212: Rambling Eccentrics

Movie meltdown movie oh man get out the dvd player this is michael winslaw from police academy one through infinity. And space posit now brooks movie meltdown. It's showtime. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised.

Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power. Provide more cooling in the containment chambers. To your sentinels, we have a rebound. I'm gonna get in this thing and I'm gonna kick your ass! 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 am Brian. I'm Lucy. I'm Ben.

I'm Bo. And I'm Greg. And it's time for another session of the Caffeinated Movie Geek. Cappuccino 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 are coming to you live via digital recording from Nancy's Bagel Grounds where we will get together, drink coffee, and randomly pick movies that we don't really know how we felt about it i i'm going to tell you because i know bo at least you will be excited. We're drinking oregon. Breakfast actually no i got the scraps left over from i don't think you did it was gone i think it was i got the last of Mountain top, mountain raising one.

I was trying to remember. I was like, if I say it, it's going to come out dirty. Mountain saddle, I think. Saddleback serenity. We're going to have to do a saddling and mounting.

Let's get to your favorite movies later. Mountain mountain. Yeah, I like that. I think if we want to do some minor geek week, mine that I wanted to bring up, I recently watched Real Steel. Oh, wow.

Yeah, the Rock'em Sock'em Robots movie. Was the Steel indeed real? It was R-E-E-L. I would be disappointed. Then, you know, it fails.

That's not as clever a title. They could have the sequel that could be Surreal Steel. I was just thinking of that! Green light it, Lucy! We're on it.

He is trying to look for a new project, so we can bring him in. Has anybody else seen this thing? No. Is Hugh Jackman in this? Yes.

I vaguely remember this happening. Boxing robot movie. What I will say about it, here's the thing. It is possibly the. Most manipulative movie I have ever seen.

It is pulling those strings so damn hard. Oh, my God. Like, every little piece of it is very. set up to trigger this and that and whatever and the other even more startling thing is it still kind of works oh that's the worst because by the end when i'm like i really do care about this kid this but no i don't this is. A horrible you know what stops no. Can you please tell me that like it has a young ricky schroeder in it that would be.

Awesome no telling where this kid will go maybe he will be the next rick when he gets older. That's how I felt at the end of Day of the Dolphin, where literally there are tears streaming down my cheeks, and I'm bawling, and I'm screaming at the television, you didn't earn this. But there's some films that they can't, like they do everything right, and even though they're so. Wrong, you can't stop. I wasn't quite that far, but I was like, it's kind of working, and it's worse because I'm conscious of it, because I'm sitting here going.

This is so stupid, they're freaking robots there's no point to this there's no science to it which is what boxing is really it's the limits of the human body and when there are no limits and it's not any real feeling there's no sport to it it's just rock'em sock'em robots it is just one machine beating up another one and yet at the end i'm like come on little robot you can do it. He's the scrappy underdog robot, by the way. Of course. And he's fighting the evil corporation robots that are also run by foreign countries. I guess you can read into that whatever you want.

We don't like Russia and Japan is what we're telling people. Who would have known? They would be the bad guys. Rocky IV meets WALL-E. Yeah, kind of.

There is something kind of about it. Because that's how I always feel about animal movies. Whatever the animal movie is, no matter how bad it is, I'm. Going to cry. I guess I have that same connection to robots, too.

Short Circuit and all the robot movies. You really love those little robots. You kind of do. You have to have extra emotion for them because they have none. Well, and that's the thing.

That's why I'm amazed. I mean, you have to give them some credit, I guess, because this robot doesn't even have personality. Like, he really is just a robot. They make it where he's sort of tapped. Into the kid, and then Hugh Jackman, and they have their weird different ways that it sort of interacts with them.

But it never has a personality. It never has any feelings that they usually, like, shove into the robot storyline even though it's completely illogical this never goes down that road and yet still somehow by. The end of it you're like come on little robot you can do it it's so sad oh my. God I. I don't know yeah I sat there the whole time going damn it why is this working it's so bad and yet I don't know I mean.

Hugh Jackman turns out a pretty decent. Performance actually like for a half-assed dad. And I'm fighting robot it so shouldn't work and by the end it's like well i mean it's not as embarrassing for him as i expected and it's not as horribly pieced together i mean it's stupid but i mean aside from that it's pretty functional as a movie. Just out of curiosity how did you watch that it came. On the tv for free I didn't have to give him any money, so that's how I watched it.

It was on, and I didn't get up to change it or turn off the TV or do something more useful. The robot was missing at the moment. It's funny how effort, just the simple fact of having to put it in the DVD player makes the difference between whether or not you'll watch it. If it's on, I'll watch it. It was just there.

I was like, all right, let's see these robots fight. When I had cable, I couldn't bring myself to change the channel when. Shawshank Redemption was on. Like, it was like, oh, it's on? Oh, I have to finish watching it.

I think a lot of people have that weird connection. I don't know what it is. That's how I am with Goodfellas. Every time. I can't watch the TV version of Goodfellas.

It's like, that's. They're supposed to be cursing there. It depends on what channel they're showing it on. They can get creative with it. Sometimes that's its own game.

For a while there, that became the joke, was watch the most foul-mouthed movie on regular TV and see what they did. Because sometimes I'm like, shouldn't that two-hour movie be about 15 minutes now where you finish editing everything out of it? And somehow they still make it fit and Some of the things they use to replace other words is so ludicrous. I don't know. That's its own fun game, if you ask me.

So that's all I really was going to go into. That's horrible enough right there. So was that a recommendation? Wait, are you endorsing this film? It is the movie meltdown stamp of approval.

It's a guilty pleasure recommendation. I don't even know if that's a guilty pleasure. It's like a guilty... I watched it. It's a confession more than anything.

It's a guilty... I can't believe I didn't hate it. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It sounds like a, God damn. It, why didn't I hate this?

I wanted to hate this. But, I mean... There it was. It was a movie, all right. I'm not sure, you know, so.

Many little points along the way I want to argue with, but in the end I was like, well, yeah, they was fighting robots, all right. I don't know. It was there. I watched it. I will not deny that.

I watched it. Anyone else? I know I'd mentioned prior to this, I just recently saw Mississippi Burning for no other reason than, I was like, well, I've got some spare time to kill. Actually, it was one of those things where I was planning on kind of halfway watching it because it's not that I expected it to be bad. I didn't expect it to be special.

I was like, well, just this whole police procedure, you know, yeah. But, um, it was like after the first 15, 20 minutes, I found that I can't remember what I was going to do, whether it was going to fold laundry or just straight or whatever, while it was kind of going on in the background, I instantly became hooked and just sat there. I mean, I think because admittedly I like Gene Hackman, um, in most anything, even if it's in Superman II. I'll forgive him for that. Superman II, that's fun.

It's just got a great supporting cast because you've got Gaylord Sartain as the sheriff. You've got, I'm trying to think of some of the others. Yeah, Stephen Tobolowsky. Michael Rooker, I mean, it's just got a great supporting cast to back up the main crew that are in here, and it's an effectively told story. It's been done so many times before, but this was done well when it came to that police procedure story.

And it sets it in a very weird circumstance for that kind of story. Yeah, not a true Lynchian universe, but it definitely feels a little separated from reality just because they take this, you know, very backwards town. But you buy that these places do exist. You don't deny that fact that those types of towns are out there. And it did bother me at first.

It didn't explain how it was that Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe came to work together. I almost feel like if somebody were to make that today, they would have to give the exposition saying, I'm going to put this new rookie who thinks he knows it all with the old guy who's been doing it forever it's like they would have to give you that setup but here it's like no you're seeing it down the road where most other films would start off and i grew to appreciate it for that fact that they didn't give you all that background because you didn't need it. That is true like you just first time you see him it's just they're just driving and he's like annoying he's like jokingly saying that like some. It's like a KKK song, yeah.

And it's just like, and that's the first time you see them, and it's just kind of like, and you don't need anything more than that. You totally accept that they're these two cops. They're different people because Willem Dafoe is kind of annoyed by them. But it's like, right off the bat, you don't need to have a setup to understand that they have this dynamic where they're going to be kind of butting heads a little bit. But, yeah, it totally works.

Because, I mean, the whole good cop, bad cop, by the books cop, and doesn't play by the rules copy. I mean, that's been done so much. And it probably was also due to the fact that, I mean, you're giving it to Hackman and to Defoe, and they both are just excellent. It's kind of hard to go up there, really. Yeah.

