The Gun (1974)

Welcome to the Shabby Detective, yet another Columbo podcast. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again. Of course, is mister Christashu. You may have heard of me as myth or legend, but I can confirm, ladies and gentlemen, I am, in fact one of those responsible gun owners.

Oh my, yes, we are talking about the gun now. Not a particular object, well, I guess it is in this movie. But we are talking about a movie called The Gun, which was written by Richard Levinson and William Link as well as Jay Benson. It was directed by John Batham, one of his early direction gigs, John Badam, who probably best known for Saturday Night Fever, War Games, Point of No Return, a lot of great stuff he did over the years. This originally aired on November thirteenth, nineteen seventy four.

It inspired a song by George Jones and Tammy Wynette in nineteen seventy six called Golden Ring? Can he get any better than that? I don't think so, Chris, What did you think of the Gun? I mentioned what I mentioned at the top of this episode intentionally because for a couple things in the last couple of years, or I would say frankly more in my lifetime. Obviously.

I am a child of the nineties, grew up in the nineties and early two thousands, became an adult at the end of the two thousands, officially per the legal standing of this government. And like you said, Mike, I'm an American. Of course I know about guns. There are going to be some things about this episode that might make some people uncomfortable, and those are opinion's thoughts and things that this movie is talking about, that this movie is getting at, that this movie is pointing out. I mentioned that I'm a gun owner because anything else, it is a topic in this country specifically that makes people very uncomfortable.

Why well, as you see in this movie, we have people who are mentally ill getting a hold of firearms and doing things with them that responsible gun owners don't do, leaving them out, or leaving them near where your children can get them, or not locking them up, all the things that non responsible gun owners do. I mention all of this to say, the fact that this has never been released in any format or any medium is a shame, because this should be shown in every single school ever from here until the end of time. It is like one of those things that has not lost the impact. It not only hasn't lost the impact I feel like in watching it, because I've watched it three times now, every time I watch it, I get something different from it.

But every time I watch it, the only thing I can think of when I walk away from it is I am while I am glad that I am a gun owner, because I understand, just like the gentleman at the beginning of the film does that sometimes an alarm is not enough of a way to protect yourself from things should people come into your home looking to take your things. There are alternatives, baseball bats, other ways to hit people with things or get them out of your house. But there is a certain level of fatalism and finality to a gun that is not present with other things. So I understand where he's coming from. But then by the end of the film, when you get to the moment where a child shoots himself in the head with a gun, and that is how this ends, it is and you know that's where this is going from the moment it starts.

If you don't think that this is where this thing called the gun is going to end, is in the most sad, horrifying way. Possible. I don't know what to tell you, but all of that to say, I feel like this is going to be an interesting episode to talk about because for me, I am gay, but I'm a gun owner, which makes me an anomaly. I'm very socially liberal, but I am a gun owner, which makes me an anomaly. I like to hunt, but I'm socially liberal, so that makes me an anomaly.

And watching this filled me with the same level of cognitive dissonance, which is I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it for what it is, the message that it's trying to get across, and the importance of gun safety as a gun owner, responsible gun ownership. But as this movie kind of makes clear, guns are fucking dangerous any way you cut it. But at the same time, the movie makes a very astute point that just like a car, a gun is a machine. The problem with a machine, just like anything else, is the intent behind the person using it can't be known until the person who's using it is using it.

And cars can kill people. Guns kill people all the time. People kill people all the time. It's a problem. This just happens to be about guns and gun safety and gun violence and the ambivalence with which our country seems to treat guns.

So all of that to say, I'm excited to talk about this with you, Mike, but at the same time, I'm worried about talking about this with you, not because of you, but because of this being a topic that I think broadly this was something called the abortion, I think we'd be having just as much of a time of Okay, so this is what we have to talk about for the next half an hour, huh. I am so glad that we do live in America where we've had a history of problems with guns, and that this came out in nineteen seventy four. It is fifty years later, and we haven't had any sort of gun violence for the last fifty years. So it's just been It's great. It's very much like that incident that happened in New Zealand where there was an automatic machine gun of some sort being used and they said that's it, no more guns.

They took care of it. Same thing happened here. We've had how many people, how many presidents get shot? At least four that I can think of without even trying five, I guess in yeah, after sixty three with Kennedy being such a public display of gun violence, that was it. No more, I'm living in an alternate reality where people actually give a shit about each other and the NRA isn't this huge lobby keeping guns in the hands of people that shouldn't have guns.

This is an amazing movie. To correct you from earlier, This was released at least on VHS in Sweden, as you can tell by the picture that's on IMDb. If you do want to see this movie, it's very easily available. It's out on YouTube, or you can go out to modcinema dot com. That's modcinema dot com where they have just a one of TV movies and some other great stuff too, So yeah, check that out over there.

