141: Last of the Independents

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Way down among Brazilians Coffee beans grow by the billions So they've got to find those extra cups to fill They got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil. What's up, and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. I'm Fred. I'm Greg.

And we are back for another edition of The Caffeinated Movie Geek. Cappuccino on my butt. I still drink coffee. The last fucking thing you need is another cup of coffee. It's time for The Caffeinated Movie Geek.

We're coming to you live via digital recording from here at Nancy's Bagel Grounds, where we... get together and occasionally talk about movies and usually drink a hell of a lot of coffee. So, Greg, I ask you, what blend of coffee are we drinking this week? Once again, we are drinking Fishers and Fallers. Still good. A favorite.

I'm going to have a sip now. Me too. It's delicious. It's good. You've got to go.

So with that, we will get hammering on a little more coffee and roll into this week's Geek Activities. I'm trying to keep mine under control. I only watched two things in their entirety. I went to sleep on several others, but one I'm not going to get into much because I almost would like. I even throw it out there.

I watched Super recently, and if we could have pieced it together, I would kind of like to, and still would like to end up talking about it because there's a lot going on in that movie, and yet it's... It is what you think it's going to be, and then sometimes it's not. And, yeah, so I'd kind of like to have a whole discussion on James Gunn's super. It's pretty interesting one way or the other. I can see some people going both ways on it.

I can see it being really popular with certain crowds. And other people wanting nothing to do with it. So I won't go too much more into that because somewhere down the line I'd like. To revisit it. Yeah.

The other one I watched, I finally, and this is one that for some reason, I mean, it's been huge in our little geek circle, but I finally got around to watching Hatchet. Oh, yeah. Have you seen Hatchet? I have not seen it. See, that was mine.

In the horror geek world and the convention circuit that we certainly seem to run in, it was huge, and it had such a following. It had this big push. Behind it when it first came out, and... Everybody got behind Adam Green as this new force as a director. I don't know.

Maybe it's another one of those that I went in with too much talk beforehand. Because I went in and I like it. It's good, but I think I went in expecting something different. I expected it to sort of take... And everybody always said, oh, it's the return to old school slashers.

And it's the return to old 80s horror movies. And that's exactly what it is. I mean, it is straight up an 80s horror movie again. And I think I was expecting it to be that, but then sort of take it up to another level and do something else. And it never really seems like it does that.

It never transcends that into this new, wonderful, amazing movie. It's still just kind of an 80s slasher movie, exactly the same. And the only thing I think it does and what I ended up liking best about it is it's pretty funny. Like it's actually got some well-written stuff and some fun characters. And you sort of like the dynamic between some of them and the actors they bring in were good.

And I ended up liking that way more than the horror end of it. Like the, the horror end is like, yeah, they really go out of their way to throw in that. That was their thing. Buckets and buckets of blood. And they really go out of their way to make it super gory when they can.

And you get the money shots of people's heads being ripped apart or whatever. And, I'm just like, eh, once again, I've seen that kind of stuff. It doesn't, you know, it's not shocking anymore. Once again, in the 80s when you'd never seen that before, I guess it might have been able to push those buttons. But now I'm just like, yeah, like 4,000 other movies that came out in the last few years, you know, that do those same gory kind of scenes.

So, I don't know. From that angle, I wasn't that thrilled, and I'm not really big on the big villain. The Crowley guy, I don't know, he's just like, to me, he seems like a Jason ripoff. And again, I know they're tapping into that 80s, but I mean, he, most of the scenes, I'm like, it feels like it could just be another Jason movie, or it could be it's ripping off The Burning, or I mean, it just feels like that exact same. Story, only told again.

And I'm just like, I've already seen that, and I've seen it done a million times in the other movies, too. So it's not even like you're ripping off one movie, you're ripping off an entire. Series of movies that did the same thing over and over, and The horror end of it became way more tiresome to me. I liked the characters and I liked the setup and the jokes in the beginning and the dialogue a little more than I ended up liking the horror. Aspect of it.

Was it too cliche? Is that what it was? It was just predictable. I really felt like it was exactly like every 80s horror slasher movie. It was almost in that way of we want to get back to the old school American horror, which is how they build it, But I don't know.

It's like you've got to do something else. It's like you've got to find some other way to also put a spin on it or be original or add something to it that wasn't there. Because if it's just those 80. Horror movies, we've seen those before. It's like there needs to be a way to sort of one-up it and do something else.

And I don't know. To me, Victor Crowley doesn't do that. I don't know. But again, I mean, there's potential. And you can see Adam Green... is and has now turned into kind of a real director, and people are actually giving him bigger projects and bigger names are getting involved with him.

So, I mean, he didn't put together a bad movie as far as, you know, basic setup and shots and all that. It's just the story itself, to me, was a little... which, again, he was responsible for. But, you know, that was pretty early on for him. So I'm hoping he can sort of progress, and even did. I think... as much as people had issues with Frozen, I think Frozen had a lot better setup to it.

And I still haven't seen Hatchet 2 either, so now that I've seen this one, I'm going to move on and work in Hatchet 2. But I know even by the time we got to Frozen, as much as it had plot holes and things you wanted to scream at the TV about, because people made stupid decisions, I think it was still more interesting what was going on in that scenario that wasn't near. I mean, there was. Nothing near that interesting in Hatchet. It was just Kind of run-of-the-mill, but.

Well, I mean, Frozen certainly was at least original. You can get upset at the characters. You can get upset with how the plot progresses. And interesting. I mean, it is one of those kind of movies that makes you, from the first second it starts... the scenario of, well, what would you do in this situation?

It's one of those kind of movies that's like, oh, well, here's what I'd do. And that's why you start yelling at the characters. Like, you're an idiot. You should get on that and you should go over there. And the fact that it makes you do that means it's kind of well put together.

And it's interesting the way that it's written because it incites that in you. Whereas Hatchet, I'm just like, I guess I'd run. I don't know. I mean, there's no scenario that's ever that clever or ever offers that to you. It's always just like, You just kind of zone out and sit there and watch people get killed.

And it's fun, but I think I was expecting more going in because it had. Had so much talk and build up beforehand. I gave him a lot of credit in Frozen for the little segment, little thought, like epiphany that she has about Her dog. And her dog's at home. That's the best scene in the movie.

Really, that's the best written portion of the movie. Because it's real. It's the thing you'd think when you have that much time. It's the thing you'd think of. And that's the thing I would think of.

And it kind of makes you sick. That's the heartbreaking part of the movie. All the gross-out stuff that happens. is nothing compared to that moment with the dog story. And I'm just like, shit, that's the part that shows that somebody actually put a little more time into that one, whereas you don't really get anything like that in Hatchet. At least I didn't see it there.

But again, it showed promise, so I'm just hoping we get better stuff as he goes on. That was pretty much it for mine. That's about all I made it through. Well, I think one of my favorite.... This goes back a ways, but one of my favorite uh italian movies is uh bicycle thieves or sometimes they call it the bicycle thief but i got into an argument with my sister about you know what makes a really great movie um and she was rooting for this movie called il posto And I was saying how a lot of my favorite movies kind of involved kids, I've noticed, and just the way, like, kids are thrown into the world and it's messed up and they just make themselves at home in it.

She said, no, but she felt like kids are, like, resilient. Well, whichever way you smack them, they're going to be okay. So it takes some of the drama. It's like older people. But then, you know, she was arguing for this movie I hadn't seen, Il Posto, and.

It's a kid. So I don't know what she was talking about. She was drunk. I mean, he's an adolescent. He's like a teenager.

And he's like, instead of. Staying in school, he has a younger brother who he's always kind of pissed off at. But it turns out he's going to work now, so his younger brother can keep going to school. And he goes and gets this job. He's applying for the job.

He's taking these tests. It's hard to tell. I'm not confident that he got the math right. But he seemed to think it was easy. Then there are all these tests, and there's crowds of people there.

He sort of gets on, but then there are no positions open. So they get him a messenger job until something happens. opens up, and he meets this girl, and he's definitely interested in this girl. And then they're having a dance, and he's hoping she can come, and she doesn't show up, and it's like all these people sitting around. He winds up having kind of a good time, but he doesn't see the girl again. I don't want to spoil it, but it's just skull-crushingly depressing is where this is going.

You're known for those movies. Yes. Yeah, and so I respect it for that. And the kid in it is just, like, great to watch. There are certain scenes, like, just, like, straightening himself in front of a bathroom mirror.

It's just, like, that's what Stanislavski must have been thinking about when he said that, you know, if you could watch a person and they didn't know they were being observed, that it would be. Poetic and true. And then he tried it by going out and spying on people. And he's like, no, it doesn't work. But he was looking at the wrong people because I grew up in a suburb, which is kind of odd.

And it reminds me of this movie because, like, my parents' generation, like, the suburbs were. Like, idyllic. They were like heaven. You could go live in this pastoral place. And then, like, in one generation... we all hated it and had to get out of there.

It's like the shift in our perception of the same thing. But in this neighborhood, there was a neighborhood pool, which is gone now, because it was a neighborhood full of families and young kids, and we knew all these kids. Everywhere we went, we knew kids about our age. And there was a neighborhood pool, but After our generation grew up and moved off, it was mostly like our parents. And nobody wanted to deal with the pool or keep up with it.

So now it's an empty field. But when I look at that empty field, I remember a naked woman standing. And I know about where she was standing. This was like the first full-grown naked woman. I ever saw.

And I'm not proud of this. But if you went into the guy's bathroom, you could climb up and stand on a sink and look over the top of the cinder blocks and see into the girl's bathroom. And there was a shower in there, and it was nerve-wracking because, you know, the guy's bathroom door could open. Anybody could walk in. You know, the lifeguards see that you could be in a shitload of trouble.

But I had the nerve to do that. I was one of those kids who, like, stay up till midnight and say in the mirror, I don't believe in the Bell Witch. I did that. I did that, you know. So I got up on the sink, held on with my fingers, and this woman came in and took off her bathing suit and showered, and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

And it was a bad thing to do, but I can't regret it. I don't know how. And if Stanislavski had been there and. Seen that, He would have stuck to his guns on his theory of acting because it was poetic. Anyway, I digress.

But I watched this movie, Il Posto, which is about a kid getting a job, and it's skull-crushingly depressing. It's very nice how they set it up. It's a big build-up to just a complete letdown. Nice. And it is.

It was a great movie. My sister was right. I mean, she was wrong in theory, but in practice, yeah, it's a really great movie, and I'm glad I saw it. And I didn't see a lot else because, I don't know, I've been trying to actually get things done in. My geeky way.

And I'm trying to put together like a short little film, which is a fake foreign film, I'm not sure I'm up to the challenge because I'm going to have to mumble in some fake foreign language so I can use subtitles. It's the only way I can tell the story. So I'm going to have to do something like this. And then put subtitles in. Sounds like all foreign movies I've watched.

Just change the accent several times. Well, I used to speak very good Three Stooges German. But, you know, if you don't use it, if you don't have anyone to speak with. You need a refresher course in Three Stooges German. Yeah, and it's basically.

Yeah, I do remember most of it is conjugating to have. It's like haben, sie habt haben, mach schnell, I think is most of Three Stooges German. That works in most World War II movies right there. You can just keep saying that over and over, and they'll be like, damn, Nazis. And then you'll get killed.

Mach schnell. So, yeah, I think that's most of it. There was another story I was going to tell, but I probably shouldn't. I was like, this is what I'm going to do, this is what I'm going to tell. I'm going to tell this story of a movie my wife had to watch for an education class.