Especially in New South Park, perhaps. Well, I was going to say, I saw this as $ 40, 000. Oh. Well, no. I mean, I liked it.

I really did like it. I mean, it wasn't as a comedy. I started to realize from the get-go that I wasn't expecting a huge laugh-out-loud comedy in the vein of, say, 40-Year-Old Virgin. Even Knocked Up, it was a pretty funny movie. But judging from where Judd Apatow, from the movies he's directed, from the 40-Year-Old Virgin to funny people.

He's gotten more into like personal, you know, dramatic stories that are, you know, sprinkled with funny throughout rather than just like, you know, wacky comedies, which is basically what the 40 year old version of Virgin was. And this movie was like, basically it totally was, you know, logically followed that path. It's probably his least funny movie to date, but it's also probably his most, I felt like his most honest movie and like the characters in it felt, very real life. Like I'm, I was surprised like how much, like there are these moments of wacky comedy, but they still managed to feel like, I'm like, these are like my relatives. Like this is this.

Yeah. It's like, yeah. And it just, the way it conveyed these stressful moments of adulthood or like, you know, family dynamics, it's like, Oh yeah. When so-and-so asked for money, it's like, ah, and it's just the way it conveys that was really honest and like, well done. And I wasn't expecting that kind of, I don't know, depth of, I don't know what to say, character, but just like that.

He really surprised me just with how seriously he took the story and the characters. But at the same time, it's like, as a comedy, it's not... If you're going to see a comedy, you're going to be gravely disappointed. Like, yeah, there's a few, like, really laugh-out-loud moments in it, but it's... For what it is, it's totally fine.

You know, Paul Rudd, it might be like it's probably one of his best... Like, one of the better, like, characters he's played. Like, one of the most complex, I would say. Yeah, he doesn't get a lot of that, really. Yeah, it really is, like, I mean, it was hard because judging from the trailer, like, I thought, like, oh, he's going to be, you know, silly Paul Rudd.

But, like, the amount of times in the movie where, like, him and his wife, Leslie Mann, are, like, getting into these ugly, like, bitter fights is, like, kind of disturbing on how, like, realistic it's, like, I didn't know this movie was going to go in this direction. But I kind of like that. And it's not a downer. at all. Like it's, it definitely has some really, like I said, funny parts, but compared to knock, knocked up and especially the four year old version, it's like totally far removed. And I think that's why a lot of people might've been disappointed in it.

And it's like, yeah, you do, it is kind of a stressful movie. Like it's like a lot of the, like the midsection is all about like, you know, the, the drama comes from like not being able to pay like a mortgage or, you know, them, you know, money not coming in like you want, and just all this, like, complex stuff, and it's just like, ah, this isn't a very happy-go-lucky funny movie, but I thought it still worked. Okay, so counterpoint. This movie broke my heart. Only because I want to find Judd Apatow and give him a big hug and say, Judd Apatow, you're Judd Apatow.

Yeah, I hope he's happier than this movie leads on to suggest. You're really good at making this very specific kind of movie. In fact, you're the best at it. You were so awesome at making the knocked-ups of the world. don't try to go in this direction because I think he fails. And I think he wants so much to be John Cassavetes that it breaks my heart.

And the movie, I just felt like the funny parts were super funny, but the rest I found tedious. I found grating. I never cared about the characters. That's the way I found knocked up. It didn't feel as bloated as knocked up to me, though.

That's the thing. It felt like a more. It. Had a purpose going. There was...

The dramatic flow was more focused because it wasn't just like Seth Rogen and his friends plus Paul Rudd's family. Like it was a bunch of these people knocked up. It was just the family. And that's what we're focusing on, like their marital problems. And that was basically like, it didn't venture outside of that.

It didn't have these kind of long improvised comedy scenes, which is like also like it's Judd Apatow, like those kinds of scenes where people are just like doing impressions and just like taking a joke, you know, as far as it can go and just improvising like that's, his strength and his weakness. Like sometimes he can go too far with that. And sometimes it doesn't, because this movie didn't have a lot as much of that. It felt a little bit more focused, but at the same time as a comedy, it also suffered because of that. And it, it's like I said, it's definitely like more of a stressful, I mean that in a good way because it felt honest to me.

Like, I'm not like, I'm not married. I don't have kids, but like, it felt real. Like those moments when they're fighting and they're just like, they, they, they're having these arguments where they're just kind of, you know, at their wits end. And it just, it definitely felt like I was surprising, like how, like what, how we went in that direction, but no, sorry, continue. Well, I'm going to have to say that I've not seen it and I didn't want to see it because I didn't like his path of borderline fairly brothers kind of comedy stuff.

I didn't like that. And, and, I fell in love almost from the first episode when, when I couldn't even find what channel it was on with freaks and geeks. And I thought he could really tap into real life and make it light, but really can make it feel almost that pain of high school. Yeah. And here's what made it.

And I, that hearing that makes me want to see this more like he's going back to how he was with, with that. And I think a lot of people like, some of the reviews I read afterwards said like his image of like a kind of a failing marriage or whatever, aren't that like, you can't take it too seriously. Like it's too light. Like I didn't, I totally felt the opposite. I felt like movies that are about failing marriages that are really dark and like involved, like really serious.

Like I feel like that's not totally represent because real life does have like funny moments and it's very wild and unpredictable and, And, like, that mixture of kind of, like, oh, you know, we can joke about it now and, like, you may have some good days and, like, it's fun. And then it'll just, everything goes to shit. And, like, that kind of chaotic element is what makes it stressful. And that kind of stressful feeling is, like, permeates throughout the whole movie here. I think Woody Allen's really good at that, too.

Like, Annie Hall would be a good example. Like, it's funny. It's sad. Like, it's so, like, bipolar and crazy. Yeah.

And that kind of gives it like a realistic stressful, like I've used the word stress so much. But it's like, it is like the one like main, I feel like feeling I had about it. I feel like. He wants to make important films and I don't think that he's an important filmmaker. And I think that was the part that kind of hurt me.

I feel like he needs to stop with this. This needs to be as far as he goes. Like it's, it's awesome. I thought it was very interesting and intriguing. Like, and I like the experience of seeing how far he could take it with this is 40.

Now I'd like to see him make, I mean, not necessarily like make a slapstick Farley brothers come, but like go in some other opposite direction because he's only been just kind. Of, The stuff that he produces that turns out to be comedic, I feel like works. I feel like super bad works and I feel like Pineapple Express works. I feel like when he's just the creative producer, it's a whole lot better than when he's the director. But I mean, again, I'm only basing that off of.

I. Sat through Knocked Up to the end and I was over at a friend's house and they put on 40-Year-Old Virgin about half hour in. I'm like, I got other stuff I need to be doing. I feel like though, he's just, that's just the kind of directory is he's not, he doesn't feel like he wants to waste time experimenting. He's, if he's going to make and direct his own movie, he's wants to get down to making the movies he wants to make.

And it's clearly like, this is going to be it. So I'm not, at the same time, I'm not very hopeful. Like I don't expect him to, you know, make direct his own super bad or pop. Like he, he'll, he'll produce stuff like that and he'll have fun doing it. I feel like he sees that as more of a, side project he does with friends but as far as him making his own films he wants to be this auteur and that's.

What i think the whole problem is i think that's why those movies work is they're genuine in the sense that they're fun but also i mean it's it's it's almost as if and you know when i watched knocked up i i felt like i was watching something where i was watching him go through a checklist like if i want to try to make a romantic comedy that's going to appeal to everybody. I need to have all these things in, and I feel like I'm just sitting there just checking them off as you go. I'm just like, I didn't care about any of the characters in it whatsoever. I think a lot of modern comedy falls into that for me. I haven't seen so much of that genre in the past 10 years, because everything, I'll just see the trailer, and I'll be like, either it looks horrible and.

Not funny at all, Or it looks like I've just gotten the best right out of the trailer. And I don't need to sit there for two hours. Here's what I've noticed is like, is probably the, for me was the biggest, like we are like the film's biggest shortcoming was that even though he wants to be this kind of personal messy, like getting down to the, you know, to real life experience, like this is what he wants. He still feels the need to like wrap things up into like kind of a romantic comedy bow in a weird way. Like, I don't want to give too much, but there is kind of like, you know, the end of the four-year-old version where he's just like, I'm riding on a bicycle.

And it's this rushed kind of, this is the climax of the movie. He has to, and something's going to come to a, you know, a big crash, like halts. And then everyone's going to like sit and, you know, admit that they forgive it. You know, it's going to have this kind of sort of, it's going to try to tidy things up, but that totally goes against what the untidy tone of the film. And like, I think he shouldn't have even tried to go for that.

