for it, I'm going to get fucking dinged by Shout Factory as if they made the movie themselves.

But maybe, Shout Factory, did you guys fucking fix it? Somebody. You can still do it. It's not too late. To be fair, it is a hard word to spell.

Oh, come on. Two M's, two L's, two N's. Here's another thing I like. This I actually really did enjoy about the movie. My dog Ripley hated Jeff Fahey and just fucking went to town every time he came on screen.

I had to put her out of the room. Aww. Just, like, he would appear just for a second on screen, and I'd hear a weird growl behind me. And then he'd come back on screen, full barking. What do you think that is?

I don't know. Something she just hates. Elephants. Horses. She hates elephants.

And horses. And horses. And Jeff Fahey. And Jeff Fahey. Well, there's similarities.

He does have a bushy mane of a lion at the start of this. Yeah. That's what it is. It's the hair. Straw-like.

Yeah. No moisturizer at all. And why is he wearing overalls for, like, a 300-pound person? Because he got it out of the mission box at the church. The lost and found.

Rather corpulent farmer. Accidentally dropped his clothing. Did you care at all about, like, the Vitruvian man stuff and how, like, they were trying to evoke Da Vinci with all that? No, because... Because it just felt like this hodgepodge of semiotical kind of signs and symbols.

There's like witchcraft symbols that keep popping up for him, which I guess is what to explain the fact that all this virtual reality was making him telekinetic and psychic. I didn't notice the witchcraft. Oh, rewatch. No, don't rewatch. I would never.

I mean, I did. I'll never tell you to do it again. But I'm sad that I don't know the symbols. Well, yeah, it's just, you know, look, if you pick up any random astrology book that's going to make you do math in order to find out if you're going to have a good Saturday, you'll probably see some of the same symbols. Okay.

Well, it looked like they chose every symbol. Yeah, all of them. Because they needed Job to be the culmination of all human knowledge. Why, when you get that smart, don't you go, why am I living in this hovel? the behest of this priest who's been using me for all of these years. Fie, I say, I'm off to better accommodations, sir.

There's a certain ascetic element that happens as you evolve intellectually. Well, he was having a lot of sex. I mean, he sure was. Okay. Let's talk about that now.

So they posit Jenny Wright as a, well, she lost her husband. They say miscast though. Oh, completely, because she's not a sex pot at all. Never has been. I mean, but she's gorgeous.

She's gorgeous, and I think she's incredibly sexy. She is. But she's not the sex-starved housewife down the lane. No. No.

She's the cool girl in the wildlife or chocolate war that you want to impress and somehow hang out with. Yeah. Exactly. She's different. She's weirdly like naive and ferocious.

It's not this part, this character at all. I mean, she looked pretty and everything. Yeah, but she just does. So who cares? Yes, yes, yes.

Put her in another part. Make her the Pierce Brosnan role anyway. Or the wife of him at least. Oh, the wife. Which apparently the director's cut, we got to see more of that character.

She was like a non-entity in the original thing. Oh no, I disagree. I think she was the whole movie. When she's gunning down those guys from the shop, I was right there with her. And then when she got shot herself, I thought, well, that's okay, too.

Because I don't care about any of these characters. Did you like that they put her in a 1950s kind of. No, because that didn't look good on her. Or did it make sense? No, because it's like 1992 and she should be dressed like sexy 92 and not like some ideas of the fucking Stepford Wives would wear.

Let's say Job is now... the intelligent version of himself. And he's out there mowing the lawn and she sees him for the first time. That makes sense that she would go, oh, I would definitely, I'd fuck that guy, right? Well, I think she first. This is what I'm talking about.

The first scene where he's like eating a sandwich and she's like eating a piece of fruit and they're like making eyes at each other. And all she knows is this is the sub-level moron who mows my lawn. I'm really turned on right now. And then she sees him again, ass up, At the gas station. That's right.

