Patreon Request - Labyrinth (1986)

Welcome to a special midnight viewing it as a listener episode as a Patreon listener episodes, So you're hearing it on the Patreon channel. What's up, Trish. This is the first of our couple of David Bowie episodes are gonna be We're gonna be covering here from David Bowie's cinematic efforts, Probably his best known, most beloved, most formative for both young men and women is the one we're talking about today. Play the trailer right here and we'll get back to you. This is Labyrinth, the imagination of Jim Henson.

Who are you? I've brought you? Okay? Is it? It's a crystal ship with your dreams that it's father than you think.

The wizardry of George Lucas. See, there's nothing to be afraid of. Just have given up, must be stomped. The excitement of David Bowie. Everything I've done, I've done for you.

I move the stars of No One. Run so long, Run so long. Three extraordinary talents take you to a world of fantasy and adventure, the world of Labyrinth. Coming June twenty seventh. Joining me here talking about Labyrinth.

Please welcome my co host in pretty much everything. Mister HP, HP, how are you there? I'm well, Father Malone, how are you? I'm excellent because we're talking about a fucking classic for once. I'm guessing this wasn't your first time seeing this.

No, not at all. I saw this in the movies. Oh I think I talk about that, would you? Oh? Sure?

Who among us in our generation? Father alone wasn't into Jim Henson at this time. I had seen The Dark Crystal in the theater, and Labyrinth had the added benefit of having David Bowie, who is probably my favorite musician of all time. And then I was in my ascent of fandom with David Bowie. But I think he brought a lot of people to that movie.

This wasn't just a puppetfest. You had one of the most protean and interesting personalities in entertainment at all. He was in it as the Goblin King. What could be better? Yeah?

I saw this in the theater probably twice, and a hell of a lot on home video and cable. In the behind the scenes documentary that they have out for this film, Jim Henson says, I don't know what it is, but every age group just responds to David Bowie. And it's true, right, Is there anyone who didn't like him? And if they are, fuck you. He could be anything to anybody.

If you didn't like Let's Dance, then you could go back to Ziggy Stardus. If you didn't like Ziggy Stardis, maybe you'd like the Thin White Duke and you didn't like it. Just that was the best thing about Bowie is that he if you didn't like what he did, It's like that joke about the weather. If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. If you don't like the Bowie persona five minutes and he'll come up with something.

He'll do something electronic, or he'll do something with soul, or he'll do it's amazing. Yeah, I think that's a very apt quote from Jim Henton. Jim, had you mentioned The Dark Crystal? I did, I as well saw this film in the theater. I saw this film several times in the theater while I could mostly empty theaters.

Unfortunately, nineteen eighty seven was in a great year for fantasy films, particularly featuring puppets. But I had seen The Dark Crystal in the theater as well. I think The Dark Crystal is a fucking massive achievement in filmmaking. That he made that movie entirely with puppets. At one point, they didn't even speak English.

They spoke an entirely foreign language, a made up language, and you were just supposed to go along with what was going. Were they over was it overdubbed or did they record it with the alternate? Yes, I believe those tracks are out there and you can you can see it. One of the great admirers of Dark Crystal, who had been invited to an early screening of it but showed up late, was mister Terry Jones from Monty Python. He eventually made Eric the Viking and he's my favorite Python, and he came out of that theater thinking that was, like, I just said, that movie's a massive achievement.

It was thrilling and an amazing achievement for fantasy filmmaking. And then the reviews came out and Terry Jones couldn't figure out why the critics were laying basing it for being so obvious in its storytelling because he had missed the opening three minutes of the movie where there was narration where they basically told you the entire story. So to him, he came in completely blind and was swept up with I don't know what's happening here, but I love it. That's great. So when Jim Henson contacted him, he took the meeting because he wanted to right the wrongs that he thought had been done critically to The Dark Crystal by writing the screenplay.

Now, the screenplay came about because Jim Henson had been hanging around with Brian Froud, who was the production designer on The Dark Crystal. He did all the designs for all of the goblins in this and they were kicking around ideas for a new movie. And originally we're intended to do a movie sent to Indian mythology that's India, not Native Americans, before they realized that they were completely out of their depth with Indian mythology, at which point Brian Froud suggested, Hey, I draw goblins really well. So it's Brian Frown's idea to do goblins and a goblin king, and it's his idea to make it set in a labyrinth. So they hired Dennis Lee, who was a I believe a Canadian children's author and poet, to do the first version of the screenplay which Terry Jones described as a ninety page novella like not screenplay format, like lots of rhyming gibberish.