He should have totally just like, not tried to have the characters just, you know, stand in the circle and being like, okay, this is basically like at the end of it, it was like, you know, the end of like an intermission, like it, it shouldn't be like a confrontation, like a group therapy circle. Like I forgive you for that. Like it should just totally be real life and no one, everyone just balls up their shit. Like that would have been more realistic. I think he kind of had to do that for the sake of his wife and kids, though, because, like, by all of their own admissions, like, it was about their marriage and their family.

And he cast his wife and wife and he cast his kids. And by the end of it, you're like, Jesus Christ, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann just need to get a divorce. Like, this is terrible. This is a terrible marriage. And it makes me wonder, like, you know, his kids, it's weird.

Like, you know, they're in this movie where, like, their real life, like, I don't know, it's just weird. Like, there's... They're like saying fuck every like three– which is fine enough because I'm sure you grew up in the Apatow household, like that kind of thing. It's just from your whole life. That's totally accepted.

I was going to say you mentioned– I'm sorry. Go ahead and finish. No, I was just– I'm rambling about nothing. Well, I mean you mentioned Annie Hall and how it is very much bipolar and I was like, well, to me– that works where knocked up didn't because that is characteristic because, because, because that's characteristic. Hang with me here.

You're going to like where this goes because that's characteristic of the narrator because Annie Hall is essentially coming from the narrator. So it's going to reflect his personality. And if that's the case, I mean, you know, from what I recall and knocked up, it was just this, stoner to where he was having to deal with the fact that it was growing up and my whole issue with it was there were points of hilarity but they were crudely broken by these very serious moments and i suppose if i were to go back and watch that again i might be able to reevaluate it watching it from that point of view that i am essentially watching a movie from the point of view of a stoner in the sense that there are these moments that are with his friends and are very hilarious and they're cruelly juxtaposed with reality.

So I suppose I should perhaps give it a second viewing, perhaps, to reevaluate. Do you like where I took that, Brian? I just love that you're comparing and contrasting Annie Hall and Knocked Up. I have no... I mean, Knocked Up, I don't own the DVD.

I saw it in the theater. I'll never see it again. I have no interest in ever seeing it again. He makes silly comedies, I think was the point I was trying to make. And he makes them effectively, and people laugh, and people enjoy them.

And I think he's trying to take a turn as a director. And I appreciate his ambition. God bless him. But I just don't think he has it. Sounds like Judd Apatow is trying to take a 180.

I keep serving this back to you. Nice. Ben's not done. Yeah, I'm still like, I don't know, because it's fresh on my mind. I just got done seeing it last night.

Well, I think this is for you. Like, I think it would have been a much better movie if he had just, I wanted him to just kind of, get it out of the system and make his interiors, you know, and just get that darkness. Because he's going in that direction. I wish Knocked Up weren't still trying to be sort of a comedy. I wish just all the comedy was just, like, exercised out of the whole thing, and it was just this, like, just depressing, just...

I wish he'd just gone, like, just 100%, like, full-on, like, I'm not even going to try to make you laugh. I still like it, but I just think it could have been even better had he... not still tried to have the comedy in there, which. It looks cool in the movies. But I think that's why it turned out to be a three-hour movie or whatever it was. I mean, it's a really long movie.

It's well over two hours. It's like two hours and 45 minutes or something. It went on forever. I remember getting out of the theater and being like, I am late for everything I play. I assumed this was going to be a 90-minute comedy.

I'm late for tomorrow. It is almost two and. A half hours. It's really long. Every movie that's out right now is like 300.

But I think it's. Because there's a 60 minute comedy and then there's a 90 minute drama and he just kind of mashed them together and I do think that the comedy was more effective than the drama like I felt like the drama was I just I didn't I wasn't invested in the way that I should have been the kids were. The funniest part of the movie they were like twice as funny as Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann like Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann were just more than anything just Their characters depress the shit out of me. Since we made the comparison, do you. Because, I mean, that's pretty much what Woody Allen started out doing was very slapsticky, goofy comedies.

But he's talented. That's what I was going to ask. Do you feel that it's possible to leave one and go to the other? Absolutely. Because he got.

Very dark as time went on. But Judd Apatow, not the guy. So you're a fan of Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Judd Apatow, to me, I don't think he has the ambition or the... Woody Allen was always this guy who was like, I want to be Fellini, I want to be Bergman.

He always wanted to be those guys, and he felt kind of trapped. Well, the thing that works for Woody Allen is he practices all the damn time. The guy's been making pretty much a movie a year since the early 70s. It's astounding that he constantly... Every given year, there's a Woody Allen movie out in theaters.

I kind of wish Judd Apatow maybe was offering, because maybe he would. I don't know. I feel like he's going to this kind of slower pace and it's not helping him that he has, it makes this is 40 feel like all the more like that much more of a dud that we had to wait because like, and you know, the funny people wasn't that great either. Like it was like, no, it was okay. It wasn't terrible.

It was actually terrible, but it was, he was trying to do that same thing. I mean, a lot of movies, it was pretty serious. It was like, yeah, I mean, it definitely felt original. Like, it was trying to, even before 50-50, it was like the cancer comedy before 50-50. And I thought, you know, once 50-50 came out, I was like, this has already been done, so I'm not even interested.

But like the fact that he was the first person to take a crack at it was kind of interesting. But the funny cancer movies? The cancer comedy. The 50-50 was really good. The 50-50 was good, but I mean, at the same time, I was like, you know, this was made like two years ago with that same guy in it.

It's a little odd that he. Would want to do this again. What's up with him doing cancer movies? But I mean, You know, I think one difference is if you were to compare Woody Allen, I mean, he. Is much.

More socially inept. than Judd Apatow. Judd Apatow, I think, is well-adjusted, you know, the common guy. Woody Allen is not, he's not right. I mean, he's, I mean, he's not, I don't think he can do that. He's fighting pop culture and Judd Apatow is always in love with pop culture.

Right. I don't think he knows, he's a nerd in that he loves film. God, I love him. He's fantastic at his craft. Basically, what it sounds like, yeah, and it's Judd Apatow almost refuses to exploit his own niche.

Yeah, maybe. Or needs to embrace the niche that he's in. I think he needs to embrace. His limited capacity for. Almost like.

He's staying broader than he needs to be, so that way he can eventually build a following to make... I don't know. Well, even the setup for this is... I mean, the This Is 40, they're tapping into that. We're going to get all those people that are out for their... you know, they've taken the kids to the babysitters and they're going to get out and go see this movie and they're going to love it.

And they're all going to buy the DVD DVD because it's there. It's them in their lives and they're having trouble with money or their relationship or whatever. You know, it's, Hey, they grew up with, you know, these, these comedy movies, but life sucks now. And so, you know, I don't know. It's almost a formulaic and like they did.

Okay. Let's do a demographic study on what movie the people with the money are going to go see. And that's it. This is our niche. I think he's just running into a dead end because I mean, you know, funny people didn't get really any recognition critically or financially.

Right. And the same is pretty much going for this, uh, And they were so desperate saying, it's the sort of sequel to Knocked Up. I don't think hardly anyone would have seen it had you not attached the Knocked Up signal to it. And it's so weird that, I mean, it doesn't really spoil anything. I mean, like Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, neither of them are in the movie at all.

Which I thought that was kind of odd. I mean, I could have my own theories as to why that probably. Was the case. Because Katherine Heigl doesn't need to be in any of these? Yeah, well, Judd Apatow still, I think, has a brush.

That is not a love story. Because Captain Hyde was shooting six other horrible movies simultaneously. And probably Seth Rogen was probably, I bet, you know, they probably asked Seth Rogen, he was probably filming something. There is a scene where you do see Seth Rogen's picture, like, hanging on a wall, and that's, like, as far as they. See, that sounds about as forced or silly as having.

It's very shoehorned. I almost wish he totally. That's got to be up there with the Sean Connery picture in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yeah, I was going to say, I wish they hadn't included it. I almost wish this was an alternate version where this family...

It's like a sitcom thing. It's this family, but it's an alternate universe where the Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl... they don't exist or they're not important, but they still had to shoehorn that picture. And like, it's weird that they don't mention, cause like there's this hole in the movie, like it's a buildup cause they're turning 40. It's like having a birthday party and like neither of those characters shows up and it's like, Hey, she's supposed to be your sister. And they could have at least had them die in a car accident.