But yeah, nineteen seventy four, big year for Richard Levinson and William Link where we've got that execution of Privat Slovak that we talked about last month and now just a few months later the gun also courtesy of Jay Benson, who was a pretty prolific TV writer, no slouch himself. Yeah, did a bunch of stuff, including a movie called Mind Over Murder, which I just recently watched as part of my research because it has Debora Raffin in it, and she was in Noble House, and Noble House was one that our mutual friend Amanda res asked me to be on the commentary for. I think Chapter three is the one which you can now pre order on Keino, so knock yourself out anyway. The structure of this movie is it's something we've seen before, especially if you're a big Brandan Fraser fan.

I think he was in a movie called twenty Bucks where you get to see a twenty dollars bill moving from person to person. It's very much a whole series of vignettes. This one so much more powerful, so much more effective. Where it is the making of a gun at the very beginning, like seeing the holes being carved out. It's so very Christine to me.

The John Carpenter film based on the Stephen King novel, where you see the car being made and then you see the mayhem afterwards. Here we see the gun being made and then we see how it passes from person to person. And to your point, Chris, the threat of violence looms over this entire movie from probably what ten minutes in if even that. Basically as soon as the first person buys this gun, at a gun store. And that first person is Steven Elliott we talked about two months ago because he was the victim of the psychiatrist.

In the final episode of the fourth season of Colombo, Steven Elliott was murdered. And now here he's back buying a gun because of the break in at his house. And I love that. Again, Obviously, one of the big points of the movie is intention. Sometimes intentions don't necessarily pan out.

Again, when he purchases the gun, it is for again, by my opinion, a genuinely perfectly acceptable reason. Again, this is New York City. I'm assuming I was picturing southern California, probably just because of where, But yeah, you. Know what I'm getting at, right, And that's what they're attempting to make the point of, we don't feel comfortable where we live because of whatever. And I understand that when I have friends that I've talked to openly about handgun ownership up and being a gun owner, and I think, again, like anything else, like I'm not afraid to talk about it.

But I also understand the way his wife reacts to it, because guns are dangerous and they are not to be taken lightly, and they are not to be trifled with. There's a moment that I really love in this movie, and again it's a thing that I don't know if you noticed it, but early on when Steven Elliott goes to buy the gun at the store and the guy is explaining to him everything is you have to wait, you have to wait a week and then we'll have an instructor and will teach you all the stuff they show. It's like a shot of their hands with the gun and he's moving the gun around like this, and Steven Elliott's character practices correct gun pointing because the guy who runs the gun shop or the gun salesman doesn't.

At one point, the gun salesman is essentially pointing the gun at him and Steven Elliott moves it down to stop pointing at him, and it's like such a subtle thing. But again, as someone who tries to be responsible gun owner and knows that is a thing that does exist, Like, I love that the movie is cognizant of these things of people trying to be like, don't point it at me, even if it's not loaded, even if there aren't bullets in it. That's how you treat these things. Because again, just because a car is not moving doesn't mean it's not dangerous. A car is an immensely dangerous thing as well, just like anything else.

But I like that the movie takes that moment to show that, because again, where this is coming from is a place of Levinson and Link really treading a weird line here, because they're not painting this as guns are bad the end. If they wanted to do that, I don't think either one of us would have enjoyed it that much, not because we don't agree with the sentiment or anything. It's more just the case of that's not a very nuanced story to tell. We get the first vignette of the man and his wife and he buys the gun because he's worried about their home being broken into, and then his wife the next day goes, I don't want this gun in my hand, and he takes it to work and just gives it to an old man at his job, which I mean, again I understand, but it also again the movie doesn't make a point of it, but the movie shows it happening.

This is the gun show loophole, right, I'm buying a gun from you, and there's no paperwork, to be fair, Steven Elliott's character does again the right thing, and he can even have something written up showing that ownership pass to you, which is the way you're supposed to do it. That is the federally legal way. Say, when my parents pass away, if they were to own guns and I were to inherit said guns, you are supposed to reregister them with the federal government to let the federal government know who is gun is now. In fact, because at the end of the day, unless someone reregistered the gun in their name, Steven Elliott's character's gun was used to kill child. That's the issue, and he's trying to do the right thing, but he gives it to someone who he believes intentions a collector collects guns, and instead the guy just goes and pawns it immediately.

We never see what he does with the money. It doesn't matter what he does with the money. His part of the story is over. We see him for two scenes, but the gun stays in the picture. The gun is the reason that the story continues, and you almost again it's like watching a car crash in slow motion.