She had to watch an inspiring education movie. I don't think they make any of those. Yeah, well, you know, it's fun. The whole genre of inspirational movies... is I think the movies I love are depressing. But I'm not up to watching inspirational movies, because that's just too much.

It's a new layer of depressing that you haven't even touched. You'd rather have this skull-crushing depressing movie. But that doesn't encourage you to be better. Yeah. Okay, I'm too far into it now.

I can't be one of those people who starts to tell a story and says, oh no, I can't tell it, because. But. Because one Halloween, my daughter and I were out trick-or-treating, and there was a midget who lives down the street, and he was giving out candy. And as he's giving candy to my daughter, she says, I like your costume. And I look at her.

And as soon as my eyes lock with hers, she gets it. Because this is just a midget in jeans and a flannel shirt. And we just go on. But like every couple of houses, my daughter goes, Dad, I just feel so bad about what I said to that man. And I'm like, honey, it's okay.

It's all right. It's okay. Everybody says the wrong thing. I don't even think he heard. And she'll sort of settle down, get some candy, go a few houses.

And I just still feel really bad. Honey, it's okay. I Everybody, you know, sooner or later you're going to say something, you've got to just walk it off. I've said the wrong thing and done the wrong, many, and she's like, what did you say? And I'm like, the only thing I can think of is like the worst thing you can say to a woman in bed.

I am the author of that masterpiece. And I'm not telling her that ever in her life. Right. So I start telling her stuff her mom has said. I'm like, well, once your mother, when she was in school, there was a girl who sat in front of her, and she said, your hair is always so perfect.

And later found out the girl was bald. And wore a wig. That's a good wig. Yeah, it was a really good wig. So she felt bad about that later.

And then there was a friend of ours... Rafael, who was from Venezuela, and he had a terrarium he was very proud of. And he said, it's good now, but for a while I had a kilo frog. And my wife said, what's a kilo frog? I'm like, Len, that would be a frog that kills the other animals that live in the terrarium.

It's a kilo. It kills things. So there was that. And there may have been a few others. But anyway, so one night I'm at this party.

This girl says. Oh, she's going to tell this terrible, embarrassing story. She can't do it. No, there's no way. She can't do it.

So I say, well, if you tell an embarrassing story, I can top it. And so she tells the story how she worked at a foundry here in town, bronze casting, and it's her first day on the job. She gets up. She's running late. She throws on some jeans from the dryer.

She gets there. They pour bronze. And then somebody says, somebody lost their underwear. She's the only woman that works here. And there's a thong on the floor.

And she said, because I wear thong underwear, I say, hold that thought. I want to talk to you in a minute, but go on. Um, and so she has to go over in front of everybody and pick up the thong and say, yeah, that's mine. It was probably in the leg of her jeans or something. So this happened.

Um, and, uh, And that was her embarrassing story. But by now, a crowd has gathered around us, and I'm not telling my story. And to my everlasting shame, I just couldn't. If it was just her and me and like a couple other people. So I interviewed her about the thong because a friend of mine wanted to know, what's the deal with thongs?

Are they uncomfortable? Why do women wear them? Because his girlfriend said, yeah, they're horrible. Women just wear them for guys. And then he found one in their laundry. and she never wears it for him.

So he's like, what's the deal with the thong? She's like, oh, yeah, that's mine. He's like, yeah, but you told me you only, what's going on here? And their relationship was doomed. But anyway, yeah, so I asked them about it, and they had a whole different, her and her friend, a whole different thong theory.

It's like, well, all underwear is going to work itself up in there. said, you're fighting it all day, so you just take it, you put it there, and you're done. And I'm like, yeah, but you're conceding. You're conceding defeat, aren't you? I don't know. I don't understand this.

But anyway, my wife had to watch this movie, Music of the Heart. Oh, wow. And look for educational strategies in it. And there was one. I don't want to spoil the movie.

If you're going to go watch it for educational reasons, strategies. At one point, she says, you're playing the wrong notes. Stop it. And that was it. But to watch this, I had to go on a quest.

This was back when all the video stores were converting from VHS to DVD and getting rid of all their VHS. And so my wife comes home and says, yeah, I have to watch this movie. It's like, what a music of the heart. And it's like, And do they have it? Are you watching it in class?

No, she says it's in video stores. I'm like, give me the phone. Give me the phone right now. She says it's in video stores. Yeah, they're going to be sure.

To have that. It sounds like fucking Star Wars. They're going to have that. And so the first couple of blockbusters I call. And I'm like a.

Dude in the stock market, man. I'm on the phone. I'm like, okay, all right. Music of the Heart. Do you have it?

Okay, forget you. Music of the Heart is, why does everybody keep calling about that movie? It's like nobody has that movie. We find it somewhere over in the West End. I'm like, give me the keys.

I'm going. Because she has to, you know, she has to do this. And we watch it, and you're playing the wrong note. Stop it. So that's my story.

Because. This was like an actual education program that you have to do this kind of stupid stuff to get through. It's like swallowing a horse pill. You have to do that so that you can teach the youth of this country. And it's movie-related, I suppose, in some way, but that's my rant.

Do you think movie meltdown is more about therapy than it is about movies? Oh, sometimes I believe that it is. You watched this movie, right? Yeah. This is the one with Meryl Streep?

Yes. Yes. Do you know who directed that? No. For the really frightening finality of this, directed by Wes Craven. holy not making that up i i was pretty sure as you said that was like isn't that the one west craven like the one off weird thing that west craven did that like makes no sense in his career now.

You need to rewatch you're going back to. The west directed by west craven. You're going back to the west. Figure that out. Yeah somehow that just like It's like when you hear church bells ring in the distance.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. And they're done. And then there's that one last little bell. Ding. And you're like, who is that?

You know what the last bell is? What is it? It's the guy letting go of the rope. Ah, really? Yeah.

Because it sounds sort of like unnecessary. It's not like the other bells that have purpose. It's a bell that's like, I'm just here to... It's letting go of the rope. Wow.

Yep. Oh, wow. I'm making that shit up. I don't know his name, but his face rings a bell. Yeah, well, I didn't have a lot.

I didn't watch a lot of stuff, so that's how I filled my. You filled it in. You certainly did. Embarrassing stories and looking over into showering, these showering women, all to get to Music of the Heart. Music of the Heart.

You're playing the wrong notes. Now, write an essay on that. Right. I don't want to. You know what?

In my entire life, that's my problem. I'm always playing the wrong notes. Yeah. You know. Maybe most of the song is on, but there's a few notes that are wrong.

Now this has suddenly become about your therapy. Right. Oh, I need it. I'm not talking about music. I need it.

Everything in my life, I'm playing the wrong note. Anyway. Okay. Do you want to move into yours, Greg? Yes, I watched two movies.

All right. And they're movies that I've seen before, but I'm watching movies that I watched much younger, and I'm learning a lot from that. I'm learning a lot about movies and about what I liked and what. I didn't like. Yeah, I've played that game.

The first one I've seen many times, many, many, many times, had it on VHS, got it off of Cinemax or something. Conan the Destroyer. Nice. Which I've always believed that it was the best of the two, in my mind, and everybody. Disagrees with it.

Yeah, I remember being thoroughly entertained by that movie. I barely remember the first one, but I remember everything about the second one. It's the perfect quest movie. It's the perfect band of people that don't fit together. Motley crew of weirdos.

If ever there was a movie that maybe launched that... thing of, we've got to have one of these, and we've got to have one of these, and a weirdo like this, and this guy. Yeah, it was that group of people that were just like, wait, why would any of these people ever be in the same place together, let alone go on a quest together? It's the final fantasy of movies. It is, actually. You've got the strongman, you've got the magician, you've got the...

All of that rolled into one. It's very simple, it's very. You've got the guy that scores with 100 chicks. Oh, wait, that's it. 100, it's like 3,000 or 10,000.

Well, this was a long time ago. You know, Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt Chamberlain. Boombata, if you will. It's very simple.

It's campy where it needs to be campy. Yeah, I had a blast with it, and I challenge anyone to say that Conan the Barbarian is better than Conan the Destroyer. And most people will. I still hear that. I know.

That that one is a great action epic and then the other one is just stupid. And normally I'm not into blondes, but damn, Olivia Dabble. Olivia Dabble was very hot. God, God. I'm sure she still is now.

I haven't seen her in a long time. But back in the day, in pretty much the run of her movies, she was always pretty damn attractive. And she could lose her accent. She did in The Wonder Years. Yep.

But the accent just... Normally I'm not one for accents. That one, for some reason, I really like. So. I have no problems with that movie.

And I think it was the first time I really started thinking about, because I was young, very young when I saw it, I started thinking about sex because the thief in the movie starts talking about joining with a woman. And he's like, you know, practically doing the finger in the whole thing, you know, when they're riding on the horses. And I was like, When I saw that this time, I was like, yeah, that's that moment. That was it for you. And, you know, it brought back some butterfly moments in my belly.

Yeah, I've stumbled across those memories on movies before. Oddly enough, in many of the Sandal and Sword kind of movies, that's where I think we start to find all these weird ideas about girls. And the weird thing is, you know who wrote the original draft of that screenplay was John Updike. Directed by Nora Ephron. Didn't know that, did you?

Conan the Destroyer directed it. By Nora Ephron. So, yeah. And let's go back to another 80s movie, and I know you all know this well, but I've probably not seen it since I was nine, I'm thinking. And I even reference.

This movie all the time, but didn't re-educate myself until just this week, is Escape from New York. Hmm. It's one of those, it always seems to get foggy for me. I've watched it two or three times overall, but every time I'm like, I kind of forgot about this part. For some reason, it's.

Like, oh yeah, this part. I don't know, it always seems like it does that. Whereas Escape from L.A., I can't get those images out of my mind. For some reason, I've got it confused a lot with Big Trouble in Little China. I got a lot of different.

No, that one I know so well that, yeah, there's nothing I don't know in A Big Trouble with Jack. Yeah, he definitely had that... I just brought it up last time, the assault on precinct... What is it? I always get the number wrong.

13. That criminal that's lost its mind and works almost as a zombie. Yeah. They had that in this one. They're such criminals that they don't even...

I think they may have referred to them as the crazies in it. They come out and they just tear apart everything and everyone. Yeah, I kind of had forgotten about that. It definitely is, I mean, most of the movie is social commentary. It plays pretty heavy in his whole run of things.

I mean, you look at, well, I was thinking obviously like they live, but then I just, in the past year, finally got around to watching Ghost of Mars. That's completely what Ghost of Mars is about. So, yeah, it's odd how much he ends up returning to that Prince of Darkness. Yeah. Something weird going on in his brain.

Not that we didn't know that already, but that's funny. I didn't appreciate, as a kid, Ernest Borgnine. Nobody does. Or Harry Dean Stanton. Oh, man, I love Harry Dean Stanton.

Ernest Borgnine and Marty. Yeah, no kidding. Oh, my God. And they're so good, and he's not even in it that much. No.

But he's so good when he's in it. And I think there's the one scene where they're all in the cab. I'm like, look at these people, the collection of people, and the. Just the greatness that's in this cab in this one scene. Yeah.

If you've not seen it in. A long time, it's definitely worth going back and watching. It's, you know, silly things you kind of laugh at and question. But, yeah, I'd forgotten about the whole glider and the World Trade Center thing, too. Yeah.

Yeah. See, it's been so long. It might have been that long. It may have been 10 years ago since I've seen it last. It's been a long time.

That's funny. Landed a plane on the World Trade Center. That's funny. And the president's plane crashes into New York City right next to the World Trade Center. You know, it's just so.