Yeah. Right. It was just weird. But I mean, it's like, why couldn't your sister be here? Oh, they're stuck out of town on this.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They go audience. Say that literally, actually. And the audience will go, yeah, whatever. We don't care either.

But I think just Apatow is just... He's just. He likes to... All his movies are just like riffs. Like a bunch of riffs.

Like that just kind of don't really... I don't know. I mean, I say there's a story there, I guess. But it's just a story made of riffs. Of like people just...

I don't know, like. Having arguments about relationships and making a funny joke or a pop culture reference and then cut to a scene at an office where they're doing the exact same thing. You know, I don't know. The best part about 40-year-old version was the deleted scene when Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen were doing the, you know how I know you're. Gay bit back and forth?

Yeah. And it was like five minutes where they went back and forth. That was a... Yeah. That was the best scene in the movie and it wasn't in the movie.

So, I mean, they do it for like. Yeah, the long version is not even in the original movie. It just seems so dumb. Oh, it is dumb, but it's still. It's just so juvenile.

I'm like, really? This is what made how many millions of dollars? I don't know. I'm just... I think I want more for my comedies, damn it.

And see, that's the whole thing that kind of thrills me off. It's like, Judd Apatow is already a name after Four-Year-Old Virgin had knocked up. Yeah. And Superbad. Superbad is not his.

It is. He produced it. He didn't direct it. Didn't he co-write it? Did he co-write it?

I don't know. You complete him, man. When they say it's Shadaptel, they totally take into account his production. You have to. He's a brand at this point.

Yeah, he's a brand. That's the thing. I feel like a lot of maybe what. The problem with him could be like with the movies he directs is he, I think he has this fear of like wanting, like I have to separate the movies that I direct from the movies that I produce. The movies he produces, I find fun though.

Yeah, that's the thing. But I feel like he just wants to separate himself so much. He just doesn't want, which I think, I mean, I don't like the way he tries to separate himself so much in the direction he's going with like being super serious. We're talking super bad, right? It's a fun movie.

No, it was Seth Rogen co-wrote it. Okay. And Evan Goldberg. Okay. I was thinking he just produced it.

Superbad. Superbad. Damn. This dude is bad. And he ain't just fly.

He's super fly. Yeah. When it comes to women, they come to him. But it's still not enough. He wants a big score.

A million in cash. Yeah, the big one. This is a chance, and I want to take it. Now. Before I have to kill somebody.

Before somebody ices me. What kind of money are we talking about? I quit now that I took all this chance for nothing, and I go back to being nothing. Working some jive job for chump change. Day after day.

Look, if that's all I'm supposed to do, then they're going to have to kill me because that ain't enough. Ain't I clean? Bad machine. Super cool. Super mean.

Feeling good for the man. Super fly. Here I stand. Secret stash. Heavy bread.

Baddest bitches in the bed. I'm your pusher, man. Can a super fly Harlem dude lead the system? He's got a plan to stick it to the man. He's super hood, super high, super dude, super fly.

Hey, Mom. Yes, you. Why fuss and fret about dinner? Why not have it right here? Yes, this drive-in offers everyone in the family a real picnic treat for dinner.

We've got delicious sandwiches with all the trimmings and your other dinner favourites, plus whatever you want to drink, hot or cold. Come early before the show starts, or eat while you're being entertained, or at intermission time. So why fuss? Give your family a tasty dinner at this drive-in. I'm Dangerous Jamie.

Joining me, as always, is Sarah, and we're going to talk to you about why you should be listening to the Gold Press Broadcast. Let's do that. Let's, indeed. Why should they be listening to the Girl Press broadcast? Well, firstly, because it's awesome, obviously.

Obviously, and that's a given, or a given. A given, yeah. You can expect nonsensical puns like that. Yeah, with zero content. Absolutely zero content.

But also, we review horror films. Mostly, we review horror films, I would say. Well, yeah, that's probably the bulk of what we do. We also look at new releases, top five lists. Yeah.

We cover theme months. Yeah, we do some horror news. Yeah, tell us about the theme months that we've covered. We have done Horror Behind Bars. Yeah, we did Clowntown, where we looked at clown movies.

We did. We've done Trash Kings. Trash Kings, where we looked at the films of Fred Olamre, Jim Winovski and David Ducato. Yeah, we've done a bunch of stuff. We've got Revenge Month in the works, Trauma Month.

So yeah, loads of stuff like that. Loads of stuff. So if you like horror films, you should probably listen to Go For It Scorecast. Absolutely. We're here and we're ready to believe you.

So that's not all you can get. You can also get extra super bonus content when you subscribe to the feed. Tell them about it, Sarah. Tell them. Tell them now.

We do the Gorepress Gorementry, which is basically us shamelessly ripping off Mystery Science Theatre. Yeah, basically getting drunk, chatting. Over the top of a film and hopefully being quite. Entertaining, I think. There are two ways to find the show.

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Tune in, drop out, stay spooky. I'd recommend this show to anybody. Anybody who's into smut. Tweet Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds. Available in three styles and seven colors, durable and designed to sound great for both music and those chatty podcasts, like the one you're listening to now.

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This is John Stalberg Jr. And you're listening to Movie Meltdown. Where are you? I was gonna clean my room until I got hot. I was gonna get up and find the broom, but then I got hot.

That's part of your problem, you know. You haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies. And now, on with the show. Woo!

Yeah! Hey, hey, oh yeah. I've been had my eyes on you for a while. Girl, it's something. About your hair.

Can I show you like your style? Maybe it's the way that you carry yourself. Or maybe it's the way that you wear your hair. You move with the feeling and you sure know how. No, no, no.

I love that movie. The reason why I laughed was because you just unearthed a memory that was so far suppressed. I watched that when it came out on VHS and reviewed it for my school newspaper because when I was in the 8th grade, I always reviewed completely inappropriate. Things for my elementary school newspaper. It hasn't changed.

I was going back through stuff and I was like, oh my god, I reviewed Sex, Lies, and Videotape for my. Elementary school newspaper. 8th, I think. Whatever it came out. This explains so much.

But I was like, and I totally missed the point of the film, thankfully. Yeah, it's probably the best at that point. But I just don't know who the advisor, the teacher was that was like, sure. They were smacking a lot of the teacher's lap. They didn't give a shit.

Okay, who else watched them? I watched a couple. One that I'm still trying to pin down whether or not I liked it, and I think this happens with the. Um, somewhat comedy, drama, independent films, um, genre. And this is the, um, Jeff who lives at home.

Oh, Oh, Oh, I love that movie. Okay. You know, I, I really liked, you say love. I really liked it. I liked the path that it went down.

I didn't even know what to expect from it. I was just like, Oh, okay. We're going on this journey. Kind of like Jason Siegel's going on this journey, uh, He's just getting there. I thought the Susan Sarandon bit felt a little forced.

But wasn't it fun to have Rae Dawn Chong back. For a little bit? Oh, no. I've been looking for more of her since Commando. And I thought she was great.

And I liked the exchange at the water cooler. This is the first person I've had to talk about. It with, so sorry. I haven't seen it since last spring when I saw it in the theater. And I declared it then my favorite movie of the year, not having seen anything else this year, and it stayed.

You know, I think by the time you get to the climax, you've kind of incrementally been stepped toward. If you heard that that was going to happen at the end, you'd probably go, you know, but you've been led to believe enough things have happened along the way. You're like, okay, I can accept this. Um, I, but I wondered if, if, is it a, you know, was it to me? Cause I really liked it and I didn't want, you know, I, I, I did really like it, but I was trying to decide if I, if I did like it or if it was a genuine, if it was genuine, I.

Don't know how to put it that way. Am I being tricked by that independent style movie mindset where you watch it and you're enamored by it and then you realize go, yeah, then you realize go, wait, that really wasn't good. No. Okay, tell me though what I'm right about. You were absolutely right.

It's a perfect film. I don't actually want to talk about it at all because I want people to go into it not knowing anything. Because I didn't know anything and I was just completely enamored by it. I thought that I loved all the characters. It was so watchable.

It was so funny. It was just a delightful thing to experience. It had something to say. It was smart. I loved it.

Yeah it's you can go into it easily it's not it's comfortable pajamas kind of a movie you know you're not you don't have to yeah think yeah it's it's good but i still don't i still i'm i'm maybe i'm still too close to it by i'm trying i'm being guarded in that i don't want to come back and go oh wait that was crap you know later on do a 180 on it down the road and that's what i'm guarding. Against so well i hope that i don't because maybe you should never see it again okay. No it's it's it's good it it'll it'll um yeah it'll it's good to. Watch oh i also saw i forgot sleepwalk with. Me yes which i watched that recently too.