You're watching all the failings, the little small failings in the system, or the little took a step to the left as opposed to a step to the right, and that was all it took for the gun to end up here as opposed to hear. I love, like you said, the aspect of the story. I love that storytelling device because it makes the ending feel that much more inevitable. Basically, the gun becomes the main character because it's the only thing that ties all of these stories together. Yeah, in talking about the threat of violence, I guess it's the second vignette where it's the guy with the mustache and the glasses that works on an office building.

Well, yeah, when he comes in and he buys this gun and he tries to do and Arnold Schwarzenegger with it just likezy nine meter. Hey just wait now, like those kind of thing. Actually they had the oozy nine melimeter was the laser plasma rifle. I think they don't have in nineteen eighty four, ten years after this movie. But yeah, when he comes in and basically steals the gun but then leaves, the money doesn't have change, YadA YadA.

But yeah, it goes to the office and it's just over and over. You're just like, this guy is gonna go off. He is too strung. He's strung way too tight, and he just he's gonna get fired at his fucking job. He's gonna go out on a kill crazy rampage, just the way that they play this whole thing off, and I just I loved it.

I thought it was directed so well, so taut, and your heart's in your throat the entire time you're watching, especially when he's out there pointing a gun at different people. I'm just thinking of Bogdanovich's targets and the kid that goes up the oil thing and starts shooting people on the freeway. I'm like, that's what this guy's going to do, and he's a hair's brought the way from doing that. Thank god, somebody finally calls the cops, but even then you get to see the way that he escapes and direct it again so beautifully. So thank you for transitioning into the next vignette, because I think's probably the easiest way to talk about this is just vignette by vignette, because it, again to Mike's point, we don't even know the names of any of these characters for the most part, like business guy who looks like he's ready to kill somebody, give me somebody who looks like they're harried and ready to make a decision to end lives, Like you got the perfect actor for it.

He looks the part in seventy four too. I don't know. I think it's something about the mustache and the glasses that do it for me. But also the moment, and it's the way that the movie is shot that's so well done. There's a moment where the gun store owner hands him the gun.

On shop owner hands in the gun and he just takes the gun out of his hand and necessarily that and pointing it down and he just wraps his finger around the trigger. You don't put your finger on the trigger of a gun unless you're ready to pull the trigger, unless you are committed to pulling the trigger. Keep your finger off the trigger. And that for me, that's again like just those small moments that are the ones that are really horrifying, because, like you said, the threat of violence is there. The moment the gun has bullets in it, the threat of violence is there.

The moment the gun is out, the threat of violence is there. People become violent around guns even if there's nothing in them, because the assumption is there is something in them. But in that moment where you see it and they just they cut to the full shot of the hand and the gun coming down and he just starts to squeeze the trigger, and like you said, it's just nothing has happened, but it's that threat of violence. It's the threat of, oh my god, what could happen, what might happen? Where is this going?

And when we transition then to he puts the gun into his waist and then he's in the office building, it's, oh no, there's not. Levinson and Link don't give you any time here to sit with envy of this. It's just it's in Ininvincible the cartoon, there's a moment where one of the characters grabs someone and holds them in a train car as it's going down the track, and he kills a bunch of people by holding on to someone and kills them too by hitting people going sixty miles an hour. That's what this movie feels like to me. Levinson and Link are just holding you like this and forcing you forward because you know, from the moment the gun is out into the world, there is going to be something bad that happens with it.

And they never let it. They never let the cat out of the bag until the end. But I think for me, like you've said already, the thing that's so good is that the suspense is just being built throughout. When he goes into the office and he's sitting there, you don't know what's going to trigger him, if something's going to trigger him. He goes into the bathroom and here's people talking about things.

He goes into the office of his boss, and you think he's going to do something. It's just the amount of tension that this movie gets out of very little is impressive, to say the least. Just the whole thing where he's pointing the gun at the window washer across the way, and the window washer is the one that sees him with the gun. I know some other people see him with the gun as well, especially because what we see him go out into this public square at eleven fifty nine, and as soon as it turns to twelve, you see all of these people coming out for their lunch. By twelve fifteen, they have noticed him and they've all run back inside of their buildings and he's just standing up there, pointing the gun down and just pulling off shots like he's going to be picking off all of these innocent bystanders.

And then he's just left in this empty area, and I love how there are people inside of the offices and inside of the businesses looking at him, but they are all just too afraid to go out. And eventually he moves into another area where they don't know that there's a gunman on the loose, and everybody's back to normal. But here he is just walking around with this thing. But that window washer when he's there, like tapping on the window, hey, like trying to call this woman to him, it's just driving me up a walk because she's just ignoring him completely, and he's no like the guy who had the gun pointed at him unknowingly. Is the guy who's, Hey, there's somebody out here that you need to look at, you need to call the cops.