When he was given that draft of the screenplay, he said, he read it for a little while and then he just threw it away and started from scratch. His version of the screenplay was based entirely on whatever conversations he had with Jim Henson and just sitting with a stack of Brian Frowd's drawings of various characters, and when he would get to a scene where he needed something to happen, he would flip through the stack of drawings and go, okay, this character, and then we would get that scene. His first draft of the screenplay was about a little girl, so it was like more allis in Wonderland. She was about nine or ten, and Jarreth shows up and steals the baby. She doesn't wish the baby away at all, so it's more of a quest where she has to get the baby back.

It was overall funnier, and it was overall, like I said, much more adventurous, and Jarreth as a character, while taunting her throughout the entire thing, we never saw again. After the opening scene. We don't meet him again until the finale where she defeats him and gets her baby brother back. So that draft gets turned in. Henson consults with executive producer George Lucas they decide to make it about instead of a young girl just on an adventure and a fantasy world where the labyrinth is the main character of the thing, that they would make it about, a girl on the cusp of adulthood, which they tasked him with writing a second draft.

And now they've cast a rock star, and so he has to make a goblin king character throughout and against his better judgment, which was we should never see the center of the Labyrinth until she does. Because they've added the Jarletthe character, we now see the center of the Labyrinth from the get go, and there's absolutely no surprises for the rest of the movie. So he, even though he rejects all of that, he does turn in that screenplay. They then turn it over to Elaine May, who takes basically all the comedy out of it. Elaine May, who is like one of the greatest part of one of the greatest comedy duos of all time, ends up crafting all the comedy out.

They have to bring it back to Terry Jones, and Jim Henson says, David's going to leave because it's no longer funny, at which point Jones runs wild. Now he at the end of the day say is basically everything up until Sarah eating the apple is him. Everything else is by committee. And it makes sense. Because it gets really dark after that, obviously, and it's not as rollicking an adventure after that happened, so it makes sense.

I never would have thought of it until you had just explained it. And that's how we got ourselves a labyrinth. I mean, get the official stats up here. Directed by Jim Henson, as I said. Story by Dennis Lee and Jim Henson from a screenplay by Terry Jones, starring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Toby Frowd that is Brian Frowd, production designer's baby as Baby Toby.

None of these people, I'm not mentioning any of these people. I will mention Brian Henson as Hoggle and one of the Goblins. Most of the Muppet performers were in here doing major characters, but Jim Henson wanted a level of remove from the Muppets themselves, so he didn't want you even getting the barest hint of Fozzy from the character that Frank Oz is playing, or Dave Goles is playing a character, and he didn't want him sound anything like Gonzo. So while they performed the characters, they hired English actors to come in and do the voices. Sure, and even giving the sort of name of Muppets does a real disservice to the work that the puppeteers did in this because they don't read.

If you think of when I think of Muppets fat One, I think of the Muppet Show, I think of Fozzy Bear, I think of Rolf, I think of Kermit Frog. And those are all wonderful, timeless characters that I don't have to I don't have to defend them. But in this these really are like like fantasy drawings come to life. There's a level of versimilitude and realism to these characters. Like Hoggle, he reads like a real person, like a real character.

He doesn't. It's you don't see the seams with any of these characters. You can tell that they're not people necessarily in the traditional sense. But what they do is they create a world populated with all these crazy characters. And again it's I don't think you could have gotten there without having the Dark Crystal first, because the Dark Crystal really made the mold, so to speak, for this kind of filmmaking where there's no real human essence in it anywhere.

It's these are all characters created literally from whole cloth, and that's what we see here. And it's such a wonderful universe that he created with Labyrinth. As a kid at that point, like what' thirteen fourteen years old, I was so ready for this and the music Bowie, it was I can't miss for me. Oh. I had a fantasy period there in high school where I was watching a lot of Robin of Sherwood and I was watching this on a loop, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal honestly, and Dragon Slayer.

There was a like I said, there was a brief but intense period of everything I get my hands on, including those that terrible Bakshiet Lord of the Rings. I do want to make one quick call out that kind of leads me into Labyrinth. I don't know if you picked up this book eighty five Father Moment. There was a book by an artist named Christopher Manson and it was called May and the book was almost along the lines of a choosieron adventure. It was a book with these great sort of charcoal drawings and every page had a number of doors.

It was essentially, like the title, it was a maze that you would have to try and solve using context clues on the page. Again, this was before Labyrinth, but and it's not directly informed by fantasy. There is some fantasy elements to it, but the art style definitely reminded me or eventually was felt like a callback to Labyrinth in a funny way. And the hook behind this book was if you solved it, if you got through the maze, you could submit your solution and win a ten thousand dollars prize. It was a promotional thing.

But I would say, if anyone wants to know why I was so prime, one of the reasons why I was so primed to see Labyrinth and really get into it was this was a book that was essentially about solving a maze, a labyrinth, if you will, not trying to save someone's stepbrother. But I would say this was a formative influence getting priming the pump for me to see Labyrinth. I would I would also implore you, father will to check it out, because I think you'd really dig it. HPI moved the Stars for no one. Let's talk about Sarah as character here.