I liked it um yeah i like like from getting in like it was very enjoyable very funny like i always liked um Mike Birbiglia, like, his stand-up was really funny. I do think, like, it does kind of suck because, like, I had already heard, like, his stand-up routine. So, like, a lot of the funny jokes in the movie were just, like, literally taken from that and, like, I already knew the jokes. So I felt like if I hadn't heard that, it would have been even more funny. But it was still a really, like, kind of interesting, kind of, like, Woody Allen light, almost.

Yeah. You know? I like that he directed. It was him doing the direction. It was his own thing.

Yeah, and he was, like, talking to the camera. That was really interesting. Yeah. It's still like this like running joke like with him that just cracks me up like in all the stand-up he just has this weird obsession with eating pizza like that he has to always work i love to i love to see that it was definitely included into the film like that's that's just so funny to me like uh no i thought it was pretty good I think it. Was a really good year for those movies.

Like there weren't any of the films. I don't really know what the Oscar films are going to be. Like I don't, I haven't seen any movies that are supposed to be good and I haven't seen that yet, but I haven't like those big studio films. It's probably going to be like Lincoln and Ms. Rob.

It's going to come down to Lincoln or Zero Dark Thirty. It's my, like, 100%, like, one of those two movies. I've been underwhelmed by the studio, like, the bigger films, but I will say that, like, for... I hate to use the word quirky again, but, like, for just, like, the independent comedies. It has been a good year.

Like, Ruby Sparks, I thought was charming. The sound of my voice... That wasn't... That was more of a dark. It was charming, but it was good.

Um. What else am I thinking? I think the door would have been opened for The Master this year. The movie that I expected The Master to be is so much better and Oscar-worthy than The Master is. I hated that film.

But weren't you built up like, this is going to be it? I don't trust P.T. Anderson anymore, so I really wasn't. If it had been P.T. Anderson of days gone by, perhaps.

See, I haven't been disappointed by him myself, but. Do you feel they're going to have pressure to nominate at least some of the actors just because it was such a big build-up? Because I've wondered that going in. I was like, everybody's been kind of underwhelmed by that movie, but they built it up so much. And Oscars are always sort of like...

I don't think the Masters have really. Been that built up as an Oscar. It really hasn't. It came out too early. No one's been talking.

About it lately. And now it's been sort of forgotten. I think that Walking Phoenix... He has a pretty strong chance of winning. Because another one that was built up a lot for the Oscars and then just died at box office was Hitchcock.

I don't even think that was ever going to be an Oscar. That just looked kind of like cheesy entertainment. Yeah, it was all right, but it was nothing impressive. That's the thing. I expected to like it more.

I mean, it was just sort of a run-of-the-mill retelling of the story. It wasn't bad. It's just I expected a little more out of it. It's a fun companion piece with the girl, though. Have you seen the girl?

The HBO, I think it's HBO. The one that just did this year? Yeah, the Sienna Miller. It's his relationship with J.P. Hedren as opposed to his relationship with Janet.

Leigh, which is two very different relationships. So if you watch them back-to-back, they're cumulative sum of their parts. I should do one about his relationship with Leo G. Carroll. Now, my vote for the Oscars, though, is the.

Film that I thought Master was going to be. In an alternate universe. Right. That will sweep the. I'm going to say Samsara, which is not going to be acknowledged whatsoever.

No, it totally won't. Maybe that should. Probably because it's too good. It wouldn't even be nominated for like. Like, story concept.

Like, not script and not film. Documentation. We were really expecting this. The last couple Oscars, like, this included, it kind of bumps me out because it's like, I totally know, like, I know what's going to win. I know what the stuff I love, like, I know that none of it's going to get nominated.

So, like, I'm kind of not that invested. And usually I am. I still like the big show of it. I kind of like the ridiculousness of the whole thing. But I'm just so... invested in any of it.

Well the last three or four years have just fallen flat i mean even billy crystal last year i felt like they were like okay we're gonna go ahead and get billy crystal for you to be able to redeem what the past two or three shows have been sucking. It's like, past the opening montage, I was like, this has fallen flat and he's barely on. It's just, it didn't work. I will always love the pageantry. The fact that the statement Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon is a thing has completely destroyed its credibility as an award show, but I like watching it.

I like the costumes. Wait, what did she win for? And I like. Walk the line. Yeah, walk the line.

Which I thought was overrated in and of itself. Agreed. It wasn't even as good as Ray, which that movie wasn't even that good. No, I mean. I didn't know she won.

I'm surprised by that. No. I still like. Oscar winner, Sandra Bullock. Yes!

That came after that. That is like the. I'm sorry, is it just me, or is that movie unintentionally racist? I feel like it is. It might be intentionally racist, frankly.

I don't know. It's just. It's like overcompensating racism. This is what's going on. We're going to go so far out of our way to pretend like we're not racist that by that very.

Nature, we're almost. It's like I'm supposed to care about this female character to where. It's like I'm a rich, egotistic white woman who... is going to continue to be rich, continue to be so egotistic that I see this poor black kid on the street and I'm going to take him and shelter him because only through me will he ever be able to succeed. All we need is rich white women. To me, it just struck me as just very backwards.

But if there are any rich white women out there who'd like to sponsor the show, take. Us under their wing. Nothing against the wealthy among you. Glad. Yeah, what is at stake with her?

I mean, really, what's she got to lose? She doesn't change throughout the course of time. Because when there's the thing at the end where they're like, they kind of gloss over, but that was part of the real story. But they gloss over it. They're like, we have to include this part, but we're not going to dwell on it.

And I was like, oh, I'm pretty sure that really is how that went down. No spoilers. Yeah. Plus, they're all millionaires anyway now. So I don't know.

I thought out of the ten nominees that year, that was the weakest of the ten films nominated for Best Picture. Oh, it totally was. I think everyone felt that way. I think based on my wife alone, my wife never goes to the movie theater. Well, I'd say never.

I'm talking once or twice a year. And she has gone twice to see Les Mis already. I can't not win. As far as. So has everybody in the friggin' city.

Well, that and Lincoln. Yeah. Lincoln, I mean. I haven't heard anything about Lincoln. No, Lincoln, we just.

Anybody who's seen it. We were selling out on Lincoln this weekend, and we've had the thing since before Thanksgiving. It was selling out. It was all, like, really, really old. I have white guilt.

I'll see this movie. It's the help all over again. Can you just please bring back the Vampire Hunter movie so that they can get. We actually been at one of the other matches there. We.

Our Lincoln poster that was out in the mall, it got completely worn out. We had to replace it. We didn't have any new ones. We ordered some, but in the interim, he actually made a Lincoln poster out of the Abraham Lincoln vampire. We still had like upstairs.

That would be good. I think he probably could have done a better job with the Lincoln lawyer poster from, cause I think we probably still had some of those too. How long ago was that? Was it just two years ago? Two years.

Matthew McConaughey is Abraham. I think that was just last year because it came out at the same time as The Conspirator, which was the Lincoln movie. It's like there's too many families. Oh, man. People love that Lincoln movie.

That was a rough one to sit through. I saw that in. Theaters. Those might have both been this spring, maybe. What I want to know is when are they going to make the Lincoln Log movie?

That's a good question. They made Battleship. Yeah. I mean, come on. Lincoln Logs.

And then they'll make the porn version of that. Oh, no. David Lynch to make it. Here you have the log lady. Like an origin story.

Oh. I'd probably watch it. Genius. I would watch it and then declare it crap, but I would enjoy it. I would enjoy hating it.

But it's going to be like a toy story. In theory. You know. We'll get Tim Allen involved. It'll be hilarious.

I would love to see, like, a Steven, like, especially one of his later ones, like Lincoln, just to like strip off, you know how they had that on YouTube, you can watch like the sitcom, like Big Bang Theory, like without the laugh track. And it's just like a train wreck. You don't even know like how I feel like if you took John Williams out of the movie Lincoln, it would be just as much of a train wreck. Like you so need his swelling music for like to get any emotion out of every scene. It would just be so weird and bizarre to see it, like, with just the dialogue, because it's one of those movies that's just made to have, like, just.

