Reel Talk: Unsolved Murder of Bob Crane

We're Actor Bob Crane was murdered in nineteen seventy eight in his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. He left behind a legacy of a hit TV show that in recent years would change due to his personal life coming into clearer view. Wild sex parties, voyeurism, and more were the actor's nightly escapades, and that may have been what got him killed. His murder is yet unsolved. That seems like something worth talking about.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Scary Stories we Tell. I am your host, Chris Stashew, and I am joined by my good friend, all the way from a destination that's quite dark. He says good night to mister Walters once a week at least, I've been told, and he tells some astounding tales that come from the public domain. Your friend and mine, a man I've never seen, Father Malone. That's all my shows.

I can't even like, I can't even riel in here with some sort of snappy thing because I'm just overwhelmed with the sheer number of plugs you crammed into my introduction. You're welcome. Speaking of cramming things into places, on this episode of This Scary on this episode of scary stories we tell we're gonna be talking a little bit about a film, but more importantly, the case and the man associated with it. We're gonna be talking a little bit about the life even death of mister Bob Crane, otherwise known as the Hogan of Hogan's Heroes for those of us that aren't, I guess old enough to remember the show or even who Bob Crane looking for. But I don't want to say ancient, because, like you know, it's not.

It's more contemporary than I Love Lucy, which I know all about. Like Hogan's Heroes was old when I was a kid watching it, right, Like that's yeah, Like now it's like, like you said, like ancient, yeah, of the scrolls of old Right. Yeah. But we're gonna be talking about the life and times and death of mister Bob Crane, and we're gonna be using the film that came out in two thousand and two as a place to start. That film is Auto Focus, which you can find no plug here because we're not supported by them.

Over on Amazon Prime or wherever you find the lovely media that you consume, or if you want to legally download it, you can do that too. So, Father Malone, this is something that kind of you and I were talking about, but I think I don't remember exactly how did we come to talking about wanting to talk about Bob Crane. I don't auto focus came up somewhere in some conversation we were having, and I was like, I've never heard, I've never watched it, always wanted to. But where why are we talking about Bob Crane? Well, you and I are on a different podcast called Midnight Viewing the Night Gallery podcast.

In a recent recording, we're talking about an episode where Bob Crane was a guest star in a in a segment Okay with Ghost is the name of the episode from nineteen seventy one, and you had mentioned that that was the first time you had ever seen Bob Crane performing anything, which kind of staggered Mike and I, who both are of a similar vintage and both grew up in undated with Hogan Tiros. At least in my case, I know locally where I grew up in Boston, it was on every day, multiple times a day, Right, So I saw that series a lot, but you hadn't seen it, and you didn't I don't know if you hadn't Well, you hadn't seen Auto Focus either, right, so you didn't know the Casey existed either. I knew of the case only because Entertainment Weekly in two thousand and two covered the movie at some point in some fashion, and I remember getting Entertainment Weekly growing up, so that's where I would have seen info about the movie.

And again, like I know what Hogan's Heroes is, any I think I'm not young enough to have missed being introduced by my parents or knowing about vintage and classic TV, because again, like I mentioned, you know, I grew up watching a lot of I Love Lucy with my Mom, which is older than this show. So it's not like I don't know about quote older shows. But I mean this is yeah, I mean, this is not a show that I ever watched. And frankly, I mean they mentioned it in the movie, but I want to mention it here. The idea for this show is not something that could be made like this today, primarily because it's just like such a weird idea, not a bad idea, but it is a strange idea for a comedy sitcom.

It's yeah, it's it's very unusual for they're not that far removed. It's about twenty years, less than twenty years since the end. We're still alive from Yeah, most of the people involved in the making of the show were involved in the warm and everyone decided there's some comedy gold here. If we said it in a prison camp, I mean, unfortunately, if you say camp in World War two, the the the immediate thought is concentration camp, which they literally throughout the movie. Every time anyone mentions the show to him, they say concentration campany has to correct them, no, no, no, prison camp.

Prison, it's a pow camp. Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, it's the show is essentially the a sitcom version of Stalag seventeen, the sort of World War two prison camp flick um. It's kind of the greatestape too, right, Like, yeah, so it's it's less unheard of maybe at the time, but I don't know. I think you could do it today. Honestly, I don't.

People say you can't get away with this or that or the other thing. As long as it's funny, Yeah, no one will care. I think more it would be people would be having the same quibble that you see in the movie. And I'm sure there was obviously in real life with the concentration camp. It's not a concentration camp.

But again, like like you don't want a joke about that, obviously, but I mean again, like again, not going to say you can't, but just know what you're doing if you do it, and understand the backlash that you will incur by doing. But doesn't mean you can't make a funny joke like it's just it's it's not inherently comedic. I'm not advocating a show said in a concentration camp. I'm saying you could do a World War two pow camp. Sure, I agree, TV, but I'm saying I don't think I would do a concentration camp show.

Like that's not a thing that would ever happen. No, I will use we say that, but then that you know, people were like, you could never do a concentration camp movie, and they're like you, it has been done, and it has been done with grace, so um only wants to be fair. I'm not saying, again, not advocating a sitcom set in a concentration camp. Nor am I advocating even rewatching Hogan's Heroes. You know I mentioned I watched it ad nauseum as a child, like over and over and over again.

And I remember the credit sequence vividly. But I could not tell you the plot of one episode of Hogan's Heroes. And that's sure for like six years or something like that. So there's a plethora of episodes and plot lines to choose from, and I have zero idea of any of them. I mean, I feel like that could be the sentiment of a lot of shows from that time, right, just you know, no, but I remember that Gilligan switched brains with the professor with the Skipper at one point in one episode.

No, I can tell you the majority of the plot. Okay, okay, fair, but you well, you know what I mean, Like a lot of there's still sitcoms, Like the scenarios that they're mining in some of the cases are very quaint, like a lot of I Love Lucy stuff is like I baked a loaf of bread too big, or the laundry machine is on the fritz. Like there, it is situational comedy, so right, we like are going to crop up right exactly, But I mean, you know, with something like this with Hogan's Heroes, you get a specific brand, style and location of comedy that is to be expected. And again, you know, I watched a couple episodes and it's fine, it's fine armless right Like again, Like I say that you couldn't do it now only because I think people now are too sensitive about certain things and they would get hung up on it's a camp in World War Two and they wouldn't even if you even if you explained it to them explicitly, they still wouldn't care.

But yeah, watching it now, it's like, nah, whatever, it's just you know what it's like. It's just like if they set Mash somewhere else and it was and as good. It's it's a mild Catharsis of a show. You know. It's like we're making buffoons of the villains of their of their youths, you know.

Uh, because the entire premise is that the Nazis are dopes, complete morons of the highest order. Yeah, that are being played for the dummies that they are by the by these American prisoners. Like all the all the Nazis have as might, they have nothing else going for them. So the Americans are trapped on that level alone. But within that level, they're able to uh pull the wool over their eyes and you know, get what they want and dig tunnels and I don't know, I know there's some tunnel digging in there somewhere.

It's uh, it's it's look like a lot of things viewed now, it's very much of a time and of a place like that's that's. This is not a thing that people are mining this way in twenty twenty three, because there are other things similar to this that will be mined now that will not be mined sixty years from now, and people will look back on now and say, well, they were doing this because of this, just like they were doing this because of World War Two, and you know, it's a weird time capsule of a thing, right. But then we get to Bob Crane, who liked to fuck folks. He did. I don't want to kink shame, and I don't want to call anybody out, but in unhealthy amount for someone of his visibility, Well, he certainly couldn't get away with that to these days, now, could he.