I don't know. Self-fulfilling? It's perspective. We'll put it that way. Wow.

Yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen it. It's almost kind of like rediscovering it. Now that you mention that, yeah. Once again, what is it about that movie? But yeah, I lose so much of it between times, but I think it has been that long.

I think I forgot the Royal Trade Center was in it, really. It's a major part. And another thing that his way of establishing... that you're never safe. He lands on the World Trade Center, and then he gets down to where the elevator gets him to, and he communicates back to the base, and you see someone. There's not supposed to be anybody in there.

You see someone run across behind him in the distance. it's never addressed. You know, you think, oh no, it's going to jump out and they're going to try. To get him. It never does. But it establishes that they're everywhere and they're going to get you at some point.

And I. Don't, yeah, I don't think, obviously I didn't catch that stuff the first time through or it would have been burned in, but it does a really good job of, you know, like they come out of the floor to get people. It definitely is that you know, zombie, people-have-lost-their-minds thing. And it's in so many, it's not a cliche, it's in so many movies now that it's going to, you know, you think, oh, people devolve. When you take away certain things, people devolve and they just, they're.

Coming to get you. They kind of do. I mean, you go, if you take it to that extreme, I mean, we were looking at, did, have you watched State Clan since then? We were talking about, well, it's just one, or, or I mentioned the road during that. And it's like one of those, you look into these futuristic and it's like, if you take a pretty realistic look at what happens to people, when you take everything away, they're one step from animals and they really are almost mindless in the way that if not the way that they follow just their basic instincts, but also the way that they'll follow some other evil bastard that decides to be in control in that situation.

So, I mean, it, it, It very easily could go down that road if everything falls to hell. I watched one. Of those end-of-the-world, you know, what could happen if, you know, the virus came or something like that documentaries where they interview real sociologists. And scientists on how people would react. And the scenario was, okay, people get sick and water or just trash delivery happens. shuts down and how quickly everything, the dominoes start to fall and people, and I think one of the guys said, don't stockpile food or don't stockpile water or anything like that.

You need to. Have shotgun shells and gasoline. That's, that's the difference maker. And because everyone will converge on you for everything else and, You're going to need gasoline to get out of there and shotgun shells to keep them on. And if you have shotgun shells, you can get anything.

Else you want. Exactly. You can go get food because you're the one with the gun at that point. So, yeah, that's what it comes down to. That's why the show, I mentioned it here before, Survivors, the British.

Yeah. Two seasons. It's a nice little, you know, philosophic exploration into what kind of person are you going to become and how. How is society going to... And it's more than just a movie that you handle in two hours.

It's 16 episodes or whatever each season. And you really get to think about, oh, those types of people will go down that path. It's a nice watch. That's the potential of what The Walking Dead can be. And we've only gotten six episodes in, but I'm kind of...

Again, some people have issues with where it's already gone, but I'm just kind of like, looking forward to the potential that if they follow through you really could have this you know society's falling apart we've got this band of survivors and what happens to them and what when there's nothing left what do you do and what if you have no reason to live and you're still alive what the hell do you do with yourself you know it's like it's kind of cool to have that much time to address that kind of no whether or not they do it right is arguable but we'll have to see but yeah i think that's kind. Of the potential of something like that as well so Yeah, those are the two movies I watched this week.

All right. Well, if that rounds it out, we will take a break here and be back with this week's movie. And it might be time. To escape. New York But it's making you insane And it's like everyone's to blame So let's go Down.

To Mexico, no one has to know. Just grab the cab and drive, maybe we'll make it out alive. Cause every train ride is a fight, and every bar is packed all night. And I'm tired of being angry, being angry all the time. In the mood for hot coffee?

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Somebody sold out the black man and the red man. Somebody is going to pay. Paramount Pictures presents Charlie One-Eye, rated R. If you're enjoying this podcast, perhaps you'd be interested in GleeCast. You watch your tone, young lady.

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Tweaked Audio. Sounds better. Hi, this is Louis Gossett Jr. This is Movie Meltdown. One man, one goal, one mission, one heart, one soul, just one solution, one flash of light.

It's time for Sofa Theater. Varick? Have you seen Charlie Varick? You're an interesting man, Mr. Varick.

The last of the independents. You want to die for somebody else's money? Half a million? Half a million? The bank manager has estimated that the bandits escaped with less than $ 2, 000.

Who are they kidding, us? It's ten to one. This stuff belongs to the mafia. This is gambling money skimmed off the top. The mafia kills you.

No trial, no judge. They never stop looking for you, not till you're dead. I'd rather have ten FBIs after me. One man against the mafia. Bang!

This little bank a million miles from nowhere gets hit by four professionals. Now they're gonna think that's strange. Why couldn't it be just a coincidence? Because they don't believe in coincidence. Crop dusters don't wave guns.

Put that thing away fast. But we're going to get him. I'll never get out of New Mexico. I feel that in my gut. Might want to fence off some money.

Hot? Burning up. What do you want? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.

Which doesn't mean I won't throw you right out that window if I have to. Come on. Sooner or later, you're going to tell me everything you know. So why not save yourself a great deal of pain? Where's Charles Varick?

When Charlie Varick runs out of dumb luck, he always has genius. To fall back on. So strange. You hide a funny face behind a head of hair You never care what they say Everyone will love you the way that I love you But they don't, oh no They don't know you like I do Charlie, oh how stars shine in your eyes. There's some good shit in that movie, wasn't there?

Yes, there was. All right, we are back. From Movie Meltdown Sofa Theater, this week's Sofa Theater feature is Charlie Varick. The year is 1973, director Don Siegel. The plot, according to IMDb, Charlie Varick and his friends rob a small town bank, expecting a small sum to divide amongst themselves.

They are surprised to discover a very large amount of money. Quickly figuring out that the money belongs to the mob, they must now come up with a plan to throw the mob off their trail. And I was going to throw the spoiler out before that, but truthfully, all that's in the trailer, and I've posted the trailer a bunch of times. So, anyway, spoiler alert from here on out, because we'll go further into it than that, and I'm sure ruin whatever the hell it is. You haven't seen.

Yeah, definitely go watch it before you listen to it. And again, if you've got Netflix, it's on Instant Watch right now. You need a cut. Catch it while you can, and yes, Netflix. Please send us money.

Don't think that's going to happen, by the way. All right, so, Charlie Varick, where would you like to begin? I think an overall impression that I have to get off my chest about this is the realization, it's one of those movies, the realization of what have I been missing and how much do I not know about what I've not seen. I know there are endlessly more movies out there than I will ever see. And it almost, you have to just throw your arms up and say, well, I'll watch Conan the Destroyer again.

Yeah. I've heard of it before. I've even heard reference of it before, but it never registered. And until you said this is what we're watching... I never would have watched it.

That's kind of why I wanted to start doing this, and that's kind of why I. Wanted to do the, and speaking of which, we need to do the one from the vaults moment, because that's what turned me on to this. It's like I didn't know anything about this movie, didn't even know. In times since I've talked to Andrew, I've heard people reference it. Before that, if I had, it never stuck.

I never made a connection to this movie. It shouldn't. Until I went to go talk to Andrew and started looking at some other stuff, and I was like, well, look at this. Don Siegel directed, and it's got a pretty big cast. Walter Mappauer at that time is a huge star, so it's like, what is this movie?

So going into it, I'm like, okay, let's see what he thinks about it. And then I was like, okay, now I need to watch this, because it seems like a very different movie than I would have expected from anybody that's involved at that point. So with that, yeah, let's see what Andrew has to say about this movie. One from the folks. We're here with Andrew Robinson.

I was going to ask about Charlie Barrett. Oh, yeah. Again, the same director as... Dirty Harry. Don Siegel.

Best director I've ever worked with. How was he to work with as a director? Well, I mean, he's a man who's... When I worked with him, this is a guy who had been doing film forever. I mean, you know, he won Academy Awards for his montage work and things like The Roaring Twenties, Casablanca.

He's a guy who had the film inside his head, the entire film inside his head from beginning to end. So he always knew from moment to moment what he wanted. So when you're working with someone like that, I mean, it just makes it easy. And you did a lot of action. I mean, how was it working with the action scenes, especially that movie?

That was exciting. I mean, I was a young guy then, and I was very fit. So I did all my own stunts except for one stunt, but I did every stunt. And then unlikely action hero, Walter Matthau. How was he to work with as a co-star?

Well, Walter was a brilliant, he was one of the great American actors. So it was a privilege to work with Walter. Definitely. And Charlie Barak is probably, you know, my favorite film that I've been in. Really?

Yeah. It's underrated, yeah. Very underrated. Hardly anybody's seen it. Very underrated.

Definitely. So, once again, thank you to Andrew Robinson for telling us his story. thoughts on the movie, but yeah, we'll have to get back into ours because I, yeah, I'm kind of right there with you. I didn't know what to expect going in and it ended up being a very different movie than I expected. I think right off the bat, it's like we, we get into this movie and, and again, you're, you're You get that like most of these cop and robber kind of movies and you're on the side of the quote unquote bad guy in the scenario. But pretty quickly, usually they're really good people and you get on board with them.

And in this movie, right off the bat, they shoot a cop in the face. Yeah. Yep. And I'm just like, oh. okay, I guess we know what kind of movie we're getting into here. It's like this is not a sugar-coated movie.

It's like there are criminals, and they're telling this story from a pretty realistic point of view that, you know, they're playing hardball. You know? Yeah, it starts out with the little suburban. Shots, and it gives you a really different feel. Yeah, definitely.

So. And here comes, you know, Walter Matthau, and you're thinking, this is going to be the clever, likable crook who's going to, like, talk his way. Oh, fuck. What just happened now? Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty um surprising how the tone shifts.

Yeah very quickly yeah and stays down that road and goes a little deeper as it goes on so yeah i again just did not expect where we ended up right off the bat. Yeah and then there were other things later in the movie that are like that like i think oh, they're making this guy sort of, like, sympathetic. They're doing things to make you think, oh. Nope, wait a minute. No, no, not so much.

So, I mean, again, we can go right from there. I mean, we shoot a cop in the face, and then he just kind of leaves his wife to die. And, in fact, takes her out. Finishes the job. Well, but, you know, that's true, but he's so lovingly let her go again.

I'm not, I'm not even faulting him for that because that's a really good scene. And it really does show you that, you know, they, they did love each other. Like in the beginning, I was like, maybe she's just some girl and you know, maybe they weren't really, maybe that was part of the game was they were pretending, but no, that scene there, it's like, this is his wife and he loves her. And it also is again, being in that realistic criminals world of, here's what I have to do. He probably didn't want to.

Have to burn her alive and leave her body there, but this is what he had to do. He's a realistic person. I think she was pretty much dead. When he got out of the car. She was still breathing.

Maybe that was just the acting, but I kept going, well, maybe she's dead. No, she just moved a little. Oh, shit. It was like. It was a blooded movie.

Yeah, it is. It really. The tone, it was. Almost Reservoir Dogs meets No Country for Old Men. Kind of, yeah.

Really just, it gets into that dark and it just stays there. And you just. But there are times when it doesn't. Like Fred was saying, there are moments when you're like, okay, this is just sort of a fun 70s kind of, you know, heist movie romp. Ha ha, oh, no, no.

What just happened? Yeah, it seems like they do that just enough to, like, keep you grounded in... the pedestrian world of daily life so that you don't just get numb to it. It still kind of like. Freaks you out. It makes it more disturbing, yeah.