Well, you could probably say that about a lot of films, though. But I feel like Lincoln was, like, especially, like, it was just like, John Williams! Because it was all, like, I felt like Spielberg was like, this is the first movie I've done that's been, like, maybe the color purple, that's closest to it, that's, like, sort of, like, theater-ish. Like, so, like, I don't know, like, the emotional moments are just from, like, confessions and. Like, Theater-ish as in almost, like, stage-like in the way that it's done.

Yeah, and, like, I think maybe because he's such, like, a showman, and, like, he has these... I feel like most of the time he has some kind of action, like, or set piece going on, and, like, all the set pieces, you know, for lack of a better term, are, like, you know, scenes where he's just sitting at the end of a table and just arguing about, like, why they need to, for whatever reason, with the... But anyway, the John Williams music is just such a heavy presence. With the very fact that he went with Daniel Day-Lewis, it's like, how can we not give him the Oscar just by seeing a photo of him as Lincoln? That's potentially true.

They may just go ahead and have those printed out. And I totally realize how much that would be the case for most movies. If you just took out the soundtrack, it would just be like, what? This does not work. but he should, like John Williams almost, I just felt like it gets to the point where he should also be nominated for Best Actor or something. This transcends just score.

He's such a presence. Best overpowering presence. When, if any, I suppose it's like a movie trivia thing, but has Spielberg worked with other composers? He didn't work with Jerry Goldsmith for. It's one movie and I can't think of...

Was it Jaws? No, it wasn't Jaws. Jaws is John Williams. John's John Williams. I'm sitting here racking up brain, and I'm sure Brian's loving the silence on his podcasting show.

You can hear him. Clicking at the computer. You can just hear the typing. Oh, didn't he have Hans Zimmer for Saving Private Ryan? I'm pretty sure he did.

Was that Hans Zimmer? I think it was Hans Zimmer and John Williams. No, it was another. Hans Zimmer contributed... pieces to it, but it was John Williams also. That's like the only.

We're talking like complete non-John Williams. I know. I feel like. I don't know why. I honestly feel like.

Like he went cold turkey on his composition. No, John Williams. Get out of here. Because, I mean, even Elfman. I mean, even Burton branched away from Elfman a couple times.

I don't think that's a laugh. Yeah, I was going to say, how does that. It actually worked very well, I thought, for Ed Wood. Well, Ed Wood is. And I actually want to know.

Sondheim, I know, did the majority of the music for Sweeney Todd. Was Elfman used for incidental pieces on that, or was that all Sondheim? Like stock music? Oh, that's a good question. I've seen that movie once, and that was in theaters.

Keep typing over there faster. Welcome to Let's Google That podcast. I just recently re-watched Sweeney Todd because I hadn't seen it since it was in theaters. And I don't know why, I just kind of got in the mood for it. I don't know why either, yeah.

But I had completely, completely forgotten that Alan Rickman was in it, much less was the main villain. I was like, oh. It was almost like when I saw it for the first time, I was like, oh, Alan Rickman's in this. And he's very good. He's entertaining in.

Whatever he's in. It's not an unforgettable performance, though. Yeah. If you want to put it that way, because you wouldn't remember. I guess so.

I mean, it's just.... I love how, like, basically. I think somehow I've forgotten that Alan Rickman has been in anything else other than Harry Potter movies for the past decade. And Die Hard. Well, okay, that last decade, yeah.

For the last decade. No, it's like. That's basically true. I can't think of anything outside of the Harry Potter movies. Well, now Sweeney Todd, but I just associate him with playing Snape in, like, all the recent ones.

But as far as Snape goes, there's... I mean, all the characters in the movie, you can't... In the book, in the movie... They're like sort of what they're supposed to look like, but Alan Rickman is Snape. The description from the book is exactly what's on the screen.

It's probably the most perfectly cast character. He looks a lot like Hans Gruber. Oh, yeah. I'll be damned. So what say you, sir, down there, after all that frantic typing?

I don't know what you were looking for. What am I supposed to be checking? He was there. Oh, it's me. He was down there actually looking through, it turns out he just put up on Craigslist, need a new podcasting crew.

We'll see how it pans out. I'm just going to take a random stab in the dark. I'll say that Jerry Goldsmith did the music for Hook. I'm just totally guessing. Sounds plausible.

I've heard it's like this weird apocryphal story that apparently Spielberg got legitimately pissed off at Bob Hoskins and Dustin Hoffman on the set of Hook. Because they if you watch it they almost play it like an old gay couple and apparently well apparently um they almost any scene they would do they would up the homoeroticism so ridiculously from the get-go apparently it just like pissed spielberg off to where he would have to stop and just tone them down and then they would continue like they were doing it almost as a prank. See, I thought their relationship was one of the better things in that. I think so much going on with Robin Williams. Robin Williams' end is so bad that that was one of the more enjoyable things.

But apparently they just took the gag too far during one take in Spielberg. Kind of thought it was funny, but kind of was irritated. And apparently they kept doing it to the point to where it really was ticking them off. And then they really found it funny and they kept doing it. There's apparently a ton of outtakes with them.

I'm just not making. Out, but like. I can't wait until the special edition comes. Out. The make-out reel.

By the way, original music, John Williams. Oh, damn it. That's a good try, though. Well, I guess in that case, he must have been pissed a lot. Because wasn't he also.

Like. He was really pissed at Julie Roberts. To the point where they nicknamed her Tinker Hill... On set. Really?

You know, of all the people in that cast that you could say is going overboard and you get pissed off at, wouldn't Robin Williams be at the top of the list? You would think so. I mean, I think anything that Hoskinson and Dustin Hoffman could do would pale in comparison to five minutes with Robin Williams. It's Robin Williams being Robin Williams, though. Exactly.

I can't handle him in large doses. You're actually going to think this is really funny. bizarre for me to say but the only movie that i can and i actually go back and forth on whether i hate this film and it's complete shit or whether it's one of those movies that should have been given a second chance and that is toys. I really like re-watched it because i i've seen it once a long time ago and. That's why i appreciate how. How many chances barry levinson.

Took was that weird especially for as mainstream as that was in the cast and yeah him. It's just it took so many weird turns. And i just thought of that also because i associate with the hook because um it's what's that character actor's name arthur malay who plays um he plays the older version of i think it's peter is the character's name and hook isn't that right um He plays, like, the older version of him, and he's also, like, his attaché in toys. It's like the two work together for those two movies, like, almost back-to-back. But, I don't know, it's just Michael Gambon hamming it up in that.

John Cusack made it. LL Cool J. LL Cool J, yeah. Who was fantastic in that, I thought. One of his better performances.

I thought he out-Burtoned Tim Burton in that. Yeah, very much so. I think so. No, he's saying Barry. Levinson, Al Burton, Tim Burton.

We might have to have a toys special episode. I don't know if anybody wants to watch toys, but we'll probably. I'll re-watch it. I'll re-watch it. I own it.

I haven't seen it since I was a kid. I don't know if I'm ashamed to admit it, but I'm proud. I think it'd be interesting to dig back into that and nobody else would understand why I'm proud. Joan Cusack was fantastic in it, too. She was pretty good.

As a kid growing up, I wanted one of those video games that the kids are testing. And then I suppose it instilled in me what it was in turn making fun of, like the violence within video games and all this stuff was going. Because I was riding down the road with my parents as a kid thinking, oh, it would be so cool if I had that game and I could really blow up these cars. Actually, now just going back and just re-watching it since then, you know, do everything that's happened up in Connecticut. I was reading an article where they're having essentially a video, like a violent video game burning.

Essentially people can, they, you can, any video games you perceive as being violent in your home, you can bring them all in and dump them in the trash and get like a $ 25 gift certificate to go see like dinner and a movie or something. And it's being done. It's not in, um, it's, I can't remember what town it is. It's up there. Um, it's so weird.

Um, So that was a really weird direction to go. I'm sorry. I apologize for that. Video games. That feels like such a thing that would happen in 1999.

I'm like, really? That's happening? Doing a 180 in the sense I'm going to go in just a completely different direction here. We were talking about movies that we just watched recently, and I'm now going to have to go and look up the episode, the Apple episode. Oh, yeah.

Because I was, I came across that. I didn't remember how, I think I was just looking at just weird top 10 lists that bloggers had compiled online. And like, I was looking for something kind of in the vein of like fan with a paradise or Tommy. I think I even typed in like top 10 psychedelic rock movies of the seventies. It was like a very specific criterion that I put into Google.