I remember when Lucas re released the Star Wars trilogy the new and enhanced CG fests back in what ninety seven that was, and I remember being struck at what a punk Luke Skywalker is at the beginning of that film, just thinking, what a whiny little fuckers. I want to go to Toashi's station. Shut your mouth, dummy, watching this again. Sarah is a problem at the beginning of this move she is. She is an hour late for babysitting.

Now, granted, no, no one likes to babysit their younger sibling. And this is a movie about her eventually coming to face responsibility, and all these character traits will be weeded out of her by the end. But she's an hour late because she's been running in a field with her sheep dog playing princess. And you know what's funny, is like they wanted to make it so she's on the verge of adulthood. They've casted Jennifer Connell, who's sixteen here as opposed to Terry Jones's original conception where she's nine or ten.

The nine or ten year old it would be okay for her to be running around playing princess and not realizing she's an hour late to anything. But they've given her this level of responsibility and then she's just pissy about it. I don't know, I just hate her. I know it's just a it's a facsimile of the teenage girl as an object, just all the moody and ungrateful and an asshole and needs to figure out life whatever. But oh I hated her.

Yeah, very whiny, And yeah, I would agree with you there, it's not a very it's especially as a thirteen fourteen year old boy at the time. What did I know from girls? I was just learning about girls at that point, So it wasn't the easiest character to identify with on the face of it for me. But then when you add in the fact that she, as you said, I think that's a holdover from having her be so young in early drafts. I think, and frankly Jennifer Connolly for being sixteenth at the time, she gives a she's very sophistical, she's a very sophisticated performer, so it's hard to reconcile those aspects of her character where you hear her talking in her line delivery, and the way she carries herself.

She seems to be way beyond sixteen years old, and yet we're supposed to believe that she is this sort of privileged, whiny girl. That is, she's in the wrong at the beginning. Let's say it. She they're not asking her for too much. She's supposed to just babysit her stepbrother, whom she should be loving as this infant.

It's a child. What's up with her? Yeah, that is it's a rocky start for the character. I agree. She bursts into that room.

She wants to punch that baby, kick it like a soccer ball. That's it, man. She effectively does she like wishes it away. I love the idea by the way, that goblins are just waiting. There's a room full of them.

They are on guard. Wait, oh, everybody, they're watching television. It connects it to basic folklore or things like the monster under the bed. You don't believe that they're true. You grow up and you believe you grow out of those silly superstitions.

But in this case, you're saying no, the goblins are there and they're waiting. They're just waiting for you to wish that brother away. Yeah. But what Also, it's funny when you're saying this, I'm connecting it to another movie right around this time. I think it was actually Maty four.

Another movie that it reminds me of is the never Ending Story. Similar idea where you have this child that's under difficult circumstances in the real world and they gain entrance to this incredible technicolor fantasy world that they can have these adventures. The same idea here, and certainly two very different characters, but simp again, these are all things that are getting me excited. I'm in the right headspace. For a movie like that is a true character or you're not supposed to like her at the beginning, and I get that, like I'm not an idiot.

But because it's Jennifer Connelly, right, who is sixteen and sixteen, by the way, seems she seems older than sixteen because she is sophisticated and she has that sort of precociousness of a really good child actor, which we've been seeing her since Once upon a Time in America. But the character as written is a twelve year old. That level of the world's against me. Fuck you all, the kind of thing like at sixteen, her father should be like, go to your room, we'll take the kid with us. You're a fucking like you're going to boarding school.

That's too much. Get a job, honey. I do love that. Just in Movie Magic Land, when the movie starts, she's in a park and that's in England, and then she runs across the street and Upper Nayak, New York, and then runs onto the sound stage at Elstree Studios. I just love that movie Magic.

No, it's great. I love when movies do. I remember seeing an interview with David Lynch. She was talking about making e raise her head and there's a point at which the main character opens a door and then when the reverse happens and he walks into the room. He said, yeah, that reverse shot happened four years after the other shot, because it was always a struggle to get financing and get people to make the movie with me.

But you would never know that if you're watching the movie. It's just one continuous shot cut crosscut, but it's four years between those two shots. I love it. Movie Magic. It's a time mission because we have our leads, like I said, Didymus and Ludo and Hoggle and Sarah and then obviously Jareth and his little coterie of goblins.

But everyone she meets along the way the actual residents of the Labyrinth, and there are many of them. Which one's your favorite? Probably? I was always charmed by the door knockers that give her the riddle that to me because a lot of this was reminding me of computer games and things that I was playing. In fact, they made Labyrinth into Lucasfilm.