Yeah, how cold it is in places. The humor of the old lady in the trailer, air park area that looks in on everything and every man is after her and every, you know, that's some good humor that kind of, okay, all right. It's okay, but. That is what I was going to say. It is probably, as I watched it, one of the most impressive things that they do.

Almost every side character becomes really memorable really fast. As a sidestick. And they really seem like pretty fleshed out characters and none of them have more than a couple of scenes. Like even the sheriff at the beginning that you assume is going to be like the main guy and he's going to be chasing the whole time. You really don't see much of him.

But in those few scenes. they're. Really well done. And there's like that exchange of him and the little kid and like, you've got blood on your face. Are you going to die? Like that exchange, like it wouldn't occur to me to write that.

And they do. And it makes it like a richer story. I mean, there's all of these little, like the, the pushing the girl on the swing later that we can get, we can get to that guy, but yeah. And it's like, I didn't expect that. Yeah.

They're making this guy sympathetic. You know, he's like taking an interest in it. And then later he's talking about cows. And so it led me to expect something different. Because then it's like no country for old men.

We're like, oh, there went that guy. It's just like so.... Well, you talk about introducing people. The guy that they re-pulled a car from. Yeah.

The kid's crying. He said, don't you think? I told you I'd get you a new puppy. So, oh, obviously this kid's dog died. You didn't need to. make that character three dimensional, but he did in like 30 seconds.

I mean, you walk into this scenario and like already you've got, and again, it's not like it's a heartwarming moment. It ends badly. It's like a horrible wrap up to this little scene. And then we're gone. It's not like we come back to him.

It's not like it was important to the story, but I think all those little moments in the end make this a much more impressive movie than with all of those little side characters, none of which are really all that important, or could have been very two-dimensional and the story would have still progressed just fine. Well, without those things, I think the story has some issues, and it would wear thin, but it's just, they keep you feeling like. You're in a complete world. Yep. Not just in something somebody has put up there just for you to see what's there to be seen.

The world is happening around this story. The secretary, when you first see John Vernon, the banker, the head of the bank, when he's in his office the first time, he walks past her and says, I need you to send this right away. And she goes, you're a bastard. And they kind of smile at each other and share a moment. That's it.

They set that up and you're like, oh, okay. But that was unnecessary. Man, it was good just to have that moment there. Yeah, there are several moments of what just happened in this movie that, yeah, I don't know what to do with sometimes. One of which I guess we'll get to later down the road.

But I don't know. I was just trying to think of other stuff going into it. Yeah. Because, yeah, I mean, it's a pretty simplified plot. I think I expected more of a heist plot to it.

I mean, usually with those, there's several, and it goes from different cities, and it becomes more of a, this is how they go from city to city robbing people, and it becomes that scenario. Where this one is a pretty simple, we hit it first thing right off the bat, and then it's dealing with this situation, everything after that. And it doesn't, it's a pretty simple setup. Other than that, it doesn't ever really stray from it. Will you sign for the dynamite, please?

Sign for the dynamite, right? Right. Got to sign for everything these days. I guess so. Dynamite, time delay cap, mercury switch and emergency compartment light.

One, two, three, and four. Anything else? That's right. That's $ 9 even. There you go.

Out of 10. Don't happen to have the crime there. Well, it's a little slow. It's 847. 847, right.

I'll put that in the bag. Okay, I don't need a bag. Thank you. May I ask what that's for? Certainly may.

What were you going to say? Oh, I was just thinking more about character development of side character. Because that was the one thing that I kept getting over and over in this film. The. Going into the Chinese restaurant, and the.

Hostess speaks Chinese, or speaks that broken English. And then once she identifies him as someone important. It's... Oh, he's right over here. He's right over here, and speaks perfect English.

And I can't tell you how many times I've thought that, that they're speaking a heavily accented language, language to me, just so that it's that barrier and, oh, we'll give him the benefit of the doubt because he's having trouble taking my. Order or something. That reminds me of a great moment in the movie Boys in the Hood. It starts out when they're kids and there's. A mom in it.

I think it was Ice Cube's mom. And she's sort of yelling at the kids and then she's on the phone with the principal of the school. And she has this whole other voice. And it was just, and it's. Not even like a main thing in the scene, but you just notice it and it's like, Oh God, that is so right.

And they don't draw attention to it. They just, yeah, that's good. But yeah, I mean, there's so many, like just about everybody. Like I kept going through going, looking almost by the end of it for like badly done side characters that didn't really add. Anything to the plot.

And I was like, There weren't any, like the gun shop owner and the madam. And like every one of them is like, they've only got a couple of minutes on screen, but they're really lived in characters. It's like, you really kind of, you know, you feel like you've got a really good sense of who they are and what they're dealing with every day in this minimal amount of time. Yeah. And that scene too is also interesting because, um, the way to make the movie makes you watch it to like know what's going on.

And you're thinking, Why is he telling him, oh, he wants this to get out? He knows that if he, oh, maybe I won't talk about this, but he knows it'll get out. It keeps you kind of riveted on how it's going to develop. And there's a lot of stuff that, like, if you watch it, like, overall, you start seeing how much is planned out. And some of it's big, obvious stuff.

And then there's other stuff that's really subtle that if you're not paying attention, you won't even realize how much they're sort of setting up to come into play later. So that's... Yeah, it is one of those you kind of have to watch it more than you would expect in a movie like this. Right. After you've seen the full story and then you go back to... the trailer where the two of them have just come in after getting away, and you can see in his face his wheels are already turning.

I'm going to plant this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to go to the dentist's office. Every single thing, I'm going to set this up. Walter Matthau's character, Charlie, was a badass.

And you don't see that. Like, again, that was what I thought was such weird casting. It's like Don Siegel makes these like action kind of movies and he's done a lot of movies with Clint Eastwood. So, I mean, that's your kind of. Badass and makes the Clint Eastwood reference, which he just like the one before this has been like him.

Doing Dirty Harry with Clint Eastwood. So it's like it is funny that he works in his own little in joke there. But, yeah, you don't see that. He was a badass, actually. Because you're like, oh, is he going to be too aw shucks?

Is he going to break down? But when a man keeps whiskey in his bedside table, but after his wife dies, he drinks a glass of milk, you know he's a bad guy. He has the whiskey there. He knows where it is. He can get it.

But he prefers and chooses to drink a glass of milk You know he's a badass. It's just, yeah, it's something. And I know he's done other stuff that's more along this line. I mean, he's in the original taking the poem one, two, three. I mean, he's done stuff that's...

He just got so well known for the comedies and the odd couple kind of stuff, and then the grumpy old men stuff. Mr. Wilson. Yeah, he got sort of shoved into that, especially the older he got. So it's really interesting to go back and look at him.

And this was probably about the end of when he could... Because by the time he hits the 80s... he starts getting into the old man funny roles. And even when you're putting him in other stuff, like the survivors, he's just there to be the old guy. And the younger guy makes fun of him because he's the old guy. So this was about the last era that he could be the tough guy.

And he could be the main character and still kind of pull off this. Oh, I think he could have done No Country for Grumpy Old Men. Nice. Sort of like, okay. We have to give you a little checkmark for that one.

Thank you. It is one of those I wonder if, if someone would have offered him something a little more hardcore in those last few years, how much he could have pulled it off. Because based on this, he could have. Oh, yeah. If a Tarantino would have come and went, I want you to be the mobster boss in my movie, he would have been amazing.

But you wouldn't have expected that. Everybody else of this next generation would have been like, Walter Matthau. What the hell are you doing? Yeah, but. It seems so Tarantino.

Yeah, at this point it does. It's stunt casting. Especially now, yeah. But, I mean, again, pulls it off here. Harmon, where's the money?

You're busting my ribs. Let's try it this way. Where's Charles Varick? I don't know. He left you to take the heat?

Is that it? That's what he did. Exactly what he did. Dirty bastard. One thing that puzzles me.

He's going to leave you behind while I have a passport made for you. Huh? Well, you didn't give Varick your driver's license. My wallet's right there in my shirt. Can I show you?

Sure. He's gone. surprise surprise. Don't insult my intelligence boy that could be a grave error i swear to god i don't know what you're talking about i'm asking you nicely where's the money and. If we want to go from one main character to the next let's get into it joe don baker. Good lord I mean, I always knew I liked him.

I guess. As much as you can like Jodan Baker. Right, yeah. Like him and hate him all. At the same time.

Good Lord, he was a bad motherfucker in this movie. Just a bastard. Just like, as much as Walter Matthau is kind of a bastard, you really have to hate Jodan Baker. I wrote down two of his quotes. I didn't drive 600 miles for the amusement of fools.

I thought that when he missed the whores. That is pretty nice. I don't sleep with whores. At least not knowing. Knowing.

I had to stop watching and go write that down. That's how good of a line that was. And so much of his stuff is just such jackass delivery. But realistic. I've known guys that say things like he says and mean it just as horribly.

And yes, I mean, it's funny how real that character is. I mean, he's made to be a little more evil because he's, you know, the villain more or less in this. But yeah, I mean, it comes off as so natural that again, I'm pretty much, especially having seen him in all these other roles. That he's one shade away from this. You get the feeling he's just kind of like that.

Yeah. He could very easily be this guy. He's a lot like that Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. It's almost the same role. It's funny.

I thought about that when I was watching. I was like, he does sort of have this unstoppable force. Always is just one step behind him. And whatever, he comes in and does whatever he wants. And people give him whatever he wants.

He's not quite as badass, but again, for a watered-down 70s version, he's pretty close to the same type of character. There were a few things in the movie I didn't think really worked, though. Okay. The James Bond-like sex scene. I'm sorry.

Okay, good, because I had issues with the Walter Matthau one. I really had. Issues with it. I mean, there was plenty of weird misogyny in it. But that scene in particular, it's just like, oh, come on.

That is almost the only scene that really felt forced into this movie. It did not fit anything else. It didn't fit the character. It didn't fit the story. It didn't fit the mood of the entire movie.

She's just like, she may as well lay there with her legs spread open in every scene. Direction of the compass. Cardinal direction. But that was my first reaction. And that's why I have such problems with it.

Because, yeah, the misogyny of Joe Don Baker's character doesn't bother me. But, I mean, Walter Matthau, the only other interaction we've seen with him with women is his wife and how much he loved her. And then he's relatively... Polite to every other woman he meets, even ones that he kind of is using or they're using him or vice versa or both. Yeah, it's one of those.

That he still bombs. Yeah. And it's so forced in there. And especially it seems really. Cold considering it's been a couple days yeah since his wife died he still got the ring on his finger well and i noticed that when he looked for his watch i noticed he's not wearing his ring anymore but he's still wearing hers so you do feel like okay once again he did love her he still has feelings for this woman it's been a couple days since he disposed of her body and now he's Not just having sex with someone.

Having sex with someone he just met, has nothing in common with, could give a rat's ass about, and will be gone and totally leave behind tomorrow. None of that fits his character. And was prepared to throw out the window. Yeah. Although he did send her flowers.

That's true. Did you notice that she had her boss's picture on her nightstand? Yeah, I did. Yeah. And it ain't...

An eight and a half by ten or whatever, or eight and a half by eleven. That's special. So, yeah, immediately I was just like, well, I guess he's over his wife. Right, yeah. That kicked in real quick.

Awkward, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. The woman, passport woman, that it's like assumed that she's going to sleep with him. She doesn't even. And they don't establish a history with each other.

He just comes in and is like, I'm going to get some of that. Just like he goes in and gets something out of her refrigerator, he's going to go get. A piece of that too. But you expect that out of that character. Yeah, now we switch to Jodan Baker.