I was going to ask you about that because Okay, so we need to get a couple things out in the open here. Obviously we're talking about the real life person and also the real life person as he's perceived through the eyes of Paul Schrader and the film Who is adapting from the Robert gray Smith book Who, And we've never talked about it on this show. I would like to at some point. Robert gray Smith has problems of is his own regarding the Zodiac case and his kind of conclusion jumping. It's a match that you jumped to the conclusion on.

That's what gray Smith did a little bit in Zodiac and especially in Zodiac unmask But this is again an unsolved murder that gray Smith is covering that someone is adapting into a movie that is fictionalized. So we're again talking about a real person, but we're also going to talk about the movie version of him. That Again, the movie has a point that it's trying to make, and it has a bias that it's going to be coming from, even if the filmmakers don't claim there is, but they're filmmakers, so there's gotta be. But again, all that out of the way, Bob Crane in real life was what would we consider him now a sex addict? I think that's what he would be labeled now, definitely right, unfairly deserved or fairly deserved.

Again, it's you know, the real life person is a lot more nuanced than the film. But Greg Kaneer in the film, I think is uniquely suited to play that kind of character, because I'm not saying that that's Greg Kneer in real life. But Greg Canar has never struck me as the kind of person that I'd want to be around again. But I think that's just the roles that he's given, that's the energy he has, and that's a that's that's a positive because I'm sure the person that is Greg Caner is a wonderful human being, but he always has these roles where like Bob Crane, you're about as disingenuous as you can be in this movie, and in this performance you kind of get to see the reality poked through towards the end.

But like Greg Kneer always plays someone who may or may not be on the level, and it would seem they're not. Yeah, you know, I had said before I rewatched the movie, when you and I were talking about it, I'd said that Greg Canear is perfect casting as Bob Crane, And on the surface, that still true because both Bob Crane and Greg Caner are terrifically smug human beings. They just radiate that, but they also radiate a genuine charm, so as you're saying, it's kind of hard to know where you stand with them, So in that way, like there's no other person you could have cast for it, right, But there seems to be a distance in Canary that you don't see in Bob Crane. Bob Crane seemed genuinely warm, right, and Kenear just seems genuinely distant.

That might just be the way the movie portrays him, because we never get to really dig into the guy, even though we're getting all the beats of his life and we're getting all of the parts of his life, the unsavory parts of his life that they want to focus on, but we never get too close to him. And that's why I wanted to mention this. You know, it is a movie version, and the movie is going to take some stylistic liberties to prove a point, or to reinforce a point, or to hammer a point home. And I think that's one of them. Is this like person that Bob Crane was outwardly because I watched some interviews with his son, because his son one of his sons.

Bob Crane Junior wrote a book about his dad recently and was talking about his dad, and his dad sounded like a wonderful human being, Like sounded like eight didn't treat his family poorly. I mean, look, he fucked around on his wife obviously, but he seemed like he was again outwardly facing a warm person, which in the movie they kind of try it and then it just never feels real. So it's like they drop it halfway through the movie, and I think they keep coming back to it. They keep showing him being like mister family guy. But I think the problem is, as you just said, we're like, are we supposed to invest in that?

Or are we supposed to invest in the other guy? Like it's all sort of schizophren we're kind of reviewing the movie here, we have we should just sort of tell what happens with mister Bob Crane in his life before we sort of dig into Paul Schrader's adaptation here and like how successful or not in it is? So Bob Crane, like we've mentioned, was on Hogan's Heroes for six for six seasons and then effectively afterwards his career. Look it happens to a lot of actors, right, you have one role, you're known for one role, and you know what, like some actors would kill to have had a role that is six seasons of anything. But Bob Crane got it, made the most of it.

He turned it into a show that got enough episodes to be syndicated. And if he had been alive long enough, he would have been a fucking multimillionaire because he owned twenty five percent of that fucking show and right, twenty five percent of ninety million dollars in like the nineties, imagine now like like it's It's again. It's a shame, but Bob Crane's career ends up having a little bit of a downturn right around the time Hogan's Heroes ends and he starts performing in dinner theaters and smaller productions. He's in a Disney film at one point, an episode of Night Gallery, an episode of Night Gallery where he's pretty good playing a smug asshole, playing type, playing a type. And then, as luck would have it, unfortunately Bob Crane met a rather well I think the word we would use ignominious end.

It's exactly the word I was thinking. Yeah, mainly because it happened in Arizona, in Scottsdale, of all places, folks. Yeah, and we know what happens in Scottsdale, Arizona. A whole lot of golf plan and a whole lot of old white folks running around enjoying being snowbirds. Because that's I've been to Scottsdale, Folks, as father Malone has two I'm sure, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not.

I'm not trying to besmirch the entire state of Arizona. I like a great deal of it, but maybe not Scottsdale, right, And I don't think I don't think we're far off from maybe a large portion of the people of Arizona, because it's it's not even Phoenix the way it is. It's like where the Hoi POLOI and fake Hooi POLOI attempt to mince about with one another and be seen. I guess that's my perception of scott Have you been to Winslow, Arizona. I got a big crater there, you see, that's more interesting than playing golf.

I think so with Bob Crane, but Bob Crane probably was Bob Crane was playing golf I'd want to go talk to Bob Crane because ignominious end indeed heldened to death. Bludging to death, oh man, it's awful. Bludgeened to death while sleeping. Here's the thing, folks. So he had a good friend named John Carpenter, the director of Halloween.

Wow. And this is not the same person I was led to believe it was. This man has a fucking film career. So he has this good name friend named John Carpenter, who is a video video whiz and video technician and equipment salesman who is equipping him with the coolest high fies and the latest video technology and VTR and video cameras and put put them both together. There's you know, Bob Crane's burgeoning fame and his love of ladies.

He's videotaping all of sexual dalliances, and they those the dalliances break up his marriage and then eventually threatened his career because word gets out, like after Hogan's Heroes. The reason he's doing dinner theater is because this is a this is a conceit of the movies. Like I don't know how you mentioned like we need to wait to talk about the movie. But again, like Some of this is informed by the movie, which again taking some of it with a green as salt. He did do Dinner Theater, but you certainly did.

But you know the back of the motivational stuff that we just can't know because you can't know what you don't know because we aren't Bob Crane and can't go ask him or be present for those things happening. Yeah, you know, when how Lindon was doing Dinner Theater, it was because no one was hiring Barney Miller because he was typecast. So in the early nineteen seventies, I don't know anyone wants to hire colonel Hogan. They've been watching him with buffooning Nazis for seven years, like in everyone's home, and he's like furniture, you know, Like why would you cast him in anything? The movie posits that he was he couldn't get any other work because of the because of his because of this proclivity for sex.

So anyway, in any event, he is very much into videotaping his This is fact he'd been to videotaping all the sexual downances with many, many many women, photographing many many of them, and ends up getting bludgeoned to death and the main suspect is John Carpenter, who will eventually be tried by the police, but it's found not Fialty. And and here we are today in this unsolved mystery and a movie based on it, based on a book. And did you feel like the movie took a stand as to who it was? I have my answer, Yeah, Okay, I feel like it did, but it was trying to not in a way that like Zodiac did, because Zodiac had the thing that I think is like the smart way to do it. Frankly, where Zodiac is played by like three or four different actors.

It's not just one actor in the movie, Zodiac is played, Yeah, but Zodiac Zodiac, No Zodiac calls it shot. In that last scene where they bring back the dude from the who gets shot, points at John carolynch goes, that's him, that's the guy, and then the movie ends. It's like, sure is that they make a very clear stance who they think the Zodiac And I feel like that is in response to the Gray Smith book doing the same thing, right, they were right to do it in this one that they were in this one. Paulistador obviously believes in the script does too, that John Carpenter killed this guy like it's the scene preceding it is. The is basically a breakup scene between these two characters, the idea being in the movie.