And that came up and someone had put that at number one. I was like, I have never even heard of this. Or anyone really in it, save Olivia Newton-John. No, wait. Catherine Mayer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Who we actually talked to on that episode. Oh, I'm really going to have to check this out. But I watched it, and I thought, and it was kind of almost with toys.

It's like, this is a mess in so many ways, but yet. it is yeah. It really is I again I expected the train wreck and there's so much if. Anything the only thing that pissed me off was the ending I felt like they've gotten to the point where it's like we don't know where to go like you know they run off and they're with the hippie commune and all of a sudden next thing you know it's like years past yeah and then it's real choppy they all show up and it's like we're going to arrest you and all of a sudden God or the God allegory comes down in a limo in the sky and everyone walks into the sky with him and it's over and I was like A gold limo. Yeah. And I was like, whoa.

Okay, you were semi-subtle on the whole religious aspect. I mean, I suppose just the very fact that it's called the Apple makes it sort of blatant Adam and Eve. But just the whole discussion between him and, oh, Boogaloo. Yeah, just the discussion between those two. I was like, this is so cheesy.

Yeah. I love how it's already spoofing American Idol 20 years before anybody even thought of American Idol. It's amazing. I don't know. I honestly felt like that director had watched probably both Phantom of the Paradise and Rocky Horror Picture Show and thought, okay, I want to do something that's in the vein of Phantom of the Paradise because it starts off very similar because they both start off with the music number and then you back up and you see the record producer who's superior over this very sort of bizarre music world.

And then somebody else comes on with the love song. And it's like, I want this girl involved with this, but not this guy. And you've never the tryouts at the place. And there's a lot of similarities between the two, but at the same time, so much of it was just so bizarre. And you had these weird, like, you know, the BIM stickers and all this, I saw, and I felt like they were specifically setting up the machinations.

Like we could make this another Rocky horror picture show. We'll give them, like the very fact that they keep doing the BIM dance all throughout it. It's like, we could make this like the new time warp. I don't know that he was that conscious. Like the, the way they talk about that guy, he seems like kind of crazy and like almost lost in his own like weird world.

Cause I mean the other stuff he goes on to make and. Like, what else did he make? Oh God, do we need to, he's all over the place. I was watching, I was like, so much cocaine went into the making of this movie. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

You can just tell. But at the same time, it did very much have that sort of weird shock treatment, Tommy, Rocky Horror, Phantom of the Paradise. They all kind of fall into that mold of these weird sort of rock musicals that respond in the 70s and early 80s. Kind of, but I think it's so off because I think he's so out of, out of sync with the culture that he was working in, because I think he's, like, Iranian or something, like, he was, and did, like, movie. After movie there before he came here.

And started doing this, these kind of movies, and then later got into weird, like, producing all these, like, gung-ho American action movies, but, like, I think in that middle portion, like, he just seemed, like, everything seemed so weird and awkward, because I don't That was sort of that crossover area where he was trying to be so. Americanized, but he didn't get it. Yeah, like the whole hippie thing. It's like, that almost felt forced and outdated. Even for then, it felt outdated.

It's like he didn't get it. But yeah, he's directed like. 45 movies, and so many of them were before he got to. America that I think he was just a weird crossover. But at the same time, it's one of those things where I can objectively say it's a mess, but anybody who asks about it, I would wholeheartedly recommend it.

Yeah, he's from Israel. That's what it was. And yeah, she even talks about how he would just yell at people. He was just kind of crazy on set. So I don't know.

I think so much of that contributes to what it ended up being. The Israeli David O. Russell. I like. That.

He's quite a character, I'm sure. Speaking of David O. Russell, I was just hearing somebody talking about an interview they team with David O. Russell where he was explaining... The angry character in Silver Linings playbook was based on his son because his son has some anger issues.

I'm like, are you kidding me? Your son? Yeah, my cousin. No, David O. Russell, you have anger issues.

And that's what this movie was about. The character from the book, and he said he was drawn to it. Because of his son's problems. Because of his son. It's like, really?

God, you're such a jerk. I love watching. It's kind of funny. Like, if you guys. I don't know if you've seen it already, but, like, you know the Hollywood Reporter Directors Roundtable that they do every year?

It's, like, an hour long. They talk with all, like, the main directors of the major, like, Hollywood films. And it's... This year, it was just... It's always pretty awkward because the guy asking the questions never knows what he's talking about.

And, like, usually the directors are somewhat, like, hostile to each other in a weird subtle way. And this year was particularly, like, awkward. Like. Tarantino is clearly like taking jabs at David O. Russell and David Russell is just sitting there taking it like...

Oh, that's awesome. It's like Tarantino is like saying something like... And they ask him something to the effect like, do you ever, you know, have difficulty working with actors? Like, no, no, no. And in fact, like, you know, if you... antagonize, you know, your actors or something, you know, it was definitely, he was referring to Russell sitting right across from him.

He was like, that's the Les Lowe's you can go as a director as far as I'm concerned. And it was just silence. And David Robertson was just, he like almost mumbled, so he's like, it's just. Like, ah. So he's trying to get him to blow up.

And then there's like, Tamteno's doing his thing where he's just like, you know, going off. That's every interview with him. Yeah, and then Tom Hooper's like off to the side just giving him this like, shitty look, like just shut up already. Like, it's just so great to watch these videos because. I don't know.

What are these? How do we watch these? Well, it's like, it's every year, it's these roundtables hosted by the Hollywood Reporter. Like, they get all the main actors, they have an actor's roundtable, and they all talk with each other, and they have a director's roundtable, and they always pick the perfect combination of, like, people that would probably hate each other. You know what I mean?

Like, the egos are, it's just, it's always this awkward atmosphere, and the guy's this British guy who, like, pretends to know all this stuff about movies and, like, filmmaking, and he asks, like, all the wrong questions to, like, the wrong people. It's just always kind of awkward. You have to see it. It's just the moment where, like, just. Yeah, David O.

Russell is one I didn't really care for until I saw The Fighter, and Fighter I didn't think was, like, best picture worthy. It was a good movie, but not super great, but Three Kings, it was just kind of meh on. I loved Three Kings. And I Heart Huckabees was. That was a disaster.

Torture. That was sheer torture. I like Three Kings a lot. I didn't like The Fighter. I liked The Fighter.

I didn't love it like a lot. I was going to say, I'd say probably Three Kings for me is on par with The Fighter. I mean, it's a good movie, but. I thought Warrior. I liked Warrior more than The Fighter, actually.

Yeah, actually I did too. But. I've not seen it. I just. I think Silver Linings Playbook might be my favorite of his movies so far.

I thought it was great. I mean, I like then that it's a director that's growing as he goes then. But I did think it was hilarious that he decided to make a movie about a guy who gets angry and blows up, but it's not because he's a bad person. It's just because he's got some stuff he's got to work through, and he's a little misunderstood, so let's maybe hug him, okay? Subtle.

Very subtle. Right. And then won't even admit that it's him. Yeah. It's my kid.

That asshole. Right. I wonder who taught your kid, asshole. I'm such a good parent, though. Yeah, calling out your kids as having anger issues nationally is kind.

Of a dick move anyway. Going back to the whole thing, Samsara probably not being nominated for anything. Do you think they have hesitancy for nominating non-narrative documentaries for Best Documentary? Because, I mean, you know, Koina Scotzi, Baraka, all those. I mean, none of them have ever really fallen... into any kind of recognition when it comes to stuff like that.

I'm trying to think if Microcosmos was. Was Microcosmos nominated for Best Documentary? I don't think it was either. Was it technical, maybe? Maybe.

That's the only thing I can think of. The closest thing I can think of was Winged Migration. Sort of. I don't know. To me, the best documentary I've seen is Samsara, but also Hero Dreams of Sushi.

I would love to see get some sort of recognition. I feel like that's been so long ago. People have forgotten about it because it tends to be where they always nominate the documentaries that haven't been released in major markets yet. It's just the stuff that have made like the festival rounds at best. They cram it in in November just to be able to get in there.

And yeah, they use the fact that they've been nominated to get it out to. The smaller markets. Yeah. That's why I'm always just kind of hit and miss when it comes to the documentary. Tells everybody I'm searching for Sugar Man because I loved that.

I haven't seen it, and I've had a lot of people recommend. I don't know if it is. I thought it was brilliant. That's the one that I think most people have been talking about. I saw Ai Weiwei.

I missed that. That was very good. That's probably one of the better. Documentaries I've seen this year. But in a way of like documentarians that don't hardly get recognition, you know, Herzog typically doesn't.