Which, again, that's a really weird scene. Just. It's weird anyway that he comes in and does very much just like, well, that's what I'm doing. Why is she working so hard at making the passport if she knows he's going to die? That's what I didn't understand.

I was like, why is it that she's like, I told her it won't be done until midnight, but she's sold him out. She knows how it's going to go down in theory. So what's the point of even following through with this? I'm not gonna sit there and put in extra work yeah you're gonna die i mean i don't i didn't follow that that never made sense to me but no back to the i mean back to the. Secretary since we started it so okay do i mean there's so many questions here because that's the thing like the The photographer at least seems like she's sort of sketchy.

She's sort of involved in the underworld, more or less. So if she wants to be a little, you know, if she wants to make some questionable choices in her who she sleeps with, that part didn't surprise me. But this woman, like, she seems a little more upscale. She seems like she's probably, you know, again, she's got a real job. She seems otherwise well-adjusted.

She's got a nice place. So do these kind of women just randomly sleep with, A, anyone, let alone a man who breaks into your apartment, threatens physical violence, and then you quickly realize is involved with the mob in some way. This is who you're going to sleep with at the drop. Of a hat? But her boyfriend boss is a bastard that she calls to his face.

Yeah. He probably treats her like shit. She keeps a picture of him next to her bed, probably something he put there so. That guys would run away from her. She's kind of loose if she's got a round bed.

I think. That was the... You got a round bed, you're a little loose. Oh, she's a swinger. I see.

I think that was the implication. And again, I wasn't even alive when this movie was made. And I heard, oh, that was the 70s. Maybe that's how shit went down then. I don't know.

I don't know, but it just seemed weird. Again, it's not like she's an amazing character. I'm not putting her any higher than that. Again, especially because of what's going on with her boss. She definitely has her little skeletons in the closet, too.

But then the other half of it that comes into play is Walter Matthau. I'm like, really? He's not really credible. Nobody really is. Nobody really is, but definitely not him.

He was in shape then. He was still. I mean, but for somebody... Meeting in that way. Yeah.

And that amount of time. And she seems so totally swayed to him. Why? Now, I got a different feeling. I thought, you know, her calling her boss a bastard was just like sort of.

Playing around. And like they were a thing. They had a thing going. I believe they were, but I still. Thought he was probably.

I thought he was probably a fairly nice guy to her, really. Because, you know, he was. he had moments where he seemed like he was sort of a decent guy. And I had this expectation that he and Matthau were going to like, it was going to become one of those buddy, they were going to work it out somehow. They were going to come to some understanding. No.

No. Not at all. I don't know. But I think what that was was not really the way things were in the 70s, but it was like, The playboy man's man's fantasy. And that's the part that feels like we have to shove that into this because.

We've got everything else. You know, we've got explosions, and we've got a bank robbery, and we've got all this other stuff. We need a sex scene. Now, how do we get that in? We just killed his wife.

We ruined that one. You know, it feels very shoved in the middle of this. Yeah. And it's the only time it feels like a Hollywood moment where they shove something in that feels like it kind of needs to be here because it's a movie. Right.

Everything else really doesn't fit that mold. Yeah. It was odd. It was. Yeah.

And strange. It was like Jesus inventing the table. Oh, boxing the compass. All right. Uh, no Jesus.

There were a few. Other things that, uh, like I didn't really quite find it convincing the way he buddied up when he, he lands the plane and goes out and meets and he's glad handing and slapping him. And, and for some reason saying aloud, we did it. Um, Somehow, I didn't quite feel that that would play out convincingly to Joe Don in his car. I don't know.

That's the one time... They did. Set up that he had a great motive, if he could find. Yeah. I don't know.

It was a little... I don't know. I thought that was fine. And I thought, oh, that's pretty smart. It was the airplane chase scene that kind of was the part.

And as soon as they were talking about, oh, I flew a biplane and we did tricks, and I'm like, oh, shit, here it goes. We're going to have a scene at the end, it's going to be the climax, and it's going to be a plane scene. No, that's the part that I think is kind of, like, ridiculously understatedly genius, is did you notice, like, a few scenes earlier, like, 15 minutes earlier in the plot, do you see when he's on the phone talking and he's in his little area there? Well, in the big banner behind him that shows the move that he ends up doing by the end of the movie. And that obviously it was his thing.

He'd done it as part of his, you know, that was like his signature move. So the fact that they never really spell that out, it's just there in the background if you want to pay attention to it. Oh, no, I think, see, I clearly saw it. I mean, I was like, oh, they're going to do that. I don't know.

I could see a lot of stuff like that going on and then just going on with the plot and doing a more conventional wrap-up. And then not. So I thought it was kind of cool that they didn't show him do that beforehand. They didn't do anything else to really set it up. I mean, he didn't even fly a plane before that.

So it's like they didn't really set that up other than the few mentions of it and that. So you don't really know that there's this fake-out that sort of comes into play that Joe Don's too dim-witted to realize. Which, again, is kind of why I buy him congratulating him. Because Joe Don Baker really, as much as he's a tough guy, he doesn't seem all that smart. He seems like he knows to not trust people, and he knows... when people are pulling something, but in the grand scheme of things, he still seems kind of just like a thug.

So I could almost see him going along with that, that bastard, he's in on it, and I can kind of see that. There was that, but the wrong touch was having him throw the money after the car blows up, because he had planned everything. Why didn't he put the money in there so it would blow up? It was so we could see it. Yeah.

Yeah. It was just so we could see and go, oh. Well, there's, again, they do that several times with him not having his watch, looking for his watch, them focusing on the. Watch by the end. Like, they really, they want to make sure you tie everything up here.

Yeah. A little bit subtle, but at the same time, it's like, don't forget to catch this. They want to make sure you. Piece it all together. But they at least give you that shot so that you go, oh, and that's, you know, what I guess you're supposed to do in most of these movies.

Well, put it this way. I think we're kind of not picking apart, but my expectation level was very low. You know, for the movie. I think when I saw that Walter Matthau was going to be the leading man in a heist movie, I thought, oh, here we go. It's going to be kind of funny, and we're going to, you know...

Blah, blah. Yeah. And, oh, it's hijinks, you know. And it. No, it was the opposite of that.

It was very dark. Low jinx. Low jinx. Okay. But that's why I...

The whole flipping the air... I don't know. It didn't work for me. I mean, it's silly, but at the same time, it's sort of like we need a wrap-up. We need a grand finale.

Again, if there's anything that's sort of movie-like, we need some sort of finale. And we need a way for him to pull something and trick the main bad guy, which is what it becomes. So he can finish this plan. that we've been working on since damn near the opening scene. It was a plot, but I think the thing that made it all, put it over the top, was, like you said, it was the little side characters and the attention to details. That didn't advance the plot.

That was the thing that strengthened what you might otherwise go, eh, I don't know. It was more real. Well, and again, just setting stuff up, And then paying off and knowing how to plot it and like slowly sort of work in even stuff that was almost like a joke. To me, the flipping the plane thing was more of a functional one. But the one that was more of just like a joke for the sake of making a joke is when 15 minutes later after they mentioned this, we get this big close up of the yogurt sitting on the stoop.

And I was like, okay, that's just funny. And you set that up a long time ago, and somebody not paying attention doesn't get that. The fact that you put that shot in there isn't going to register if you're not paying attention. And that little detail kind of stuff is, to me, what makes this movie. She was great.

There were two bits of camera work that I thought really caught my attention. The one is when they're throwing the guns into the creek. And they're very low, almost at water level, looking up at them dropping it in. And then they get in the car and drive off. And the camera pulls up, turns, and follows them down the road.

And it's a high, high crane shot. It had to have been. And you don't know that it's a crane shot until that moment, but it's so fluid, and it just, it's not necessarily telling anything more, but to get those two angles in one smooth transition was really amazing. The other one is another transition. The police, when they're surrounding the trailer, they start on the far left and they start to pan.

They pan past 20 guys and they keep going and they pan past the house and keep going to the right and going and going. It feels like they've had to have gone a full circle around this thing. It gives you this... They could show all the. Cops lined up and everyone around in a circle or Even from over top of that one, it was like, I don't know, it just felt like, no, they really.

Do have this place surrounded. And they didn't need it, and they didn't need the shot. And it probably was just set up on a tripod, but it looked really good to me. It was a fun one for me. Was that Norman Fell that was in the top?

Yeah. He was in that scene for. That's the thing. They showed him in the credits, and I was just like, oh, this is kind of interesting, because I don't think I've seen him in anything else. Like, I only know him as one character.

So I'm like, okay, I kind of want to see him, and especially do some serious acting. And he comes out and has, like, four lines, tops, and disappears. Yeah. You never see him again. He trips over some rocks.

It's like you never really get much out of him. That's, I guess, one of the. Few side characters that doesn't fully deliver. He was kind of like the Three's Company landlord also in The Graduate. He was the landlord that hated.

It's been so long since I've seen that, yeah. He was like, I want you out of here, Dick Shinnerick. He was great. And it's so funny to see him in The Graduate after seeing him being. Mr.

Roper. Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't. Really remember if he was like the original and was replaced by Don Knotts. Nobody can ever get that straight.

Which is funny, because I've said several people have tried to make it the other way, and I, being the dork that I am, constantly correct them and go, no, the Ropers were first. The Ropers left when they got their own spinoff show, which failed after one season, if that much. And then they brought in Mr. Furley, who was equally as entertaining, if not a little more so, really. Yeah, which one do you put down as the one that was the better of the two?

Mr. Furley's more entertaining, I'm sorry. I mean, Mr. Roper had his moments, he's funny, but Helen's kind of annoying, I hate to say it. Mr.

Furley's just, he's over the top, but at this point, you're watching through his company. You're not looking for subtlety in the plot here, so you can go along with Mr. Furley, but No offense to Norman Feld. So, but yeah, on the camera work stuff, I mean, yeah, Don Siegel's done some amazing stuff. And I kind of, there's a couple others of his I kind of want to look at.

One in particular and one amazing camera shot. So it's like he's got stuff in him that he can just shoot competent scenes and do stuff that's like a really well put together action scene. And then he's also got it in him to turn around and do something really arty and like really like amazing that you can tell he worked out way ahead of time in his head that this is what I want. Now, how the hell can I even physically put this shot together? And yeah, he's, he's got those moments.

And the crane shot of the Creek, I don't know how they, where they positioned that because it comes up and it turns back on itself on a high shot. And I don't, It must have been to the left of the camera, and they must have been hanging over, but it was. Really well done. And for me to take notice, it had to have been really well done. At the beginning of the movie, what it reminded me of and what I expected with Alter Matthau and the opening sequence, I remember a movie maybe around that time called.

The Doberman Gang. I know the title, yeah. And about the same time there was another movie I remember liking a lot called Day of the Dolphin. That's George C. Scott?

Those were like 70s movies. And so I was telling my wife about like the Doberman gang. I remember it vividly. These guys go out and they train these Doberman dogs to like rob a bank. So they're nowhere near the bank when the dogs go in there going through the amazing duct work that always exists at and stuff like that, and you're really rooting for the dogs.

You know, you really get caught up, and one of them gets stuck, and it's like, get the money and get out of there. And, you know, it has that old school 70s, you're rooting for the bad guys. And she said, and what was Day of the Dolphin about? And I said, well, that's where they train dolphins to rob a bank. She said, how did they get them out of the state?

Never mind. I don't really remember what it was about. It was like Flipper or something. Dolphins could talk or something. I don't know.

I think you're confusing this with a different movie. Yeah. It's where George C. Scott builds a brand new tail for a dolphin that falls. It's a heartwarming tale.