No, nothing, She's just It's so again tension, but in other ways, not just the tension the fear of this white collar guy ticking off these shots, but also the tension of is anybody going to call the police? And then there's the are the police going to get this guy? And that's what I love about this movie is that none of those things happen because it's not even about him. It ends up just being once again about the gun itself and the voyage that the gun goes on, and I guess he gets away with doing nothing. Oh yeah, Well then you get that tension again because he ends up throwing the gun into this car, and then you see the woman in the car and you're just like, oh, fuck, is this gun gonna go off in this car?

I don't see how it could happen, but I don't know. Maybe her heel gets caught in the trigger or something, because you're just like, well, no, now that it's being taken around by this woman. And I love that transition because you think that's the beginning of the next vignette, but it really isn't. It's not until she gets to the car wash, right is when the guys they are cleaning inside the car and just like, hey, look what I found, tucks that away and off we go into our next one. And so I think, for me, the next vignette is the weakest one of the movie.

I don't know how you felt about it's the weakest one for me because it's the most stereotypical, right, like, guy, you know, it's a bunch of kind of these I don't know, dip shits, just I don't know, like the kind of person who would take a gun out of someone's car. And it's also that it's the first time we're seeing minorities. This is the Latino section of the film. Did they have to be Latino? I guess I get, and they have to like almost fuck while they're the dad's out in the living room like two feet away and they're messing around with a gun and fooling around in the kitchen.

I'm just like, guys, the dad's right there. Yeah, it's the whole thing with them and the gun Like that for me was the least compelling part of the film. I wasn't particularly interested in that vignette. I don't know. The vignette with the guy at the office is just so compelling that there's, oh it's again, I don't know, like nothing, it's not that nothing else ever lives up to that, but nothing else really gets to the point for me where I'm like, oh, yeah, this is totally just as good as that second vignette, or even again, even the first one.

Because the Stephen elliott One I enjoyed that one immensely, because again it cuts back to this idea of the necessity of the gun not necessarily being a negative, the necessity of the gun just feeling like it needs to be a necessity. Once we get past those two first scenes, we're just in stereotypical treatment of minorities in television in the seventies land. That's what it feels like, a little bit like, Oh, they're taking things from people that they shouldn't be doing and doing things that they may not need to be And I'm like, I just I don't know. That part just falls flat. Maybe that's just me, but it falls flat for me.

Yeah, I like the mystery of the old man, the father character taking the gun and we don't know where it's at and everybody looking around for it, and you know, the reunification with the suns. But yeah, it feels very I hate to say it because the rest of this doesn't feel this way, but it feels very movie of the Week. It feels very Yeah, you're typical melodrama that you have on TV. I do like that the story ends up being like, Okay, his dad is sad and he stops his dad from killing himself. But I don't know the next part where we have a gun dealer getting the gun and then selling the gun and we have people essentially like criminals.

I like the idea of the one before, where it's all we have people with a gun and this might be leading to something that wouldn't have happened otherwise without the gun being there. But with a movie like this, I think they should have just gone there to show it to actually, because Rob, I think my biggest issue probably is the fact that with the Ignacio vignette with him and his wife and his dad and his brother, like, I really would have thought that the movie would have made a bigger point of talking about the issue of mental health and suicide in terms of the gun and access to a gun not being a positive when you have someone in the household whose mental health is not necessarily clear, and the movie doesn't hammer that home the way it hammers home some of the other stuff.

That feels like a pretty big missed opportunity for me. Yeah, because really, the white collar guy is mentally deranged, and then Pops is just going and he's old and he goes to funeral so people that he doesn't know, and that's what ends up triggering the sun to run to the cemetery and find his father in front of his mother's grave and tell his brother, Hey, Pops is over here. So they all come to the cemetery together. It's not until the I guess it's the fourth vignette now where we actually get to see real criminals with the need for guns. And that's the thing, right, the thing of criminals with guns.

Again. I was like, all right, so we have the criminals with guns vignette finally, Right, they don't I don't know, maybe to readdress what I said before, maybe this is the worst part of the movie, because this is the most obvious direction to take it, right, Like two criminals who just are using the guns to rob a business. Like maybe that's I don't know, I mean, which of the vignettes other like, which of the vignettes didn't work the best for you, because I think it might actually be this one for me, Like there's very little to chew on in this vignette. Yeah, this is pretty typical stuff as far as Oh, they're casing the joint, they're looking around, they're trying to make these arrangements, and there's the whole like buying of the guns, which we've seen in so many things before, and that they're casing a movie theater.