Oh, that's right. By the way, if becoming more and more intelligent means you start dressing in Western wear, fucking make me stupid. Oh, you would look good in Western wear. It does not matter if the look would be good. It's how I would feel.

Okay. Yeah. It is a strange choice, but he goes full. Belt buckles and everything. I noticed the boots first and I was like, okay, maybe he just got the boots.

A nice crisp jean. I could forget the mother of pearl. As opposed to the light wash. But once he was laying back in his VR chair and I could see that gigantic belt buckle reflecting, I went, Job, what have you become, man? It's a step up from overalls.

So if he was supposed to be that intelligent, how did he not realize that maybe VR rape wasn't necessarily the best idea? And I was also upset when he totally ruined her tube of toothpaste. By testing his psychic powers? And then he just left it there. I feel like how annoying it's going to be to clean that up.

Or just think, I'd like to brush my teeth now. What the fuck? And this mess. So, so rude. Not to say those things are on par necessarily, but.

Squeezing out somebody's toothpaste with your mind is not equivalent to raping them in a cyber environment. It's not, but symbolically. I think it's more of a violation to have your toothpaste squeezed out in your medicine cabinet. No. Trigger warning.

I mean, that's just real world. I don't think anything like that is happening. It's pretty fucked up. Yeah. Yeah.

The toothpaste we're talking about. Yeah. Not the VR rape. I mean, that, let's just not, we don't want to talk about that anymore. You don't want to talk about the VR rape?

I'm so irate. You keep bringing it up. Well, it is, I mean, it's just because I really like Jenny Wright. I do too. You don't want to see her treated like that.

Yeah. You want to see her chased around by Bob Geldof with a broken guitar. That's more how I want Jenny Wright treated. You've never seen Near Dark, have you? Yeah, I've seen Near Dark.

I did write in my notes, did Jenny Wright lose a bet? I don't know what she's doing in this. Other than like, we all got to eat, you know? Yeah. I mean, she does a good job at.

Not this. She does her job. She's not bad in it. She's competent. She does the best with the character they've given her.

Her hair looks really good. It does it? I thought it was all fly away and gross. But it's kind of the look, you know, it's it's I think what they were going for. They were going for everyone looking like they slept and just woke up.

No, I think she's I think it was a layered thing. Also, he drove her crazy with VR. Yes, he did. That did happen. And then he and then he made another woman get riddled with bullets.

So Supreme Intelligence seems like a whole lot of misogyny. Well, I think that, yes, but they also started adding the original formula. Oh, the aggression. Yeah. So they're letting Job off the hook.

Pierce Brosnan got off the hook. I mean, he created all this. It's all his fault. He blew up an entire government agency building. Yeah, why does he get to survive?

Yeah. He's Dr. Frankenstein in this case. Like experimenting on chimps when he shouldn't be and then humans when he shouldn't be. And I thought it was interesting how it starts out as a nightmare, but then ends up as actually have happened.

Yeah, what was that? That was unnecessary. I was like, oh, okay, that was a dream. Oh, no, wait, it's continuing. So does that make him psychic?

Did they have a psychic link with the chimp? Yeah, maybe. Was that the idea? They didn't tell us, but. But I'm going to make that leap for them because somebody has to do some work on this script.

You helped them out. You didn't help. You helped. I mean, he was back there, too. He was doing just fine with Job at home, you know?

Yeah, but then they added aggression. Exactly. He's the reason he wanted to change brainwave patterns and get all the good equipment. I want to say that the storyline, the basic sort of bones of the plot is really interesting, but then it is Flowers for Algernon, so … I knew I kept enjoying parts of this movie. And every time I responded to it, I thought, oh yeah, that was really skillful when they did it in that story.

Did you like Terry and Joe's relationship at least? That's the thing. I wish there had been no monkeys. I wish there had been no sort of cuckoo virtual reality everything. I really wish there had been no straight from central casting bully biker character with his tiny shades and his do-rag and his, I'm going to beat you up, you retard, that guy.