As as I spot have mentioned earlier, he can't get work because he has a reputation of being a pervert and sex addict and videotaper and you know peeper and what all, you know, all the all the terrible things, and so he is going to disassociate himself from John Carpenter played by Willem Dafoe in order to walk the straight and narrow and revive his career. And John Carpenter can't handle that because he can't get the chicks on his own. He needs Bob Crane's fame to make it happen, and in a fit of rage, kills Bob Crane. That's the movie. I mean, it's basically a breakup scene.

And then Bob Crane has a bad dream and then he gets bledged into death. I wish the movie had shown more restraint, But I get, but I get, but I get the narrative that the movie is telling. Because the narrative of Zoe the reason so many people don't like Zodiac is because it is an unsolved fucking case, and the thing that they do at the end of the movie is to please the people that could not walk out of that movie theater going you. I mean, they don't know who it is and we just sat here for almost three hours and we don't have an answer. Look, I get it, it blue balls the audience.

But like that's the reality, folks. Like the reality is there is no answer. I mean it's not. Let me put it this way with John Carpenter. In reality, it is not as clear and dried and obvious as the movie makes it.

Seen. Well, I disagree with you. I think John Carpenter is a murderer. He absolutely killed his career with Ghosts of Mars. Amber Heard is the real murderer.

She was the one who ended career. Yeah. God, I saw enough of it to know I didn't want to finish it. I've seen a lot of Facebook posts recently like but John Carpenter gives some interviewers like I'll come back, but I have a set of rules or something like that. People are like, oh, please come back.

I'm like, no, it's okay, don't worry. Let him keep playing video games anyway. Back. Haven't you made Haven't you made enough good movies that everybody loves? Like, what else you need to do?

He made great movies. Don't come back and ruin it at all. Don't do that. Back to the murderous John Carpenter, It's it's not that I don't think he did it, it's just you wish the movie didn't spend two hours leading us to that inevitable. No, I have no problem with the movie doing it, because again, it's a movie like it has an agenda like and that's a look, are you castigating Gray Smith?

Here? Are you? Are you carstigating the movie for I don't. I don't think I'm castigating. I guess I'm castigating the audience expectation that the filmmakers feel that they need to serve.

But here it makes sense because there's one person that is overwhelmingly a person of interest with Zodiac. It's like they're like, there are plenty of people. It's like, you know how many people were in the San Francisco Bay area, and you know when those murders were taking place, and then the ones that aren't women, but they again there you go. Then you've got the pool of people realistically, and then you can go further down, but it's still a lot of people. This is like it could have been him, maybe his ex wife, and like and or like, and then and again we get into what's effectively alien speculation in the alien camp, where it's like it could be aliens and this it is like it could be a hit from somebody's girl, you know, boyfriend who is mad that he's fucking that person's wife.

Absolutely, but like that that is all that for me in cases like this feels like the same, like it could have been aliens. It's like, well, of course it could have been that, Like duh. But that's not a fun thing to speculate because then you've essentially opened it up to everybody in Scottsdale. Like there you go, Yeah, exactly, but prolific if nothing else, right, So I mean, I I don't I don't think there's anybody who's a better suspect than John Carpenter. Yeah, I mean, look, they don't.

They don't show Willem Dafoe swinging the ranch or the pipe or whatever the hell it is. Oh it's a tripod, right, how beautiful? Which that's something they only found out in the nineties when they started revisiting the case and researching it. The guy that they brought in was like, let me look at the smear marks, because in the real murder, the murderer smears wipes the tripod off on the sheets, and he was like trying to figure out. So he compared the smear marks on several items and it was a tripod.

Wow, which is very on brand. If John Carpenter did kill him, come on, like you fucking shit, Like, come on, I thought, it is not the item you want to pick up and smack somebody with, Like, I don't care how heavy. It was probably aluminum or something like yeah, pretty hard, I mean right, like I would expect something like that's gonna like bend before it kills someone. I'm sure this is like what the early seven is. It was probably really heavy.

Yeah, it was like made out of like steel or yeah, swing it real hard, clock him real. I mean that's the thing. You can find the crime scene photos online if you watch the movie. You don't really have to because they more or less recreate it like, yeah, it's horrific, it's awful beautiful, yeah, but terrible beautiful and it's grotesque. Eye I mean, it's grot ask, but he just gets blunted.

There's no torturing, drawing and quartering, nothing, It's just being clocked over the head. But somehow it ends up being ask. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I don't need to see all the build up to the fucking event, Like you can make the event shocking enough that you know, it seems seems lazy. The other way, Well, Paul Schrader is a you know, he's a hell of a filmmaker, right, and he loves talking about the male psyche, doesn't he he does.

He's that's where he spends a lot of his time. So I mean this, this movie in a lot of ways, is a spiritual sequel to hardcore, right, like, uh yeah, but the Underbelly of Hollywood. Yeah, yeah, Well I think Paul Schrader is just interested in the underbelly of everything, right, that's fair. It's very male centric, especially with this Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know I can't really think, well, I guess a light sleeper. He's kind of a co lead in uh Susan Sarandon, but um yeah, I mean all of all of his leads seem to be dudes.

He the experience he can speak to as a right. So yeah, I mean he's writing what he knows, I guess, but you know he also write he also out the part of Jesus for the Last Temptation of Christ, but you know, as the ultimate white interpretation of Jesus. But every one of his movies are deeply spiritual movies like People's. I read something about Martin Scarsese. Somebody said about Martin Scorsesees movies that his films are all about the wrong ways we look for God.

And I believe that to some extent. But really, the Martin Scorsese movies that embody that sentiment are the ones written by Paul Schrader, and those continue in all of Paul Schrader's movies there, all of his characters are always looking for God in some way, and sometimes in baffling ways, and sometimes heart core like yeah, yeah, I'm the hardcore is the sort of most sort of I don't know, obvious. I don't like that, Mary, I mean, I get it, I'm not sure I'm a fan of it. It's fine. I like George C.

Scott, but like he also he's also his own bundle of fun. Right, But you know, all of Schrader's movies are kind of of a piece. They are very male centric, but I think more than that, they're they're they're more a yearning toward God. In whatever underbelly our lead character seems to find themselves and this one's no exception. And what's interesting is juxtaposing the world of high technology against the world of I guess the underbelly smut creation world and the kind of weird history that this movie, I mean again, it taps into it of the how the technology is following along with Bob Crane's life and his I guess perversion grows stronger and stronger the better the technology is getting.

Yeah, where again the movie I'm taking I'm not taking the movie at its word that he's thinking about these people necessarily, but like, it's very interesting where our lead has spent his life sort of as a hobby at this point, because he's when the when the film starts, in his life in his career, he's a successful djum and at night plays drums at like strip clubs, basically which he's not getting any money out it. That he's just doing it because he likes playing drums and he likes being in that environment. But you know, and I'm sure if if he's a cheater, eventually he was cheating already with whatever, like you know, right, hey, I assume he was. I mean he I assume And by I assume, I mean go look it.

In real life he was video he was photographing his sexual dalliances long before, right, right, what's unsurprising, right, This is not behavior that was like, oh it just happened one day. I don't think so. Yeah. So is the movie like just a sneaky condemnation of the availability of pornography that that it escalates you and your behavior, you know, like once once it became readily available for watching, right, Not so much the videotaping of it, Like once once he could watch it, like he became even he became so obsessed with that in the lifestyle, it entail that people his manager, his agent played by Ron Leedman, who shows up every twenty minutes ago, what the fuck are you doing? Basically, you know, his manager telling him, like, your career is going to go away.

People are talking about you doing this, and he's anyone in Hollywood, in fear of their career evaporating would stop doing those things with pom Crane, this looks like, nah, fuck it. So it seems like that the movie might be a condemnation of that, or is it trying to figure you're out who this guy is in the face of all of it. Like the murder in the film almost seems an afterthought, like it's not a mystery like I keep saying it like labeled as sort of this docu drama mystery thriller, and it spends the whole movie showing you what the conclusion is going to be. Right, The best endings for movies are the endings that are essentially, like you said, an afterthought or with a different parlance, even an inevitability, like yeah, it's a it's an afterthought because it's an ability.