LucasArts made it into a computer game. It wasn't very good, but that level of it was like the Bridge of Eternal Peril and money Python. Right, you have to solve a riddle to get through. One is always lying, one is always whatever I That to me is a and that is probably one of the most Terry Jones esque bits in the whole movie. Right, So I would say the.

Door knock I love the door Knockers as well. In fact, the phrase no good can area. I say that to anyone I'm done in a conversation with and have done so since nineteen eighty seven. So that is a definite favorite. But I think overall it's gotta be the helping hand.

That entire sequence where after the which Doherty to choose who's lying, who's truthful. When she falls down, the chef finally actually entering this nightmare world where the rest of the movie's going to take place, and yeah, they form into hands and they're holding her and they'll do what she says, and it's all very tactile and weird and fun and scary all simultaneously. It's one I wish the whole movie was just that. It's gonna be a lot of things. But something about that really screamed we're in a different world now and anything is possible.

That's a great call out. And it reminded me of Woman Chance, which was a big thing, and people are listening to this going, what the hell is Wuman Chance? But it was essentially puppetry with the human form using obscure lighting and things to make like a person into a worm or a spider. They appeared on The Muppet. Show, has been on Muppet Show.

Oh yeah, but yeah, but it's because all these helping hands are it's just a bunch of hands put together to create faces talking and things happening. It was it was it's a very cool effect. But it's a credit to the dexterity of the human hand. That's all it is. Yeah, it's incredible to think.

You look at Hoggle, which is a animatronic head filled with gears and pulleys and radio controlled things, and as effective, if perhaps not more, is just a bunch of arms in foam sleeves forming different faces and talking in different ways and forming different expressions. I don't know, marvel at that scene every single time. Yeah, I totally I completely spaced on that, but you're right, there is something magical about that sequence. I also like the hat, of course, It's so stimulating being your hat. The wise man and his bird hat.

Fuck it, hey man, I could watch a movie with those two. I could watch a sitcom featuring those two just going about their daily lives. And yes, those are that is what remains of Terry Jones throughout this movie, all those sort of beats. Terry Jones was to me my favorite writer of the Monty Python guys, and I think he would probably cop to it, and has written a bunch of very books, including a book with Brian Frowd about These Goblins and Encyclopedia of Goblins. Which I don't know how available it is anymore, but if it is available, like Internet database wise, I will put a link in the show notes, where I will also put a link to everything else we've been talking about, like Mument Shawns, for instance.

We need to spread the gospel of movement Shans. If nothing else, at least we're exposing them to a new audience. That's right. They need to see warring, clay faced people and what they can do to present themselves as happy, and how they can make others sad, indeed, because there's a lot but speaking of making people sad or not making people sad, it's a bad segue here. But I think one of the other things that I really dug about this movie is again, we grew up with the Muppets.

They're safe, they're fun, they're happy. But with Dark Crystal and then with this we're seeing this sort of fantasy world, but there are real stakes here, and there's real danger around every corner. And now it's not completely scary to somebody watching it now, or maybe someone over the age of thirteen or fourteen years old. But I think Jim Henson does do a good job of creating a tone with this movie, where it is look, Hoggle has been threatened by Jarath to be dunked into the bog of eternal stench, where he will stink for all eternity. A scary prospect as you're a boy going through puberty.

You don't want to seem stinky or gross forever. It's this jeopardy here, I guess, even just the fact that maybe it didn't make as much of an impact as a kid. This child has been taken from his family. Well that's a pretty heavy thing if you really stop and think about it. The bog of eternal stench always troubled me because they finally make their way across, because these stones rise up out of the bog and provide stepstones.

But all I could think is the bottoms of their shoes are now covered from the bog of eternal stench. You all stink of the bog of eternal stench. Ludo's feet will now forever stink of the bog of eternal forever. Yeah. I never thought of it like that, But you're right.

Even just a little touch it, just ever so briefly, and that's it. You're staying forever. I don't think Jim Tnson ever shied away from darkness quote unquote. I think he always just and the best children's entertainers do this, spoke to kids like they were adults, and I think dark Crystal. I think maybe the lesson learned was you can maybe lean too hard.

You need some human element and it can't all be foreign and strange and fantasy fantasy crazy. Perhaps he's over correcting with the musical numbers in the movie. Are you specifically talking about something like magic Dance, which is probably the most egregious kitty. I think I'm specifically talking about the magic Dance number, not the song. I'm talking about let's stop everything and have a song that does not forward the plot or anything.

It's just a moment of glee. I love the sequence, don't get me wrong, But narrative wise, I can tell why Terry Jones was like, what are we doing? And it was jarring for me at the time, because again, I'm used to David Bowie being such a serious musician and really being intense, and to see him frolicking with a room full of muppets singing this dance magic Dance, Jump badget it is a little bit now, I really appreciated because it is such an outlier, and it was a nice window into Bowie's humanity. Again, my humanity. But it's easy to think of him as his untouchable alien type presence.