I'm like, orno theater. Orn't like, how much money are you making out of this job? I? Yeah? And then it did make me laugh because with you being a friend of Allen Sachs's, here's mister Woodhouse as the guy who runs the porn theater, who's got a gun of his own and has this whole Mexican standoff with these two idiots.

You know what they say, a good guy with a gun, Mike, Yeah, a good guy with a gun is all it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun. I have never seen that actor where he's not angry, right. Every time I think of him on Welcome Back Hotter, he's just always the most cantankerous asshole ever. But yeah, I guess it's the whole thing. The reason why they're choosing to do the porn theater is because one of them works there, because he recognizes his voice, and it's again, this could be something, But I feel you're right that this is a squandered opportunity, and.

It's a squandered opportunity because again, I feel like, even though I maybe don't agree with the Ignacio one. I do feel like at least the story that it's telling is somewhat interesting, even if it is a little rote. This one is just wrote and uninteresting. There's nothing about it it. Ultimately, I feel like goes nowhere other than to get the gun to its final place, which I don't.

I think the other issue is I feel like they could have gotten us there a better way. I don't know how you feel about it, but doesn't it feel a little contrived how they get the gun to the family at the end. As far as it being the gun reclamation project and the guy works there and ends up just lifting the gun or he there's one that falls off the truck kind of thing, because they're melting down all of these guns and he gets one that just happens to not get burned up. Yeah, but again, I feel like nobody who's doing that job would actually do that. Would I would fucking hope.

Really, that's the thing. That's what I'm like. Again, I feel like, if you're going to get to the point where we have a character who is a younger character who may die because the gun is involved in this, somehow, you're telling me that the best way to do it was to have the guy who hauls it pick up the gun and take it home with him. I just I don't know. Yeah, I would hope that person would be smarter than that, but I guess obviously that is the point.

Obviously right here again back to the idea of what is the point of this goddamn thing to begin with? The point of this thing is to show that at every level of all of these scenarios vignettes, there has been some kind of failing on someone's part. But has there been is the question? Because Steven Elliott did ostensibly the right thing. It's not like the guy he gave the gun to did the wrong thing by going and planning it.

The chain really started once the guy stole the gun. But did he really steal the gun? I guess he technically stole it because you have to wait for a week to get the gun, but he paid him right. I feel like the movie has a moment where it goes from these are things that are happening, and these are ostensibly best I can tell good people that are making mistakes or choices that will affect someone else down the road, and then it goes to now we just have people like a gun dealer selling it, and from that moment on to the end of the movie essentially is when it loses me. It brings me back in with oh, now the gun is at this man and wife's home, there is a child there, the wife has issues with the gun being there.

What are the issues and why we all know what they are? And then obviously the worst fears become reality, and I like the inevitability of it. I just feel like they could have gotten there in a more believable, interesting and impactful, more importantly way. Yeah, it's funny because talking about those other episodes with a similar storyline between Quincy and Wi Fi, I have, oh, this particular part where it's like the couple with the gun, which really mirrors the beginning of the film. But this guy, it's almost seems to be turned on having this gun around.

It just seems to be very You're like, oh, look at how cool I am to have this gun. And it's one thing that we haven't talked about is that there's a little bit of a documentary aspect of this film the beginning with the making of the gun. Even the gun seller that you're talking about at the beginning it feels almost like an educational film, but there are dates that are being put on each of these vignettes or different parts of the vignette, So this whole movie takes place over a three year period of time. I want to say the first date is like September seventy one. The last date that we see on screen is November thirteenth, nineteen seventy four, And if people are paying attention to the beginning of this episode, that's the day that this aired.

So you're watching this movie and the final scene is taking place on the day that you're watching it, which I just think is fantastic. I love that kind of stuff because you always get those assholes that say present day on their films, and you're just like, yeah, present day five years ago, I'm watching this in the future, right, this is in present day, guys. I like that. The way the movie ends is that today is the day, and this is where you would hope the story of the gun ends. This is where I'm assuming the story of the gun ends.

This is where I think anyone who watches this hopes that the story of this gun ends. But ultimately, as we know, as you mentioned early on, as people who live in this country. That this is not where the story of the gun ends. The gun probably goes somewhere else and has probably maybe tried to be gotten rid of but reclaimed again or who knows even again. That's the thing, like so many minor mistakes were made for the gun to get into the hand of this kid, and then the kid dies.

The gun is never even fired on screen. No, in the gun What a great choice, by the way, God. Yes, and it's the exact same end that they use it. I think it's in the Quincy episode. I can't like they're running together in my head, but I'm pretty sure it's Quincy.