It's in and up there, Okay, it's in an inevitability because we again, like you said, there's no question it's Willem Dafoe in the movie. Right, Uh, it's inevitable, Like it's an afterthought because like that's what they're getting to, it's the journey getting there, right. So, but in that journey along the way, what what is Schrade or even trying to say to us here, Like is he saying that that thing is the technology exacerbates this problem, or or is the thing even a problem. It's when he tries to stop that he gets murdered, but he gets murdered by the thing. I don't know.

It's the movie is a lot deeper than that. It sort of lets on in the surface. But the problem with the movie not to change gears when I'm asking questions or anything. But the problem with the movie ultimately is we never feel any strong connection with Bob Crane as a person. He just seems to sort of cipher because he's presented supposedly as he was, which is this deeply depraved guy who was also the most decent human being, and like, it doesn't do anything with that information.

It just sort of presents it, like the fact that he was both these things is a fascinating thing and is worth exploring, And it doesn't really do it. It just sort of shows the two. I don't know, it's I don't know, I don't know what I'm saying. Well, I was going to, I mean, I was going to address kind of what you're getting at. I mean, I think in a lot of ways, I don't think it.

I don't think it really cares about Bob Crane, the movie does in a lot of ways, like he's not it's less about him and more about what he represents in the grand context of like the underbelly of Hollywood or just Hollywood at the time and the world that he lived in. Treating someone like that, But again, I think it's more trying to speak universally and less just using Bob Crane as the vehicle through which to do it, which I mean again like Last Temptation of Christ, essentially do the same thing with Jesus, Like it's not like it's an unknown thing to do it. That's normally the point of a movie that's done well is not you're not just retelling the life of the person, but using it to contextualize something you're talking about in a way that is easier to digest than just writing it down and expecting somebody to have the wherewithal to understand it.

So I feel like Bob Crane gets lost in his own movie because I don't think he was that exciting in real life in the way the movie wants him to be, and his own kid kind of makes it seem that way. And yes, maybe he's downplaying his father a little bit. For the sake of himself. But he also did write a book about his dad titled Like Sex Something Else and Like an Unsolved Murdered My Father Bob Crane. It's like, it's not like he's not willing to be open and honest because everybody knows it now, like it's out in the open thanks to something like the movie and the fact that he was a big time actor on a big time show that got murdered long before he should have died because he's forty nine.

Wow, really, yeah forty nine man, Like that's dude. Didn't look forty nine in the movie either. When they show like old Bob Crane, it's like he looks like he's like a sixty year old man too. It's yeah. They try to make Bob Crane not important in his own story because the other stuff, the ruminations on these things are more important, which I get, I mean, which they could do, But we spend an inordinant amount of time with Bob Crane and come away kind of with nothing, because I guess my problem with the film is I do find this idea that he's a decent family man and a hedonist of the highest order at night because I'm not king shaming him at all.

I say go for whatever the fuck you want. Say yeah, like like, go for it, But at the time I can definitely see where you don't want word of that getting out and it might have repercussions on your career and your reputation in your family and whatever. Let's contrast Bob Crane's life with someone else that's more contemporary, that is less Again, it's not a lesser or more question Army Hammer. Yeah, right, there's a pretty good analog here, right, at least when we're talking about the levels of behavior in depravity quote unquote, Bob Crane was just fucking an orgies, right, Again, that's the way the movie presents it. Maybe he was up to all sorts of really depraved stuff.

Outside of that, the movie also paints Bob Crane as not down with the LGBTQIA plus movie meant at all, which again, it works narratively for the story they're telling, that's for sure, But again, like how close that is to the reality of Bob Crane, we will never know, because he would he would never be honest about what he was doing in any of those things, because again, look what happened to people who were at the time. Yeah, Yeah, what's the question here? Like it is it? Ultimately the people of the nineteen sixties and early seventies did not want that their sitcom start to be having orgies and videotaping it and taping and taking photographs of young ladies. Is the problem the videotaping and the taking of pictures?

Or is it the problem that he was having orgies? All of it? It's all of it. How much of that would be acceptable now? None of it?

I think. I don't you know, I don't know, because Heffner was doing it for years. He got away with it, right, I mean, that's what I'm asking. Gee, I don't know. Again, Like, that's why I say Armie Hammer, because like Armie Hammer is like a sexual assault thing is also rolled into it, which is why it's a bad example in a lot of ways, because Bob Crane doesn't have sexual assault written all over it, but Armie Hammer.

Take the sexual assault part out and just talk about the let's take the sexual assack part out because that it might be worth taking out honestly, because he's heading back now, have you. I'm sure you've seen like he's starting to give interviews. Now, sure, I mean, what a surprise. It's been a year. Yeah, that's why it goes, that's a year.

I I do want to I agree with you about this in this case, like if he actually assaulted anyone, then fuck him and bury him, right yeah. But but if if it's not that, if it's the conversations he's been having with people online, then everyone needs to shut their fucking mouths because it's all king shamming. It really is on like a grand scale. I agree, I agree. I mean again it look, it's Look, I don't think it's stock crimes right, like it's it's it's Yeah, I don't have cannibal fantasies.

Okay, but as a writer, I might have to write something like that, right does that make me a fucking lunatic who doesn't deserve to like make a living ever? Again, Like, I think that should be the title of your first album. I don't have cannibal fantasies. And then and then like Neimo, years later, I'll release another album they say, As it turns out I do have cannibal fantasies. Yeah, I mean what right, yeah, lean into it, like again, I don't, I don't understand that particular kink, but like I'm sure most people wouldn't understand mine, and I don't want you to.

And I don't give a shit if you do or not. And we shouldn't have to do with him either. Let him the Ranger two, him and Johnny Depp together on screen again. Boy, that'll be out in drones. What a coup to get them back together in a movie.

I go see it. I see it just for just for the constant, like meditextual nature of all of it. Yeah, yeah, And look, I mean I'm with you. You know again, if if Army Hammer is a prolific sexual assaulter and committing that kind of violence against people, yeah, fuck him right out of existence. But if that's not the case, and again I'm not saying it is or isn't.

I don't know the facts of that case. We're just using him as an example for the other part, which is thought crimes regarding your kinks. Bob Crane was doing these things, I'm sure, but what he was doing now is rather pedestrian feeling like it all seems very consensual with a bunch of a bunch of like obviously like a similar group like there's a scene in the flick where he like walks in It's like, hey, what's going on, Tony, Hey Janet, like you know, it's drops traut right in front of them, no patience, like so, you know, he basically belongs to a you know, an orgy group who gives a shit, right, Like you know what, folks, if you don't believe that this is a thing in your town, go to the grocery store, take a pineapple from the shelf, and turn that fucker upside down in your cart and just walk around the store and see the looks you get from some people, because some people will know what that means.

Some some not all, but you don't have to It hasn't have to be all. And here's the thing, like so, but it is some not all because some people. I think you'd be more it would be more acceptable these days if this were occurring, It would be doubly acceptable if he was a musician though, right, right, like automatically, like you know, like they were having oranges and videotaping like uh huh, yeah yeah, Michaels like yeah, exactly, like any rocks like the Bengals, like part of the job, right, like groupies, hangers ones like yes, you're you're there to bang, and then like, I don't since when is part of that not being an actor as well? If that's something you want to do, because you're an actor, you have the visibility that means people are going to be interested in you, go for it.

Just don't don't rope other people into your bullshit that don't want to be part of it, like significant others. You could get away with it now, though, because there are more options available to you. You got to remember in like nineteen seventy two, his options were three networks and five studios. Oh right, and that's it. And if they've decided the public sees you as a deviand whether they don't want to deal with you anymore, we certainly don't want to, then you're done.