It's been around forever. But he was warm at times in this and it was a side of him that we didn't really see. Just the fact that he's in a muppet esque movie was heartening it even now. But I hear what you're saying. Maybe he wanted to temper some of that heaviness such as it was something I guess you could say it was an overcompensation.

I wonder what you would have in its. Place, a different song. Maybe it felt like a music video in the middle of the movie. Sure, but part of that might have been, Look, I've got David Bowie in this movie, and yeah, he's already singing a number of songs, but I need to feature him more prominently. And maybe maybe it's something that he responded to and said, you know what, this is a side of me that my fans haven't seen.

It might be a fun to do this. I will for my part, I had the soundtrack and I loved it. This was never one of my favorite songs to listen to outside of the movie. You have Sha Ka Khan though singing back on me. Yeah, but we have Sha Ka Khan on underground along with Luther Vanros and other people.

You have the baby cooing sounds provided by David Bowie, provided by David Bowie himself. Didn't did not win me over? Then didn't win me over? Now I agree. I Look, here's the thing.

The movie is what it is. It's you can't compare it to other narrative films, or other musicals or other fantasy movies. This is just Labyrinth, which is always anytime anyone potentially says that they we're going to remake this, I'm like, what are you crazy? That movie is what it is. You can't do that again, There's no way.

And it only works because it's David Bowie. Honestly, Yeah, for all of the punches he took for the look and the fact that his costuming. Let's say, I don't want to get into too much. No, let's get no, let's get into it. Actually because Brian Froud did most of the drawings, and obviously there were costume designers and production designers and everything.

But I believe I've read an interview with Brian Frowd. We're talking about the bulge in Jared's pants that we've all been staring at for forty fucking years now some odd And in the interview, the point was made that everything in the Labyrinth, everything is out of Sarah's head. Right. If you look around her room before the movie begins, you will see every character you're about to see, right, including all the little books and stuffed animals. And if you look at Jared, not just the bulge in the pants, but if you look at him the pieces of him, what you have is a rock star haircut from the time.

You have him in a kind of heathcliff waistcoat from like Victorian literature, like Jane Eyre type literature, and then he's wearing ballet pants. Those are ballet pants which a teenage girl would piece together as her perfect lover slash antagonist slash romance novel slash fantasy guy. And once I heard that, I was like, oh, yeah, that all now totally makes sense. It makes perfect sense it But at the time, at least, it was such a prodigious image to be confronted with because this was this guy was the epitome of cool, and now he's got this Tina Turner type wig and he's got Almadillo and his trousers. It was You're absolutely right, and when you put it that way, it makes perfect sense and it is thematically appropriate.

But at the same time, it was a little ridiculous to be confronted with that image. It's still a troubling bulge it is. It reminds me of that scene in the Chevy Chase movie Modern Problems, Remember that where he. Goes he blows up that the ballerino. Yeah, the whatever the male equivalent of a ballerina is, but.

It is ballet man, it is big. But let me ask you, well, we're on the subject of Bowie here. Now I'm going to put aside the song Underground for the moment father along, because I think that Warren's some discussion on its own. But aside from Underground, what is your favorite Bowie song on the soundtrack? Oh?

The ball sequence then everything I've done for you. It's within you where they're in the esher staircases and running up and down and everything that that is my That's also my favorite because it's got that style, that Bowie dramatic style. It's all done in this sort of discordant minor minor. Key and you know what, the dance magic dance sequence. It doesn't feel in character.

The guy we meet is the guy who's singing that song at the end of the movie, the Frolicsome. I never bought Jarreth Thiss Frolicsome. He's the one who's making people frolic just to make himself feel good, you know what I mean. He doesn't seem to have that much joy in him. I just it, just I just remember.

This is a totally unrelated memory. I remember at the time in high school, I remember you often throwing out this quote. This might have been one of your favorite quotes at the time. It was nothing tra la la. When he's got the he rips off the disguise.

Oh yeah, I still if I hear the word nothing, I will hear David Bowie saying nothing tra la la. It's just a memory that popped in. Sorry, no, that's I forgot that. I do that. That's funny.

Yeah, it's funny, but it is. It also must be said that about half the soundtrack is Bowie. In the other half it's music by Trevor Jones. The guy was fucking talented. Oh, I was trying to when you asked me one my other favorite David Bowie song was something like, aren't they just the three songs?

But no, there is one other sequence that I do not like in this movie that I wish was not in the movie, the Chili Down. Really with the Fieries, there's five Bowie songs on this soundtrack. There's Underground, Magic Dance, there's Chili Down, There's as the World Falls Down, there's Within You, and then there's Underground. I think I already said Underground. Maybe there's five, but but yeah, Chili Down just miss it out right, because I get.