It teaches it how to jump, right? Once again and saves its life. It's the adventures of young Moby Dick. You know, every fucking movie is based on a true story. Yeah, people fucking exist.

Loosely based on the existence of people. I fucking hate based on a true story. Yeah, I do too. And I remember being like so conflicted when Fargo came out. And it's like this is based on.

And I only felt better about it when I found out it was just a total lie. It's like, okay then, I can respect that. That makes it better. If you're just. Saying that so that people will buy into it just.

A little bit more, they'll go, really, this really happened. I'm going to write a complete fantasy sci-fi adventure, and I'm going to say that it's based on a true story. Yeah. Well, I mean, there have been those. What was the fourth kind?

Or what was the one that just came out with Mila that's all about aliens coming down and it's all based on. A true story? Nice. I like that. It's all like verite footage and like security camera footage of what's in its recreations of what supposedly actually happened.

And I'm just like, we can turn anything into based on a true story now. People exist. There's your base. Now move on. Yeah.

Hello? Hello? Hello, this is Sybil. How pleasant to hear your voice, Miss Fort. I assume this call is important?

If you consider three quarters of a million dollars important. What about it? I have a gentleman here who wants to give it back to you. Is he alone? Yes, he's alone.

Put him on. Thank you. Hello, Boyle. Who is this? Charlie Berry.

I got something I want to get back to you. How is it packaged? In two canvas and leather bags with the name stenciled on the front. So give them back. What's the problem?

The problem is the big gorilla in the maroon car is trying to kill me. I'm listening. Well, I want your word that once these bags are delivered to your hand, that's the end of it. No reprisals. Alone, no hitman.

So before we get too far, we've gone through most of the cast, but I don't want to leave John Vernon out. You mentioned him, but again, watching, it's sort of that same, like, Walter Matthau, Norman Fell, it's like all these guys. Later, at least most of us ended up knowing them for their comedic persona. Right. So getting to watch him do serious... was kind of awesome.

Like it's one of those, I think there's a reason. And you look at him, it's in, you know, animal house is what most people are always going to know him for. And he's awesome in that. And I think the reason he works so well is kind of because he can do serious. I was, I was thinking about his, him is almost like that comparison of Leslie Nielsen.

It's like the reason Leslie Nielsen was so funny. The first time we saw him in airplane was It's because he'd done years of this serious work, where he really. He was only part of his plan. He really was. He spent the last 10 years developing an immunity to.

What was it? Iocane powder. Iocane powder, yeah. So yeah, it's like, I think that's why he works so well, because you buy him as this really, you know, somber character in all these other movies, and then you get to something silly, and you're like, he's going to be the butt of these jokes so well because he can play it that straight. It was all built up to Dracula getting loving.

Oh, never mind then. I take it all back. He had that in him 40 years ago. Yeah. Never mind.

I'll replace him in Forbidden Planet. But no, John Vernon in this is, like, he plays it really well. He can play that jackass in a suit role pretty well, but then you get the scene where he's talking about cows, and it's a weird scene, I'll give you, but at the same time, I kind of buy him as this guy. He sort of unfolds this other layer to this character, and you're like, okay, like maybe he's you know he's he's in a bad situation but he's not really the villain in this you know it's like and there aren't any other i mean joe don baker ends up being the villain all the other guys kind of feel like they're just stuck in a real bad place the bank manager and the they're in the john vernon's character and it's like all these guys in the middle.

Just kind of feel like What have we gotten ourselves into? Like, this was a good deal when nothing was going wrong, and now everything's falling through and we're all screwed. You know, John Vernon's character, that scene, the way he climbs up on the fence, the way he's helping the bank manager, like, you really got to get out of this, and I've got to help you do this. He really is the most.... The character that you want to know more about.

He's very layered. How did he get into it? Why is his secretary calling him a bastard? He's even philosophical in how he's... It's like, look at these cows.

They have a perfect life. And. He's the only one that really stops and reflects. Yeah. I mean, everybody else is just a heartless bastard and continues, even our quote-unquote hero of the movie.

Yeah, that's why it's so shocking the way he dies. It's like, whoa. It's like the guy in No Country for Old Men. You're so invested in him at this point. And he just dies like that?

Really? Do you even see him die? No, you don't see him die. And a lot of people were like, really thought that wasn't fair in a way, like he had earned a death sentence so brutal that, no, he's just dead now. And again, as you get into this plot, as it unfolds with him, you do kind of wonder, well, what the hell was going on?

And they never really... Who was in on it? Like, we never get to that point. Why was it that these nobody bank thieves happened to hit on the one day when all this mob money's in there being laundered? And, like, again, you keep expecting for that to sort of be, you know, revealed at some point, and they're just, no.

You kind of end up like... the the main character it's like you're stuck with this plot and you deal with it and you don't really ever know how it got like that you just follow through with it and that's kind of what we're left with. The highest ranking bad guy you get is honest john and he's not even fully aware of anything they that exists as the mob never surfaces at all. Passing things down the line yeah that's You can call me at this number. Yeah, this is a safe place. Like, everything is so coded.

Some central office to report where he is. For a minute, yeah. Who knows what that is? Yeah. I like that mystery.

Because it's like Inspector Gadget. If they actually showed Claw's face, it ruins everything. You don't want to know who's in charge. And that's another one of those, like, characters that we just get a glimpse of. But, like.

What's going on there? Like, why don't we have a whole other movie about this guy and his crazy underground ping pong ring? We go through all this, like. secret door and underground society and they're playing ping pong for money and he's good but i was just like what an odd thing like i i get the gambling tables like that feels very like underground gambling world but we've got. Ping pong going on in the middle of it. I was just like this is a weird movie.

Yeah i thought they were going to when they when he goes through From that ping pong table and into his office behind the glass windows. For a second, they linger with the two of them in the office. And I think the door is even closing. And I was like, oh, are they going to shoot this scene? Like you can see them working it out, but we can't hear it.

We're out in the other room. I would love to have seen something like that. And maybe I've even seen it in another movie. I've seen stuff do that, yeah. Because it didn't matter what happened in that scene.

It didn't matter what they said. You knew that he was going to get his orders. He was going to go out, you know. Whatever was going to happen. They could have just closed that door, let it stay silent, frustrate the viewer, maybe listen in on some ping pong or something, and move on with the story.

I was hoping for that moment. I was like, oh, here it comes here. Oh, they're going to go inside. Yeah. In a way, I mean, you can so see the influence of this kind of style on Tarantino, but the logic of the plot and the mystery in it reminds me a lot of the Coen brothers' kind of standard plot.

Very basic. Nobody in the movie knows what's going on. Just the eye of the camera is holding it all together. And sometimes it gets almost like they're too... I don't know, two on top of that kind of structure, like in Burn After Reading where you get to the end of it and it's like, well, I guess we learned not to do that again, although it's hard to say exactly what it was because nobody.

Really knew what was going on. Everybody's from their own angle and nobody communicates well enough to have any sense of how it all fits together. The only thing that ended up happening in that entire movie is a pretty cool sex toy got made. That was the only thing that actually manifested or progressed in that movie. Other than people dying.

That's the difference. The Coen brothers are usually a very straightforward plot. It doesn't change much. You get a very simple plot and then crazy characters and crazy situations that happen because of that. But the plot's usually really where you get Tarantino is.

A very complicated plot. And you've got all. This other stuff going on that gets tied into it. And again, sometimes scenarios that come back and forth in time and end up tying the same big complicated plot. So it is a very different take on it.

But it's funny you said the influence... is definitely there. Did you notice the line? Yeah. I, yeah. As soon as I, yeah, it was just like, he just straight up stole that.

I know. That's what I said. I was like, what did I not know about? Yeah. Yeah.

That's the, and that's, it's funny. Cause yeah, you can see, you know, young Tarantino sitting in a video store with this running in the background going, huh? And it just, yeah, you can see him, lifting things from different places like he does. And granted, he does it in a cool and original way, but he will. He doesn't overdo it.

He will straight up take stuff out and repurpose it and shove it into his own plot. And yeah, that is just a line that is almost word for word taken out of a different movie. He steals all the time. He steals so much in all of his movies, but he does it so well, and it's not. It's an homage.

It's not. ripping yeah it's not yeah and that's why because like i said it's not like he steals it and rips it off he repurposes it everything like everything is from something else but then taken and used here an entirely different way in a different form and i mean he he just finds a new way to do it yeah but taking from these old basic stories that you know he was sitting around watching in his video store back in the day I. Heard that line and I thought, I know nothing. It's one of those things like, I'm learning stuff that occurred in the past. That's a line that the average dumb jock that saw that movie was still quoting five years. Ago and probably still quotes this again.

Still today. Yeah. And have no clue where it came from. I didn't know. And as big a geeks as we are, we hadn't watched this either.

So we didn't even know where he stole it from. So. Yeah, it does open up that door that's like, and why I want to find these movies and track them down and be like, what else haven't I seen? I know. And I need to see, and.

There's so much. I love being put in my place. Well, I don't even, I love learning new stuff and finding new films. Same thing. Yeah.

Oh, now I've got more things, more onion layers to peel. Yeah, I never think I'm that geek that has seen everything and knows everything. Oh, yeah. I'm the opposite. I'm always like, there's so much I still need to see.

And I always feel like there's so much more I need to track down and get around to watch. And yeah, it's, I love finding stuff like this. That's just, even if it's not amazing, even if it's not the best movie ever, it just adds a whole new layer. Like you were saying to the whole movie realm. And it's like, it's, it's a whole nother just entry into that, that yeah, I really like having in there.

Anything else? Other than this is one of those that the opening shot is the final shot. Yeah. And this was one I kind of liked it because to me it left that in the beginning. I'm like, what the hell is that?

And why are we doing that? I don't know. Amounts of money. Well, that changes so much as time goes on. And what was that license plate?

VOH20. VOH20. What was that trying to say? His license plate on the car was something like VOH20. That's probably a quote of some other thing.

I'm sure that's a reference to something even older that this director is making. It's funny how much it gets passed down the line that this director's doing an homage to this director and this director's doing it to this guy and didn't know he was stealing from this guy. I think that's in the Maccabees. Yeah. It will be.

Oh, the only other thing I was going to go into is what the director originally wanted to be the title, The Last of the Independents. So I thought that was, that's very telling of the time. It really, and the fact that they bothered to bring that little story in of how, you know, the big companies came in and took him over. And they sort of use it as a way of telling the kind of character that Charlie is. But it's also sort of this little commentary on the way the world was going.

And it's really interesting to look at it now, considering this is 73, versus, you know, where the world has gone to at this point. Mm-hmm. The name does no good. The name that it has does nothing for them. Yeah, it's funny that I think the studio probably wanted to change it.

They didn't like Last of the Independents, which I think that's something I would have sought out before Charlie. Yeah. Probably, the studio probably thought, oh, that's a slap in our face. Okay. It could be.

But, yeah, I mean, Charlie Varick does not really make you want to run out and see this movie. No. Let's see, what was going on in the 70s? The name Charlie had certain popularity. I think it was the perfume that all the 7th grade girls wore.

Charlie! It's still coming off of Vietnam. Yeah, which they mention. They do work in that nice little Vietnamese reference. Right off the bat again, you get Andrew doing a nice little...

Which gives you a little window into his character for that, too. He's just... dim-witted too. He's the other version. He's even more dim-witted than Joe Don Baker, which is why he ends up the way that he does. Yeah, which I have to give the.