Right now, you can go to some streaming service and go, yeah, I'm the guy that has orgies. Would but I've got this good idea for a show. They'd be like, good, let's do that show. When we like the controversy quick, can't you would lead with the hey I do orgies by the way, Yeah yeah, hey, this room, this pitch room is kind of like the orgy I was in Last Night, just a lot less sex, you know, like lead with it. You could like there's a company out there that will deal with you.

Nowadays it's probably Vice or Netflix. Maybe that's like definitely they strike me as the ones that are the most open to orgies in the office. Oh yeah, god, look, I mean look yeah, at the time, I mean, you know, that's funny they mentioned Bobby Darren in the mood Yeah, which is you know again similar no murder, but you know, possible deviancy could be leveled against him. I guess by no, no, we can level it all at the guy who portrayed him in that horriblement, Kevin spaces unfortunately sullied. The whatever good name of Bobby Darren existed is now unfortunately inextricably linked in my mind.

Thanks a lot, Kevin. Thanks Kevin Spacey. Next time I hear beyond the Sea, I gotta think of your ugly mug showing here in Las Vegas and booking yourself into a hotel for a week performing as Bobby Darren. This happened, he did this? Oh yeah, yikes.

But Bobby Darren was would be consider would have been considered a deviant at the time. Yeah, was he what was he doing? I thought he was having like three ways? Was he good for him? I mean, isn't that the thing?

Though? That's my response. It's like awesome. Yeah, but again twenty three versus nineteen sixty something. Sure, well, you know, I mean again, I'd like to think a version of me then would be as progressive as I am now for Fox's sake.

Look, it's always been going on. It's just a matter of discretion. I think, well, visibility, right, yeah, any expectation, Like I think if you're in the arts, it's expected that you could maybe lean a little bit more in a free living way. But what you know, I think we're never gonna have a politician anytime in my lifetime that says I have orgies all the time. It left me for fucking state rep.

I mean maybe in this day and age, it wouldn't be that far off from reality with some of the shit that some people say. But I mean again, people in this country get really weird about sex, like it sucks because you know, there's no reason to be icky about it. It's literally part of life. Look, we've come a long way, but there's there's miles to go yet. Moved inches, but miles need to be traveled.

Like yeah, basically, I mean progress is measured it in chi is not in miles. And I mean, look, it's like it's like the it's like marijuana, right, Like it's more socially acceptable now than it ever has been, but it was always socially acceptable. Just the people that weren't socially acceptable, whether it we're fucking loud and constant about it, yeah, and legislative. I feel for Bob Crane in the movie only because if he was alive now doing what with the visibility that he had, then nobody would care. Yeah.

At the same time, this time watching the movie, I don't know this must be factual, but like, you know, he's married, he's got children. He gets onto Hogan's Heroes. Whatever affairs he's been having are ramped up geometrically now, and that ends his first marriage. He then takes up with the girl from Hogan's Heroes, right and and marries her and then continue secretly having this lifestyle. And all I could think is, like, this ended your first marriage.

Shouldn't you just come clean with the second girl and just be like, look, here's the deal, my marriage is ending. Because of the fucking orgies, and the orgies are going to continue. Do you want to be my girl? Because it still seems the same, like where are you going, Bob? I'm with you?

Like if it had been me, I would have been like I look, I wouldn't have gotten married the second time. What's the point? I mean again, But it's again seem any reason. But but then we weren't delving too hard into those relationships. Those two characters seem like Cypher's, they just seem like mirror images of each other.

I mean again, I think also it's a presenting thing, right, like you have to present yourself as the family man, as the good, good, god fearing Christian man who as a wife and kids. Like it's partially that again, why now it wouldn't matter because it doesn't matter now, as if it mattered then it only mattered to vocal people who made decisions not necessarily legislative. So you know, I mean the heads of the studios, if they had seen that, would have been like, okay, yeah, right, we're not going to stake anything on you. You're un reliable because you're not a nuclear family man. So yeah, that's true, which is why Willem Dafoe's character is so much more the actual main focus of the piece.

Yeah, Whereas Mike White pointed out, the movie is really a one long fetish reel for bygone technology, like it like masturbatory. Yeah, the loving detail of like the opening of cases in the gleaming equipment within is sexier than any of the the actual sex presented in the movie. It's all pretty bloodless. But but oh man, those cameras. Yeah, and instead of seamen, the film uses film reel to stand in for ejaculation.

I mean it's like it's it's it's that masturbatory with the technology of the time, like it it, I mean to the point where we have a scene of Willem Dafoe coming out that he's colored black. Yeah, Like it's that it goes that far to be like even the people of the time and with the technology are are unable to fully understand it. Like, yeah, with it Michael Michael McKean popping in. Michael mckein and Ed Begley both both shown of Ed as as the world's most unlikely d Right also didn't realize that Richard Dawson was on Hogan's Heroes until I watched it, yeah, and realized that that's who that actor was attempting to play in the movie. Attempting being the keyword.

Yeah, he wasn't doing a great job. He marginally looked like him and sounded nothing like him. Right, Richard Dawson another interesting fella, almost, Like, here's the actual question, how was what Richard Dawson was doing? Okay? When it's effectively like out in the open version of Bob Crane without the fucking well, because Richard Dawson was a swinging bachelor from England.

He's British folks, that's why. But also didn't take the step of recording at all. How the recording of it is the more damning part, Right is it the recording or the sharing both? I know? But like if you record all of it and keep it for yourself, what does it matter?

Right? But even still word is getting out that you're doing it. But it's only getting it's only getting out if you're showing people that you have them after the fact, because that's like they make a point in the movie, they make a point of it. How many like common lay people saying they're fucking Bob Crane and these videoing things is going to matter to anybody, Right, you'd have to see it wouldn't here, right, You'd have to be like, oh, look there's a video of Bob Crane being blown by someone. Again, Like you know, again, I don't know, now somebody would sell that for money if they found it, Like you know what I mean, Like I've seen plenty of other celebrities doing things just like that, and they have careers still, and they maybe even have careers because of it.

Right Again, I'd like to know how much is fictionalized in the film, Like how much of this was actually affecting anything, Like maybe they were video taping everything and they were fucking discreet about it. Maybe nobody knew anything about it, like you know, his wife finds out or whoever. But like, is it as prevalent as the as the movie was attempting to, Like I said, Ron Lieman shows up every twenty minutes ago, This stuff is just going to destroy your career? It wasn't or was it a simple manner of typecasting where nobody wanted Colonel Hogan, you know? And that's and that's why I feel like the movie loses Bob Crane because Bob Crane ends up being not important, and that's an important question that should have been asked and addressed in the movie, even if it's the movie addressing it, not real life addressing, Like the movie could have taken a stance on well it makes the decision that it was it was this thing, right, and like it couldn't have just been that.

Yeah, and then like you know, he takes pains to to shun it, but at the end and that's what ends up killing him, which again, like I'm not even sure if that was the case because when in the documentary on the on the movie, they talk about, yeah, you know, he was kind of like done with John Carpenter and it was like kind of sick of him because he was kind of annoying. But like okay, like all right, Like that doesn't sound like someone who's like I'm gonna fucking murder you, like you know what I mean, Like get look and can't we just get this out because we haven't mentioned it. The movie is like gay baiting the entire or fucking time, and and like it not no, like it made me uncomfortable, not like I'm ashamed of the fact that it did it or like ashamed for the movie, but like what was the point of doing it?

I just don't get it, which part specifically, well, the whole like, oh, it's an orgy man, no big deal, Like, oh, it's a big deal, like and then the breakup scene that is again it's literally a breakup scene between two men, but one of the men doesn't realize it's a breakup scene. Yeah, it's weird. It's like gay baiting. Like it's like it's like the whole idea of the movie of what is it taking a stand on? Is the problem here?