Yeah, he was offensive. Yeah, he was the only one defending Jenny Wright's character when George Lewis was calling her a slut. That is true, but that was only because he wanted to fuck her. How dare you say that about my future girlfriend? I still think it was interesting.

I do, too. I'm not denying it. I'm just saying that guy, other than that, his only function in the screenplay was to pop up, go, you're a stupid person, and then walk out. Or what about the whole child abuse thing next door? No.

Yeah, all these straw men that they set up in this thing so we can, like, root for our character for a little while. The retribution. Yeah, he kills the evil priest and the abusive father. He kills him in a way where he sets him on pixelated... Fire.

Kind of. I was thinking the priest got off easy for that. Because he turned into a bunch of pixels. It was a real fire. We didn't see him scream or burn, really.

And how he dismantled some of his other opponents was... Turning them into marbles? Yeah, that was unusual. I kind of liked it. I liked it the first time.

And then the second time, I was like, okay. And then he did it again, and I was like, this is the move now. I guess once you start marbling, it's all over. And your least favorite character, I think his name was Jake, how he gets in his head, and so his lawnmower is going to eat his brain forever and ever and ever. Yeah, that was great.

You like that? Oh, yeah. I loved a big CG Jeff Fahey with a lawnmower mouth skimming lightly over a CG brain. That's my screensaver on my desktop. But I particularly liked, as a horror fan, the actual lawnmower attack when it's chewing up the furniture.

And it's all shaky cam and chaos vision and none of it made any sense. And it's like, jump out the window. Just run away. It's a fucking, it's a thing on the floor. Just run away.

But it flew and then it got him. And then it flew. Now, I will forgive the cyber sex. I will forgive. I will forgive the monkey attacks at the beginning.

Pierce Brosnan's complete lack of any scientific methods. But. I will not forgive the lawnmower suddenly attaining flight in order to pin somebody to a tree. But it was controlled by Job's mind. He can't.

Oh, I guess he can't do telekinesis. He can't lift things. Yeah, you're right, I guess. No, I'm still saying no. No.

Well, that was the one murder I wanted to happen. Jake? I mean, aside from the priest as well. I wanted the priest to have more of a painful murder. Well, we all want priests to die painfully.

Yeah. Except you, Father Malone. Oh, thank you. Well, I'm a fake priest, so. I know.

I'm off the hook. Aren't they all, though? Fake priests? Yeah, when you get right down to it, that's deep. That's what you brought me on the show for moments like that.

Depth. We'll call them depth charges. Laura, hit us with a depth charge. Did you like it when he finally goes into the computer and his body is left as like a big giant corn husk? What's not to like?

That was really interesting. Someone designed that. Half a million dollars, eight months of animation for the computer generated imagery featured in this movie in which my phone could produce something better today. Was it a. Hit at the time?

This movie? Yeah, I mean, I know they made a second one. They did. I think it was a modest hit in theaters, and then like most 90s stories of success, it really hit its stride in VHS and then eventually DVD. And now everyone regrets seeing it.

Laser discs. Laser discs, yes. Flip it over halfway through like the filmmaker intended. Oh, wait, we've got to stop the movie, everybody. I've got to turn it over.

I have some early DVDs still that you have to do. I have a copy of The Wild Bunch that halfway through The Fucking Wild Bunch, they're like, and now turn the DVD over. I'm like, what? I had a lot. I don't have them anymore, but VHS that had sample or preview on them the whole time that you watched the movie.

That was my favorite time in Los Angeles, screener season, because I knew lots of people in the industry would go, hey, you want these? I'm like, yeah, you know I do. Oh, there's no conditioner in cyberspace. That's what I'm taking away from this movie. I think Lawnmower Man is a subpar film.