It As the World Falls Down as a great song, Yeah it is. That's not Both those songs are in character. The other songs are just shit, not shit because. They're somber, they're a little aggressive, they're not that sort of frolicsome thing that you said, Vex, you so much about the soundtrack, and I agree with you. There, Magic Dance and Chili Down are way out of character.

Yeah, just for the film even never mind just never mind the I don't know, I'm not gonna keep beating that dead horse, but the Chili Down sequence, even then, I remember sitting in the theater and thinking, Wow, what a bunch of blue blue screen nonsense, because back then they use blue screens and not green screens. Everybody. This was the heyday of the bad matted blue screen. It was easier for an optical printer to take out the color of blue than it is than green. But now digital takes out green better than blue, which is where that switch happened.

HP. Let's talk about Underground because it's one of my favorite David bos and let me steal all your thunder. I love it, Yes, I love it too. It's from a diehard David Bowie fan as such as us. For me, it's probably a top top five, top ten song of his top top seven whatever.

I love it. We talked a little bit about this before we started the episode. It's great because it got a lot of the soul singers that he had worked with on the Young Americans album. WHI has always been one of my favorite Bowie albums. But on Underground and some of the other songs you have, he's reunited with Chaka Khan and Luther vandros Albert Collins, famous blues musician, is playing guitar.

He's mixed a little bit low, so I would forgive you if you didn't really hear it, But now that you know it's there, you'll hear it. Tell the people who are who that guy is man, So he's he was. The master of the telecaster, he was the ice man. He was one of He basically took what John Lee Hooker starred and ran with it. John Lee Hooker was one of his big insplutens.

But for anyone of our approximate age who maybe doesn't know who Albert Collins is, I will direct you. I will say the following line to you, which is, ain't nobody getting out of this place without singing the Blue? Which anybody who's seen him Adventures in Babysitting remembers the scene where Elizabeth schu has her the kids that she's trying to rescue from this crazy night in the city. They take refuge in a blues club and they try to escape, and this blues man on stage says, yeah, you can't go, you can't leave without singing the blues. So she sings the Babysitting Blue and Albert Collins makes a go of it.

The guy was a fantastic guitar player, and I always loved that side of Bowie, that kind of I think to a degree he might have been a little embarrassed by the sort of the sort of white soul that he got into with young Americans and so forth. But this was It's such a great song. It's electronic, it's got the electronic drums, but the lyric is fantastic, the chorus is built for singing at full volume. It's just it works for me in every way as a Bowie song, It's fantastic. As I loved it, I do love it as a fan of the song.

In the opening of the film, we get up to the chorus and then the movie begins, and then we're denied that chorus. And now that we know the song art, do you feel let down that now we're in this park with this whiney girl when we could all be chanting get me out of here. But it's so the way that they that Trevor Jones interpolates the song Underground with the opening titles. I think it's a fantastic entrance into the movie because by then Underground had been a single, a lot of us had seen the video on MTV, so it's just great. It gets the blood pumping and excited for this adventure that we're going to be on, this fantasy adventure.

It's I just feel I don't know the way that this world is created and that the music works propels you into it. You don't get that so often these days, and in the days of computer generated effects and characters. The tactile nature of this world that Jim Henson and company created, combined with this fantastic music that Trevor Jones and Bowie wrote, it felt at the time it still does like I can't miss proposition. It's stunning that this movie did not spawn at least one sequel. A tactile world it certainly is, but not without CGI.

This was the age of CGI in its infancy. Go check out the titles for Amazing Stories, but here the titles, we get a CGI owl owl. All right, that's right, you're at This was like less Starfreighter might have been the first movie that used real CG graphics for ships and stuff. You're right, I totally forgot about that they did use CG. I was struck this time watching it that the owl only shows up for certain credits, and I'm wondering if that were a directive of Jim Henson's that he liked you.

Where the owl comes and swings by your name, because I noticed George Lucause only gets a little twinkle, but then Terry Jones, the owl comes down and flaps his credit into existence. So the more animated the owl is, the more the better thought of you were in Jim Henson's eyes. It's a theory, and I believe it to be true. Hey, it works for me. I'll have to I'll watch it with renewed with new eyes.

Get me out. Yeah. My experience with that song is I if I start to listen to it, I'm going to listen to it ten times in a row and I can't stop. It is one of my favorite Bowie songs of all time from that era. Definitely.

The weird thing is you have all these fantastic, like I said, these great soul singers in the background, but the way that they're singing in the sound of after you've seen the movie, it sounds like the characters in the movie, these muppet like characters bopping along singing the song, when in reality it's these fantastic R and B singers. It's a very It's like a sleight of hand. You get these great musicians, but in your mind's eye, you're still invested in that world and you see these characters singing. It's a really unique song in his catalog. Did you know that?