It's like, well, we're just gonna say maybe he was gay, and maybe he was in love with him, and maybe that motivated him too. Maybe not, though we don't know. It's like John Carpenter was married, just like Bob Crane was. Maybe he was. Maybe that was the case, maybe there was a unrequited gay love between them.

But when people are saying, oh, you just kind of found him annoying, it's not like, oh, you found him annoying and overbearing and wanting to, you know, grab his ass constantly. Like I feel like Bob Greene would have said that just to make sure that dude was further thrown under the bus to get away from because that's the way the movie paints it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ultimately that you know, yes, it can be interpreted that way, certainly, and it could have been a possibility for sure. What the movie posits, and I guess what the sort of criminal investigation is based on. It's the idea that he was removing himself from Carpenter's life and this lifestyle was going to end, and in a fit of rage, Carpenter kills him.

But it's like Carpenter, even in the film, is presented as this creepy guy who said all the stag parties and every like you know, watch the with the watch. That's what I'm thinking. I'm specifically has this watch that it's a digital watch. It shows you the time, and then it shows this guy with a giant boner, like you know, thrusting and he's like, it's time to fuck. Like that's his pickup line.

Now, obviously that's terrible pickup line, and they showed the girl being disgusted by it and walking away, but like, you know that he's used that line a lot and it's worked at some point, right, It's so yeah, like he's getting a higher class of young lady with Bob Crane at his side. But his lifestyle is not going to change at all. He's still gonna get girls in videotaped them at his pad, you know, like naive idiots who think a boner watches somehow sexy. Well that's my point. It's like I don't think he actually had any problem getting women because like, again, getting women is not what a orgy party is.

They're they're there, there's nothing to get. You show up and you have fun and you leave. Nobody's getting anybody anything. You're all there tacitly agreeing that's what you're do it, Like you could bring someone with you or meet someone there, but like it's not a I'm going to get somebody there and like and like out in the wild, Like that's not what this is, and that's not what they painted as And that's kind of not what I believe was going on. I believe it was just a bunch of orgies all the time, with a bunch of people they probably sort of halfway new and maybe they met people on the road.

I'm sure they did, but I'm sure they were constantly doing stuff where they lived constantly, and there's got to be a scene and you know, right, of course spysically there is now and that's with the Internet. I mean before because the Internet didn't exist then there was no way to figure out how to get there. Like I'm sure it was harder, but like there there have do it. But but is the lack of Bob Crane's sort of prestige men that they've kicked John Carpenter, creator of Escape from New York out of the community in reality? I don't think so.

In the movie's reality. That's the logic. It goes with that's movie logic. Do you think that in reality that would have been the case? No, definitely not.

I think if they were tolerating him, then they were tolerating you know. Like, but the gay baiting also goes to the thing that Bob Crane makes for John Carpenter that weird movie that like pisses him off to no end, because again it's like, what are you implying? Like again, in the orgy scene, I wouldn't think anybody would care, is my point. Like, in my mind Bob Crane was bisexual just by design, he's in an orgy setting, those people I wouldn't feel like give a shit, correct me, if I'm wrong. But my perception is you're having an orgy with people.

I don't think you're really like you're like, you're not getting hung up on the same things people that are wanting to be monogamous are by design. But Bob thought he was godly and a family man who, while yes, he is going to engage in multiple sexual female partners with men thrown into the mix, he's not going to touch or be touched by other man. Apparently not. Again, that's that's the way the movie portrays it. I just don't believe that was the real person, and that probably happened.

I bet that did just him like putting his foot down about it because he had to say it out loud because of his you know, version of masculinity. But I don't know that the movie needed to make the point of it other than two draws toward the the notion that these two are in a relationship, including a breakup scene. Right And look, I mean, ultimately, you know, like we've said, it takes kind of a pretty direct stance on who they think killed Bob Crane. And yeah, look, John Carpenter went to trial. You mentioned it.

He was tried for Bob Crane's murder and he was acquitted because they did not have evidence. It was a circumstantial case. Yeah, they had blood on the car, but yeah, it was like twenty years after he was He was tried and acquitted in ninety He was tried and acquitted in ninety four. Oh yeah, then it's like forever like that. How they even if even if there was a smoking gun somewhere, like, they'd still have Trouble convicted.

They found a piece of human flesh matter in Bob Bob Carpenter and John Carpenter's car that they tried to DNA test and they couldn't get the DNA information. And again I don't know if they've done anything recently with it, but that may have been Bob Crane. A piece of Bob Crane in the car that was on his clothes that maybe came off. There was blood on John Carpenter's car that was a bass match for the blood type that was Bob Crane's. What are we downing here?

Obviously John Carpenter, director of Big Trouble in Little China, murdered Bob Crane. I mean the signs would point to yes, but again he didn't get you know, he didn't get convicted. He died a normal heart attack death outside of prison in nineteen ninety eight. I mean four years after he died. He didn't go to jail.

He never served time again. If he did it, then he died anyways, and he you know whatever, four years is not that long. He was an older man. But the documentary posits that his family lived until a hundred, you know, until older than that, till they were a hundred, So it's weird that he died at seventy. Okay, again, anecdotal evidence is anecdotal evidence.

But trying to say that he was murdered. No, they were trying to say that like the stress of the case, oh hole on him. Oh really, I would think creating memoirs of an invisible man would have created a stress that would have killed I'm I'm so glad that you and I were thinking the same thing. Every time they said his name, it's it's absurd. I mean, he when he introduced himself, John Carpenter, and then he's saying that he Greg Kinnear says, if I was a car again, is that not gay baiting?

Yes, I guess it is. Rightly, from from the beginning, Strader is setting up their relationship, why not go all the way with it again, because again, in my in my brain, the person that Bob Crane really was probably did because again, if you're getting to that point, I just don't see why you would care. The only thing you would care about is being found out. But if you're being filed out about the orgy thing, it's like that's already pissing people off, Like, okay, and then you're gay too, Like what if you're gay and orgies like? Which is worse?

Clearly per the movie's logic, one was already bad enough as it is. Okay, So the facts of the case staint that Crane was disassociating himself from John Carpenter because he found Carpenter be annoying, right, right, Like, just didn't want to deal with him anymore. Right, But the movie makes it seem like he's doing it because he doesn't want to be part of the scene anymore. But could it be that he just didn't want to be part of John Carpenter's scene anymore, but wanted to continue at the scene, and thus were was in fact going to get him kicked out of the scene, Because if they had presented that in the movie would make a lot more sense, Like I'm going to continue living this lifestyle with this community that we've engaged in, and I don't want you there anymore, and no one will accept you anymore because I'm Bob Crane and you're nobody.

Do you think Bob Crane was actually turning his life around and stopping his lifestyle after his wife had divorced him. No, no ramping up if anything? Right, Like, maybe he was getting rid of Bob Crane from his life but going to go on his own. Because here's the thing Crane may have been holding him in. Jesus Christ, Carpenter may have been holding Crane back from being able to go to those kinds of places that only Bob Crane could go to.

No, that's true. Di't your friend Diet your friend John Carpenter. He's WEIRDO. It gives people weird vibes. But you, Bob Crane, You're cool?

Like again, why is that so hard to believe? Yeah? I believe it more. They should have gone in that direction with the script. I mean again, I don't again.

You know, script is one thing real life, Like those things make more sense in real life because real life doesn't work like a movie. Real life is so far removed from the logic that this movie is going for. And I don't know if Bob Crane would have been put off by someone who was a man being in it halfway intimate towards him when he's already being intimate with large groups of people all at once anywhere. So the movie have been more salacious. I mean, again, how salacious do you think he was in real life?