And I think they even like pan Over as well, so they just straight up stole this kind of thing. But yeah, just the gun, the guns period. Just guns are They're just used for one thing. You're not hammering nails with them. Despite what Stephen Prince might say in Taxi Driver, you are there to fire the gun.

The gun is there to be fired. That's the only thing it can do. In the whole movie, it's never fired until the last few minutes of the film, which is crazy, Like you don't see this gun getting shot, but here it is finally and you've been waiting for it an hour and thirteen minutes for this gun to fire, and just that potential energy, that stored energy runs through this whole frickin thing. Not what a concept, what a way to pull this. Off, to execute it at the end, because for me, like you've already said, the end is the most important part.

The end is the part that nails it and hammers it home, which is, no matter what we do, guns will be here and everybody can do a better job in being part of this system. And like you said, of course you know about guns. You live in America. This is the part of this podcast that becomes uncomfortable for some people to have to hear. This country was started with guns.

We literally have a country because of guns, because of a militia of people who said, I don't want to be taxed anymore by people that are across the plan from us. They don't have our best interests in mind. And the ability to own firearms, and by own, I mean have at that time was what allowed them to take this country and turn it into a country that we all share. Unfortunately, for us in twenty twenty four or nineteen seventy five, or we are still putting up with and dealing with the ramifications and repercussions of our country being started by people with guns, because guns existed, and they're intrinsically linked to the culture of this country in a way that we often Again, is it a surprise that we look at violence in this country and it doesn't bother us, but yet sex does for so many people.

It shouldn't if you know anything about history. People that left England to come here were boring because they didn't like to have sex, at least not indiscriminately quote unquote the way so many people believe everyone who aren't like them at the time were like they were having orgies in England all the time, though they seem to be a little bit more freewheeling and dealing with their sexuality. My point being, it shouldn't be a surprise that people in this country have an aversion to sexuality and talking about it, And it shouldn't be a surprise that people in this country embrace guns like it's nobody's business, because again, it's hardwired into the DNA of this country. The land that this country exists upon was soaked with the blood of other people who lived here before us, and people came and took it away from them now with guns because they had guns and the other people didn't.

Again, it's awful, it's horrible. I'm not defending it. I own guns, so that doesn't make me a defender of it. That just makes me an owner of guns. I've said this before and I'll say it again.

If someone came to my friend door tomorrow and said, Chris, I'll buy all of your guns from you for X price, I would say, as in the US government, I would be like, okay, sure, and I could sell them myself. And I've thought about it, frankly, because I don't need as many as I have. They were the ones that I have at all, But I would sell them in a way that would make sure that if they go to whomever they're going to, it is now legally yours. There is a paper trail. It is your problem.

Now. I hope that you are an in fact, a responsible gun owner, because there are ways to do that in this country that don't involve selling someone a gun in a parking lot or taking it to a guy at your job and just having your secretary right a little missive to say this gun is his now, because no, that's not how that works. There are legal steps in a process to get through all of this, and this movie like it kints at that. I wish it had leaned into that a little bit more, because that's the thing that this movie feels like it is truly lacking, is an addressing of the part of this that the government is trying to do something about but is woefully underqualified to do anything about. The movie doesn't really talk about that, and it feels like kind of money left on the table, given that they check every other box, it feels but that one.

But yeah, it's like you said, as Americans, we know about guns because unfortunately for so many of us, and by so many of us, all of us who live in this country exists because of guns. There's nothing that you said that I disagree with, because that's very much the case. This is a country that it's fine with violence, but sex forget about it. And whenever we get closer to being a country that appreciates sex more than violence, we got to switch back and head the other way. So yeah, and done.

Violence is just right now. It's It's that famous Onion headline that runs every time there's a mass shooting. No way to prevent this, says, only nation where this happens regularly, as I find that it's of course, Uval Day was the next the last time that they ran the headline, but they probably have run it since then. What they say about leopards and eating your own face? Yell own a chimpanzee long enough, it's bound to bite your face off and rip your hands off a couple of dead kids along the way.

Mike, they're making more right, Oh they're not. Oh no, maybe we should care about these things. That headline has run thirty seven times since they first ran it in twenty fourteen. Twenty fourteen was ten years ago. That's glorious.

I love living in this country. God bless America. Just overall, this movie is a uniquely American experience to watch, And I think if someone from another country were to watch this, I think it would make them deeply worried about us as a country. The ability to purchase guns, the ease with which guns can be purchased even now, is frightening and shocking to many people. And you know what again, as a gun owner, the amount of paperwork that I had to do to own a gun is a lot less paperwork than I had to do to apply for state insurance.