Director credit for seeing that in him because he so doesn't play that in his first movie, but seeing it in him to be able to play this guy who is sort of underhanded, but at the same time kind of simple and doesn't even realize how much You know, he's robbing from people, but he's also getting one put over on him pretty early on and completely unaware of it. He gets the shit beat out of him, though, doesn't he? Yeah. And doesn't even put up a fight. Like, doesn't even get a shot in at all.

Like, it really is just. Horrible for him. Yeah, Lin was ready for him to get this shit beat out of him. He was, like, really getting on her nerves. He was a bit of a turd, wasn't he?

Yeah. He's not a likable character in this, which is. And he just completely lacks cool. Yeah, definitely. I mean, he was just so...

It's like, just shut up. Just be cool for, like, five seconds, and now he couldn't do it. He's whiny. Yeah. Which is, again, like, that we... work Andrew into this, it's like it's funny how different he is and how different his other roles as his career goes on.

He's actually usually like a very calm, collected kind of a character and becomes that type of character as the years go on. So it's funny to watch him do this, especially as young as he is. It's like you see him as this inexperienced kid and maybe that's why he can pull it off so well, but at the same time, It's just weird because it's very different than how he probably got typecast years later as he started working. Yeah. I know one thing.

I have to go back and I stumbled on a quote looking at Siegel's list of movies and just a refresher. I'm like, okay, I've got to educate myself more. And he had a quote that said, I guess somebody was asking him about inspiration or how he sees his work or something like that. He says. I just did it for the money.

I'm just a whore. I was like, that opened a new door. I'm going to have to check out. Well, again, for the type of movies that he made and for the amount of movies he was working, I can see him having that aspect of himself. He's like, I am part of the Hollywood system and this is what I do.

This is my job. But again, you get those moments of no, there's an artist in there. You can see when he wants to do something above and beyond just a normal regular run-of-the-mill kind of movie. I watched Dirty Harry as a kid because it's the It's like some of the young kids. Now, I've got to watch Scarface.

That whole thing. I assume I know what's going on in that movie. That's the thing. I recently went back and that's why I kind of have it on the list tentatively if you guys are up for it. Some of it for both of those because Don Siegel does some interesting stuff in it and Andrew's in that one too and does a really different version of Yeah.

So going back, again, I kind of watched it as a kid, I thought, but I didn't remember a lot of it. And going back and watching it, it's a different movie. So I'd be interested to go back and watch that somewhere down the line. So if you were up for it, yeah, I think Don Siegel's got some interesting stuff to throw out there. Me?

Watch a movie? Yeah. Every once in a while we do. You know. So anything else for the last of the independents here?

No, I'm You're just going to give it the original title now? No. It's definitely worth watching. I mean, there's some really good chunks of stuff to get. Out of it.

And like I said, I think not what I expected going in, and the most impressive thing is just those snippets of characters along the way that, how many times have we said, we need more on that guy, we need more, and that's the sign of a pretty good movie, that you can have these characters that you want more from, that aren't just two-dimensional, that you actually leave. You wanting something else. I don't know, I think that it probably could have gone down a better road and gone more into different stuff, and it goes a little conventional towards the end, but yeah, I think there's some really impressive stuff along the way. I think my biggest part is there's a little bit too much of that misogyny in it.

There's a lot to be queasy about in that movie, really. Did we address the slapping the photographer? No. What the hell? Yeah, I was thinking I couldn't remember if we did.

What the fuck? Like, what the hell happened? Like, why was that there, and why was that okay? Yeah. I, yeah, again, I mean, it definitely shows you another and more horrible layer of Joe Don Baker's character, but what the hell is up with the photographer?

Why not only was she willing to, okay, he's going to get a piece of that and she goes along with it, but fucking slaps her and she has no problem with it. What the hell? Because that's what women want. I guess. Is that what we're saying?

But again, we never really get that. It's never, it's just a window into that. And then we never touch on it again. Never come back to it. Women in this movie are whores or servants or.

Things to be beat on or things to be fucked or, you know. But, you know, we're forgetting because, you know, we're not that old. I think I'm old, but, uh. There's just a lot of that around. Oh, yeah.

And, like, when you watch Mad Men, like, and it only goes so far as a period thing, but. Ye gad. It's like, yeah, people lived through that. There's still a lot of that hanging in the atmosphere. There's still a lot of that.

If you find the right people, they have not changed a damn bit since the 50s. Yeah, you're right. it's just earlier it's just it's to me it's the same as the the racism and everything else that goes on it's not that those people have changed or learned anything they've just gotten better at hiding it. Yeah there are people know the right thing to say now but people are many people are really not that reflective about their attitudes and about about things they do and and it's just strange, you know, that film captures. And it's bigger than life because, you know, part of it is an element of fantasy that's intended for, like, young... What was it Clint Eastwood once said about his character, his bigger-than-life character, was that, you know, the average guy out there, he said, was insecure.

And so he has this kind. Of superhero character who's, like, certain and confident and. And guys latch on to that. And so I think what that serves is for guys who are intimidated. By women.

And scared of them, really, it's like, oh, that's the way to be. Just smack them. This is how it should be. And so it's like a corollary to the fears and insecurities of guys which, you. Know, I don't know.

70 i was 10 when that movie came out um but it's gross i mean there's a lot in that that movie that's just like kind of left over and it's kind of like gross. In a way, I'd... I don't have a problem with that because I think it is interesting to see it because it is such a window into the time period. I love going back and being able to look at it. Again, I don't approve of it, but I like being able to have it captured even in a way that they probably don't want sometimes when they look back on these movies.

I think the only problem I had was the fact that our character, Charlie... gets on board with it by the end. I think I liked that he wasn't like that, that everybody else, that Joe Don Baker is horrible and he's like that, and the rest of this world around him is this seedy underworld that he deals with, but he wasn't like that. He was still in love with his wife, and he still kind of conducted himself like a pretty decent person, aside from the robbing and shooting cops. But other than that, he seems like a somewhat decent guy, And then you get to that scene towards the end there, and I'm just like, well, we just threw a light out the window. I think that I have more of a problem with.

See, I don't know, because you can't give the guy ethics all of a sudden. He's willing to shoot a cop, just point blank. He's willing to rob banks. He's willing to rat out his friends, so-called friends, and hang them out to dry. Hang another businessman out to dry.

I mean, he does nothing that's... No. That's good. But he doesn't... Again, if they would have set it up that he was just like that, if we wouldn't have had that relationship with his wife at the beginning, if we would have seen something along the way that made him more of that kind of guy, it just seems very out of place.

It seems very out of place. It's like a playboy forum something. So if they would have... Again, I don't have a problem with him being a dark character. It's obviously...

Everything else about him is a very dark person, but. The fact that, yeah, it just seems very out of place. I'm not saying that I like that that scene's in there. I didn't. It is, it doesn't fit.

But the same thing is, that character is not, he has. No morality to him necessarily, or no goodness that you can really see, other than he's kind of polite to women sometimes. Yeah. But other than that, he's an asshole. He is.

He's a criminal. I think I like having those levels, though, that when you do enter into a dark character, that there is almost like they have sort of a moral code within their own group. I like seeing that kind of stuff, and I can almost see that if he's supposed to be our hero, that at least we have some sort of line that, okay, you know, he's a criminal, he's gonna, you know, if you get in a bad situation, you gotta shoot a cop. Like, there's some sort of reasoning that comes into play in all the rest of this, and then that just seems weird. So, again, I don't think I'd have a problem with it if it was played right.

It just. And it might have been, if you could. Have set up for some reason that she is trying to escape, and she's going after a man because she's in a bad scenario, and... If you want that, there's a line I won't cross, almost like Joe Don Big or Molly's characters, that says. I don't sleep with whores.

Yeah. You know, that he's got his own level of, I won't cross that line. He does. And if he could have said, no, no. Thank you, or fuck you, or whatever to the secretary, then you're like, okay, that's more realistic.

That might have been, like I said, they could have established that she was trying to get out of her. Situation, or whatever. But no, it. It was almost kind of jokingly, hey, we're going to fuck around in all these positions. It doesn't work.

Yeah, it really doesn't. And again, I don't have a problem with his character being that dark. It just doesn't seem to fit the way that they work it in there. Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's not that he has a respectable moral code.

It's just that. that realistically, virtues and vices don't really come in matched sets, so a person can have some qualities, and it's not that he's a bad guy, and so he's bad in all respects. It was just. Such a weird scene, and it wasn't believable. She wasn't believable in it. It makes me think of the professional kind of setup.

You get Leon, and it's like, He will kill people all day long. No women, no children. It's like even within his fucked up world where he's a hit man, he has rules and he otherwise has this way that he goes on about his day and he seems like a nice guy, but you cross him and he's a horrible killer. He doesn't want his plant to die. Yeah.

He's worried about his plant more than anything. Drinks his milk. So yeah. Speaking of titles, the professional was so much better at title than in Leon. And what does that, Right.

It's well, it's the Charlie Barrett. Yeah, it is. It's just slapping a name on there. Yeah. Leon does nothing but the professional resonates weirdly with the little lady at.

The school in the end. Yeah. Who has to hear this story and go, what is my role here? What do I do with this? And that's just such a great ending.

Um, So, yeah, I think there's a way to have that, you know, underworld kind of person, but yet still give them some sort of sense of right and wrong or sense of this is what I have to do because it's my job, but as a. Person I don't want to do this. I mean, there's a way to do it. This is just, it's weird the way that they do it with Charlie. That was just so 70s Playboy.

It was. And I know a lot of people have this opinion like Playboy magazine was like, kind of innocuous and fun. But in a way, it was like the wickedest of all of them because it was trying to act like it was nice, but it was a kind of sick, sentimental, like. Slavery catalog format. Nice.

It was. That's what it was. It was like a slavery catalog. And you had, like, these girls would fill out, and all of them had the same handwriting for some reason. Like their turn-ons and turn-offs and the specs.

It was like advertising arms or something. Well, you know, they published a lot of really great fiction. That's the thing, and that's probably why they did more, if you want to look at it from that angle damaged than any of the rest of them because they could present themselves as a real piece of literature they could they could get real interviews that people would just read it for the interviews and the articles they really would bring in the highest end the highest caliber of writers and get these big names behind them they would get celebrities to do interviews and They had the power and the sway as they went on to be a real magazine, but at the same time, really all they were doing was kind of wedging the door open for the smut that then came pouring through from everybody else.

Yeah, they made it seem that it was classy to be misogynist. They did. Yeah, we're going to put next to good literature and good music reviews and everything objectifying women, whereas if you go to get a hustler, it's like, We're down in the dumps. We're nasty. We don't give a fuck.

At least we're honest. It's healthier, I think. But the presentation of it is just something normal. There are the traces of this fantasy of slavery and of buying women. And also the women in Playboy in the old days were really beautiful because they were different.

I think now. Everybody looks the same. Now everybody looks the same. To be a. Yeah, a guy.

It's like, it's hard to totally badmouth it, because I see it from the other angle, which is, they're beautiful women. Like, I don't want to call myself, you know, I have to call myself out for going, I remember looking at my dads, and I was just like, these women are beautiful, and I will easily fall into that category of... liking them, but at the same time I can look at it and go, there's something going on here that I don't. That's uneasy. I've done nothing against naked women. The only other place you can see.

Pictures of normal naked women, I checked, was Books on Witchcraft. The only other place. National Geographic. Of course, it's all different now. Now you can see a woman doing anything you can think of right now.

Thank you, Internet. Yeah. You know, but I'm saying that it's so unrealistic what they, and I know that's almost cliche to be saying that, but that's the part that's, like I was saying, that is so negative about it. Yeah. Is because it makes it okay.