A lot of people remember it nostalgically, like The Net, like Hackers, like this entire genre of movies that we're covering here. Jeez, it's really difficult for me because Brett Leonard made a movie called The Dead Pit back in 89. I think it was an Australian zombie movie that I really liked when I saw it. And then, like I said, I liked Virtuosity quite a bit. But this thing, I don't know what it is.

This really feels like people stumbling around without any knowledge of the thing that they're making a movie about. And it ultimately feels just like The Net, that it kind of feels grafted on. Like, really, they were just making a Flowers for Algernon story, a Jekyll and Hyde werewolf type story where a character goes from one thing to another and then that spirals out of control. It's the careful what you wish for. Don't go, you know, trespassing in lands you don't belong.

Dr. Frankenstein shit. Yeah. So I respond to it in that way. But and I think that could have been really, really good if they had dispensed with all of the other bullshit. the priest, the fucking gardener, the fucking bully, Jenny, right.

All of it. And been this two piece about these two characters, but then we're talking about a whole nother movie now. So yeah, that's, that wouldn't be so fucked. Lawnmower, man. I guess it's my ultimate.

Don't see it. If you haven't, and if you have to see it, do not watch the director's cut. Unless you want to have a fun time, just, you know, an. Extra half hour of this. Please.

Well, it's, There's a lot of, I had some fun watching it. Yeah, well, there is camp value to be had, but I don't know that that's the worth of a movie. Like, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has convinced us that these movies are actually worthwhile when they are not, unless you have professional people making fun of them for you. I felt like I was okay by myself making fun of it. Yeah, but you're really smart and funny.

No, see. All right, you're recommending it then. I am. I think people should watch it. Wow.

Just be repulsed like we were and understand how failing it is. And also understand Penn Stiller's motivation for Simple Jack, because I think Tropic Thunder is an important film that we've all seen as well. As far as antecedents go, you're missing out if you haven't watched this, if you're a completist. Are you really not recommending it, really? Really?

I'm really not recommending this movie. You really are not. I'm really not recommending this movie. See, whereas I filmed, I'm glad I saw it. Good.

I will recommend, if you have not seen this movie, I do say watch the opening. If you get through the, if you get through Cybo-Man, the Cybo-Man sequence, then this movie is definitely for you. Continue. Especially just for that scene of, Of. Running down the hallway with the camera attached to him.

Yes. For murder. It's great. Love an aggressive monkey with a pistol. With a pistol.

He needs the pistol. And I love the graphics that are guiding him there, which is this one, like, janky line that just points in the direction he's supposed to go in, like all early HUD displays in movies. Oof. We are talking about old tech, everybody. The displays in the beginning that lead the monkey, I'm surprised we don't really see them again.

My favorite heads up is he sneaks up on a guard whose back is to him, and then the camera focuses in on the gun, and a graphic says, acquire, which means that that monkey knows the word, acquire. That formula really works. He's a smart monkey. Smart monkey, dumb filmmakers. Where does that leave us?

I don't know. She's recommending it. I am not. I don't know what our next movie is, so I'm not going to announce that. You can choose it.

We want to choose one? Yeah. You have the list in front of you? Yes. For I do not.

Well, let's do Cherry 2000. All right. Well, on the next episode of whatever this is, airlock sensors and ray guns, we're going to be going 180 degrees. Yes, we are. As far as quality goes.

They're good. As far as enjoyment goes. As far as sexiness goes. Yes. Because we're talking about Cherry 2000.

Double the sexiness, actually. That is a classic from one of my favorite filmmakers and a personal friend, Mr. Steve DeJarnett. Until then, ladies and gentlemen, Laurel, tell everyone where they can find you. On this podcast.

That's where they're going to find me. I mean, I think. You're pro-cyber rape. I think that's what you want to leave everybody with. No!

Ew! Nope, nope, nope. Okay, then. I will be everywhere, like this movie. Hear the phones ringing.

Yeah, exactly. Try to enjoy the daylight because the phones are ringing, everybody. I hear them ringing now. Yeah. She takes a step and falls.