But I mean, that's a problem. And I am sitting here saying it's a problem. And this movie in seventy four was saying it's a problem, and we're saying now in twenty twenty four it's still a problem. And until somebody fixes it, it will always be a problem. And I think things like the Gun go a long way to fixing things, or at least shining light on the fact that these things are happening.

But you know what, the thing we really haven't talked about, Man Levinson and Link just killing it again with the storytelling like mechanisms that they use. Yeah, I know what's up with that. These guys are just geniuses. Good for them, right. And I won't say that this is the first time that this type of conceit has been used where you're following an object rather than following the people, But it is so effective that they ended up using it two more times on network television, oddly enough, both the seventh seasons of Quincy and Hawaii five.

Oh, I don't know if that was just a thing that you did in the seventh season is let's talk about gun violence, and here we are followed one gun through an entire storyline, and it's was very interesting the way that they did this, especially when it came to I want to say, it's the quinc where there's this whole shipment of guns, and yeah, it is that one, I believe, because they're talking about a Saturday Night special, which is the same model that it was in Hawaii. FI I've owe as well. And they have these photos at the beginning where they're like, this gun was used in this crime, and then they'll show another crime and they'll have a photo this gun was used in this crime. And then eventually they get to one where they don't immediately cut to that gun.

They just keep following the gun all around. I believe it's San Francisco and just like everybody who ends up with it and Hawaii, I've oh, it's the same thing. Guns are being shipped in. There was a great line that Steve Garrett has where it doesn't make any sense since the Hour on an Island. I think he says they're being driven in every week or something, and it's dude, you're on an island.

They're not being driven in. It driven in from where exact like Loda and made, but definitely not driven. That famous land bridge that they have. But yeah, it's like, it was amazing that they were so close with those great episodes. And I definitely want to check out more.

I fucking love Quincy, but I haven't watched it in forever, and I never really was a Hawaii fi O guy, so I'm curious to try it a little bit more. But great, great TV. And yeah, fucking Lincoln Levinson and like I said, six months from when they released their last banger with Private Slovak. Yeah, the two of them together really just I can't think of a better duo for writing television stuff like this. I really can't.

Lincoln Levinson made two of the most important TV shows of all time with Colombo and Murder. She wrote, these are shows that have stood the test of time, that are still being shown now. We're still talking about them now. But it does feel like a shame that something like this has been lost in the shuffle of all those things, because this is as good as any of those really good Colombo episodes. The Murder of Private Slovak similarly another great thing.

When I was done watching it, I was like, how do more people not know about this, because feels like a thing more people should not only know about, but also enjoy. Maybe not enjoy is the right word. There's a level of inevitability in Private Slovak that the gun also has. Look at the end of Columbo, they're getting caught. It's that level of inevitability that Lincoln Levinson operate under.

So well, you can see the wall coming from fifty feet away, but they're gonna slam into it. But you're gonna enjoy slamming into it. You see it coming, and that's part of this. They know, But it's the journey to get to that point that's important. Because again, at the end of this, you know, the gun's gonna have to go off, And at the end of the Private Slovak, you know he's gonna die, And at the end of Colombo, you know he's gonna catch him.

It's just a matter of how. And the how is so interesting. Levinson puts so much time, effort, thought and care into answering the how of so many of these things that, yeah, again I'm so impressed by their ability to just write whatever. At this point, you know what I mean, it's just Colombo. This Colombo that.

I'm more impressed by them just writing other things. Really, Not only. Do they have these two TV movies coming out in nineteen seventy four, but they've got episodes of Colombo's show that they helped create. Plus they've got episodes of Manix are still coming out at this time that wasn't canceled till seventy five. So it's just holy shit, guys.

Yes, they've got so much stuff going on. Why it's right. I also forgot about Manx. Holy cow, Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is odd that I've never seen an episode of Mannix. And I know, like Mystery Science Theater, anytime somebody would drop down and pose with a gun, they'd be like Manix.

And even in the Beastie Boys song where they're talking about your favorite seventies TV detectives and they'd say, is it man X, And I'm like, yeah, no, I know, I ever saw that one. I think I've even seen an episode of Barnaby Jones, but not Mannix. Mike the Manux cast. I think that's what happens after Colombo. I think that would probably that's one hundred and ninety four episodes it is.

That's eight seasons of hour long episodes or half hour long. Oh, that's a good question. I imagine they were hour long. Episodes fifty minutes y oh my god, it's twenty four episodes a season. And it's remarkable too when we look at the gun and it's one hundred and thirteen minutes with commercials.

It wasn't a two hour thing. They're not stuff in forty five minutes of commercials in the air. No, they are sure not. No, this is an hour and a half slot with all the commercials. That's crazy.