It makes everything, well, you've got this nice piece of literature, this nice, really good interview. Right here next to, well, if this is what I need to, as a journalist, try to become, this is what I need to become as a female or looking for a woman. I mean, that's definitely very valid. I can almost see the other sales pitch that they're using, which is this is the best work of fiction that we have. And I want to put it next to this beautiful artwork.

And, you know, photography as an art. Form, you know? So, I mean, how wrong is it to have a classy black and white photo in a museum of a naked woman versus the stuff that ends up in Playboy? Yeah. It's one shade away, but at the same time, there's something a little sleazier going on here.

But that then goes back to people like different styles of literature. You might like literature that actually... tells you about what life really is or romanticizes. Yep. Now, and so I would rather see a woman where a picture of a woman where the lighting's not that good or the, you know. You like hustlers, what you're saying.

I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, I like gunshot wounds and stretch marks, you know. Let me see something a little bit more realistic and attainable, you know? No, I agree. I mean, well, again, and I don't mind, again, I think that's why I think I liked the old one's, better than by the time you got to the 80s, where it was all, like, tan lines and bleach blonde hair.

Right. And then now, it's nothing but airbrush. You might as well be looking at anime. Like, it's not even real anymore. Whereas, at least the ones in, like, the 60s and early 70s were real women, and they hadn't totally doctored them up yet completely.

They were probably getting pretty damn close. But even then, they still feel like more of what... a different cross-section of what women look like versus... You know, the machine that makes the ones now. They definitely were. Yeah.

I brought up the misogyny thing. One more thing about the movie, and were they trying to say something, and we can go over it quickly, but were they trying to say something about the bank manager, that. He was homosexual, and that he... And that he was weak. I thought that seemed like it was a little bit.

I can see somebody reading it that way. Because he likes to restore things, and he found his place, and he obviously wasn't married, and he. It just seemed almost. It definitely.... Even if it wasn't a homosexual angle, it was definitely making him very effeminate.

Right. And, of course, then what's he going to do? The most weak thing you can, take yourself out. Take yourself out. He was too afraid, and somebody tried...

A man. tried to help him along, and he still couldn't handle it. I thought that was, that kind of, when he killed himself, I was like, oh, he's going to do it, isn't he? And I was like, and I don't know. Again, that was me on the other side of it. 1973, wouldn't thought a thing of it.

But now, I'm kind of, maybe I'm a little bit more sensitive to that stuff, and I think. It just seems... Cliche. That, oh, the weaker, more feminine guy that likes to restore, you know, that's worried about historical significance of his bank and those sorts of things is too weak to handle this. And he's going to take himself out.

And yeah, the only other ones that handle all this are the manly men. You've got the Jodan bakers. Right, the guy that slaps the women. I agree. There's definitely that angle there, and you can take offense.

I mean, the way that they present it. I take offense to very little, but it just, yeah. But you could. I mean, the way that it's presented is. There's just some queasy old stuff in there.

Yeah, yeah. Which, again, is why I like finding these. I don't have to agree with what I find in them, but I like the fact that it preserves them, and people want to gloss over that stuff. And I'm like, no, that's kind of why. We need this.

We need to preserve these old weird movies because I think even more than a lot of other art forms, I think it's the most immersive in the ways that things went. I mean, even if it's fictional stories, I think it tells you the way that the world kind of worked at the time that these things were made. And that, I think, is almost more interesting sometimes than what's going on plot-wise on the screen. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, we talk about influence, and when you talk about misogyny and all that kind of stuff, what's nice is we talk about Tarantino, and clearly he saw this, and clearly he was influenced by it. But his female characters, especially later in. His career, you know, you've got Jackie Brown, you've got the bride, you've got Shoshanna from. Yeah. They're all super strong characters, and he's not mired in that at all.

This is, again, him picking and choosing what he wants to take from this stuff. And does it. Pretty damn smart, really. Early on in his career, you know, Reservoir Dogs. No females.

Yeah, it's nothing like that. No females, but it talks about this world of men in a very interesting way. And I think a lot of critics have looked at it as a kind of commentary on this world that he was serious about. And in some ways, I think it may be his best, most thoughtful movie. Yeah.

It's definitely impressive, especially to be right out of the gate to deliver something like that. But you do see how much he took from this stuff from the 70s and, you know, the old movies that he liked. But he wasn't brainwashed by them. He didn't fall into the trappings of everything that was wrong with society at the point when they were making this. He sort of found this new, like, you know, 21st century way to piece them together, and now he's making movies, you know, with kind of the best of all the elements in there?

Like, using the exploitive stuff, but finding a new way to make. It smarter and a little more balanced, maybe? I almost said, I almost misspoke and said that Pulp Fiction didn't have the strong female, and she doesn't really have the role, but Bonnie... so clearly controls her husband and at least three other men. They're fucking, these are gangsters and they're afraid of Bonnie. So, you know, so, okay, we can, we can, I can, I'll take that back.

So, um, but yeah. I don't know. I think we ended up with a lot of interesting stuff out of this movie, more so than I even saw coming. Okay. So I think we, yeah, I think once again, it, I just like digging up these old movies.

It's definitely one that I think everybody's good. It just brings a lot more to the table than you even know when you sit down to watch it. All right. That having been said, I guess we can wrap up Charlie Varick. Amen.

All right. Time to round things out. Okay, kids, get out your decoder pins. What is the sound of. This?

That's a sorry fanfare, if ever I heard one. We did fanfare last week. We both did. It's a whole new episode. I don't know, but that was.

I could tell that tonight's message was really important. It is time for the Movie Meltdown Secret Circle reveal of the next exciting episode. And next week will be exciting once again. We're venturing outside the coffee shop. We're heading out into the real world.

Frightening as it sometimes is. Misogyny and gunfire. God knows what else is going on out there. This time we will be heading back to Lexington for Scarefest. Which, if you remember, Greg, you were there last year.

It was quite the epic road trip, was it not? It was magical. Wasn't it? Do you want to put your hand out and do the magic motion? There we go.

Magical. Making of magic motion. Greg is making a callback. So, yeah, we had a good time last year, and it was a fun trip. So I'm really looking forward to this year's show.

I almost got killed by Danny Trejo. Well, you were asking for it. I was asking for it. So in addition to our, you know, whatever random people we can drag from our crew here, I am attempting to work our friend and newly added co-host Lucy into as much of the episodes as possible, since for once we'll be sort of more in her area, so it should be easier to drag her into some of this craziness, so. Hopefully she can rip up a few more actresses.

And then they will be pissed off and call in. She's a smart girl. Oh, that she is. So we'll be planning that and hopefully some special interviews and guests along the way. We'll see.

No telling what will actually happen or fall through. But if nothing else, if I get to meet Leah Thompson while I'm there, holy shit. She's going to be there? Yeah, they've added her in the last few weeks. So rethink your whole life.

No, she deeply affected my whole life. Yeah, me too. I had some epiphanies during space camp. Yeah, me too. And Back to the Future.

And sadly, Howard the Duck. Yeah, I built a lot of my fictional world around her, and I was probably a little delusional about it. The the relationship that we had. How about how she looked in dennis the menace. You know she was still awesome i can't yeah when i'm saying when i that's what i'm saying when i'm watching the little rascals and i'm like why are you in this but damn you're.

Still leah thompson you're still awesome so. When when he was when he was laying on the ground out in front of the house and you oh never mind. Yeah i'm telling you i i yeah i the If I just get to go up and stand there for a second and talk to her, I'll be pretty damn thrilled. I know that I can't go because I would be a bumbling idiot. Well, that's bound to happen anyway, but if I can do it in front of Leah, that's cool.

So, yeah, if nothing else, I'm going to go for that. But hopefully there's some other cool stuff that will pan out whilst we are in the city. So, we'll see what we can piece together. As for, you know, you guys, hey, go to thescarefest.com for all the info and head over there and join us while you still can. So, it should be interesting.

Yeah, now I know I can't go. Yeah. They're like, I'm staying here. Magic. Magic.

Oh, Lord. that's like, other than that, and Daniel Harris and Danny Trejo. Yeah. I mean, he looked at me like he was going to kill me. I asked him to do a, you know, a bumper or whatever they call that for the show. Promo.

Promo, and yeah. But he did it. You don't do it. You ask him about that shit. Yeah.

And yet his is freaking hilarious. The movie Babysitter's Beware. I saw it on Netflix. Kid watched it with the kids. Oh God, I have not watched it.

Don't watch it. But he's in it for maybe 15 minutes. It's funny that he's like the front of the cover, is he not? No, he wasn't. The original title was called The No Sit List.

And they changed it to... To The Professional List. To the professional last of the independents. Right. Eric.

And, yeah, they bill him as, like, being. Yeah, I thought he was the main. I. Thought it was sort of his pacifier, and he was the main guy, and there's kids whacking distances. He's a funny character, too.

It's the best part of the movie. Obviously. Yeah, except for the actress that does the... The nice babysitter that the kid really likes. She's got some.

She's one of. Those girls that... Young actresses that. Oh, she's got some quirks to her. She's attractive and got some quirks to her.

Maybe she could do something somewhere else. She's not. She's already out of business. Oh, that's good. Oh, Lord.

So, anything else before we wrap this up? Oh, I'd like to sing. All right. Can you do the song, The Last of the Independents? No.

Because that's what we're going out on. Is it? There is. Again, this is another one of the things I like doing with the show is I like finding ways that, again, it's not just me. Playing, oh, here's a song.

I like finding the way that the songs and the music and the movies sort of tie into it. It's back and forth. It's like sometimes there's movies that bring about a song, and then sometimes you'll pick a movie and you'll find 14 songs that you had no idea existed about this, or a movie gets made because it's the name of this song. That was popular. There's all these weird back and forths.

And I like, you know, instead of just randomly playing a song at the end, I like when we can find something that ties into it. This is from Rory Gallagher. And according to this is, yeah, I was like, okay, it's odd that this just happens to be the name of this, you know, what was the name of this movie originally. In 1979, he does this interview and they were asking him about that, you know, the title, The Last of the Independents, the song. And if it's autobiographical and if he, you know, what this means and how it ties into the business or something.

And he's like, his quote is, the song actually came about when I had the title and then I wrote the song. And halfway through I realized I had read the review of a movie called Charlie Baric. And he was piecing the song together before, like not even knowing that that's where it came from. Not even seeing the movie at that point. So.

I think, once again, the movies sort of influence us, even when we haven't seen them, even when they're just jammed into your pop culture diet, you end up making use of them in your job, in your everyday life, and it's, I don't know, I thought that was kind of cool, that this song got made without really tying to this movie, but specifically tying to this movie. I don't know. His father's name was Molly. Sure it was. So, if nothing else, yeah, this is.

A song recorded live in 1979 of his version of Last of the Independents. Oh, I think I know that song. Does it go. He's the last of the independents. Dun, dun, dun.

Yeah. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week. Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.

On a 747 She went highway The moon was laughing at me Like I did not have a care I just ran right back and said You ain't going anywhere Thank you. Thank you. I was on my way, it was 7.47 So I held. On, the moon was laughing at me Like I did not have a care I just smiled right back and said you ain't. Going anywhere And I was out on the records And the number's green.

Cause when you cross the minimums You only got yourself free. I'm a sinner like that, you know I'm not named for police. Protection, but I'm bringing my own way. I'm not a sucker for the pit. I'm a sucker for the pit.

Got no time to lose. Got no time Got no time to lose Got. No time Got no time to lose. I'll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. Talk hard!