I was really hoping he would have actually won. I was really hoping he would have won Four Encounters at the End of the World, but I'm not disappointed that Man on Wire won that year. Because, I mean, that's also an excellent movie. Yeah, I was going to say, that was also a great movie. I still haven't seen it.

Just, what was the guy on Death Row. The documentary he did on that? And I just watched, not long ago. That's like on my next, because that was the last documentary he did on that. My favorite documentary director for me, I would have to go with Errol Morris, though.

I just love the fact that he'll just point the camera at somebody and let them go. And he always picks the oddest characters, too. I think he's so... I don't know. Tabloid really upsets me.

Have you guys ever seen his movie? That's the only one of his that I haven't seen. And that's actually the one he won the Oscar for, but it's the only one I haven't seen. It's one of the best documentaries I've seen just about war in general and like I don't know. It's just the way he films these guys.

It's kind of, like you said, he just puts the camera on the right people. See, that's almost how I feel, though, about Herzog. I mean, he'll let the person ask, answer a question. He'll let them go on. For a little bit too long.

It comes in this awkward kind of, but he catches that extra kind of bit of weirdness. Yeah. The eccentricity behind his characters where they don't make them seem silly or crazy. It just gives them a little bit of depth. I mean, they try to pick They both tend to pick characters that are fanatics within their own realm, but not exploit that fanaticism.

I was thinking, in Grizzly Man, everyone that he talks to that loved the Grizzly Man or that he interviews, he lets them go, and then 15, 30 seconds longer, then they'll say one more thing because they don't know. What else to do. They're like, cut. And he did this, and you're like, oh shit, that's the real story. That's the part that I love about him.

He went through all that superficial stuff for them to get uncomfortable and say something. Yes, that's the part that I like about him. He did that a couple times at Encounters. At the End of the World. I love it when he goes to talk to the fellow who's been living amongst the penguins, essentially.

He even has the preamble with all these people where it's like, oh, this guy's not going to talk to you. He's throwing questions at him to finally get to go to him. It's like, have you witnessed homosexuality in penguins? It's like, and it's just like, he's still like cutting him short. And finally he's like, what about insanity?

And then suddenly the guy just goes off on like this. And also when he's talking about prostitution and he starts going into like the mating rituals of penguins. And then all of a sudden he gets them to be passionate and it's, but it's, it's very entertaining. And Morris does that too. I mean, like fast cheap and out of control.

I mean, he picked four very eccentric, characters that were very passionate about what they did. I really liked that one. Yeah. And Vernon, Florida, have you seen that one? That's one of his earlier ones.

I really loved that film and it's definitely his least structured, but I think that makes it absolutely fun because he essentially goes to this town. It's like in the middle of nowhere. And, you know, if you've ever been on a road trip or anything like that and You stop off at a gas station and you might idle and listen to these two old codgers who've probably been coming and sitting on that same bench for the last 50 years and having the same argument over and over. He basically went to this town and when he saw those people, it's like, what y'all arguing about? Put the camera on them.

Or when he just saw some fellow just kind of like wandering through his yard, fiddling with something, it's like, what you up to? And he got all these odd eccentrics from this very small town just to essentially ramble, but damned if it isn't engrossing. For me. Lucy's making a face at me. I haven't seen it in a really long time, so I can't really speak to that.

I remember having sort of a general sense that it felt condescending, and that was definitely my problem with Tabloid. I don't know if anybody saw that, the film. We made this year. I was going to say, which one was... Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, when was that one made?

That was 97. Oh, okay. I got that mixed up. That was a couple years. I was thinking of Tablo was the most recent of his.

That was a couple years prior to Mr. Death was Fast, Cheap, and. Out of Control. Tabloid, I felt, was very exploitative and sort of heartbreaking in the fact that I felt like this woman thought that he had approached her because she was interesting in a different way than he found her interesting. I mean, it's very.

That's, you know what, now that you put it that way, that's kind of how, in a lot of ways, the fog of war is. But, you know, I mean, you still get all this fascinating information out of these people. Like, I mean, and it's not like it's against their will. Like, they signed up to talk about this information, this guy did, about, you know, this, you know, being under the Kennedy administration and all this stuff. But the final product is certainly like, I mean, if this guy, you know, he was interviewing, like, had seen the movie, he probably wouldn't have agreed to it for sure.

But, Because, I mean, it paints this very gray picture. You think it's going to be this kind of nice, you know, he's just going to be this very progressive-minded dude talking about, you know, the ethics of war or whatever. And just by the end of the movie, there's just all this gray area that just kind of pops out, you know, out of nowhere. And, you know, you can totally imagine that the guy, you know, probably saw the finished product and was like, that's not cool. The even sadder part is that I guess the lady from Tabloid toured with it and brought her dogs out and they paid to have her autograph things and she sees herself as a very different sort of celebrity than he's made her and it's sort of heartbreaking.

That he's, I don't know. To me, my favorite documentaries have always been the ones where they just put the camera on somebody and just let them go because I remember years ago before they ever made Downfall, I'd seen Blindside, I think it's or blind spot, blind spot, not blind side. We're talking about that earlier, but blind spot. And, um, to where it was the documentary on Hitler's secretary. I mean, the woman was like in her eighties, nineties, something like that, but they just put the camera on her and just let her go about how she got the job, what it was like working underneath him.

And she was in the bunker during the last days because the movie downfall that they made was actually based on what she exposed or what she revealed in this documentary. And I don't think the thing ever cut. I seriously think it is just like an hour and a half take. And the whole time I was just absolutely engrossed in just her talking. And just, you know, you imagine like, what if you'd just gone to some very boring, you know, girlfriend's family get together and you just notice the old woman sitting in the corner and you just start up a conversation with her.

And all of a sudden she starts going all of a sudden, I mean, you were just instantly hooked. even though she's just talking about these very macabre things about, um, uh, Gerbil's wife, like poisoning their kids and stuff like that down in the bunker. And then just everybody, she goes in depth about how they all sat around one night and talked about if they were to commit suicide by blowing the brains out, what's the best angle to put a bullet to make sure that you don't just go through your face or through an area of your brain that's going to still keep you alive. Like, all these really grisly things, but it's damned engrossing. It really is. And not, I don't feel like it was exploiting or anything.

If anything, I feel like somebody realized that she was still alive and just said, we have to just capture her story because she was there. She's the, she was the only one who survived. And just even after that, she goes into all these details as to how she managed to get out of the war zone and not end up killed and not end up in prison, all this stuff. What is that one called? Blind Spot.

I think it's actually the full title is Blind Spot, Hitler's Secretary. What year is that? 2000... I want to say like 2003 or something like that. I remember I had it up with a couple of other Nazi posters.

We joked about how it was springtime for Hitler at the theater. We had Blind Spot, Hitler's Secretary. We had Amen, which was like the weird. Movie about the priest who had a Nazi coming to him and confessing, and there was one other Nazi film. There were like three Nazi movies that all came out within the exact same month at our theater, and it's going to drive me crazy that I can't think of the third one.

I actually feel like the third one is the most mainstream one of the three, but it's like 2002, 2003, somewhere in that realm. But yeah, the film Downfall is actually, it's essentially based on what she talks about in this interview I think it's even credited as that like in the opening it says based upon which downfall in and of itself is an amazing film just seeing Bruno Gans I think yeah it's a very heart-wrenching performance on him because I mean I thought I was going to essentially be watching something that was like a made-for-tv movie recreation I was like it's so weird because you almost want to care for this monster and. It's when you know they've done something kind of impressive. They go to that much trouble to make him an identifiable character.

That's why I thought it was so well done. They take it to such an extreme where it's like you sort of feel bad for these people. They're complete and utter evil but at the same time it's just Just the little things, like even when Hitler knows that they're losing the war, it's just him going around and greeting, not the Nazi equivalent, whoever the Boy Scouts were during that time. Like the kids who had shot some tank with a rocket launcher. Yeah.

The SS youth. Or was there a subsection of that? Is there like a Cub Scouts version. Of the SS? The Tiger Cubs?

I don't know. The older I get, the more I just dig documentaries. It's just that simple. I don't know why. And you're going to be eating more Werther's candies as you get older as well.

Is that where you're at? No, I'm just saying eventually you get there, I think. So, rambling eccentrics. Sounds very familiar. Have we rambled.

Enough for this? All right, let's get the hell out of here. All right. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week.

Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. We apologize to anybody who's made it this far. I think that's said at the end of every episode, isn't it? Yeah, pretty much.

And the beginning. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, Email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!