I think pretty fucking salacious, right, I think so too. Like again, like you think we should have gotten a number of the crazy. I think it would have made maybe what ends up happening to him seem more like a rabid dog being put down, you know what I mean? Like, oh, it's like he would It would have hurt our impression of him had we seen more of the insanity. Again, it's like that Freddie for me.

Yeah, well, the Freddie Mercury thing is completely absurd that they didn't dive headfirst into that, Like you don't think Freddie Mercury wouldn't have wanted us to see that? He would Vandalia Like, yeah, yeah, he would have, and I wanted to see it, God damn it. And I wanted to see this here in auto focus, Bob Crane Junior's son said that his dad would talk about his Fellini adventures. What else could that mean? I want to know?

Right, But like what do you think of when you think of that, like bacchinalia and people just being free? Like yeah, like I can only imagine what Bob Crane was up to, because you know what, like this doesn't even come close to the reality, I'm sure, and that's okay. Like again, if everything was consensual and everybody was above board, it literally does not matter one singular fucking iota. Was there any rights issue? Did they have to like get permission from any money for this movie?

Like I wonder that, like, you know, they had to like make the case, like make us understand that one scene that like, I'm not into this, I'm not a gay. His son, Scottie Crane apparently says that there's plenty of the movie that's not factual, like him being into beati sm Also, apparently the movie does make a truth conflation. Bob Crane apparently did not have a penile implant, per his autopsy, not finding it, but he told everyone he did, right, I mean again, the movie makes the movie makes a point to show Willem Dafoe looking at which is a great scene. I mean, it makes her, it makes right, it makes a great comedy at least, so there is that. By the way, Willem Dafoe doing his impression of Werner Klemperers Colonel Clink is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, oh good with the monocle, like it's that's nightmare fuel. I mean, you know, as much as we talked about Bob Crane in the movie, Like again, it really is John Carpenter's movie. And that's because Willem Dafoe is just it's Willem Dafoe. You put him in anything, and he's I mean, the reason those Spider Man movies are remembered so fondly and really only one of them in a lot of ways, is because Williem Dafoe is so good. That's the reason he came back.

Because he's Willem Dafoe, and he's just a talented actor and he could elevate anything great in this movie. Yeah, playing a fictionalized version of a real person who may or may not have been like that. The scene where he's composing this map for the fog is amazing. I swear to good I will say that John Carpenter in real life, the real person who did not write the score for Halloween, the person who may have killed Bob Crane. They did a service to him by casting Willem Dafoe.

Yeah they did, all right. Yeah, you could sit and say William Dafoe is a weird looking dude. No, and the character asked Tritton is like one thousand percent creep and there are certainly levels of that on display, but he doesn't seem a completely like h And it's because of the charm of William Dafoe ultimately, like, yeah, he's a creep, but you know it's William Dafoe, Like, you know, he's kind of that's like creeps the expectation. Yeah, do you think Bob Carpet or do you think John Carpenter the person was more or less than the version of the movie, like the real tangible man that existed. I bet I bet he was a thousand times more charming.

I bet that right. I'm with you. I feel it feels like the reality was. Bob Crane and John Carpenter were a lot more charismatic together than the movie tries to portray them as because it always feels one sided to try try and show them like as a team, right, And I think they were both more charismatic outside of one another than they were the way the movie says. Because the point of showing William Dafoe is like failing is because it's like, well he needs Bob there, And it's like, I don't.

I think John Carpenter was was doing what Bob Grain was doing, just like Bob Crane was long before they met and long after. I'm sure John Carpenter was continuing to do it. And it would and it would, and it would strike me that Bob or John Carpenter's wife didn't have a problem with it because she was married him until he died. There you go again, Like you said, he's probably a lot more amiable of a person right to look like that and get as much ass as he supposedly got. Yeah, Like he's not like a stutter by like Bob Crane's a good looking guy.

This dude not just like a dude like actual John No, not foo man chew facial hair with long ass old man hair, John Carpenter, no other John Carfer. He's not that good like an either when you think about it. I'm not saying for the features you just mentioned, I described someone much more dashing. But that's my point. I like you said he I think he would need to he would have to have something else other than looks because he was just a guy, Like nothing set him apart from other people.

Yeah, then dazzling equipment, like, like, let's face it, that stuff was the state of the art. It was like, you know, nobody had a video tape recorder in their home. It was unheard of, Right, So he shows up with all the lights and the camera and the razzle dazzle like that goes a long way to seducing the type of people who want to appear on camera while you have sex. I should think, I would assume. So it's like, Wow, he's got the technology.

It's maybe a sly comment on how porn really does drive the technology, right, I mean, that's why Blu ray is what it is. That's why DVD is what it is, or was Porn went with DVD over Betamax. Porn went with Blu ray over HDDVD. And that's why we have what we have all right, Porn drives all our technologies. I mean, I don't think Polshrader was commenting on that, but again, I'm not sure what he was commenting on.

Frankly, yeah, I think he was. But he never seems to be clucking his tongue at anybody, which is something I like about Polish Trader, like because in all the wrong ways people are looking for God, he respects the journey and the search for it. I agree, And I think the dream sequences that he gives Bob Crane are probably some of the better parts of the movie. For me. It's like it's the time where the movie actually kind of is maybe trying to say something about Bob Crane in a roundabout way.

Maybe it doesn't necessarily hit that, but like that's the moment you get to see inside of Bob Crane. It's the only time we seem to stop and try and get inside his head quite literally. You know, most of the time he just seems to be this character sort of moving through the events of this guy's life. Character. Yeah, we're not really investing all that much in him, but you know, they're trying to tell a lot of story here, Yeah, too much.

You need to focus a little bit laser focused in which is, you know, the purview of two of the producers of this movie, Scott Alexander and Larry Karazuski, are the best biopic writers of all time because they figured out the formula, which is, don't tell the person's whole life, figure out the most interesting part of them and just tell that story. And this movie comes close to that, but it needs to have been even more focused on what it wants to talk about, which is again less the murder and more this guy's fascination with technology and sex and where is that going and what is it doing to him and what is it eventually doing to society. That was what the movie should have been abound, I agree, because the intersection of that is I mean, that's that's Bob Crane as I mean, as the symbol in this movie.

For this where the script would have been right. This movie needed to be directed by like David Cronenberg. It should have. It needed to be directed by a fetishist and not somebody who's a spiritualist like Paul Schrader. I mean it, Paul Schrader makes this script what it is.

It's like he made the movie as written, but it ultimately isn't about the murder, and it isn't necessarily about this guy's struggle between being a good family man and being a deviant. It's about the technology and that coupled with the lifestyle, and it needed a different filmmaker to bring that out. I agree. I think it's a perfectly fine movie. I just wish that the things about Bob Crane had been more feeling like they're taking a stand or something to say, or something to say that's at least interesting.

It's just it feels kind of like, yeah, I've seen I've heard something like I've heard this tune before, maybe not this exact same note, but you know, again, an obsessive. Yeah, all right, I see where you're going with that story. But like there's more to that than there's more to that story, this story than just he's an obsessive. Like, yeah, he's an obsessive about whatever he wants in that moment, be it sex, be it photography, whatever, But like there's more to it. It's all sa, it's all sex.

Ultimately, ultimately, the day wasted. They that's their refrain. They say it a lot in the movie Jesus Christ. So I guess are you you're of the you're of the ilk, then that John Carpenter, not the director of Assault on Precinct thirteen the original, is the one who murdered Bob Crane allegedly. Um, I think John Carr Carpenter, director of Starman, did murder Bob Crane for taking credit on Dark Star.