I know. I completely agree with that as well. And that's the other thing that cracks me up about this is it's so economical on top of everything else. It's honestly the most echo noomical thing I've seen in a while because it manages to get so much across without having to do it for two hours. That's what an hour and thirteen right?

Like, God, come on, I'm not sure I have the writing ability at the moment to write something this well, and it'd be an hour and thirteen minutes and by the end of it it be as impactful as this, which is heartrending and awful. But yeah, at a breezy one hundred and thirteen minutes. You wouldn't expect it to have that much of an impact, but it does. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to last between the last seasons, I believe is one we did Woman under the Influence. With this break between these seasons, we did some Lincoln Levenson.

I'm looking forward to doing more Levinson, especially. I think it's after either the next season or the one after that, because Roller Coaster is a fucking amazing movie. It is one of those movies where you go, this is better that has any right to be and wait to see that one again and to have that conversation with you. I've heard of it, but I've never. Seen it, so you are in for a treat, my friend.

I have enjoyed everything we've watched on this show so much. Even the episodes of Colombo that we've watched that haven't been the most knockout, stand out best ones have been quite good. Yeah, but this is this again, similarly to Private Slovak, this is one of those things where I'm just like, how have more people not see this? In twenty twenty four? This should be what's that thing called that they would always show kids back in the day when they were like at school learning how to drive, like Rick, what pavement?

Yeah, pavement. This is similar to that. In my mind, this is a condemnation of this system that we are part of in a very explicit way. And good on Lincoln Levinson for having the balls in seventy four to write the story, because there aren't people writing stories like this now. On a very special episode of The Big Bang Theory, they Weldon, I found a gun.

There's none of that. Again, it's not that people aren't concerned with talking about issues anymore, but talking about issues and being entertaining aren't things that people are necessarily interested in checking both boxes, and I don't blame them. It's not easy. But the gun is a piece of both entertainment and I think education a very needed end, as holl And Oates would say, adult education, because again, gun violence and guns and access to guns and guns being in the system unknown to where they are lost is a real problem, and these things do happen, and it's not okay. I could see Sheldon out there in that park, that office park, with the gun, bazinga.

I'm good anything with Jim Parsons in it, and I'm good. That's as someone who's gay and I'm good because you know what, Jim Parsons, I love you to death, buddy, But the Basinga and shit is just too much. But at Bazinga the serial Killer. Okay, Bazin, We're reporting tonight from Topeka, Kansas, where we now have a name for the man who's been skinning women alive. He wants to be called Bazinga the serial Killer.

Was Zinga. On the next episode of The Shabby Detective. We will be back in Colombo territory. We're going to be kicking off the fifth season of Colombo with the episode Forgotten Lady. Well, we're gonna have Janet Lee, Sam Jaffy, a lot of good actors in there.

I'm really excited to get back into some Colombo's with you, Chris. Though this little diversion has been a lot of fun. Yeah, no, this diversion has been great. I have enjoyed these two movies immensely, and I look forward to the next Columbo stuff, but also looking forward to the next time we have a break, not because I don't want to do anything, but because we get to watch stuff like this, which is I've heard of Colombo. I had never heard of this.

Yeah, until we come back next month. Chris, what are you up to these days? I am just making audio content over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you can find this show and so many other great shows, all about the things that you may or may not care about. You like Barney Miller, you like seventies cop shows, like Columbo, You might want to check out our Barney Miller show. You like weird spooky paranormal stuff.

We did a cold check show. I did a show called Scary Stories We Tell where we talked about real spooky stuff, not just a man chasing after invisible monsters with a pork pie hat, though there was nothing wrong with that, but sometimes even they didn't know what they were doing. Yeah. All that and more can be found at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, other than Rankin on Bond, which we do once a month with our friend Richard HadAM, where we talk about James Bond movies once a month on our patreons at the ten dollars or higher level. So that's where you can go to find me, and that's where you can go to find the things that I work on.

What about you, Mike Wright. Same thing, Weirdingwaymedia dot com for all your audio diversions. As Heather would say, definitely come on over and listen to the projection booth the Life and Times of Captain Bernie Miller. Yes, we have all of those Cold Chac tapes available for people to download. I don't think that any of the TV movies we talked about were written by Lincoln Levionson, but think so.

Can you imagine them doing a spooky show that would be pretty neat? I would, yeah so much. Give me that now, please. Yeah, sounds good to me. I think just Black's Magic, the show that they did in nineteen eighty six, I think that was as close to magic that they went to.

It's a shame. Yeah. I want to thank John Walker for our opening theme and Colin Gallagher for our closing theme, and I want to thank you everybody for listening to us as we talk about these interesting things, at least interesting to us. Hopefully you found a little bit of enjoyment with. This, and maybe you learned a little bit along the way.

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