At one point Terry Jones had a as most artists do, have a litany of unfinished or unrealized projects, one of which was a jukebox musical for the Kinks. He did an initial one. They eventually did one, but without him, but he was the initial author of the book of that. The other one he was going to do was a collaboration where he wrote all of the lyrics or a musical with Jim Steinman that never came to be. Yeah, it's for the best.

My feelings of Jim Steinman are not very high opinion. I feel bad because he has his supporters, and I don't want to ruin anybody's fun if they love the guy. Well, we talked about this. We won't hpl say it again. It was going to be a hip hop musical from Jim Steinman with lyrics by Terry Jones.

I guess I appreciate the idea of Jim Steinman because he was such a He was like a space alien. The guy was just a weird dude from start to finish. But yeah, that does not sound Jim Steinman always felt that there was a kinship there with Todd Rundgren. I know they both worked on I think he produced that out of Hell in fact, but I don't know the difference is I love Todd run Jim Steinman, I can't explain it. One of the things that I loved about this movie then now forever, not only that worm, but that optical illusion how to get into the labyrinth to begin with that you're seeing it, it's just offset.

Yeah, and then they don't really call attention to it. I thought. Just a couple of years later, they do the same basic solution to a puzzle in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, The Leap of Faith. Oh yeah, where then the camera slowly tilts and we get that stop motion fucking set. Oh look we can see the ledge.

Now it's a complete cheat. Let's be honest, especially in Indiana Jones's case, because it's Yeah, I always thought that was bullshit. I appreciate the idea. And I talk about a Terry Jones moment. Oh don't go that way.

Oh she might have gone straight to the castle. Yeah, could have gone right there. Yeah, how dare you, mister Jones? And it might have been he might have been my favorite python as well, now that you mentioned his father one, what a what a lovely man? Yeah.

I just finished his biiography. It's okay. I don't think the writing was all that good, but it was nice to learn as much as I learned about him, because he was genuinely just a decent guy. You remember Mike Nesmyth's story about him. Terry Jones came to stay with Michael Nesmyth and he put him in the guest room and not realizing that somebody had stacked like every loose pillow in the house already in that room.

And when Terry Jones came down after settling in, he said, how's everything? And he says, I'm good, but I could use a few pillows. And it should be pointed out that when Jim Henson first met with Terry Jones, they met at his house and he said he felt like Jim Henson. For half the time, his attention was fixated on his dog, who was a named Mitch, a long haired Jack Russell Terrier. Now, if you notice Didymus in this movie is a long haired it's his dog on screen, that swagger stick carrying dog writing another dog in the most bizarre sort of character moment, and it's so weird.

I feel like we've been robbed and Jim Henson passed away. Unfortunately, how many wonderfully imaginative movies in a similar vein to Labyrinth where we robbed it? Right? I know Brian Henson carried the torch and he has his own thing, but man, the imagination is insane. Yeah, it is a shame we never got a sequel to this movie.

We've never got a series for these characters. Like, I love all of them, even the villainous ones. There are comic books though, you can follow the story. It's what they did this with Escape from New York and other things like. They have an official comic book which does take the story.

I haven't read it, but I'm aware of it and I think it. If you want to satiate yourself to a degree, you can read these comic books. Boo, I want puppets. I want humans interacting with puppets. I can do without the giant puppet, which clearly they just took on as a challenge, Hey, can we make the biggest puppet of all time?

Yeah, but then of course it barely can functions, so it's not even really a thread at all. Yeah, if you were going to do that today with a CG monstrosity that could transform and do all this crazy stuff, yeah, it probably was like a directive from Jim Henson, you make the biggest puppet you can make, and I'll take care of the rest. That very similar to the fact that every all the Puppets seem much more realistic, that they have that distance from the Muppets, These are an attempt to make them as realistic as possible. Pretty much came as a direct not a directive, but as an influence of George Lucas, who's the executive producer on this film, Like apparently that was his main topic of conversation with Jim Henson, was we got to make everything real.

It's got to look real. And I think for the most part they pulled it off. Wasn't Warwick Davis I think was one of the players in this, was he not? I know, Kenny Baker is. I thought Warwick Davis was in costume at some point.

I know this carrying through the George lucases Nat. You're correct, or Davis is part of the Goblin cor along with Kenny Baker. They're both there. You go. So you already mentioned this obviously.

What here's an interesting question. I don't necessarily even have an answer for it, But what is the closest analog you can think of to a labyrinth in current day, Let's say, in the last five ten years. Is there anything that comes close to having that mix of whimsy and darkness and fun and adventure. Geez, I don't know, you might all task, yeah, do you have something in mind? I don't, Like I said, I don't.