Yes, I think. I think the scenario might have been more what we conjectured, that he was cutting him off and cutting him out, and that would cause him to murder Bob Crane. At least that's a motive. If that's the motive, then yes, I think John Carpenter, director of Body Bags, murdered Bob Krane. Otherwise, as I know you called it the alien sort of theory anyway it comes to true crime unsolved it kind of but not to be a downer, and I'm not gaming anyone in their choice of lifestyle.

But you know, Bob Crane seemed to not only be part of the scene, but was also a a ladies man and would pick up any girl he could. It's really not without the realm of possibility that he took someone's girlfriend and or wife home and kabam, that's what happened to him on that Faithfully, I mean again, I'm not I'm not saying that because I don't think it couldn't have happened. I'm just saying that because it's not the it's not the fun answer. No, No, Look, you know, I'm I kind of I think I would be inclined to agree that. I think the person who killed Bob Crane knew Bob Crane because Bob Crane's house was not broken into.

The person who killed him just came in, so they knew how to get in, or they knew enough to get in without causing a ruckus. So that could have been a couple of people. John Carpenter again, look, hangers on or hangers on, There are plenty of people like that. Peter Ivers may have been murdered by someone who was in a similar situation. Your golden goose is your meal ticket is out the door, and you don't have a way to get on that gravy train as it leaves the station.

And so what are my options? Do whatever I can to try to stop that from happening, to the point of maybe killing them by accident, are on purpose, or just live with it. Nine times out of one hundred, you're just going to live with it, but it's the one time out of a hundred where it's something like this, and that's kind of that's what the movie is kind of getting at. And again, is that what could have happened in reality? I don't know, but I think that that's a line of thinking.

That they clearly investigated people who had much more time on their hands to talk about this in much more in depth ways, to the point of prosecution. They didn't come back with a guilty verdict. They acquitted him. But would they acquit him now if we had the DNA technology we do now then I don't know any more than anybody else does. That's conjecture.

But the movie tells a good story, a story that tracks, but it's not the story that the person who got murdered deserves to be told about them. And now there will not be another story told about that. That's the way it goes with stuff like this, Like what's the point? Like they have the one movie, He's not a big enough deal now for people that are making these kinds of things for anybody to address it. I wish they would because it's an interesting story.

But maybe we can get a four part Netflix documentary. Plenty of drone shots. I mean that's what this would be, right, Yeah, I'd like to see it. I mean, I'm with you. Like the thing I would like is a actual like a factual right take take on it.

Yeah, because you know, the movie is a lot of conjecture in the movie. It does take it take a stand, and it should. You know, it's it's a piece of art. It needs to you know, entertains on the table. But also, yeah, i'd like to deliver like, yeah, you said about Zodiac, like you can't three hours later ago and guess what, everybody we still don't know have a good night, Like I mean you can, you can, and it's always unsatisfying, right, but really, I mean again, like I get that art needs to satisfy the unsatisfiable things of reality, and it's it's it that can be.

One of the purposes of art is to create something we can't experience or itch a scratch that can't be itched in reality. And I get why Zodiac did it, but like, don't base yourself off of bad facts and conject Let me ask you a Zodiac question because I know you're knowledgeable. Sure, Okay, the kid who was shot in that initial like you know, lovers leap Michael Magino. Yeah him. Okay, so he was shot.

He did survive, right, grew up to go to West World, I think, yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, he's great at it. By the way, um that the actual guy did he eventually identify the person that the movie identifies as the killer. That is, that is the Michael Majoe scene from the movie actually happened. That actually happened.

Yes, okay, So the movie makes a stand by presenting us that as the last scene in the movie that that occurs. But it did occur. It did occur, yes, okay, right, like again, like it's taking a stand. But because we have no idea if the breakup between between Bob Crane and John Carpenter, director of the TV mini series Elvis, went down the way it went down, you know, like it's that's all conjecture. You know, it's all sort of an invention of the screenwriters or the you know, or gray Smith, right, which again, like I said, we we know that Robert gray Smith sometimes, even with things that are meant to be non fiction, seasons his uh seasons his meat a little too much because sometimes the truth is a little bland.

Oh no, I mean look, I get it, Like it's like it's you're trying to sell a book, like, right, read a five hundred page book about an unsolved crime and then there's no conclusion at the end. The funk, How the fuck do you feel in that doesn't just take three hours to read for some people, like you know, it's just the same thing. But the reality is the Zodiac murder, just like this one is unsolved, just like this it was John Carol Lynch. I saw it in that movie. I mean, look when the movie has him go if I was the Zodiac Killer, I wouldn't tell you, and then he changes his voice's backs like we come on, like you're laying it on a little thick guys.

This is honestly, I'm going to once we stop recording, I'm going to watch that same I don't fucking love that movie. Same right, that's my favorite David Fincher movie. Yeah, I think it might be mine now too, honestly, Like it's so masterful. It's just it's a wonderful piece of film. I will feel good in like a couple of years when the tide has completely turned on that movie and I can go I liked it from the day it fucking came out.

Yeah, I saw that shit in theaters with my mom because she lived through that as a kid. She was blive and that movie was she cannot hear Hurdy Gurdy Man anymore. She didn't like it to be she didn't like it to begin with, but she really doesn't like it now, And that is the sign of someone like David Fincher. Yeah, it's so perfectly placed, like, yeah, yeah, we need We should probably talk that movie sometime because I'll start going right, I won't stop for a long long time until the next time you and I do an episode of the which is too infrequent because these are way too much fun to talk about things that aren't necessarily just movies. Where can people find?

You find me at Weirdingway Media weirdingwaymedia dot com. I have like it's like a dozen shows. It's just it's absurd, But I'll mention the most current. I guess. I do a show called Astounding Tales of the public Domain.

It's enhanced performances of public domain stories from the golden age of science fiction with writers like Ray Bradbury and HP Lovecraft and all the great all the great ones. And I also do a new show. It's a music podcast called Noise Junkies, which I do with Mondo. Heather's Heather Drain and HP the the resident musical genius of weirding Way Media. He scores half a dozen shows.

He just scores everything I do. And he has his own podcast about taxi called night Uster Walter's a taxi podcast. So in a nutshell, weird Way Media, Chris, that's the answer, and uh yeah, still my answer too. Weirding Waymedia dot com. That's where you're found finding this show and where you can find so many other shows like Eighties TV Ladies, which one of those hosts is U is it may or may not be U cohabiting with the one and only mister Richard HadAM, who's been on here plenty of times, the mock man folks right.

Also you can find Twisted and Uncorked, two ladies who are who are funnier than me because you know what they are and it's the truth, and you should go listen to them. That's a really funny show. I've actually been listen. They're really funny. They are.

They're currently have the they're having like a dry month and it's for a good cause and everything. But like get drinking, ladies, I'm with you. I mean, hey, you know, I mean you can you can run. You can run a car on electric, but sometimes you gotta put gas back in the tank. Just gotta just fire it up, gotta go one hundred and ten.

Those electric vehicles can't hit that high speed. And yeah, you know what, I'll mention the rejection booth because that's that's the show that started it all folks in a lot of ways, and uh you know, in a lot of ways. Uh that that will be the show that ends all right, the Alpha and the Omega. As for this show, Uh, scary stories we tell dot com scary stories WT on social media. No, that shit sucks.

So if you want to follow, great, If not, just like rate and review the show wherever you find it, which is more than likely iTunes. Maggie the Odd and Dust and Rutledge do the album artwork for the show. You can find Maggie over at Dolan Museum dot com. And my good friend Alex Melanack of Blondo makes the music for the show. You can find him on Spotify just search Blondo.

Father Malone, thank you so much for joining me. It's always been a gas and a blast, all right, yeah baby, oh yeah, oh yeah, we're gonna focus Otto focus boy. Bob Crane deserved better folks than two ding Dongs riffing on him in twenty twenty three. But you know what, God blesses you know. I was a projectionist in a movie theater that was showing this movie.

Really oh yeah, I watched it a lot the end