I was more curious about what you watch more movies than I do on average. I do the trend of IP lately has negated any of these standalone one guy with a vision kind of fantasy projects. You know what I mean. I think if anything's getting greenlit as a fantasy now, it's going to have to have been a manga or a long running book series, or at least have George Martin's name attached to it in some way. What a terrible shame that is, because you already said that this was not a successful movie in its day.

But man, what if it is a singular vision and to not have that be something that that's celebrated nowadays, it's really it's really a bummer, like you said, unless it's an existing ip or something that they the studio is consider more of a safe bet. You will, we may never see the likes of a Labyrinth again, something with that's targeted toward a very particular audience as well. Yeah, that was the criticism of it. It's too old for young people and it's too young for old people. But that's the thing.

It's a specific it's looking for the audience that would like Labyrinth, and that's who found it. And I think this is still a culty movie. Like people know it and they've everyone's maybe seen it, but the people who go back to it are fucking hardcore. This is a true like fandom as far as I'm as far as I'm concerned. Oh yeah, but it it never left the public consciousness.

Like I said, they're a comic book now devoted to it. There have been board games, and I'm not talking like in its day, like those terrible board games that you would get at toys r us. I'm talking about prestige produced modern board games. Things like that, that that this doesn't happen because no one. That shows how much people care about this movie and really have carried it with them all this time.

I bought those door knockers as a decorative gift for a friend of mine for Christmas. One here you. Could buy them. Really this a more recent. Oh yeah, this three years ago?

Yeah? Wow, amazing. I don't want that going back in my mouth. You can talk, all you do is mown no good. The logic problem makes sense when I'm doing it in my head, but when I stop to think about it in an abstract way, my brain hurts.

Yeah, like any of those like in theory. I like logic problems because I'm a game type person. I like that stuff. But when like when. You'll see Eleanor has a daughter, but the daughter is older than Eleanor, but then so who is hell, It's like I can't just sit here and do this.

I have to write it out schematically, Like I can't figure this out. So yes, the logic problem in Labyrinth is much the same thing, and it hurts my head. Even though I wish I was more of a logic. If I talk it through right now, it'll make sense. There's a one toest the truth.

One lies. One door leads to death, once to the castle. So you have only one question you can ask. Would he tell me this is the right door? Would he tell me this is the door to certain death?

And the answer has picked the door that they opt. I can't you know what. My brain is already hurting exactly. But it's fun. I don't know, it's so singular, it's so much fun even now, like I have, my love for the movie is not waned since seeing it as a thirteen fourteen year old kid.

And it's just a fun movie, and the kind they don't make much of anything. Did you know, by the way, Father Molona, here's. Hit me with a fun fact of trivia. Here's a fun fact I'm gonna give David Bowie was my very first concert that I ever attended. And I know that it was on the twenty first of July nineteen ninety.

It was at the time it was Foxborough Stadium, later to be Jillette Stadium. Do you know how I know that? You know how I'm very specific about that date. Fought them alone. Was there a simulcast involved?

There was a simulcast. In fact, it was the simulcast was Roger Waters did the Wall in Berlin. Remember when the Berlin Wall came down? Yes, as we were driving home. As I was driving it, as my dad was driving his home, he turned on the radio and they were simulcasting the Wall live from Berlin at the time.

So while the Wall was going on, I had just had my mind blown by seeing David Bowie live. Oh, I can imagine. I wish i'd never I never got to see David Bowie perform. Unfortunately, I don't know why you didn't go. You wouldn't have been the obvious choice to attend it with me, because I don't know.

You must have had other plans, because I don't know why you wouldn't have been the obvious. It was summertime, and we didn't really fraternize in summertime. I guess we were working and maybe I don't know, for whatever. Reason, nineteen ninety I was working all summer long. Yeah, right, but that's my Give me lay on a piece of trivia for me father along the same lines.

Anything now that that giant robot is named Humongus, that's all I knows. Like the Road Warrior, Yeah, just like that, I guess that's that's going to bring us to an end here the labyrinth. I wish, I wish I knew some other snappy way to wrap it up, but we've reached the end of the labyrinth. HP. We thanks Trish.

This was fun. Yeah, this is a good one. I always love re experiencing this. I don't know how I'm gonna feel about re experiencing Merry Christmas, mister Lawrence, but we'll find out. It's a lot less jocular.

I think there are an equal amount of puppets though, so at least we got that to look forward to. All right? Do we get there? Where people find you? I can you can find me co hosting the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside Father Malone.

Of course, I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast, and I have a band campsite HP Music plays dot band camp dot com. As for me, you're listening, you guys. This is the patron channel. So you hear everything early and every you can hear everything everyone doesn't. So you know where to find me.

Find me right here, all right, and I look forward to talking to you next time. Underground m